I am Bhavna Sosa, from department of English MK Bhavnagar University. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This thinking activity about Comparative Literature.
ARTICLE 6 : “Translation and literary history: An Indian view” - Ganesh Devy
Abstract :
‘Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile,’ says J. Hillis Miller1.
The statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of the Fall, exile and wandering. In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the origin; and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a post-Babel crisis iii. Given this metaphysical precondition of Western aesthetics, it is not surprising that literary translations are not accorded the same status as original works. Western literary criticism provides for the guilt of translations for coming into being after the original; the temporal sequentiality is held as a proof of diminution of literary authenticity of translations. The strong sense of individuality given to Western individuals through systematic philosophy and the logic of social history makes them view translation as an intrusion of ‘the other's. This intrusion is desirable to the extent that it helps define one’s own identity, but not beyond that point.
Analysis :
One of the most revolutionary events in the history of English style has been the authorised translation of the Bible. It was also the literary expression of Protestant Christianity. The recovery of the original spirit of Christianity was thus sought by Protestant England through an act of translation. It is well known that Chaucer was translating the style of Boccacio into English when he created his Canterbury Tales. When Dryden and Pope wanted to recover a sense of order, they used the tool of translation. Similar attempts were made in other European languages such as German and French.
The tradition that has given us writers like Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Heaney in a single century – the tradition of Anglo-Irish literature –branched out of the practice of translating Irish works into English initiated by Macpherson towards the end of the eighteenth century.
Most literary traditions originate in translation and gain substance through repeated acts of translation, it would be useful for a theory of literary history if a supporting theory of literary translation were available.
Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation proposed a threefold classification of translations:
(a) those from one verbal order to another verbal order within the same language system,
(b) those from one language system to another language system, and
(c) those from a verbal order to another system of signs (Jakobson, 1959, pp.
232– 9).
Structural linguistics considers language as a system of signs, arbitrarily developed, that tries to cover the entire range of significance available to the culture of that language. The signs do not mean anything by or in themselves; they acquire significance by virtue of their relation to the entire system to which they belong. This theory naturally looks askance at translation which is an attempt to rescue/ abstract significance from one system of signs and to wed it with another such system. But language is an open system. It keeps admitting new signs as well as new significance in its fold.
The concept of a ‘translating consciousness v and communities of people possessing it are no mere notions. In most Third World countries, where a dominating colonial language has acquired a privileged place, such communities do exist. In India several languages are simultaneously used by language communities as if these languages formed a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The use of two or more different languages in translation activity cannot be understood properly through studies of foreign-language acquisition.
In Chomsky’s linguistics the concept of semantic universals plays an important role. However, his level of abstraction marks the farthest limits to which the monolingual Saussurean linguistic materialism can be stretched.
And in the absence of a linguistic theory based on a multilingual perspective or on translation practice, the translation thought in the West overstates the validity of the concept of synonymy.
J.C. Catford presents a comprehensive statement of theoretical formulation about the linguistics of translation in A Linguistic Theory of Translation, in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation.
‘Translation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another; clearly, then, any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of language – a general linguistic theory.The privileged discourse of general linguistics today is closely interlinked with developments in anthropology, particularly after Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss. During the nineteenth century, Europe had distributed various fields of humanistic knowledge into a threefold hierarchy: comparative studies for Europe, Orientalism for the Orient, and anthropology for the rest of the world. In its various phases of development modern Western linguistics has connections with all these. After the ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on Orientalism.
Comparative literature implies that between two related languages there are areas of significance that are shared, just as there may be areas of significance that can never be shared. Translation can be seen as an attempt to bring a given language system in its entirety as close as possible to the areas of significance that it shares with another given language or languages. All translations operate within this shared area of significance. Such a notion may help us distinguish synonymy within one language and the shared significance between two related languages.
It is an aesthetic and ideological problem with an important bearing on the question of literary history. Literary translation is not just a replication of a text in another verbal system of signs. It is a replication of an ordered sub-system of signs within a given language in another corresponding ordered sub-system of signs within a related language.
The problems in translation study are, therefore, very much like those in literary history. They are the problems of the relationship between origins and sequentiality. And as in translation study so in literary history, the problem of origin has not been tackled satisfactorily. The point that needs to be made is that probably the question of origins of literary traditions will have to be viewed differently by literary communities with ‘translating consciousness’. The fact that Indian literary communities do possess this translating consciousness can be brought home effectively by reminding ourselves that the very foundation of modern Indian literatures was laid through acts of translation, whether by Jayadeva, Hemcandra, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, H.N. Apte or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.
Conclusion:
When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics. Indian literary theory does not lay undue emphasis on originality. If originality were made a criterion of literary excellence, a majority of Indian classics would fail the test. The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalise the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of
translation.
ARTICLE- 7 : On Translating a Tamil Poem by A. K. Ramanujan
Abstract :
How does one translate a poem from another time, another culture,another language? Ramanujan translated poems from Tamil were written two thousand years ago in a comer of south India, in a Dravidian language relatively untouched by the other classical language of India, Sanskrit. Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation.
Analysis :
The paradigms make for metonymies and metaphors, multiple contextual meanings clusters special to each language, quile untranslatable into another language like Tamil. Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father, mother, brother, mother-in-law, etcIn kinShip, the system of relations and the feelings traditionally encouraged by each relative are also culturally sensitive and therefore part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists. Ramanujan took two different poems about love (What She Said) and war ( A Young Warrior ) and made the point that, when we move from one to the other we are struck by the associations across them forming a web not only of the akam and puram genres. But also of the five landscape.; with all their contents signifying moods. And the themes and motifs 0f love and war.
Love and war become metaphors for one another. In the poem “A Leaf In Love And War '' we see entwines the two themes of love and war - in an ironic juxtaposition. A wreath of nocci is worn by warriors in war poems and a nocci leaf skirt is given by a lover to his woman in a love poem. Example God Krishna: both lovers and warriors. Ramanujan takes a closer look at the origin of Kapilar’s poem Ainkurunuru 203. And he points out that The word annay (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girlfriend'. So I have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girl friend.
Impossible intricate task, foredoomed of failure. What makes it possible at all? At least four things. Maybe even four articles of faith. help the translators.
Structural Mimicry
Systematicity
Interiorized contexts
Universals
1) Universals:
If such universals did not exist, as Voltaire said of God, we would have had to invent them. Universals of structure in both signifiers and signifieds are necessary fictions. The indispensable as ifs of our fallible enterprise.
2) Interiorised Contexts:
One is also translating this kind of intertextual web, the meaning- making a web of colophons and commentaries that surround and contextualise the poem.
3) Systematicity:
One translates not single poems but bodies of poetry that create and contain their original world.
4) Structural mimicry:
The structures of individual poems, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric , and poetics, become the points of entry. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical Units but rhythms; not morphology but syntactic patterns.
Conclusion :
The translation must not only represent,, but re- present, the original. One walks a tightrope between the To-language and the From-language, in a double loyalty. A translator is an 'artist on oath'. Sometimes one may succeed only in re-presenting a poem, not in closely representing it. At such times one draws consolation from parables like the following.If the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in ’carrying’ the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.
I am Bhavna Sosa from the Department of English MKBU. Welcome to my blog. In our syllabus of M.A. Sem- 4. We had one paper on Contemporary literature and Translation Studies. Dilip Barad assigned us this article in the Group presentations Task as well as the Thinking Activity task.
Article -4 : What is Comparative Literature Today ? -Susan Bassnett
Abstract :
Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question : What is it ? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space.
Susan Bassnett says that most of the people do not start with comparative literature but they end up with it in some way or other. Generally, we first start reading the text and then we arrive at a comparison. I mean to say, we start comparing that text with another that has similarities and dissimilarities. Comparative Literature emerged in the 19th century. Comparative Literature is different from national literature, general literature and world literature. It was begun as “Literature Compare” in 1860 in Germany. Comparative literature got recognition as a study in 1897. In 1848, Matthew Arnold had used this term “Comparative Literature “for the first time in English. He defines this term. He says...
“Everywhere there is connection. Everywhere there is illustration. No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literatures.”
Goethe gave the term “World Literature (Weltliteratur) to Comparative literature because by comparing them, the comparatists compare one literature to another one. In a way, comparative literature removes all borders and brings nearer to all literatures and spreads harmony. What is common in different literature? That is the main function of comparative literature.
What is the object of study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the object of anything? If individual literatures have a canon what might a comparative canon be? How does the comparative select what to compare? Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study? All these questions can be raised. Rene Wellek defined as “the crisis of comparative literature.”
Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non- subject, contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that it might be seen as a separate discipline. He discussed the definition of Comparative literature as the exploration of “the vicissitudes, alterations, developments and reciprocal difference” of themes and literary ideas across literatures, and concluded that ‘there is no study more arisen than research of this sort. This kind of work, Croce maintained, is to be classified, in the category of erudition purely and simply. Instead of something called comparative literature, he suggested that the proper object of study should be literary history.
“ the comparative history of literature is history understood in its true sense a s complete explanation of the literary work, encompassed in all its relationships, disposed in the composite whole of universal literary history (where else could it ever be placed ?), seen in those connections and preparations that are its raison d’être.”
Croce’s argument was that the term “Comparative Literature” was obfuscator, disguising the obvious, that is, the fact that the true object of study was literary history. Here, we can see Croce’s different views regarding comparative literature that he is against the concept of comparative literature. This shows various comparative literatures. All cultural differences disappear when readers take up great works; art is seen as an instrument of universal harmony and the comparator is one who facilitates the spread of that harmony. Moreover, the corporatist must possess special skills; Wellek and Warren in their “Theory of Literature “ a book that was enormously significant in Comparative literature when it first appeared in 1949, suggest that:
“Comparative Literature... will make high demands on the type of linguistic proficiencies of our scholars. It asks for a widening of perspectives, a suppression of local and provincial sentiments, not easy to achieve.”
West comparative literature began to gain ground in the rest of the world. New programmes in comparative literature began to emerged in China, in Taiwan, in Japan, and other Asian countries, based, however, nor on any ideal of Universalism but on the very aspect of literary study that many Western comparison had sought to deny: the specificity of national literatures, Swapan Majumdar puts it:
“It is because of this prediction for National Literature- much developed by the Anglo-American critics as a methodology- that comparative Literature has struck roots in the Third World nations and in India in particular.”
Conclusion:
Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category,but this assumption is now being questioned.The work of scholars such as Toury,Lefevere,Hermans,Lembert and many others has shown that translation is especially at moments of great cultural changes. Evan Zohar argued that extensive translation activity takes place when a culture is in a period of translation :when it is expanding,when it needs renewal,when it is in a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part. When a culture is solidity established, when it is in an imperialist stage, when it believes itself to be dominant, then translation is less important.
Comparative Literature have always claimed that translation as a sub-category,but as translation studies establishes itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigour, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive work, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else. Seenin this way, the problem of the crisis could then be put into perspective,and the long,unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline in its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.
Article- 5 : Comparative Literature in the Age of Digital Humanities: On Possible Futures for a Discipline by Todd Presner.
Abstract :
After five hundred years of print and the massive transformations in society and culture that it unleashed, we are in the midst of another watershed moment in human history that is on par with the invention of the printing press or perhaps the discovery of the New World. With the invention of the printing press, communication, literacy and the state of knowledge completely changed, providing the conditions of possibility for the reformation, the Enlightenment, the age of humanism, and the rise of mass media.
Key points and analysis :
Nicholas Negroponte once asserted in his wildly optimistic book Being Digital (Negroponte, 1995 ), for they always have an underbelly: mobile phones, social networking technologies, and perhaps even the hundred - dollar computer, will not only be used to enhance education, spread democracy, and enable global communication but will likely be used to perpetrate violence and even orchestrate genocide in much the same way that the radio and the railway did in the last century (despite the belief that both would somehow liberate humanity and join us all together in a happy, interconnected world that never existed before) (Presner, 2007 ).
Paul Gilroy analysed in his study of “ the fatal junction of the concept of nationality with the concept of culture ” along the “ Black Atlantic, ” voyages of discovery, enlightenment, and progress also meant, at every moment, voyages of conquest, enslavement, and destruction. Indeed, this is why iany discussion of technology cannot be separated from a discussion about formations of power and instrumentalized authority.
N. Katherine Hayles, I find myself wondering – as we ponder various possible futures for Comparative Literature in the second decade of the twenty - first century – how to rouse ourselves from the “ somnolence [of] five hundred years of print ” (Hayles, 2002 : p. 29). Of course, there is nothing neutral, objective, or necessary about the medium of print; rather it is a medium that has a long and complex history connected to the formation of academic disciplines, institutions, epistemologies, and ideologies, not to mention conceptions of authorship and scholarly research.
Darnton ’s assessment seriously that we are now in the fifth decade of the fourth information age in the history of humankind, it seems to me that we ought to try to understand not only the contours of the discipline of Comparative Literature – and for that matter, the Humanities as a whole – from the perspective of an information - and media - specific analysis, but that we also ought to come to terms with the epistemic disjunction between our digital age and everything that came before it.
Walter Benjamin did in The Arcades Project (1928 – 40; 1999), it is necessary, I believe, to interrogate both the media and methodologies for the study of literature, culture, and society. The “ problem ” of Comparative Literature is to figure out how to take seriously the range of new authoring, annotation, and sharing platforms that have transformed global cultural production.
Comparative Media Studies
Comparative Data Studies
Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies
1)Comparative Media Studies :
Digital media are always already hypermedia and hypertextual.For Nelson, a hypertext is a Body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper [ … ] Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world ’ s written knowledge.
2)Comparative Data Studies:
Spurred by the work of Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the field of “ cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past five years to bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data visualisation to dissect large - scale cultural datasets. Jerome McGann argues with regard to the first in his elegant analysis of “ radiant textuality, ” the differences between the codex and the electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The data of comparative data studies is constantly expanding in terms of volume, datatype, production and reception Platform and analytic strategy.
3)Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies :
Just browse and passively consume predigested contenbut are actively engaged in the production and evaluation of digital media and software thanks to the open source movement. James Boyle points out, there are many corporate entities eager to regulate the public domain and control the “ commons of the mind. ” 10 For Boyle, the real danger is not unauthorised file sharing but “ failed sharing ” due to enclosures and strictures placed upon the world of the creative commons (Boyle, 2008 : p. 182).Scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick have even “ published ” early versions of their entire books on Commentpress.
Conclusion :
This article mainly focuses on this twenty-first century in terms of digital humanities how we are doing comparative studies. After discussing various arguments, we come to know that to date, it has more than three million content pages, more than three hundred million edits, over ten million registered users, and articles in forty - seven languages (Wikipedia Statistics). This is a massive achievement for eight years of work. Wikipedia represents a dynamic, flexible, and open - ended network for knowledge creation and distribution that underscores process, collaboration, access, interactivity, and creativity, with an editing model and versioning system that documents every contingent decision made by every contributing author. At this moment in its short life, Wikipedia is already the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. In my opinion, that is worth some pause and reflection, perhaps even by scholars in a future disciplinary incarnation of Comparative Literature.
This blog is in response to a task assigned by Yesha ma’am based on The Piano and The Drums by Gabriel Okara.
About poet :
Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. After his first poem, “The Call of the River Nun,” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts in 1953, several of his poems were featured in the Nigerian literary journal Black Orpheus. In his poetry, Okara draws from Nigerian folklore and religion while exploring extremes within daily life through circular patterns. In addition to a novel, and several books of adult poetry, including The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), Okara has published two collections of children’s poetry, Little Snake and Little Frog (1992) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992).
About 'The Piano and The Drums' :
In the poem, the piano and the drums, the poetic persona shows the difference between the normal lifestyle of Africans and that of the modern world. The setting of the poem, as is seen in the poem, dates from the advent of civilization to the modern time. The central theme of the poem hinges on the effect of foreign culture to Africans. This theme he elaborates using the effect of music on the poetic persona as an analogy. The poem tries to emphasize the purity of African content before the interference of civilization.
In essence, Gabriel Okara perceives the desecration of the African way of life from the musical perspective, and comes out to lament about it through the instrument of
Analysis of the poem, The piano and The Drums
Stanza One :
In this stanza, the poetic persona speaks of the sound of the jungle drum. This sound of the drum he feels is mystical, that is, there are so many supernatural things that come with it. The sound of the drum to him, creates agility, strength and quickness of action. This can be seen from lines 3 to 4 as he runs into imagination to the primordial time picturing what this sound would do to the jungle residents:
“… Speaking of
Primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
The leopard snarling about to leap
And the hunters crouch with spears poised”
All is action and natural. The poetic persona with a straight use of imagery and comprehensible words draws the readers’ attention to the fact that everything about this sound is in their natural states using words like, “riverside, jungle, raw, fresh,” names of animal in the jungle – natural habitat, and the last line of the stanza speaking of a hunter with spear ready to strike and hunt.
Everything about this stanza depicts the freshness of nature and life as of the old.
Stanza Two :
Once again, the poetic persona remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast (lines 9 to 11). Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into:
“At once I’m walking simple
Paths with no innovations,
Rugged, fashioned with the naked
Warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
In green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.”
Stanza Three :
Then, here in stanza three, reality changed as the poetic persona came in contact with a different sound from a faraway land:
“Then I hear a wailing piano
Solo speaking of complex ways in
Tear-furrowed concerto;
Of far-away lands”
The change in the sound came with a different instrument other than African native drum, and it also produces a sound that is different with so many musical technicalities which the poetic persona expresses with musical dictions in words like, “concerto, diminuendo, crescendo.” He deploys them to emphasize the difficulty in understanding this new sound
“… but lost in the labyrinth
Of its complexities…”
Consequently, in the last four lines, the poetic persona laments on the level of confusion the new sound brings when it mixes with the drums:
“And I lost in the morning mist
Of an age at a riverside keep
Wandering in the mystic rhythm
Of jungle drums and the concerto”
On a general note, the poet discusses the confusion that is created when western culture mixes with African culture. Any attempt to unify the two results in confusion and disorder. Therefore, one is keenly advised to abhor such a lifestyle. If you want to be African, be it, otherwise, live like the white man.
The poetic persona is not against choosing any of the cultures, but don’t mix them together. Indirectly, he warns us against becoming whiter than the white themselves or more civilized than civilization.
Themes of the poem The Piano and The Drums :
Celebration of nature :–
In stanza one, the way the poetic persona expresses the details of the jungle drum depicts his appreciation of the normal natural environment of things.
No place like home: –
Although, this theme cannot be identified on a surface level in the poem, but, when the poetic persona laments over the confusion that emanates from the contact of the two instruments: piano and drum (African lifestyle and western lifestyle), he shows how comfortable one can be at home with the things and way of life that he is familiar with. There was no confusion when it was all African and their drums until civilization came.
Living a double standard lifestyle :–
By emphasizing the confusion that comes out from the marriage of the piano and drum sounds, the poetic persona tells us that living two contracting lives can only breed confusion and complexities.
Acculturation: –
The notion of acculturation is brought into the poem with the contact of the piano and the drums. Acculturation is when two distinct cultures meet and start to adopt and absorb each other’s norms.
Cultural conflicts :–
The poem also shows that two distinct cultures cannot stay together as any such attempt will result in conflict of norms, traditions and beliefs. For instance, as many analyst has proposed, the conflicts in Nigeria that appear in the forms of ethnicity(tribalism), favoritism, nepotism, nonchalant attitude to public work and so on, is as a result of the incompatibility of the three major tribes in Nigeria and the many others. However, irrespective of these abnormalities, Nigeria still calls for unity in diversity.
Structures of the poem, Piano and The Drums :
It is a poem of three stanzas with 29 lines. It has no consistent rhyming scheme, hence one can say that it is mainly a free verse.
This blog is in response to a task assigned by Yesha ma’am based on Chinua Achebe’s African poem ‘Vultures’.
About author :
Writer Chinua Achebe was born in the village of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria. His father worked for the Church Missionary Society, and his early education was through the society’s school. At the age of eight, Achebe began to learn English. When he was 14, he was one of a few boys selected to attend the government college at Umuahia, which was one of the best schools in west Africa. In 1948, Achebe enrolled at University College, Ibadan, which was a new school. He intended to study medicine, but he soon switched to English literary studies. The college at Ibadan was affiliated with the University of London, and Achebe’s course of study was very similar to that required by the University of London’s honors degree program. While at school, he contributed stories, essays, and sketches to the University Herald; these pieces were collected in Girls at War and Other Stories.
About poem:
Vultures’ is one of the famous poems of the Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe. It is a dark and somber piece that focuses on the Belsen concentration camp and a commandant who works there. Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ is a gritty poem that is hard to read due to the harrowing subject matter. By using several visual and olfactory imagery, Achebe creates a dark and filthy environment in the poem. It depicts a truthful picture of the Belsen concentration camp. The commandant, in the poem, is none other than a representative of a class, who selflessly thinks of his own family even if thousands of families are rotting just around him. The fetid smell of rotting humanity inside him gets featured through the imagery of the vultures.
Tone of the poem :
In much of the poem the speaker’s tone is quite detached, as if he is narrating what he observes and whatever thoughts occur to him. The description of the vultures is quite clinical in the way it recounts in great detail what they ate and did. In the second section, in which the speaker personifies love in the charnel-house, there is an element almost of tender amusement as he describes how she tidies her corner and curls up to sleep with her face to the wall. The description of the Belsen Commandant shows a note of disgust as the speaker mentions ‘fumes of human roast’ and ‘hairy nostrils’. He shows a touchof contemptuous outrage as he mentions the ‘tender offspring’ waiting for ‘Daddy’s return’. In the final section of the poem, the speaker’s tone becomes rather hopeless and pessimistic. He allows the reader to choose thankfulness, ‘if you will’ – the phrase emphasizing his own lack of faith in this option. Clearly his own view is that thepotential for love is the flip-side of the potential for evil.
Structure of the poem ‘vultures’ :
The poem is in free verse, with no rhyme scheme and no formal stanzas. The lines are very short and enjambment is used throughout – commas and full stops are found in the middle of the line rather than the end, and there seems to be no logic to where the lines end. The poem is divided into four ‘sections’ indicated by the use of indented lines and ellipses.
Themes:
Scavenger
In this poem, is that there are two vultures. When we think of vultures, we think of Scavengers, big dark bird that search for rotten/dying food. However, in this poem is portraying vultures as love 'birds' and how there can be love during a war and that whenever there is darkness there is always light somewhere .
Nazism:
Bergen Belson was one of the many notorious Nazi concentration camps. Unlike the death camps such as Auschwitz it did not have gas chambers. Instead prisoners were worked to death on a starvation diet. Conditions were appealing and the cruelty was unspeakable. By the time the camp was liberated by Allied troops 50,000 European citizens had been killed within its fences many of the dead were put into mass graves; others were incinerated in giant crematoria. One its most famous victims was the diarist Anne Frank.
Vulture as metaphor:
Vultures symbolize death and decomposition. The poet tells us that these symbols of death and evil, who eat the decaying corpses, can have a loving side. This image of love contrasts with their evil nature. Bashed-in head- another image of violence that creates a terrifying picture of them. The poem is an extended metaphor on the nature of evil. It portrays a picture of a concentration camp commander, but begins with an analogy; a description of a pair of vultures who nuzzle 'affectionately' together after gorging on a corpse.
Humanism:
Vulture is sitting in the ‘broken bone of a dead tree’. It shows that they fed on dead humans. It represents the violence or evil nature of vultures. They are harmful for nature. But we see at the centre of the concentration camp how the commandant survives on dead bodies. It is very ridiculous.
Ecology:
Poem begin with a gloomy atmosphere of the words 'grayness' . It shows that a very dull and lifeless atmosphere is created. First focus of nature is that it's very gloomy. It's presented as something bad. The next word in the poem is harbinger. Vultures are associated with evil. This creates a sinner atmosphere. Achebe identifies the charnel house as the belsen concentration camp where Jews and other prisoners were killed and their bodies were often burned. 'Human roast' refers to the victims in the concentration camp as if they were being cooked.
Setting and Context:
Two vultures roosting by a roadside prompt thoughts on the nature of evil. The poem is set principally in the Biafran war, although this is not mentioned explicitly. The second part of the poem refers explicitly to the Second World War. By implication/suggestion the poem is relevant to all human conflict.The poem begins with a graphic and unpleasant description of a pair of vultures who nestle lovingly together after feasting on a corpse. The poet comments on the strangeness of love existing in places where one would not
expect. He then goes on to consider the love a concentration camp commandant shows to his family, having spent the day burning human corpses, he buys his child sweets on theway home. The ending of the poem is ambiguous/two sided. On one hand, Achebe praises God and providence that even the most cruel of creatures can show love. On the other hand, these creatures show love for their families only and so allow themselves to commit cruel acts towards others.
Conclusion :
The vultures, described in such a disparaging; grim fashion could beconstrued as a metaphor for the people responsible for the atrocities in Belsen and in particular the Commandant. It is the longest part of the poem and this is not a coincidence. The first stanza is a metaphor for the Commandant’s predominant personality traits and this is
why it dominates so much of the poem’s content. The third stanza, the scene with his child, represents a far smaller portion of the poem and this is a metaphor for his spark of humanity. The form of this poem is very clever as it creates a grim and deathly image, it creates a glimmer of hope in the second and third stanzas and then ends on a hopeless and fatalistic note emphasising the futility of the situation. Difference between the vultures and the commandant: Vultures feed on corpses. That is their instinct. It is not something that they choose to do. The Commandant is not acting on instinct. He has the ability to choose. He chooses to be evil.
I am Bhavna Sosa, from department of English MK Bhavnagar University. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This thinking activity about Comparative Literature.
What is comparative literature?
Comparative literature is an academicfield dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature performs a role similar to that of the study of internationalrelations but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures from the inside.While most frequently practised with works of different languages, comparative literature may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures in which that language is spoken.
First article: Why Comparative Indian Literature?
Abstract :
Since the beginning of this century a group of scholars have been trying to project the idea of Indian literature, empha- sizing the underlying unity of themes and forms and attitudes among the various literatures produced in different Indian languages during the last three thousand years or so. This is partly a manifestation of the Indian intellectual's anxiousness to dis- cover the essential threads of unity in our multilingual and multi religious culture. Its impact on our literary studies, still fragmented into smaller linguistic units, is extremely limited, and certainly the idea of an Indian literature as conceived by Sri Aurobindo and others has failed to provide us with a criti- cal framework to study Indian literatures together, except in viewing Indian literatures as expressions of a common heritage. Nevertheless, it has encouraged some of our scholars to identify certain themes and ideas and to see their ramifications in differ- ent literatures of India. Though these attempts are in discovering the basic unity of the Indian creative mind, they are made at the risk of ignoring the plurality of expressions in our creative life.
Key points :
The term Comparative Indian Literature, like comparative literature, is not self- explanatory, and it is necessary not only to define the term 'Indian literature' but also to defend the necessity of the qualifier. If Indian literature means the sum total of literature written in Indian languages, then it can hardly serve as a significant literary category. In order to make it a significant category, Indian literature must be taken as a complex of literary relations and any study of Indian literature must reflect that. It is not an inquiry into their unity alone, but also a study in their diversity which enables one to understand the nature of literary facts.
But it is not the precision of the nomenclature alone which demands our attention. We must try to find out the exact nature of the relation between comparative literature and comparative Indian literature. We must also try to see if there is an express necessity to study Indian literary relations within a comparative framework. Or, in other words, can an area of enquiry clearly demarcated by linguistic and political boundaries serve the basic demands of comparative literature? One can further ask, does not the area identified as Indian literature impose certain restrictions on the investigator and precondition him? Does it not, for example, make it obligatory for him to look for certain things because of an imposed expectancy of parallels and analogies? And, finally, why should a scholar of literature prefer Indian literature to comparative literature, which promises a greater scope and a wider perspective?
Comparative literature emerged as a new discipline to counteract the notion of the autonomy of national literatures. The minimum requisite of a comparative study is to start with at least two literatures, but this binary concern is hardly sufficient to meet the full demands of comparative literature, which views literatures produced in all languages and in all countries as an indivisible whole. A comparator has to extend the area of investigation not only beyond one language and literature, but to as many as possible. The main dilemma of the comparatist, then, is to reconcile his idea of literature as a single universe of verbal expression with his ability to study it in its totality. Whatever be his professed aim, he has to make compromises and to delimit his area of investigation according to his ability.
A comparatist is hardly in a position to exercise any aesthetic judgement in choosing the best works in all the languages of the world. He is concerned mainly with the relationships, the resemblances and differences between national literatures; with their convergences and divergences.But at the same time he wants to arrive at a certain general understanding of literary activities of man and to help create a universal poetics. Goethe wanted the common reader to come out of the narrow confines of his language and geography and to enjoy the finest achievements of man. The comparatist knows that comparative literature is a method of investigation, while world literature, as Goethe meant, is a body of valuable literary works.
The comparatist also wants to come out of the confines of language and geography, but not so much to identify the best in all literatures as to understand the relationships between literatures in their totality. His goal too is "world literature', not in the sense that Goethe or Rabindranath Tagore had used it, but in the sense of all literary traditions.
Comparative literature differs from the study of single literatures not in method, but in matter, attitude and perspective. One can argue that comparative Western literature is the study of different national literatures, while comparative Indian literature is the study of literatures of one nation, or, according to some, of one national literature written in many languages. Is not comparative Indian literature, then, a retrograde step so far as the basic premise of comparative literature is concerned?
The and the Americans use the same language but they have different national literatures. Yet no comparatist would regard a study of British literature and American literature as comparative literature proper. Do French writings in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada form a part of French literature? Are Indian English writings a part of English literature? What will be our criterion, language or nationality? There is hardly any dependable criterion.
The binary dimensions of comparative literature will be determined at times in terms of nationality and culture, and at other times in terms of linguistic history. Political boundaries are flexible and are redrawn quite often.Multilingualism is a fact of Indian society and of Indian literature. This multilingualism appears bewildering to the foreign students of India, and certainly occasions a grave concern in our politicians. But the literary history of India is a history of multilingual literary activity. Not only have different languages interacted with each other, giving rise to new literary styles, such as manipravalam, but they have also given birth to a new language and literature, such as Urdu. There is hardly any other society we know of where languages belonging to so many families have operated side by side and interacted with each other for so many centuries.
Conclusion:
In a recent article, 'Towards Comparative Indian Literature', Amiya Dev said, 'Comparison is the right reason for us be- cause, one, we are multilingual, and two, we are Third World.'s The fact of multilingualism is now more or less appreciated by Indian scholars. The Third World situation that lends Indian comparative literature a greater validity may need further comments. Professor Dev points out in this paper that the tools of Western comparison are hardly adequate to deal with our literary situation. For example, the categories 'influence' and 'imitation' and 'reception' and 'survival' need serious modification to suit the Third World literary situation. 'Influence' in our case is not confined to two authors or two texts, but is of entire literature upon each other, and involves larger questions of socio-political implications. In order to make literary studies free from these psychological restrictions, we need to look at our literature from within, so that we can also respond to the literature of other parts of the world without any inhibition or prejudice. Our idea of comparative literature will emerge only when we take into account the historical situation in which we are placed. Our journey is not from comparative literature to comparative Indian literature, but from comparative Indian literature to comparative literature.
Second article: Comparative Literature and Culture
Abstract
In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities. His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis, and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative literature in India. He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual positions on unity and diversity and looks into the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization of differences in the name of unity. Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of inter literariness. It is there Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and interliterary process: Indian language and literature ever in the re/making.
Key points
In this article, he discussed an a priori location of comparative literature with regard to aspects of diversity and unity in India, a country of immense linguistic diversity and, thus, a country of many literatures. Based on history, ideology, and often on politics, scholars of literature argue either for a unity of Indian literature or for a diversity and distinctness of the literatures of India. Instead of this binary approach, his proposal involves a particular view of the discipline of comparative literature, because he argues that in the case of India the study of literature should involve the notion of the interliterary process and a dialectical view of literary interaction. He starts with a brief account of linguistic diversity. We are all aware that the so-called major Indian literatures are ancient - two of them - Sanskrit and Tamil ancient in the sense of Antiquity while the rest of an average age of eight to nine hundred years except one recent arrival in the nineteenth century as an outcome of the colonial Western impact Indian English. We also know that although some of these literatures are more substantial than others and contain greater complexities, no further gradation into major and minor major ones is usually made.
Gurbhagat Singh who has been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue". He does not accept the idea of Indian literature as such but opts for the designation of literatures produced in India. Singh, comparative literature is thus an exercise in differential multilogue. His insistence on the plurality of logoi is particularly interesting because it takes us beyond the notion of dialogue, a notion that comparative literature is still confined to.
Jaidev, criticising the fad of existentialist aestheticism in some contemporary Indian fiction, develops an argument for this cultural differential approach. However, and importantly, Jaidev's notion of an Indian sensus communis is not that routine Indianness which we often encounter from our cultural ambassadors or in the West, that is, those instances of "national" and racial image formations which suggest homogeneity and result in cultural stereotyping. The concept of an Indian sensus communis in the context of Singh's differential multilogue or Jaidev's differential approach brings me to the question of situs and theory. That is, the "site" or "location" of theory and of the theorist are important factors here. Commonality and the ones he is suggesting here as a primary situs of the Indian theorist and theory is not exactly the cultural commonality Jaidev had in mind in his critique of cultural pastiche.Jaidev's concept of oneness provides an ambience for particular concerns with regard to cultural and artistic expression such as the case of language overlaps, the bi- and multilinguality of authors and their readership, openness to different genres, the sharing of themes based in similar social and historical experiences, emphasis on the oral and performing modes of cultural and artistic transmission, and the ease of inter-translatability. On the other hand, these characteristics of Indian cultural commonalities Jaidev suggests in turn are rooted in a situs of the premodern age of Indian literatures that is, in periods prior to the advent of print. Where Jaidev's structure is applicable, instead, is our contemporary literature in India because it is here that the danger of a oneness construction -- the process of nation-state construction -- looms.
The notion of an "English" archive of Indian literature came about two decades ago by the suggestion of V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee who were speaking of an Indo-English corpus of literature that was created out of English translations of major texts from major Indian languages. Gokak and Mukherjee suggested the canonization of their proposal by inserting the Indo-English corpus into university curricula. It was along these lines of ideology and political economy that a decade ago recommendations were made by a government committee to institute a Master's program in Indian literature following an undergraduate degree in any single Indian literature. Ahmad's concern is with the hegemony of English, although he does not suggest its abolition in a way which would be close to Ngugi's arguments.
On the other hand, Gokak, Mukherjee, and Motilal Jotwani who was a committee member for drafting, the above circular suggested to implement English as a function, owing to the ever-growing corpus of translations from the various Indian literatures into English, thus making this new corpus of Indo-English literature available to all. In turn, this new corpus would suggest an Indian community resulting in a more or less homogeneous Indian literature. In addition to the argument against this construction of a national literature advanced by Ahmad, there are other problems with the notion and its implementation. It is true that the ideal of one language in India has been made real by now by ideological and political mechanisms. The official national language is Hindi and if literary texts from the other languages could be translated into Hindi, we could possibly arrive at a national Indian literature.
There are many other similar literary and cultural textualities in India whose nature, while manifest in different other systems of a similar nature, are based primarily on themes or genres, forms and structures observable in historiography. It is possible, in other words, to think of a series of such sub-systems in which the individual literatures of India have been interrelated with one another over the ages.
Conclusion
Finally, Obviously, the problems of unity and diversity are not unique to India. However, in keeping with Dev's proposal that the status of both theorist and theory is an important issue, he demonstrates here the application of the proposal. If he had discussed, for instance, Canadian diversity, it would have been from the outside, that is, from an Indian situs. He is not suggesting extreme relativism, but Comparative Literature has taught us not to take comparison literally and it also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not universally tenable. He is suggesting that we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative literature and then we will formulate a comparative literature of diversity in general.
Third article : Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History
Abstract :
The essay gives an outline of the trajectory Comparative Literature in India, focusing mostly on the department at Jadavpur University, where it all began, and to a lesser extent, the department of Comparative Literature at the University of Delhi. Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies at Delhi University, where it afterwards received a new name Its connection with Indian literatures is the starting point.The tradition began with the department in Jadavpur. With a modern poet-translator as its originator, it is based on Rabindranath Tagore's lecture on World Literature. While there were early attempts to decolonize and an overall desire to enhance and foster creativity, there were also subtle efforts to decolonize and an overall endeavour to promote and nurture creativity. Indian literature, along with literature from the southern hemisphere, gradually gained significance. In comparative literary studies, paradigms of techniques evolved from impact and analogue research to cross-cultural literary interactions, with an emphasis on reception and transformation. In Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives in recent years, connecting with various areas of culture and knowledge.
The beginnings
Indian Literature as Comparative Literature
Centres of Comparative Literature Studies
Reconfiguration of areas of comparison
Research directions
Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies
Non-hierarchical connectivity
1) The beginnings :
There were texts focusing on comparative aspects of literature in India long before Comparative Literature was established as a discipline, both from the perspective of its relation to litera- tures from other parts of the world-particularly Persian, Arabic, and English-and from the perspective of inter-Indian literary studies, the multilingual context facilitating a seamless journey from and to India. between works of literature created in several languages."Relationships of joy," Satyendranath Dutta wrote in 1904. (Dutta 124).Rabindranath Tagore's address to the National Council of Education in 1907, titled "Visvasahitya" (meaning "global literature"), provided as a pretext for the formation of the Comparative Literature department at Jadavpur University in 1956, the same year the university began operations.Although it is impossible to speak of the epistemology of comparison with reference to a diverse group of individuals, the emerging contours of the discipline did reveal certain prerogatives. In the early stages it was a matter of recognizing new aesthetic systems, new visions of the sublime and new ethical imperatives – the Greek drama and the Indian nataka - and then it was a question of linking social and historical structures with aesthetics in order to reveal the dialectic between them. The he Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, which went on to become an important journal in literary studies in the country, came out in 1961.
2) Indian Literature as Comparative Literature :
In this part,It wasn't until the 1970s that fresh pedagogical views began to enter the subject of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur. Indian literature has made a significant impact on the curriculum.However, not in terms of establishing national identity.of Comparative Literature studies in the country was around this nodal component of Indian literar themes and forms, a focal point of engagement of the Modern Indian Languages department established in 1962 in Delhi University. In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages started a post-MA course entitled “Comparative Indian Literature”. A national seminar on Comparative Literature was held in Delhi University organized by Nagendra, a writer-critic who taught in the Hindi department of Delhi University and a volume entitled Comparative Literature was published in 1977. However, it was only in 1994 that an MA course in Comparative Indian Literature began in the department. As stated earlier the juxtaposition of different canons had led to the questioning of universalist canons right from the beginning of comparative studies in India and now with the focus shifting to Indian literature, and in some instances to literatures from the Southern part of the globe, one moved further away from subscribing to a priori questions related canon-formation. T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto-centric, body-centric and phono-centric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.
3) Centres of Comparative Literature Studies :
In the 1970s and 1980s, Comparative Literature was taught in a number of South Indian universities and departments, including Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharati Dasam University, Kottayam, and Pondicherry. Despite the fact that Comparative Literature classes were conducted often, In Madurai Kamaraj University's School of Tamil Studies, a full-fledged Comparative Literary Studies department was formed alongside English literature. K. Ayappa is a well-known poet, novelist, and critic. When discussing the south, Paniker, a Kerala native, must be acknowledged for his work in the field, particularly his work on literary theory similarities and his book on India's storytelling traditions.
4) Reconfiguration of areas of comparison :
At Jadavpur University, revisions and reconfigurations of comparison areas occurred once more in the 1980s. Along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was added to the syllabus in the late 1970s, along with a few other works from Latin American literatures, and eventually African literatures were included. These aspects of the syllabus were typically structured around concerns of solidarity and a desire to understand resistance to oppression, as well as bigger problems of epistemological changes and efforts to bridge gaps in history caused by colonial interventions.In the late eighties, with Comparative Literature moving out in different directions, it was felt that more structured approach to the subject was necessary. At Jadavpur, under the guidance of Amiya Dev, who was instrumental in the spread of Comparative Literature in different parts of India in the early years and for giving a direction to the discipline, a Master’s syllabus was designed that had genres, themes and literary historiography as its core area and this model was more or l followed in many new department of comparative literature that would come up later.
5) Research directions :
Many single literature departments were given grants under the programme to pursue studies in a comparative perspective. The English department of Calcutta University for instance, received assistance to pursue research on literary relations between Europe and India in the nineteenth century. Several books and translations emerged out of the project. The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century.
The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programme to the status of Centre of Advanced Studies in 2005, and research in Comparative Literature took a completely new turn. The need to foreground the relevance of studying literature was becoming more and more urgent in the face of a society that was all in favour of technology and the sciences and with decision-makers in the realm of funding for higher education turning away from the humanities in general.Efforts towards this end led to an International Conference on South-South dialogue with a large number of participants from Asian and European countries. An anthology of critical essays on tracing socio-cultural and literary transactions between India and Southeast Asia was published.
6)Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies :
It must be mentioned at this point that Comparative Literature in the country in the 21st century engaged with two other related fields of study, one was Translation Studies and the other Cultural Studies.Comparative Literature’s relationship with Translation Studies was not a new phenomenon for one or two departments or centres, such as the one in Hyderabad University, which was involved in doing translation studies for a considerable period.It must be mentioned though that despite tendencies towards greater interdisciplinary approaches, literature continues to occupy the central space in Comparative Literature and it is believed that intermedial studies may be integrated into the literary space.
7) Non-hierarchical connectivity :
It is evident that Comparative Literature in the country today has multifaceted goals and visions in accordance with historical needs, both local and planetary. Several University departments today offer Comparative Literature separately at the M Phil level, while many others have courses in the discipline along with single kinds of literature.
