Saturday 8 June 2019

'Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs!'

On Words | Personal Reflections

“It’s only words,” sang Elvis live on stage to a rapturous, electrified fan audience in Las Vegas!

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet,” said Juliet with reference to the family name of Romeo.
 
“The human spirit thinks with words,” said ‘Spinozist’ Johann Gottfried Herder!

He adds to say that, “Words, by connecting passions with things, the present with the past, and by making possible memory and imagination, create family, society, literature, history. [. . . ] to speak and think in words is to ‘swim in an inherited stream of images and words; we must accept these media on trust: we cannot create them”.

To Vico, who came a generation earlier, again, ‘words’ or ‘linguistic forms’ are keys to the mental, social and cultural life of societies, present and past!

Indeed words shape us! Words make us! Words also break us! Such is the power latent within words! In short, words, carefully used, become the basic building blocks of a beautiful relationship too!

Such is the power, such is the lure! Such is the charm and such the grace contained within  our ‘words!’

This series, hopes to tap a wee bit into this grandiose power that lay behind ‘words,’ in their myriad facets and avatars, from literature to linguistics!

Cardinal Newman, like Stephen Leacock, and other educationists of his ilk, had his own ideals and ideas for a University. In this regard, he stood an opportunity to give a host of lectures on the topic, ‘The Idea of a University,’ in Ireland, way back in 1852.


And in this wonderful lecture series, Newman provides a powerful articulation for a liberal arts education. To him, the primary aim of education is to develop and to nurture the mind of the learner, and NOT to churn out information in chunks to the student. (And today, Google and Wikipedia combined, as we would all well agree, can do that with ease, much better than the teacher!)

In this regard, his definition of the term ‘gentleman’ has such intense rubrics that seek to bring out the power latent within ‘words!’

The first time I came across this wonderful definition to the term ‘gentleman’ was in a lecture class by late Dr. Ranjan Samuel!

Dr. Ranjan was such a passionate and committed professor who used to inculcate in his students a sense of discipline and decorum in such suave and elegant ways that highly endeared him to us all! Never once have we seen Dr. Ranjan getting angry with his students ever! His words were always so dignified and gentle! And he had in ample measure, what Bertrand Russell in his ‘Education and Discipline’ would call ‘tact’, and he also knew full well the Jidduji dictum that, the key to discipline is NOT in the hands of the teacher, but in the hands of the student! And so his classes always had an ennobling effect on the student’s conduct!

His refrain, in each of his classes was on the power of ‘words’ on people! Quoting Newman, he used to say,

‘A gentleman is one who never inflicts pain on anybody by his words or actions!’

How beautifully he’s summed up a gentleman for us all!

For more on his elucidations concerning the virtues of a gentleman, you may want to read from our earlier blogpost on Newman HERE.

Newman, as I further learnt, goes on to compile some indispensable attributes that qualify a person to be a gentleman!

‘The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast,’ says Newman.

‘He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization.’

‘He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best.’

‘He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp saying for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.’

‘He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny.’

‘If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it.’

‘He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive.’

What lovely qualities laid out for us all in a platter!

And herein, ladies and gentlemen, lies the skyhigh powers of real, ennobling literature. To make a person cultured, civilized, lady-like and gentlemanly, well-groomed in etiquette, dignified in bearing, gracious in manners, and their like.

Ample evidences abound in literatures from across the world, that connect to these lovely virtues exemplified by Newman, chief among which are the qualities of empathy, tolerance, peace, love, goodness etc in great measure!

Maya Angelou in her autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, provides such intense and detailed descriptions of growing up black in a racist society.

Although, initially, she has a growing feeling of abandonment, very soon, even as she joins a bevy of such abandoned children, hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them, (with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a black girl from Oklahoma), she spends almost a month on the streets with these abandoned folk, who, as she later says, “set a tone of tolerance for my life.” 

Hence, her own pain of abandonment has made her extremely sensitive to the pain of other abandoned children around her, and to their emotional turmoil as well! And as the novel proceeds further on, Maya, gradually grows into a lady who could keep her dignity with such finesse, in the midst of insults and injustices, by her sheer perseverance and tolerance. So much so that, she soon starts feeling more comfortable being herself. Now she has evolved as a lady! She is no more the passive, reticent and shy girl that she once used to be! She is now, not a wee bit worried about how others perceive her, or look at her, because she knows with such convincing surety, who she truly is! (phenomenal woman, as she herself says!)

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre proves another paradigm for this virtue of tolerance! Indeed the power of Helen’s words are so therapeutic on Jane that they transform her life a full 360 degrees!

Helen and Jane
Jane, like Maya, again, struggles with a profound sense of loneliness and abandonment. It is at this point of time, in her loneliness, that her friend Helen’s philosophy of tolerance and her encouraging words act a great stimulus on the impulsive Jane!

At school, Helen is quite often taken to task by Mrs. Scatcherd for no fault of hers.

(On an aside, I should add that, Charlotte Bronte, in this intense story, has woven with such finesse and grace, amazingly valuable lessons for life and living in such great abundance for us all!)

So yes, coming back to Helen, although Helen answers with elegance some of the questions that even her classmates cannot, she is not appreciated or praised by Mrs. Scatcherd anytime. Rather, Mrs. Scatcherd picks on her for being dirty and disagreeable, and has her flogged quite often. But then, now comes out some invaluable lessons for life from Helen Burns to Jane.

Jane cannot comprehend Helen’s philosophy of tolerance at all. Jane hence says,

“If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again. […] I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”

Now Helen Burns comes out with her philosophy of tolerance, when she says,

What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart... Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last… If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

So much for the power of words to ‘make’ people, not to ‘break’ them!

This transformative power of words, this therapeutic power within words, this healing balmy power within words, are the domain proper of any 'practitioner of literature!'

On a personal note, well-o-well, I might be a student of literature, or even a teacher of literature! I may have been bestowed with such great spiritual, or material gifts! I may have the ‘tongues of angels!’ on me toooo! But…

But…

But…

But… if I don’t live up to the lady-like qualities and the gentlemanly qualities that my literature has thus long passionately tried to endow me with, one fine day, at the end-o-end of days, call it D-day or judgment day if you may, all the books that I’ve had read, all through my literary life, would rise up in unified testimony against me straight from off their stacks and treasuries, and say, ‘O wretched wreck of a person that you are! How dare you’ve wasted such a beautiful literary life, after having tasted for this long, from such pure fountains of literature, so pure and so serene, that all of us, from our treasuries and gardens had graciously bestowed upon you, in such abundance! We don’t want to have anything to do with such a mean, base and lowly being as you! Get away from us, far far away from us, you worker of iniquity,” all the books on the treasure-stacks would pronounce in such firm yet unified accord! ;-)

Following these grand old books that marched straight from the sacred treasuries full throttle to testify against this 'literary practitioner,' come next the Mathematics scholar, the Physics teacher, the Engineering student and the Commerce professor, followed by the able medical doctor, up in tow, marching up to the trial stand where the accused has been arraigned! Now it's their turn and quota to do the mocking and the reviling, the scoffing and the scorning, the taunting and the pooh-pooh'ing of this so-called, self-proclaimed 'practitioner of literature,' and then they'd all say, 

"Thou, 'practitioner of literature,' thou who art the custodians of our culture, thou, who wert assigned with the task of nation-building, ennobling us all with your refinement, your grace, your elegance and your love, your wit and your tact, how dare you've shamelessly failed to live up to your expected ideals? It's because of YOU that humankind has become so full of crime and corruption! It's because of YOU that people have lost their faith in humanity! It's because of YOUR abysmal failure in living up to the ideals enshrined in your literatures, that humankind has become so greedy, has completely lost their sense of sympathy and empathy, has totally lost the tact and the grace in their words, the love in their deeds and gentleness in their actions! We are so ashamed of you," they would say and indignantly march away, far far away from this  type of 'practitioner' of literature! :-)

To be continued…

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