'The true standard of the artist is in every man's power...'

Gleanings on Realism | from the Dean of American Letters!

He was nicknamed “The Dean of American Letters”! He was lifelong friends with Mark Twain!

He was editor of the prestigious The Atlantic Monthly!      

He had written Abraham Lincoln’s campaign biography titled, Life of Abraham Lincoln.

He has quite carved a niche for himself as one of America’s most popular realist novelists who also doubled up as a realist playwright!

Presenting good ol’ William Dean Howells, ladies and gentlemen!

Howells also happens to be Herne’s close buddy! (the Herne of our past post!)

The Howells-ian Hall to Fame continues…

Indeed, as Ezra Pound to Eliot, so is Howells to Henry James and Mark Twain as well!

Well, William Howells was also on the pally-line with Lowell, Wendell, Henry Adams, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, William James, Waldo Emerson and a host of such acclaimed writers of his era!

“Art for truth’s sake”, on the other hand, emphasizes humanity!

James A. Herne | “Art for Truth’s Sake In the Drama”

Herne has a heart! A heart of gold!

A heart that beats for society through his chosen medium – theatre! A heart that delights to be the conscience-keeper of his times! the humanitarian in Herne lub tubs through his heart all the way! And therein lies the success of Herne’s oeuvre!

Just a rehash for y'all from the counterfactual
world of the Thomson and Thompson's!

As testament to his credo, on what he believed in, on what he delighted in, is made manifest in his amazing manifesto of sorts to the concept of ‘Art for Truth’s Sake’, an intriguing article that he wrote for Arena, way back in 1897.

Such simple language, such lucid style, with such conviction!

First for a kutty little note on Herne and his art!

Well, James Herne has been instrumental in the development of realism in drama, and is also supposed to have foreshadowed the development of naturalism in drama! Herne took to the stage as an actor when he was twenty years old. Moving on, in 1874, his rendezvous with writer/director David Belasco, proved to be a vital turning point to his life and career. Interestingly, this wonderful association resulted in the duo together writing the play, Hearts of Oak, wherein Herne acted along with his wife Katherine!

Herne had on him the noble vision of advancing theatre amongst the intellectual life of society.

To Herne then, theatre should not be a mere diversion, but prove to be vital sources of societal guidance, sound values and instruction as well. Hence, theatre should have a social commitment, he affirmed.

His thoughts, he laid down in his delightful 1897 manifesto titled, “Art for Truth’s Sake in the Drama”, in which he outlines his credo for theatre. Well, I’m sure, you’d love these Herne-ian lines of high renown that sums up to a tee on his credo! Yes! You’d sure love the import of this lines! [And yes, thank me later, folks! ;-) ]

Here goes Herne for us all -

It is generally held that the province of the drama is to amuse. I claim that it has a higher purpose - that its mission is to interest and to instruct. It should not preach objectively, but it should teach subjectively.... It sets forth clearly that the concern of one is the concern of all. It stands for the higher development and thus the individual liberty of the human race.

Art for art’s sake, then, to Herne is aesthetic. He says -

Art for art’s sake is aesthetic. It emphasizes beauty. It aims to be attractive. It must always be beautiful. It must contain no distasteful quality. It never offends. It is highbred, so to speak. It holds that truth is ugly, or at least is not always beautiful. The compensation of the artist is the joy of having produced it.

Art for Art's Sake ;-) My good ol' classmates! ;-)

“Art for truth’s sake”, on the other hand, emphasizes humanity. It is not sufficient that the subject be attractive or beautiful, or that it does not offend. It must first of all express some large truth. That is to say, it must always be representative. Truth is not always beautiful, but in art for truth’s sake it is indispensable.

Art for art’s sake may be likened to the exquisite decoration of some noble building; while art for truth’s sake might be the building itself.

Art for truth’s sake is serious. Its highest purpose has ever been to perpetuate the life of its time.

Herne is simply amazing,  and amazingly simple! Ain’t he?

To be continued…

image(s): Herge’s Tintin & this blogger’s! ;-)

'Perhaps they will see parts of their own life story reflected in mine!'

Mind Without Fear | Rajat Gupta

One of the first Indian honchos to have made it big, way before a Indra Nooyi or a Sundar Pitchai could make it this big - across the Atlantic - would obviously be Rajat Gupta!

Rajat Gupta had managed to reach to the ‘toppest’ echelons of the US corporate world, with his sole acumen, determination, grit and vibrant spirit!

Being the eldest child of the family, and having being orphaned when still in college, Rajat Gupta had a great burden up his shoulders! He also had his task cut out!

After his graduation from IIT Delhi, he moved over to Harvard Business School in the US, and then joined the globally-renowned consultancy firm, McKinsey, where he had spent close to four decades of his life!

But then, things took a turn for the worse in 2011 – 12, when he was accused of insider trading, and was condemned to a prison sentence by the US law courts!

Rajat Gupta has remained in oblivion for long, until he decided to take a stand! A stand to speak his voice and his defence from off his heart!

Mind Without Fear thus happened in March 2019.

Mind Without Fear, hence purports to be a kinda memoir giving us all glimpses into the man, his life, his successes, his failures et al from his own points of view, without any tom-tomming of sorts! On how he became a victim of circumstances, and how his blind trust on some of his friends and acquaintances eventually led to his downfall, and how he survived the whole ordeal by his sheer determination and courage, which, then, forms the crux of this memoir!

Personally, what attracted me to the book was its Title! It’s taken from one of my (and by default, most of our) all-time favourite songs of Tagore!

Mind Without Fear!

And this obsession with Tagore is manifest in Rajat Gupta’s book all over so much so that, Tagore’s famed quotes are strewn across his chapters to add to the impact of his confessions!

And well, he opens his memoir with a candid confessional statement! Says he –

Like anyone who has lived a full life, I have some regrets. The one that haunts me most is my choice not to take the stand. I consider this book my testimony, and this time I have no hesitation about taking the stand.

And so well he does take a stand!

The epigraph to Part One starts off with a wonderful quote from the Gita!

O Krishna, drive my chariot between the two armies.

I want to see those who desire to fight with me.

With whom will this battle be fought?

 - Bhagavad Gita, 1:21–22

And rightfully, on a related vein, he asks midway through his memoir,

How was I supposed to stand up and fight, when my adversary was merely a shadow?

The book is available on Amazon amongst a host of e-stalls at a very competitive price! Grab it quick!

On the ‘Why this Book?’ question, he has an answer again on the opening pages itself –

Just excerpts for y’all -

Not too long ago, I took my twin granddaughters to the US Open tennis tournament. We were strolling between the courts when two strangers approached me—both Indians in their twenties. “It’s so good to see you here,” one of them said. “You’ve been a role model for us. I hope you are doing well.” We chatted for a couple of minutes, and they took some pictures with me, before we went our separate ways. 

If I think about who I would most like to read this book, it’s people like them. People who encountered my story or my work, who were inspired by my values or my success and confused or disheartened by my downfall. People who have been wondering: Why did this happen? And how is he doing? Perhaps they will see parts of their own life story reflected in mine. Perhaps they will learn a lesson or two about what to do and what not to do.

Writing his Prefatorial to his memoir from Westport, Connecticut, January 2019, Rajat Gupta says,

I am an orphan. Immigrant. Businessman. Leader. Philanthropist. Role model. Convicted felon. If you read the business press you might have followed my story, which captured the public’s attention during 2011 and 2012…

The judge went out of his way to block any reference to my character and to the aspects of my work that mattered most to me. The prosecutors were skillful in manipulating the press. And I missed that opportunity to tell my own story, and to let the jury, and the public, see who I am directly. For that, I take full responsibility. This book is that story.

The book starts off on a solemn note with the lovely Tagorean song, ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’, from his Gitanjali, and ends with an amazing discourse on the Gita! The Bhagawad Gita!

Rajat Gupta’s life and deeds remind me of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem titled, ‘If’

Just giving y’all excerpts from this wonderful motivational, inspirational poem –

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Why ‘If’? You may be tempted to ask this pavapetta blogger! ;-)

Because Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel, had to undergo more of such unending hardships right from the time he was a kid. His foster mother’s abuses were so distressing to the little kid in Kipling, abuses that he endured with such stoic silence! As an adult, he yet again suffered huge losses when the bank in his which he had kept his life’s savings, had collapsed. As a result he became, all of a sudden, penniless!

Although he was beset with innumerable misfortunes and personal tragedies, (his daughter died, at the tender age of seven, on a trip to America, after having contracted pneumonia, and his son, enlisted in the army, died in battle!) still, his spirits were always jubilant, and his energy on such a positive high!

In spite of the trials and hardships in his life, he managed to keep his spirit high all of the time, as he believed in the dictum that, ‘Storms make the oak tree take deeper roots’! Hence, the more the storm, the deeper the oak’s roots! The oak is no ordinary tree! When other trees fall by the wayside in the face of even the slightest storm, the oak not only survives the fiercest storms, but also emerges triumphant, on top, because its roots are so deep and so strong!

Of such mettle was Kipling! He directed his energy and his spirits towards his muse! Now he started writing passionately, and soon he became a rage, a sensation and the talk of the town! He went on to win the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, and this poem was written soon after.

As is widely known, power lines from this inspirational poem adorn the entrance to Wimbledon, as a gentle reminder to players, on what it takes to be a man! Or, in today’s parlance of parity, a human!

Rajat Gupta’s life proves true to a tee on this credo! And howww!

images: Grigor Dimitrov via twitter, twitterdotcom/mindwofearbook

'For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen!'

Hobbes & his Leviathan | Memory

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, published in 1651, has some amazing takes on memory! Wait! Quite surprised, ain’t you? So was I, when I stumbled on this delightful read for some insights into social contract theory!

Well, although the book deals with society and government, the writer in Hobbes has this vibrant knack of simplifying things for us all and taking us, his ardent readies, on a guided, graded tour down his 500 page-long endearing read!

Serious readies, should seriously read Leviathan seriously! ;-)

Such is its awe! Such its grandeur!

In the previous post on memory and intentionality, we saw that ‘every mental phenomena, then, is directed at an object, which we might call, intentional object or intentional inexistence or immanent objectivity!’

Hobbes in his Leviathan has an astounding take on this subject!

To Hobbes, all our thoughts are a representation of some quality which is called an object! And this object, according to Hobbes, works on the eyes, ears et al and produces a diversity of appearances, and all of them actually originate in the senses!

Here goes Hobbes -

All the thoughts of men are, a representation or appearance of some quality, or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of man’s body, and by diversity of working produceth diversity of appearances.

The original of them all is that which we call sense, (for there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense). The rest are derived from that original.

This next part, where he beautifully, in graded manner, develops on the concept of memory, is the real topping on the cake!

Hobbes yet again for us all -

When a body is once in motion, it moveth eternally; as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it.

And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses.

But the Greeks call it fancy, which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.

The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it, in such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars;

But because amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is sensible; therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not affected with the action of the stars. 

And any object being removed from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain, yet other objects more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured and made weak, as the voice of a man is in the noise of the day.

From whence it followeth that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any object, the weaker is the imagination.

For the continual change of man’s body destroys in time the parts which in sense were moved: so that distance of time, and of place, hath one and the same effect in us.

For as at a great distance of place that which we look at appears dim, and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and inarticulate: so also after great distance of time our imagination of the past is weak; and we lose, for example, of cities we have seen, many particular streets; and of actions, many particular circumstances.

This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, as I said before. But when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory.

So that imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations hath diverse names.

Much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience.

Amazing Hobbes, ain’t he?

So yes, let’s hop on yet again into Hobbes!

Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several times; the former (which is the imagining the whole object, as it was presented to the sense) is simple imagination, as when one imagineth a man, or horse, which he hath seen before. 

The other is compounded memory, when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of another man, as when a man imagines himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to them that are much taken with reading of romances), it is a compound imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind.

There be also other imaginations that rise in men, though waking, from the great impression made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after; and from being long and vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark, though awake, have the images of lines and angles before his eyes; which kind of fancy hath no particular name, as being a thing that doth not commonly fall into men’s discourse.

Deivameyyy! He’s super-awesomeee!

I strongly recommend Hobbes for your holiday read dear readies!

And my refrain on this post, yet again would be –

Serious readies, should seriously read Leviathan seriously! ;-)

To be continued…

images: amazondotcom & this blogger's! 

‘Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake’!

Memory & Intentionality

To William Wordsworth, ‘the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.

Which means, ‘thoughts’ can be sparked, and ‘memories’ kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.

I repeat –

Thoughts can be sparked, and memories kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.

To Wordsworth, since his conscious thoughts are directed towards the ‘flower’, it makes thoughts by the number well up within him!

To Marcel Proust, in like fashion, and I quote - the past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

Hence, when, Proust, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, raises to his lips a spoonful of the tea in which he had soaked a morsel of the cake, and no sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched his palate than a shudder ran through his whole body, which made him stop, mindful and intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. 

Now, Proust begins to feel an exquisite pleasure invading his senses, and at once the vicissitudes of life have all of a sudden become indifferent to him!

He’s quite wonder-amazed! ‘Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake’, he says!

To Marcel Proust then, when his consciousness is directed towards the ‘dunking of the morsel of cake in his tea’, it makes facilitate the insurrection of a range of subjugated memories!

Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is yet another delightful rumination on revisiting Tintern Abbey five years later. Every object that he sees here, impresses him to the core, and the “steep and lofty cliffs” in especial, impress upon him “thoughts of more deep seclusion”!

Wordsworth confesses that, even years later, whenever he happened to be all alone, or in company, or in crowded cities amongst the madding crowd, the memories of Tintern Abbey help in providing him with such “sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.”

The memory of these ‘objects’ seem to have a great impact on his body, mind and soul, providing him with such “tranquil restoration”, and hence, it had the power of inspiring all his loving deeds of love and kindness to everything around him.

In philosophy, this experience is referred to as intentionality, the capacity of humans to direct themselves at objects! Brentano, could we call him a kinda guru to Husserl, says that, every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself!

Every mental phenomena, then, is directed at an object, which we might call, intentional object or intentional inexistence or immanent objectivity!

Hence it is that, every belief has a believed!

Every desire has a desired! Every Love has a loved! Every Hate has a hated!!!

This capacity of directing one’s consciousness towards an object/s is also called ‘Aboutness’ or ‘directedness!’

It’s called thus, since it is intended towards, is about, or directed towards an object!

Intentionality, then, becomes the key to understanding human experience!

So to sum it up for this once, for the sake of this post, and for the newbies to intentionality as well, the hallmark of intentionality, then, is the directedness of the mind towards an object!

Well, dear reader, is there any object or event or happening that sparks a sea of memories welling up on your consciousness the moment your thoughts are directed towards that particular object or event or happening? Do mail me on that! I shall use it as a spark for our next blogpost for sure!

To be continued…

Connected reading -  

You may like to read a few of our past posts on the subject herein given below -

Memory, Eliot and Marcel Proust HERE

Kundera, Memory and Forgetting HERE

Herbert Spencer and Memory HERE

Simone de Beauvoir and Memory HERE

On ‘Flashbulb’ Memories HERE

A Few Super-Amazing Reads on Memory Studies HERE

Holocaust and Memory Studies HERE

Images: all snapshots are the blogger’s! ;-)