This book is a learner’s escort to world mythology, since it cannot conceivably contain the whole. The author gives you a taste that makes you crave fThis book is a learner’s escort to world mythology, since it cannot conceivably contain the whole. The author gives you a taste that makes you crave for more. This investigation of myths is also an appraisal of the world. We notice that each section contains myths from a different geographic region, so the reader is at liberty to travel around in his own way. Could’ve been a little more in-depth. But overall it is an entertaining read. Recommended. ...more
A word on the title at the outset. The title, assimilated from Benedictus de Spinoza, better known as Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, is an indication to theA word on the title at the outset. The title, assimilated from Benedictus de Spinoza, better known as Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, is an indication to the leitmotif of the work which segregates it from other autobiographical narratives. As far as Spinoza was concerned, human bondage consisted of centering one’s being on an insufficient object that is to say on something short-lived and ephemeral rather than on something permanent. Freedom came only when one was able to control the lusts of the flesh and the weakness of the spirit and attach oneself to some permanent good. And this is precisely the passage that Philip Carey must follow in his youth. He falls into a gruesomely corrupting bondage to Mildred, knowing incessantly that she is a loutish prostitute. He is, nonetheless, too irresolute to liberate himself from his craving for her until he has grieved significantly. Mildred practically ruins his life on more than a few times. However, bit by bit Philip’s soul is eliminated of her sway. He regains control of his desires. His love for Sally Athelny at the culmination of the tome is perchance less ardent than his adoration for Mildred. Nonetheless, it is a saner and healthier emotion, one that will allow him to build an upright life rather than destroy himself. Thus, this novel is principally a success story in which the hero, after many prosecutions and hardships, habitually voluntary, emerges joyful and in general unhurt. The ideas that have influenced Philip finally evolve into an stylish, judicious cynicism about life and human motives. From every one of his love affairs, starting with Miss Wilkinson and ending in marriage to Sally, Philip learns something, mostly how to endure the torture of being in love with someone who derides or at best snubs him and how to unhinge himself eventually from the fetters of such love. To conclude, much akin to the tradition of ‘David Copperfield’, and ‘Sons and Lovers’, this tome is concerned with the growing pains — emotional, intellectual, and spiritual — of a youth on the way to maturity. It is a highly autobiographical record not only of the young Maugham’s life and loves but of his intellectual expansion as well, ranging from the miserable religious nurture in his uncle’s vicarage through the aromatic ethical autonomy of Heidelberg, the nonconformist life in Paris with all its illogicalities and catastrophes, and to end with the coming to grasps with the implication of life in London and in the kindhearted, no-nonsense home of the Athelny family. There’s little contradicting that Maugham is one of the best-loved English storytellers. And Maugham’s youth was uncannily analogous to Philip’s. Maugham studied at King’s School, Canterbury, and went to Heidelberg in preference to the more old-fashioned Oxford. A noticeable stammer produced the psychological outcome on Maugham that Philip’s clubfoot had on him. Introverted and desolate and miserable from inchoate tuberculosis, Maugham spent an anxious youth searching for his vocation. Like Philip, Maugham became a qualified physician, but he always desired to write. If this novel is expressively less piercing than ‘Sons and Lovers’, or hypothetically less thrilling and audacious than Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’, it is nevertheless a confidently crafted, well-balanced, and recurrently perceptive treatment of the great theme of youth’s ‘emerging’. In the numerous decades since its publication it has been widely and consistently popular. Read it once in your lifetime, at least. I guess I’ve read it over a dozen times, and everytime, it has ended up producing a different kind of emotion. ...more
Must one undergo suffering for his Art? Discomfort and affection, they both produce art, as it means the artist is honest and accurate to themselves, Must one undergo suffering for his Art? Discomfort and affection, they both produce art, as it means the artist is honest and accurate to themselves, unvarnished naked of appearances, reduced to spirits and genuine. In the beauty and spitefulness of human experiences we instinctively make out what is proper. Let us recall Spanish artist Víctor Mira. He said: “Art is not reasonable. It does not submit, it does not listen, neither willingly nor out of fear, to someone who is not a virtuoso. Just as neither suffering nor pain will let themselves be governed by incapable artists. In order to be art, pain must have something that haunts the mind, it must be able to be thought out and frozen. On the contrary, it is an automatic reflex that responds to suffering or pain, a shock absorber. (…) An artist should not have any other goal or concern than the art they had taken upon themselves or, rather, than being an empty space in which art can happen.” Rooted in the life and times of the great French painter Gauguin, this novel is Maugham’s interpretation of the self-interest and dedication that go into the making of a great artist. His hero, Charles Strickland, is a stockbroker with a wife and two children, who becomes obsessed by the longing to paint. He forsakes his job and family and settles down to an unprincipled, poverty-stricken life in Paris where he pitilessly dogs and chases his art. In the course he drives the wife of his friend and aficionado Dirk Stroeve to suicide and immigrates to Tahiti where he in due course goes blind and dies, leaving the walls of his aboriginal hut covered with, paintings of great grandeur. What does this all mean? Misery and agony that are not strained and inferred by a creative mind practically do not comprise anything, much less can they be turned into art. The artist, Mira thought, must be adroit in separating from their own discomfort so as to perceive it as an entity. Only then will they be able to look at agony without suffering it and, free of their passions, will they accomplish in placing themselves in that quiet “empty space” that allows them to observer everything and produce art. Not every pain engenders art, and suffering and pain are transient, capricious. Art has instead the proficiency to be everlasting. It is this conception of immutability that is the message of this book. ...more
ভোলা বাবার stature, তাঁর swag, তাঁর উপস্থিতি এক্কেবারে আলাদা।
কল্পনা করুন এমন একজন বাবার, যিনি এক্কেবারে নির্লিপ্ত। স্ত্রী এবং ছেলেমেয়েরা নিজের নিজেরভোলা বাবার stature, তাঁর swag, তাঁর উপস্থিতি এক্কেবারে আলাদা।
কল্পনা করুন এমন একজন বাবার, যিনি এক্কেবারে নির্লিপ্ত। স্ত্রী এবং ছেলেমেয়েরা নিজের নিজের স্ব স্ব পথে গমন করছে।
প্রত্যেকের সমস্যা এবং অভিযোগের incidence এক্কেবারে ভিন্ন। মানুষটা সব শোনেন কিন্তু। স্রেফ react করেননা বিশেষ। আমার বাবাও ঠিক এমন ছিলেন। সকালের খবরের কাগজ হাতে উপবিষ্ট বাবার কানের সামনে অভিযোগ করে চলেছেন আমার মা নীলিমা চট্টোপাধ্যায়।
আর আমরা দুই ভাইবোন, ততোধিক উচ্চকিত স্বরে নিজেদের case অনর্গল present করে চলেছি।
শেষে বাবা একবার কাগজের দিকে চোখ রেখে একটা হুঙ্কার ছাড়তেন। সকলে তটস্থ হয়ে যেতাম। 'জানোয়ারের দল' বলে বাবা একটা সাংঘাতিক হুঙ্কার দিতেন। চমকে উঠতাম আমরা। অন্তত আমার 'ঐটা' technically 'শর্ট' হয়ে যেত।
ভোলাবাবাও এমনটাই করতেন মাইরি।
মোদ্দা কথা এটুকুই যে শিক্ষকদের থেকে শিব সম্পর্কে basic text তিনটি :
১) শিব পুরাণ (বহু ভাষায় পাওয়া যায় , গীতা প্রেসেরটা পড়বেন আগে) ;
২)লিঙ্গ পুরাণ (এটিও বেশ অনেক প্রকাশক এনেছেন। তবে গীতা প্রেসের Original version সবচেয়ে উমদা, অসামান্য); আর অবশ্যই
৩) স্কন্দ পুরাণ। (একটু একঘেয়ে শোনালেও এই বইকেও গীতা প্রেস সর্বোৎকৃষ্ট আদলে এনেছেন!! হিন্দি সিল্কহে নাও গুবলুবেড়াল! (একজনকেই এই নামে ডাকি! সে বুঝে নেবে! Original version সবচেয়ে উমদা, অসামান্য
এই বইয়ের লেখক উপরোক্ত মূল তিনটি বইয়ের সবটুকুই এনেছেন নিজের লেখার মধ্যে।
আরো specifically বলতে গেলে, আমার নিজের জন্ম একটা সোমবারে। আর সোম হল শিবের বার। সোমেই উপচে পড়ে অনেকানেক শিবধাম।
বেদের শিব, কল্পনার শিব আর ভক্তির, সমর্পনের সবগুলো শিব আমদুধে মিশে একাকার মিশ্রণ এই বইয়ে।
লেখিকার কপালে চুমু খেলুম। তার গাল টিপে দিলুম।
আর তার কান মুলে তাকে এই encyclopedic কাজের পরবর্তী ভল্যুম নিয়ে আসার আদেশ দিলুম। ...more
So many personal memories with this book!! My English instructor came from a very esteemed family of teachers. His grandfather’s father down to the maSo many personal memories with this book!! My English instructor came from a very esteemed family of teachers. His grandfather’s father down to the man himself were a devoted lot. And hence, it was no wonder that in 1998 he would highly recommend this book to me. This novel is a subtle acknowledgment to Hilton's schoolmaster father. It abides moderately on the past of Mr. Chipping, adored by generations of schoolboys at Brookfield, a trivial English public school. Sitting before his hearth at the ripe age of eighty-five, Mr. Chips, as the boys have christened him, understands that his superficially monotonous life has not been misused. Never very brilliant, he has taught Latin in an undistinguished school. But he loved and married the beautiful Katherine Bridges, who died catastrophically in childbirth merely a few years later. He survived the war years, giving his students the mettle to face a world absolutely unlike Brookfield. Grown grumpy and bizarre in his late years, he has nonetheless maintained a custom of mild humanism and grace and politeness in the old school, and this has given value to his life. Penned as a Christmas tale, this novel is a most dazzling sentimental, mawkish recreation of all that is good, long-term and persistent in the English convention. A brilliant, brilliant tome. Most recommended.
টোলকিয়েন এমন জঘন্য presentation করবেন, তার ন্যূনতম ধারণা ছিলনা। একমাত্র মূল চরিত্রকে বাদ দিলে গোটা বইটাই অবিমিশ্র Trash !! আমার নিজেরও খারাপ লাগছে এইটোলকিয়েন এমন জঘন্য presentation করবেন, তার ন্যূনতম ধারণা ছিলনা। একমাত্র মূল চরিত্রকে বাদ দিলে গোটা বইটাই অবিমিশ্র Trash !! আমার নিজেরও খারাপ লাগছে এই শব্দগুলো টাইপ করতে। কিন্তু এই বই এক্কেবারে হাল আমলের হিমাদ্রিকিশোর দাশগুপ্ত রেপ্লিকা!! অসামান্যতম ফালতু মাইরি। ফ্রি পেলেও পড়বেন না। সময় বড় মূল্যবান। ...more
In the romantic tradition, Hudson is fixated with the interconnection of all nature. In this tome under review, Rima is part bird, part girl, speakingIn the romantic tradition, Hudson is fixated with the interconnection of all nature. In this tome under review, Rima is part bird, part girl, speaking, or rather chirruping, in birdlike tenors, unintelligible to mortals. Totally at one with nature, she is powerless to comprehend how man can loot the ‘Green Mansions’, which are her home. The heartbreak of the book is that she herself dies outrageously at the hands of barbarians, who, although too live meticulously with nature, fail outright to see any advanced spiritual meaning in it. Rima’s impact on Abel is that of a commanding natural force. Coming to the jungle as a city-bred sophisticated individual, sickened with the life of politics in which he has fiddled with unhappy results, disheartened with his early search for gold, Abel is disposed for a conversion to the gospel of nature. Initially, he misguidedly deliberates that he has found the happy natural life with Runi’s Indians. However, in the sequence of the plot, beginning with Kua-ko’s suggestion that he kill Rima, Abel’s approach toward these primitives begins to get acerbic. After the tragedy of Rima is thoroughly played out, Abel, half-distraught, wreaks blood-stained vengeance on his past friends and finds himself reverting to barbarism as a hermit. He does not truly come to grips with nature and himself, up until he deserts his aboriginal hut and returns to civilization. What he emerges with is, a kind of impassiveness entrenched in a philosophical approval of man’s rather scrawny and feeble place in the natural scheme of things. Abel’s final recognition of the hard facts of existence, in addition to Hudson’s intense surveillance of nature rendered in classically simple prose, does much to redeem a novel whose luxurious idealization has proved commonly alien to the present spirit. The contemporary outlook towards a novelist such as Hudson is perchance most excellently articulated by Ernest Hemingway in ‘The Sun Also Rises’. One of the characters in Hemingway’s tome hankers to go to South America after reading ‘The Purple Land’, which, Hemingway says, “is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described…” Give ‘GREEN MANSIONS’ a go. Albeit, predominantly meant for radical and forward-thinking reader, this book will pose piercing questions for the untrained reader as well. ...more
ধন্যবাদ আপনাকে শরণ্যা। আপনার সুবাদেই এই কবিকে চিনেছি। অ্যান লাউটারবাখ।
পড়লাম তাঁর কাব্যগ্রন্থ UNDER THE SIGN!
বিশ্বাস করবেন , এই কিছুদিন আগেই কবি সৌম্ধন্যবাদ আপনাকে শরণ্যা। আপনার সুবাদেই এই কবিকে চিনেছি। অ্যান লাউটারবাখ।
পড়লাম তাঁর কাব্যগ্রন্থ UNDER THE SIGN!
বিশ্বাস করবেন , এই কিছুদিন আগেই কবি সৌম্যনারায়ণ আচার্য বিরচিত 'কবিতার জন্মে' পড়ছিলাম :
হুবহু একই বিবেক পেলাম. The poet there, writes:
একটি কবিতার জন্মে একটা গল্পেরও জন্ম হয়, নানান ছন্দ থাকে সেই গল্পে এবং যা, শেষ হয়েও হতে চায় না।
একটি কবিতার জন্মে একটা গানেরও জন্ম হয়, নানান সুর থাকে সেই গানে যার মূর্ছনায় ভেসে যাই আমরা।
একটি কবিতার জন্মে একটা জীবন পূর্ণতা পেতে থাকে, নানান রং থাকে সেই কবিতায় সেই রং গায়ে মেখে সুন্দর হয় সবাই
একটা কবিতা জন্মে জীবনে, গল্প ও গানের প্রবেশ হয়, যোগ হয় অনেক পংক্তি ও ছন্দ যা কেউ কেড়ে নিতে পারে না।
তাই অ্যান যখন তাঁর Ugly Sonnet কাব্যে লেখেন :
Shame vanquishes the old school. Truck stop rape. A or the women
falls or fall under the wheels of chatter around truck stop rape.
Besieged by glare; the untidy aperture of historical accounting for
truck stop rape. Flare of paper in wind. Some sirens, some typing on small
handheld instruments. Minimal delay but very little inclusion beyond
truck stop rape. Everywhere she saw eyes looking back into the harbor
where there had been an accident and no chance to escape the truck. Stop rape.....
আশ্চর্য হই না আমি।
কবিতার ভাষা খুঁজে পাই তাঁর 'THE TEARS OF EROS' কাব্যে। তিনি বলছেন:
after Bataille A format thrown from purchase exaggerated, a wish-bloodied sign, disoriented comfort, a reversal played as habit and fortuitous, a gaze as if the image could make its way into desire’s unmade bed there configured by ghosts.......
কবির শব্দের সমাবেশ অনেক সময়ই হয়তো পাঠককে অপ্রস্তুত করবে। অবশ্য অচিরেই ওই বিহ্বলতা কাটিয়ে উঠে পাঠক আবিষ্কার করবেন কতকগুলি ব্যক্তিগত পিছুটান কবির কল্পনার উৎসে মৌরসিপাট্টা করে বসে আছে। তাই তো অ্যানের গভীর নিশুতিতে একাকিত্ব আর তলিয়ে যাওয়ার নিরুপায় আওয়াজ সহবাস করে এক নতুন দিগন্তের সূর্যোদয়ের আশায়।
'A Fold in Time' কবিতায় তিনি লিখছেন:
Not to swerve off the road dust runs in the family of the dream speaking into the sheet shrouded in you in which you shortly after the curtains addressed the flood the ratio were detained, saying repeated frequently need to want spoken near the foxed copy of Yeats under the stained eaves had been abused thematically after the earrings.......
এরকম শব্দেরই বশে কবির কল্পভাষ্য ও প্রতিমাগুলি স্বাধিকার পায়।
চেনা ইংরেজি কবিতার very well known rhythm, অভ্যস্ত ছন্দের বাইরে একটু আঁকাবাঁকা, slightly curved পথে যেতে চায়।
আধুনিক মার্কিন কবিতার নানাবিধ অনুষঙ্গ ও উপকরণ গড়ে তোলে কবির বিরোধাভাস। What we call 'self-negation in verse'.
অবচেতনের ঝোঁকে এমনকী surrealistic আমেজও তৈরি হয়।
আরো মনে হয় এই আলোচকের, তবে কি আধুনিক মার্কিন কবিতার আধুনিকতায়, যার সেরার সেরা আইকন হলেন Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath কিংবা Robert Frost বা Louise Glück অথবা Mary Oliver'কে উত্তরাধুনিক কবিতার পরাকাষ্ঠা Charles Olson, Paul Hoover, Michael Palmer, Allen Ginsberg ইত্যাদিকে মেলাবার একটা সম্ভাবনা?
মোদ্দা কথা যেটুকু বুঝলাম তা এটাই যে 'সব ঠাঁই তাঁর ঘর আছে' অ্যান লাউটারবাখ মহাশয়ার কাব্যে। ফ্রস্টের জগৎ তাঁরও জগৎ। আবার গিন্সবার্গ, হুভার , পামারের জগৎটাও তাঁর একান্ত নিজস্ব।
তার জগৎ, তাঁর কাব্যিক চিন্তনের plateau দেশ ও কালের প্রতিম��য় সেই দ্বান্দ্বিক চেতনার মহাকাব্যিক বিস্তার-অনুকরণে নয়, কালোচিত সমৃদ্ধিতে, পুনর্নির্মাণে।
আমার মতানুযায়ী সেই জগৎ থেকে, পূর্বসূরি ও সমধর্মাদের সকল রকম অনিশ্চয়তা কাটিয়ে, তিনি Maya Angelou নামক এক বেগানা চিন্তকের উত্তরাধিকার অনুভব করেন রক্তে!!
অ্যান, কবি হিসেবে চূড়ান্ত বোহেমিয়ান। সাংঘাতিক বাউন্ডুলে। তাই মনে আসে আর এক বাউন্ডুলে কবি সুকুমার চৌধুরীর একটি কবিতা। কবিতার শিরোনাম : 'রহস্য' !
এই কবিতা দিয়েই রিভ্যু সমাপ্ত হোক :
"একজন শিল্পী জানেন অনুভবের কোনো অবয়ব নেই
তিনি তাকে তরলতর করতে চান তিনি তাকে জলের মতো ব্যবহার করেন
মূর্ত হলে খুশি হন না'হলে বিমূর্ত থাকেন
একা ভারী একা আর তাঁর মুখে লেগে থাকে বিষণ্ণ হাসির রহস্য!!"
পুনরায় ধন্যবাদ শরণ্যা। আপনার পাঠসমৃদ্ধিকে কুর্নিশ জানাই।...more
Have you read Andre Gide’s ‘Les Faux-monnayeurs’ aka ‘The Counterfeiters’? Remember that very unforgettable punchline in the blurb? It says: ‘a novel Have you read Andre Gide’s ‘Les Faux-monnayeurs’ aka ‘The Counterfeiters’? Remember that very unforgettable punchline in the blurb? It says: ‘a novel about individual development in a society structured by deceit.’ Point Counter Point, by the same token is a phantasmagoric novel much the same. “Novel of ideas,” Philip Quarles writes in his notebook. “The character of each personage must be implied, as far as possible, in the ideas of which he is the mouthpiece. .. . The great defect of the novel of ideas is that it’s a made-up affair.. . . Living with monsters becomes rather tiresome in the long run.” Huxley’s book is precisely like the one Philip is contemplating penning down. And like ‘Les Faux-monnayeurs’, Huxley’s work is built as a novel within a novel. Indeed, it is a novél about a novelist writing a novel about a novelist — as involuted as a Rubic’s cube. Huxley moves swiftly from one set of characters to another, all of whose lives sometime encroach on each other. And in the process, he applies the contrapuntal techniques of music, particularly the refrain and variations form, to fiction. The foremost theme of the book is sexual desire and unfulfillment. The disparities are played by the unalike characters. Thus Walter loves Lucy downright despondently. Just as Marjorie him despairingly. Elinor loves her husband but is eager to be courted and seduced by Webley who really loves merely his own power. Spandrell’s affection for his mother has fermented into a universal abhorrence of women, political nihilism, and self-destructiveness. Burlap tries to hide his deep sexual hunger with devoutness; Lucy’s father has channeled sex into science; and old John Bid Lake is acquiescently licentious but cannot face demise. Only Mark Rampion, whose character and ideas are rooted in those of Huxley’s comrade D. H. Lawrence, gives ‘sexual congress’ its appropriate place in life. Speaking through the characters as they interact with each other, Huxley gives the reader a panoramic view of the ideas and mores of the London sophisticates ¡n the years just following World War I. Rootless and overcivilized, their lives consist of a series of usually sordid or ludicrous erotic adventures which usually finish forlornly. For all its nihilistic waggishness, knowledge, and satiric puncturing, of society’s hypocrisies and superficialities, Point Counter Point attains a genuine emotional power rare in satire. Although most of the characters are indeed the “monsters” Philip Quarles predicted they would have to be, they are captivating monsters. The play of wittiness and philosophies in this enormously learned novel is continuously enticing to the attentive, urbane reader. A thinking reader's novel. Give it a go. ...more
For starters, ‘Decline and Fall’ is not simply a comedy about the decline and fall of Paul Pennyfeather’s fortunes. It records, by strong insinuation,For starters, ‘Decline and Fall’ is not simply a comedy about the decline and fall of Paul Pennyfeather’s fortunes. It records, by strong insinuation, the obliteration of outmoded English values in the messy, untidy, disordered and frenzied postwar world. Thus Margot’s grand Tudor home, King’s Thursday has been “modernized” into a dwelling more suitable for machines than for civilized human beings. Captain Grimes has intentionally exploited the English tradition of the “old school tie” for criminal ends. The young aristocrats in the novel are either heartless amateurs like Alastair Trumpington or wonderful boys like Peter Beste-Chetwynde given to drink too early in life. The social flexibility that Waugh detests is embodied by Margot’s appearance at the Llanabba fete accompanied by a Negro gigolo. This tome is by no means a traditional satire. Such satire implies the author’s belief in the possibility of some kind of improvement in conditions as he sees them. No such inference can be found in Waugh’s early novels. Life is prejudicial to Paul Pennyfeather; the world is outrageous and muddled, but nothing can be done about it. For all its wit, this tome is principally glum and cynical — a black comedy of a kind, infrequent in English fiction. Waugh simply laughs hollowly at the curious doings of the world about him. His ingenious and outrageous incidents and examples of human depravity force us to laugh with him. In a way, this book can be seen as the foil in fiction of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Both are specifically observed pictures of a world bereaved of traditional values, searching — not very hard or efficaciously —f or something to substitute them. Lastly, if I might be allowed to add, contrary to Waugh’s claims that he is not an unpretentious satirist because satire implies a static set of social values which he has not found in his world, his novels are most recurrently discoursed as satires of chiefly acerbic and spiteful wit. They are not, undeniably, about a steady society but about one which is disintegrating before Waugh’s charmed, if perturbed, eyes. Give it a go. Dark but enjoyable....more
And I had this book for such a long long time in my TBR. But only when I take a breather from daily drudgery and withdra953 pages of absolute bliss!!
And I had this book for such a long long time in my TBR. But only when I take a breather from daily drudgery and withdraw into the study-leave cocoon, do my eyes fall upon this tome!
I do not have many words to write in this review, other than that definitive portion from Doctor Who, where the Doctor and Amy take Vincent Van Gogh - who fought hard to sell a single painting in his own lifetime - to a Paris art Gallery in the year 2010.
The Doctor asks a celebrated art critic about his opinion of Van Gogh.
Just read the excerpt:
Doctor: “But I just wondered, between you and me, in 100 words, where do you think Van Gogh rates in the history of art?”
Critic: “Well... big question. But, to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly, the most popular great painter of all time, the most beloved.
His command of colour, the most magnificent.
He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty.
Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world...
No one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again.
To my mind, that strange, wild man, who roamed the fields of Provence, was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived….”
Nothing more to say. Just give this book a go....more
ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! কেঁদে কেঁদে একটা বেদমন্থনসম সমুদ্র ভাসিয়ে দিতে পারি। লোকটাকে বেঁচেছি। And truভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! ভ্যান গো !! কেঁদে কেঁদে একটা বেদমন্থনসম সমুদ্র ভাসিয়ে দিতে পারি। লোকটাকে বেঁচেছি। And trust me, তার জীবনের প্রত্যেকটি আঙ্গিকে তাঁর সঙ্গে বেঁচেছি। শিল্পী হিসেবে অসামান্য তো বটেই , মানুষ হিসেবেও অসামান্যতম। শিল্পী না হলেও, স্রেফ একজন সাধারণ মানুষ হলেও , ওঁর মনীষা , ওঁর presence , জগতের সর্বকালের সর্বসেরা হতো। পাতি বাঙালিদের বলছি: এক ছটাক বিদ্যাপতির সঙ্গে বঙ্কিমকে মেশান। , তারপর অবন ঠাকুরের খোলা হাওয়ার সঙ্গে পার্সেন্টেজ অনুযায়ী নন্দলাল আর মেঠো রামকিঙ্করকে ��েশান। এই সবকিছুর প্রোডাক্ট ভ্যান গো !!
আর্ট হিস্ট্রি জানো অনসূয়া ? সেটা তো জানতে হবে। শিল্পের ইতিহাস শিখতে হবে তো। সেটা একটু পড়াশোনা করো।
আমি আজকে আসি ?
এই বইটা পড়বে পারলে। তার আগে শিল্প নিয়ে একটু পড়াশোনা করো।
Art আর তার ইতিহাস না জানলে সাহিত্যের কিছুই বুঝবে না তুমি।
I do not believe you have. And do not ever, never ever ever test my scholarship Veera. I am your teacher, Have you in fact read this book Veera Basu?
I do not believe you have. And do not ever, never ever ever test my scholarship Veera. I am your teacher, not without reason.
I am seventeen notches higher than where you stand right now. Anyways, give this tome a crude try.
For appetizers, Theobald and Christina Pontifex are unkindly and entertainingly represented by Butler as memorials of satisfaction, arrogance, fabricated religiosity, and hardhearted callousness to their children. In nearly every single specific, they match Butler’s own parents. Butler sees himself partially as Ernest and somewhat as Mr. Overton, the astute, cultured, even-tempered man of comprehensive culture.
And you know what? This tome inaugurates ominously with a long, somewhat tedious account of the early Pontifexes — John and George, Ernest is not even born until Chapter 17. One of Butler’s deepest interests in the story was the question of heredity.
A disciple of the biologist, Lamarck, Butler had numerous philosophies of heredity (at variance with the predominant Darwinian belief of his day) which he desired to discover in this book. One of these ideas is that inborn appearances can skip one or even two generations.
Thus Ernest is involved in carpentry and music, like his great- grandfather John and contrasting his grandfather and father. Since traits can gambol generations, Butler felt that parents and their children may have little in common and thus seldom understand each other.
The book’s entreaty, nonetheless, barely depends on its biological expectations or on its autobiographical principal. Generations of disobedient youths, feeling themselves imprisoned in a domineering home environment, have drawn spiritual assistance and relief from Butler’s energetic battering on the insincerities of parents and the life-denying severities of a puritanical household. The “way of all flesh” is to seek autonomy and self-fulfillment, Butler feels, but too often in practice it is to oppress over the young. Would you beat that shit?
And this book is Butler’s only full-fledged novel. Moreover, the number of years obligatory for its configuration are testimony to the pain it cost him.
This one is one of a number of autobiographical novels which were extremely prevalent in late Victorian and Edwardian England.
I am so so proud of you that you pinned your finger on this one, Veera Basu.
You are just a little notch ahead of Anusua. She has to work out her shit to touch you.
But do not put too small a price on her Veera Bose. She can out-sparkle you, if she chooses to realize who she ‘in fact’ is.
I enjoyed typing these words Veera Athena Basu.
All power to you!! You are everything that I want in a cadet just nearing my limit-Rubicon.
This is your Captain.
And yes, you do get to call me that. Only the ones who pass the final fig-leaf do get to call me that.
I read this novel just the day after I cremated my father. Every page of this book is saturated in my private memories. This tome commences in 1899 anI read this novel just the day after I cremated my father. Every page of this book is saturated in my private memories. This tome commences in 1899 and ends two years later, with a distinguished account of the funeral of Queen Victoria, the great monarch of Forsyteism. Soames Forsyte, anticipating a son to inherit his property, tries to effect a settlement with Irene but merely manages to drive her into the arms of Young Jolyon whose children are now grown up. Irene and Young Jolyon in due course marry and live in the ill-starred house at Robin Hill. They have a son, Jon. In the interim Soames, after his divorce from Irene, marries a French girl, Annette. Instead of giving him the longed- for son, she has a daughter, Fleur. But then again Soames, ever the Man of Property, is able to reflect in pride at the baby’s crib, “By God, this thing was …… his!” This book is far less complicated emotionally and lighter in tone than ‘The Man of Property’. One of the foremost leitmotifs in this book is ‘change’ – change of an old order, the coming in of a new order. It was not as if I had prearranged to read this book on the eve of a personal tragedy. It just happened to fall into my hands. And I embraced it. My entire life was about to change. I had unexpectedly become a different man within a space of two days. That is why the memory is so very penetrating, even to this day. ...more
What does the world seem like to the blind? Now, this question really depends on if one is born blind or goes blind later. If you are born blind, it dWhat does the world seem like to the blind? Now, this question really depends on if one is born blind or goes blind later. If you are born blind, it does not feel like anything. People do not see black.
They see nothing.
To them it is completely normal, as they do not know any other way of life. It is like asking what it feels like to be white, black, or any other race. It just is who you are.
People describing things in terms of hue and shade gives you an idea, but it is still based on your thoughts and not what colour actually is. Say, you know an apple is red. Consequently when they say she is wearing a red shirt, you think apple. However, whether that image is the same red as everyone else sees is immaterial and unimportant. Going blind is different, though. It depends on when you go blind.
The younger you are when you go blind, the easier and more standard it feels.
This mawkish, semi-autobiographical tale is about Dick Heldar, an artist, who wins fame during the fall of Khartoum, but who disastrously begins to lose his vision thanks to a sword wound smarted at the same time. Dick is brought up in England by Mrs. Jennett, a stubborn and religious woman who starves the boy for love. He finds compassion with a fellow orphan, Maisie, who inspires him in his study of art. As a correspondent at Khartoum, Dick sends back sketches of General Gordon’s daring action which (like Kipling’s stories) take England by storm. After the war, however, Dick’s vision begins to nose-dive. The model for what is to be his masterpiece ruins the painting in a fit of disbelief, and Maisie, too, deserts him now that he is going blind. Dick goes to Egypt, where fighting has broken out and purposely exposes him to lethal enemy fire. I cried for an entire day, refused to eat and talk.
You know why? Would you believe Annie Mazumdar? Just a year prior to going blind, my childhood-adolescence instructor, Dr. Biswajeet Chattopadhyay, a Calcutta University Gold Medalist, had recommended this book to me.
আমার লব্ধ জ্ঞানের প্রত্যেকটা অনু-পরমাণু আমার আচার্য্যদের শ্রমের ঋণ। মরে গেলেও ভুলবো না।
আজ আমি যা, তা আমার আচার্য্যদের সম্মিলিত ভালোবাসা ও আশীর্বাদের ফলশ্রুতি।
জীবনেও ভুলবে না অনসূয়া। আমাদের বিগত প্রজন্মের আশিষেই আমাদের বর্তমান গঠিত হয়েছে। ...more
I am so very tempted to quote Conrad’s personal note at the commencement of this book. He writes:
“On approaching the task of writing thiIntroduction:
I am so very tempted to quote Conrad’s personal note at the commencement of this book. He writes:
“On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the first thing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearness to me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and to the mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtained when first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of the war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of an Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world already full of doubts and fears.
The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in this edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having been published in the United States early in the year made it difficult to delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in the thirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter of reality, tragic enough in all conscience, but even more cruel than tragic and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous to think there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community which in the crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressing the truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharp knife at its throat.
The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.”
Critics have called this book, ‘the last of Conrad’s important novels’. The tome is about a disenchanted; Hamletesque Swede christened Axel Heyst, who tries to escape involvement with other human beings and sanctuaries to an island of his own. He becomes involved against his resolve with Lena, a girl being abused by the heavy handed, coarse German hotel keeper, Schomberg. Heyst spirits Lena off to his island but is hunted by Jones, who, like “Gentle man” Brown in Lord Jim, is the purest personification and downright embodiment of evil. In the ensuing battle, Heyst thinks Lena has deceived him to Jones but learns, too late, of her moral conquest in keeping unto death a confidence and faith he had never been capable of returning.
Personal Recollection:
You know, why this novel is a personal favourite of mine Anusua?
I’ll tell you. Your Sir was travelling towards his first posting as a young teacher for a prestigious North Indian University. It was high winter.
As the Jammu Tawi Express was steering its way towards the destination, little did he know what surprise was awaiting him.
Just on his arrival he was informed that the very first class of the Final Year Master’s students that he was to conduct is on a novel that he’s never ever read -- ‘Victory’ by Conrad.
He had checked into his quarters by 8:15 pm. And Oh boy; was it cold!! It was round 3 degrees. Most miserably, had his fat share of warm food and alluring booze. All so appealing!!
The food, the liquor, the warm bed with cozy blankets was all calling him to an early repose. Almost as your new love calls you to a warm, carnal closure….
But he just had around nine and a half hours before his preliminary class. The very first professional class of his career!! A career he wanted to be in, all his life….
He prayed to Goddess Saraswati.
Whenever in trouble he’d chant the back-up mantra, Annie!
“Women in Love stands as one of the central monuments of literary modernism, while Tono-Bungay has remained on the sidelines. Wells himself, with some“Women in Love stands as one of the central monuments of literary modernism, while Tono-Bungay has remained on the sidelines. Wells himself, with some of the blindness of his narrator, seems to have regarded his novel as more conventional than it is. In his preface to a 1925 reissue he called it a ‘novel upon the accepted lines’, and in his Experiment in Autobiography he said he planned it to be ‘a novel, as I imagined it, on Dickens–Thackeray lines’. But a century after its publication, it seems less dated, less limited by its era, than many modernist classics. Its picture of a world shadowed in by anxiety and change in the midst of apparent normality remains vivid and urgent, as does its vision of a society whose wealth is built partly on the imagery of advertising, partly on the exploitation of technology, partly on piratical commerce on an international scale. The ambiguities and uncertainties of its narrative technique retain their unsettling power because Wells never insisted that he was writing in a way that was radically new – and that must therefore grow old when its moment of newness passes. Tono-Bungay is a book that defined its century, while its century scarcely noticed it.” [Introduction to Tono-Bungay -- Edward Mendelson]
Three principal symbols in the book exemplify the theme:
**The first is Bladesover, the great estate on which George is raised. The estate comes to us as a representation of the narrow-minded, stuck-up England of the late 19th century. Bladesover, and the whole system of life implied by its existence, nevertheless has its good points, George realizes. At least it is rooted in tradition and an ordered way of life, not on exploitation and advertising. Lady Drew belonged there, but after her death the estate is taken over by members of the nouveau riche class — unschooled, unrefined people who care about its traditions only since they enhance their own status.
**The second major symbol is the patent medicine, Tono-Bungay. Utterly inconsequential, through saturation advertising it makes a fortune for George and his uncle. Scientific experiment, which Wells felt should be subsidized by the government, is dependent on the financial success or failure of such goods. As the first major satire on modern, advertising techniques, Tono-Bungay is still an effective novel.
**Third and lastly, the mysterious radioactive quap symbolizes the recklessness of imperialism and industrialism, and the plunder of the natural resources of the earth to gratify men’s gluttony. With the purpose of getting this substance, which is nauseating to smell and unsafe to hold, George, who is normally decent and honest, must lie, steal, and even kill. The quap is in conclusion lost — refunded to nature where it always belonged.
Although Wells never preaches and harangues in Tono-Bungay, it is clear that he is abruptly criticizing the vulgar commercialism in the England of his day. Neither the self-destructive snobbery of Bladesover, symbolized by Beatrice’s refusal to marry neither George, nor the aggressive unscrupulousness of the middle class, tradition less and socially unsure of itself, strikes Wells as good.
The aristocracy perishes since it is feeble, blinkered, and self-indulgent. The middle class is rising to take the aristocracy’s place, but its only structure of values is a persistent materialism.
At first, science seems to be the only genuine human concern in the book. But it is science that has taught the world the uses of quap, and we last see George putting his scientific training to use in designing destroyers. Essentially only the good-humored endurance and courage of George’s Aunt Susan, like the spirit of Weena in The Time Machine, is worth anything. Underneath its ebullient humor and Dickensian high spirits, Tono-Bungay is a darkly prophetic book, richer in detail and human warmth than The Time Machine but every bit as pessimistic about the future.
To conclude, although Tono-Bungay is often amusing, it is a profoundly thoughtful analysis of the breakdown of values in pre-World War I England. The character of George Ponderous is much like Wells’ own, down to the details of being a housekeeper’s son and receiving a scientific, technical education rather than the classical education of the upper class.
This is a charming novel about an exclusively charming lower-middle-class draper’s apprentice’s hindrances and splendid escape from a monotonous existThis is a charming novel about an exclusively charming lower-middle-class draper’s apprentice’s hindrances and splendid escape from a monotonous existence. After one and a half decades of trying to run an unsuccessful shop and to cope with a shrewish wife, tender, mild-mannered Mr. Polly decides to escape. He sets fire to his shop so his wife can collect insurance, pretends to commit suicide, and then takes off for high adventure as a tramp. Thereafter things get interesting. Eventually he meets an unassuming woman who runs a country inn and joins her in that more jolly enterprise. This book reflects Wells’ kindheartedness for the run-of-the-mill individual. The author stands in solidarity with all those who lead, what Thoreau had called a life of “quiet desperation” but who nevertheless refuse to close their eyes to the beauty and romance in life. Mr. Polly, nonetheless, is no typecast for the “little man”: he is one of the “originals” in English literature and the novel is a gem, mined in the Dickensian vein. Give this novel a go. ...more
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