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G L E A N I N G S:
Mainly literary
K. S. Sivakumaran
From this week I shall stop concentrating on films. Information and
comments on cinema will, however, be continued in the Projector Page
from February 4, 2008.
So how shall I entertain you and may be educate you and even report
and analyze works of art- literature, theatre, music and so on?
The usual way - as most columnists in other countries do: Chat, brief
comments, write in a conversational style with accent on personal
experiences. Hope I wouldn’t overdo this and make you bored.
I will try to make you appreciate what I write. Your comments and
suggestions are welcome.
This week, let’s get to know something literary. Perhaps,
particularly the younger readers in High Schools might glean a few facts
that you might not have known before. Here we go:
James Joyce
Some of the classics of the past century are available in English.
This you know. James Joyce, though Irish, wrote a classic novel in
English called Ulysses. It was a pace-setter in the past century
depicting sex as well in an artistic manner.
Some of his other masterpieces were his collection of short stories,
The Dubliners and his unreadable Finnegan’s Wake and the Portrait of an
Artist as a Young Man. If you have not read them already, you should
read them.
You know something. I saw a brilliant film based on James Joyce’s
private life, particularly with his wife, a few years ago in the
Sundance TV Channel while I was in the U.S. some five years ago. I can’t
recollect the title of the film now. Let’s hope the British Council or
the American Embassy gets down this film for us to show even in a video
format.
Eroticism
Talking about sexuality, I wondered what “Eroticism” means in
literature or the cinema or the dance or even theatre. Sure, there is a
mile of difference between pornography and eroticism.
Yes, there is and a mighty one at that. Chris Baldic, who compiled
the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms describes it as follows:
“The distinction between pornography and literary eroticism is open
to continued debate, but it is commonly accepted that eroticism treats
sexuality within some fuller human and imaginative context, whereas
pornographic writing tend to be narrowly functional and often
physiologically impossible.”
D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller, John Updike, Colin Wilson
were a few of the writers of the past century I had read and who had
treated sexuality as erotic presentation. They were not obscenest in my
understanding of their works.
The author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and lovers, Women in
Love, The rainbow and other novels and the fine short story, The Odour
of Chrysanthemums - D. H. Lawrence said: “Pornography is the attempt to
insult sex to do dirt on it.”
British Theatre in 20th Century
R.J. Rees, a teacher of English and a scholar talking of British
theatre in the past century said that “although today we do not seem to
have any single dramatist as important as Shaw or Eliot, the modern
English theatre is probably more alive than it has been since the time
of Dryden.
It is however a theatre of experiment, and nobody seems to have very
clear ideas about the purpose of drama, or even whether it has a
purpose.
“Dramatists like John Osborne, John Arden, Harold Pinter, Henry
Livings, N.F. Simpson, Arnold Wesker and Tom Stoppard cannot be
classified as tragic or comic writers in the old sense...”
Of course this is the view that the scholar had more than 30 years
ago. But what’s new in British theatre now. Perhaps academics like
Neloufor de Mel, Neluka de Silva or dramatists like Sashi Mendis de
Costa or Ranmali Mirchandani and others can enlighten us.
Quotes: Theatre
Talking about theatre, may I give you some appealing impressions of
some outstanding theatre personalities? Peter Cook: You know I go to the
theatre to be entertained. I don’t want to see plays about rape, sodomy
and drug addiction.
Samuel Beckett: It’s worse than being at a theatre.
Shealagh Delaney: The cinema has become more and more like the
theatre, it’s all muttering.
Eugene Ionesco: You are often going to the cinema; you must be very
fond of the theatre. It is not his fault if he doesn’t understand. He is
an intellectual. A man of the theatre should be stupid. Elenora Duse: To
save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and
actresses all die of the plague...they make art impossible.
Fantasy
From the theatre let’s move on to Fantasy. Again we may consult Chris
Baldic. This is what he says: Recent theorists of fantasy have attempted
to distinguish more preciously between the self-contained magical realms
of the marvellous, the psychological explicable delusions of the
uncanny, and the inexplicable meeting of the both in fantastic.”
On Literary Criticism
As we all know the late T. S. Eliot was not only one of the greatest
poets but also a literary critic. He was born in America and lived in
England. This what he said about literary critics:
“And any book, any essay, any note... which produces a fact even of
the lowest order about a work of art is a better piece of work than
nine-tenths of the most pretentious critical journalism, in journals or
books.”
Until next week Cheers!
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