Sadaat Hasan Manto

The writings of Sadaat Hasan Manto, Urdu short story writer, are characterized by sharp wit and cynicism, compounded by his personal vagaries (some of them he invited himself) and the turmoil of his times. Some of his writings are available online in English translation. We know that much of the Urdu melody and irony is lost in translation, but even then Manto's caustic ideas and world view comes forth beautifully. In his famous short story, Toba Tek Singh, he describes the transfer of "lunatics" between India and Pakistan, as they exchange war prisoners. Some of the lunatic behave like political leaders, some don't want to go anywhere and others have lost the idea of which part of the world they are in. In an adsurdist plot, Manto points to the trauma of the displaced and how it will live for ever. The story can be read here. If you can read Urdu, you can find the Urdu pdf on the same page.

Manto wrote nine letters to Uncle Sam between 1951 and 1954, out of which four are available online in English translation. These letters are witty and a sign of what is about to come as US imports to the developing countries, the ill-fitted modernizations, the arms and ammunition, and the wars and battles, that will reduce these nations as "small" players in the big game. These witty letters are filled with references to persons and events, which can be read as his sense of future for the new-born nations - political hopelessness and cultural-devastation of his folks through the hands of the Uncle, which no one can see then. The Urdu pdf of one of the letters can be found here.

A short biography of Manto here. More translated writings here and here.

The Art of Translation.

This is Nabokov's essay on the art of translation, that appears in his lecture book on Russian literature. It ends with a tutorial on translating one line of Pushkin :)

sample this:

But masking and toning down seem petty sins in comparison with those of the
third category; for here he comes strutting and shooting out his bejeweled
cuffs, the slick translator who arranges Scheherazade's boudoir according to
his own taste and with professional elegance tries to improve the looks of
his victims.

and this

Now comes the authentic poet who has the two last assets and who finds
relaxation in translating a bit of Lermontov or Verlaine between writing poems
of his own. Either he does not know the original language and calmly relies upon
the so-called "literal" translation made for him by a far less brilliant but a
little more learned person, or else, knowing the language, he lacks the
scholar's precision and the professional translator's experience. The main
drawback, however, in this case is the fact that the greater his individual
talent, the more apt he will be to drown the foreign masterpiece under the
sparkling ripples of his own personal style. Instead of dressing up like the
real author, he dresses up the author as himself.

Chekhovian Hero

A delightful passionate paragraph by Vladimir Nabokov where he describes Chekhovian hero.

What rather irritated his politically minded critics was that nowhere does the author assign this type to any definite political party or give him any definite political program. But this is the whole point. Chekhov's inefficient idealists were neither terrorists, nor Social Democrats, nor budding Bolsheviks, nor any of the numberless members of the numberless revolutionary parties in Russia. What mattered was that this typical Chekhovian hero was the unfortunate bearer of a vague but beautiful human truth, a burden which he could neither get rid of nor carry. What we see is a continuous stumble through all Chekhov's stories, but it is a stumble of a man who stumbles because he is staring at the stars. He is unhappy, that man, and he makes others unhappy; he loves not his brethren, not those nearest to him, but the remotest. The plight of a negro in a distant land, of a Chinese coolie, of a workman in the remote Urals, affects him with a keener pang of moral pain than the misfortunes of his neighbor or the troubles of his wife. Chekhov took a special artistic pleasure in fixing all the delicate varieties of that pre-war, pre-revolution type of Russian intellectual. Those men could dream; they could not rule. They broke their own lives and the lives of others, they were silly, weak, futile, hysterical; but Chekhov suggested, blessed be the country that could produce that particular type of man. They missed opportunities, they shunned action, they spent sleepless nights in planning worlds they could not build; but the mere fact of such men, full of such fervor, fire of abnegation, pureness of spirit, moral elevation, this mere fact of such men having lived and probably still living somewhere somehow in the ruthless and sordid Russia of to-day is a promise of better things to come for the world at large - for perhaps the most admirable among the admirable laws of Nature is the survival of the weakest.

Excerpt from Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladamir Nabokov

Joycean, Dulights and Cunfuisions, Trials and Errors.

I am posting this for basically two reasons, one is quite obvious, that I have nothing else to post or say. And there is no second reason. If there would have been some second reason, it is generally formulated on the fly, to fit in some borrowed view that there are generally many reasons for something. The second reason can be easily constructed from the fact that I issued a book from a local library (which has lots of films too), its called Critical Views on James Joyce, its edited by Harold Bloom with critical essays on Joyce by lot of other writers and academics. I was pretty sure that I wont read it. But I was sure too that I would try to. I was right. I tried and I failed. But there are few things I was so puzzled by, that I would like to put here. Here is the the starting of Samuel Beckett's essay titled Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce. Without delay, here is the beginning which has nothing very special, as you can take any other paragraph and feel similarly confused. One more point before we go, confusing is not derogatory for the subject matter, but it can be for the observer, the reader, the interpreter. Here we go:

The danger is in the neatness of identifications. The conception of Philosophy, and Philology as a pair of nigger minstrels out of the Teatro dei Piccoli is soothing, like the contemplation of a carefully folded ham-sandwich. Giambattiata Vico himself could not resist the attractiveness of such coincidence of gesture. He insisted on complete identification between the philosophical abstraction and the empirical illustration, thereby annulling the absolutism of each conception - hoisting the real unjustifiably clear of its dimensional limits, temporalising that which is extratemporal. And now here am I, with my handful of abstractions, among which notably : a mountain, the coincidence of contraries, the inevitability of cyclic evolution, a system of Poetics, and the prospect of self-extension in the world of Mr. Joyce's Work in Progress. There is the temptation to treat every concept like "a bass dropt neck fust in till a bung crate", and make a really tidy job of it. Unfortunately such an exactitude of application would imply distortion in one of two directions. Must we wring the neck of a certain system in order to stuff it into a contemporary pigeon-hole, or modify the dimensions of that pigeon-hole for the satisfaction of the analogymongers? Literary criticism is not book keeping.

Now that I type it word to word, I do get some of it (may be a delayed attempt to save the soul). Actually, there is one essay in the book that I was able to read and fairly understand, but it falls in the space which Beckett describes as "Exactitude of Application". The essay on Finnegans Wake by Roland McHugh. It takes samples ( author of the essay has divided the whole FW into 4 parts and claims that the samples are fairly representative of the tone and distinct atmosphere of that part of opus). That essay is as helpful as the clues of the cryptic crossword for a person who has recently decided to try harder. It helps, but at times, helps a lot. I will give one line and its "de-complification", done by McHugh here. These lines are used to describe tailor's daughter to Norwegian Captain in such a way that we are continually obliged to construe her in both human and aquatic terms. McHugh describes this as "...but Joyce treat both attitudes as cliche and instead spotlights fortuitous parallelism with a consequent split image and throwaway humor."

... with the grit as hard as trent of the thimes but a touch as saft as the dee in flooing and never a Hyderow Jenny the like of her lightness at look and you leap...

Commentory: On the aquatic plane, the grit of the river bed is as hard as that found in river the river Trent and the river Thames, but the touch of its water is as soft (Norwegian, Saft, Juice) as that of the river Dee in flooding. On the human plane, the anger ( Rhaeto-Romanic, gritta) of the daughter is as hard as the trend of time demands, yet she has a touch as imperceptible as the letter d which has been removed in the word "flooing". Both the water and the girl are light, and they are, therefore, compared with Hydrogen, the lightest element, impetuously failing to look before they leap.

I know that this type of translation, becomes one dimensional after some time, but for beginners, its both necessary and amusing, and above all, inviting to read the original text and try to interpret ourselves.

2nd Anniversary Post: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

As of now, I feel two things, either what I am writing will be worth posting or it will be trashed. The other questions are secondary, at least as of now. I am also thinking one more thing constantly, as I write this, whether I should think it to be readable material to others or not (my apologies, if I sound pompous, let me pour today) and an associated thought that runs through my mind and it seems now, it is not a new thought, I have thought of it over and over in different forms and at different times, the thought of whether to think about my potential readers (again pardon me) or to completely forsake them, and absolutely abandon the thought that these words will ever be read by anyone except me. In order to free myself from these thoughts and proceed, I make a quick compromise, as always, and a quicker mental note of that compromise of posting it, if it sounds good. I keep the compromise as vague as possible, intentionally. As you might have found out in all this blabbering, the main point of self-doubt. Should I, whether I should, Will I etc etc. All futuristic fears. But a hidden fact is more profound, it's some sort of self vindication and may be self appreciation. See, I know this, and well too and I can write also. That ugly feeling, the celebration of mediocrity.

This post is supposed to be a mixed post. It will be a mixture of personal and fantasy. Nothing that I write here, will be purely true or purely false, because I believe neither of the two exists and therefore neither of them can be written. It will be mixed because I would like to talk about topics which are not worth a post but can not be left out too. They are marginal and necessary both. So it's not a post about a certain thing and it is also not a post about nothing. One way to see this post is group of discarded posts or discarded paragraphs from posted posts, in last two years. I may seem pompous and pretentious, but let it be.

When I first read Camus' The Stranger, I was almost shocked by the stylistic and narrative simplicity of the first part because just before it, I have read an essay by Camus (Its called Absurd Man), which was exceptionally difficult to understand and I left that one page essay in between. But as I read the first part of The Stranger, I thought what Camus was conveying by such a deceptively simple language, with no philosophy, just simple unadorned dead observations. There emerged some clarity of vision, after reading the second part of the book, which is not tough to follow but tougher to understand than the part one. The first and the foremost thing that come to the mind is the difference between the life lived and the life observed. Meursault, who was obviously happy in the first part and he has no reasons for anything, but in the second part, although he was not doing wrong things which he did in the part one, he was unhappy, may be because he was forced to analyzed the life lived. I don't know much about existentialist philosophy and stuff, but I felt that Camus is pointing to a fact of life. Its an example of literature being philosophical without explicitly being so, its such a hopeful proposition, its hopeful because it works for casual readers like me and it draws one to read more too. On a second level, there is always a danger of a novelist becoming a philosopher. A single page of 'Absurd man' might be having lots of truth and xxx philosophy but Camus must write a 100 page 'The Stranger' to tell what it is and in all this he must maintain his style and structure, not compromising on the tenets of art. Fiction is what liberates, it's accessible and it's universal. No doctrine of stone headed philosophy will ever humanize the inhumans. It's the fiction, mix of real and imaginary that will set us free. Gogol could have written the character of scoundrel Chichikov without the fabrication of a thousand absurd characters, but Gogol knew that the background picture must be complete and hence he fills in all the blocks before he adds his anti-hero to complete his portrait. Camus might have discussed in whole philosophy in essays but a stranger and a fall are indispensable.

One more thing at the point and it's about my double standard between two mediums of art - Literature and Films. I think a work of literature should stand by itself; it should create a world of its own. It should stand alone, unparallel, holding unto itself, should create its own language. I don't want a slice of life or an episode in a novel but the whole pie. Even though, a novel tells a story about one day in the life of a person, it should hold a world view. As you see, I have stellar expectations from novels. It does not mean that they should run into pages. I am still to read anything which is more than 200 pages (Dead souls is the only exception, it almost killed me, I completed it in several night outs, smoking like a pipe. Although I strongly believe one should not smoke while reading, you measure pages by butts). That's why Kafka works for me, he did not write much, but even his short stories create a world of their own. I also don't like exotic touches in a novel, mentions of cultures and recipes and the foreign words. And that's why I hate Indian novels, which start with a big extended family, most of the effort for a foreigner will go into mapping the family tree, the criss-cross plot amongst them, this is not what I meant by creating a world of its own. Given all these stupid prejudices, my pathetic reading speed, and television menace, I don't read much and enjoy my ignorance. When it comes to films, I am ok with a slice and don't look out for worlds of its own. I think, it's not because of any bias from my side but may be because of my limitations as a reader. I also believe it's partly because of the advantages and limitations of these mediums, but I can't clearly enumerate them.

I am really interested in stupid statements. Consider this statement. Since an author observes every detail of the characters, their attires, their features, body shapes, hair, and the way they move and talk, why a critic not allowed to do so about the author while reviewing 'his' work. Although absurd and laughable, this is an idea and if put in better and overblown (try using some 'ism's) words, it might seem perfectly ok. See this logic. This movie is not good because the white subtitles are put across white background, not able to get what the movie want to say, this movie is not recommended. There are loads of such arguments, if put in better cryptic language will sound very plausible. We can say the following about the subtitled movie. Although a good film, it's hard to follow owing to its technical difficulties. Bravo. Any stupidity can be justifiable by the 'effective' use of language and that's why if a writer seems artfully logical, think twice.

One more mental fight that I constantly indulge in about style and content, although I haven't read much to think about it in any concrete terms but I enjoy this mental debate and it's a big time pass. It's always fun to read about Flaubert's obsession with style. It always fun to read about his eccentricities on how he would try to attain perfection with a limited number of syllable and how he will play with patterns and sounds till they become perfect and how much a single punctuation will mean to him. This obsession made his contemporaries call him a stone figure, trying to sacrifice all for style. After this thought comes an associated depressing thought, an almost defeating thought. I think of the futility of such an effort if the people do not care for it. How many of the good readers will care about this precise music in dead words. I know that this idea is and was revolutionary and it did help in the growth of literature at the turn of the century but thinking a lot about poor Flaubert gives you a static depression. May be a creator does not write for others, or as Nabokov will put it, an author never caters to masses but even there should be individuals who should be great readers, good alone will not do.

My speed of reading is pathetically slow, and if I were reading something that is interesting to me, I will make it even slower. I have come to believe by now that the speed of your reading is directly proportional to the speed of your mind and I think slow, slower when I am interested. I have tried to justify this design flaw by saying that one should give proper time to a creation. When it comes to books, you can steer the speed but even in films I try that, I will see the first 40 mins and then turn off the player and sleep and give it its time ( or give me some time) and then start it the next day. I will not listen to commentary track for 2 days before I have made something out of it. In effect I will try to diffuse and spread a film for a week attention. It seldom works fine. At times you lose track of what you are thinking and a week is a long time for other things to happen, and other things are always more important. Last year while making a plan on how to see a film, I took some basic precautions like switch off the mobile, switch off the light, watch alone, take something to eat before hand and , concentrate on the film, which worked but later I realized that what I am doing is just making the atmosphere of a theatre.

I read on somebody's blog a quote by Cicero that says "I criticize by creation, not by finding fault". I myself always criticize by nitpicking and I understand the futility of such criticism. The only purpose served by such criticism that finds fault, is to fill in pages and to feel good about that. Why I didn't like 'Life is beautiful', it should not be criticized because several scenes rang untrue and unnecessarily funny and manipulative but because it is ghastly disrespectful. Hot favorite 'Shawshank Redemption' is bad because it promotes hero worship and optimism of worst sort, and the film is against freedom and equality. People don't criticize by creation because of several reasons. First and foremost, because it's very difficult to turn your back from what you have said if you hit the basics, no patchwork can fully undo that. Secondly, it is simply too difficult to criticize by creation, quibbling is easy and we can comfortably defend it. If you go by what I just said, Shawshank Redemption promotes hero worship. I also meant that I don't like hero worship which is big statement and can't easily be refuted, once said. One of my Tamil friends always laments that Tamilians are a clan of hero worshippers. But next time when he will appreciate Rajnikant by his mass appeal, he is surely in big trouble. Criticism by creation has big traps ahead, so people fear from it. I like the first half of Rang de Basanti because of the fun and lightness but I don't like the second half because of the conclusion it delivers, this types of criticism are trash and will never bring any desired change. But, I know, we will continue to do so, because it a lazy and trouble-free way to fill pages.

I have a huge soft corner for films of Bergman. I can say that I didn't like Saraband that much but if someone says that he hated it; I will immediately come to defense. Even his obviously flawed films like 'Autumn Sonata' are very dear to me. It's because I feel that I stepped into serious cinema only after watching Wild Strawberries. It had all what I wanted from Cinema. It has great evocative photography, real melancholy, nostalgia of regret, philosophy, truth, honesty and humanity. When I saw this film, I thought what they wrote in reviews was all true. It was an uplifting feeling of Eureka! I still owe my little understanding of cinema and the knowledge of huge potential of films as a medium to Bergman. I once read on imdb where a newbie after seeing her first Bergman film wrote something like, "Now I know what they are all trying to achieve, when they make a serious movie". This statement is not as pompous as to say that I have an orgasm after watching the film but its really true observation.

Sometimes, it looks like that one decision might have changed the whole film. I always wonder what Chinatown would have looked like, if Polanski would have succumbed to the pressure for a happy ending. In certain films, happy or sad ending does not matter much, and in some films, like most of Fellini films, director manages both. When I think of certain films, especially Chinatown, it becomes almost necessary to have a sad ending with big void of nothingness and how brilliantly that film manages it. With the hero, audience feels without any power, as if they lost a fortune. This is the power of cinema.

Code Unknown makes an ultimate statement about the relationship of actor and director. This is the scene where Georges surreptitiously photographs passengers on the Metro. It's a dream of a Bressonian director to shoot his actors like this. But Haneke must have seen a deceit in that and probably that's why that episode was put in the movie. To me it looked like an attack on the unsuspecting public, there was something sacrilegious about it, a sort of profane voyeurism. Now interpolating back from public to actors, it still remains a bit profane, directors know that, I think. It's justified for sake of art, but still it is so.

It happens with everybody. When you start seeing movies, you begin with reading reviews. Especially in India, where most of the films are not available or we have no knowledge of them. You gradually know that there is better cinema somewhere, you learn name that you can not pronounce. About 3-4 years back, there was a constant joke that I have to bear (with pleasure), it was about the ratio of films I have seen and the reviews I have read, it tends to zero. After my great efforts, it still tends to zero, may be a better zero, one shade lighter, two shades brighter. And I have been blamed to frame my opinions on reviews (that is partly true too). I must confess I love reading reviews and I owe them a lot. I have not watched a single film if they were not there to guide me to watch and later what to get out of it. I read reviews of Color Trilogy for 2 years and then I watched it, it was all speculation. I read the plot of Talk to her and thought of how it will be. Love and coma. It was such nice period of imagination and supposition, and a pure hope that I will see them soon. When I remember myself reading about Aguirre, I still get a sensation of madness, Aguirre in Amazon, deadly waters, lovely daughter and all. When reviews are written by someone who loves them, the magic is recreated. Reading about Mulholland Drive where reviewer admits that he loved it but did not get it, is the truest confession for the love of cinema.

When you are writing about a Bresson film, you usually run out of adjectives and in dour posts and views (like the ones on this blog), you perm up the mundane matter by magniloquent adjectives. At best you can come up with 'simple', 'pure', 'earthy' and 'spiritual' and a little more thinking can let you reach to 'transcendental' or move towards 'grace', anyway you will look stupid if you use 'Bressonian' to define his films. Someone said "There is nothing to writing; all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." But the problem remains, which vein to open, how to open it, how many to open. In case of Bresson, the problem has an extra dimension, why to open the vein when it is so beautifully and economically opened by images and sounds. Any writing on Bresson's film will not be able to say more about the film than you have seen, and rightly so. They will flirt more about Bressonian themes, Bressonian methods and in some cases, his other films. And I have heard about Bresson and Bressonian in more film reviews than any other director or approach. That's his influence and that is what Bresson all about.

In being John Malkovich, of the entire film, I love the chimp scene, the scene where a chimp frees Lotte and where he remembers his past. In normal terms, we can just have a big laugh at that sequence but at a more aesthetic level it's perfectly beautiful and extremely innovative. In accordance to the theme of the film, we are thrown into the chimps mind and his fears, emotions and desires. It's seemingly weird but absolutely truthful, at the same time. Another such scene which is apparently laughable but eventually insightful comes from Winter Light, the scene where the Sexton says that he suffered more than Jesus, it's at once laughable, but eventually it turns out to be sad. Weekend, Naked Lunch and That Obscure Object of Desire are filled with such apparently laughable episodes. Of all other things, these sequences test our patience for a reaction, our tolerance for art and above all they rebuke our hurry to get into quick judgments.

Some time back I read an interview of Lars von Trier where he talked about Slave Owners. The concept goes like this. To control slaves, we need slaves who can work as slave owners. The good ones usually do that. And it is because of those slave owners, slavery lives endlessly. Without slave owners, everyone will be fighting for themselves but as soon as some well intentioned good slaves come to picture, they become the instrument of manipulation by the owner. This may look like a thought of dangers of goodness but it is actually a thought of being together in front of such type of oppression and do not act emotionally. Our goodness should not come in the way to be used by the oppressor. It is, no doubt, a radical thought but it comes second in the ideas that totally shook me. The first one is by Fassbinder, "Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression" and now when I think, these two statements look closely related. Also, if any of these statements look to be against goodness or love, then you are mistaken; they are against their power which can be used for manipulation.

I know that this post is going nowhere near conclusion but its time to wind up. This post is written over long time, and mainly when I had a fever last week. During that time I had lots of time by myself and started to jot down this post. It's a cleansing post to get a lot of things out my mind. I think I feel lighter after writing it. Thanks for reading.

Ode to Kaavya !

What do those immense, wide, far-flung open spaces hold in store? Is it not here, is it not in you that some boundless thought will be born, since you are yourself without end ? [1] The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced through both his strength and his weakness. If we are to bear any grudge against illness and weakness, it is the fact that along with it, there decays the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defense and of war in man. [2]

Human nature has its limits. It is able to endure a certain degree of joy, sorrow and pain, but becomes annihilated as soon as this is exceeded. The question, therefore is, not whether a man is strong or weak but whether he is able to endure that measure of his suffering. [3] Resistance is impossible, if one could only understand what it is all for, But that too is impossible. An explanation would be possible if it could be said that one has not lived as he is ought to. There is no explanation. Death, Agony ... What for ? [4] On one hand its very unlikely, on the other hand its perfectly natural. [5]

There are exceptions here too. Theft is a crime, but the man who commit it for extreme poverty, with no design, but to save his family from poverty, is he an object of pity or of punishment. [6]

A theory of sorts, the same one by which one consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrong doing and hundred of good deeds,... a theory of sorts - dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons, that is persons to whom the law doesn't apply owing to their superiority, who makes laws for the most of mankind, the material, that is. [7]

But yes we never give up hope. More, we never lose, ever for an instant, the sense of honor and privilege in being member of society. [8]

One lives for many years, with small regular recuperation, in visible glory, honored by the world, yet in spite of that , troubled in spirits and all the more troubled because no one would ever take his trouble seriously. What comfort could he possibly need? What could he possibly wish for. [9] But everybody knows life isn't worth living. Deep down, one knows it perfectly well that it doesn't matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living, and for thousand years, but it takes all the strength to quiet ones heart to be rational. [10]

So a rocket fades, its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pour over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in. [11]

Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they are! There is animalism in the soul, and the body has its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter is a mystery also. [12]

Index:

[1] Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
[2] Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche
[3] The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
[4] The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy
[5] The Stranger, Albert Camus
[6] The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
[7] Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
[8] Animal Farm, George Orwell
[9] A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka
[10] The Stranger, Albert Camus
[11] Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
[12] The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

The title of the post of taken from here. The text of the masters are taken out of context and I tried to change them as little as possible.

Eduardova

This is one of the entries from the Diary of Kafka, about a dancer, Eduardova.

The dancer Eduardova is not so pretty outdoors as on the stage. Her pallid color, those cheekbones stretching her skin so taut that there is scarcely any movement in her face, her large nose—rising as if from a deep hollow—which can’t be made into a joke, like examining the hardness of its tip or grabbing it lightly by the bridge and pulling her this way and that, saying, “Well, come along now!”, her broad figure with its high waist in far too pleated skirts—who could like that?—she almost looks like one of my aunts, an elderly lady; many people’s older aunts look like that. In fact there is no compensation at all for these disadvantages in the dancer Eduardova outdoors; aside from her quite good feet, there is really nothing that might command rapture, or amazement, or even respect. And so I have very often seen Eduardova treated with an indifference that even gentlemen who were otherwise very elegant and well-mannered could not hide, although they naturally made great efforts to do so for the sake of such a well-known dancer, which, after all, Eduardova was.

Gogol Effect.

I read two short stories (The Overcoat and The Nose) by Russian author, Nikolai Gogol and part one of his masterpiece novel, Dead Souls. I am severely under Gogol effect and I should write it off. I will jot down some of my random observations.



Gogol's Naming Conventions

I am really intrigued by Gogol's Naming Conventions, they are lyrical and based on ample use of alliteration and thus obtusely or rather tangentially signify the repetitive nature of his weird characters who according to Gogol are not conventional heroes but just some person ignored to be chosen to lead a story or a novel for a painfully long time. In his celebrated short story, The Overcoat, the full second paragraph is devoted to the baptism of our hero Akaky Akakyevich and Gogol, without referring to the obvious redundancy in his name, just tells the readers that it is the only name for him, and he was not named so by chance or choice but by his fate to be so. Our hero moves in his pursuit of repeatedness and redundancies in his life and work. Gogol gives an amusing account of his day at work and night at home and echoes that duplicating effect that his name resonates with.

Anyway, we can say that what's there in the name, but in Gogol's world baptism is a big event which he immensely enjoys and which he uses for infinite effect ranging from the unimportance of a peasant in a society, or the smugness of a outwardly dear but a filthy character. Here the names assumes utmost priority whether it is some Uncle Mityay and Minyay who try in vain to get Chichikov's troika up from tangle or the officers at provincial office named Ivan Grigoryevich, Ivan Antonovich, Ivan Andreyevich, probably to show their sameness in spite of their different parentage or Captain Kopeikin, who by his name itself doesn't sound like a great hero, or the magnificent Greek name, Themistocleus, of one of the child of a meek land lord, Manilov or in one of funniest episodes he refuses to name the two agreeable ladies because he laments that nowadays people of all ranks and classes in our country are so sensitive that they think everything in a book refers to them personally and he goes on to positively insult the whole breeds of ladies agreeable in all respects and also those who are just simply agreeable!

Even Nabokov was under Gogol-effect, when he named his characters Pnin (To get the "pn" right, try the combination "Up North", or still better "Up, Nina!", leaving out the initial "u". Pnorth, Pnina, Pmn...), Lo-le-ita (the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp, the suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness) or rhythmic Humbert Humbert. After thinking about the Gogol's Naming Conventions, I managed to understand some of Nabokov's lament of not writing in Russian. See yourself, which sounds better John Johnson or Akaky Akakyevich ? There are also some more meaning to these name, the syllable kak means “like” in Russian which corresponds to the sameness of his name and sameness of act of copying. A person who knows Russian must get amusing, lyrical and meaningful depths out of those names.

Gogol's Style

I feel too stooped to write anything about Gogol's style, but here are some frivolous observations.

Lot of authors don't give clues about writing or why they are writing or what should or shouldn't be written but Gogol does that especially in Dead souls. There are passages devoted to Gogol's justification for talking devilish Chichikov as his hero, and how authors have written and written about the virtuous man that there is hardly any virtue left in him. One more striking facet of Gogol's style, as I saw it, is his composition of sceneries from start to finish, mildly moving from some romantic idealism to a practical distortion and searching beauty in both the extremes. This passages traces a river from loftiness of mountains to the hurdles of the bridges and dams.

The river, true to its banks, twisted and turned with them, sometimes leaving them for the meadows and sometimes, after taking several serpentine turns, flashing like fire in the sun and then disappearing in a copse of birch trees, aspens and alders and running out of it in triumph accompanied by bridges, mills and dams which seem to be pursuing it at every turn.

Gogol at times, makes you gape after reading and pushes you into a fabricated world and then make you understand it and allows you to laugh at your silly gapes and in all this business of gaping and ungaping while you see weird characters and sublime descriptions you are never ever overwhelmed by what you have read and you actively think of what unwritten text Gogol is pointing to and what written text he is fabricating for that and that's how an ultimate comedy and satire points to the rampant tragedy of our times and lives.

In The Overcoat, we never know whether to laugh at or not and if at all to laugh at it, whom to laugh at, the characters, the situations or ourselves. At one point we tend to stress our cheek muscles to prepare ourselves for a grin which we feel is well-deserved for the well-written text, the other moment we are allowed to think before we can proceed to consummate a smile, we anyway almost oblige by giving a smirk but with broken heart that the overcoat, that spoilt a lovely monotonous live, is robbed off. There is a satisfaction that its gone now but their is pain too, that the poor soul is robbed of it. I don't know whether to laugh at it or feel sad, but an intelligent and a sophisticated reader can let it go, I can't ! The point is Gogol's mastery of juxtaposing comic episodes with the moving ones with blurred lines that are almost non-existent.

Gogol has a mastery of social satire. Here goes one of very fine observation about human nature that Gogol makes.

If he did acquire a superficial knowledge of one branch of science, he would afterwards, as soon as he occupied a prominent position, make those who really knew something of that branch of science feel it. And may be he would say afterwards: "Let me just show them the stuff I'm made of!", and invent so wise a regulation that many people would be sorry they were ever born...

Or a more funny observation

The governor, who was at that moment standing beside some ladies, holding a raffle ticket in one hand and a lap dog in the other, dropped both the ticket and lap dog on to the floor on seeing him, the dog yelping piteously; in short Chichikov spread an atmosphere of joy and quite extraordinary gaiety.

Here a excellent satire on authors and characters alike.

I cannot reproduce governor's wife's word with any accuracy but something extremely polite was said in the manner in which ladies and gentlemen converse in the words of our society novelists who are so eager to describe drawing rooms and boast of their knowledge of aristocratic manners, something in the style of: 'Have they so taken possession of your heart that there's no longer any place in it, not even the tiniest corner, for those you have so mercilessly forgotten?'

And this one:

But the simply agreeable lady could think of nothing to say. She only knew how to be alarmed, but did not possess enough reasoning power to form any sensible idea as to what it was all about, and that was why she more than any one else was in need of tender friendship and advice.

Apart from these small doses of satire and humor, there are glorious long passages about man made garden taken over by wilds of nature, about our hero taking nap on a 'highway', postman's hilarious short story about an invalid captain and lot more, all done with a unique Gogol-style.

Being Chichikov

When you read about a characters vividly drawn on paper, his each contour inscribed by words, his each emotional high and low reported on print, you are damned to connect to it, some of the greatest characters sketches are like that, but Gogol delays the so-called character sketch of the hero, Pavlovskoe Chichikov, to the last chapter of part one of Dead Souls, by the time reader have seen enough of him and probably made some serious opinions (good, bad, ugly, and for some as always ok-types) for him, Gogol unfolds the life history of Chichikov and all those who have formed some opinion about it feel bad about him or themselves, which is actually one or the same entity. Gogol miraculously proves that we are all in this secret quest to acquire phoney dead souls.

Given my weakness on fixating too much on characters, (the last time I found out that my office is full of Gregors peeping from every nook and corner with Squealers trying to hunt them down, and Gregors trying to turn the table by sometimes metamorphosing themselves to Travis Bickles while they are cheating on lots of Cabirias, who try to be Charlottes but there are no full-time Werthers left now !), now I am seeing a Chichikov in everybody including myself. I too had a discussion with one of my friends where I told the Dead Soul "story" to him and he joyously exclaimed what a go-getter he is, what a fantastic, fast and furious achiever. I felt that if some self-help guru ever has the time to read the first 10 chapters he can even write about the "10 ways to acquire Dead Souls and be a winner". And this is all the travesty of our Chichikovian times. As pointed out in the character sketch, Chichikov try to make a quick fortune by his marvelous dressing sense and callous hind designs, but it doesn't turn out to be that quick, given our hero's bad fortune to run into carefully uninvited troubles, it do points about the Chichikovian mirage we live in, we become more careful, more artful, more masterful in all our eloquent foreground and virtuoso background patterns as we move for our own quests.

I wish Gogol may have completed and published his next two full volumes, his grandiose ambition, where he projected to somehow bring his scoundrel hero, to what he called , a spiritual regeneration and where he claimed that his work will give some genuine answers to the abyssal mystery of abominable existence, but I am afraid that there could be any easy answers and any art cannot put any morality into dead souls, the best it can do is to point to the the aberration or rather claim that there is one which we cannot see using our unaided eyes, and can help someone to know himself better or to say it grandiosely, can help him move closer to truth, or may be just give a direction, right or wrong, he is only to decide.

The picture above shows Gogol's statue at St. Petersburg, the location of his short stories.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Last week, I read a great book, a hopeless love story of a young man and his journey to death. Its a very intimate account of a doomed love affair and it is really delightful (if I may say so) how passionately Goethe handles our hero's longing for his love, how beautifully and meticulously the graceful picture of his lover is painted. In a semi autobiographical novel told in a series of letters, Goethe dissects romantic love, social clichés and at times raises questions about love, life, death and passion.



As you all must be knowing the plot by now, since I termed it as a tragic love story. As a customary here is a brief plot. A young man, Werther falls in love with lovely Charlotte, who is already engaged to Albert. Since Albert is away for some assignment, Werther spends a delightful time with Charlotte. After Albert's return, Werther soon realizes that he has to break all the ties with Charlotte, he tries not to meet her, in order to put an end to his daily trauma of seeing her, wanting her but a hopeless certainty of not getting her. After a last brief encounter with Charlotte, where she showers her love treasure on Werther's lips, Werther takes his life away to wait to meet her after death. The story has by now became a cliché, but as a real work of art The Sorrows of Young Werther lives in his youth till date.

The Sorrows of Young Werther was supposedly the first bestseller in European history and its success led to a flurry of artistic creativity in Europe but most famously it resulted in young men emulating Werther by wearing blue jackets and yellow vests and committing Werther-style suicides. The question is whether the novel champions suicide. In a way, it does, but than lots of work of art dear death than life at least in concept. In an extremely enlightening tirade our young hero, Werther, tells Albert about the similarities about physical and mental trauma and how everything is allowed in passion but the novel is not about suicide or dying, its more about love and that classic romanticism we often talk about. Then comes the eternal question that I have asked for long, why all the famous love stories are tragic, as of now, we shall leave this question for a rainy day.

There are several things about the novel that I loved apart from it being tragic and a love story. The one thing is Goethe's use of nature, which is used to a dual effect here. Firstly as a portal of external beauty and a testimonial of rampant beauty in the world lying in every landscape and the creativity galore by the creator of all these mesmerizing scenic images. This use of nature is explored in the early part of the book where young Werther is happy and trying to see nature as a piece of art, and he dabbles with poetry and painting. Actually at one point Werther remarks "Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?" The second use of nature is to depict the condition of our hero as he climbs down the stairs of melancholy. Although here the nature serves as a backdrop to the despair of Young Werther, Goethe goes a step further to show that we ourselves make an illusion of nature (or rather any surroundings) to mirror our state of heart. Werther sees gloom in the same landscapes which showered pure delight when he was with Charlotte and exclaims why he was so happy and light then and now those pillars of happiness seems so hopelessly haunting as the beautiful face of dearest Charlotte. Goethe's use of nature as a backdrop of Werther's broken heart is exemplary and creates much of foundation for the unrequited love and longing.

I am a big fan of subplots and some times I feel more intrigued by the subplot than the main story. A sub-plot, in my opinion, should not be a tool to push the story forward or a tool to provide respite from the plot itself. A subplot should bring some universality to the story being told ( I don't mean to say that it should strengthen the main plot, but it might do that). Here in The Sorrows of Young Werther there are two subplots that interested me. First is the story of a young man, secretary to Charlotte's father, who too cherished passion for her and was dismissed and now he has turned mad. Werther meets him, when he was looking for summer flowers in chilling winter for his princess. To his delusion, Werther reacts " You were happy !, as gay and contented as a man can be! God of heaven! and is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason, or after he has lost it? Unfortunate being! And yet I envy your fate: I envy the delusion to which you are a victim. You go forth with joy to gather flowers for your princess,-- in winter, -- and grieve when you can find none, and cannot understand why they do not grow. But I wander forth without joy, without hope, without design ". The second plot is more involved, where Werther favors for a servant who had been formerly attached to a widow, and has killed the other servant who replaced him after his dismissal from service of widow. Werther fights vehemently for him to gather some pity for him and to save him from the impending danger, Later he retorts " You cannot be saved, unfortunate man, I see clearly that we can't be saved". All these situations brings Werther to realize that he is going in the same path and probably same woes wait for him too. Thematically, these episodes resonate with the feeling that in society, love should get its approval and the passion of love is universally misunderstood and only those who are in same situation can grasp the misery and anxiety of the people trapped there. Also the episode with murderous servant brings about how the the noblest feelings of love and attachment for loved one can convert themselves to jealousy, hate and violence for others. Even Werther starts rearing a seemingly irrational jealously for Albert and questions himself "What is the use of my continually repeating that he is a good and estimable man? He is an inward torment to me, and I am incapable of being just toward him."

While building an ultimate figure of a romantic hero, Goethe shows utmost respect to every minute feeling of his hero, Werther's every idea and observation is captured with intense intimacy, china-like vulnerability and truth. How true is the feeling when Werther says " Heaven reward him for it!" observing that Albert always refrains from kissing Charlotte in his presence or the episode where Charlotte kisses and plays with a canary and our hero turns his face away so as not to excite his imagination or when Werther describes death as "One lifts up the curtain, and passes to the other side, -- that is all! And why all these doubts and delays? Because we know not what is behind -- because there is no returning -- and because our mind infers that all is darkness and confusion, where we have nothing but uncertainty." or how artistically he describes his end to Charlotte "For the last, last time I open these eyes. Alas! they will behold the sun no more. It is covered by a thick, impenetrable cloud.Yes, Nature! put on mourning: your child, your friend, your lover, draws near his end!". In all these tiny moments we come closer to Werther's agony and his passion for Charlotte.

The famous episode of Werther's last meeting with Charlotte where Werther reads out an Ossian (Werther starts enjoying this imaginary poet over Homer as his obsession deepens) poem to Charlotte, moved by poem that resonated Werther's trauma and passion, in a stroke of trembling passion, Charlotte covers his lips with a thousand kisses and the world seems to disappear from their eyes, the last happy moment in poor Werther's life. This episode must have been enacted a thousand times on stages, films and operas but still Goethe's words have not lost their charm.

In the preface Goethe writes "And thou, good soul, who sufferest the same distress as he endured once, draw comfort from his sorrows" and that is true for any great work of art. How much depressing or bitter they may get, but they always provide solace to the soul by giving a better understanding of life. Here Goethe carves a figure of a tragic romantic hero and the idea of fatalistic romanticism that centuries have emulated and will continue to do so.

The Old Man and the Sea

I read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea this week. Some of the passages were great, especially where the old man, the fish and the themes of the novel (as I perceive them) came in unison and tend to go beyond the simple tale of an old man's quest in an inhospitable sea, trying to kill the biggest fish, he has ever seen. It is quite satisfying once we start to feel for the fish the same way, we felt for the old man -a virile and heroic character fighting to survival. Their tussle, a sense of understanding of each others situation and the dignity shown towords each other signify about the man-nature balance left in mercy of each other . I found this passage quite moving and somehow it left me longing for more such simple magics throughout the novel.

Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. he could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am ?
[...]
His choice had been to to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all the snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either of us.

Buñuel on love.

I saw this book called An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel from Google print.



Here is this interview of Luis Buñuel under the heading Surrealist Writings in the book, aptly titled On Love.

I. What sort of hopes do you place in love?
L.B.: If I am in love, all Hopes. If not, none.

II. How do you view the transition from the idea of love to the fact of being in love? Willingly or otherwise would you sacrifice your freedom to love? Have you ever done so? Would you consent, if you felt it necessary in order to be worthy of love, to sacrifice a cause that up to that point have considered yourself bound to defend? Would you agree not to become what you might have been, if at the price you could fully savor the certainty of love? How would you judge a man who would go so far as to betray his convictions to please the woman he loves? Can such a pledge be asked of him and obtained?

L.B.:

1) For me nothing exists for the fact of being in love.
2) I would gladly sacrifice my freedom for love. I have already done so.
3) I would sacrifice a cause for the sake of love. But the remains to be seen in the moment.
4) Yes.
5) I would judge him favorably. But nevertheless, I would ask this man not to betray his convictions. I would even go so far as to insist on it.

III. Would you acknowledge the right to deprive yourself for a time of the presence of the person you love, knowing how exhilarating absence can be for love, yet aware of the mediocrity of such a strategy?
L.B.: I would not like to separate myself from the loved one. At any cost.

IV. Do you believe in the victory of admirable love over sordid life, or that of sordid life over admirable love.
L.B.: I don't know.

Kafka's Metamorphosis

I feel so very small to write anything about it, I sense a deep sense of fear plunging in, that sometimes say what if you said something that refers to something stupid to a piece of art that you revere in totality, a piece of art, so horridly blurred with nightmarish fantasy and so clearly delineated, so powerfully behold the spirit of a poor fellow, a black and white story, so very elegantly painted, so meticulously done. Gregor Samsa turns to a gaint bug one fine morning. This happens in very first line of Metamorphosis. What else, so what, please don't ask these stupid questions. A poor guy has every right to turn to what ever filth, he wants to. Let him do that. Pity is a first emotion that Metamorphosis evokes, pity of entrapment and alienation, a pity of ritualistic living, a pity of powerlessness, a pity of how a beautiful body gets transformed to a heavy, grotesque bug, an insect of no respect. what a shame, what a pitiful sight. Gregor, the sole bread winner has to get up and go to work, earn money for the family, so that they can survive. The family of a Gregor has ghostly appearance more than the transformed Gregor himself. They look at Gregor as a old circus animal entrapped in four walls through three doors, calling and pounding doors at him to perform to bring them some pennies to them. No one think of Gregor and his new persona and why it happened, why he transformed into a bug, by his will or by some force. What does this all signify, if at all. Why are we subjected to the details of the nightmare that Gregor is having, why should we, Gregor should be let alone to die in peace, but a reader can be on any side of the wall, outside the room with Gregor's circus family, or inside the wall with Gregor. The power is such that we tend to move either side. Those who somehow cross that boundary are, in my humble opinion, great readers. I did cross the line, but not very consistently, not very frequently though.



On whole of the story, a feeling of entrapping hovers. The first indication is Gregor's job that he hate and want to leave, but to pay his family debts he continues. Second is the transformation (rather entrapment) of Gregor into a insect body, and third is Gregor's imprisonment in a dark room. These all signify a sense of solitude that Gregor is experiencing and how this solitude grows and become more painful and fatal.

Metamorphosis very clearly describes how we become increasing indifferent to others pain with time if it becomes even the slightest hurdle in our so-called daily routine and how our neglected pain can grow exponentially wasting us altogether. Gregor's sister, Grete is a very interesting character to understand in that respect, part from Gregor. A loving sister, transforms into deaf and blind lady unable to connect to Gregor. One of themes of Metamorphosis is inability to express oneself, Grete, mother and father are so horrified by Gregor they just stopped seeing and communicating with him, Gregor, too, on the other hand, being turned to an insect is unable to express himself, it was fully supplemented by neglect shown by the family. All the characters show their repressed feeling in one way or the other. Especially father, whose anger results in the 'Apple incident', which ultimately become calamitous to Gregor. Kafka uses Gregor's transformation as an indication of transformation of all the characters involved.

From one perspective Metamorphosis looks the analysis of transformation, from other look it seems like deconstruction of society in general and a family in particular, but from all angles Metamorphosis is a scrutiny of being human being pushed to live and survive. When I read Metamorphosis for the first time, I was more taken over my Gregor's plight and his family's increasing indifference to him. On the second time, it reflected much more, the feeling of insecurity and fear of every character and the longing of Gregor to get his position back in the family resonated. There is a very brilliant scene in Metamorphosis, one of my favorites, the violin scene, where Gregor comes out to hear the violin his sister,Grete is playing. It may be the most emotional [not melodramatic in any sense] scene of the whole story. The reaction of the family to Gregor's return from dark room brings more rejection for him and a final fatal unanimous decision by family. This scene shows Gregor's last effort to gain some love from his estranged family. What makes this scene and whole story so riveting is that fact that how misunderstood and helpless, speechless and loathsome Gregor is, and this feeling vibrates all over the story but culminates into this episode.

The end of the story is nothing short than perfect and stoically yet brilliantly breaks apart all the mush and goodness attached to the concepts of society and family. While coming to the end, I had a feeling that the story also started with a unwritten paragraph about normalcy of everyday life, the sweet weather and bird chirping. This full cycle gives, Metamorphosis a completeness, an integrity of structure and sense that everything is fine on surface and lots of Gregor's are trapped in dark chambers.

For more detailed, coherent and intellectual discussion on Metamorphosis, read Vladamir Nabokov's notes here ( These notes are very interesting, detailed and incisive, although I cannot disagree more with him when Nabokov says ...[Music] belongs to a more primitive, more animal form in the scale of arts than literature or painting..., I think music in the 'Violin sequence' is used mostly because it is the sound only that Gregor can register in his dark room and it can take him out. In fact sound plays a very important role in the whole story.]

All of those, who haven't still read it, can find it here. Here is a nice animation of story.

Being a Writer...

This is one of the dialogue from Chekhov's play Seagull, that I saw during my Bombay visit. The following part comes in Act 2, where an accomplished writer, Trigorin talks about being a writer when asked by our heroine, Nina about the pleasure and beauty of being a writer.

TRIGORIN. I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony!