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!
This dishum-dishum between idealism and
realism forms the basic argument of the poem!
On a similar note, Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull stands tall testimony to the
redemptive, liberative power of art!
What amazing lines! What memorable lines
that adorn the length and the breadth of this four-act play! You read the play
once, and you are just on ‘ankle deep’ mode! You read it twice, and you are
knee-deep! You read it thrice over, and hey presto! you are waist deep!
Anything more! And you are on swim-mode, bloke!
Although work as a chore, a routine or a
way of life provides succour and strength for their existence and their
survival, most of the characters in The
Seagull find their jobs a tedious, monotonous drudge of sorts! Especially Doctor
Dorn’s take on art and artists bespeak to this earnest desire to be liberated,
by taking to the wings of art!
Says doctor Dorn – I quote verbatim –
Use
your talent to express only deep and eternal truths. I have led a quiet life,
as you know, and am a contented man, but if I should ever experience the exaltation
that an artist feels during his moments of creation, I think I should spurn
this material envelope of my soul and everything connected with it, and should soar
away into heights above this earth.
Doctor Dorn adds to say, - I quote
verbatim -
Every
work of art should have a definite object in view. You should know why you are
writing, for if you follow the road of art without a goal before your eyes, you
will lose yourself, and your genius will be your ruin!
When Medviedenko tells him,
Doctor
Dorn, it is easy for you to make light of it. You are rich enough to scatter
money to your chickens, if you wanted to.
Doctor Dorn replies,
You
think I am rich? My friend, after practicing for thirty years, during which I
could not call my soul my own for one minute of the night or day, I succeeded
at last in scraping together one thousand roubles, all of which went, not long
ago, in a trip which I took abroad. I haven't a penny.
If we could pay attention to what Doctor
Dorn says, ‘I could not call my soul my own for one minute of the night or day…’,
we’ve real gotten into the crux of the problem!
Well, again, it would do well for us to
remember that even Anton Chekhov is a medical doctor by profession. So who pray
is doctor Dorn? ;-) Doctor Anton Chekhov’s alter ego? ;-)
To
be continued…
images: americanliteraturedotcom
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