A WRITER’S PROGRESS
By ANNADA SANKAR RAY
(Translated
from ‘Binur Boi’ in Bengali
by Lila Ray)
(Continued
from the previous issue)
XXI.
DUTY
By
nature Binu was indolent. He was averse to effort of
any kind. He liked to stroll and did his thinking as he paced up and down. He
liked to stretch out at full length and dreamt or read as he reclined. He did
not like to sit in one place and therefore he did not eat well, converse well
or correspond well. What could force such a person to sit down to the creation
of literature? If there had been no urge, no insistent need, he could not have
done so; he would have jumped up and run away.
If
anyone had asked the twenty-year-old Binu why he
wrote they would have been answered by the word ‘Duty’. To say that he did not
hanker after fame at all would be an exaggeration. But to exert himself for it? That was another thing. The
‘duty’ he spoke of was of course social and humanitarian. He understood very
well that his efforts would not produce literature, but he was more bent upon
breaking down prejudices and reforming society than upon art for art’s sake. He
had set himself to prove the worthlessness of the customs, inherited beliefs
and conventions that have been so highly prized so long and to smash current
pre-conceived notions. If for this he had to write a novel he would. He put
himself to the trouble of sitting down and holding a pen in order to carry on
his work of demolition. This demolition was not to be pure destruction however.
Reformers destroy but, like a river, they break down one bank only to build the
other higher. They also know how to construct. To dream of a new society
was second nature to Binu. Like Omar Khayam he used to exclaim to the companion of his choice:
“Ah,
Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To
grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would
not we shatter it to bits–and then
Re-mould
it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”
By
degrees, quite unnoticed, the bonds which bound Binu
to tradition loosened. He hesitated to describe himself as a Hindu and became
diffident about calling himself even an Indian. What then was he? That which bears no label, a man without a brand.
The
answer to the question why he should write was duty. But there is another
question. How was he to write? The answer to that was, not just anyhow. Binu was always very fastidious about the way he wrote, his
style. Others could specify the subject: examiners pleased themselves. Binu could, however, dispose of the subject in his own way.
As the proverb says: Eat to please yourself but dress to
please others.
Binu, ease-loving as he
was, took the greatest pains with his style, developing it sometimes
conversationally, sometimes on paper, sometimes mentally. Correspondence is
also writing of a kind. There is a saying that God must be remembered in the
forest, in the heart, and in corners. Writing is similar. Binu
did not relax his efforts for a single day nor did he compromise. He displayed
his style even in his examination papers, and was penalised
for it. He was also rewarded. He refused to write just anyhow even for
newspapers and, though he wrote about social reforms, his manner was
distinctive. Whether it was good or bad did not concern him; it was enough that
it was his own.
For this he had to apprentice himself to many, in the first instance to ‘Birbal’, then to Rabindranath and lastly to Gandhiji. The style is the man. To separate a style from the stylist in order to learn it is like trying to separate moonlight from the moon. It is neither possible nor desirable. Binu did not content himself with an analysis of the style of those he chose as teachers; he sought the reality behind the appearance. A person is open to the influence of another as long as his own character is vague. The influence passes away upon self-discovery. To attempt to free oneself from an influence before then is like trying to jump out of a boat before it reaches the landing place.
The
sole object of apprenticeship is self-discovery. When self-discovery comes
imitation ceases. From then on one gives oneself, makes oneself known. Until
that time imitation is not something to be ashamed of, and he who is ashamed to
follow in others’ footsteps is not a true sadhaka.
How
should he write? The answer was, in his own way. There
was another question. For whom was he to write? A study of ‘Birbal’s’
writings revealed that he wrote for men of feeling. He was unwilling to proffer
his emotional experiences to those who lack feeling. How few men of feeling
there are in the world! Even when education is universal it will not be
possible to count them by the dozen! The inevitable conclusion is that ‘Birbal’ did not write for the general reader. And Rabindranath? Of his works some are for men of feeling,
some for men of imagination, and some for sadhakas.
Not all of his work, but a great deal, is for the general reader.
Before
entering college Binu had discovered Tolstoy, the
Tolstoy who, like Dhumra Lachan,
criticised his own work, composed fairy tales for
peasants and repented of having written; War and Peace, Anna Karenina, all,
in fact, of his masterpieces. There is nothing in the history of literature
like it. Ordinarily we lose ourselves in rapt admiration of even our most
faulty creations, we take a blind parental pride in
our offspring, not to speak of repentance. Tolstoy showed no mercy to his
finest work because it was beyond the intelligence and learning of peasants and
primitives, because a twelve-year-old boy would not be moved by it as deeply as
an old man of seventy-two, because neither would be prompted by it to embrace
his fellow-men as brothers and to forgive them their misdeeds, because it was
written for a handful of wealthy, educated, civilised
and leisured parasites. Tolstoy of course overdid it. He went to extremes in
everything he did. He had enjoyed his youth like a Bhartrihari,
and in his later days his sense of guilt was acute. He cursed his pen when it
occurred to him that he was writing for sinners. He did not care to see a
printed copy of his books.
Be
that as it may, Binu came gradually to agree with
him. The most successful creation is for the general reader or the people, the
peasant and the savage, the boatman and the disposer of the dead. If these happen to be educated and cultured, well and good.
If they are not, it does not matter, for words spoken with a home thrust, in
tears and blood, touch the hearts of all men, no matter how insensitive and
illiterate they may be. That does not mean that no other writing is worth while
or is not art.
Binu’s apprenticeship to
Tolstoy had for its object not the acquisition of style but the outgrowing of
it. He does not remember when his apprenticeship began and it is still
incomplete. A time comes in the life of a writer when he wants to identify himself
with his reader, when he does not want anything to stand between them. The
thinnest partition pains him. For the literary initiate, as for the religious
acolyte, the last word is sarvat tanmayo bhavet, complete
union. Style is a help up to the point of union but at that point it becomes an
obstacle. If the faithful friend does not take leave at the entrance to the arbour of love, she ceases to be a friend and becomes a
co-wife.
In
Tolstoy nothing at all is kept back. He gives his reader all he has at the
moment to give, life, youth, sin, virtue, wisdom, folly. He wanted to be one
with the reader and he seems to have succeeded. The enemy of the writer, as of
the acolyte, is his self-esteem, the tinkle of his jewelry, the clang of his
pride. Has she, who comes to her Divine Lover tricked out in all her frippery,
left any of herself free for an embrace? Silks and gems cover her entire
person. The best heroine, the greatest initiate, is she who removes these
trinkets, she who has overcome their fascination. So it is with the best
writer. His ultimate reader is the inner soul of all men. “In
this person is That Person,” as the bauls say.
To win the love of That Person everything must be surrendered.
This
is so not only in the case of style. Tolstoy abandoned his home a few days
before his death. It was necessary for him to bring himself to that point in
order to keep faith with life. ‘What magic is powerful enough to make the
writing of a person true whose life is not true? A time came when Binu’s thoughts turned from society to life itself. In this
too Tol~toy was his guru. His analysis of the
essential and unessential bore a resemblance to Tolstoy’s, the young Tolstoy’s,
With the elder Tolstoy he had greater differences of opinion but he also recognised that freedom, moksha,
lies in complete union, in identification. For the writer moksha lies in identity with the reader. The
reader is the ‘people’ made visible and he is also, off-stage, the pre-eminent
Reader of all times and all countries, That Person.
For
whom should one write? The question is answered in various ways by various
people and each prepares to live his life according to the answer he gives. If
a person says he must write or peasants he prepares to live like a peasant himself
for, unless he does so, the authentic note of peasant life will be absent from
his work. And if a person says he must write for industrial workers he must
live the life of an industrial worker, if the authentic note of industrial life
is to be present in his work.
Upon how the writer lives ultimately depends who his readers will be, peasants or industrial workers. It may be that with education peasants will lose their rusticity and workers their drunkenness. They will present a different appearance when the State is at last theirs. But as long as peasants till the land and workers labour with their bodies, it will be necessary to tune one’s life to theirs. Not for a long time to come will the life of all classes in society be the same, even in Soviet Russia. Writers also should vary their modes of life; they should not all live alike. They should harmonise their lives with the lives of those for whom they write.
Binu felt like taking to
the road in order to be everything with everybody, a peasant with peasants, a
boatman with boatmen, a woodcutter with woodcutters, a
baul with bauls. The
influence of Tolstoy made him partial to peasants. A peasant is like an undying
banyan; he puts out roots that strike down into the earth. All others may be
uprooted but he will not be. By being a peasant among peasants and marrying a
peasant girl, Binu could learn the mysteries of the
elemental life of nature. If it is at all possible to feel things that are
primeval and fundamental, it is possible in the life of the peasant. Though he thought
of the peasant in particular, the idea of the people in general had attracted
him ever since Gandhiji started his mass movements. Fresh moods
and a fresh speech float on the current of the people. He could not approach
them without jumping into the stream. For the language of books and moods
derived from books he had acquired a distaste.
Now
and then Binu grew impatient to change his mode of
life. As long as he had been alone it was more or less possible; now his life
was not his alone. In the last reckoning he would be called to account for his
life alone and the future would judge him as though he were single; yet, if he
lived the life of his choice, other lives would be disarranged. Exactly how
much this opposition implied, the future would not be able to understand. It would know only as much as could be
understood from inference.
Half
of Tolstoy’s life was passed in an inferno because his life-purpose did not
agree with the life-purposes of others. When he felt death near he threw off
his hesitation and struck out into the life that was his alone. Before he died
he won through. If he had not done it he would have been defeated for all time.
In Gandhiji there is no hesitation, Not only does he face suffering himself for
what is dear to him, he makes others suffer also. The number
of his close relatives has grown by degrees from five to five or ten lakhs, and in course of time may number four hundred
millions. Gandhiji has the strength of soul to drag them along with him but Binu had not enough strength of mind to put to the test
what he thought true with only five others.
The
fact that saved him is that the peasant is not only a peasant,
he is also a human being. The Ramayana and Mahabharata give him
pleasure even though the writers were not peasants among peasants; they neither
heard nor sang the song of peasant life. The coal-miner is not a cowherd; yet
the dalliance of Radha and
Binu had always wanted human life in its
entirety, in all its guises, to find a place in literature. Let its full and
complete music be heard! Of the lives of kings and royalty in general there has
been enough, too much, and enough also of aristocratic life. There has also
been a great deal of what is spoken of as middle class life or its lack of
life. Other people exist who have a beauty of their own, a special melody, a delicious flavour. They may not
be the losers if their acquaintance is not made and they are not introduced
into literature, for they are not over-anxious to read. But we will lose, we
who have learnt to read and read to learn. Why should our writers deprive us of
them? Why should they not taste life as a whole and give us a taste of it? When
the Ramayana and Mahabharata were written there was an excuse;
the reading public of the day was not large. Can there be any excuse today?
There
is none. Yet enquiry will reveal that the lives our poets lead are confined and
arid. Many of them, like Binu, have the
urge without the strength. Tolstoy is the representative writer of
the present day. And the fact that he found the strength to make the plunge in
the end is significant.
Then
what is the answer? The answer is the birth of hundreds of writers like
Is
Binu was one of those too
impatient to wait for the birth of
Binu himself tried to do
this sort of thing in his later life. He has not been able to accomplish much
yet. If he ever finds the time he will try, to show how it is done. Binu wonders why our modern poets do not turn their
attention in this direction. The greatest literature is based not in the
individual mind but in the group or racial consciousness. Though the individual
has been given freedom in creation, the towers of buildings whose foundations
are not set in the earth are destined to topple, however high into heaven they
may aspire. Why have the Vaishnava lyrics survived so
long when many other creations of those same Vaishnavas
lie in the dust? The answer is that the padavali
takes into consideration the general consciousness of the common people of
the time and builds upon it. The other poetry is not so written. If our modern
poetry were to relate itself to folk poetry it would have a future. And folk
literature also would gain permanence. Literature would be suffused with the
mysterious vitality of folk literature.
Binu had loved the Ramayana
and Mahabharata from infancy. Why are no epics written nowadays? The
question occurred to him now and then. Vyas may not
be alive today, nor Valmiki, but we have Rabindranath
and Sri Aurobindo. Since when has
To go back to our question.
The answer is that an epic is not the creation of any single person. Before
Valmiki gave the Ramayana a permanent form, many others had given it a
transient one. Some of them were charans or
bards, some panegyrists or bhats, some
professional story-tellers or kathaks, some
grandmothers or aunts putting children to sleep with bedtime stories. The Ramayana
is, so to speak, the creation of a whole nation. So is the Mahabharata. To
say so is not to belittle the genius of Vyas or of
Valmiki. Not to say so is to leave unsolved the riddle of the creation of an
epic. There are no epics today because modern nations,
do not do things in an epic way. No tale nor
collection of tales comparable to the Ramayana and Mahabharata has
wide currency. There is only the dalliance of
Then
shall we give up all hope of an epic? No, the individual must do what he can.
Tolstoy gave an epic to