'Memory represents past experience of the outer world!'

Herbert Spencer | On Memory

‘Memories are small islands in a sea of forgetting. In processing our experience of reality, forgetting is the rule and remembering the exception!’ says Astrid Erll, one of the major theorists in the burgeoning field of Cultural Memory Studies.

Well, in general, of the broad uses of ‘Memory’ in Literature, this little series would seek to highlight the use of memory to bring about or to induce a strong feeling of nostalgia,

and

the use of memory as a means to construct one’s individual identity or one’s cultural identity!

The Romantic poets have always been rich ensamples to the former!

How beautifully then, does Wordsworth define poetry on these lines! To him, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Great minds of yore from Wordsworth to Marcel Proust and beyond are amazing proponents to this credo!

Herbert Spencer in his enormous work and probably one of the pioneering works on psychology, written way way back in 1855, gives his take on Memory in Part IV of the first volume to his two-volumed book titled, Principles of Psychology.

To Spencer,

Memory represents past experience of the outer world. Each act of recollection is the establishment of an inner relation answering to some outer relation; but as the outer relation is often a transitory one, the inner relation established in the act of recollection is often one answering to no relation now existing or ever likely to exist again; and in that sense is not a correspondence. The correspondence here becomes evanescent. From this it will probably be inferred that a satisfactory account of Memory, as viewed from our present stand-point, is impracticable.

Therefore, Spencer adds on to say that,

We recollect those relations only of which the registration is incomplete. No one remembers that the object at which he looks has an opposite side; or that a certain modification of the visual impression implies a certain distance; or that the thing he sees moving about is a live animal. To ask a man whether he remembers that the sun shines, that fire burns, that iron is hard, would be a misuse of language. Even the almost fortuitous connections among our experiences, cease to be classed as memories when they have become thoroughly familiar.

On this note, his thesis on Memory, [along with the ways in which he connects it with ‘Instinct’ using astounding illustrations galore,] would sure make this book, one of the few harbingers of the presently popular field of Memory Studies.

It is highly unfortunate that Herbert Spencer doesn’t find mention, even in passing, in Astrid Erll’s primer on Memory Studies, titled, Memory in Culture, which has  got pages and pages on the ‘References’ part, acknowledging the big names in Memory Studies, but wanting in their master connoisseur Spencer!

[If I may use an epithet to describe him much better to our generation, well, he could perhaps be called the Bill Bryson of the nineteenth century!]

In fact, Herbert Spencer’s take on memory [pages 444 to 452] are interesting insights that are so relevant to our times yet conveniently side-stepped by certain sections of scholars in the field of Memory Studies, and the reasons are not hard to find! ;-)

To be continued…

'It was a girl who could pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin...'

The Garcia Girls | their Ideal of Liberation

Julia Alvarez’s first and her bestest novel, titled, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, has received wide critical acclaim for its impactful insights into traditional gender roles, immigration, assimilation, the American dream, and the struggles of the four girls in trying to ‘fit into’ their new land of ‘liberty’, America!

Hence, when the four sisters make good their departure from their home back in the Dominican Republic, they have a host of factors to cope with, to wrestle with and to battle with!

Although initially poor when they set foot in the US, the four girls are made to ‘fit into’ the American way of life, by a host of stereotyped ways and means that bespeak to a typical American childhood! Hence it is, that they are asked to wear braces in order to straighten their teeth, and even their accents are polished off in school!

Unfortunately, however, their father Mr. Garcia has a feeling that this kinda ‘fitting ins’ have drastically misfired on the family! As a result, he feels there’s no connect between him and his daughters.

In fact, by helping his four daughters ‘fit into’ the American system, Mr. Garcia now feels a huge distance between him and them!

The novelist Julia gives us a glimpse into one of these modes of trying to ‘fit in’,  through the eyes of Sandra, the second of the four daughters! Here goes  excerpts from the novel –

As she let herself out of her stall, she heard Mrs. Fanning still active in hers. Quickly, she finished hitching up her silly lights, then swished her hands under the faucet, beginning to dry them on her dress, but remembering after an initial swipe, the towels.

She took one from the stack, wiped her hands and tapped at her face as she had seen Mami do with the powder puff. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was surprised to find a pretty girl looking back at her.

It was a girl who could pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin, looks that were traced back to a great-great grandmother from Sweden at every family gathering. She lifted her bangs-her face was delicate like a ballerina's.

It struck her impersonally as if it were a judgment someone else was delivering, someone American and important, like Dr. Fanning: she was pretty.

She stops in the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror and observes that “she was surprised to find a pretty girl looking back at her. It was a girl who could pass as American, with soft blue eyes and fair skin.

Moreover, now, as a result of this constant fixation with trying to ‘fit in’, Sandra develops a lot of psychological complexes on her! Her dieting leads her to a near total nervous collapse, resulting in anorexia!

Something on a similar note befalls the other sisters too! Finally, at the end of it all, the four girls are of the firm opinion that, the more they try to ‘fit in’, the less they feel liberated! The more they try to ‘feel American’, the more they get stifled with their own free liberated selves!

Through Sandra’s precarious predicament in trying to 'fit in,' then, the author seems to convey the idea that the four girls had not only lost their voice, their cultural ethos, and their language, but also their identity in the process!

And through this valuable insight the novelist suggests, albeit on a veiled vein, that, true liberation is when one speaks their own voice, stands for their cultural ethos, converses proudly in their accent, and lifts aloft their language!

To be continued…

image: amazondotcom

Spot a Literary Soul, the Easy Way! 💖

Ten Salients | Of the Liberated Literary Soul

It’s a truth, universally acknowledged, that any liberated literary being (young and old) must sure be a class apart in everything there is to life and living! 

Be it in their perspectives, their sentiments, their approach to people, their attitude to life, and towards society in general – They are simply amazing in every way, you see!

Phenomenal in every way! A literary being, we literati call them!

‘What’s that particular something, I pray thee, which makes them a class apart, sir?’ you seem to ask!

Well, then, if you would take some time off your busy schedule to observe those special qualities that makes a literary being stand out, you’d sure end up saying a ‘hi five’ to any literary being who happens to come your way!

After you read through these salients, maybe!

Because, you’d find it out all for yourself these lovely salients enshrined in the hearts and minds of any literary being! 

And yes! The literati is all over the place, to paint the town red! And the fact is, there’s no stopping them!

So here goes –

First and foremost, a liberated literary being has got an amazing ‘defamilarised’ perspective to everything under the sun, as Viktor Shklovsky would call it! 

They don’t look up things the way pavapetta mortals do! Their souls are of a different mould! A different class! A different temperament!

Secondly, a literary being believes in the power of their pen! 

To them, their pen is mightier than the sword at any given point of time! So they tend to be working on their muse as often as they possibly could! 

They don’t necessarily write for a particular reader or an audience, but they write their hearts out, chiefly because if they don’t, their muse will sure twitch and tweak their ears to a scream if they ain’t! One reason why they strive to create such amazing worlds through words!

Thirdly, they don’t revel or relish in whiling away their time watching crass videos, nosey memes or stale jokes by the number, ones that don’t have any literary merit to them! In short, they don’t have time on them to waste on trivialities by the dozen that come knocking at their doors!

Fourthly, they’d always be on the watch for the latest reads in town, the latest additions to the libraries, the latest winners of those prestigious literary prizes, the latest journals in town etc. 

Without them, they feel, they’re sure missing out on something! Some literary spice! Some action! To them, as with Emily Dickinson, ‘The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy’!

Fifthly, they’d never associate even in their wildest dreams, with those miserable gossipy gangs in town, at any point of time ever in their precious lives, because they know and they are convinced beyond measure that these gossip gangs are always part of those deprived, god-forsaken souls who’ve always felt that, their hearts will stop beating and they’d have to be admitted in Apollo hospitals and that too on ventilator mode, if they don’t do their daily quota of trivial, mean, damaging gossip. 

Sixthly, a true blue literary being will never pass value judgements on ANYONE! Neither will they arrive at conclusions that easily on their fellow human beings! 

That’s because they believe in the dictum that, ‘To each their aura and their glow!’

As J. Krishnamurti says, 

‘A living mind is a free mind, learning, never concluding!’

With this lovely thought that guides and binds them, they do NOT indulge in that moral policing and ethical conditioning on any human being, because they know and they are convinced for sure that, the other person (whom they’re trying to criticize, to attack or to browbeat) is just the same as themselves, in flesh and blood, with the same two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth, two hands, two legs and one head! 

They too call themselves ‘I’! Hence, they will never attack the personal values and beliefs of others because they feel that, each is a product of their individual, cultural, social and economic specifics that seek to define their identity to a tee!

That again makes them quite convinced that, nobody has claims to a divine right, whatsoever, to criticize or to judge another human being by their own upright, ‘holy, holier, holiest’ standards!

In short, a liberated literary being ain’t ever believe in stereotyping their fellow human beings! Neither are they extremely cynical or overtly critical of people! 

They’d have learnt from the wonderful, delightful books that they’ve read that, reality, like truth, is always relative! And so every human being, every species of flora and every species of fauna deserves to be celebrated and venerated!

So with Wordsworth they say,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

One reason why they’d take the utmost care to relish and to cherish, to nourish and to make flourish other voices, other eyes, other opinions, other thoughts, other ideas and other views from everyone in, around and outside their fold!

Seventhly, their hearts will leap up, with Wordsworth, when they see a rainbow in the sky! Their muse will work overtime when they see a flower, a bird, kitten, a calf or a puppy in such mirth and jollity! 

That’s hence they believe in the credo that, 

the time to be happy is now! the place to be happy is here! And the way to be happy is to make others happy! And to have a little heaven right here! 

With this motto in mind, they always make it a point to make everyone around them happy all of the time!

Eighthly, they would have a beautiful literary stack of books - all of their own - their own sweet collection of books - that’s so unique to them, which they value so very highly, and relish and cherish with such happiness on them! 

Neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride! 

Ninthly, they will always be on the watch out for ways and means to encourage others, and be of help to others in their own little ways and means possible! ‘Unto good works’ would be their philosophy for life!

Let me cite an example - 

Just this morning, in class, some five undergraduate students of literature, with such joy and satisfaction on them, came up to me glad and said that, they’d started a Joint account with our Campus branch of IOB. It was a long cherished dream for these fab five to help the deprived in some little way possible! Now when their dream was on realization mode, it’s only meet that they are so overjoyed. [A separate post on them soon!]

Tenthly and lastly, a true blue literary being is known by their grace, their demeanour and their humility! 

A gentle smile always hangs on to their lips like pendant drops of ice on those frosty refrigerators of yore! 

As the age-old proverb goes, 

The branch that bears the most fruit bends itself thankfully towards the ground. 

Hence it is that, they don’t have any airs on them when they walk! No airs when they talk! No haughtiness when they converse! No bandha or uppishness on them when they interact! 

A very good example to this proverb would be a practitioner to this credo, Dr. S. Balusami, or Bharathi puthiran, as he is known in literary circles! [Retd Head, Dept of Tamil, MCC]

Such is their calm! Such their cool!

If you happen to find anyone else who says I’m a part of the royal, regal, elite band of literati, sans these qualities, please join in on the chorus and tell them neat and polite, ‘I don’t know the likes of you!’ and quick look out for the nearest escape route or emergency exit around you, then do a quick hop a little, jump a little, and with the fastest kudu kudu kudu steps possible, run away, far far away from their presence! ;-)

This decision would help much-o-much in saving and redeeming a precious soul! An amazing soul! A dynamic soul! An imperishable soul! A lovely soul! A chirpy, positive soul! A vibrant soul!

In short, a literary soul! 

‘Whose soul, sir?’ You seem to ask! 😎

Yours, silly! ;-) 😍

'One fine day, I shall be liberated'!

Blake’s Tom | Liberation on Dream-Mode!

Fresh from a discussion on Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, who seeks with his heart and soul, to escape his harsh mundane reality, let’s now get a glimpse of yet another Tom from Blake’s Songs of Innocence, which offers another liberation of a different ball-game altogether!

In the mystic poet William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” there’s a little boy [who also doubles up as the speaker of the poem,] who’s been sold by his own father into the chimney-sweeping business at a very tender age, after his mother passes away!

This little boy introduces us, the reader, to a fellow chimney-sweep by name Tom and to his equally wretched predicament! When Tom’s hair was tonsured in order to prevent the soot from settling on it, Tom’s miserable cries rend the heart of the narrator boy! Hence he comforts and consoles Tom, who then falls asleep.

Now in his sleep, Tom gets a wonderful dream! In this amazing dream, Tom and a host of his friends are liberated from their ‘coffins’ by an angel. The angel comes to them all with a special key on him, and opens the locks on all the coffins and sets them all free!

The little boys who are thus set free, are shown to enjoy their first stint or bout with freedom. They are shown running with such mirth and jollity through a meadow, and then they get to wash themselves to their heart’s content in a river out there, emerging pure and white as could be! Now, the angel consoles Tom by telling him that, if he were to be always a good boy like this, this paradise would be his, forever!

When Tom wakes up out of this ‘visionary gleam’, he is awestruck by the impact of the imaginative liberation offered unto him by this wonderful dream!

This acts a stimulant, a fillip and a boost for little Tom to comfort and console his little heart, and now with a blessed assurance of liberation that’s offered to him by an angel, [albeit on fantasy mode,] then, he gets to gather his tools, and along with his companion -  the narrator-boy heads out for his drudgy, hum-drum, monotonous routine of sorts!

The dream-mode liberation offered to Tom proves to have such a positive, refreshing and rejuvenating effect on him; now he seeks to hope [against hope], that one fine day, ‘i shall overcome’ and ‘deep in my heart I do believe’ that our lives will improve for the better, on that ‘one fine day’!

In another sense then, liberation for the little boy looks an absolute mirage, a very distant possibility of sorts! So on a symbolic vein, that ‘one fine day’, could also connote to mean his death!

'Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.'

The Glass Menagerie | Tom Wingfield's Desire to Escape Drudgery through Art

This post is a continuation of our multi-part series on the liberative power of art gleaned through the works of poets and writers of all hues from across the world!

In our last, past post we'd discussed a few salients on the predicament of Gregor Samsa, from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: on Samsa’s high-end fantasies 24x7 that haunt his little mind and heart, to escape his habituated existence that’s been thrust on him by circumstances, and on how he effectively achieves this freedom and liberation wrought on him by his miraculous transformation into a gigantic insect!

There seems to be much of a muchness in the temperament and spirit of Tom Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie fame, with Samsa’s in such striking semblance to its substance and its feel!

Tom Wingfield also, much akin to his counterpart Samsa, feels cloistered, chained and fettered by the limitations, the pulls and pressures of his job and his family! Hence he longs for that ‘great escape’ far far away from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife!

Added, a symbolic liberation he attempts on himself, by writing poetry in his spare time. Moreover, he also frequents the movies on such clockwork precision, night after night, his favvy genre being the action-adventure ones! Tom attempts yet other forms of escape from the drudgery that’s enslaved him, by going to the fire escape and smoking cigarettes, and by getting himself intoxicated as often as he could!

The ending is in many ways reminiscent of Gregor Samsa’s too, with Tom leaving his family towards the end of the story.

Some of his lines are worth such an intense ponder –

Do read the lines given below a minimum of twice or thrice or multiple times over, to get the intense feel that irradiates through their texture!

Here goes some of my most favourable lines for y’all – Do try chewing the cud on ‘em all, as oft as ye possibly could!

You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?

And this one –

I go to the movies because—I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.

"Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!"

"People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses."

[On an aside: Way back in 2003, when I first got the opportunity of handling this wonderful play for my General English class, I remember how the highly motivated class was so passionately divided in their loyalties between Tom, Laura and Amanda! They were hooked skyhigh to the play that, every character and their concomitant dialogues seemed to come alive in flesh and blood when they acted it out all by themselves, on that huge, vintage gallery class of ours!

Such was the charm of Tennessee Williams and his, this play on the class! I call it the 'T. V. Gayathri' batch, as she was one of the most outstanding students of the whole class, known for her passionate involvement with the play! More on Ms. T. V. Gayathri on our past post in February 2008, HERE]

To be continued…

image: newyorktheatredotme

Now, with his transformation, he is able to be the master of his own destiny!

The Metamorphosis | Transformation as Liberation

Franz Kafka ❤️

One of Franz Kafka’s best known works, the novella The Metamorphosis is witness to yet another kind of liberation, of a different order altogether! And yes! Gregor Samsa could possibly be the alter ego habitation of his creator Kafka! Anybody’s guess, should I say!

Who on earth could ever forget those immortal opening lines to the novella,

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

The novella begins with this transformation of the pavapetta salesman Gregor Samsa into a gigantic insect. To Gregor Samsa, then, this transmutation was a much-needed, long delayed, often longed for liberty of sorts, as he badly madly needed a break from his daily drudge of a routine as a salesman, of which he loathed to the core!

Samsa, although he happens to be the sole breadwinner of the family, has got such high-end fantasies on him, to escape his habituated existence that’s been thrust on him by circumstances!

Hence the moment he finds himself transformed into a giant insect, he’s convinced that he’d be able to get himself relieved of all his monotonous humdrum responsibilities that bog him down every other day of his life, and instead, he could now breathe the air of freedom with such gay abandon! 

Moreover, this transformation also helps him get abler and stronger as an individual, an individual who could now, with the liberty and freedom at his disposal, meditate, contemplate and reflect on everything around him from a dispassionate, disinterested perspective of sorts!

Now he feels he's got that ample-o-ample time on him to love himself, appreciate himself, and devote the sacrosanct ‘me-time’ entirely to himself, thus tending to himself in the process!

On the other hand, before this transformation was effected in him, Gregor Samsa could not find any time for himself at all!

This could be gauged from the fact that even Samsa’s father had once admitted on this count to the head clerk, on having nudged and goaded his son to spend time on himself, to appreciate his personal space and celebrate himself; but unfortunately, Gregor couldn’t afford time on himself at all, as he was either busy planning out on his routine work schedule for his upcoming daily grind, or else, he was busy spending time with his family!

As such Gregor Samsa was lost for his own little private space, a room of his own! But now, with his transformation, that doubles up as his liberation, he is able to be the master of his own destiny!

Symbolic overtones and critical interpretations galore on this count! But it would be meet on my part, gentle reader, to rather leave it to thee, to read, to interpret and to gauge, all for yourselves this 1915 novella in all its grandeur!

To be continued…

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'I could not call my soul my own for one minute of the night or day…'

Literary Vignettes | On the Liberative Power of Art

Writers, any many of them, have always sought to take safe refuge in their eponymous alter egos, in order to speak their mind and heart on ‘liberated mode’, without any constraints or inhibitions! Literatures from across the world abound in such alter ego habitations of our great writers! Nietzsche included! ;-)

In this post then, let’s have a kutty little glimpse into some of the alter ego habitations of some of our prominent poets and writers!

The Keatsian ‘viewless wings of poesy’, which we had discussed on our past post, has amazing interpolations with Joyce’s Stephen in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man!

If the nightingale could be considered a counterfactual alternative to Keats’s harsh existence on this ‘feverish, frettish’ world, to Joyce then, Stephen could represent his own fictional alter ego!

You may want to read more on counterfactual alternatives, on our past post HERE.

As much as Keats wants to fly far far far away with the nightingale, on the viewless wings of poetry, Stephen too longs to ‘fly’ high high high above, and far far far away from the restrictions of narrow nationality, petty politics, and rigorous religiosity, and revel in his own sweet world of art!

Coming next to Robert Browning’s ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, [again, supposedly his alter ago,] this dramatic monologue hinges on the true function of art and the artist in society!

The argument of ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ rests on the debate whether an artist should paint the souls of men or should they be realistic! Art that seeks to paint the soul, is liberative art, say the religious-minded! But to Fra Lippo Lippi, none of us could ever prove the existence of the soul, and hence true liberative art would then be the representation of the human form as realistically as could be! 

Feel It's High Time for a Digital Detox?

On a Sabbatical? A Digital Detox? | Read On... !!!

Well, as cultural beings, we human beings are always already indoctrinated and affected to a high degree by the pulls and pressures of a techno-driven society.

Although the benefits of being part of a techno-centric world has its share of advantages, there’s much more ‘fullness of joy’ and ‘pleasures for evermore’ with advantages abounding in a ‘digital-detox’ed world!

Initially, when, years ago, a few of us resolved to set out to do a digital detox or a digital declutter, it was perceived to be a highly unrealistic, improbable venture!

But as days and months and years rolled by, all of us who’ve been part of the digital detox challenge have testimonies galore on the inexpressible feeling of liberation that we’ve felt, experienced and enjoyed. And hence we thought of joyfully indulging ourselves yet again and again and again, on our weekly / monthly detox as often as we possibly could! It pays, you see!

Of the 24 hours in a day’s time, statistics tells us that we are more slavishly addicted to, and intoxicated by our techno-gadgets than even tipplers of the highest order!

So it would be a misnomer to call a tippler alone an addict! 

To call them all sorts of names and to whine and complain full time about them, using all sorts of derogatory labels against those pavapetta tipplers is gross injustice! 

When we ourselves are confirmed addicts, intoxicated by the power of all those techno-gadgets, that’s enslaved us to the core! There may be a slight variation in degree, but the quantum remains the same! 

Intoxicated and addicted! Both equally are! So we in us find both the tippler and the techno! ;-)

Hence, much akin to the host of de-addiction centres that are in place all across the city for patients with substance use disorder, or the host of psycho-social rehabilitation centres that are burgeoning by the day at every residential locality across the city, a digital detox centre is the need of the hour for those of us who are so obsessed with our techno gadgets 24 x 7!