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| Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies |
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| UNIT 422-1: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORIES |
| 422.1.5.1. 'UTTAR-AADHUNIKATAA' - A CONTEMPORARY LITERARY
POSITION IN RESPONSE TO EUROPEAN POSTMODERNISM
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| The situation in the late '60s and early '70s in the context of modern Indian literature saw an interesting change. The Communist-democratic movements that had aimed at peasants' uprise earlier in different parts of India had failed but had resulted in cataclysm or in the intellectual elevation of petty-bourgeois. Without weighing the merit or demerit or the results and consequences, we could summarily state that the movements referred to could not achieve what they were actually intended for. Nevertheless, something was achieved alright on fronts other than literary. While intellectual elevation benefited the middle class elites socio-politically and materially, the landless labourers continued to remain as poor as ever. Consequently, atleast some questions began to be asked by the creative writers belonging to the younger generations. Idolatrous approach to the nineteenth century literary (and socio-political) renaissance, evidence in Bengal or Maharashtra or elsewhere, was challenged. It was soon realized that neither the Romantic humanism nor the Victorian philanthropy would serve us now, because the modernism that we inherited as a post-colonial society had now been turned into a faithful but despicable agent of a vested society. |
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| Aware of the decadence of modernism, with a new sensibility and response to the cultural awakening in the '70s a generation of poets and authors emerged in different post-colonial societies and the writers of the new generations that have now come up through prolonged struggle particularly in almost all Indian literature know that established and modernism are complementary to each other. A working term like 'postmodernism' was suggested by some critics to mark the spirit of revolt in this new poetry and new literature in South Asia. Though the primary inspiration behind this poetry is spontaneous apathy to modernism and other social and cultural corruptions, the term 'postmodernism has its own limits and it is only relative to tempus : one may well confuse it too with the European postmodernism. Interestingly, the elementary idea of postmodernism in the Indian context came among the indigenous young poets of Bengal who began writing in the '70s, as a reaction to the farcical surrender to Euro-American models by the decadent modernist writers of Bengal between 1950 and 1970. |
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| 422.1.5.2. THE BROAD CHARACTERISTICS |
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| If we want to characterize this new kind of writing which has been aptly called 'uttar-aadhunik', several features would emerge: First, modernism in Bengal poetry is now being fast replaced by a positive tendency among the newer generation of poets and writers to hunt for their roots. Secondly, the new poets recognize an indomitable urge among them to look back at their own mythology and folklore, ballads and music, drawings and paintings to bring in a demonstrable plurality. Thirdly, other dominant qualities of this generation include, as some critics have suggested, their careful combining of the individual's idiolect with sociolect, incorpulent linguistic pattern, all of which appear like a free response to the positive international tendencies and dialectical surrealism. |
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| What must be emphasized is that even if some of these qualities have things in common with European postmodernism, the early essays and academic articles on the lines of uttar-ahunikata published in various magazines on the new poetry of Bengal bear little or no references to it, which is an evidence that it has been a parallel development here. But the central question still remains to be asked and answered: in what way do we go beyond 'postmodernism'? |
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| 422.1.5.3. THE ETYMOLOGY |
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| A pause is needed here for a scrutiny of the term used for this theoretical position: 'Uttar Adhunik'. If we consider an etymological dictionary, we will see that the root verb of 'Uttar' is 'tarap'. The comprehensive lexicon of Haricharan Bandopadhay (1966/1978: 386-7) informs us that 'tarap' is suggestive of 'getting beyond or going across'. The prefix 'ud-' (which in sandhi became 'ut-tar-') implies 'elevation or development'. 'Ud + tarap' combining to form 'uttar' frequently occurs in astronomical terms like 'uttaraayan$a' and 'uttargot$h', reflecting to 'the diurnal and annual course of the sun and other cosmic bodies', to 'the continuum of time'. The ordinary usage of the word 'uttara' (a noun, meaning 'an answer') may be found in a discourse between two fairy-tale birds asking questions and providing replies, in a story about Radha-Krishna's romance. From the scholastic point of view, 'uttar' in this literary term in Bengali may further be analyzed by citing an illustration of it from the classical Indian philosophy. The Vedaanta-group, which included all the major branches of Indian philosophy of the pre-classical ages, barring of course the Lokaayata, depended on 'Uttara-Miimaamsaa' while the earlier group of Indian philosophers included only the exponents of what we call Puurva-Miimamsaa'. Sanskrit in origin, the word 'uttar' occasionally, only when it has got anything to do with the theory considered, means 'post' or 'past'. More frequently, it refers to a development upon the earlier thought and getting beyond it. Because of its juxtaposition with the word 'Miimaamsaa' (noun, meaning 'a solution'), 'uttar' has a potentiality for facing questions which have so long remained unanswered. |
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| Etymology of 'uttar', cannot stand for an analogy between 'Uttar-Miimaamsaa' and 'Uttar-Aadhunikataa' and such an analogy can never be well drawn. The etymology may only indicate their metaphorical relationship. An artist's journey form 'modernism' to 'postmodernism' and 'uttar-aadhunikataa' is far greater than that from 'karma' to 'jnÖaana' or from 'operation' to 'wisdom'. This journey is now a voyage - a human passion. |
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