REVIEWS
The
Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene. (Heinemann, London.
Price 9s. 6d.)
THE
Penguin New Writing published a couple of years ago (Nos. 27 & 28),
an article by John Hampson, entitled “Movements in the Underground” which
examined exhaustively and with correct critical appraisal what present-day
English writers were making of the shadier side of life and society. I was
struck with the scope and sweep of the subject, its originality, the variety in
its one-ness, and when Mr. Hampson came out to India early this year I had
occasion to meet him here, in Madras, and during the times we met, listen to
many of his illuminating criticisms of the works of contemporary English
novelists, and among them those of Graham Greene. Greene, I knew, both as a novelist
and as a writer of travel books, having read some of his novels, Rumour at
Nightfall, Stamboul Train, A Gun for Sale, Brighton Rock, The Power and the
Glory and Lawless Roads, a travelogue. “Graham Greene,” observes Mr.
Hampson, “one of the most important of the younger generation of novelists,
employs the sinister aspect of life in order to point a moral. Greene is in a
class apart from most of the writers in this genre, since his approach is based
on certain spiritual beliefs. He is a Catholic, and this results in a stand
which gives his work authority, direction, and purpose. One may challenge or
reject his viewpoint, of course, but his novels, while embracing the tenets of
his faith, have valid qualities which make them important.”
The
Heart of the Matter, Greene’s latest novel, is
red hot stuff. The scene is the African Coast with British Administration as
the hero. Among the characters are a Chief of Police, an elderly soft-hearted
man with much of his softness for the natives; his wife who is devoted to
poetry and hence is distrusted by the rest of her race; and the inevitable
third party–a young girl, one of those rescued from a torpedoed ship, parted
from her husband who is lost, her honeymoon coming to a sudden, tragic end. The
Chief of Police, so good, so human, so soft-hearted, is drawn to the girl; he
betrays his wife but continues to love her and also love the girl; and
unwavering, above these two to whom he gives his love, in his love of God. It
is a bitter world in which the forces of evil are abroad, with a darkness that
has the quality of a blinding effulgence; only by implication, by suggestion,
is manifest, like little stellar gleams, the benign, the protective love of
God. The Chief of Police is a man of goodwill and “only the man of goodwill,”
says Greene, “carries always in his heart the capacity for damnation.” Have you
ever thrown a stone at a pane of glass and seen and felt it shattering to stars
and arcs with sounds of a most agonising crack and tinkle? If you have not, do
it, just to realise the style and manner of Graham Greene. It cuts, it slashes;
it also soothes and saves. By the choice of epithet as well as image, by the
selection and correlation of mood and movement, Graham Greene reveals a
superlatively integrated mind, burning with religious faith, eternal in its
search for destiny and spiritual fulfillment, with deliberate speed, majestic
instancy.
Yama
and Yami, by Manjeri S. Isvaran (S. Viswanathan, Central
Art Press, 14, Singanna Naick Street, Madras. Price 12 as.)
MANJERI
S. ISVARAN has established himself today as a noted Indo-anglian not only
finding prominent mentions of his work in encyclopedias of literature but
having been read out also on the BBC. If it is needless to introduce him to the
readers of Triveni, it is also difficult for one who has been ‘twin’
with him to bestow praise on him.
Isvaran
has made his mark both as a poet and as a short story writer. Though to a world
less given to reading poetry, he has more often, especially recently, come with
his stories, it is his essential poetic spirit that he has presented us through
his stories; in some of the shorter ones among these, he has merely done
prose-poems.
Yama
and Yami, dainty reprint from Swatantra is, like
his Sivaratri, wrought out of the golden ore of ancient Indian lore.
Yama and Yami, twin issues of Sun, brother and sister, prime progenitors of
human race, Day and Night, the spirit of the dead beyond and that of those
still alive here, is a legend-complex of Indo-Iranian antiquity; the meanings
of the myth had become somewhat indistinct even in the vedic times. In Rik X. 10, we find the brother and sister in
dialogue, the brother remonstrating against the love of the sister; the Rita
and Anrita, right and wrong, of the incest from which the brother
gently dissuades the eager sister, is a moral hymn for man’s guidance; as a
cosmogonic myth, however, the incest of this primeval twin Yama-Yami is as
inevitable a symbolism as that of Prajapati and his daughter.
To
his version of this old vedic dialogue, Isvaran has added a significant
epilogue, tagging on to the vedic legend the story of the origin of the great
river Yamuna, who is also sister of Yama and daughter of Surya. It is the
tearful Yami, sorrowing for her unyielding brother who had gone away, that
flows out as the dark Yamuna. The sister of Kausika Visvamitra similarly
transformed herself into the river Kausiki for the good of the world. Rivers
are not merely the sources of our sustenance but the symbols of the flowing current
of life itself. Yami-Yama yearning here for the Yama beyond is the eternal
longing of the living here for one-ness with the One there, above life and
death.
Theendathan, Rendered
into Tamil by K. Ganesh from the Original English Novel, Untouchable, by
Mulk Raj Anand. (Pudumai Padippaham Ltd., Karaikudi. Price Rs. 3-12 as.)
DR.
MULK RAJ ANAND is one of the few Indian writers in English who have had a
sympathetic hearing both in our country and in England. Social life in India affords
an EI Dorado of interest and profit to the amateur writer and the master
craftsman alike, and in this it is as easy to be futile for the one as to be
preachy and pedantic for the other. Happily, Dr. Anand has not been guilty of
putting the fly of propaganda in the jam of his creative work. Untouchable was
first introduced to the British public by Mr. E. M. Forster of whom an eminent
literary critic remarked: “For knowing India, having taste in literature, and
being artistically incorruptible, Mr. Forster is a welcome intermediary between
ourselves and an author whose work might easily have escaped attention.” I know
of no Indian writer who had been benefited more soundly from criticism of his
English contemporaries, nor of one who had made, as Dr. Anand has, such
wonderful strides between novel and novel: Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves
and A Bud, The Village, Across the Black Waters, The Big Heart.
The
whole action of Untouchable is fitted into one day; this might suggest a
certain artificial forcing of the plot but Dr. Anand has, with considerable
skill, treated his material in such a way that the events seem perfectly
convincing. The story centres round Bakha, a young ‘untouchable’ of eighteen
who started to clean latrines at the tender age of six, but dreamed of becoming
a Sahib, watching the life of the soldiers in barracks. I am quoting from the
original which is before me while reading through the translation: “He (Bakha)
didn’t like his home, his street, his town, because he had been to work at the
Tommies’ barracks and obtained glimpses of another world, strange and
beautiful; he had grown out of his native shoes into the ammunition boots he
had secured as a gift. And with this and other strange exotic items of dress he
had built up a new world which was commendable, if for nothing else, because it
represented a change from the old ossified order and the stagnating conventions
of the life to which he was born.”
Bakha accidentally polluting a high-caste Hindu;
Bakha approaching the porch of a temple into which he has no entry; Bakha
smouldering with rebellion when he learns of a priest’s attempt to seduce his
young sister; Bakha coming into contact with the enlightening tenets of an
English missionary–all these are recounted with a candour which doesn’t wince
at the many dreary details and filthy realities of a scavenger’s life. It is a
story told effortlessly, and the telling produces the effect of art the
authenticity of which there is no gainsaying. Mr. K. Ganesh has done a good job
of it; he never lets down the original, at the same time he is not unduly
obsessed with his responsibility. We look forward with anticipatory delight to
the Tamil version of Coolie, another of Dr. Anand’s novels, which the
Publishers promise in, a preface to Untouchable.
Abhedavadam,
Rendered into Tamil by Thi. Ja. Ra. from the Original
English “Bolshevism”–a Chapter in Chats Behind Bars, by Sri C.
Rajagopalachariar. (Shakti Karyalayam, Royapettah, Madras. Price Re.
1.)
TROUBLES
in the history of man had arisen quite a number of times when
he forgot that he was related to his neighbour by bonds of labour. The thought
that every piece of bread he ate was a product of the sweated labour of many
never occurred to him. His ambition for competition is his inveterate disease,
and his pathetic struggle for amassing wealth and winning power deprives him of
all inherent sweetness. The dual nature in man is perplexing. To cite an
example, we find him cooperating with his neighbour when the action in which he
is involved brings him no loss. But when the question of denying to himself
certain things which would serve the needs of the people as a whole is put
before him he has no answer to offer. He has not cultivated that love to share
and possess the products of human labour in common with others. He forgets that
everyone is a labourer and no one has the natural right to deny the other what
it is in his power to give. We talk of Division of Labour. We must see whether
there is equal distribution of the things which are produced.
From
the day of the Sermon on the Mount to the day of the Russian Revolution, man’s
political, social, and economic evolution had been through several isms.
In this century the various states of the world have various political ideals
for purposes of administration and international relationship. Though a few of
us have ceased to be nomads, the predatory instinct is still in us, the greed
to aggrandise. Imperialism wears the apparel of democracy, democracy resembles
an association of an intellectual oligarchy, socialism has a thousand faces
looking far into eternity, and the energy of the black-market deities nourishes
itself on these isms.
Sri
C. Rajagopalachariar in these lectures teaches us how to live our life, how to
know liberty, and how to find happiness. It is only when everyone of us becomes
fully conscious of our duty to every other being peace could be attained. We
must shed our self-centredness and lust for power. He wants man to evolve not
through revolution, but through non-violent means. Sri C. Rajagopalachariar’s
approach makes one think of the words of the celebrated Socialist, Beatrice
Webb: “The good life at which the citizen aims is the life that is beneficial
to all his fellowmen, irrespective of age or sex, religion or race.”
Sri
Thi. Ja. Ra. needs no introduction to the Tamil public. As a creative writer
and as a journalist he has made a first class reputation. In the present
translation he lives up to that reputation by wielding a style, so much his
own, simple, chatty, and unobtrusively informative.