Saturday, 12 October 2019

'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! 

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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