A sense of History : Hobsbawm 's autobiography Interesting Times

 

           Hobsbawm’s   autobiography is a historian’s attempt to grapple with the meaning of history in general, and of  the  twentieth century in particular. As a ‘participant observer’  in the  last century Hobsbawm looks at his life as a part of and shaped by history to  make sense of  the twentieth century which was  described by him as ‘the age of extremes’--  it is “the most murderous as well as the most revolutionary era in history.” (P.7) Hobsbawm shows  German thoroughness in presenting the vast panorama of history with facts and figures in  an interesting manner in his historical works.  He offers  an in-depth   knowledge, logical explanation and curiosity and  his understanding of history  without seeking approval or  disagreement. In the present times characterized by the  religious conflicts, terrorism, despair about violence in the Middle East, it is necessary to know if history offers any specific  meaning or just a blind force that tramples on human life and dignity.        

    In his autobiography, Interesting Time, Hobsbawm  presents how he has grown up as a young man, became a  communist , followed party, turned critic of Stalin’s regime after Khrushchev’s revelation in the Twentieth Congress the Communist party of the Soviet union , his association with other historians and  association with third world leftist movements, constancy of loyalty to the party, the advent  and aftermath of globalization of the meaning of history as unending optimism in human agency to bring a change.. Being a Marxist  historian till the end of his life , he sees himself as an ordinary man but not as a genius like Rousseau  or St. Augustine and gives no scope to confessions or intimate personal life. The vantage point from which he sees history is as a German , Cambridge-educated  and as one  who  played a vital  role as the  British Marxist intellectual of his times .

       The public self dominates the private self and we come to know very little about his personal life or psychological landscape of the writer. As in the case of  Nehru’s autobiography , we find the private self is completely submerged by the stream of history in Hobsbawm’s autobiography.  Both Nehru,  the maker of history and Hobsbawm, the writer of history have chosen to give more importance to their public selves rather than private selves. The autobiographer thinks that either  he has more to say about his public self or reluctant to reveal  his private world to avoid hurting  people close to him. He perceives his life would  be more interesting to the reader not because of his mundane life but because of his ability to rise above his limitations. Here also his ego plays a role but indirectly. The ‘objective’ autobiographer wants to present his authentic self by not writing about his internal life  and   leaves it for the biographer to reveal little known aspects of his personal life. All the readers are not nosey type but the missing of internal reality as shaped by the external reality or history  may leave them still  clueless about the making of man. “Take it or leave it’ says the ‘objective’ autobiographer who emphasizes his public self.  

 

It is the autobiographical historian’s business not simply revisit it, but to map it. For without such a map, how can we track the paths of a life time through its changing landscapes, or understand why and when we hesitated and stumbled, or how we lived among those with whom our lives were intertwined and on whom they depended? For these things throw light not only on single lives but on the whole world. (7)            

      In the first three chapters he writes about his childhood. He was born to an English father and  a German Jewish mother in Egypt. The family came to Vienna after the first World War. His father Leopold Hobsbawm  was an idealist and his mother was an intellectual and a writer.  Owing to the impracticality and the death of his father , the family   fortunes suffered and his mother had to work hard to sustain the family through tuitions , writing novels and doing translations. Hobsbawm’s  Britishness saved him from ill-treatment given to  the other Jews  in the school. His father exercises a slight degree of intellectual influence on him and his mother told him  “You must not do anything, or seem to do anything that might suggest that you are ashamed of being a Jew’ (24) Hobsbawm writes that in pre-Hitler Vienna many middle-class Jews never became Zionist. He writes of his father’s abrupt death on returning home from a futile search for job and her mother’s deep  sorrow that  ended her life two years later. Hobsbawm doesn’t believe in exclusivism and refuses to see himself as religious or  a typical  victim. He writes, “Right and wrong, justice and injustice, do not wave ethnic badges or wave national flags.”  The claim of the Jews to the term ‘chosen people’ rests not on ghettoized existence of them but  “on its quite disproportionate and remarkable contribution to humanity in the wider world, mainly in the two centuries or so since the Jews were allowed to leave the ghettoes, and chose to do so” ( 25) The Marxist Hobsbawm steadily refuses the separatism based on fragmented identities.

He also writes about his faint memories of his father, his mother’s illness, his stay with his aunts   Gretl and Mimi and  how his mother made him defer his desire to join the communist party till he got  intellectual maturity. He criticizes his mother’s poems before his aunt and refers to his conviction in his “professional life and private passions” that “one should not delude oneself even about the people or things one cared about most in life.” (39)

His arrival in Berlin 1932  in the context of conflict between National Socialism and communism, the influence of  some of his teachers  made him turn towards the latter. He felt the abiding influence of the October revolution but not the Chinese revolution and the historical  circumstances propelled him to “a future of passionate commitment to politics.” (56)

He tided over hard times subsequent to the deaths of his parents due to his intellectual pursuits. He also acted responsible for his sister Nancy  during the traumatic period .               

Hobsbawm’s autobiography manages tension between autobiographer and historian . As  a historian, he tries to be objective and very little is known about his individual feelings and reactions. He writes about his fellow historians, leaders and contemporary famous people.

He remained in the communist party   after the Khrushchev’s exposure of Stalin’s crimes in 1956 for the  main   reason that he didn’t want to side with the Satan party in the name of deserting “the god that failed.”  He writes as follows;

. I was strongly repelled by the idea of being in the company of those ex-communists who turned into fanatical anti-communists, because they could free themselves from the service of “The God that failed” only by turning him into Satan. (217)   

He wanted to prove the success of being  a historian in spite of being a communist. He steered clear from becoming either the victim or a bitter critic of communism  during  the second world war and cold-war period. He has established his academic credentials as a historian and his works have been read by many leftists  around the world. His wide canvas, meticulous portrayal of events , admission of drawbacks of his cherished ideology, constant attempts to make sense of history gives us an insider’s history of the rise and fall of  fortunes of communism. The profound influence of  the October revolution decided his reference point and he remained a staunch loyalist of the same  despite disillusionments  inside the Soviet union.

  His joining the party as a central European in the collapsing Weimar Republic but not as young Briton and his pride made him remain in the party and succeed as a historian. He writes, “I do not defend this form of egoism, but neither can I deny its force. So I stayed.” (218)   

   Hobsbawm notes that  in the present it has become possible to have abundance and technological change as Marx predicted  without communism. ‘Today the foundations of this certainty that we knew where history was going have collapsed, notably the belief that the industrial working class would be the agency of change.”( 137)

While the cold war made them stick to communism, they saw unlimited potential of socialism in Russia. “To most of the world it did not seem to be the worst of all possible regimes, but an ally in the fought for emancipation from western imperialism, old and new , and a model for non –European economic and social development.”(195)

He also writes about how he  moved closer to Italian party’s line. He deals with the sixties which have seen the students’ revolutions around the world, communism in the  third world and Chinese experience. He doesn’t show much attachment towards Chinese experiment and  India appears  only  as a passing reference.

Writing about the state of history in the present he observes the political pressures on writing history, people changing the past to suit their purpose and writes, “Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defense of history by its professionals is today more urgent  in politics than ever. We are needed.” ( 296) 

 Regarding the nineteen  sixties, Hobsbawm notes that reds of his generation who were bitter lot “could not  share the cosmic optimism of the young”.( 253) While the Vietnamese struggle moved  the English Leftists deeply , for revolutionaries of his generation the main problem was “ what Marxist should do , indeed what their function could be in non-revolutionary countries.” (259)    And the disappearance of The traditional labour  left after 1983 and   Thatcherism sang a  dirge to the traditional leftism. He expresses that the night of the  electoral defeat of the Labour in 1992 as “the saddest and most desperate in my political experience.” (277)The disintegration of communism and the weakening of social democracy led to the resurrection of religious and ethno- tribalism  once propped up by the USA. Technology has caused the disappearance  of the proletariat in the classical sense in many countries, especially advanced countries. The staunch Marxist historian Hobsbaum  himself has expressed uncertainty regarding   the direction of history.  

Tony Judt in his article, “The Last Romantic” in  The New York Review of Books, Nov.20, 2003

Writes as follows: “His style is clear. Like E.P.Thomson, Raymond Williams, and Christopher Hill, his erstwhile Companions in Communist Historians’ Group , Hobsbawm is a master of English prose. He writes intelligible history for literate readers.” He also points out that  his memoirs “record a long and fruitful twentieth -century life.” He criticizes Hobsbawm’s  silence over  Russia’s suppression of  internal and external dissent. He refers to as “the most naturally gifted historians of our time; but rested and untroubled , he has somehow slept through the terror and shame of the age.”          

    Hobsbawm’s experience has been shaped more by the  Euro-centric perspective  which made  his perception of history as  pessimistic in the aftermath of the world wars and the  cold war. The   newly independent countries of  Asia, Africa and Latin America emerged from centuries of  colonialism. Hobsbawm’s uncertainty and skepticism in the face of globalization and consumerism have  not  spread to countries like India, China, Cuba or South Africa which retained their  optimism.

 

             

 

Poetry and pathos in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel, By The Sea

 

    The novel  begins with the reflections of Omar Saleh, a sixty-  five year old man  who enters Britain as a refugee pretending the ignorance  English language  and with a small casket . He is stopped and handed over to  a worker Rachel  in an organisation meant for the welfare of the refugees.     

 Awaiting Rachel's call  the narrator reflects 

In the darkness I lose a sense of space, and in this nowhere I feel myself more solidly , and hear  the play of voices more clearly , as if they we rehappening for the first time. Sometimes I hear music in the distance, played in the open and coming to me as a muted whisper. I long for night each  arid day, even though  I dread the  darkness and its limitless chambers and shifting shadows. Sometimes I think it is my fate to live in the wreckage and confusion of crumbling houses.  (9)

The narrator is reflecting on his past self in the present time.

“What I mean is I don’t know  a great truth which I ache to impart, nor have I lived an exemplary experience  which will illuminate our conditions and our times. Though I have lived, I have lived.” (2)

He says that  his vibrant  life is before and behind him. He visits furniture shops and thinks

  “At the very least, it weighs us down and keeps us on the ground, and prevents  us from clambering up trees and howling naked as the terror of our useless lives overcomes  us. It keeps us from wandering aimlessly in pathless wildernesses , plotting cannibalism in forest-clearings and dripping caves.”  (3)

He , a refugees  arrives at Gatwick airport and walking past rows.

‘‘ What we know constantly reels us into our ignorance, makes us see the world  as if we were still squatting in that shallow tepid pool which we had known since childhood terrors.” (5)

He shows his joke passport which is  taken by Kevin for further interrogation about his state and background. But the narrator pretends not knowing English0. Kevin finds goods brought in by the old man Shaaban and tries to convince him that he cannot survive in an alien land with a few belongings  and without knowledge of English and he is an old man.   Shaaban prefers silence and listen to the lecture how he does not fit in their being without European values unlike him who has come from Romania .

Shaaban remembers a series of colonizers  who came , traders, the Portuguese, Omanis , the British,   the Germans and the French. 

Writing about the British colonialism

The stories we knew about ourselves before they took charge of us  seemed medieval and fanciful , sacred and secret myths that were liturgical metaphors and rites of adherence , a difference category of knowledge  which, despite our assertive observance , could not contest with theirs.(18)

The colonials’ good was ironical.

They told us about  the nobitity of resisting tyranny in the classroom and then applied a curfew after sunset, or sent pamphleteers for independence to prison for sedition. Never mind, they drain the creeks, and improve the sewage system and bring vaccines and the radio . Their departure  seemed so sudden tin the end, precipitate and somehow petulant. (19)

Saleh Omar , the narrator reflects the arbitrary businessman’s nature of the British. The alive customers used to visit the furniture shop to admire the exhibits.

 They did not have the same obsessive need of them that my European customers had-to acquire the world’s  beautify hinge so they could take them home and possess them , as tokens of their cultivation and open-mindedness, as trophies of their worldliness and their conquest of the multitudinous parched savannahs.

When Kevins questions the narrator about the Mahogany box  , “it was something like that Kevin Edelman had done with my casket  of ud-al-kamari .” (21)

    The narrator also recounts the story of Hussein, a merchant whose grandfather Jaffar Musa has made the British envious of his success as a businessman and biding their time to dethrone him rumoured to have  been immoral, lascivious, intriguing businessman . After his death, his son Reza has dispensed with his European employees and his business gradually  declined in Malya. Reza  stated another business in Bahrain which was also under the British. Hussein borrows some money from Omar and gives him a document which shows debt of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud to Hussein . Hussein departs for  another palace and  sends a map to Omar who has been fond of hopes.

Colonial mapping to plunder is expressed neatly by Omar

Before maps the world was limitless. It was maps that gave it shape and made it seem like territory, like something that could be possessed not just laid waste and plundered .Maps made places on the edges of the imagination seem graspable and placable. and later when it became necessary, geography became biology  in order to construct a hierarchy in which to place the people who lived in their accessibility and primitiveness in other places on the maps. (35)

Rachel takes Omar to a home run by Celia .There he sees many refuges from various  countries-  Mick , the seventy year old who always watches mute TV , Ibrahim for Kosovo running form Serbians, Georgy, A Roma  from  Czech republic . Saleh Omar who has been pretending not to know English at the behest of travel agent assumes the name of Rejab  Shaaban. He has not fund the ambience there congenial and later when Rachel comes to him and talks to him he causes her annoyance  by revealing how he could speak English. Earlier she wanted to find an interpreter named Latif, an academician working in London  for him.

Now Latif enquires Rachel  about the welfare of Saleh Omar who has told her about his familiarity With Latif. Now the narration is taken  forward  by Latif. He tells that his father the real Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , his wife Asha given to alienation form he husband and flirting with others, sons Hasan and Latif.

Through Latif’s narration we come to know about  colonial vilification of the blacks. In street he is derided as ‘balckamoor’. He checks dictionary and finds words, blackhearted, blacklist, blackguard, blackmail , black market, black sheep which filled him with disheartenment.

  Of course I knew about the construction of black as other, as wicked, as beast, as some evil dark place in the innermost being of even  the most skinless civilized European , but I had not expected to see so much black black  black on a page like that. (72)

Into their house comes Hussein, a merchant whom Latif’s father calls a good friend. Latif describes how his father , a clerk in Public Works Department  has felt shameful all along but shows tenderness towards his children . Latif admires his brother who is knowledgeable but  he also doesn’t tell Latif anything about the alienation between their parents.

Latif narrates how his house  has been lost to Saleh Omar due to  the machinations of Hussein who has stayed in their  house as a guest  of his father  Rajab Shaaban Mahmud in the name of business partnership and seduced Latif’s brother Hasan and entered into an illicit affair with  their mother Asha. Hasan who  has burned with shame has disappeared. Their house has been sold to  Saleh Omar, the furniture shop owner who has reappeared as a refugee  as a refugee for whom Latif is supposed to have been interpreter    in London.

The novelist  Abdulrazak Gurnah shows  through Latif’s narration   how colonial legacy in library  influenced them and books left by  European teachers at school on their departure   ‘’so the departing conquerors could  feel that they were leaving this fruit of Europe’s intellect in the had of responsible persons.”(105) Latif narrates the  luxury of Us information library , shifting of alliance of president of his country  Zanzibar from America to Socialist countries and his sojourn in East Germany for training as a dentist.    The novelist shows the corruption by ministers in the system in arranging scholarships as  a return for  sexual favours from Latif’s mother Asha . Latif knows it but does not demur. He describes how his father has become more pious after losing their house. While he was leaving for east Germany, his father asked him to be pious amidst the godless  and mother to take care of himself and his passport. He left in anxiety and failed to fill in the impressions of surroundings for sterile years ahead. In East  Germany , Latif stays in a hostel and his roommate is one Ali, from Guinea  who makes fun of him.

The hostel was modern rectangular block, concrete and glass and asbestos, with tiny unheated rooms that were shared between two students. The corridors were narrow and sharply angled, so that although the buildimg gave a monumental impression outside , inside it was cramped and suffocating, until I got used to it , it felt as if I had to struggle to breathed lying  in bed  in a silent panic , heaving to take in the bad air with its taste of vegetable decay. The windows were never opened  because the whole block was so poorly heated. If the window was opened in the remotest corner of the building , a chill draught blasted through every crack and crevice , and led to an immediate hunt and punishment for the criminal. (113)

The novelist wants to bring out the derision which Germans entertained towards African students. One day while they were crossing a street a group of German boys grinned and  barely suppressing their mirth  one of them said “ Africker-nische “ and the rest laughed. “ It was shocking, that casual mockery , but there would be time to  get used to that and worse, time to learn to recover form such smug disregard.”     (119)

Both Ali and Latif came there at the behest of their respective mothers to save them from insecurity and trouble. Ali grew up in France and their family went back to Guinea after independence . his father got arrested and brother went missing , probably killed by the authorities. While Ali had been more open about his family, Latif told his story  in a guarded manner since he felt embarrassed to tell storied of our ridiculous domestic melodramas I exchange for his terrible one of loss and oppression.” (121)

     Latif ‘s ignorance of Dresden, a famous city in twenty miles distance  made him realise the damage done by Colonized education. He didn’t know about its medieval triumphs,  wealth, ingenuity , industries, buildings, greatness of Electors of Saxony,  huge port on the Elbe,  devastation of May 1945, the horrors it faced or inflicted on its enemies and victims. But he knew about the fishing banks of  Newfoundland,   the Fire of London an Cromwell , the siege of Mafeking and the abolition of Slave Trade.

 I Knew nothing about Dresden or  a multitude of other Dresdens. They had been there for all these centuries despite me, ignorant of me, oblivious of my existence. It was a staggering thought , how little it had been possible to know and remain contented. (123)

Latif goes to meet  Elleke and to his surprise Jan comes and apologise for his pretension as Elleke to become a pen friend  causally and his mother  too helped him in writing letter to give the right one. Latif understand the reason and goes to Jan’s house. Jan’s mother Elleke  attends to injury to his feet due to snow. Both tell him story about Euryclea, the nurse when Ulysses as a child  who recognised him by a scar on his feet.  Latif comes to know in the course of conversation that they also were settlers  who went form Austria to Kenya to Germany. when enquired why Kenya, she replies,

“Yoe mean why did you choose to go and take what belonged to other people, and call it your own and prosper on duplicity and force. Eve fight and maim for what you had no right to.  Isn’t that what you mean ? “ (131) she says colonialism made them do so and they went to Ngong hills where became coffee farmers. 

Latif’s interaction with Elleke and Jan is not liked by Ali. But it grows and Latif joins Jan in escaping from Easy Germany and roams other capitals such as Prague, Budapest and other central European cities and arrives t Plymouth , England. He claims that he is a refugee from East Germany in the office of the Harbour Police. He is   enquired about  life in GDR and travels in Central Europe   and  on the next  morning let off and given the address of  a refugee organisation.

Later on Latif who has become an academician and a poet  is asked by Rachel to act as an interpreter to Saleh Omar whom he meets after six months . In the next part of the novel we find  a shift in the narration and Saleh Omar continues the story . Latif goes to meet Saleh Omar and the latter tells him his side of the story regarding how he and why he has assumed the name of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , the father of Latif.

Omar marries Salha and after a few years she gives birth to baby girl . Omar in fact wanted to call her Raiiya which means  a citizen of the conquered nations.

 It was true that the conquerors in its use were Muslims and the conquered were not, and to offer that vanquished rights after having taken away their freedom to conduct their affairs as they wished was hardly magnanimous., but the idea of citizens’ rights was a noble cause, and we could use it for our own meaning. (150) 

As his wife objects , Saleh  Omar gives her the name Raqiya, after the prophet’s daughter with his first wife Khadija.  He also teel him how the girl died before she reached two years. Hussein, the wily merchant has taken money from Saleh Omar in exchange of document of mortgage Hussein got  from   Rajan Shaaban Mahmud for partnering with him in business. After Hussein has left , Saleh Omar reveals this to Rajab Shabaan who is distraught. Later Rajab’s second   son Latif goes to Saleh Omar    to  beg Mahogony table belonging to  his brother Hasan When their mother requests him to do so.   Omar later narrates his life as a student , his friendship with Jamal and Sefu , their going to Jamal’s house during vacation and getting rather shabby treatment and then his travels with Sefu during which they have been received well in the houses of Sefu’s relatives and finally his father’s message to come home. He comes to know about the second marriage of his father after the death of his own  mother.

Omar comes to know that his father married Bi Maryam and both of them looked content. Bi Maryam’s first husband was  Nassor , the nahoda ( A man of the Sea) who was an orphan himself and was cheated of his rightful share of his property by is relatives. Nassor’s mother revealed to him how she had been tricked into remarriage and both she and her son were deprived of their rightful share by their relatives.  The story turns many twists and turns and Omar tells that Bi Maryam inherited a house after Nessor’s death and his own father who married Bi Maryam . Bi Maryam was the aunt of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud who was given to bouts of drinking. In the course of time, Saleh Omar’s father and step mother died. At last Bi Maryam had  bequeathed  her house to Saleh Omar  in stead of Rajab Shaaban  Mahmud and the rumours had been that she had been cheated of her property by Omar and his father.

   In continuation of narration Saleh Omar reveals to Latif his saga of suffering . he has been vilified  by others for having ruined Rajab Shaaban Mahmud by taking his house. His justification is that  has wanted to take loan on the house but not own it.  He also narrates of Asha, Latif’s mother who has had maintained relations with  a minister to the shame  of her husband who turned more and more pious. Latif has continued to listen to the story rather reluctantly. Then after  nationalisation of  banks, Saleah Omar has been asked to repay the loan on the house overnight and he has failed to repay the amount . He has been called to the office of the party headquarters , faced the trial, charged with fraud , ordered to give document of house Bi Maryam bequeathed him and was arrested.

Saleh Omar recounts Latif Ahamd who was originally Isamail about his life on the penal island, detention camps and  his final release . Here we find a beautiful description of the sea at night through the eyes of  Omar imprisoned  on the island. .

At night it was as if there was no sky, just a dense mass of stars bearing down. The sea frothed and turned endlessly , catching the light of the stars in filigreed crests , sighing and snapping and rushing at the rocks on our lee. Low on the horizon, the glow of the town was visible as an aurora on the far edge of the sea.(229)    

 He comes back to his town and finds out bout the deaths of his wife Bi Salha  and child Ruqia  in his absence , the death of Asha, the wife of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud , latter’ undiminished hatred towards him and his death . He also tells about resumption of his business, return of Hassan , the prodigal son of  Rajab and long lost brother of Latif , the prosperity of Hassan and his pressure on Saleh Omar to return house documents, threats to  file a case .The subdued and mellowed Omar does not react, takes passport in the name of Rajab Shaaban Mahmud  whose birth certificate he has found unexpectedly and leaves for London. Latif Ahmad now is aware of the loose ends in the  entire story of his life and the life of Omar.  Rachel and Latif treat the old man Saleh Omar in a friendly manner.

 The prose of the novel is well chiseled, ironical , tender , evocative of memories in reader’s personal  life , empathetic and offers psychological insights into characters, brings out impact  of  colonial  rule on the lives of citizens, the nexus between power and corruption and an intimate relation between the reader and the lives of characters in the novel. The novel ends rather abruptly but reminds of the words the life of no one is  to be considered  happy till the end.                                                   

                   

      

                                                  

 

                        

Poetry is His occupation: A Study of Neruda’s Memoirs

 

                                

 

     Pablo  Neruda is a great and committed  poet  who has made poetry a respectable craft  and poets a respectable tribe in times of war and dystopia. He remained an incorrigible optimist despite the Spanish civil war, Second world War followed by the   cold war era, the dictatorships which characterized many countries in Latin American continent.    He has become  one of the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century who has found his vocation in turning out poetry on nature, love, solitude, beauty, war and death. Neruda’s Memoirs is a combination of varied experiences across the cultures , with different poets of the world and his views on politics and political conditions of his time. The richness of his life, ideas and his prolific  and high-quality  work reveals his love for passionate expression. In his work Neruda’s poetic soul finds expression time and again whatever subject  he touches-nature, country, politics and humanity. For his poetic achievement he received the Nobel Prize in literature , “the sixth Spanish-language writer, and the third Latin American, to receive this distinction.” (363)

     He writes that “what the memoir writer remembers is not the same thing the poet remembers” (3) There are gaps due to forgetfulness and the  memories of the past “have crumbled to dust , like irreparably shattered glass.” ( 3)  His life is not an isolated phenomenon and he notes, “perhaps  I just didn’t live just in myself , perhaps I lived the lives of others” ( 3)

    He has come out of Chile to ‘roam , to go singing through world.’  In his Memoirs which consists of twelve chapters, he allocates first four chapters to depict his experiences in various countries, mainly oriental countries  which form the stuff of his poetry in initial period, the next  three chapters  reveal his engagement with Spain, Mexico , the chapters eight  to ten reveal his concern with the fate of his country, travels in Socialist countries and his homecoming . the last two chapters   lay bare his preoccupation with his motherland and poetry. The lengthiest chapter titled ‘Poetry Is An Occupation’ stretching to    seventy five pages lay bare his engagement with poetry. A reading of Memoirs certainly helps one to grasp the warp and woof of Neruda’s poetry.  My paper  relates what has gone into the poetry or his preoccupation with poetry.

   The emergence of young poet:

   While in the Far East, Neruda writes that his poems in  Residence en la terra  have not reflected anything  but  “the loneliness of an outsider transplanted to a violent, alien world” (84) This initial loneliness has yielded to his deep solidarity with the workers of the world in his later life. Regarding his own poetry Neruda comments that it absorbed passion, love, struggle , mystery, song , triumphs and defeats. He writes, “all the choices, tears or  kisses, loneliness or the fraternity of man, survive in my poetry and are essential part of it, because I have lived for my poetry and my poetry has nourished everything I have striven for.” (171)

 He refers to Spanish language gifted by the Spanish conquistadors. “Words fell like pebbles out of the boots of the barbarians , out of their beards, their helmets, their horse shoes, luminous words that were left glittering here… we came up losers... we came up winners.” (54)

 In the chapter ‘Lost in the City’ he writes of his ecstasy at the publication of his first work, ‘Crepsculario’, his attempt to shed the influence of Sabat Ereasty , a Uruguayan poet , calls  his Venite poems as “his love affair with Santiago,”  ( 51 )and the stuff of his poetry has always been “the distant sound of the sea , the cries of the wild birds, and love burning , without consuming itself, like an immortal bush”(52)

Neruda  as a young man  visits  Buenos Aires ( Argentina), Lisbon ( Portugal), Montparnasse ( France), Shanghai ( China), Medan ( Sumatra ), Singapore, and Penang( Indochina).  He also visits India waging  the struggle for independence . He finds traditional life and the idealist  poets and says  “This is the time we have been destined to live in. This is the golden era of era of  poetry. “( 79) He relates an experience of his bus journey from Penang to Saigon, the breakdown of the bus in the mid-forest, the fear of death in an alien land and the sudden reappearance of passengers with musical troupe to entertain the poet Neruda. He writes as follows:  “ The poet can not be afraid of the people. Life seemed to be handing me a warning  and teaching a lesson I would never forget; the lesson of hidden honor, of fraternity we know nothing about , of beauty that blossoms in the dark.” (81)                 

      Neruda relates how his  poetry reading session moved deeply the workers at Vega central in Santiago,  his  poem silenced  slander by the Press against Tina Modetti, his Italian comrade, and  once even  saved him from  a  tough guy who turned out to be his fan in  a bar. The response of market loaders at Vega Central  has changed Neruda forever.  When his reading of ‘New Love song to Stalingrad’ was announced , the mass of workers removed their hats and helmets, ‘a huge soundless wave, a black foam of quite reverence.’ Neruda ‘s poetic ambition is vast and he writes, ‘ I would like to swallow the whole earth. I would like to drink the whole sea’.(264)

 

 On poetry and other poets:

Neruda sees modern poet as an avatar of the priest whose job is ‘to interpret the light’(266). He rejects the fetish originality attributed to poetry and  writes that at the moments of greatest creative intensity, the product can be partially someone else’s, influenced by readings and external pressures.” (267)  He praises another poet Paul Eluard’s personal qualities, comradely spirit and clarity, likens  Pierry Reverdy’s poetry  to ‘a vein of quartz, subterranean” (279) and shining and eternal, and appreciates  the commitment and universality of Somlyo and Quasimodo’s attachment to beauty and universality. He writes glowingly of Vallejo, ‘serious and pure in heart’ and  refers to unnecessary comparison   made  between his poetry and Vallejo’s. He calls Gabriela Mistral’s heart as ‘magnificent’(285) and praises her as one  who removed the barrier between prose and poetry . He calls Hudibras’s poetry of ‘diaphanous’ (288) quality, and  in spite of  his earlier  literary controversy with him proposed a monument for him next to  another  great poet of Latin America Rubén Darío. Both Lorca  and Neruda  spoke in commemoration of  Ruben  whose poetry  ‘stands outside norms. Forms or schools.’ (114)

   Neruda’s views on poetry get expressed while he refers to other poets and their poetry. He praises Vallejo , Louis  Aragon and  Rafel Alberti . While poets such as Pushkin, Byron and Petofi  died in violence and war, Alberti’s survival   makes Neruda comment on the nature of poetry as follows : “it survives every attempt with a  clear face and a smile as bright as grains of rice.”(137)

    In his Memoirs,  Neruda also refers to the voluntary exile of Latin American novelists such as Marquez, Llosa, Cortazar , Fuentes  on the basis of irrefutable reasons. He also mentions his destructive critic called Joe Blow who published twenty five journals to undermine  Neruda ‘s  character and  poetic achievement  but committed suicide in the end. He also mentions his perceptive critics such as Lev Ospovat, Monegal  and Amado Alonso. He sees himself not as a realist or surrealist but as one who  loves books without schools and classification. To him poetry is ‘rebellion’(294)

    He thinks that poetry can be written on the  sublime as well as usual things  and a poet who embraces divine isolation  is ‘the safest bet for capitalism on its last legs.’ (296) He also mentions the refusal of a  news paper to mention his name as writer of his famous poem’ Alturas de Machu Picchu’ 

    He gets angry at the envy  of his detractors  at his comfortable life attained through the proceeds of sale of his books  and comments, “reactionary hacks , who are behind the times and constantly demanding honor for Goethe , deny today’s poets the right to love” and he would like to leave his house in Isla Negra for the working class to take rest and conduct meetings which will be his “poetry’s sweet revenge” (297)

Descriptive powers of Neruda 

Neruda’s  poetic  style characterizes his Memoirs  and comes out vividly in describing nature , the poetry

 of other contemporary poets. At Chile Chico , he writes  as follows: “the sky was working on its twilight with sheer silks and metals: “a  yellowness shimmered in the sky, like an immense bird suspended by pure space. Everything  went through abrupt mutations, changing into a whale’s mouth, a fiery leopard, glowing abstract forms.” (309)

In the chapter  titled,’T he Roads of the World’  he describes the city of Valparaiso as “secretive, sinuous and winding ” and poverty spills over its hills like a waterfall” ( 58) he refers to the earth quake foll0wed by flood , the mountainous wave, the immense green arm that surges , tall and menacing like a tower of vengeance’ to sweep away the remaining life. At times the city “ twitches like a wounded   whale. It flounders in the air, is in agony, dies, and comes back to life.” (60)    

 

Neruda’s internationalism

     Neruda was intensely political and refers to Vietnam . While appreciating the distant and colorful horizon he questions, “who can forget the color of all the blood senselessly spilled in  Vietnam every day?”(297) He remained in favour of Cuban revolution but not blind to its faults. When he was accused by Cuban writers for participating in the conference of P.E.N Club, he felt deeply  hurt and refused to shake hands with his unjust critics who ignored his attack against imperialism and slandered him. 

  In the spirit of inter nationalism , he accepted  honour from Peru despite historical hostilities between both Chile and Peru. He writes poetically that every vice is  accepted in the old order  except communism. His attachment to people comes out in words, “To have embodied hope for many men, even for one  minute, is something unforgettable and profoundly touching for the poet.”(336)

  He refers  to the liberators of Latin America --  Simon Bolivar, San Martin , Jose Carrere and Bernard O Higgins. He remained objective and   in China he observed  the hero-worship of  Mao and turned critical and says he didn’t want to repeat the mistake as happened in the case of Stalin In Russia.  But he praises Stalin’s role in defeating  fascism and describes him as ‘a good-natured man of principles , as sober as hermit , a titanic defender of Russian Revolution ‘ (320)

  He compares the work of writers with the work of Arctic fishermen. The writer has to be patient like a fisherman with a hook and weather criticism to catch new and bigger ideas constantly. He supports artistic freedom   and preserved his “absolute faith in human destiny” (227) He expresses concern for peace and yearn if only the catholic priests fought for peace like the Buddhists against ‘atomic death’(229) He also refers to the fall of Chinese writer Ting Ling and silencing of Ai Ching who accompanied him in spite of their personal difficulties while on tour in China.               

His final moments :

   Neruda had high praise for Allende in whose favour he stepped  aside as a candidate for Chile’s presidency. He terms Allende’s nationalization of copper mines against the interests of North American company as  a ‘titanic achievement’ and an act which made Chile’s “sovereignty definitive by reconquering copper for our country”. Neruda dies on 23rd September, 1973,   eleven  days after the assassination of Allende  by the military junta headed by  Pinochet that plunged Chile in misery. Neruda’s houses in Valparaiso and Santiago were vandalized by the enemies of democracy. 

Enigma of Time and Identity in Borges’s The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory

 

           Borges is  a writer from Argentina  who has used the technique of magic realism to startle and delight the readers. His work deals with  history,  metaphysics of Schopenhauer and Berkeley, the cult of his ancestors, the imagery of mirrors, mazes and swords and imagination that  arouses curiosity, fear and suspense. As a  universalist, he writes ,“ why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. ... in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.” ("A Conversation With Jorge Luis Borges", Artful Dodge (April 1980)

     In the story  ‘The Other ‘, one finds the meeting between the young self and the old self of a writer on a bench beside the Charles River in Cambridge , north of Boston.  Both of them  share their childhood memories, house they lived in, furniture they had,   books and writers they liked . The young self  thinks of it as his  dream  and the old self replies  that the dream could end and goes on telling about the deaths of  their parents and grand  mother , the future of the young self as a teacher , the second world war, the ascendancy of Russia , the complacency of America , the knowledge of the labyrinthine soul  of the Slavic people by Dostoyevsky.  The old self  realizes that there has also been divergence despite the future of the young man as himself. After the parting also, the old self  claims  the encounter was real since the young  could forget him since he spoke to him in a dream whereas he spoke to him while he   was awake and  is still tormented by memory. Dream  of  the future and memory  of experience represent the young and the old selves and the  line between reality and illusion are thin.

   His ‘Ulrikke’ starts with  ,”My story will be faithful to reality, or at least to my personal recollections of reality, which is the same thing.” He meets her,  a Norwegian feminist in the Northern Inn . She was light and tall , with sharp features and gray eyes, aim of calm mystery and enchanting smile  and spoke a Colombian. When  she asks him what is’ being Colombian,’  he replies that he’s not sure but “it’s an act of faith.”  Both of them  are scholarly and after new experience. They go on long  walk , converse in literary allusions. She promises happiness in Thorgate Inn  and Javier Otarola, a celibate and middle aged man thinks “proffered love is a gift that one no longer hopes for; a miracle has the right to impose conditions” (14) Their union was eerie,line between reality and memory is blurred  and the story ends with the words,  “ for the first and last time, I possessed the image of Ulrikke.” (16) 

      Another story ‘A Weary Man’s Utopia’ imagines a world where language is Latin, printing and media have disappeared , present more important than past , the obsoleteness of  national states  and  professional  politicians who took to  honest work, disappearance of possessions,  inheritance, poverty , wealth, space travel  etc. When the seventy year old  professor of English and American literature  known as Eudoro Acevedo   also comes to know that every one has to produce his own art or science, he remarks,  “In that case, every man must be his own Bernard Shaw, his own Jesus Christ, his own Archimedes.” In the utopia  man faces his old age in solitude and healthy pursuits of contemplation and games and dies in peace and grace. The man from Utopia tells that man will be the master of his life as well as death. At the end the narrator sees the utopian man collects all his art and other things in the house  with four of his friends  and enters  the crematory.In his study on Calle Mexico, the old professor and writer of fantasy tales  finds himself  alone with the painting  to be done after many millennia.

   In the story  ‘The Book of Sand’ one evening  the narrator is sitting alone in his room in a fifth –floor apartment on Calle Bagrano. A stranger from Orkneys  of Scotland comes in and offers to sell a book. He claims that he has got a  holy book from an Indian  Dalit called the Book of Sand  or the Book of Books that has no beginning  page or no final page in exchange  for a few rupees and   a Bible. The peddler  “If space is infinite, we are anywhere, at any point in space. If time is infinite, we are at any point in time.”( 91) when the stranger offers to sell the book  for a huge sum, the narrator expresses his inability to but it. At last the stranger  parts with the book  for the full sum of pension and Wycliffe’s black-letter Bible offered by the narrator. He  becomes the  prisoner of the book hidden by him       behind some volumes of  Thousand and One nights. He attempts to preserve the book from being stolen or discovery that it might not be truly infinite, turns into a recluse an dreams of it . He  finds that both himself and the book have become monstrous in his  He  felt that “it was a nightmare thing , an obscene thing  , and that it defiled and corrupted reality“ (93) He  doesn’t want to burn  the infinite  book  causing  infinite pollution and   smuggles it  onto one of the shelves of the basement of the National library and avoids going there afterwards.   Does the author criticize the circular notion of time in vogue in India while progress is associated with the linear sense of time prevalent in the wish? What does the enigma of time mean here? Does the fault lie with time, socio-economic and political  structure  in India for not making lack of progress? Which does  determine meaning of life -- the time or history or the human agency?  

      In the story ‘There are More Things” makes us remember   Hamlet’s words .  “in the world than your philosophy dreams of.” Borges’s stories contain short and  precise lines revealing deep study and reflection, literary allusions and starting definitions and build up an ambience of  terror that creates suspense and terror in the moment of truth. The narrator’s words  “ If we truly saw  the universe, perhaps we would understand it.”(42)  The  narrator, A university student   comes to know about his beloved uncle’s death and  visits the place . his uncle taught him many things related to philosophy, science in a playful manner. He was an agnostic  and after his death his house has been bought by one Max Preetorius . The narrator  refers to the oppressive  air of the Norfolk pines and a peaked roof  of slate tiles and a square tower with a clock which seemed to weigh down the Red House , he writes , “As a boy, I accepted those facts of ugliness as one accepts all those incompatible things that only by reason of their coexistence are called “the universe.”  One day the sheep dog of the uncle was found dead in a grotesque manner. The nephew  meets Alexander Muir, the builder and friend of his uncle and  another tough guy Daniel Iberra and Mariani, the carpenter  who tell him about the abnormal  temperament of Preetorius.  One rainy night the narrator enters the house  by chance and also by curiosity , searches the rooms for the monstrous creature and while coming down  the ladder from the upstairs he hears heavy steps. The last   line “Curiosity got the better of fear ,and I did not close my eyes” terrifies the reader.   

    In the story ’Congress’  Alexander Ferri   who comes up hard in life relates  as the delegate the memory of a mysterious congress which used to discuss various things under the Sun.    Borges ‘s dry humour comes out in sentences such as   “Indecisiveness or  oversight  or perhaps other reasons led to my never marrying , and now I am alone.  I do not mind solitude ; after all, it is hard enough to live with one self and one’s own peculiarities.” (17) the members from different backgrounds meet periodically under the chairmanship of one Don Alejandro , a man of means and generosity. The congress embarks on becoming a   representative body of all the people and to develop an international language .The narrator Ferri and Eguren , the nephew of Alejandro are sent to London and Paris where  they mix up business and pleasure.  Don Alejandro  who arranges a bonfire of  the mound of  books painstakingly collected  claiming that   the Congress includes every thing in time and space and it’s not a handful of persons prattling on ranch.  He says, “ There is no place it is not. The Congress is the  books we have burned.     It is the  Caledonians  who defeated the Caesar’s legions. It  is Job on the dunghill and Christ  on the Cross. The Congress is even that worthless young man who is squandering my fortune on  whores.”(33) The narrator remarks that  the night of realization remained unforgettable and occasionally he “caught a snatch of it in a song, in love making , in uncertain memory, but it has never fully come back to me save once, one early morning, in a dream.”(35) 

       Borges’s story ‘Avelino Arredondo’, based on the real incident  shows   the nurturing of  the anger and purpose by the apparently reserved person who goes into seclusion to do away with the dictator.  Arredondo ‘s sticking to prayer in spite of his agnosticism is based on the writer ‘s own life-long  experience  of prayer at the behest of his mother. The story evokes many historical associations through childhood memories of the Arredondo.’ The Disk’ shows the futility of greed and murder  by a wood-cutter who  wants to possess another man’s   royal fortune supposedly lying in the  one side disk in his hand  which is  never found.

   ‘The Bribe’ shows the academic rivalry in a university department  that leads to many stratagems and academic esoteric articles in the name of research and exhibition of vanity to settle scores . At the end of  the story, Winthrop, the head  who prefers  Einarsson  to  Locke to represent university in  a conference at Wisconsin   tells after the latter’s confession, “we share one sin, at least—vanity. You’ve   come to my office to throw in my face your ingenious stratagem; I gave you my    support so I could boast of my integrity.” (79)

   The story ‘Undr’ tells how one has to live and seek his life on his own and utter something different from the  traditional one. The story is  narrated as part of writing by one  Adam of Bremen who  tells the story of an Icelander  called Ulf Sigurdarson . The latter  has visited the land  of the Urns and its king. .  The people of the Urns are mainly shepherds, ferrymen, sorcerers, swordsmiths and rope makers and the land has been supposed to have a poetry of a single word.  Sigudardarson has been asked to  flee  and save his life  by another person named Thorkelson . Sigudarson tires to  know the single word  but told to seek it on his own. He passes through a life of  vicissitudes and again revisits Thorkelson who in his last moment gives the word ‘Undr’ which means ‘wonder.’ When Sigurdarson is asked to repeat the word, he utters a different word.

     The story , “The Sect of the Thirty”  tells about a  group  unconverted to the Christian  ethics. The group also embraces the ideals of equality, lack of private property, unbridled lustfulness. The name could have come from their number or the height of the Ark or the number of nights with in a lunar month or  out of the conventicler known as the Thirty Pieces of Silver .The narrator doesn’t  give the Word to save and leaves it to the wiser people and the act of crucifixion, “there is not one lone guilty man; there is no man that does not carry out, willingly or not , the plan traced by the All-Wise. All mankind now shares in Glory” (47). The sect  revered the redeemer and the betrayer equally and  the members resorted to  crucifying them selves on reaching a certain age.   The entire story is told as if it were  found from  document in Greek dating  from fourth century AD and even referred to by Gibbon.

    ‘Shakespeare’s memory’ is another collection in which Borges reveals the quality of invisible and enigmatic connection between  magical memory of a dead poet and . The narrator Hermann Sorgel  gets Shakespeare’s memory which needs to be  ‘discovered ‘ in the wakeful as well as sleep states and takes an uncertain time. The narrator  reread Shakespeare’s  volumes and enters “the palaces and the caverns of memory ‘ and  memory offers “the chaos of vague possibilities(128)he realizes that circumstances  alone can’t explain away the greatness. Shakespeare’s gift was to change “trivial terrible things that all men know into fables, lively  characters and  abiding  verses with music. When Shakespeare’s memory was inundating him , the narrator becomes afraid of losing his  parental  language and sanity. For a week, he thinks of himself as Shakespeare and finally one day gets rid of his burden by passing on that memory to another wiling person on Phone. He tries hard to redeem himself through study of Blake’s mythology and Bach’s music but at dawn in sleep and in the twilights , he gets disturbed by small. Fleeting and genuine music.

  In the ‘Rose of Paracelsus’, a  person called Grisebach   comes to him  be taken as a disciple and asks him to make rose into ashes appear again as rose. The     teacher refuses  to do so but the latter persists for a proof to allow him to  spend some years as a student and says perhaps he has been a fraud as some of his critics say. The disciple leaves him forever in remorse and promises to come back when he has more faith. But after he’s gone , Paracelsus turns ashes into rose. The story tells how faith is prerequisite in learning.  

  In the story, ‘August 25,1983’ the narrator enters a hotel  and gets surprised to find his name already in the register and a look alike occupying the room. There he sees his older self  and talks to him  and two  talk of dreaming each other. The older Borges talks of suicide and asks of the  most terrible moment in their lives and smiles at reply saying that  they feel as two though they are one.  The older one talks of visit to Rome, reciting of Keats’ s poetry, elegy on the beloved, the masterpiece to be written, the criticism of it being imitative of Borges, the old age , the humiliation  and other things  leading to the present condition on the verge of suicide. The older self understands the  annoyance felt by the younger one and says, “ The stoics teach that we should not complain of life—the door of the prison is open.      I have also understood that; I myself saw life that way, but laziness and cowardice held me back.” (104) then the older self  realizes the thing to be done  while giving a lecture on Aeneid ,and that has led to him the final moments. When the younger self raises his head, he finds nothing there or outside except other dreams awaiting him. In Borges, we find this technique of conversation between  double selves , the thin line separating life from dreams and intra-communication seems powerful  and demanding .  

     Borges often employs the method of mixing history, mythology and suspense. Timothy McGrath writes, “ Borges’ stories subtly and without mal-intent, demand a reexamination of the way we collectively relate to the world... questions the reliability of the past – something by which individuals, ethnicities and nations define themselves.” (http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_criticism.html).verything becomes just another story.”