Myriad Musings on 'Beauty' in Literature - 1

Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world. All privilege is that of beauty; for there are many beauties; as, of general nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of the soul. – Emerson

Ever since the Zadie Smith'ian ‘transatlantic comic saga,’ On Beauty, laid an impressive claim on my heart, I’ve been so wanting to put down some of the vibrant responses to beauty in literatures from across the world!

And well, these responses are pure subjective, and, as it oft is said, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder! Ain’t it?

So yup! Here we go!

Our Town, by Thornton Wilder is an unconventional play of sorts, written way back in the 1930s, that takes place in a small fictional town of Grover’s Corner. It is so unique in its descriptions of what ordinary people did in their everyday lives. Emily, especially, is of Wilder’s own heart and soul! Well, Emily so wishes to go back to the good ol’ past, and relive those nostalgic moments of yore yet again! But Mrs. Gibbs warns her not to go back to her past! She further tells her that it’s better to forget those past vignettes of life, and rather look ahead to life. But Emily sticks to her stand, and assures her that she’d choose to relive a happy day, and decides to pick her twelfth birthday.

Now, the Stage Manager promptly sets the scene back in time, down the decades, to 11 February, 1899. Emily now relives her twelfth birthday. She gazes at the town as it once used to be. She hears her mother’s voice calling her down to breakfast and is so fascinated at how young she looks, back then. Her father now walks into the house…. No spoilers again. So, life moves ahead so quickly, and people don’t even seem to realize this fact.

Emily now proceeds to ask the Stage Manager if human beings ever seem to realize the true meaning of life while they actually live it! He replies that, perhaps some saints or poets do. Mr. Stimson then observes that, she has learned that people go through life in utmost ignorance, blind to what’s really important – the little beautiful things in life!

Emily Webb’s final speech in the graveyard emphasizes the beauty of these mundane elements of life!

Well, from Emily, let’s now move on to our next fictional aristocratic Victorian character, Dorian Gray, the protagonist of Wilde’s only novel, and a Gothic-philo at that!

Dorian Gray’s beauty inspires, impresses and even infatuates the renowned painter Basil, that Dorian promptly becomes his highly intense and intoxicating muse!

On a delightful summer day, when Dorian is sitting for the painting, even as Basil Hallward is passionately painting away his ‘Dorian’ portrait in oil-on-canvas, Dorian happens to listen to the aristocratic Lord Henry explicating on his highly hedonistic world view, and soon he also begins to concur with Lord Henry, that beauty is the only aspect of life worth pursuing.

No spoilers though!

Although Dorian Gray seemed to have rubbed off on the sensibilities of the British publishers and the public at large, the wrongy way, way way back in the 1890s, still, Wilde prefaced a defence to his solo novel, as “the artist’s rights proper, and the probity of art for art’s sake.”

Wilde himself, commenting on the novel, said that, Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian is what I would like to be!

What is maritime history? What is terrestrial history?

All History is Maritime History | Paine

The Sea and Civilization

After having elucidated a little on the ambit of argument literacy as the domain of the academic intellectual on our previous post, as a follow up to Ayn Rand’s New Intellectual, Sowell’s Modern Intellectual, Edward Said’s Liminal Intellectual, in sync with the Intellectual Dark Web, let us now foray into the world of Gramsci’s Organic Intellectual!

Antonio Gramsci has pondered much on the profound role of the intellectual to society. 

To him, all humans are intellectuals, because they have their own intellectual and rational faculties. The problem crops up because all humans do not have the social function of intellectuals.

Hence, he draws a customized line between the ‘traditional’ intelligentsia who see themselves, albeit wrongly, as a class apart from society, and the thinking types, produced by every class, from its own rank, in an organic way! 

He calls them Organic Intellectuals!

There’s no gainsaying the fact that the liminal intellectuals advocated by Edward Said sync a tad better with the organic intellectuals, put forward by Antonio Gramsci. 

To Gramsci, if at all there’s a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, it musta real be effected only through the concepts of ideology, hegemony, power, and organic intellectuals.

And these ‘organic’ intellectuals help in expounding, through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the masses could not express for themselves.

This said, I would personally regard Lincoln Paine as one such organic intellectual of sorts, who explains, through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences of the sea, which the masses could not express for themselves!

All history is maritime history, roars the byline to his official webpage, that puts forth his profound ponder that, human beings FIRST had the opportunity to come into contact with one another only by means of the seas, the oceans and the rivers, the lakes, and the streams! 

Hence, goods, languages, religions, and even entire cultures were specifically spread across and along the world’s waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.

He real has a knack for giving his reader an engaging and gripping narrative right from the introduction on, where you find the flipping of the pages seem so easy on the indexy, and makes you ask for more from Paine! And the read, titled, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World, is real huge, running to a whopping 1048 pages in toto!

Just a little bit of snippety nuggets from his Intro –

I want to change the way you see the world. Specifically, I want to change the way you see the world map by focusing your attention on the blues that shade 70 percent of the image before you, and letting the earth tones fade. 

This shift in emphasis from land to water makes many trends and patterns of world history stand out in ways they simply cannot otherwise. 

Before the development of the locomotive in the nineteenth century, culture, commerce, contagion, and conflict generally moved faster by sea than by land.  

Two questions merit consideration before taking on a maritime history of the world as either writer or reader: What is maritime history? and What is world history? 

The answers to both have as much to do with perspective as with subject matter An alternative and perhaps simpler way to approach the question, 

What is maritime history? is to tackle its unasked twin: What is terrestrial history? - the view from the land being our default perspective. 

Imagine a world of people bound to the land.

The ancient Greek diaspora would have taken a different character and been forced in different directions without ships to carry Euboeans, Milesians, and Athenians to new markets and to sustain contacts between colonies and homelands. 

Without maritime commerce, neither Indians nor Chinese would have exerted the substantial influence they did in Southeast Asia, and that region would have been spared the cultural sobriquets of IndoChina and Indonesia (literally, “Indian islands”)—in fact, the latter would have remained unpeopled altogether.

This book is an attempt to examine how people came into contact with one another by sea and river, and so spread their crops, their manufactures, and their social systems—from language to economics to religion—from one place to another.

I have sketched this history as a narrative to show region by region the deliberate process by which maritime regions of the world were knit together. But this is not a story of saltwater alone. Maritime activity includes not only high seas and coastal voyaging, but also inland navigation.

These “signs” indicate that mankind’s technological and social adaptation to life on the water—whether for commerce, warfare, exploration, or migration—has been a driving force in human history. 

Yet many mainstream histories are reluctant to embrace this. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies gives barely a page to “maritime technology,” by which he means watercraft and not the ability to navigate or any associated abilities.

Although airplanes have replaced ships in most long-distance passenger trades —transatlantic, between Europe and ports “east of Suez,” or transpacific—more than fourteen million people annually embark on a sea cruise. 

This is far more than ocean liners carried before the passenger jet rendered them obsolete in the 1950s, when the names of shipping companies were as familiar as (and far more respected than) the names of airlines today. 

The idea that people would go to sea for pleasure was almost unthinkable even 150 years ago, 

says Paine!

Now, moving on to Pinney...

Pretor-Pinney, is yet another intellectual who’s forayed deep into the world of clouds, and finds could-gazing an art and a therapy as well!

His delightful read of sorts, The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History and Culture of Clouds, is a real awe-inspiring treat to the culture of clouds, that’s completely unknown to the lay hitherto!

I’m just excerpting a chat from the pages of The Guardian, where, he opines that, he’s embarked on this gentle quest to overturn the malign understanding of clouds that has long informed western thinking. “People do have a slightly derogatory view of them,” he says.

“When people say someone’s got their head in the clouds, it’s about being disengaged from the world. Whereas I say, ‘Sod it - what's wrong with having your head in the clouds?’ It’s a really important thing to do, a reaction to the pressures of modern life. But there are all kinds of negative associations: the idea of someone having a cloud hanging over them, or clouds on the horizon - these very doomy things.

“But there’s an Arabic phrase for someone who is lucky or blessed - they say, ‘His sky is always filled with clouds.’ It’s the complete opposite. Clouds provide shade and rain. And rain is life; it’s about abundance. Clouds bring beauty to the sunset. And they clear the atmosphere. They’re purifiers: cloud droplets form around bits of pollution and bring it back to earth. But one of the main things for me is appreciating their beauty. Every day is like a new page.”

Indeed, there’s a silver lining to all his clouds! He’s got one named as Morning Glory!

Also, since he’s the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, he’s got their manifesto outlined in simple nuggets right at the start of the book, with Shelley’s mighty lines on Clouds for the poetic charm to it!

The Manifesto

of The Cloud Appreciation Society

We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be

immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that clouds are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her

displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if

we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s

moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation

benefits the soul.

Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see within them

will save on psychoanalysis bills.

And so, we say to all who’ll listen:

Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty,

and live life with your head in the

clouds.

Then Pretor-Pinney moves on to categorise clouds into ten basic groups, much akin to the Latin ‘Linnean’ system, based on their heights and appearance.

This apart, he broadly divides clouds into three types –

The Low Clouds, which he impishly calls the ‘cotton wool tufts that form on a sunny day’

The Middle Clouds, which to him are, ‘the layers of bread rolls in the sky’

And finally, the High Clouds, which he calls, ‘the delicate streaks of falling ice crystals’!

Some of his descriptions are so charming, that they really tug at your heartstrings with such impact and such warmth!

Just giving y’all a snippety nugget from his first chappy on the Low Clouds!

The rest, I bet, is as engaging as your favvy lead actor’s blockbuster movie!

Do grab a copy for yourselves at the earliest, dear litterateurs! It’s a collector’s treat of sorts!

Yesss! He’s got a real amazing way of enthralling the avid nature buff in us all, with his impish, engaging and humorous descriptors of sorts!

Here goes Gavin Pretor-Pinney –

Leonardo da Vinci once described clouds as ‘bodies without surface’, and you can see what he meant. They are ghostlike, ephemeral, nebulous: you can see their shapes, yet it’s hard to say where their forms begin and end.

But the Cumulus cloud is one that challenges da Vinci’s description. Rising in brilliant-white cauliflower mounds, it looks more solid and crisply defined than other cloud types. 

As a child, I was convinced that men with long ladders harvested cotton wool from these clouds. They look as if you could just reach up and touch them–and, if you did, they would feel like the softest things imaginable. The most familiar and ‘tangible’ of the cloud family, this is a good type for budding cloudspotters to cut their teeth on.

Cumulus is the Latin word for ‘heap’, which is simply to say that these clouds have a clumpy, stacked shape. 

The people who concern themselves with such things divide them into humilis, mediocris and congestus formations–these are known as ‘species’ of Cumulus. Humilis, meaning humble in Latin, are the smallest, being wider than they are tall; mediocris are as tall as they are wide, and congestus are taller still.

It is the smaller ones that generally start forming over land on sunny mornings. And because neither they nor their mediocris brothers produce any precipitation, they are widely recognised as ‘fair-weather clouds’–a pair of puffy fingers up at those who can only think of clouds as the opposite of fine weather.

A lazy sunny afternoon beneath the drifting candyfloss curls of the Cumulus is far finer than the flat monotony of a cloudless sky. Don’t be brainwashed by the sun fascists–fair-weather Cumulus have a starring role in the perfect summer’s.

  

There is one other species of this cloud: Cumulus fractus. This has a much less puffy shape, its edges being fainter and more ragged. It is the way a Cumulus looks when it is decaying at the ripe old age of ten minutes or so.

The distinctive shapes of Cumulus clouds may go some way to explaining why they are the cloud of choice in the drawings of young children.

No six-year-old’s picture of a family in front of their house feels complete without a few puffy Cumulus floating in the sky above. Children just have a fascination with clouds.

Can it be that, wheeled around in prams staring up at the sky as infants, they develop a deep connection with the clouds–like young chicks forming a familial bond with the first thing they see out of the egg? Who knows?

Well, yesss! Who knows?

Yet another delightful read from the pen of Gavin Pretor-Pinney is his equally lovely book on the waves! It’s titled, The Wavewatcher's Companion, where he discusses all sorts of waves, proving his premise that waves are such an indispensable part of our lives!

Wordsworth and Shelley have given us impactful powerlines on the clouds and the waves!

Yet, Wordsworth for once, seems so near, and he seems to resonate far beyond his lines, kindling a few soulful chords that tug at straight at our hearts and souls, and now we could feel with such awe and import the aura of his famous lines from his poem, “The World is Toooo Much with Us”!

Here goes - 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.

How Tooo (trueee) much!

To be continued…

Intellectuals on the 'Intellectual!' From Bertrand to Ayn Rand to Noah to Neil!

Today in class, we were having a discussion on Bertrand Russell’s interesting take as regards the Education-Discipline connect!

To Russell, the real purpose of education is civilization! (and civilization is partly individual and partly social). And this education-leads-to-civilisation connect, according to Russell, (the 1950 Nobel winner!) has two beautiful branches to it: it gives an individual one’s intellectual qualities, and one’s moral qualities as well!

Intellectual qualities would include – a certain minimum of general knowledge, technical skill in one’s own profession, a habit of forming opinions on evidence, etc, whereas,

Moral qualities would include, impartiality, kindliness, and a modicum of self-control!

This apart, he adds a liminal quality, that’s neither intellectual, nor moral, and he calls it the physiological – having a zest and joy of life!

Commenting on Bertrand Russell’s emphasis on civilization, I would like to take a leaf out of one equally interesting read, from the Objectivist philosopher, Ayn Rand, a raving recommend for our troubled times! It’s titled, For the New Intellectual, where she puts forth her proposition that, civilization in general, and America in particular, are in desperate need of a new philosophy and new intellectuals.

She is at once crass, and sometimes starkingly crude! She can be strategically defiant, and do a fight-until-death verbal duel to prove the merits of her stance, as well!

Commenting on the lack of good intellectuals in civilization today, Ayn Rand has this to quip:

What we need most urgently is to recognize the enormous power and the crucial importance of the intellectual professions. A culture cannot exist without a constant stream of ideas and the alert, independent minds who originate them; it cannot exist without a philosophy of life, without those who formulate it and express it. A country without intellectuals is like a body without a head. And that is precisely the position of America today.

The majority of those who posture as intellectuals today are frightened zombies, posturing in a vacuum of their own making, who admit their abdication from the realm of the intellect by embracing such doctrines as Existentialism and Zen Buddhism.

She takes the crass route here, when she says –

These modern zombies are left aghast before the fact that they have succeeded—that they are impotent to ignite the lights of civilization, which they have extinguished!

Select Snippets to 'Gendered Representations' in Literature!

Woolf & Atwood | In Focus

Ever since Judith Butler’s massive attempt at deconstructing the ‘essentialist’ic nature of gender identity through her masterpiece, Gender Trouble that’s gained significant traction the world over, there’s been a smashy burgeoning of sorts in the field of Gender Studies in academia in general, and literary studies in particular!

Indeed, gender was, is and continues to be one of the dominant factors that’s profoundly shaped societal perspectives on sexual orientations, and has proved an impactful decider of sorts, on one’s individual’s self-esteem, one’s way of life and thereby one’s identity per se.

This post, in a little series, attempts to give a bird’s eye view to some of the pertinent gendered representations in literary texts over the decades, or, literary representations of femininity and masculinity, from a very very very subjective point of view, thus revealing the impactful resonance that gender occupies in our lives.

The post starts with the Butler’ian postulate that syncs to a tee with the premise of Simone de Beauvoir in her Second Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman!” with an existential streak running through its frame!

Here goes the Butler’ian postulate: Gender identity is NOT a manifestation of intrinsic essence but rather the product of actions and behaviors, which translates to performance!

Remember the central proposition of Existentialism developed by her soul-mate Sartre, that existence precedes essence! Proves quite a take, ain’t it?

After a perusal of this post and its import, I sincerely wish that there could be a perceptive ponderance on some of the questions that I’ve raised herewith, that could possibly be discussed in connect with the present context!

Three questions are highlighted for a more sustained intervention on the topic!

First and foremost: Are the double binds, the predicaments and the dilemmas of the female characters different from those of their male counterparts, in the literary text? If yes, how? And why?

Secondly: Does an author's gender play a role in impacting the narrative voice within the text?  If yes, how? And why?

Thirdly, are there absent voices or thwarted voices, muted voices or silenced voices, gendered stereotypes or missing gaps that merit intense focus in the text?

A 'Graff'ic Rendition of Sorts!

Reading scholarly takes from Professors, especially when they're from accomplished, celebrated Professors of Literature, are such a sweet delight in itself. Ain’t they?

Be it Professor Catherine Belsey, who has given us newy directions and delightful detours of sorts with her nuanced text, Critical Practice, that has ably proved itself such a profound poststructuralist text, positing the premise that theory indeed matters, as much as the heart does matter!,

Or Professor Judith Butler, who’s given us a groundbreaking book of sorts, Gender Trouble, in which she brings forth her pioneering postulates on the performative theory of gender, and seeks to premise the proposition that, sex is a socially constructed category that stems from its social and cultural milieu, and there’s nothing to validate the traditional, patriarchal assumptions, or what Peter Barry would call, the ‘basic givens’ to vouchsafe to the fact that, sex is a ‘natural given’ category and gender is an ‘acquired cultural-social category!’,

Or Professor Gayatri Spivak, who’s provided us with such a scholarly treatise of sorts, with her A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, in which she talks about the exclusivity-strategies practised by European intellectual interventionists, and takes us along with her in such an engaging manner, even as she strives to redefine the label of postcolonial studies, as much as she strives to reposition the role of the postcolonial critic, and move on to the much wider arena of transnational global studies,

Or Professor Bill Ashcroft, who’s given us a ground-breaking book of sorts, On Post-Colonial Futures, in which he delves deep into the therapeutic nature of postcolonial writing, the transformative effects of postcolonial resistance and its sustained impact and relevance in the present world scenario. In this lovely read of sorts, like his contemporary Spivak, Ashcroft also forays much into literature, history and philosophy, (Like Spivak does in her Critique of Postcolonial Reason!) and postulates a new theoretical paradigm for evaluating postcolonial literatures. This paradigm, to him, is not simply limited to an overhaul of the canon, but also has an impactful intervention in our perceptions and ways in which all literature can be read!

In this line, yet another Professor who’s been giving me such sleepless nights of great delight, is Gerald Graff!  Culling out a chunk from his informative bio on his own official webpage - Gerald Graff stands as the profession’s indomitable and indispensable Arguer-in-Chief. In his books Graff invites all parties—students, teachers, scholars, citizens—to gather where the intellectual action is, to join the fray of arguments that connect books to life and give studies in the humanities educational force.

The 'Sublime' in Literature

A Few Thoughts on the “Sublime”

Right from the times and the climes of Aeschylus, who’s rightfully got on himself the huge honorific, - “Father of Tragedy,” and has, till date, been the benevolent benchmark for the entire gamut of Western literature on the ‘tragic’ genre, and his ardent advocacy of the ‘sublime’ in poetry, the word ‘sublime’ has always sustained in having gotten unto itself such a delightful, mesmerizing haloed aura that bespeaks volumes to its sustained passionate sway over writers and poets all over the planet!

Interestingly, although Euripides advocates the sublime, himself, and is considered one of the triumvirates on the “terrific three tragedians hall of fame on ancient Greece,” Nietzsche ain’t really considers him so!

In his The Birth of Tragedy, his talk tones down on his admiration for the third of the trio!

To him, Euripides is more vulgar than Sophocles! And he’s got his validating reasons for that too!

Furthering on his ponderance on the sublime, he adds, “What gives to everything tragic, the characteristic tendency to the sublime, is the dawning of the knowledge that the world and life can afford us no true satisfaction, and are therefore not worth our attachment to them. In this the tragic spirit consists; accordingly it leads to resignation”!

Hence, according to Nietzsche, tragedy takes a detour to a debilitating downturn and gradually to a decline, with Euripides!

Hence, he avers that, ‘Euripides represents the transition into modernity’ and in the ‘New Comedy’ that succeeded him, there was ‘a womanish (I’d personally say sexist!!!) flight from seriousness and terror’, and hence also from the sublime!

Even to Schopenhauer, one among the trio, Sophocles comes under some attack! ‘Shakespeare is much greater than Sophocles,’ he quips!

Longinus’s immortal treatise On the Sublime, written around the first century A.D., has probably been one of the earliest and of the best advocates on the aura of the ‘sublime’ for us all!

To Longinus, therefore, the truly sublime effect, could only be produced by ‘greatness of soul,’ and one can reach its dazzling heights only as heave-ho as one reaches by an arduous journey, or flight!

And he also alludes to the use of ‘figurative language’ as a vehicle for such a ‘flight,’ of fantasy, and adds (to the delight of Stanley Fish and his comrades) that, it is not just the writer who is transported by the power of the sublime, but the reader as well!

No wonder, Longinus has been such a striking influence on the Romantics, along with Kant, who’s the master-influence on the Romantics, for his advocacy on the subjective, or the ‘I’ to the experience of the ‘sublime’!

Lyotard alludes to the importance of Kant’s take on the sublime in the latter’s Critique of Judgement, for the inquiring mind to get an idea on the intricacies and the delights contained within the modernist art works galore, and on their ‘avant-gardish’ sensibilities in their painting, art and music!

Kant’s intellectual contemporary, and an equally vociferous and vehement votary to the sublime, Edmund Burke has also doled out his delightful deifications on the sublime, in his treatise titled, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. Well, in many ways, this work of Burke is a pioneering, trendsetter of sorts! It also marks the first defence for the artistic merit of horror in literature!

To Burke, interestingly, the beautiful and the sublime are diametrically contrastive in their appeal!

He says, “There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered into compliance.”

No surprise then, that Kant, quoting his pal Burke, quips on a similar note! To Kant, as with Burke, woman is always associated with the ‘beautiful’ and the male with the ‘sublime’!

He vouches to his facts, rooting that, the ‘fair sex’ has ‘as much understanding as the men’, but still, the woman has ‘a beautiful understanding, whereas the men ought to have a deep understanding, in tangent with the sublime!

[Thanks much to Dr. Angeline, on RR, for providing a delightful spark on the subject]!

To be contd…