A Goldberg lurks within me
Making me sweat and shiver in fear
Lest he snatches my Marigold...my brain child
My spectacles betrays to look
His cigar makes them smoky
Someone told him, he
Screwed up christ, but
I was not among them
Then why me?
My Goldberg cries out
I was unborn when Christ was undone
Then why me?
I gave him my handkerchief
He sobbed, and even did I
And kept thinking
Why we, God?
Tuhin Mazumdar
M.A. Final
Department of English
Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi
Friday, February 19, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
SCHIZOPHRENIC MININOVA: a reverie reviewed
SCHIZOPHRENIC MININOVA: a reverie reviewed
_Do you believe in Spontaneous Human Combustion?
_Yes.
_Can you bear the dazzle of the sizzling light –hours?
_Perhaps yes.
_Do you fear black consumption?
_Not at all.
_Are you willing to run the risk of being nullified?
_Hunnhh....I’m dying for a chance.
..................,...............................
_Then?......am I getting stringed?
......You are......
..................................................
And then came the cloud with a tail that could touch the earth; and it blew over things and me; and I was still as it was ordained...
Fear not; it was only an interview on my views in prospect in a reverie that I lived with one afternoon. And I am to clarify that I am not here to edit a psychological documentary on the Freudian texture. I intent only to incant some of the words of my personal paranormal reverie and corresponding existential strategy (taking you into my confidence).
It’s me, a born effete existence, who eventually got attached to a star. It burnt me all the while and yet I somehow manage to exist but recently it died and I got all the more fascinated with its deathly hallows. A shrinking star, as it was, it caused a mininova; and then got transferred into a blue-hole with all its gravity and mass and energy concentrated upon a convex focus.
And now it is sucking me up. I am not a star, but I am an immagician, a new kind of asteroid in that galaxy; and that dead gravity could not but suck me. In fact it was born to be conceived by me, an alien pollen in this optical galaxy. And now, that I am also going into the same elemental mortality (or centricity!) there would be another bang shortly, though a very trifling one.
I damned god thrice; and thrice there were flashes and, this is true. God granted me. Perhaps, he, too is bored with his satanic existence and evil blessings, and he, quit like me, is desperate to get damned. God had blessed my smuggling my last comfort. The last chance is lost. And now he has cursed me by conferring his crown upon me; and now I am virtually an ape of god, your personal Jesus. Hail me!!!
She caused a mininova, and now I will forge one, and together we will effect a Supernova that you have ever fancied of. And then, we will extract all aesthetics and all love in our blue-hole...
Here we stand---WITH ARMS WIDE OPEN!!
...So be aware
....HA Ha hA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Ha!HaHa Ha!!!
...Fear not, fair! It’s only a reverie reviewed...
...ALL IS WELL!!
--- e!iamnot Chatterjee
Tanmay Chatterjee
Department of English,
Banaras Hindu University,
Email Id. e!iamnot@gmail.com
Monday, February 1, 2010
Science And Literature : Some Critical Parameters
This parameters has a double aim : to draw a general outline of the critical reflection on the relationship between science and literature in the past, and to classify the possible modes of inquiry into this subject at present. Our aim here is to offer the widest of panoramic view.
In the field of literary theory and criticism, it is Plato who broaches in an explicit way the question of the relationship between literature and knowledge. As Bacon says 'knowledge is Power', Plato sees ideas at the higher platform and says ideas rule the world. Plato discusses whether " good poets really have sound knowledge of the things on which they are popularly supposed to speak well"(1962:46). The conclusion is emphatic- poets and all artists, are initators and " the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning of what he imitates, but his limitation is a sort of game and not serious".
The Platonic position is challenged by Aristotle with a double arguments :
a) Poetry does not need to borrow technical knowledge from othe deisciplines, since it is relatively indifference to literal truth. It is the internal coherence, or the versimilitude of plot and characters which matters, and not their factual value.
b) Literature is understood as metaphor or as plot- making. Great literature provides "Catharsis". Prof. R.N. Rai compares Aristotle's Catharsis with Bharatmuni's 'theory of Rasa'.
The opposition between the arts and the sciences is now perceived as historical: the arts belong to the past, and the future belongs to the sciences. The eighteenth century Enlighenment is the crucial point where the opposition between the disciplines of knowledge becomes consciously historical.
The historical nature of the opposition between poetry and science is formulated more radically by Hegel. In the Hegelion system the physical or natural sciences belong to an early phase of this development , when the spirit is still alienated from itself: the sciences deal with finite knowledge, while the highest knowledge is the absolute knowledge of philosophy (Hegel, 1990:157). Hegel is among the first to proclaim the death of literature. Art, and poetry among all the arts, represents a higher degree of self-consciousness; the extreme instance is Romantic Poetry.
" A poet in on our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community."
(Peacock 1987:209,211)
Peacock's "The four ages of Poetry" signs the triumphant march of science while poetry remains hopelessly superseded.
Charles Darwin, the famous biological researcher and the writer of " Origin of Species"; the propounder of "Theory of Evolution" and "Adaptation" recognized that he had become completely insensitive to literature and art- a far cry indeed from his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, who wrote epic poems on biology and botany using an incongrous mixture of scientific subject matter and Augustan Poetic diction; "Say Muse! how role from elemental strife/organic forms, and kindled into life..."
The opposite claim and the concomitant rejection of the scientific world-view, is voiced by many Romantics, like Blake who sees the advance of science and technology as the harbinger of bleak prospect of mankind. Poetic imagination is then seen as the counterpart of logical and scientific thought. The poet Goethe reinforces the links of man and nature.
The romantic defence of poetry against the imperialism of science continues into the victorian age with the figure of Matthew Arnold. Like Carlyle or Dickens of "Hard Times", Arnold reacted against the utalitarian ideology of industrial bourgeoise; and he diagnosed the central event of his age as the death of religion and growth of mechanical and material civilisation.
Arnold's view is more akin to poetry than science:"In thus making a sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry". Science, which belongs to "machinery", can not occupy the empty place of life by the decay of religion.
For Wordsworth himself, "Poetry is the breadth and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the conuntenance of all scince."
Shelly is ready to go even further, claiming that poetry is at the root of all knoledge and of every deed; he is willing to put in the same bag poetry, science, philosophy and indeed inventive or heroic action. I.A. Richards regards literay studies as pre-scientific studies.
The relationship beetween science and literature is still widely discussed in twentieth century criticism, but the focus has shifted to some extent. Instead of an almost exclusive concern with comparing the different merits of science and literature as models of cognition, now this common grounds and interpretations also become subject of inquiry.
In the field of literary theory and criticism, it is Plato who broaches in an explicit way the question of the relationship between literature and knowledge. As Bacon says 'knowledge is Power', Plato sees ideas at the higher platform and says ideas rule the world. Plato discusses whether " good poets really have sound knowledge of the things on which they are popularly supposed to speak well"(1962:46). The conclusion is emphatic- poets and all artists, are initators and " the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning of what he imitates, but his limitation is a sort of game and not serious".
The Platonic position is challenged by Aristotle with a double arguments :
a) Poetry does not need to borrow technical knowledge from othe deisciplines, since it is relatively indifference to literal truth. It is the internal coherence, or the versimilitude of plot and characters which matters, and not their factual value.
b) Literature is understood as metaphor or as plot- making. Great literature provides "Catharsis". Prof. R.N. Rai compares Aristotle's Catharsis with Bharatmuni's 'theory of Rasa'.
The opposition between the arts and the sciences is now perceived as historical: the arts belong to the past, and the future belongs to the sciences. The eighteenth century Enlighenment is the crucial point where the opposition between the disciplines of knowledge becomes consciously historical.
The historical nature of the opposition between poetry and science is formulated more radically by Hegel. In the Hegelion system the physical or natural sciences belong to an early phase of this development , when the spirit is still alienated from itself: the sciences deal with finite knowledge, while the highest knowledge is the absolute knowledge of philosophy (Hegel, 1990:157). Hegel is among the first to proclaim the death of literature. Art, and poetry among all the arts, represents a higher degree of self-consciousness; the extreme instance is Romantic Poetry.
" A poet in on our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community."
(Peacock 1987:209,211)
Peacock's "The four ages of Poetry" signs the triumphant march of science while poetry remains hopelessly superseded.
Charles Darwin, the famous biological researcher and the writer of " Origin of Species"; the propounder of "Theory of Evolution" and "Adaptation" recognized that he had become completely insensitive to literature and art- a far cry indeed from his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, who wrote epic poems on biology and botany using an incongrous mixture of scientific subject matter and Augustan Poetic diction; "Say Muse! how role from elemental strife/organic forms, and kindled into life..."
The opposite claim and the concomitant rejection of the scientific world-view, is voiced by many Romantics, like Blake who sees the advance of science and technology as the harbinger of bleak prospect of mankind. Poetic imagination is then seen as the counterpart of logical and scientific thought. The poet Goethe reinforces the links of man and nature.
The romantic defence of poetry against the imperialism of science continues into the victorian age with the figure of Matthew Arnold. Like Carlyle or Dickens of "Hard Times", Arnold reacted against the utalitarian ideology of industrial bourgeoise; and he diagnosed the central event of his age as the death of religion and growth of mechanical and material civilisation.
Arnold's view is more akin to poetry than science:"In thus making a sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry". Science, which belongs to "machinery", can not occupy the empty place of life by the decay of religion.
For Wordsworth himself, "Poetry is the breadth and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the conuntenance of all scince."
Shelly is ready to go even further, claiming that poetry is at the root of all knoledge and of every deed; he is willing to put in the same bag poetry, science, philosophy and indeed inventive or heroic action. I.A. Richards regards literay studies as pre-scientific studies.
The relationship beetween science and literature is still widely discussed in twentieth century criticism, but the focus has shifted to some extent. Instead of an almost exclusive concern with comparing the different merits of science and literature as models of cognition, now this common grounds and interpretations also become subject of inquiry.
Lethal Soul
She created me with her own image,
Bestowing the physicality but not the courage,
She took that with her,
I look upon those skies,I cann't she her anymore.
She is gone and so are you,
Heaving one in the dark oceanic abyss,
I don't know what will arise from chaos,
My peaceful death or satanic destruction.
Those who left me have left me,
I need none else anymore,
Just like the first rays have the only goal,
To light the world and enlighten the soul,
I am left with the only hope,
To merge with death, giving rest to my painful soul.
Amar Singh
M.A. (Previous)
Department of English
Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi
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