A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

 

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posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:56 am 5 comments

 
On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoke, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

-- John Milton

I have been reading Stanley Fish’s critical essay Interpreting the Variorum, and it was quite a task manoeuvring around the elaborately argumentative piece. I will probably want to discuss my thoughts at length when I am at more leisure, but such a time never comes, so I will at least briefly run over them for now.

Stanley Fish’s important claim in this essay is that literary texts cannot be judged on the basis of their ‘formal’ features. Formalism is a school of thought that believes that the text is an independent entity, and whatever needs to be understood or analysed about it, can be done by purely studying the text’s form such as the literary devices used, narrative strategy, and so on. Fish is completely opposed to this mode of thought, so much so, that he believes that an independent text, as such, does not even exist! The latter appears to be too radical a thought to admit belief; however, Fish takes the reader through a series of arguments to prove his case. For my part, I found the arguments going a bit round and round, in that, some of the premises themselves didn’t hold water with me.

Now, the question is, if the text’s form is not the ideal basis for literary analysis or criticism, what is? Fish’s answer to this question lies in the ‘Reader’. The Reader’s ‘experience’ in the course of reading the text is what makes the text what it is, according to him. No Reader, no text, and as such the text as an independent entity, does not exist. The text as an independent unit that can be analysed without reference to an intended reader, does not exist.

To elaborate and explain his point, Fish selects some of Milton’s poems as examples. The poem On His Blindness (reproduced here) is one such. In the course of reading this poem, the reader traverses a gamut of emotions. In the beginning, the reader feels the pain of the speaker and cannot but empathise with his complaint—why did God deprive him of the very gift or eyesight that he could have used best in God’s service? As we move along the poem, our emotions continuously undergo change. When the speaker says ‘I fondly ask’, we know that the speaker’s faith is a bit shaken merely but still intact; the speaker instinctively believes that God has his own ways of dealing with his servants. The voice of Patience brings another perspective, and soothes or fails to soothe our troubled emotions depending on how convinced we are with its arguments. The last line “They also serve who only stand and waite” leaves us confused. We do not know, for sure, who spoke this line¬—Patience or the speaker. We do not whether this line suggests the speaker’s acceptance of his passive duty (which would be the case if he spoke this line) or whether this line merely continues the argument that Patience has been making, in which case, the speaker is still ambiguous about his role and faith. The words ‘stand and wait’ are also susceptible to two readings—does it mean ‘wait for a suitable opportunity for active service’ or does it mean ‘wait passively’? Literary critics over the centuries have apparently debated over what these lines exactly mean, who spoke them, and such other questions that are difficult to determine by studying the text. They have also tried to introduce extra punctuation and other such intrusions to give the text the meaning they chose to interpret. According to Fish, the problem lies in the fact that we believe that the text is supposed to have some independent or inherent meaning. According to him, there is no such independent meaning; the experience that the individual reader goes through in the act of reading is the meaning!

This is not the end of the argument nor is this the only dimension. He also goes so far as to say that readers do not read a text—they actually write or create the text in the process of reading!

I must admit, I do not agree with many of his arguments. I do not feel that the form of a text is as fluid or as arbitrary in the interpretive process as that. While Fish says that readers create the form of the text depending on how they interpret the text, I choose to believe that the author’s intention of giving the readers a particular experience leads him to choose a particular form.

What I find intriguing and useful about Fish’s argument, though, is that the readers’ experience cannot be ignored while interpreting a text (whether that experience is not motivated by the text at all, as he says, or whether the experience does arise because of the author’s studied use of markers in the text, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, is a different argument). The experience of the reader, as Fish says, is a ‘temporal’ one as against the ‘spatial’ experience suggested by form analysis. It is not a moment of experience after reading the text, but a series of thoughts and feelings and mental adjustments that the reader steers through in the course of reading the text that accounts for the overall experience.

… When you think about it that way, you do realise that you had hitherto never given this ‘experience’ that much notice, hitherto only thought about ‘what the text is’ but not ‘what the text does to me’. That’s a potentially rich line of thought to explore.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:06 am 6 comments

 
Little flowers bloom
in the warmth and shade of love
ever protected, ever watered
away and outside the harsh light of the world
Light that opens knowledge unbounded
expands the mind and opens intellectual horizons
but, leaves the heart empty and cold
encased in an iron box
each in its own
with no means to reach out
to touch or enfold
another kindred heart, trapped like its own
An unnatural development
blooming one way, dying in another
growing one way, stifled in another
such is our modern world
plenty in riches -- money can buy
plenty in food -- for the seeking mind
But, starved of the warmth and shade of love
where little flowers bloom
and where the soul finds nourishment.

(I am the last to downplay the accomplishments of the mind, but I can't help feeling that somewhere we have left our hearts and souls behind, in this eternal race or search or march of civilisation)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:29 pm 6 comments

 
I never thought I would feel this way for a puny, small, tiny little thing. I didn’t even know about its existence till three weeks ago, when my brother got a huge cage and this tiny wonder, the little cockatiel bird. My brother told me it was a specie from Australia and he pronounced it as ‘cocktail’. Being my usual pragmatic self, not given to excitement when I see something or someone new, I looked at it detachedly, and went about my stuff. When everybody stared at it and cooed at it, I didn’t bother to notice, and when nobody was around, I went near it and thought it was quite a cutie, with a little crest on its head and orange cheeks. Most of all I liked it’s innocent babe-in-the-woods look. I wanted to call it ‘cookie’, short for cockatiel, and my brother insisted on calling it birdie; what a non-name, like calling a girl ‘girlie’, I thought. I decided to call it cookie, no matter what he said, and I decided cookie would want to be called cookie, if I called it often enough. I soon gave up my act of not being interested in the new creature, and had animated conversations with my mom about it. We discussed its eating habits, sleeping habits, playing habits, almost like it was a baby (I don’t have experience with babies but I know how moms talk about them). Things started settling into a nice pattern with cookie joining me for early morning tea (she seemed to wake up when we did and whistled so loudly that we had to wake up when she did anyway). I felt nice saying a bye to her in the morning and I don’t know if she whistled back at me when I called out cookie, but I liked to think she did. I started looking up articles on what cookie may enjoy eating or doing. I would call home in the afternoon to check up on what cookie was up to. My brother said she needed to be let out of the cage for some time during the day and then let back in. My brother did this at first and my mom, who being brought up in Mangalore is rather handy with these things, took up the task when he wasn’t around. During the weekend, though I wasn’t scared of cookie when she was out...I still felt like being in some other room when cookie was let out of the cage. When I warned the folks about what if she flies away, they had a very philosophical attitude: what if she does? Then maybe she wants to be free and let her be. None of us have had any experience with pet birds and I couldn’t help feeling that yes, wasn’t cookie really bored sitting in the cage all day? What if she did feel like getting away? Should we cage her because we want to? And another voice would say, but could she survive outside…? here we were taking such good care of her, talking to her, petting her, feeding her, who would take care of cookie outside? I didn’t know what was right. But I couldn’t bear the whole shock of what if she just flew away. And somehow, being oblivious in the other room when she was out, I could ignore these conflicting feelings. I would feel glad to see cookie back inside her cage later. And slowly, after a few days, my mom told me she had started going inside the cage on her own. I felt better knowing this, almost like a certain indication that she liked being with us too.

Every night, it was so funny to see cookie sleep perched on that exact same spot in the cage. It tickled me and pleased me, I don’t know why. I couldn’t understand how a bird could have a sweet spot like that. Or maybe because I like consistency, this consistency in her habits quite appealed to me. One day last week I remember how she danced a little jig from one end of the tiny pole to the other when I walked in home in the evening. I don’t know whether she was happy to see me, but she made me very happy. How I cooed to it! One day when it seemed to be growing too cold, I moved her cage a little further over the window, where the view outside was a little blocked… what a little ruckus she made! And then I moved it back and she was quiet. She used to be too quiet after sunset, perched on its favourite spot, and come sunrise, she would whistle and jump and gorge on the grains and other little tidbits we kept for her, like she had been hungry for weeks rather than the night. My mom would sit next to her with her toast and tea, and cookie would jump so much, that mom just had to give her a little bit of toast.

Today, as usual, I waved goodbye to cookie in the morning. Around afternoon mom called frantically, ‘Ayyo! cookie has flown away, what do we do?’ I knew the inevitable would happen someday. She had let cookie out of her cage as usual but this time instead of climbing down from the fan, she just whizzed out of the opening in the curtains, even out of the grills surrounding our window. Mom is an unreasonable optimist and never really thought she would fly away through those. She seemed to be upset and hurt—maybe she never really meant that if cookie did fly, may be it was alright if she wanted to. Suddenly she seemed to realise that truly, she was gone. No cookie, only an empty cage. I didn’t know what to say, what to do to make cookie come back. She couldn’t see her around, and she had frantically looked outside. Doing a bit of Google search, the only sensible suggestion I found was to keep the cage outside with some bird food. Maybe she would recognise the familiar home and come back. That’s what I told mom but doesn’t look like something positive has come of it. The more I read the Google pages about lost cockatiels, my heart sank. I wanted to read about it because I couldn’t think of anything else, and I wanted to read something to give me comfort, but there was so much that made my heart sink. It doesn’t matter if cookie doesn’t come back but let nothing happen to my little baby, let it be taken care of, let it only find a kind soul, let it get food to eat, that’s all I ask for. I read that owners usually clipped their birds’ wings that they wouldn’t fly (it almost feels like cutting legs!), but cockatiels are strong fliers and if they get away, they rarely find their way home, because they don’t have homing instincts. It looks like we have lost her, never to see her anymore. I am thinking of all the sweet little moments I had with her over the last three weeks; I feel rather heartbroken as if suddenly our little one is gone and we can’t do anything.

Truth is, when my brother brought her home, I didn’t want to get used to her or get attached to her… I wanted to be aloof because I cynically thought, birds die soon… so why get attached to something that wouldn’t be around for long…silly me never realises that things never last…and then I was told how the cockatiel lives for 15-20 years… and that pleased and reassured me… cookie wouldn’t die soon after all…I started imagining how our cookie will grow old with us, how it would grow fond of us, how it will recognise us, how maybe it will even start talking a little, how it would look forward to being petted by us… I started thinking so far ahead… and how I loved her day by day, how my heart grew warm for her every day... and now, there is a dull ache…thinking about the dear little thing, gone, God alone knows where… I am missing its soft whistle and merry jig and how it perched itself in the same spot every night… I feel heavy about the thought of walking home and not finding her there, in her cage… no cutting small veggies to feed it, no enjoying her dance of delights, no discussing what she was up to, no smiling at its little figure at night, no waking up to its sounds… how I miss her already! Maybe she will come back, maybe she won’t… all I ask is, she may be safe and sound and loved wherever she is… I never understood people’s love for pets, and never thought I would… but now I do…I never thought there could be love where there was no deeper understanding…but cookie taught me something…that love sometimes transcends the mind and reaches the heart directly…will miss my cookie…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:40 pm 2 comments

 
I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn't remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember - so that if I had dusted it and forgot - that is, had acted unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. If some conscious person had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one was looking, or looking on unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been. [Leo Tolstoy's Diary, 1897]

And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. "If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.

— Excerpt from Victor Shklovsky’s ‘Art as Technique’

Most of our lives seem to be full of ‘habitualized’ or ‘automatic’ activities, things that don’t provide us any sensation at all, things that we go about doing without knowing what we are doing. We go through the motions of everyday living, so to speak, with nothing to interrupt its ebb and flow, or make us start from our unconscious reverie. We yearn for ‘sensation’, whether it is in books, in movies, in music, in travels, we want to feel ‘alive’, to consciously ‘experience’ a thing. Which is why we are drawn to novelty, to excitement, to adventure, to experiences that we are not ‘familiar’ with, and which promise the maximum ‘sensation’. Shklovsky talks about how this desire for ‘sensation’ is exploited even in art, by making objects ‘defamiliar’ so that we are forced to take notice, to actually experience or perceive them. Techniques in art are used so that the same objects or experiences, though familiar and habituated, may still kindle ‘sensation’. Poets come up with novel ways of describing the beloved or the sunset, and each time, it is like seeing the beloved for the first time, or watching the sunset with new eyes…the same experience affords sensations as if we were experiencing it for the first time. We see it as if it were something new, we actually ‘perceive’ its beauty.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder how a balance between monotony and sensation could be best achieved. I am convinced that a balance is important, because just as a person cannot be eating rich food all the time because it affords ‘sensation’ (in any case the sensation would disappear when one gets habituated, and damage one’s health too), so also, one cannot be drenched in sensation all the time, to feel like one is ‘living’ every moment. At the same time, one cannot be going on living in monotony, going about work that does not involve the mind or heart at all, and deadens one’s spirit so that one may as well not be ‘living’ or ‘consciously experiencing the sensation of life’.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:36 pm 7 comments

 
All beauty is what
But an imposture
Cruelty hidden behind
Every act of nature
Kindness, gentility, honesty
We all claim like masks
Carrying on our frightful farce
Teach me, O God,
To know your ways
Like an innocent child
Let me not fall prey
To words uttered but never meant
To emotions expressed but never felt
Teach me to distinguish the true from false
That I may live among the corrupt
But never to corruption fall.

One of those times when I feel overwhelmed and deeply jolted by how low human nature can stoop, how selfish it can be, how its own ends it can seek without one little whit of thought for another. We seem to live in a world full of superficialities and the only tools to survive are the superficial, the sophisticated, the suave and the trivial ones. Simplicity, honesty, and other core values have become a relic of the past. They are fashionable, yes, but only as a surface cosmetic. Any more deeper and they seem a nuisance.

We no more judge of people by the ‘substance’ they possess — the form, the outward, the veneer has become all important. We place so much emphasis on cultivating the exterior in today’s world, while the interior, the heart, the soul remains forgotten and unattended.

How I wish we had the capacity to look into the heart of things and the wisdom to know that only what we find there, is really worth possessing.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:21 pm 3 comments

 
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies

-- Shakespeare
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:36 am 2 comments

 
Okayyy. Let me get the wishes out of the way first.

Happy Christmas.
Happy New Year.
Happy 10th blog anniversary (to me).

I had meant to do all these wishes at the right time, if not in advance, but a LOT has been happening. A ‘first’ wedding in my family. My sister’s to be specific. On New Year’s eve, no less. And the preamble to the wedding, as is usual in all such cases, started many months ago. I’m glad we’re over the wedding and into the marriage… that which really counts :)

It always strikes me how much we plan and prepare and anticipate and deliberate over the wedding ceremony. We want it to be perfect and lovely and want the guests to have a good time and have good things to say about how well it was organised and how much they were taken care of. We stress over every little thing till the last minute — the decorations, the food, the dress, the toast, the invites and what not… sometimes I wonder if we pay equal attention to ‘after’ the wedding or we prepare as much for life after the wedding, the beginning of which we actually celebrate with all the song and dance. I also wonder if we get to really, really think about and prepare in our hearts and minds for the life we are about to enter, because we are so busy planning and plotting over the frilly and unnecessary details… I sometimes wish weddings could be done differently… if it could be a celebration in the real sense of the word for only the two people who have found each other, who have decided to pledge their life to each other, who wish to spend the rest of their lives together, and who want to celebrate that moment, that journey, that first step together…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:38 am 0 comments