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| Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies |
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| UNIT 422-1: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORIES |
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 Points to Remember  |
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| 422.1.5.5: THEORETICAL POSITIONS BASED ON IDEAS OF
STRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS
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| 422.1.5.5.1: INTER-TEXTUALITY |
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| The literary theorist can never forget about the structuralist approach through the analysis of the textual integer divided into units. However, it is meaningless to claim that integrity in a text cannot be found before it became an important phenomenon in the late 20th century. On the other hand, it was thought to be rational and also quite conforming to the textual pattern in vogue even in the beginning of the modern period. The idea of an integer in a text has always inspired the structuralists and the semioticians, right from the time of Saussure, the father of structuralism. |
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| Here again, we may need to remember that authorship in the Indian tradition fundamentally differs from the traditional western authorship because here the term is used to signify all creative activity, not merely writing. Secondly, here an artistic composition was a group activity. Too much emphasis on individual authorship and also on separate genre in artistic composition have been the outcome of our western contact. If, for a while, we take a close look at the texts composed by the ballad-singers, narrates, painters and scholars, from this point of view regarding authorship and composition, textual integer seems to be in abundance and almost taken for granted. Lyrics of the Siddhaachaaryas amd Mahaajans, rhymes and fairy-tales, terracotta panels and Kalighat or Birbhaum drawings - everywhere the attempts to integrate artistic units (after resulting in a series of compositions in which a group of compositors, sometime of succeeding generations, participated) could be noticed. Not an altogether unknown method, this method continued till the nineteenth century petty-bourgeois meddling. |
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| This Indian concept of a 'total art' began to be felt missing when we got ourselves baptized to the new religion which preaches the value of isolation and estrangement. The bourgeoisie wishes man to be broken into pieces, as the piecemeal man is a better product for sale, is a cheaper buy, and easier to be motivated into any colonial mould. The broken man's art is naturally a detached and an isolated art. To further aggravate this isolationism, the slogans like 'art for art's sake' was promoted and even extended to 'poetry for poetry's sake'. |
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| In the age of decadence, an artist is not permitted to read a book of physics, the theatre-people are hardly interested in poetry, a grammarian feels uncomfortable with contemporary novels and the scientist believes that art is for children. |
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| The said revolutionary character of early twentieth century, its experiments with raaga and raagini, along with a number of folk muses, are used for the real conglomeration. It may be noted that the nine muses of ancient Greece and the classical Indian incarnation of music through Raagas and Raaginis (male and female incarnations) have strong points of similarity as all of them are personified sound-patterns in musical feats. While the Indian classical personification is illustration of time-sequence (Raaga Puurabii, for example, devotes evening-hours of a day and Raaga Bhiaron illustrates the dawn), the classical European way to personify muses is to highlight the theme (clio, for example, is the music of songs with historical theme; Terpsichore, of song with the theme of dawn). Notice that all of the Greek muses were goddesses, being the daughters of Zeus, but according to the Indian tradition, Raagini-variations were feminine incarnation while Raagas were male - together making it a complete or 'total music'. |
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| Thus, this total concept of music, ranging from every aspect of theme and form, is within the integer of texts such as 'Shaapmochan' by Tagore. As elsewhere in the text, bridges between the celestical and mundane were established here to engross every possible imagination of the reader. |
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| By forgetting these details, the Uttar Adhunik mind cannot absorb creative figures such as Rabindranath into infinity. However, absorbing likes of Tagore is necessary because many a significant occupation of space and time - both within the Indian tradition and as a part of the heritage of progressive humanism (in reciprocation of the high bourgeois philosophy of Europe) are more easily and perhaps better attained by the Uttar Adhunik mind. Along with a proper analysis of the textual integer of 'Shapmochan', every other intricacy of Rabindrabath's creative process needs to be closely studied. |
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| The desired close study cannot be possible when the aesthetics of decadence like decaying appears to be the guiding principle for some literatures even today. In short, critics belonging to decadent modernism, like their contemporary poets and artists, prefer the split, not the whole. So they are more encouraged by the provocations of cultural imperialism; they are more interested in their creation of concocted stories regarding personal failures and follies of the literature giants. They are every ready to submit to cultural imperialism powers. In face, it is in the system of decadence that we find all positive tradition to have been assassinated. Today's decadent critics are playing exactly the same role of perverted sexualist artists and writers of 'fifties and 'sixties : those artists and writers smother the tradition of total eroticism by their vindictive attempts to turn sex into a conceited and an important affair (they are vindictive because of their Euro-American masters and thus, they themselves are deprived of an adequate sensibility for enjoying the elegance of total eroticism), these critics assassinate the tradition of a total approach to the creative genius. |
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