Issue 3 Volume 7 literophile

a student initiative for promoting literary research

Cultural Studies Year

(October 2013 - July 2014)

Issue 3, Volume 7 July 2014

ISSN 2347-3681

2 July 2014. Issue 3, Vol 7. History: writing/re-writing – manipulation?

Contents

Editorial

Historical Fact and Narrative Truth in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin,

Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany Patricia Michael looks at two texts – Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin and

John Irwing’s A Prayer for Owen Meany – to delineate how they reveal, when

viewed sequentially, not merely the face of a period beginning in the twentieth

century and ending in the early twenty-first, but also a changing landscape of consciousness reconfigured by historic disruptions that challenged the fixed or-

der and impacted everyday human lives.

ImagiNation and Demythification of Nationhood in Caryl Phillips’s

The Nature of Blood Jose Varunny M. analyses Caryl Phillips’s historical novel The Nature of Blood

to examine how Ethiopian Jews in Israel remain unable to constitute an unprob-lematic national identity in the context of diverse national ethos, myths and sto-

ries that are projected to feed a sense of national identity and integrity. He offers

a critical account of how such ethos, myths and stories associated with the Is-

rael’s nationhood become hurdles in imagining a multicultural and multiethnic social existence for the Ethiopian Jews who remain marginalised and excluded

as a ‘foreign’ element in modern Israel.

Englishness and Narrative: New Perspectives of Literary and Histori-

cal Revisionism in Jane Austen’s Love and Friendship John Mazzoni reads Jane Austen’s concerns on moral and sexual mores and the

precautionary nature of experienced authority in her early novel Love and

Friendship as indicative of a historically revisionist critique of contemporane-ously prevalent notions of Englishness and English nationality.

History of Kathakali: of art, agency, and aesthetics Safwan Amir moves through a linear history of Kathakali, dealing with its in-ception, influences, patronage and participation. He also explores the emergence

of Kathakali as an art form and part of national and sub-national identity as part

of specific responses to caste and religion based social formations. The final section looks at the implementation of aesthetics as a supposedly neutral regime

of identification of art mainly through academic and scholarly constructions,

and modern practices of tourism in the present day context.

Historicizing a Past, Homogenizing a Tradition: A Note on the Dis-

course Generated around Bengali Cinema in the 1980s-1990s Spandan Bhattacharya revisits the discourse generated around Bengali cinema in 1980's and 1990's. He posits that it is not exceptional for the cinema of any

period or of any culture to be situated in a past/present comparison, or for a gen-

eration to feel a sense of regret and loss about what the previous generation had. He explores historicising process and its politics while relating it to the question

of question of class imagination, policy of cultural representation, media, com-

munity and taste discourse.

The statutory disclaimer holds: excepting submissions by its own team, Literophile is not responsible for either the

veracity of the research or the politics of the opinions published herein.

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The Arminius picture in the 19th and 20th centuries, and his distorted

use for propaganda power purposes Riccardo Altieri’s paper considers the varying interpretations of Amrinius

throughout German history, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centu-

ries, to investigate the ways in which the authenticity of the heroic figures and stories arising from the accounts of antiquity aid the creation of national iden-

tity.

Call for Contributions; Issue Four, Volume Seven: Art and Conflict:

War, peace and artistic expression

The statutory disclaimer holds: excepting submissions by its own team, Literophile is not responsible for either the

veracity of the research or the politics of the opinions published herein.

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Editorial

History is one of the oldest disciplines to have been studied. The idea of knowing the past has always been fascinat-

ing. It gives us an idea about bygone eras and where we came from. In many ways it defines us. The catch is that his-

tory is never definite. It is accepted that all recorded history represents somebody’s perspective of an event. This auto-

matically complicates matters. How do we find a distinction between actual history and the biases of historians? If his-

tory, as we know it, is inevitably tampered by prejudices (implied consciously or unconsciously), what ends up defin-

ing us more, the actual events or the prejudices?

Of course, the scope of history and its interpretation extends much beyond traditional records of it. The resonances of

historical influences are so pervasive in our daily lives that we hardly care to notice them. They are present in the art

and architecture that surround us, in our way of living and education systems. They influence the way we think. The

basis of our respective national identity is formed on and by history.

This issue of Literophile tries to address the problems revolving around the gaps created in his-

tory due to multiplicity of accounts. In this issue we have tried to include papers which aid us to

better understand how easily history can be manipulated. We have included papers which look at

texts trying to unravel the subtle process of creation of dominant histories and those which try to

bring forth how some texts gives us a better understanding of the history of the individuals or

smaller sections of the society. The idea was to establish a fair balance between literary examina-

tion and historical scrutiny.

The expert paper included in this issue is by Dr Patricia Michael. She delineates three texts to show how fiction can be

a plausible site to understand the consequences of major events like the Great Wars or terror attacks at a microscopic

level. These are events of a certain magnitude which we usually tend to only approach in terms of large scale crisis.

Fiction makes it easier for us to feel the damage at a more personal level as it describes the permanent scars that

emerge on the people turning them into mere shadows of what they used to be, trapped in uncontrollable situations.

The sense of oneness pertaining to a shared geographical space is one that is always encouraged by all nation states.

India saw the massive promotion of the idea of nationality in the post-independence, post-partition period. In the ab-

sence of visual media, the print media was vigorously used. Everything from newspapers to calendar art was resorted

to with a sense of promoting national unity as an end. The effort at mass hegemonising worked to an extent but was

met with harsh criticism due to implied superiority of certain religious groups.

The student academic papers included in the journal are also from varied backgrounds which examine different as-

pects of historical representations. Jose Varunny and John Mazzoni, like Pat Mitchell, look at literary texts to present

historicist criticisms for them. Riccardo Altieri’s paper offers yet another instance of casual reinterpretation of a his-

torical event, which possibly passed a bunch of invented stories as history to mould national identity. The papers by

Safwan Aamir and Spandan Bhattacharya revisit the past through an examination of the changes that art forms have

gone through as a result of of the local and global scenarios. Safwan Amir provides an interesting account of the tradi-

tional dance form of Kathakali and Spandan Bhattacharya approaches Bengali movies on the question of class imagi-

nation, policy of cultural representation, media, community and taste discourse.

Editor

Editor: Arpita Roy

Associate Editors:

Anubha Barthwal Shambhavi Pandey

Tina Das


Historical Fact and Narrative Truth in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin and Irving’s A

Prayer for Owen Meany

In Irrational Man, William Barrett suggests, “What man has experienced historically with the changes in religion, in

social and economic form, and now in modern science as well – all of this experience is revealed to us, in a more strik-

ing and more humane way, through art. Art is the collective dream of a period, a dream in which, if we have eyes to

see, we can trace the physiognomy of the time most clearly” (Barrett 41). Barrett’s idea deserves consideration par-

ticularly in the light of postmodern attacks on narrative history. Can fictional narratives present a more truthful picture

of a period? Can fiction provide more accurate insights than fact? One has only to read Atwood’s The Blind Assassin

and Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany to identify the features that delineate an era, an era beginning in the twentieth

century and ending in the early twenty-first. Each novel presents, to borrow Barrett’s phrase, “the being of man in his

time” (Barrett 54). Viewed sequentially, however, the three novels reveal not merely the face of a period but also a

changing landscape of consciousness reconfigured by historic disruptions, what Hegel called “those momentous colli-

sions” (qtd. White 30) that challenged the fixed order and impacted everyday human lives. These are the landscapes

that characterize a period. In the novels under consideration, Atwood, Irving, and McEwan construct, reconstruct, and

even transgress history to detail subtle shifts in thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Through these shifts, the reader dis-

covers truths born out of the individual’s response to and collision with the facts of history. As Hayden White has

pointed out in The Content of Form, “One can produce an imaginary discourse about real events that may not be less

‘true’ for being imaginary” (White 57).

Atwood’s imaginary rendition of the past in The Blind Assassin at first leads the reader to believe that somehow the

horrific events of the twentieth century have only skimmed the central character’s consciousness. It is almost as if the

effects of the World Wars, with the Great Depression sandwiched between, have been discounted or, perhaps, re-

pressed. The very construction of the novel suggests defensiveness. Most of the deaths are announced through the ve-

hicle of unreliable news stories, while the two that are not involve cover-ups that mask the real emotions they elicit.

Most of the intense feelings in the book reveal themselves in the novel within the novel, and the severest criticism of

mankind’s violence and greed is relegated mostly to the science fiction tale situated in the novel within the novel. Iris

Chase Griffen, the eighty-two-year-old narrator, has hidden herself in the shadows most of her life assuming that ob-

scurity will keep her “out of harm’s way” (Atwood 41). At the core of the book is the suggestion that the historic dis-

ruptions of the twentieth century are lethal except to those who withdraw into a cocoon of ironic detachment. Survival

for Iris depends on limiting the consciousness, on dulling the mind and numbing the sensations and feelings, while, at

the same time, honing the sharp edge of her wit. Her life is a conjuror’s trick, a game of smoke and mirrors. Next to

her eccentric sister, she appears conventional; she lives close to the edge but not on the edge like her lover; she takes

revenge on her sadistic husband but does so by writing a book attributed to her sister. Iris dies after she finishes com-

mitting her life story to paper. It is almost as if her long delayed attempt to make sense of her experience and the pe-

riod she lived in has proved too much for her.

In retelling her story, Iris is forced to make connections between private and public events, to confront the disruptions

of the twentieth century. Even so, her manipulation of narrative time frequently forestalls an explanation of those con-

nections. The book opens with the shocking yet cryptic sentence, “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura

drove a car off a bridge” (Atwood 2). The reader is not told which war had ended nor how the two events are linked.

The first question is answered quickly enough by the next entry, a newspaper article dated May 26, 1945; the link be-

tween the suicide and the war is not explained until the end of the novel. Even then, the connection is circuitous. As

Atwood puts it in The Robber Bride, “All of the dead are in the hands of the living” (Atwood 461), and this is just

what Iris wants. The prolonged ambiguity of Laura’s death allows Iris to ignore her guilt and avoid dwelling on the

senseless sacrifice of her lover in the war. In Time and Narrative, Paul Ricoeur references Augustine’s theories on

time which may help explain Iris as narrator: Augustine suggests that three temporalities are present in the mind: “The

present of past things is the memory; the present of present things is direct perception; . . . and the present of future

things is expectation” (Ricoeur 11). Iris employs all three temporalities as her mind wanders back and forth in time

and her expectation of approaching death heightens the importance of reconstructing the past and experiencing the

present.

We said that at first Atwood’s heroine does not allow her consciousness to absorb the pain of the public disruptions

that scar her life. Certainly, Iris is aware that World War I changed her parents, that her father came back from the war

a wrecked man and seemed like a stranger to her mother. Nevertheless, occasionally when Iris writes about World

War I, her attitude is almost dismissive. At one point, she states abruptly “And then, after the wedding, there was the

war. Love, then marriage, then catastrophe” (Atwood 76). And when Iris becomes impatient with the whole subject of

the war, she ends it with a cavalier flourish of her pen. “I will cause the war to end,” she says, “I, alone with a stroke

of my black plastic pen. All I have to do is write: 1918. November 11. Armistice Day. There. It’s over” (Atwood 25).

As her memoir progresses, however, the narrator’s awareness of her own tunnel vision intensifies. Of her honeymoon

in Italy, she writes, “I suppose I ought to have seen Mussolini’s Fascist troops in their black uniforms, marching

around and roughing people up . . . but I did not see them” (Atwood 304). Writing the novel within the novel, Iris


further acknowledges the difference between living through something and observing it from a distance. Speaking of

World War II, she points out,

The war takes place in black and white. For those on the sidelines that is.

For those who are actually in it there are many colours, too bright, too red and orange, too liquid and incandes-

cent, but for others the war is like a newsreel – grainy, smeared, with bursts of staccato noise and large num-

bers of gray-skinned people rushing or plodding or falling down, everything elsewhere (Atwood 463).

Only masquerading as the character in the inner novel can Iris admit her true feelings of helplessness. In the face of

the war and her lover’s involvement in it Iris writes of herself in the third person:

She goes to the newsreels in the movie theatres. She reads the papers. She knows herself to be at the mercy of

events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy (Atwood 463).

Caught up in the brutal history of her times, Iris, the narrator, still retains a degree of invisibility and invulnerability.

The pretense is that the character in the inner novel is the one who hurts not the flesh and blood woman. Even when

the war does its worst and her lover, Alex, is killed, Iris describes the day she received the telegram as a scene in

Laura’s book.

Throughout The Blind Assassin the narrator undercuts the human desire to construct a history, to record the past, to

hold on to its essence. Photographs either lie or tell only half truths; souvenirs are merely attempts to validate one’s

own experiences. The Chase family button factory, which burnt down in the Great Depression, has been reconstructed

and now houses a shopping mall. A little store caters to the tourist trade with nonsensical items reminiscent of a by-

gone era which give people the illusion that they are taking home a piece of history. This postmodern age amazes Iris:

“History, as I recall, was never this winsome” (Atwood 52).

In spite of her ironic sense of humor, the collision of Iris’ private life with public events has taken its toll. “But in

life,” she says, “a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day

after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the

bridge” (Atwood 418). Try as she might to hide, to steel herself against the onslaught of history and its effects, Iris has

been so greatly affected that, in thinking of what lies ahead, she can create only an apocalyptic vision of the twenty-

first century. Negotiating the temporalities of the mind, Iris looks into the future and sees that “sooner or later it will

sniff us out, it will tear the roofs off our flimsy little burrows with its iron claws, and then we will be just as naked and

shivering and starving and diseased and hopeless as the rest” (Atwood 477-479). Her changing consciousness has

brought the narrator to this recognition: escape is impossible.

While Atwood’s The Blind Assassin characterizes the human being’s unsuccessful attempt to escape the traumas of

history, Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany demonstrates what happens when those traumas are embraced. The author

admitted that he wanted to create two victims of the Vietnam period in this novel. Owen Meany, the Christ symbol in

the novel, willingly gives his life to save others, a group of refugee Vietnamese children. Johnny Wheelwright, his

best friend and the book’s narrator, assists in the sacrifice and then cannot let go of his grief. When Iris complains in

The Blind Assassin, “[m]y bones have been aching again, as they often do in humid weather. They ache like history:

things long done with, that still reverberate as pain” (Atwood 56), her simile suggests Johnny Wheelwright’s emo-

tional state. Long after Owen’s death, it reverberates as pain.; Johnny tells us, “...it took years for me to face the mem-

ory of how Owen Meany died – and once I forced myself to remember the details. I could never forget..; I will never

forget it. I am doomed to remember” (Irving 507). Blaming the United States involvement in Vietnam for his friend’s

death, Johnny, who became a Canadian citizen in protest twenty years before, still cannot resist reading and ranting

about the U. S. government’s lies, deceptions, and cover-ups. He follows stories about the Iran-contra scandal obses-

sively, with hawk-like attention. His whole being is wrapped up in the politics of his day because it feeds an anger and

discontent that he wants to keep alive.

In contrast to Atwood, Irving manipulates narrative time not to delay facing the disastrous effect of historical fact but

to heighten the reader’s perception of it. Owen’s death occurs in the very last scene of the novel long after Johnny has

described his friend’s military funeral. The horror of watching Owen’s arms blown off by a grenade as he tries to pro-

tect Vietnamese orphans, the recognition that Johnny must be a party to all of this creates a drama of stunning inten-

sity that challenges the reader to feel the cruelty and futility of the times.

When Johnny suggests early in the novel that “Americans are not great historians” (Irving 18), he is providing a narra-

tive anchor for a new kind of consciousness. History undergoes a subtle change in A Prayer for Owen Meany: the

dignity of history is lost to the fatuity of politics. According to Johnny, “...it is history that holds you accountable,

and...Americans are not big on history” (Irving 88).

Most of the time even Owen and Johnny fail to place events within an historical context. While they may be watching

history in the making, they focus on the political maneuverings of the government. “MADE FOR TELEVISION,”


Owen interjects every time he hears about another nonsensical national policy. Moreover, he keeps a running com-

mentary on TV news stories in the early days of U. S. involvement in Vietnam “I HOPE WE’RE ADVISING THE

RIGHT GUYS...I HOPE WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE DOING...IT LOOKS LIKE WE’VE BEEN ADVISING THE

WRONG GUYS...DO WE THINK THIS IS A MOVIE?” (Irving 89). Politics has become a force in the boys’ lives,

and one that brings with it a good deal of pain. Likening his country to Marilyn Monroe, Owen feels that it, too, “is a

sucker for powerful men who look good” (Irving 382).

In moving from The Blind Assassin to A Prayer for Owen Meany, we encounter a marked change in consciousness as

it wrestles with the impact of historic fact on individual lives. Though Atwood’s characters are frequently scarred by

public events, these events have a sense of inevitability about them. War is likened to a hurricane or an out-of-control

bonfire. If blame there is, then it rests with universal human greed and aggressiveness. In A Prayer for Owen Meany,

however, people are being killed because of specific policies enacted by a specific government and the men who

power it. Irving’s novel takes the historic facts of the sixties and makes them personal to the characters. Scandals, as-

sassinations, the Vietnam War, the protest marches—these affront Owen and Johnny’s sensibilities. They discuss

them; they analyze; they criticize. Involvement is the order of the day, and involvement ranges from fighting the war

to dodging the draft, from protesting in public marches to making snide remarks in private. In Owen’s comment

“MADE FOR TELEVISION” lies the answer to the cause of this change in consciousness. Owen and Johnny repre-

sent the first eneration of inveterate TV watchers. While Iris depended on the printed word and movie newsreels for

her glimpses of history-in-the-making, Owen and Johnny watch the nightly news in the comfort of the Wheelwright

living room.

Hence, although Atwood’s and Irvings’s novels depict different stages in the human being’s reaction to public disrup-

tions, they share a common insight: public brutality breeds private violence. In The Blind Assassin, Iris’ sadistic hus-

band Richard, a greedy and selfish capitalist not above dealing with Hitler, abuses Iris and forces himself on Laura

and thereby brings about more devastation to the central characters than both world wars had done. In A Prayer for

Owen Meany, the demented younger brother of a soldier killed in Vietnam throws the hand grenade that brings about

Owen’s death. Owen never had to go to Vietnam to make the ultimate sacrifice. He dies in an airport bathroom in

Phoenix, Arizona. In both these texts, tensions in the public and private realms are interwoven to create an intricate

pattern of causal relationships. Separately, Atwood and Irving present human beings struggling to make sense of their

particular narrative moments in time. Together, they constitute a collective dream of an age, a dream that becomes a

media-driven nightmare with the progressive internalization of momentous collisions and historic disruptions. In an

era when the facts of history seem lost to so many, perhaps the truth of fiction can once more illuminate the intercon-

nections among past, present, and future.

Bibliography -

Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print. —-. The Robber Bride. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993. Print.

Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958. Print.

Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meany. New York: William Morrow & Coo, 1989. Print. Reilly, Edward C. “The Magnitude of a Miracle.” The Critical Response to John Irving. Ed. Todd F. Davis and Kenneth

Womack. West Port: Praeger, 2004.148-160. Print.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. I. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990. Print.

White, Hayden. The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni versity Press, 1990. Print.

Patricia Michael is Senior Professor of Literature at Holy Family University in Philadelphia, Pa. and has published a book on the freshman experience and articles on Hopkins, Dickens and Gaskell. She has lectured on Keats, Tennyson and Hopkins at the

Philadelphia Art Alliance and has presented papers at international conferences in British Columbia, England, Scotland, Den-

mark, and the Czech Republic. She may be contacted at [email protected].


ImagiNation and Demythification of Nationhood in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of

Blood

National ethos, myths and stories are fundamental both for imagining ‘a deep horizontal comradeship’ and for consti-

tuting and maintaining a national identity and solidarity. Nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson 6) heavily

relies on such stories and myths of a common history, shared cultural codes, values, ethnicity and remembrance of his-

toric dimension of struggles for building up solidarity and integrity among the members of its community. Although

the success rate of this attempt in bringing together diverse units and factions of a society is contested, they are exten-

sively used as agents for bringing about a sense of nationhood. Anthony D. Smith observes that national histories,

symbols, mythologies and rituals are fabricated to implant a spurious unity and fraternity in their heterogeneous and

divided populations (Smith 167).

In modern Israel, nationalism, aided by manifold national ethos, myths and stories, is one of the most powerful forces

of social and political integration, and it is a primary key to participation in diverse social domains. Gadi BenEzer

mentions that the prevalence of “...the ethos of Jewishness, the myth of suffering, and that of bravery and hero-

ism” (BenEzer 179) are central to Israeli society. While projecting such integrative capabilities of common histories,

shared cultural achievements and unique memory networks for establishing a solid sense of nationhood, the concep-

tion of national identity often becomes rooted in the ideological confines of monocultural and monoethnic relation-

ships. This tendency of appropriating national ethos, myths and stories as fundamental in developing nationhood in

modern Israel has failed to appreciate community membership in terms of multicultural and multiethnic relationships.

The present paper, by analysing Caryl Phillips’s historical novel The Nature of Blood (1997), examines how such na-

tional ethos, myths and stories create boundaries of separation for Ethiopian Jews in contemporary Israel and how

they challenge the domains of multicultural and transcultural social relationships.

As a historical novel1 The Nature of Blood is an attempt in retrieving and reinventing the history of Jewish diaspora,

marginalisation and their historical suffering that have been obliterated in many respects by metanarratives of history.

In a review of the novel The Nature of Blood, Ivan Kreilkamp observes, “Phillips's fiction is about historical transit,

about people travelling from birthplace to homeland, or from homeland to places unknown” (Kreilkamp 44). This

sense of displacement and uncertainty about belonging enveloping the lives of the Jews is what Caryl Phillips explores

in The Nature of Blood. Therefore, within the compass of this historical fiction he charts the history of Jews in the

Renaissance-period-Europe, Jews who are displaced and who bear the trauma of the Holocaust, Jews who make their

immigration to Palestine during the days of its formation, and the Ethiopian Jews who are rescued and ‘herded’ to the

edges of Israel.

Phillips, at the end of The Nature of Blood, finds a space for the story of Malka and her community, the Ethiopian

Jews, who are transplanted from Ethiopia into the Promised Land of Israel. Motivated by an ancient dream of return-

ing to the land of their ancestors, ‘Yerussalem’, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia to Israel as

part of three major waves of immigrations to Israel between 1977 and 1985. For the Ethiopian Jews, this arrival in Is-

rael is considered to be part of a great redemptive process rooted in a Biblical vision. BenEzer notes, “[Ethiopian

Jews] saw their arrival in Israel as a return, as a restoration from the state of exile, and viewed themselves as a part

joining its main body, to become a ‘whole’ again. In Israel, they believed, among their fellow Jews, they would feel

more complete” (BenEzer 179). Malka’s arrival in Israel reflects the accomplishment of this centuries-old dream and

an end to years of wandering as a people without a history and a land: “We, the people of the House of Israel, we were

going home. No more wandering. No longer landless. No more tilling of soil that did not belong to us” (Phillips 201).

However, what they experience in Israel is contrary to their dreams and expectations, as a traumatising inability pre-

vents them in defining the Promised Land as their ‘home.’ For Malka, the much-celebrated rescue operations that have

brought the Ethiopian Jews to Israel have not essentially served their purpose. From the beginning Malka and her

community undergo the experiences of exclusion and segregation as they are rehabilitated at the margins, both sym-

bolically and socially, of mainstream Jewish society. “She lived with her parents and younger sister at the edge of the

city in one of the developments into which her people had been placed” (Phillips 202). Such exclusionary practices

against the black Jews in Israel dissolve her great notions attached with the Promised Land. Her question “You do not

want us here, do you?” (Phillips 209) indicates how Malka and her people feel unaccepted and cast outside from their

rightful place. Benedicte Ledent has observed that the German Jew Stephan’s ideal of togetherness, in the novel, of a

country he can share with other “displaced and dispossessed” people (Phillips 5), is spoilt by the cultural and racial

consolidation of the new Jewish state which fails to integrate people like Malka and her family (Ledent 188)2.

Although overt racism cannot be held considered responsible for keeping out Malka and her people from mainstream

social interactions, prevailing racist attitudes in society cannot be totally neglected in understanding this marginalisa-

tion. Ethnicity is one of the principal markers of belonging in Israel and central to its social participation. Gal Levy

notes that ethnicity is an indispensable feature of Zionist nation-building and state-formation. They made Israel an

‘ethnicised society’, a term that denotes the ethno-national character of the state’s ‘external’ boundaries, as well as the


tendency to create ‘internal’ ethnic boundaries (Levy 12). Further, BenEzer notes, “... the ethnic identity of Jewish Is-

raelis is connected to their Jewish origins, even if it is felt and expressed in the form of a continuation of cultural heri-

tage rather than religious practice” (BenEzer 179). Thus, the entry of Malka and her community into the closed ethnic

boundaries of mainstream Jewish community destabilises the notions of monocultural belonging in Israel, for the sto-

ries of the ethnic origin of the former do not permit the latter to have accommodation under same umbrella. This dis-

criminatory character of Israeli society makes Ethiopian Jews ‘Falashas’ for the mainstream Israelis; ‘falashas’ is a

pejorative term meaning “strangers” or “immigrants” that was widely used for the outsiders (Bard 2). The basic

awareness of a boundary drawn between them is seen in Malka’s arguments: “… then you herded us on to

buses” (Phillips 199), “… as we learnt the language and your ways… (Phillips 207) and also “you say you rescued

me…” (Phillips 208; all emphasis added). These unpleasant ‘You’ and ‘I’ binaries illustrate the difficulty that Malka

confronts in defining an all-embracing national identity regardless of cultural differences in her new ‘homeland.’

Robin Franco observes that one of the reasons what differentiates the Ethiopian Jews3 from the rest of Israelites is the

perception that the former are primitive or backward who have not reached the same level of modernity as the Israelis

(Franco 82). This idea of primitiveness in the minds of mainstream Jews is highlighted as some of the Ethiopian Jew-

ish girls become curious ‘Oriental’ ‘pieces’ to be watched upon. Malka reflects, “[The mayor of the town] had re-

quested that he be sent only those who could sing and dance, so that he might form a folklore group for tour-

ists” (Phillips 207; emphasis added). This reductionist view typically demonstrates the attitude of the white suprema-

cists in Israel. Further, as Andrew Armstrong notes:

‘European’ Jewish hegemony in contemporary Palestine, in its need to construct a pure Jewish space, repeats

the neurosis adopted by societies embracing the tenets of dangerous nationalisms…. This vision excludes the

Falashas from modernity and the process of modernization. They are good for ethnic decoration, to sing and

dance for the tourists coming to Israel, but never to be considered for serious citizenship. Malka and the other

Falashas are not pure enough to be considered as real Jews; they are constituted as unsanctified – strangers in

the Promised Land (Armstrong 130).

The German Jew Stephan in the novel is seen holding the notion of ‘primitiveness’ of the Ethiopian Jews when he

says, “Dragging these people from their primitive world into this one...” (Phillips 210; emphasis added)4. Ulysses San-

tamaria refers to how Ethiopian Jews were essentially tied with other Ethiopian tribes and how this was taken to deny

them ‘a pure Jewish identity’. According to her, for many in Israel the Ethiopian Jews “belong to a culture which is in

no way different from that of other Ethiopians of different faiths ... that is, to a culture which is totally alien to most

Israelis” (Santamaria 405-406). However, such stereotypes of ‘primitiveness’ have been internalised by the Ethiopian

Jews as well. Malka reflects: “You say you rescued me. Gently plucked me from one century, helped me to cross two

more, and then placed me in this time. Here. Now” (Phillips 208; emphasis added). Malka and her family find it em-

barrassing and hard to integrate into the mainstream Jewish society with the marks of their African culture. She says,

“... as we learnt the language and your ways, our parents felt as though they were losing us. It was hard for them....

After the absorption centre, they are frightened of white walls and white coats.... My mother is tattooed on her face,

her hands and her neck. She finds it difficult to leave the apartment, for people stop and stare” (Phillips 207). A view

held by the mainstream Jews that Ethiopian Jews are placed far away from the processes of modernisation makes the

divide more emphatic between the ‘non-modern’ Ethiopian Jews and the modern mainstream Jews.

In addition to the differences in racial identity and ethnic origins, another significant area of difference between Ethio-

pian Jews and mainstream Jews is in their religious practices. Although Jewish in religion, the religious practices fol-

lowed by the Ethiopian Jews are different from that of the white Jews in Israel. While Ethiopian Jews practice strict

religious observances in accordance with biblical Judaism that is centered on the Torah or written law, mainstream

Jews follow rabbinic Judaism centered on the Talmud or oral law that is a modified version of biblical law. David S.

Ribner and Ruben Schindler observe that a lack of knowledge of the Talmud, the traditional rabbinic interpretation of

the Torah, led the Ethiopian Jews to develop different practices in regards to the Sabbath, holidays, the religious cal-

endar and practices concerning ritual purity (Ribner and Schindler 10). Malka expresses this disquiet: “During Pass-

over, we kill a lamb and sprinkle its fresh red blood around synagogue. But not here. You do not allow this” (Phillips

208).

Obviously such differences create difficulties for Ethiopian Jews in integrating into a society that comprises the ma-

jority of white Jews. One of the major aspects that constituted Jewish identity in Israel is the suffering and its memo-

ries. From the time of Pharaoh until the formation of their land, Israel witnessed multiple levels of persecutions, mas-

sacres and exiles. The collective experiences of the Holocaust and its memories act as unifying elements. Tom Segev

notes:

The more [Israelites] realised that their secular Israeli existence alone cannot offer them a rooted identity – the

more Israelis gave themselves to the heritage of the Holocaust as a kind of popular ritual and a sometimes bi-

zarre kind of worship of the memory. At a certain point the Holocaust turned into one of the sources of their

collective identity (quoted in BenEzer 180).


Malka and her people cannot claim a history of such experiences of suffering or its memories that can contribute to

their integration with a collective Jewish identity in Israel. It is true that the Ethiopian Jews endured immeasurable

amount of suffering owing to hunger, poverty, cultural decimation as well as on their journeys en route Israel. But as

BenEzer notes, “The Holocaust was connected, in the minds of Israelis, to thousands of years of suffering during ex-

ile, from the exile period of biblical times to the present, and served as its ‘ultimate image of horror’ for Is-

raelis” (BenEzer 180). What is remarkable here is that any mode of suffering comparable to that of Holocaust remain

absent from the lives of the Ethiopian Jews.

Involvement in nation-building is yet another aspect of Israeli-Jewish identity. Ernest Renan, in his essay “What is a

Nation?”, argues that sacrifices constitute the foundation of nations: “a nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, con-

stituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the

future” (Renan 19). Phillips, through the example of Stephan Stern, shows how personal sacrifices have been impor-

tant to each Jew in the formation of nation. Owing to his idealistic stance with the Zionist movement, Stephan travels

from pre-war Germany to Palestine during the 1930’s, leaving his family behind in Germany to join ‘Haganah’, the

secretive military organization to found the new state of Israel. This historical memory of sacrifices that makes

Stephan proud of being part of nation-building is absent from Malka and her people. Miroslav Hroch, a Czech politi-

cal theorist, mentions that a nation is a large social group also “connected by a ‘memory’ of some common past,

treated as a ‘destiny’ of the group – or at least of its core constituents” (Hroch 79). The absence of such national ethos

of bravery and sacrifices strongly perpetuate a boundary between the mainstream Jews and that of the Ethiopian Jews.

For the Jews, in general, having gone through constant displacements and diaspora across diverse spaces and times,

the concept of a homogenous and pure Jewish cultural identity remains redefined in terms of ‘hybridity’. Virinder S.

Kalra, Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk observe that diasporic subjects are carriers of a consciousness that provides

an awareness of difference, which is a basic aspect of self-identity for diasporic subjects (Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk 30).

But the founders of new Israel seem to undermine the hitherto reality of this cultural hybridity and differences of Jew-

ish cultures. Surviving between a deceptive notion of homogeneity and a deep reality of cultural hybridity and differ-

ences renders Malka and her community prone to constant psychological trauma. For Malka, her African cultural

identity and Israel’s cultural exclusiveness create an ambiguous position, where she neither finds inclusion in Israeli

society nor a way back to her African country. Therefore, unable to negotiate an unproblematic relationship with Is-

rael, her everyday life slides to more complexities. As Malka recognises, the problem is not with the redemptive vi-

sion itself but with those who have faltered from the great ideals of Promised Land: “This holy land did not deceive

us. The people did” (Phillips 207).

Notes -

1 History becomes a major component in shaping Phillips’s artistic consciousness. In an interview with Jill Morrison, he claims, “I am still deeply committed to the notion of ‘history’ being the fundamental window through which we have to

peer in order to see ourselves clearly” (Morrison 135). Apparently, such an attempt of imagining his characters and their

contexts through the prism of history renders him a remarkable ability for crafting their stories in a more realistic manner while holding them as historical figures. 2 In his essay “On The Nature of Blood and the Ghost of Anne Frank”, Caryl Phillips describes an incident that he read in a

newspaper and which served the thread for the final piece of story of the Ethiopian Jews in The Nature of Blood:

“According to the paper, it appeared that in recent years black Jews in Israel had been donating blood in the hope that it might be used to save lives. However, the Israeli government, fearful of ‘diseases’ that might be contained in this blood,

had instructed the medical teams to dump the ‘black’ blood. The secret practice had now been exposed” (quoted in Ledent

139-40). 3 Ulysses Santamaria provides an account of various myths associated with the ethnic origins of the Ethiopian Jews. One

myth says that they belong to the descendants of the progeny of King Solomon’s and the Queen of Sheba’s sexual relation-

ship; a second myth is that they are the lost tribes of Dan, one of Joseph's brothers, in the upper plateau of Ethiopia; a third

version says that they must have been converted by the Jewish communities in southern Arabia during the first centuries of the Christian era (406). Therefore, ethnicity, in Israel, is to be understood as a characteristic feature of social relations

while it plays a significant role in matters of social inclusion and exclusion. 4 An article in The New York Times points to how Mrs. Susan K. Stern, the new chairwoman of the Women's Young Lead-ership Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal, views the Ethiopian Jews in relation to this idea of primitiveness: “people

from the 17th century coming off a plane into the 20th century.” People with “beautiful, stunned black faces” who were

“home now after 2,000 years of waiting” (Hershenson).

Bibliography -

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York : Verso, 1983. Print.

Armstrong, Andrew. “It’s in the Blood! Othello and his Descendants: Reading the Spatialization of Race in Caryl Phillips’

The Nature of Blood.” Shibboleths: A Journal of Comparative Theory 2.2 (2008): 118-132. Print. Bard, Mitchell G. From Tragedy to Triumph: The Politics behind the Rescue of Ethiopian Jewry. Westport: Praeger, 2002.

Print.

BenEzer, Gadi. The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus: Narratives of the Migration Journey to Israel 1977-1985. London and New


York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Franco, Robin. “Wanderers in the Homeland: The Plight of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel.” Chrestomathy: Annual Review of

Undergraduate Research at the College of Charleston 3 (2004). 72-91. Print.

Hershenson, Roberta. “Telling the Story of Ethiopian Jews.” The New York Times 07 July 1991. Web. Hroch, Miroslav. “From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-building Process in Europe.” Mappi-

-ng the Nation. Ed. Balakrishnan Gopal. New York and London: Verso, 1996. 78-97. Print.

Kalra, Virinder S., Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk. Diaspora and Hybridity. London: Sage, 2005. Print. Kreilkamp, Ivan. “Caryl Phillips: The Trauma of ‘Broken History’.” Publishers Weekly 28 April 1997: 44-45. ABI/INFOR-

-M Global. Web. 14 December 2011.

Ledent, Benedicte. Caryl Phillips. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Print. —. “Fictional and Cultural Labyrinth: Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood.” A Review of International English Literatu-

-re 32.1(2001). 185-195. JSTOR. 4 October 2012. Web.

Levy, Gal. Ethnicity and Education: Nation-Building, State-Formation, and the Construction of the Israeli Educational

System. Diss. University of London, 2002. 25 June 2014. Print. Morrison, Jill. “A Conversation with Caryl Phillips.” Conversations with Caryl Phillips. Ed. Renee. T. Schatteman. Jacks-

-on: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. 135-38. Print.

Phillips, Caryl. The European Tribe. New York: Vintage Books, 1987. Print. —. The Nature of Blood. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.

Renan, Ernest. “What is a Nation?” Trans. Martin Thom. Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi K. Bhabha. London and New

York: Routledge, 1990. 8-22. Print.

Ribner, David S. and Ruben Schindler. “The Crisis of Religious Identity among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel.” Journal of Black Studies 27 (1996): 104-117. Print.

Santamaria, Ulysses. “Ethiopian Jews in Israel.” Dialectical Anthropology 18 (1993): 405-12. Print.

Smith, Anthony D. Myths and Memories of the Nation. New York: OUP, 1999. Print. Zierler, Wendy. “‘My Holocaust is Not Your Holocaust’: ‘Facing’ Black and Jewish Experience in The Pawnbroker, Hig-

-her Ground, and The Nature of Blood.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18.1 (Spring 2004): 46-67. Project

Muse. 27 August 2011.

Jose Varunny M. is a doctoral candidate with the Department of English Research Centre, St. Thomas’ College, University of

Calicut. He may be contacted at [email protected].


Englishness and Narrative: New Perspectives of Literary and Historical Revision-

ism in Jane Austen’s Love and Friendship

As England moved into the nineteenth century, it did so with an eye turned backwards to the eighteenth. Historical

and literary narrative discourse surrounding interpretations of an English identity from the 1790’s onward were symp-

tomatic of inherited Augustan and Johnsonian social customs that posited cultural reevaluation as a nation-wide iden-

titive endeavor. The shared facility that these two systems of narrative assumed for a society coming to terms with the

national significance of its global ascendency may work to shift perspectives of literary revisionism related to narra-

tive’s ironic reversals to a more critical treatment of the re-imagination of roles within original cultural texts. Through

this lens, the bildungsroman novel of pre-Regency England can be understood as consequential of a revisionistic cul-

tural model’s urge to reflect and ‘improve’ on past sensibilities in the hopes of inculcating a new cultural education.

Jane Austen’s profound relevance to her culture’s battle for the way one “ought,” a favorite word of her work and of

the century that inaugurated her authorial career, is perhaps no better exemplified than in Love and Friendship (1790).

Though part of the critically neglected juvenilia, here, Austen’s satiric portrayal of her heroine’s upbringing reveals a

shrewd perspective that mocks her culture’s anxiety to be forward thinking about its past lessons. She is playful, but

unapologetic, in her judgment of the conservative character celebrated in the fiction and values of her childhood, posi-

tioned alongside a developing model of progressive Englishness, her portrayal of which would go on to shape the na-

tional dialogues carried out within Victorian novels and historiographical parley.

More ambitiously than much of recent Austen criticism, I recommend that her well-known social commentary should

be read as a revisionistic critique of contemporaneous investigations into national identity, a claim that becomes sub-

stantiated when one considers the semantic interplay of past and future subtext within the term ‘revision’– a mission

for the future grounded in a nostalgia for the past. Indeed, it is not wrong to read Jane Austen, as a pair of critics have

put it, as “a historian of social communication” (Gilbert and Gubar), but her satirical fictions suggests that she is better

understood as a revisionist social historian, and this rediscovery, found by looking backwards to Austen’s narrative

genesis, lends a procreant quality to her too often typified and platitudinously regarded ironic sense. The first-person

narrator of Love and Friendship is independent from either the conservative or progressive recommendations that per-

meate the novel validates Jane Austen as an agentive, and not reactionary, participant in the culture war she inherited1.

Consequently, I will argue that this quality of the text offers modern readers a new perspective for literary and histori-

cal revisionism of both the eighteenth-century mores that informed early nineteenth-century literary trends, and of nar-

rative’s social function within a re-evaluative cultural model.

The rationale for such a model was largely precipitated by the geopolitical landscape during the decades that book-

ended the turn of the nineteenth-century. Historian, Warren Roberts, observes that though “there had always been a

latent, sometimes overt chauvinism in England…there was a seismic shift of public feeling in the second half of the

eighteenth-century” that saw the “civilized cosmopolitanism of an age of classicism and Enlightenment [give] way to

the turbulent forces of nationalism” (quoted in Grey 328). In 1789, the year Austen began writing Love and Friend-

ship, that turbulence was intensified by the newly installed revolutionary government in France, which “abolished

monarchy, undertook a systematic effort to eradicate Christianity and declared war on hostile states beyond its fron-

tiers [England included], initiating a period of warfare that was different in kind and scale to all previous wars” (Grey

329).

Robert’s insights speak to the international developments that prompted the “deep internal change” in English identity

politics, and orient the concurrent domestic debates along conservative Augustan, and progressive or revolutionary

lines (Grey 330). Richard Cronin, a literary historian, adds to the relevancy of Robert’s work to this paper by shedding

light on how these debates were conducted in the literature of the period. He writes of the “weighty ethical and politi-

cal themes” addressed by “Jacobin novelists of the 1790’s” and expounds on the counter-revolutionary literature,

“both in discursive prose…and in novels” that countered their progressive message with warnings of “the danger of

cultivating too unregulated sensibility,” a blight of character typically attributed to progressive figures or characters

(quoted in Todd 290-291). Robert’s work corroborates Cronin’s assessment by asserting that “British responses to the

French Revolution had been favorable initially,” and that “revolutionary ideology was taking hold in Britain,” evi-

denced by the Jacobin novel (Todd 330). Remarks made by William Wilberforce, a conservative MP in 1797, illus-

trate that some in England regarded the determination to revise the irrational selfhood as concomitant to “‘the decline

of religion and morality,’” and could only be assuaged by sustained “internal reform” (Grey 330).

Austen pollinates her story with familiar scenarios and axioms of literary celebrities like Johnson, Cowper, and Bur-

ney who campaigned against one another through their writing for competing visions of English character. These in-

clusions add additional supports to reading this work as a direct response to the at once political and narrative ques-

tions these writers sought to answer. The letters that survived her sister, Cassandra Austen’s, purge reveal that Jane

admired all three of these authors, and each can be representative of three facets to the typical eighteenth-century liter-

ary education she received. While it is worth noting that the growing genre of the novel was not, in 1789, universally

regarded as a venerable form of instruction, it is also noteworthy that by Jane Austen’s death in 1817, the novel, and

the introspective character-driven plot trajectory that she developed, had assumed a level of import in England’s


domestic character that rivaled, and soon surpassed, moralism and poetry. Again, Cronin’s insights prove helpful in

recognizing the eighteenth century impetus Austen’s epistolary novel bears, as her research credits Frances Burney as

the writer from whom “Austen inherited the main lineaments of the plot that was to serve throughout her career, the

misadventures of a young woman” (Grey 289). Readers of Northanger Abbey, a version of which began before Love

and Friendship was completed, will recall its narrator’s fierce defense of novel writing as part of an ironic turn on

Gothic fiction made popular by Burney.

Their work is also valuable to this thesis because it situates Austen in a pre-Regency dialogue about preserving or re-

writing what it meant to be English, as, significantly, a voice with allegiances to both sides. While Roberts argues “her

upbringing, accomplishments…tastes and family connections placed her within the world of a refined stratum in Eng-

lish society,” Cronin contends her “full…engagement with more recent [progressive] literary trends” orients her own

work as “novels that function also as moral fables…establishing social manners that…cultivate an ideal of English-

ness that will supplant the outmoded class-bound rigidities” of the eighteenth-century (Grey 331, 290-293). Their op-

positional readings of her cultural placement suggest that Austen’s fiction clashes with her biography, producing a re-

visionistic dualism that exists via her stylistic creativity. Therefore, one can see how Austen’s reexamination of the

values composite in her upbringing helps to more rigorously contextualize her authorial reputation as a serial editor

and recycler of plot2.

Moreover, despite her admiration and, more pertinently, her allusion to eighteenth-century literary icons, Austen re-

visits the legacy of these figures without aligning herself to their ideological programs – her text pays them homage

while maintaining the tonal distance of a cultural arbiter to two contending ideologies. Jane Nardin’s critical work

helps to better understand how Love and Friendship’s satiric reevaluation of these authors’ conservative and progres-

sive traditions makes space for the flexibility to mock and to honor her literary lineage by offering an analysis of how

irony functions in her mature works. Nardin has argued that readers should resist the temptation that Charlotte Bronte

could not and read Austen’s full-length novels not as “uneasy fence-straddling,” but to see her “ironic sense of the ir-

reversible incongruity between…the way things are and the way they ought to be,” as “always employed in the service

of morality as she saw it” (Nardin 2). If this same critical perspective is turned toward Love and Friendship, the child-

like mirth most have attributed to the novel quickly recedes in place of the more mature overtones that falsifying a

propagandized civic and lettered education resound in. What is more astonishing, given the text was written by the

equivalent of a young adolescent, is that Austen achieves this complex stylistic feat by varying the evaluative tonal

cues of the novel’s first-person narrators, deliberately leaving it up to her readers to independently cultivate their own-

interpretive pathways to discern her veiled ideological framework. Thus, Jane Austen’s ironically depreciated “little

bit (two inches wide) of ivory” can accommodate her stylistic cover-up because she will only allow her own history

and character to be externalized by replicating her internal practice of cultivating an independent self in her interpre-

tively rich narrative structure. For critic Mary Poovey, reading Austen in this context “enables us to replicating what

the challenge to traditional values looked like from the inside [or] how an artistic style could constitute part of a de-

fense against this challenge” (Poovey 172). She continues, writing, “Austen’s aesthetic choices – her style and her

subject matter – can be seen as solutions to some of the problems” (Poovey 172) her culture sought to solve, thus dif-

ferentiating her use of narrative from earlier Augustan writers.

We can see how this narrative structure beckons a revisionistic reading of Austen’s satirized tale of moral education in

the first exchange of letters between Isabel, the story’s once-heard-from initiator, and Laura, the misfortunate heroine

that Austen’s bildungsroman novel focuses on. The story opens with Isabel writing to her old friend on her fifty-fifth

birthday, entreating her to “give [her] daughter a regular detail of your misfortunes in life,” as they occurred about the

same age her daughter, Marianne, must now be, hoping it will serve as a “useful lesson” (Austen 77). Her request in

place of an offering on her friend’s birthday is the first instance of Austen’s ironic sense the novel relates, and accrues

significance if one reads Isabel and Marianne as stand-ins for the conservative and progressive models that dichoto-

mized the national debate in the 1790’s and beyond. Isabel’s wish to use Laura’s narrative as a warning to her child

signals that she represents the old, cautious, and conservative order, willing to frighten the new into continued adher-

ence to its customs by revealing the dis-order of their alternative3.

For Isabel, narrative is endowed with preventative, if byzantine, prowess, and like the cultural conformists she repre-

sents, she aims to use those forces to instill the propriety of conservative Englishness in her daughter. Austen scholar

Claudia Johnson’s comment that “Austen shows…conservative mythology…expose[ing] not only the hollowness but

also the unwholesomeness of its moral pretensions” (Johnson 96) reinforces my position that Austen achieves similar

derision of conservative values in this text by introducing and then quickly dismantling that framework by revealing

the inherent contradictions that compromise it. In this way, Laura swiftly exposes the pretense behind her friend’s en-

visioned lesson in the only direct quotation Isabel is afforded in her autobiography, where she beckons, “Beware, my

Laura, beware.” Her words read as dubious mysticisms, as readers are left to judge Isabel’s parental concerns against

the conservative, perhaps, reactionary, anxiety of England’s older generations. Furthermore, Isabel’s request signals

that Austen was aware of the gender-laden bifurcations that informed these ideas because the aging Isabel can be read

as the sex-switched “obstinate father,” the likes of which can no longer endanger Laura at her advanced age (Austen

77). Here, Johnson’s work, again, proves useful. Her insight, “anti-Jacobin [and] conservative novelists” idealized au-

thority in the “standard figures embodying them: fathers, husbands, clergyman,” (Johnson 8) orients Isabel’s


antiquated ideology as, prominently, a male one. Conservative minded male guardianship of women is thus subverted

by Austen’s reversal of the character’s sex that personifies it.

However, as Elinor and General Tilney of Northanger Abbey may remind readers, this logic concedes that Isabel’s

presumably eligible daughter is still vulnerable to her parent and the cultural interpretations that parents’ ideology

represents. In Laura’s response to Isabel’s appeal, Austen further complicates the power dynamics of their relationship

by accepting her friend’s request, not as a favor to her, but in the hopes that it “will gratify the curiosity of your

daughter” (Austen 77). By switching the agentive force of the request from Isabel to the younger Marianne, Laura’s

playful recognition, or perhaps invention, of Marianne’s wishes signals that the authority Isabel hopes will be preven-

tative has already failed – as a mother, she cannot give her daughter a lesson unless that daughter has asked for one.

Nevertheless, this passage does not indicate Austen’s endorsement of Laura or her implied progressiveness, as she

goes on to admit that she can only hope to soften the “afflictions” that must inevitably “befall her in her own

[life]” (Austen 77).

Further, the word choice of “curiosity” to describe the motivation for Laura’s re-appropriation of power to Marianne

is meaningful for two reasons. Not only does it suggest an appropriate pedagogic measure of the young girl’s charac-

ter, but it also works to distance Laura from the binary it creates between mother and daughter, conservative and pro-

gressive. Laura’s unwillingness to align with any single ideology links her to Austen’s mature narrators, as she be-

comes an outside observer in both the fictional and national drama, and is thus endowed with the third-party powers of

observation and judgment. She is free to relate both the virtuous and ignoble aspects of each without fear of inclusion

in either4.

In this way, we can see how Laura’s peripheral status along the borders of Isabel and Marianne’s ‘domestic dispute’

mirrors Austen’s own distinctiveness amidst the politically and culturally bifurcated landscape of 1790’s England. It

also highlights how in Love and Friendship, Austen avoids giving her readers explicit direction in how they should

come to judge its characters because, consequently, any necessarily independent interpretation of their ideology must

be grounded in their own personal morality, not the author’s. Thus, Austen’s generative, not reductive, irony stands

out as a high accomplishment of the writer, and in this case, one achieved by a fifteen-year-old.

The introductory exchange between Isabel and Laura contains another allusion to the conflict between liberal reforma-

tions and conservative propriety, specifically in warning of the ensnaring dangers that emerging Romanticism pre-

sented to young girls like Marianne. Recalling Isabel’s consolation that her friend is free from the ensnarement of

male heroes and anti-heroes, Isabel’s expanded quote reads that she is safe from “the determined perseverance of dis-

agreeable lovers and the cruel persecution of obstinate fathers” (Austen 77, italics mine). The sentence from which

this excerpt is pulled begins with a subordinate clause in the Johnsonian style, again linking Isabel to that conservative

tradition that is here described as prohibitive to the point of death. In the same way as her mother is typified, it follows

that this also positions Marianne, like the famous Dashwood sister of the same name, as tacitly representative of an

ideology much like the Romantics: inquisitive, eager to seek “fortitude” from storytelling that is more true to the na-

ture of lived experience, like Laura’s tale, and susceptible to entrapment by unwanted suitors (77). Sandra Gilbert and

Susan Gubar, long-time proponents of the juvenilia’s worth in extrapolating Austen’s personal beliefs about her liter-

ary culture, have noted that the plot of Love and Friendship is evidence that she ultimately “rejects stories in which

women simply defend their virtue against male sexual advances” (Gilbert and Gubar 119). Their reading is validated,

as Laura relates to Isabel’s daughter her burlesque life, idealized in the uncontrolled and spontaneous Romantic vi-

sions of passion. But this life is exposed as far from idyllic. In Gilbert and Gubar’s words, the “seduced-and-

abandoned plot is embedded in the form of an interpolated tale told to [Marianne] as a monitory image of [Laura’s]

own more problematic story” (Gilbert and Gubar 119). Through this ancillary association with these fictions, then,

Austen leaves readers to consider feminine susceptibility to seduction and ensnarement in progressive and Romantic

models that privileged intuitional passions above institutional marriage, but still eroded female identity to the single

function of gratifying or escaping male lust.

Her revision of early Romantic traditions of sentimentality is most likely the most nuanced and visceral attack in all of

Austen’s fiction on the cultural practices of her day. Almost as soon as the eighteen-year-old Laura bemoans, “how

am I to avoid those evils I shall never be exposed to?” (Austen 79), Austen loosens the delicate discretion that she

would become famous for, and proceeds to mime a story of how curious girls like Marianne (Dashwood) are vulner-

able to the dangerous delusions of a fictitious ideal that offer girls suspicious models of practicality. In this way, Aus-

ten “impl[ies] that sentimental fiction legitimizes the role of seduce-rapist” (Gilbert and Gubar 119). Like the overex-

tension of plausibility on which irony depends, Laura’s wish is extravagantly fulfilled, as her desire to control and de-

velop her life’s trajectory instead becomes a curse of dependency, amounting to a seizure of the identitive hope her

lamentation makes clear she (and her culture) covets. For Gilbert and Gubar, Laura must “reflect on the dangers of the

romantic celebration of personal liberty and self-expression for women who will be severely punished if they insist on

getting out” of that illusion (Gilbert and Gubar 120).

In the course of the next thirteen letters, Laura relates her misfortunes, beginning with her elopement with a stranger

who has had only to knock on her door to make Laura fall in love with him. Edward, Laura’s husband, has two


symbolic traits: a predilection for theft and a principled rejection of his father’s conservative designs for his future.

These mark him as both a Romantic and progressive character, the kind of male threat Isabel wishes to safeguard her

daughter from. Edward’s qualities prove to be debilitating for both himself and his wife, who has developed a restric-

tive perception of her existence in binaric relation to him. Apart from Laura, Edward has also stolen his father’s purse

to marry her, and has plans to plunder his aunt’s fortune after her death. The couple lodges with Edward’s friends,

who have an almost identical history of theft, and Laura will eventually witness all the male figures in her life disap-

pear or die, as if they were themselves stolen from her. She will ultimately be forced to entertain relations who have

stolen her money, and, literally, the food out of their own mother’s mouths. In the mature works, only Persuasion’s

Anne Elliot, who also struggles with profound loss as a result of choice, eclipses Laura’s sequestered sense of self.

When pitted against the norms of early Romanticism, the theme of thievery takes on another sinister meaning. Susan

Morgan explains Romantic literature in terms of the progressive message that this paper has worked to communicate,

terming Romantic art, and poetry especially, as “a kind of frontier literature, aesthetically and socially and politically

aggressive, challenging and transforming the old, daring to invent or explore the new,” significantly, “the English

form of the French Revolution” (Grey 365). Her explanation works together with a scene in Mansfield Park, where

Fanny Price turns to idiosyncratic recitals of Cowper when forced to maintain polite conversation, while submerging

the truer feelings of love the poems were intended to conjure, to frame the semantic affect allusions to Romanticism

produced in Austen’s day. Her presentation of the dangers it posed to the young, feminine, and impressionable can be

found in a conversation of Laura and her partner in misery, Sophia, who has also fallen victim to situating herself with

the fictitious, not against it.

While walking past a “grove of full grown elms” to the west and a “bed of full grown nettles” to the east, with a

“murmuring brook” running behind them, Laura attempts to cheer her friend up by echoing the beauty of their scene,

which is almost identical to the one in Mansfield Park, where Cowper is mentioned by name (Austen 97). In this pas-

toral setting, Laura “desired [Sophia] to admire the noble grandeur of the elms which sheltered [them] from the east-

ern zephyr” (Austen 98). However, her appeal fails as Sophia sinks deeper in despair as the immediate helplessness of

their situation juxtaposes with the illusoriness of the Romantic one that Laura thinks ought to be real since it physical

and literally surrounds them. Her next attempt to win her partner with the passionate allusions of poetry also fails. En-

treaties of a “beautiful…azure sky” that Laura thinks “charmingly…varied those delicate streaks of white” (Austen

98) produces another despondent cry from Sophia, who can only associate an abstract reality with her idealized hus-

band, who is feared dead. In this way, Austen “subverts the conventions of popular fiction to describe the lonely vul-

nerability of girls whose lives, if more mundane, are just as thwarted as those they read about so obsessively” (Gilbert

and Gubar 121). Laura, and Marianne, her ‘reader,’ exemplify this relationship.

Readers can interpret this scene best by understanding it as an example of Austen’s critique of narrative genre by de-

liberately testing its limits. Austen has already ensconced Laura and Isabel in a narrative fiction, but she allows a po-

etic aesthetic to leak into her prose, and in projecting a idyllic scene of poetry as an intended true-to-life environment

for Laura and her friend, the two wounded lovers sink deeper in the hopelessness of living in fiction(s). Ironically, in

similar mood to Isabel’s attempt to employ her friends narrative as ameliorative, Austen’s parody warns readers like

Marianne that a progressive and, nonetheless, cultish adherence to swooning, fainting, and passivity, is no less as

damaging because it is in binary opposition to that retentive, conservative order of their fathers.

In these ways, Love and Friendship provides an index by which critics might measure how the nineteenth-century

came to regard the reformist alterations of those who had cultivated a conservative model of Englishness just a cen-

tury before. It is an underexplored example of Austen’s undeniable mediation of the very authors whom she had not

yet finished reading as a fifteen-year-old trying her hand at her first extended fiction. I hope my recommendations to

this discourse spurn deeper investigations that uncover how succeeding trends of Victorian and Modernist fiction de-

veloped in the wake of Austen’s influential revisionism, as that too remains a task ahead of readers. In the meantime,

let them continue to reflect on her many other not so minor works.

Notes -

1 This is another position that departs from more traditional trends in scholarship surrounding her involvement in the socio-

cultural developments of her day. 2 In addition, then, to offering alternatives to a cultural debate that was as personal as it was public, this longer piece of the juvenilia is a fertile text for tracing back developments in Austen’s formal revisions throughout her writing life. To my

knowledge, the field has yet to produce an examination of how her penchant for revisiting her own fiction parallels her re-

evaluation of cultural models in Love and Friendship. 3 If one wished to scan the mature works for a similarly associated character, the stern and intimidating Sir Thomas Ber-tram of Mansfield Park would come closest. 4 Laura’s distance may also be an example of a young Austen testing her narrative voice on avatars (as in Emma and Per-

suasion), as their shared detachment from both the reactionary and reformist platforms that envelope the fiction becomes like, what Virginia Woolf called, the visage of a child shown the world by fairies, who “knew not only what the world

looked like, but had already chosen her kingdom… She is impersonal; she is inscrutable” (Woolf 136).


Bibliography - Austen, Jane, R. W. Chapman, and B. C. Southam. Minor Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print. Gilbert M., Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Liter

ary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Print.

Grey, David J., ed. Jane Austen Companion. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Print. Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, And The Novel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Print.

Nardin, Jane. Those Elegant Decorums: The concept of propriety in Jane Austen’s novels. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 1973. Print.

Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Print.

Todd, Janet M., ed. Jane Austen in Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. “Jane Austen.” The Common Reader. New York: Harcourt, Brace and, 1925. Print.

John Mazzoni is a Master’s candidate of English and Education at SUNY New Paltz, and has a Bachelor’s degree in History

from Gettysburg College. He has pursued Austen research and scholarship in Bath, UK, as well as currently working as an edito-

rial associate for NCTE’s English Journal. He may be contacted at [email protected].

History of Kathakali: of art, agency, and aesthetics

“Are you mad about play, Indulekha?” inquired the Nambuthiri.

“Mad about what?” asked Indulekha.

“About the play – the Kathakali.”

– Indulekha (1889), one of Malayalam’s first novels.

“Kathakali is the greatest treasure of the Keralites”

– Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon (1878-1958)

“I did not say that art is necessarily political but politics is inherent in the forms themselves”

– Jacques Rancière (2009)

Kathakali, the classical dance-drama, has been studied by historians, performance theorists, theatre artists, anthropolo-

gists and various other scholars in the past. Particular to the Kerala region, this art form has been taken up by the State

of Kerala as its representative cultural symbol through various cultural institutes and the tourism department. A con-

troversy surrounding Kathakali and the improper depiction of the art form by a multinational soft drink company in an

advertisement brought about strong non-uniform responses. Of major interest is the statement issued by P. N. Suresh,

the Vice Chancellor of Kerala Kalamandalam Deemed University, one of India’s leading performing arts universities

and acclaimed cultural centres for Kathakali, following the controversy:

This is an insult to Kathakali, Kerala’s centuries old classical theatre, always performed with a certain sanctity

in a high cultural ambience. This commercial is an insult and humiliation to the cultural tradition zealously

nurtured by Keralites over centuries [emphasis added]1.

Apart from this supposed cultural (mis)appropriation, this paper picks upon two elements that the statement speaks of

– high performance and representativeness of Malayalis in general. The two are interconnected in ways peculiar to the

historical conditions in which Kathakali underwent its transformation in the early twentieth century. But for reasons of

clarity, viewing the art form from these two vantage points will be beneficial.

This paper will move through a linear history of Kathakali, with the first section dealing with its inception, with influ-

ences, patronage and participation. The next section will explore the emergence of Kathakali as an art form and part of

national and sub-national identity as part of specific responses to caste and religion based social formations. The final

section will look at the implementation of aesthetics as a supposedly neutral regime of identification of art mainly

through academic and scholarly constructions, and modern practices of tourism in the present day context. This is a

sociological study with an interdisciplinary approach, not privileging continuities over time, but one that will try to

locate shifts where certain concepts have been gradually taken as granted and without history.

I

Various historical narratives of Kathakali (and similarly considered cultural heritages) have depicted the grandness of

the project, and a larger than time picture comes to devolve upon their genesis. Studies (Jones, 1987; Zarrilli, 2000;


Glynn 2001) have shown Kathakali’s link to bhakti, a religious movement originating from contact with foreigners

between the sixth and ninth century. Malayalam has been the language generally preferred since the tenth century,

though Sanskrit plays a dominant role in informing this tradition. It is later on, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-

ries, that a collective of plays as performances is recorded at Kottarkkara and Kottayam. These earlier plays drew

from the Kuttiyattam Sanskrit drama basing their content in the epics of Ramyana and Mahabharata. Hence, we are

informed of a Sanskritised or Aryanised influence on Kathakali2.

Further, patronage that began exclusively at palaces slowly began to move on to upper-caste households or tharavadus

of Nairs and Namboodhri Brahmins. Kaliyogam, the area within these households designated for the training of

Kathakali, was mainly used by young men for kalaripayyatu, the martial and military practice particular to this region.

Kathakali helped develop dexterity and agility (Jones 20), directly assessing and enabling the body for trained military

activities. What was the perceived threat that the Nairs and Namboodhris faced is an important aspect to be looked

upon. Levies imposed upon lower castes and other communities were mainly used to conduct Kathakali performances

(Karat 4). In order to maintain such a feudal setup of subjugation, militarism was more than essential. It is in this

background that earlier bodily practices of upper-caste elites ought to be analysed.

Participants in Kathakali were more of active actors more than passive viewers. Earlier Malayalam novels like In-

dulekha (1889) depict the frenzy in which Kathakali was performed and participated in (as actors or viewers). The fa-

mous “Kali branthundo”, “Are you mad about play,” the question posed by the Namboodhri to the young Nair woman

Indulekha, speaks of the close association of these castes with the performance. It is within the fabric of caste that per-

ceptions related to Kathakali were overtly present and articulated. Aryan superiority converted into caste superiority,

and maintained by rigid armed forces directly repressed lower castes and other communities both culturally and physi-

cally. With the coming of colonial domination, aspects of daily life came under pressure. Hence, till the twentieth cen-

tury we see Kathakali as having very little consumption as art per se. It is only with the advent of colonialism and the

nationalist discourse that we find talks of Kathakali as art.

II

The colonial invasion of India also saw a rise in the accumulation of categorical knowledge on the subcontinent. A

wide variety of topics were covered and it was within this large rubric of created knowledge that performances,

dances, music and many related activities were categorised as ‘classical’ or ‘folk’ art (Reed 508). Oriental in nature,

they classified to such an extent that even post-independence these categories remain. What began as an exotic tradi-

tion in the eyes of the coloniser was to be used as identity later on by the colonised. However, moving on to

Kathakali’s unique history, we find Mahakavi Vallathol’s instrumental role as essential in reinstating the same. Along

with Mukunda Raja, he conducted fund raising performances in the years 1923, 1924 and 1925 at Allepey, Trichur

and Calicut respectively. It was in 1930 that he successfully setup the Kerala Kalamandalam, an institute that would

go on to be the premiere institute for Kathakali and other arts considered ‘classical’. Just like other nationalist leaders

who designated classical Indian dance as a symbol of national identity in the 1930s (Hanna 35), Vallathol did the

same with Kathakali for the region (Iyer, 1955; Jones, 1987; Zarrilli, 2000; Glynn, 2001; et al.) In short, we have a

historical narrative that presupposes history as the construct of human agents in line with an essential story of univer-

sal empowerment. Hence, within Kerala’s own contribution to the national struggle, Vallathol emerges as having

played the unique agent’s role in rebuilding India’s regional cultural heritage by establishing Kathakali as a cultural

symbol, unifying people and promoting cultural resistance against colonial domination and finally empowering

through independence. It is this very kind of agency, history and empowerment that Talal Asad (2000) warns against

in a different context.

One of the questions that Asad posits as missing from such readings in history is that of “what story is the agent a part

of” (Asad 51). Vallathol is taken as the initial point for Kathakali’s grand return. Such histories then see agency as un-

doubtedly leading towards a positive goal, without considering the ways in which such autonomy and consciousness is

developed. This part of the paper will then try to explore how Vallathol, as a human agent, is ‘historically realised’

and ‘socially endowed’ with consciousness as well as autonomy. The end of the nineteenth century and early twenti-

eth century saw a series of struggles known as the Malabar rebellion, revolts against the upper caste/upper class land-

lords and the colonial state by the Muslim Mappilas of Malabar3. Colonial writings created the Mappila Muslim as

prone to violence, ‘barbaric’ in nature; and even the categories by which the Mappilas might be identified like those of

peasant, working class and lower caste were all overtly emphasised by religion (Ansari, 2005; Punathil, 2013). The

nationalist discourse also reaffirmed these very colonial notions. Gandhi4 wrote about ‘Mappila madness’ while the

nationalist poet Kumaran Asan5 in his poem ‘Durvastha’ depicts Kerala as reddened with Hindu blood ‘shed by the

cruel Muhammadans’ (Punathil 8). Such notions were not individualistic and was very much part of the major dis-

course amongst nationalist leaders, and not exclusive to a regional level. Annie Besant, also the President of the Indian

National Congress around these years, reprimanded the Malabar Rebellion. She goes on to say that the “Moplahs

[Mappilas] murdered and plundered abundantly” (Besant 252). It is such colonial and nationalist discourses that in-

formed Vallathol’s era.

Nationalist leaders from Kerala, like other leaders from different parts of the subcontinent, were elites comprising of


upper castes or upper classes. In Kerala, around this period, they were mainly part of the janmis, the land owning stra-

tum. From the late 1930s onwards there was a direct attack on “excessive exactions of rent” and “a rejection of forms

like Kathakali” (Menon 60). Hence, the rigorous efforts picked by Vallathol to establish the institute of Kerala Kala-

mandalam around this same time needs to be seen in light of a growing opposition to not just janmi sampradayam

(culture of landlordism or feudalism) but as part of Kerala’s history where upper castes and the nationalist uprising

was seen with suspicion by many in the society. Translating Mappila Muslims into Indian Muslims, at this stage6, was

what nationalists in Kerala were set upon. Unity lied between lower castes and Mappila Muslims, rooted in regional

politics against upper caste hegemony, as seen during the ‘abstentionist’ movement which started in 1932, jointly ini-

tiated by lower caste groups along with Muslims “against the domination of upper caste Hindus in administrative posi-

tions” (Punathil 10). Breaking this unity then seems to be part of the strategy applied by nationalists in Kerala, hence

conceptualising a unified Hindu religion in popular imagination7. Vallathol’s fund-raising events and the institution of

Kerala Kalamandalam then rise from such historical settings. That large funds were raised is part of the crisis that na-

tionalist Nairs and Namboodhiris faced, but more importantly it was also an act of establishing solidarity amongst

these upper caste elites. Establishing a certain Hindu-Muslim divide was also essential for breaking the unity; and

such crises were dealt with a well-rehearsed method of reconstructing the nation’s glorious past (Chakravarti, 1998).

Thus, Vallathol, representing Nairs (Damodaran and Visvanathan 7), reinstated Kathakali, giving it the status of the

region’s cultural symbol, engaging in direct opposition with the Mappila Muslims; and, translated Valmiki’s version

of the Ramayana (even while Ezhuttacchan’s Ramayana was available)8 to bring about a unified Hindu religion.

Hence, upper caste sentiments articulated through nationalist discourses is very much the ‘story’ that is seldom miss-

ing in Kathakali’s history9. But the story doesn’t remain in the hands of nationalists as communists sought to create an

Aikya Keralam (unified Kerala). EMS Namboodiripad10, Kerala’s first Chief Minister and India’s earliest left leaders,

promoted ‘arts’ like Kathakali establishing the culture of new Kerala “defined in terms of the culture of the caste

Hindu” (Menon, 2006: 61-62). The cultural formation of the state of Kerala hence saw Kathakali emerging as an artis-

tic form, devaluing its ritualistic content within the public sphere for the purposes of sub-national identity. Vallathol

(in recorded history) and Kathakali’s autonomy are, then, obtained through this connection with art, art as being sus-

ceptible to aesthetics alone.

III

If such were the conditions in which Kathakali emerged as an art form, it is more than obvious to ask whether such

oppositions still exist. Apart from a few sporadic incidents, comments, and articles11, Kathakali is criticised only

within the domain of performance, theatre and arts. There has been a neutralisation of senses with the emergence of an

‘aesthetic regime of art’ (Rancière, 2009). This breaks down various earlier hierarchies of the other regimes, asserting:

the absolute singularity of art and, at the same time, destroy[ing] any pragmatic criterion for isolating this sin-

gularity. It simultaneously establishes the autonomy of art and the identity of its forms with the forms that life

uses to shape itself (Rancière 23).

In the specific case of Kathakali, there arises an aesthetic regime that destroys earlier experiences of the sensory based

on caste, domination and opposition, asserting Kathakali as an autonomous art moulding according to its environment.

Hence, Phillip Zarrilli (2000) would describe his approach as, “intended to allow the reader insight into kathakali as a

complex and ever-changing system of social and aesthetic practices which both shapes and is shaped by its context

(s)” (Zarrilli 12).

Thus, Kathakali is seen very much a part and product of society even while neglecting the historically specific mecha-

nisms that dictate such a regime. Such aesthetic regimes are very well the construct of academic writings and schol-

arly works on arts and aesthetics. While emphases are given to minute details, costumes, mudras, and the art as such,

history is just a mere linear narrative since Vallathol’s time captured in short paragraphs within so-called interdiscipli-

nary studies. The assumption that art has to be criticised only within the ambit of arts has led even ethnographers

(Zarrilli, 2000; Glynn, 2001) to produce tedious narratives of subjective positions in relation to worldly or non-

worldly, transcendent or material, complex or simple art.

While many discourses, and not just academic ones, act to create an aesthetic regime of art, the other discourse that

this paper will try to point to is that of tourism. Touristic practices of viewing or gazing such art-forms allow two

propositions. First, connoisseurs and well-wishers of the art form can lament about the commodification and lowly

representation of high art. Second, the tourism department can extend the cultural symbol into a larger than time-space

picture assigning it authenticity by targeting foreigners; seemingly disinterested in the host populace. It is this disinter-

estedness (feigned or real) that allows for people in Kerala to then accept this new aesthetic regime of art in a large

manner. The state of Kerala run tourism department is not only vibrant but is hugely popular, strategic and influen-

tial12. Hence, such modern practices make up part of our imagination, define our senses and initiate a process of col-

lective amnesia.

In conclusion, kathakali has been an upper-caste experience right from its inception. More than a sub-national art form


that emerges out of its supposed grandness; we have seen that the genealogy of the same gives us a different narrative.

Caste and religious social formations are closely interconnected to the grand narrative of Kathakali, though given little

or no space. Modern day aesthetic practices and tourism take on from grand narratives available; remodel it and pack-

age it in such a way that history is not twice but thrice removed. This paper is not an attempt to re-write history or give

an alternative. It specifically places few taken for granted concepts within the realm of power and explores what his-

torically specific mechanisms produce discourses which function as true in particular times and places. This is the

only connecting point for the above three sections (placed in linear time for reasons of clarity alone). The outburst

(both pro and against) to the advertisement needs to be read as limiting any scholarly work as it tends to see art in iso-

lation. Kathakali, as a privileged art form in the contemporary time needs to be rethought outside the category of art.

Sensory details, bodily inscriptions, social disciplining within a practical and historical context is more than necessary

for a detailed understanding of Kathakali.

Notes -

1 For the complete statement issued, please follow the link: http://www.janamtv.com/news/Dismal_depiction_of_Kathakali

_in_7Up_ad_Kalamandal_700984.php. 2 There is very little known of an inter-caste encounter except for a few remarks on Kathakali’s costume as having derived from a low caste ritual, namely theyyam. It is pertinent to note that the red dressed costume in Kathakali, similar to that of

theyyam, is usually portrayed as the evil character. This distinction between the green (heroic) character and the red (evil)

character can be seen as symbolising an inter-caste relationship based on oppression, with the former emerging victorious

repetitively in almost all plays, as if there is a deliberate attempt to rewrite not just art but also history. 3 Mappilas transformed from being a caste-like group (kulam) to a community (ummah) only in the later periods with the

emergence of identity consciousness amongst themselves. For a more thorough study on Mappila Muslims and this trans-

formation, please refer Punathil (2013). 4 Vallathol considered Gandhi as his teacher and has even written a poem, “Ende Gurunathan”, in Gandhi’s praise. 5 Kumaran Asan, along with Vallathol and Ulloor Iyer were considered as the triumvirate poets of modern Malayalam. All

of them were closely connected to the nationalist movement. 6 It was only later on during the Khilafat movement that Mappilas began taking part in the nationalist movement. 7 The poet Kumaran Asan was a disciple of Sree Narayana Guru and believed in his principle of One Caste, One Religion.

“Durvastha”, the poem calls out for unity amongst castes within the framework of Hinduism against an Other, the Muslim. 8 Both Tucattu Ramnujan Ezhuttacchan and Valmiki’s versions of the epics were available, but Ezhuttacchan’s version of the Ramayana, due to its language in Malayalam, was usually favoured hugely with daily readings of the same by Nair

families during particular months. Valmiki’s version was translated into Malayalam for a pan-Hindu reading of a particular

version of the epic. 9 Aloysius (1998) has understood, in a general context, nationalism as an upper-caste mobilisation to counter lower caste

issues. 10 EMS Namboodiripad asked his cadre not to be embarrassed by Kathakali and temple festivals (Menon 61). For a better understanding on EMS Namboodiripad’s role, please refer to the chapter ‘Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way’ (Menon 32-

72). 11 For an analysis based on gender norms, please refer Daugherty and Pitkow (1991). For a study of Kathakali at an institu-

tional level, read Prakashan (2013). 12 For instance ‘God’s own country’, Kerala Tourism’s tagline is taken up unquestioningly by subjects within the region

that boasts of a huge Left tradition of atheism.

Bibliography - Ansari, M.T. “Refiguring the Fanatic; Malabar 1836–1922.” Muslims, Dalits and the Fabrications of History: Subaltern

Studies XII. Ed. Shail Mayaram, M.S.S. Pandian, and Ajay Skaria. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005. 36–77.

Print.

Asad, Talal. “Agency and pain: An exploration.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1.1 (2000): 29-60. London: Routledge. Print.

Aloysius, G. Nationalism without a Nation in India. Oxford University Press: 1998. Print.

Besant, Annie. The Future Of Indian Politics: A Contribution To The Understanding Of Present-Day Problems. Kessinger

Publishing, 1922. Print. Chakravarti, Uma. “Saffroning the Past: Of Myths, Histories and Right-Wing Agendas.” Economic and Political Weekly

33. 5 (Jan 31 1998 – Feb 6 1998): 225-232. Print.

Damodaran, A.K., and Susan Visvanathan. “Cultural Pluralism.” India International Centre Quarterly 22.2/3 (1995). India International Centre. Print.

Daugherty, Diane, and Marlene Pitkow. “Who Wears the Skirts in Kathakali?” TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies

35.2 (1991): 138–56. Print. Glynn, J. Kathakali – A Study of the Aesthetic Processes of Popular Spectators and Elitist Appreciators Engaging with

Performances in Kerala. PhD thesis submitted at University of Sydney. 2001.

Hanna, J.L. “Aesthetics – Whose Notions of Appropriateness & Competency, What Are They and How Do We Know?”

World of Music, Special Issue: Cross-Cultural Aesthetics 45.3 (2003): 29-54. Print. Iyer, K.B. Kathakali, The Sacred Dance-Drama of Malabar. London: Luzac, 1955. Print.

Jones, B.T. “Kathakali Dance-Drama: An Historical Perspective.” Performing Arts in India: Essays on Music, Dance, and

Drama Asian Music 18.2 (Spring - Summer 1987). Texas: University of Texas Press. Print. Karat, P. “Organized Struggles of Malabar Peasantry, 1934-1940” Social Scientist 5.8 (1977): 3-17. Print.


Prakashan, P. P. “Kerala Kalamandalam – Kalpita Savarna Kalashala”. Malayalanatu.com. 2013. Web.

Punathil, Salah. “Kerala Muslims And Shifting Notions of Religion In The Public Sphere.” South Asia Research 33.1

(2013): 1-20. Sage Publications. Print.

Menon, O. Chandu. Indulekha. 1889. Print. Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum, 2006. Print.

—. Interviewed by Nicolas Viellescazes and translation by Anna Preger in http://nakedpunch.com/articles/48. 2009. Web.

Reed, S. “The Politics and Poetics of Dance.” Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998): 503-532. Print. Zarrilli, Phillip. Kathakali Dance-drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play. Routledge Publications, 2000. Print.

Safwan Amir is an ICSSR doctoral fellow with the Madras Institute of Development Studies. He may be contacted at saf-

[email protected].

Historicizing a Past, Homogenizing a Tradition: A Note on the Discourse Generated

around Bengali Cinema in the 1980s-1990s

…films were more innocent then, more romantic, more magical. The stars of the 1930s were smarter and more

elegant than those of today. Memories of adolescence, as Sally Alexander points out, bear the weight of possi-

bility, those dreams of a better life, of a more beautiful self, that pervade the adolescent’s intense wondering

what might become. For the first movie made generation, the dreams were saturated with cinema; today their

cinema is gone. But the dreams are not forgotten1.

In An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory, Annette Kuhn beautifully discusses how for the 1930s genera-

tion in Britain, certain patterns of remembrance of cinema going got associated with their memories of growing up, of

adolescence and childhood. The memory of the film texts, and the memory of cinema-going or the possibilities of cin-

ema-going were an important element of the shared ‘dream’ of a generation who lost their cinema but kept the dream

alive with them. Consequently, it is not rare for any generation habituated to a mode of film going practice and certain

patterns of film culture to become disappointed when they encounter a newer film culture.

However, in historicizing a film culture we only recognize something as a ‘break’ when the past/present trope or lam-

entation for something lost goes beyond the generational conflict. We may call it a break when the remembrance of

‘something lost’ acts not only in the registers of a generational difference but also in some other broader parameters –

in larger socio-political measures, in the patterns of the constitution of new elements of social class formation or in

alternative patterns that ‘reclaim’ that loss. In the 1980s-1990s, Bengali cinema experienced just such a sense of

‘loss’, and the attempt at ‘reclaiming that loss’ in film texts, production and film discourse took place at a scale that

can potentially be called a ‘break’ in the Bengali cinematic practice. Interestingly, this perception led to a practice of

writing Bengali film history that established a historical trajectory of cinema and Bengali culture. Further, parallel to

the emergence of the new production circuit and the advancement of cinematic technology2, in the 1980s Bengali cin-

ema experienced new form of cinematic knowledge which manifests concerns around the development of Bengali

films. Accordingly, my concern in this article is to explore the process of this historisization and its politics while re-

lating it to the question of class imagination, policy of cultural representation, media, community and taste discourse.

Further, I will attempt to look at the intersecting planes and interactions between state bodies and cinema as a mode of

communication and will explore the politics of governmentality and good taste and questions of community and popu-

lar culture written over the history writing practice. As theorists have already problematized the concept of ‘objective’

history writing and the presence of the ‘innocent eye’ in interpreting the narrative of “what really happened”, it is ob-

vious that the historicizing discourse that I am pointing towards is not devoid of any agency. The agency is demon-

strated in ‘finding’ the ‘provided’ facts of Bengali cinematic past and ‘selecting’ and ‘ordering’ them in a generalized

narrative. Drawing from Claude Levi-Strauss, Hayden White elaborates that ‘History’ is never simply history, but al-

ways ‘history for’, history written for some interests and with an aim. My paper also attempts to explore these inter-

ests and the aims3.

*

In 1977 West Bengal experienced the emergence of Leftist regime which remained in power for more than three dec-

ades. During their regime, and especially in the 1980s, the CPI(M) government took serious initiatives to ‘promote’

film culture and to educate the film crowd in West Bengal. The State government and their cultural rhetoric and the

media discourses around the cinematic production of West Bengal in the 1980s not only focused upon developing cin-

ema in Bengal but also initiated a battle against ‘bad taste’ that the mainstream film industry allegedly promoted4. On


the other hand these two terms ‘sanskriti’ (‘culture’) and ‘apo-sanskriti’ (bad culture) that appeared in public sphere in

the mid to late 1980s spread almost like wildfire and created anxiety regarding a ‘crisis’ of Bengali films. And a

knowledge discourse about Bengal’s cinematic past was developing through the networks of new media, state institu-

tions and intelligentsia. Newer communication events like film screenings, educational programmes like film appre-

ciation courses held at state-run exhibition places and mediums like television took part in this new paradigm of

knowledge production. This new paradigm of knowledge production led to the ‘formation’ of the historiography of

Bengali films.

Hence, the 1980s-1990s is a period when historical awareness about Bengal’s cinematic past was developing in differ-

ent sections of the Bengali public sphere. To begin with, in the film society scenario a major change came about with

an awareness generated about the earlier Bengali cinematic practice. My personal interview with Shamik Bandyopad-

yay and the interview of Bandyopadhyay published in Vol. 10 of Silhouette revealed how in this period film societies

took an interest in earlier Bengali mainstream film makers and their technical excellence5. Veteran film society activ-

ists like Partha Raha or Surya Bandyopadhyay however see this as ‘selective’ awareness of some filmmakers like

Tapan Sinha or Tarun Majumdar and an ignorance about others6. In popular press discourse, features about the earlier

‘glory’ of Bengali cinema became quite regular with a nostalgia discourse generated around an icon like Uttam Kumar

or film makers like Asit Sen or Ajay Kar. Not only did this discourse circulate in the written form, but also many dis-

cussions and forums were organized remembering that ‘cinematic’ past. Apart from these, an exhibition center like

Nandan made it possible to revisit that earlier ‘glory’ of Bengali cinema in its retrospective sessions. Television’s

growing presence and the telecasting of earlier Bengali films on Doordarshan’s Bengali channel and later on other

Bengali cable television channels contributed to foregrounding this cinema and making people aware of and remem-

ber a popular tradition.

Thus, in this historicizing attempt, a sense of the lost past was generated in different patterns and through different

mediums. With constant comparisons between the present and the past of Bengali cinema, a common narrative of

Bengali cinema history was forming. Its interesting to notice that when the news of the inauguration of Nandan was

published on 2nd September 1985 in three different Bengali newspapers (Anandabazar Patrika, Dainik Basumati and

Jugantar), a particular article titled “Bangla Chalachchitrer Kramabikash” (“The Development of Bengali Cinema”)

featured in each of these three newspapers where a linear historical trajectory was presented tracing the initial years of

Bengali cinema, then the glorious middle period of the 1950s and the 1960s and the decaying contemporary. This is

the linear narrative structure that is mostly followed in all the other historicization attempts and that provided the basis

of the rewriting of Bengali cinematic history.

This may be traced to the emergence in the 1980s of a new group of film makers and producers with films like Shatru

(Anjan Chowdhury, 1984) and Gurudakshina (Anjan Chowdhury, 1987). The narrative frameworks heralded by direc-

tors like Anjan Chowdhury in the earlier 1980s were followed by filmmakers like Swapan Saha and Haranath Chak-

raborty in the late 1980s and 1990s with films like Mangaldeep (Haranath Chakraborty, 1989), Bedenir Prem

(Swapan Saha, 1992), Ajker Santan (Haranath Chakraborty, 1997), Pabitra Papi (Anup Sengupta, 1997) or Baba

Keno Chakor? (Swapan Saha, 1998). While being extremely popular, these films earned widespread criticism from a

section of the Bengali bhadralok intelligentsia for their ‘vulgarity’ and the ‘crudity’ of their narrative model. Popular

newspapers and magazines published letters of a dissatisfied Bengali film audience, and the opinion of industry per-

sons regarding this ‘crisis’ of Bengali cinema. Perhaps the main reason for bhadralok discomfort was that the main-

stream model of Bengali cinema started incorporating ‘masala’ elements like song and dance sequences, stereotypical

villains, modes of hyper melodrama which were seen as closer to Hindi film aesthetics in the public sphere. There

were instances when Hindi films were dubbed in Bengali7 and Bengali films like Tinmurti (Pramod Lahiri, 1984) had

a Bombay star cast. In the 1990s Bangladeshi film production houses also made films like Beder Meye Josna (Motiur

Rahman Panu, 1991) or Swami Keno Asami? (Manowar Khokan, 1997) that became hugely popular in the Bengali

mainstream film market. The popularity of these films caused a strong sense of disapproval and anxiety amongst the

bhadralok intelligentsia.

In this context, some films like Unishe April (Rituparno Ghosh, 1996), Asukh (Rituparno Ghosh, 1999), Paromitar

Ekdin (Aparna Sen, 2000) Ek Je Achhe Kanya (Subrata Sen, 2001), Shanjhbatir Roopkathara (Anjan Das, 2002)

emerged in the mid-90s in direct opposition towards the mainstream and constructed the paradigm of the post liberali-

zation Bengali ‘parallel’ cinema, not only in terms of their use of particular aesthetic devices or their cinematic appeal

but also their imagination of an audience, their marketing structure, their production patterns and the logic of their

publicity. Even as dissatisfaction with the mainstream model continued in the press and in public sphere discussions,

popular press columns appreciated these films for regenerating a ‘lost’ literary pleasure and reclaiming the lost

(bhadralok) audience of Bengali cinema.

Significantly, these films also contributed in the ‘history writing’ practice of Bengali cinema. In films like Unishe

April, Asukh, and Paromitar Ekdin, a legacy of the Bengali cinematic past is imagined as the ‘exceptions’ of the con-

temporary. Press features and other historicization attempts imagined films carrying that legacy. On the one hand, the

historical trajectory works to imagine a continuing thread between the cinematic exceptions in the contemporary and

the ‘glorious’ past of Bengali film history, and on the other hand, it differentiates them from the ‘vulgar’ and contem-


-porary mainstream.

What is important for us concerned with this history writing practice is how in this process the question of class

imagination became the central concern. The limitation of this history writing practice is that it homogenizes the con-

tradictory tendencies of Bengali cinema in a narrative of bhadralok culture and Bengali-ness. This historical trajectory

does not talk about instances like Bengali directors and technicians working in the South Indian films shot in the stu-

dios of Calcutta during 1931-1935, or the influence of Kashmiri or Parsi theater figures in films like Jhinder Bandi or

Khudhita Pashan during the 1950s and the 1960s. Similarly, the 1980s instances of Bengali cinema ‘remaking’ Bom-

bay film hits were mentioned as the only exceptions. Even in popular New Theaters films like Vidyapati or Chandi-

das, the art direction, acting style, and background music is in many ways much closer to other regions of India than

bhadralok Bengali culture, but the historical trajectory never talked about this.

This seems so because this Bengali bhadralok class or Bengali culture is seen and treated as an ahistoric, fixed cate-

gory that remains stable across time. Bhadralok, literally meaning ‘gentle folk’ in Bangla, is a term widely used in

Bengal to refer to the educated, though not necessarily affluent, middle and upper sections of society, and is referred

as a cultural entity. In the Bengali film industry, this bhadralok presence gained significance in the 1930s with the re-

markable success of New Theaters that continued in the later decades of the Uttam-Suchitra era. In Bengali Cinema:

An Other Nation, Sharmistha Gooptu sees how the New Theaters’ success led to a Bengali bhadralok cinema sup-

ported by its close connections with Bengali literature, the literati and the discourse of Bengali culture. What she calls

the “perfect marriage of economics and respectability”8 and the discourse of Bengali-ness is, according to her, contin-

ued in different generic practices, cinematic figures and directions in the later period of Bengali cinema, especially in

the 1950s and the 1960s. Hence, even though the being and becoming of the bhadralok class or Bengali culture the

changing idea of the self, socio-political transformations, the emergence of newer belief systems and other major and

minor social phenomena have always acted on this category as in the case of any other social and cultural type, the

historical discourse of the 1980s completely ignores the slipperiness of these terms while using it in history writing9.

This ‘ignorance’ not only speaks of the limitations of these history writing practices but also indicates a policy of class

imagination and an ‘othering’.

The perception of ‘high’ culture against the assumed ‘low’ has always been significant in the Bengali cultural history

and the cultural frameworks in the different periods of Bengali society describing the bhadra were many, but in the

1980s many of them were united in their disdain of popular Bengali cinematic practice. The cinema of this period and

their representation of Bengali culture earned widespread criticism from a segment of the Bengali intelligentsia and

they were seen as something ‘new’ and non-bhadra in the historiography of Bengali filmic practice. Perhaps this con-

scious ‘outing’ of a sphere from the so called old bhadra perspective and a neo-bhadra sphere works as a primary fac-

tor behind the formation of Bengali film history. What appears interesting to me are the way two different groups, film

historians and contemporary filmmakers, frequently use the term ‘middleclass’ and bhadralok in their mapping of the

audience for the Bengali films. In the imagination of popular film makers like Anjan Chowdhury, Swapan Saha or Ha-

ranath Chakraborty this middleclass bhadralok10 is different from what is traditionally thought of as the bhadralok

middleclass of Bengal. What is this new class then, and when did it emerge? Historian Parimal Ghosh’s article,

“Where Have All the ‘Bhadraloks’ Gone?” (2004), and his ongoing research on the history of the twentieth century

bhadralok answers this question partly.

Ghosh in his article, while mapping the transformation of Calcutta neighborhoods, observes the change in the belief

system that marked the term ‘bhadralok’ from the colonial period to more recent times. He observes the changed code

of conduct about being and belonging to bhadralok culture during 1970s and 1980s in Bengal. According to Ghosh, a

significant change took place in the bhadralok profile during this period since with the expansion of Calcutta as a city,

a new section of the rural population created a new world of ‘semi migrants’ who increasingly started visiting the city

as a source of work supported by the development of the suburban railway system connected to Calcutta11. Ghosh ar-

gues that this massive number of people traveling to and from the city everyday is in clear contrast to what happened

previously “when middle class babus instead of commuting daily settled down in the city”12. This narrative of this

new city based emergent class explains the threatened existence of the old bhadralok sphere in Calcutta.

For veteran film journalist Ratnottoma Sengupta who has been working with Times of India for more than twenty five

years, this new emergent (middle) class became the ideal target audience of Bengali cinema from the mid-1980s13.

She points out another significant aspect of this new film culture. According to her this new film culture offered not

just a new kind of folk entertainment and celebration of Jatra14 aesthetics in films which were unconventional com-

pared to earlier Bengali cinema, but also these films constructed the pleasure they offered through a strong denial of

the conventional ‘bhadralok pleasure’ of Bengali cinema. This was a denial of what was considered to be gentle, de-

cent (literally the bhadra part of bhadralok culture) and sensible and targeted towards a ‘better’ cinema going class,

and on the whole a denial of the Bengali literary and cultural tradition and the importance of education for the cinema

going class. This newly gained access to the city and city bred culture by an emergent lower middle class which in

turn generated new cultural needs of this class was seen as a serious threat in the press and by the urban educated pub-

lic sphere. Furthermore, this resulted in a serious engagement with the ‘crisis narrative’ of contemporary Bengali cin-

ema and a need to (re)write Bengali film history. The politics of strategic omission and homogenization of Bengali


film culture function as an ideology in this historical trajectory.

The over-all discourse of this Bengali film history involves the Bengali Press, prestigious magazines, published books,

television etc in the creation of the discourse of ‘good taste’. For instance, Partha Raha in his book Bengali Cinema

writes about Bengali cinema’s ‘now’ and ‘then’ narrative not only in terms of the deterioration of film quality and the

emergence of the control of Tollywood by the non-Bengali film producers chain (with surnames like Kejriwal, Agar-

wal or Khaitan) but also with reference to a style of film making that does not follow the ‘rich tradition’ of Bengali

cinematic practice. Somen Ghosh in his book Bangla Cinemar Palabadal (The Changing Phase of Bengali Cinema)

has tried to analyze this ‘crisis’ ridden period of Bengali cinema when he observes that “when a totally unrealistic,

lower standard film made its silver jubilee at the box office, it expressed our shameless nature in our cultural charac-

terless-ness” (Ghosh). In the writings of others like Partha Raha or Rajat Roy the ‘cultural superiority’ of earlier Ben-

gali films compared to both other regional films of that period and contemporary Bengali films is discussed.

Hence, this is a period in West Bengal’s film culture when a certain line of Bengal’s historical development ‘outed’

itself more publicly than in the other periods and in that process different institutional practices joined together to

form a past/present comparison of Bengali cinema that became a necessary trope in that ‘outing’. Further, certain

ideas and imaginations of class and the politics of class representation became important in this process of ‘outing’. In

this process of ‘outing’ the contradictory tendencies of Bengali film history and its cultural representations are ho-

mogenized in a narrative of uniform bhadralok Bengali-ness. The idea of class in this history writing practice resides

in numerous subsidiary texts15 and their intertextuality. They are ‘formed’ in a system of self-definition and self-

differentiation. Drawing from Partha Chatterjee, I feel that in the ‘forming’ of history, different sectors also take part

in ‘making’ that historical past in the public16. Chatterjee writes that while writing a history of the past, if the ways of

writing “are inextricably entangled in the ideologies of the historian’s present, is not the historian, by ‘doing’ history,

also participating in the ‘making’ of it?”17. Because in this history writing, the ‘present’, the crisis ridden ‘present’ of

contemporary Bengali cinema, was strongly present, perhaps this historical awareness, and historicizing of Bengali

cinema18 in the 1980s, not only indicates the cinematic transformation of Bengali film industry but also narrates a real-

ity of ‘social transformation’ of West Bengal.

Notes -

1 See Annette Kuhn, Ch. 5, “Growing up with Cinema” in An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (London &

New York: I. B. Tauris & Co, Ltd, 2002) p. 134. 2 For instance in the 1980s the emergence of colour became a major factor in the codes of narrative structure and visual registers of the contemporary Bengali films. And the filmmakers consciously thought of a new kind of editing technique

that would complement the new technology. 3 See Hayden White, “Interpretation of History” in his Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) p. 56. 4 Firstly, the state government produced a number of films and secondly they set up institutions like Nandan and the Ru-

payan lab that took part in their promotional mission. 5 Author’s interview with Shamik Bandyopadhyay, September, 2010. Also see interview of Shamik Bandyopadhyay in Sil-houette, Vol. VII, 10th November 2009, p. 142- 156. 6 Author’s interview with Partha Raha, July, 2010 and with Surya Bandyopadhyay, December, 2010. 7 For instance the dubbed version of Hindi films like Mastan (Aseem Samanta, 1989) or Dalal (Partho Ghosh, 1993) had parallel releases in Bengal. 8 Gooptu, “An Appeal Beyond Aesthetics,” p. 2414.

9 Refer to Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997)

and Aseema Sinha, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan (Indiana University Press,

2005) for comprehensive comments on bhadralok history. 10 Author’s interview with Swapan Saha and Haranath Chakraborty. 11 Parimal Ghosh. “Where Have All the ‘Bhadraloks’ Gone?” Economic and Political Weekly, January 27 2004. 12 Ibid, p. 250. Ghosh says about this previous migrating class: “They were the typical colonial merchant office employers,

the clerks; also the school and college teacher and other poorly paid white collar workers, who could not afford to bring their families to the city. They constituted the rank and file of the bhadralok…Today however the new travelers often be-

long to a different social background: the domestic workers, the hawkers and peddlers in the city’s market, the transport

workers… in brief the daily wage earners of different categories. The city now has to cater for a huge number of people

who previously had little access to it.” 13 Author’s interview with Ratnottoma Sengupta, 23rd December 2010. 14 Jatra is a category of Bengali theater that runs commercially in rural West Bengal. Jatra plays are usually performed on

stages that are open all sides in open air. Use of minimal prop or no prop, extensive use of musical instruments and a par-ticular kind of ‘loud’ acting style are some of the characteristics of Jatra plays. 15 Here by subsidiary texts I mean the publicity and media texts that were generated along with film texts, like posters, or

other publicity materials, review columns of these films in newspapers etc. 16 Here I draw from Partha Chatterjee’s introductory essay of his edited book History and The Present (Delhi: Permanent

Black, 2002) p. 12. Chatterjee uses the term ‘by doing’ history how one also takes part in ‘making’ that history. 17 Ibid.

18 In recent times this historical trajectory has experienced some changes. Whatever the reason may be, in last five/six


years, public sphere discussions of Bengali cinema have moved from the ‘crisis’ of the contemporary towards the

‘celebration’ of contemporary Bengali films. In this celebratory account, the news of recognition of Bengali art house films

on national/international film festivals is shared along with the ‘record breaking hits’ of the mainstream releases. And both

the new age filmmakers of Tollygunge industry and the media discourses generated around their work engage with this neo taste discourse. So the strategic ‘outing’ of the neo taste discourse in the 1980s-1990s gets transformed into the broader

policies of inclusion in the contemporary media discourses generated around the Bengali films. These remodeling of bhad-

ralok cultural code and formation of new taste discourse are questions which deserve serious academic interests, but are not within the scope of this paper.

Bibliography -

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ford University Press, 2005. Print.

Bhoumik, Someshwar. “Sattar Dashaker Bangla Chhabi.” Sattar Dashak (The Decade of Seventies). Ed. Anil Acharya. Ko-

-lkata: Anushtup Publication,1981 Print.

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Biswas, Moinak. “Neo-Bhadralok Darpan” Baromas (Puja issue) 2011. Print.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Columbia University Press, 1993. Print. Chatterjee, Partha. The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1997. Print.

Chatterjee, Partha. History and The Present. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002. Print.

Ghosh, Parimal. “Where Have All the ‘Bhadraloks’ Gone?” Economic and Political Weekly January 27 2004. Print. Ghosh, Somen. Bangla Cinemar Paalabadal (The Changing Phases of Bengali Cinema). Calcutta: Shyamali Prakashani,

1990. Print.

Ghosh, Somen. Prasanga: Bharatiya Chalachchitra (Indian Cinema: An In depth Study). Bangabasi Limited, 1994. Print. Gooptu, Sharmistha “An Appeal Beyond Aesthetics.” Economic and Political Weekly June 14, 2003. Print.

Gooptu, Sharmistha. Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation. New Delhi: Roli Books, 2010. Print.

Gooptu, Sharmistha. “Changing Contexts, New Texts.” Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change. Ed. Nalin Mehta. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Kohli, Atul. Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pre-

-ss, 1990. Print.

Kohli, Atul. The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print. Kuhn, Annette. “Growing up with Cinema.” An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory. London & New York: I.

B. Tauris & Co, Ltd, 2002. Print.

Mittra, Smita. “Post Colonial Modernity: Melodrama and Self- Fashioning in Popular Bengali Cinema of the 1950s- 1970s.” M.Phil Dissertation. New Delhi: Unpublished JNU, 2012. Print.

Nag, Anugyan “The Contemporary Bengali Film Industry: From Tollygunge to Tollywood” M.Phil Dissertation. New

Delhi: Unpublished JNU, 2012. Print. Sarkar, Sumit. Writing Social History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.

Sinha, Aseema. The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan. Indiana University Press,

2005. Print.

Sur, Ansu ed. The Bengali Film Directory. Calcutta: Nandan, 1999. Print. White, Hayden “Interpretation of History.” Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore & London: The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Print.

Spandan Bhattacharya has done his MPhil in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru Uni-

versity and MA in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. Currently, he is working as a visiting faculty at the Department of

Media Studies, University of Calcutta and NSHM knowledge campus, Kolkata. He is also working on a publication project on art writing in Bengali periodicals with the Asia Art Archive. As part of his doctoral research he is working on Bengali film in-

dustry from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He may be contacted at [email protected].


The Arminius picture in the 19th and 20th centuries, and his distorted use for

propaganda power purposes

Introduction

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. represented a decisive break in the Roman conquest in Germania. The

Roman Senator Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 B.C. to A.D. 9) was betrayed, attacked, and defeated by a treacherous

German who had been serving the Roman army previously. This Teuton was Arminius the Cheruscan (18/17 B.C.to

A.D. 21). After this, the Roman Legions were destroyed and 20,000 soldiers killed. Their much larger retinue was

dispersed in the forests. After the devastating loss of the 17th, 18th, and 19th legions, they were basically forgotten

because of the memories they represented (Kienast 374; Bordewich 1-5).

Since the defeat, Roman aspirations to conquer the eastern side of the Rhine were abandoned, and this battle marked

an important point in time with regard to the union of the Germanic tribes. Later, it was with the transfer of national

constructs from the modern era to the events of the ancient world that prompted the rulers of the 19 th and 20th centuries

to build their “Germaneness” on this one victory over the superiority of Rome. However, was it really Arminius, that

dazzling figure of the past, an old German national hero, whom the German rulers of these two centuries desired to

base their governing on? Were the people's national unity efforts actually based on the knowledge of this bygone

event?

The adaption in the 19th century

Since the first strong evidence of a so-called Varian disaster successively held sway until 1987, with the excavation in

Kalkriese new results were brought to daylight (in the truest sense of the word) on the above in German lands and now

only the myth of Arminius seems been decisive (Arens 99). However, it is precisely the fact that this transfiguration

can be explained by the fact that just a few years after his victory, he was murdered by his own tribesmen and family.

Tacitus has written about Arminius: “liberator hauddubie Germaniae” (he was undoubtedly the liberator of Germania).

However, this statement only comes up again in 1455, when Tacitus work was rediscovered. In the Middle Ages, the

Cheruscan was completely unknown. He has not appeared in a single significant literary work from then on. In the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, different versions of the ancient release of the Varian battle were created, as

described by Tacitus. It can be said that the more recent the work is, the more embellished and inventive is its content

as well. In 1808, Heinrich von Kleist published his famous drama Die Herrmannsschlacht (The Hermann Battle),

which was not used very often and finally no longer listed in Germany after Napoleon's successes. In 1810, Friedrich

Ludwig Jahn, who later became the subject of life-long police surveillance because of his quest for a German nation

state, published his book Deutsches Volksthum (German National Charakter), in which he stylized Arminius as the

one and only savior of the Germans. In contemporary poetry, German soldiers fighting the French, such as in the

Battle of Leipzig in 1813, were called the “grandsons of Herrmann” because they tried to equate the victory over

Napoleon to that of the ancient German (Unverfehrt 316). In the years 1813 to 1850 there were twelve new Arminius

operas composed overall, and they were themed more and more around the German liberation struggle (Wiegels 289-

290).

After the German victory over France in the Franco-German War of 1870/1871, a renewed national feeling in

Germany came up. Kaiser Wilhelm I financed the construction of a Hermann monument that had a total height of

approximately 53 meters. In August 1875, it was inaugurated. On the seven-meter-long sword, the Teuton stretched

toward France (and not toward Rome, which would have been consistent), and we are able to read what it says still

today: “Deutsche Einigkeitmeine Stärke – meine Stärke Deutschlands Macht” (German unity my strength – my

strength Germany's power). From this point, Arminius was just as important as the 1883 finished Germania statue,

also known as the Niederwald monument. Both of these symbolized the supposed superiority of the German people

against neighboring people (in this case, France). In the same way, Frane, which was defeated in 1871, created its own

national hero and also devoted multiple large statues to him. Vercingetorix, the great Gaul, who was defeated by Caius

Julius Caesar (100 B.C. to 44 B.C.) in about 52 B.C., was brought to Rome and executed six years later. Even the

creation of the myths of Dante in Italian and Alexander in the Greek nationalisms took on similar roles (Kösters 152).

The adaption in the 20th century

The first years of the 20th century initially brought no further displacement of the Arminius myth. However, when the

young Weimar Republic tried to process the defeat of the First World War (1914-1918), comparisons were quickly

drawn with the ancient heroes. Just as Arminius was poisoned by his own family, the stab-in-the-back-legend was

used to explain the events of 1918. Even if the Emperor left the field to the hated Democrats in 1918, the “German

soldiers in the field [remained] undefeated” because they believed they would be able to continue the fight until the

final victory. To accept a peace treaty was unforgivable, and the Versailles treaty system as a whole was viewed as a


result of the work of traitors and those who did nothing at home for their country in the realm anyway. This

widespread view among the ethnic-nationalist forces within the unstable young republic offered a sweeping breeding

ground for the successively stronger National Socialists around Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). Before Hitler took control

of power on 30 January, 1933, the NSDAP held a total of seventeen speeches between the 3rd and 14th of January

during the election campaign for the state elections of the small state Lippe. In addition to locally sourced sayings

quoted everywhere, the main slogan was an application of the allegory, as it was carved in stone in 1875 with the

completion of the Hermann's monument in the Teutoburg Forest: “Machtfrei das Hermannsland” (make free the

Hermann's land). With this demand, the National Socialists managed to gain 39.5% of the total vote as compared to

3.4%, which corresponded to more than tenfold of the original voices potential, and the gained an undisputed victory.

Needless to say, this was not only the slogan itself, but the message it favored that stimulated the already positive

sentiments toward the extreme-right-wing camp. After the so-called seizure of power by the National Socialists,

national unity symbols became more important than ever. But after a short time, Hitler doubted the necessity of

monuments honoring past personalities to support his charisma. More and more, the “Cult of the Führer” forbade the

coexistence of national characters in addition to Adolf Hitler. He alone should be the one cheered. He wanted to

spread real terror in France, and he didn't need the help of a German who had died almost 2,000 years previously. In

general, no major events that the NSDAP held there in the Teutoburg Forest were known. Only uniformed National

Socialists with a swastika flag near Hermann's monument, who were saluting with Hitler from afar, were shown on a

few contemporary postcards. These kinds of images were often subtitled with slogans such as “Woeinst der Führer der

Germanen Deutsches Land vom Feindbefreit, wehen Hitlers Siegesfahnenmachtvoll in die neue Zeit” [Where once the

leader of the Germans released the German land from the enemy, blow Hitler's victory flags, powerfully into the new

age (Heath)]. However, the fact that not a single military unit, either in the Wehrmachtor in the Waffen-SS, was

named “Arminius” or “Hermann” was obvious (Bemmann 253). That was in contrast to the literary treatment, in

which the Arminius-reception still was very common. Was Arminius, thus, only a lapdog to power of Adolf Hitler in

the era of National Socialism?

To understand the function of the Varian Battle for posterity, it is necessary to take a look at the actual historical

events. Arminius – the son of a noble Cheruscan – was taken by Roman soldiers in a town near Xanten, to be educated

there according to Roman traditions. Over the years, Arminius became more and more a part of Roman society, rose

to military success, and even into knighthood, which was the highest award for a non-Roman. In the eyes of Emperor

Augustus (63 B.C. to 14 A.D.) and his relative, the senator Publius Quinctilius Varus, he was a loyal and

conscientious German in the service of Rome. Significantly, this was the fact that put him up as the commander of the

auxiliary troops that was to conquer the right of the Rhine Germania under the leadership of Varus.

The real struggle was thereby prepared by Arminius in every detail. The only advantage of the Romans was the

tactical superiority in the field. While Germanic hordes stormed the enemy counter in a wedge formation, put the

Romans to the armored “turtles”, whose greatest strength, in addition to the protection of their own soldiers, was the

battle abilities of the formation itself. No one was allowed to leave the term. But when the Romans marched through

the narrow valleys and glades of the Teutoburg Forest, they had places to run consecutively, which brought the train

partially at a distance of 15 kilometers. This was the point where the strategy of the Cheruscan, who had previously

managed to bring together the always warring German tribes (also Germans in Roman service) to rid the new foreign

enemy once and for all. In a so-called sting tactics (kind of guerilla tactics), the Germans attacked the completely

surprised Romans from both sides of the forest, damaging them and retreating quickly. With these tactics, they

demoralized the Roman troops, who were not in a position to create a formation, so the entire Roman military

campaign was beaten in a few days. Their leader Varus committed suicide after the Roman custom because of the

shame of defeat (Arens 81-92).

This one Germanic tribe's victory over the Roman invaders was therefore crucial for a centuries-lasting myth. But why

did the National Socialists not devote some energy toward such national heroes as their previous rulers? A significant

reason may be that the battle of the Teutoburg Forest did come into a defensive role in which the losing Cheruscan

confronted the all-powerful Roman who threatened his home. But Hitler needed a figure whose expansive conquer of

foreign lands justified his campaign in Russia. As the powers ratio from 1943/1944 shifted in favor of the Allies, it

was too late for the National Socialists to warm up this ancient defender-allegory again (Münckler 179).

After the end of the National-Socialist regime, the several years of speculation about the Cheruscan came to rest. Only

“fantastic” literature without historical value added more romance than would have been possible for the poets of the

19th century to write about the already illuminated figure. As the 1987 excavations at Kalkriese brought to light more

and more discoveries, no nationalist revival of the former Arminius myth arose. The reason for this might be the

extensive investigation of Dieter Timpe and his source-interpretation (Timpe 49). This might be and has to be an

answer to the ancient historians Gustav A. Lehmann, Ernst Hohl, and Reinhard Wolters (Lehmann 94; Hohl 474;

Wolters 228).

Interpretation


In the year A.D. 9, a Roman tragedy occurred in the Teutoburg Forest. Three of the most-experienced legions became

the victims of a raid of Germanic mutineer. When Augustus received the news of the defeat (in fact Arminius’

message to the Emperor was Varus’ cut off head), he should have bumped his (own) head against the door and cried:

“Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!” (Suetonius 23, 155). This to be a decisive defeat on Germanic territory.

However, it was not a turning point of the Roman conquest of the campaign, as it was thought in later centuries. In the

spring of A.D. 10, Tiberius took over command of the Roman troops on the Rhine, whose quotas had been increased

substantially. From A.D. 12 a number of campaigns in Germania began under Germanicus, nephew of Tiberius. This

– under difficult circumstances – even reached the river Elbe, but his foray in confusing Germania was prevented by

the defensive Germania policy of his uncle in A.D. 17 (Arens 89-90). Four years later, Arminius died in his home,

which again had long suffered under Germanic tribal feuds. The epoch of defection to Rome was over, but the new era

wasn't peaceful. Even in death, Arminius served as a mystification to later generations, such ast he Hessian Minister

of State, General Martin Ernst von Schlieffen (1732-1825), who suspected the grave to be on his own estate (Sippel

154).

With time, as the distance from the actual event increased, the stories of the ancient heroes became more fantastic.

From the heroic dramas of the early 19th century to the many romanticized operas of the same century to the

nationalization of the historical person in World War I and during the period of National Socialism, Arminius the

Cheruscan was always part of a timely reinterpretation. He was used by poets and composers as a part of the national

memory and was presented to the German population by all sorts of politicians as a great national model. Thereby, the

original historical event, as it was handed down only by Roman historians, arose as a conglomeration of stories that

had nothing to do with history.

Bibliography -

Arens, Peter. Die Völkerwanderung der Germanen. Sturm über Europa. N.p.: Wien, 2002. Print.

Bemmann, Klaus. Arminius und die Deutschen. N.p.: Essen, 2002. Print. Bordewich, Fergus M. “The Ambush That Changed History. An amateur archeologist discovers the field where wily Ger

manic warriors halted the spread of the Roman Empire”. Smithonian Magazine 9 (2006). Web. 27 May 2014.

<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ambush-that-changed-history-72636736/>

Heath, David: Remaining Nazi Sites in Westphalia. Web. 29 May 2014. <http://www.tracesofevil.com/search/labelJ%C3% B6llenbeck>

Hohl, Ernst. “Zur Lebensgeschichte des Siegers im Teutoburger Wald”. Historische Zeitschrift 167 (1943): 457-475. Print.

Jahn, Friedrich L. Deutsches Volksthum. 1810. Hildesheim: New York, 1980. Print. Kleist, Heinrich v. Die Herrmannsschlacht. Ein Drama. 1808. Frankfurt a. M.: Basel, 2001. Print.

Kienast, Dietmar. Augustus. N.p.: Darmstadt 1999. Print.

Kösters, Klaus. “Arminius und die Varusschlacht – wie man einen Mythos macht”. Lehmann, Gustav A. “Die Varus-Katastrophe aus der Sicht des Historikers”. 2000 Jahre Römer in Westfalen. Ed. Bendix

Trier. Mainz 1989. 85-98. Print.

Münkler, Herfried. Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen. Berlin, 2009. Print.

Padberg/Schmidt, ed. Die Magie der Geschichte. Bielefeld, 2010. 151-158. Print. Reeve, William C. “Die Hermannsschlacht”. The Literary Encyclopedia. 2004. Print.

Sippel, Klaus. “Das “Grab des Arminius” bei Gut Windhausen – oder: Hier irrten Sie, Herr Staatsminister!” hessen

Archäologie 2009. Wiesbanden, 2010. Print. Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars. Web. 29 May 2014 <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/

12Caesars/Augustus*.html#23>

Tacitus. Annales. Web. 28 May 2014. <http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tacitus/tac.ann2.shtml#88>

Timpe, Dieter. Arminius-Studien. Heidelberg, 1970. Print. Unverfehrt, Gerd. “Arminius als nationale Leitfigur. Anmerkungen zu Entstehung und Wandel eines Reichssymbols”.

Kunstverwaltung, Bau- und Denkmalpolitik im Kaiserreich. Ed. Ekkehard Mai, and Stephan Waetzoldt. Berlin,

1981. 315-340. Print. Wiegels, Rainer et al. Arminius und die Varusschlacht. Geschichte – Mythos – Literatur. Paderborn, 1995. Print.

Wolters, Reinhard. Römische Eroberung und Herrschaftsorganisation in Gallien und Germanien. Zur Entstehung und

Bedeutung der sogenannten Klientel-Randstaaten. Bochum, 1990. Print.

Riccardo Altieri is a student at the history-department of the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany. His current research includes an essay about the history of the paramilitary Freikorps after World War I, which were accompanying to the

unstable Weimar Republic initially protectively, but after that – under the growing power of the National Socialists – they were,

however, more and more supporting the Sturmabteilung (SA) of Adolf Hitler with their own reactionary ideology. In addition, Altieri jointly with Prof. Dr. Frank Jacob (City University of New York) has published a volume on the history of Poland from

1772 to 1945 in July 2014, in which he examined the identity of Polish soldiers in the armies of World War I. For winter 2014

Altieri is working on a book about the pacifism of Kurt Eisner during World War I and his murder by the German-monarchist reaction as a result of the proclamation of the Munich Soviet Republic and the expulsion of the last Bavarian king. He may be

conacted at [email protected].

http://www.tracesofevil.com/search/label/J%C3%B6llenbeck

http://www.tracesofevil.com/search/label/J%C3%B6llenbeck

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html#23

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html#23

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tacitus/tac.ann2.shtml#88

Printed at Om Printing Press. 3905, Roshanpura, Daiwara, Nai Sarak, Delhi – 110006. Tel: 9811148911.


Art and Conflict: War, peace and artistic expression Call for contributions: Issue 4, Volume 7.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

― Voltaire

“War is what happens when language fails.”

― Margaret Atwood

“Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.”

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Voltaire, Atwood and Murakami, though displaced in time and space, shared strikingly similar philosophies about the idea

of war – one of the most powerful and destructive constructs of human interaction. All of them seem to suggest a danger-

ous inference, that war and violence hold a significant role in the shaping of human imagination and inter-personal identity.

Art history, music, literary masterpieces, numerous poems, propaganda writings and theatre, protest performances, radical

writings, and even classical epics like Mahabharata and Iliad, all hold accounts, voices and horridly beautiful descriptions

of what war is and how it affects the human condition. What must be reflected upon is the depth of impressionism, philoso-

phical and realist collisions and the pathos of humanity that go hand in hand with the idea of sudden (vs. planned) conflict.

From the inspiring music of Bhupen Hazarika that lifted an ongoing curfew during the Naga Rebellion, to the Rock and

Roll revolution that gave birth to a revolution in the Eastern Bloc; war-time memoirs and poetry written by the soldiers of-

ten lay bare the insider’s experience, while counter-memorials and other sculptures of protest impact the psyche, pushing

one away from the Homeric idea of glorious war towards its consequences; all stand as examples of the power of art and its

impact on national and international issues of unrest. This year, as we commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the First

World War, it becomes imperative to look back at the volume of art work, both literary and otherwise, to be able to assess

the curious case of the nation, and what it means to be at war, to be alive during that time, or in the face of the threat of one.

With the numerous wars, protests, rebellions and revolutions that have been witnessed by the unforgiving memory of artists

over the years since 1914, this issue of Literophile calls for an introspective analysis of works dealing with the idea of war,

both at the individual and social levels, to be able to understand what makes War both condemnable, as well as unavoid-

able, if history is to be gone by. Original and annotated papers and/or semi academic articles and commentaries of

not more than 3,000 words in MS Word format may be mailed to [email protected] by Sunday, 19th of October

2014. Contributions may be on, but may not be limited to, the following:

Texts concerning war and its causes

Conflict themed essays and poetry

Propaganda writing

Writings/ Artwork/ Music banned or actively suppressed during times of conflict

Human aspect of war

Migration identities

Political and personal experiences

Motifs of War in painting, music and sculpting

Wartime Heroes and Villains

Women and war

Role of religion

Forms of Protest

Please note that the papers must be annotated in accordance with the latest MLA regulations. Contributors must also submit

short bio-notes of not more than 300 words with submissions. Contributors will be intimated by the last week of October

regarding acceptance/rejection.

We would love to hear from you. Please mail queries, comments, objections and anything that you might have either for us or

the contributors to [email protected].

Literophile is a completely unaided, unbiased, not-for-profit, open-access venture. We do not charge any processing and/or sub-

scription fee. To support us, mail to the aforementioned address, or call/text 9999105003.

We are also available online. To read this issue online, or access previous ones, visit http://literophile.org/.

Cover page image: Lipica Buttan; [email protected].

Issue 3 Volume 7 literophile

Documents

Transcript of Issue 3 Volume 7 literophile