**4. Eastern mindscapes: India**

Regarded by many historians as the oldest living civilization of earth, the Indian tradition dates back to 8000 BC, and has a continuous recorded history since the time of the *Vedas*, believed variously to be 3,000 to over 5,500 years ago. India is racially, culturally, linguistically, ethnically and religiously the most diverse country in the world. Its culture has been shaped by its geography, different demographies, and a long history of diverse settlements, invasions and cultures. Social and cultural restrictions are still defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups, often termed castes. This variety has determined communal differences which in their long co-existence have enabled the proximity of many cultural and religious views, mainly Hinduism (practiced by 80% of the people) and Buddhism. The two main language families in India are Indo-Aryan (a branch of Indo-European) and Dravidian.

In South-Asia, traditions that inform religions such as Hinduism and its variants (Brahamism, Vaishnavism, Jainism, Shaivaism, Shaktism), Buddhism, Sikhism, and in the East-Asian Taoism and Shinto, retain a cyclic view of time where the sacred lies outside the flux of the material world. Like Platonic and NeoPlatonic explanations, death is associated with freedom and escape from the bondage of the temporal human condition. Unlike Western ideas of Paradise, in these traditions Nirvāṇa is a state of transcendence involving a subjective experience of deep release and happiness, the result of a natural re-ordering of the mind and body via yogic discipline. In Jainism, the Kalpa Sūtra text, describes the crescent shaped Siddhashila, a place where all siddhas (liberated souls who have discarded their mortal body) reside after Nirvāṇa. In Hindu theology, Siddhashrama is a secret land deep in the Himalayas, where great siddhas live. Siddhashrama is referred in many Indian epics, including the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata (aprox. 400 BC) the oldest preserved and well-known epics of India.

In the *Vedas*, the earliest Indian texts dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC and describing ancient Hindu cosmology, the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years. The Markandeya Purana one of the major eighteen Mahapuranas, a genre of Hindu religious texts, describes Hindu Paradise as seven concentric heavenly worlds and seven oceans. Jambudvipa forms the innermost concentric island, narrow in the south and north and elevated and broad in the middle. Its name is said to derive from a Jambu tree (blackberry) and at the center of the elevated region lies the golden Mount Meru with the vast city of Lord Brahma, Brahmapuri on its summit. Its river, Akash Ganga, issues forth from the foot of Lord Vishnu and, after encircling the city, splits into four mighty streams that flow in opposite directions, North, South, East, West irrigating all the lands of Jambudvipa. The righteous (devas) live in this paradise while awaiting their next reincarnation.

As the modern approaches the post-modern the construction of spatiality takes a different approach breaking the order/topos-chaos/chora dichotomy. The concept of site (as in website) becomes nomadic and there is a return to bounded-chaos approaches since excessive order is perceived as oppressive. With the introduction of digital media and the widespread use of social networks, relational space is reduced in terms of physical distance but also in terms of physical contact. The post-industrial city offers alienated visions of humanity amid the overload of informational signs, exemplified powerfully in Thomas Pynchon's novels and in Paul Auster's short narrative *City of Glass* (see López-Varela 2012)

Regarded by many historians as the oldest living civilization of earth, the Indian tradition dates back to 8000 BC, and has a continuous recorded history since the time of the *Vedas*, believed variously to be 3,000 to over 5,500 years ago. India is racially, culturally, linguistically, ethnically and religiously the most diverse country in the world. Its culture has been shaped by its geography, different demographies, and a long history of diverse settlements, invasions and cultures. Social and cultural restrictions are still defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups, often termed castes. This variety has determined communal differences which in their long co-existence have enabled the proximity of many cultural and religious views, mainly Hinduism (practiced by 80% of the people) and Buddhism. The two main

language families in India are Indo-Aryan (a branch of Indo-European) and Dravidian.

In South-Asia, traditions that inform religions such as Hinduism and its variants (Brahamism, Vaishnavism, Jainism, Shaivaism, Shaktism), Buddhism, Sikhism, and in the East-Asian Taoism and Shinto, retain a cyclic view of time where the sacred lies outside the flux of the material world. Like Platonic and NeoPlatonic explanations, death is associated with freedom and escape from the bondage of the temporal human condition. Unlike Western ideas of Paradise, in these traditions Nirvāṇa is a state of transcendence involving a subjective experience of deep release and happiness, the result of a natural re-ordering of the mind and body via yogic discipline. In Jainism, the Kalpa Sūtra text, describes the crescent shaped Siddhashila, a place where all siddhas (liberated souls who have discarded their mortal body) reside after Nirvāṇa. In Hindu theology, Siddhashrama is a secret land deep in the Himalayas, where great siddhas live. Siddhashrama is referred in many Indian epics, including the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata (aprox. 400 BC) the oldest preserved and well-known epics of

In the *Vedas*, the earliest Indian texts dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC and describing ancient Hindu cosmology, the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years. The Markandeya Purana one of the major eighteen Mahapuranas, a genre of Hindu religious texts, describes Hindu Paradise as seven concentric heavenly worlds and seven oceans. Jambudvipa forms the innermost concentric island, narrow in the south and north and elevated and broad in the middle. Its name is said to derive from a Jambu tree (blackberry) and at the center of the elevated region lies the golden Mount Meru with the vast city of Lord Brahma, Brahmapuri on its summit. Its river, Akash Ganga, issues forth from the foot of Lord Vishnu and, after encircling the city, splits into four mighty streams that flow in opposite directions, North, South, East, West irrigating all the lands of Jambudvipa. The righteous (devas) live in this

paradise while awaiting their next reincarnation.

**4. Eastern mindscapes: India**

India.

This description shows that in South-Asian traditions, Paradise is not contemplated as a fixed location at the end of a historical journey towards sanctification, but rather as a series of existential planes, traditionally envisioned as a vertical continuum in the shape of a mountain, with heavens existing above the realm of world living creatures. This visualization is directly related to the differences religious conceptions of resurrection and reincarnation, and impacts directly in the visualization of Paradise as ideal community.

Garden-cities may have originated as early as 4000 BC, when the idea of Paradise spread through Persian literature and Hellenic influence into Europe and North Africa. The Persian word for walled-garden *eparidaida* rendered the European "Paradise". Hebrew *pardes*  referred to a park, garden or orchard (see the Song of Solomon 4:13, Ecclesiastes 2:5 and Nehemiah 2:8) In the *New Testament* the word is used in Luke 23:43, 2 Cor.12:4 and Rev.2:7 in a reference to the Gen.2:8 and the tree of life. Besides, the story locates the garden with reference to four rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, Euphrates) and, as in the Indian tradition, they charted the four different directions North, South, East and West. The garden-myth contemplates location in relation to the birth of sexuality (*locus amoenus*), and therefore community. The enclosed quality of the garden was meant to protect physical and spiritual relaxation, and eventually came to refer to a plantation or cultivated area, not necessarily walled. Gardens were decorated with fountains and ponds and four streams dividing the four areas of the world. The design changed into a central pool with a long axis and a cross axis extending water channels into four gardens, a pattern visible in the garden of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain and in the Taj Mahal. The first Persian garden in India seems to be the work of Ẓahīr ad-Dīn Muḥammad (1483 –1530), a descendant of Genghis Khan, who was the first Mughal Emperor to invade South Asia. He established Aram Bāgh garden in Agra. In the Islamic tradition, the descriptions of paradise are mentioned in significant detail in the *Qur'an* (610-632 CE)

The different views of Paradise between ancient South Asian and Mesopotamian traditions are related to the distinct conceptions of temporal flow. In both traditions the universe is infinite, but the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, postulate a difference between sacred and profane time, with human creation (Genesis) as starting point. South Asian religions, however, belief that time is infinite, like the human soul, and it follows cycles. Contemporary scientific explanations see time as a dimension of space, in that future events are already there. The simultaneous experience of time cannot be captured from a human perspective. Thus, humans contemplate time as a succession of moments (past, present, future) in relation to perception and memory. The contents of an observation are time-extended but the conceptual observer, being a geometric point at the origin of the light cone, is not (see López-Varela 2004). In religious mythical imagery, a cosmic center or *axis mundi* would help connect the two planes, the sacred (Heaven) and the human world. A frequent element in all cosmologies is the tree or a pillar (ziggurat, temple, etc.) joining the two words.

These foundational stories are closely related to the development of communities, cities and nations. Generally, human control implies the removal of the uncontrolled, dangerous and wild, and sometimes the taming of nature. However, the envisioned garden-community also seeks to preserve ecological relations and not degrade human life and nature with polluting and unhealthy habits for the community (among them heavy industrialization, prostitution, etc., frequently associated with urban spaces). The mythical images captured in artistic

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 87

independence, several new cities were built and older cities such as Varanasi or Hyderabad, grew into state capitals. Other urban centres under colonial rule, like Kolkata, favoured bourgeois cosmopolitan environments that linked European commerce to South Asian regions. Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are becoming the world's largest megalopolises and cultural centres of growing significance, with Bollywood, Bhangra Beat and Asian Dub increasingly playing a formative role in global pop culture. All these spaces reflect the complex interrelationships between globalization, local traditions and redesigned living

As in other developing countries, India's modern popular imagery has resulted from the major cultural and technological shifts during 19th and 20th-centuries. Mass production of images, new means of visualising myths and religious legends have produced a huge eclecticism of images. The copy-paste world of Internet virtual images facilitates an ambivalent collage of representations that equates with the global appropriation of aesthetic and cultural content at a transnational level. Today's image economies are, more than ever, economies of mobile World Wide Web signs (López-Varela 2012). But although the city may be an ideal place to translate cultural forms into artistic practices, the contemporary art production is no longer just located in the urban centres. Utopian imaginaries coexist with dystopic representations where the disentanglement of communal bonds and the fear of losing one's sense of belonging take the form of fractured and polluted urban environments. With the proliferation of online technologies and social networks, this theme is being avidly discussed all over the world, as digital media is creating a general dislocation, not just of information, but also of issues concerning individual and collaborative production, creative

commons and copyright, and opening up the spectrum of communal life in general.

result of the participation of several generations of artists.

In West Bengal, a group of popular poets have been discussing about what they describe as an "overpersonal (*Uttar-Vyakti*) moment" of total personal individual growth, but simultaneously deeply social. The group, which Amitabha Gupta called *UttarAdhunik School of Poetry* (*Janapad* 1985), has vowed to put the socio-cultural context at the very centre of their poetry and react against the individualism of modernity and post-modernity, and the market-guided reality prevalent in India since the 1960s and 1970s. *UttarAdhunikata* looks back at Indian mythology and folklore, ballads and music, drawings and paintings to bring in a plurality which combines individual's idiolect and sociolect, and contemplates authorship as a group and inter-genre activity. As in the *Siddhaachaaryas* and *Vhaisnava Mahajans*, in work by *Shakta* poets, in *Kalighat* or *Birbhaum* drawings and many terracotta panels in temples, the hybrid integration of artistic units in a series of compositions is frequent, and these works were frequently the

A continuation of the breach between Western and Eastern space-time conceptions, Indian art shows the fluid diasporic nature of location, authorship, representation and genre. One example can be found in the differences between Greek and Indian myths regarding the origin of music. In both cases, female deities personify sound patterns, but while the Indian classification refers to time-sequences (Raaga Puurabii, for example, is about the evening, and Raaga Bhiaron about dawn), bridging the sacred and the profane and integrating female and male incarnations (Raagini and Raagas), the Greek cannon uses female goddesses (all daughters of Zeus) who differ in the themes they present (Clio, for example, is the music of

spaces.

representations bring forth important human concerns regarding social life in what Benedict Anderson termed 'imagined communities'.

The balance between the imagined and the real was the object of Edward Said's critique of orientalism. The perception of space (a territory) and time (its history) is constantly created and re-created in cultural representations (images, texts, discourses). Frequently, these prototypical representations are instruments of institutional power and provide a means to control and subordinate some areas. Power often lies, and even more today in the age of media communication, in the hands of those who have the means to objectify those who they imagine. Said's notion of "imagined geographies" shows the inequalities created in the construction of representations about other (different) regions and societies.

Western imagination has tended to contemplate India as a nation of small rural communities identified with nature, and whose artistic geography has been put in relation to the abundant mythology, ancient history and spirituality that strongly infuse all levels of India's life and art. But today, Indian diversity comes across in the iconography of its everyday communal life, rendered in the cities in the form billboards and posters in the streets, automobiles and shops, exhibited in art galleries and discovered in bazaars, TV adds and film posters. In the last two decades, India has become one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world. Yet, it has not given up its historical past and social structures. This rapid process of urbanization often leads to variable levels of spatial, social and economic marginalization in the case of the poorer sections of urban populations. This is mostly due to uneven coverage by public and private enterprise, uneven distribution of investment, and frequently the absence of social safety networks. In the history of the West, the liberalization of the economy associated to industrialism generated an increase in social differences that eventually led to discontent and revolutions. These problems have not been solved yet. In a working paper for the US National Bureau of Economic Research entitled "The divergence of human capital levels across cities", Christopher R. Berry and Edward L. Glaeser (2005) present a model showing the relationship between the clustering of skilled people in metropolitan US areas, and urban size, measured as population. These findings account for roughly 25 to 35 percent of the total increase in economic inequality across cities over the past three decades in the US. The solution lies in developing strategies to turn low-wage unskilled jobs into higher-waged skilled positions and build a more robust social safety net to address the persistent problems of the disadvantaged. State measures to facilitate education and training to the poor are fundamental. The last part of this paper turns to artistic representations that illustrate some of the concerns, fractures and tensions created by rapid changes in technology, industrialization and urbanization, and that frequently confront the imaginaries of local communities.

#### **5. West Bengal and the** *UttarAdhunik* **school of poetry**

The rapid growth of population in India, with 26 cities expected to host over 1 million inhabitants by 2030 is sometimes contemplated as a source of hope for the suffocating Western economies that expect to see an increase of commerce with the two Asian emerging superpowers, India and China. In the last ten years urban population in India has reached 30 percent of its total population. Many changes to the cities are coming from long-time residents, who are becoming more prosperous and invest in new industrial goals. After

representations bring forth important human concerns regarding social life in what Benedict

The balance between the imagined and the real was the object of Edward Said's critique of orientalism. The perception of space (a territory) and time (its history) is constantly created and re-created in cultural representations (images, texts, discourses). Frequently, these prototypical representations are instruments of institutional power and provide a means to control and subordinate some areas. Power often lies, and even more today in the age of media communication, in the hands of those who have the means to objectify those who they imagine. Said's notion of "imagined geographies" shows the inequalities created in the

Western imagination has tended to contemplate India as a nation of small rural communities identified with nature, and whose artistic geography has been put in relation to the abundant mythology, ancient history and spirituality that strongly infuse all levels of India's life and art. But today, Indian diversity comes across in the iconography of its everyday communal life, rendered in the cities in the form billboards and posters in the streets, automobiles and shops, exhibited in art galleries and discovered in bazaars, TV adds and film posters. In the last two decades, India has become one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world. Yet, it has not given up its historical past and social structures. This rapid process of urbanization often leads to variable levels of spatial, social and economic marginalization in the case of the poorer sections of urban populations. This is mostly due to uneven coverage by public and private enterprise, uneven distribution of investment, and frequently the absence of social safety networks. In the history of the West, the liberalization of the economy associated to industrialism generated an increase in social differences that eventually led to discontent and revolutions. These problems have not been solved yet. In a working paper for the US National Bureau of Economic Research entitled "The divergence of human capital levels across cities", Christopher R. Berry and Edward L. Glaeser (2005) present a model showing the relationship between the clustering of skilled people in metropolitan US areas, and urban size, measured as population. These findings account for roughly 25 to 35 percent of the total increase in economic inequality across cities over the past three decades in the US. The solution lies in developing strategies to turn low-wage unskilled jobs into higher-waged skilled positions and build a more robust social safety net to address the persistent problems of the disadvantaged. State measures to facilitate education and training to the poor are fundamental. The last part of this paper turns to artistic representations that illustrate some of the concerns, fractures and tensions created by rapid changes in technology, industrialization and urbanization, and that frequently

construction of representations about other (different) regions and societies.

Anderson termed 'imagined communities'.

confront the imaginaries of local communities.

**5. West Bengal and the** *UttarAdhunik* **school of poetry** 

The rapid growth of population in India, with 26 cities expected to host over 1 million inhabitants by 2030 is sometimes contemplated as a source of hope for the suffocating Western economies that expect to see an increase of commerce with the two Asian emerging superpowers, India and China. In the last ten years urban population in India has reached 30 percent of its total population. Many changes to the cities are coming from long-time residents, who are becoming more prosperous and invest in new industrial goals. After independence, several new cities were built and older cities such as Varanasi or Hyderabad, grew into state capitals. Other urban centres under colonial rule, like Kolkata, favoured bourgeois cosmopolitan environments that linked European commerce to South Asian regions. Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are becoming the world's largest megalopolises and cultural centres of growing significance, with Bollywood, Bhangra Beat and Asian Dub increasingly playing a formative role in global pop culture. All these spaces reflect the complex interrelationships between globalization, local traditions and redesigned living spaces.

As in other developing countries, India's modern popular imagery has resulted from the major cultural and technological shifts during 19th and 20th-centuries. Mass production of images, new means of visualising myths and religious legends have produced a huge eclecticism of images. The copy-paste world of Internet virtual images facilitates an ambivalent collage of representations that equates with the global appropriation of aesthetic and cultural content at a transnational level. Today's image economies are, more than ever, economies of mobile World Wide Web signs (López-Varela 2012). But although the city may be an ideal place to translate cultural forms into artistic practices, the contemporary art production is no longer just located in the urban centres. Utopian imaginaries coexist with dystopic representations where the disentanglement of communal bonds and the fear of losing one's sense of belonging take the form of fractured and polluted urban environments. With the proliferation of online technologies and social networks, this theme is being avidly discussed all over the world, as digital media is creating a general dislocation, not just of information, but also of issues concerning individual and collaborative production, creative commons and copyright, and opening up the spectrum of communal life in general.

In West Bengal, a group of popular poets have been discussing about what they describe as an "overpersonal (*Uttar-Vyakti*) moment" of total personal individual growth, but simultaneously deeply social. The group, which Amitabha Gupta called *UttarAdhunik School of Poetry* (*Janapad* 1985), has vowed to put the socio-cultural context at the very centre of their poetry and react against the individualism of modernity and post-modernity, and the market-guided reality prevalent in India since the 1960s and 1970s. *UttarAdhunikata* looks back at Indian mythology and folklore, ballads and music, drawings and paintings to bring in a plurality which combines individual's idiolect and sociolect, and contemplates authorship as a group and inter-genre activity. As in the *Siddhaachaaryas* and *Vhaisnava Mahajans*, in work by *Shakta* poets, in *Kalighat* or *Birbhaum* drawings and many terracotta panels in temples, the hybrid integration of artistic units in a series of compositions is frequent, and these works were frequently the result of the participation of several generations of artists.

A continuation of the breach between Western and Eastern space-time conceptions, Indian art shows the fluid diasporic nature of location, authorship, representation and genre. One example can be found in the differences between Greek and Indian myths regarding the origin of music. In both cases, female deities personify sound patterns, but while the Indian classification refers to time-sequences (Raaga Puurabii, for example, is about the evening, and Raaga Bhiaron about dawn), bridging the sacred and the profane and integrating female and male incarnations (Raagini and Raagas), the Greek cannon uses female goddesses (all daughters of Zeus) who differ in the themes they present (Clio, for example, is the music of

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 89

The poem's keywords, "born in Gourabanga…the land of floods, drought and good harvest", with "language all around you", "simmering inside you", refer to the inherited past, carried by the traveller in his/her movement. The poetic subject asks the traveller to "stop for a moment" and recover his/her "voice hands and tongue". The poem/song ends with the line "say, hope in the mother tongue", emphasizing that Indian myths and traditions (mother tongues) are a source of hope and freedom for *UttarAdhunik* poets. The illustration of the

Sen's poem also refers to the "travelling across" (time and space) of certain elements in Bangladeshi poetry. Sen's essay "Ashir Kabita, Grihey Pherey Bhramonik Chokh" which appeared in *Ekobingsho* (March 1992) graphically showed the similarities between the

*What a striking unity between Lalon Fakir and Ramprasad Sen. Although as poets they belong to two different religious and social classes. Actually what makes them attractive is their love of man which is not to be found in modern poetry. Similarly, there are affinities between the poetic languages of Shah Muhammad Sagir, Chandidas and the padavali poetry, though their subjects are different. Sufi-Sahajia literature also is a great treasure of Bangla literature: in it there has* 

Many of Anjan Sen's poems focus on spatial dynamics, rather than on cartographic representations. The journey and migratory movements are a constant theme, and the echo

poem also refers to this fact by depicting a bird of heavy plumage flying into the sky.

*been a synthesis of various religions."* (Sen in Chakrabarty 1991: 10)

of nostalgia for lost traditional roots resounds in many of the verses.

writings of poets on both sides of the border:

historical songs; Terpsichore, of songs on dawn, etc.). The concept of Vaak (the voice the word it utters) is relevant here and refers to the activity of speech as a cohesive force which unites sounds and words. Similarly, "*UttarAdhunikata* is a "textual integer", an expression coined by Amitava Gupta, to explain the textuality that interrelates poems connected into a narrative that fuses past and present, individual and communal and collective consciousness.

Sen explains that *UttarAdhunik* is not a movement but rather a stirring, a musical tone, an emotion, a puzzle or perhaps an anxiety. Quoting Niharranjan Ray (1968), Sen describes the notion of social subjectivity represented by the Indian concepts of '*Kula'* and *'Sila'*. A person is introduced to his/her social world in terms of his/her *KulaSila. "Kula* is heredity, inheritance, which is both biological and cultural, together constituting what we call tradition." (Ray 1968: 6) *Kula* takes place in a particular context and human situation and carries "particular problems, obligations and challenges" In these encounters the person develops ideas, visions, images, symbols, and modes and methods of thought and action, becoming aware of this inheritance (*Kula*), and responding and articulating these modes in particular ways, thus determining his or her *Sila*. (Ray 1968: 7) Myth is not a passing reference in *UttarAdhunik* poetry. In order to bridge the gap between *Kula* and *Sila,* between the past and the present, the *UttarAdhunik* poets use traditional myths as part of present history. Teleological (linear) time and history are understood as objective (scientific/empirical) response to the conflicts presented in myth (Hegel's dialogical approach is based on a synthesis of opposites, something unthinkable for Indian conceptions of coexistence of multiplicity).

*Any theory is inevitably bound within the periphery of country, time and word – even the basic physical characteristics of the theory-giver leave their imprint on the nature of the theory. Everybody lives in a specific country and time, and expresses his mind through words – the thoughts and attitudes of his countrymen are always there in his conscious and unconscious self. Tradition is created in this way. This tradition can also be called a cage. But in the cage itself lies the possibility of an achin pakhi (unknown bird) that transcends the cage.* (Chakrabarty 62)

The well-known poem "Darao Pathik" (Stop you traveller), written by Anjan Sen, addresses some of the issues just discussed:

Stop you traveller If you were born in Gourabanga If you've heard padavali mangala Panchali prasadi Madhu Rabindra Stop for a moment If you were born in the land of floods, drought and good harvest You'll say language is all around you. . . Language is simmering inside you Bangla bhasha Whenecer you want to say my Bhasha You're losing voice hands and tongue Stop, Traveller, stop for a moment Say, hope is the mother tongue

(translated from Bengaly by Khandakar Ashraf Hossain)

historical songs; Terpsichore, of songs on dawn, etc.). The concept of Vaak (the voice the word it utters) is relevant here and refers to the activity of speech as a cohesive force which unites sounds and words. Similarly, "*UttarAdhunikata* is a "textual integer", an expression coined by Amitava Gupta, to explain the textuality that interrelates poems connected into a narrative that fuses past and present, individual and communal and

Sen explains that *UttarAdhunik* is not a movement but rather a stirring, a musical tone, an emotion, a puzzle or perhaps an anxiety. Quoting Niharranjan Ray (1968), Sen describes the notion of social subjectivity represented by the Indian concepts of '*Kula'* and *'Sila'*. A person is introduced to his/her social world in terms of his/her *KulaSila. "Kula* is heredity, inheritance, which is both biological and cultural, together constituting what we call tradition." (Ray 1968: 6) *Kula* takes place in a particular context and human situation and carries "particular problems, obligations and challenges" In these encounters the person develops ideas, visions, images, symbols, and modes and methods of thought and action, becoming aware of this inheritance (*Kula*), and responding and articulating these modes in particular ways, thus determining his or her *Sila*. (Ray 1968: 7) Myth is not a passing reference in *UttarAdhunik* poetry. In order to bridge the gap between *Kula* and *Sila,* between the past and the present, the *UttarAdhunik* poets use traditional myths as part of present history. Teleological (linear) time and history are understood as objective (scientific/empirical) response to the conflicts presented in myth (Hegel's dialogical approach is based on a synthesis of opposites, something unthinkable for Indian conceptions of coexistence of

*Any theory is inevitably bound within the periphery of country, time and word – even the basic physical characteristics of the theory-giver leave their imprint on the nature of the theory. Everybody lives in a specific country and time, and expresses his mind through words – the thoughts and attitudes of his countrymen are always there in his conscious and unconscious self. Tradition is created in this way. This tradition can also be called a cage. But in the cage itself lies the possibility of an achin pakhi (unknown bird) that transcends the cage.* (Chakrabarty 62) The well-known poem "Darao Pathik" (Stop you traveller), written by Anjan Sen, addresses

collective consciousness.

multiplicity).

some of the issues just discussed:

If you were born in Gourabanga If you've heard padavali mangala Panchali prasadi Madhu Rabindra

You'll say language is all around you. . . Language is simmering inside you

Whenecer you want to say my Bhasha You're losing voice hands and tongue Stop, Traveller, stop for a moment Say, hope is the mother tongue

If you were born in the land of floods, drought and good harvest

(translated from Bengaly by Khandakar Ashraf Hossain)

Stop you traveller

Stop for a moment

Bangla bhasha

The poem's keywords, "born in Gourabanga…the land of floods, drought and good harvest", with "language all around you", "simmering inside you", refer to the inherited past, carried by the traveller in his/her movement. The poetic subject asks the traveller to "stop for a moment" and recover his/her "voice hands and tongue". The poem/song ends with the line "say, hope in the mother tongue", emphasizing that Indian myths and traditions (mother tongues) are a source of hope and freedom for *UttarAdhunik* poets. The illustration of the poem also refers to this fact by depicting a bird of heavy plumage flying into the sky.

Sen's poem also refers to the "travelling across" (time and space) of certain elements in Bangladeshi poetry. Sen's essay "Ashir Kabita, Grihey Pherey Bhramonik Chokh" which appeared in *Ekobingsho* (March 1992) graphically showed the similarities between the writings of poets on both sides of the border:

*What a striking unity between Lalon Fakir and Ramprasad Sen. Although as poets they belong to two different religious and social classes. Actually what makes them attractive is their love of man which is not to be found in modern poetry. Similarly, there are affinities between the poetic languages of Shah Muhammad Sagir, Chandidas and the padavali poetry, though their subjects are different. Sufi-Sahajia literature also is a great treasure of Bangla literature: in it there has been a synthesis of various religions."* (Sen in Chakrabarty 1991: 10)

Many of Anjan Sen's poems focus on spatial dynamics, rather than on cartographic representations. The journey and migratory movements are a constant theme, and the echo of nostalgia for lost traditional roots resounds in many of the verses.

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 91

One of the striking characteristics of Anjan Sen's poetry is its simplicity. It comes across despite the intertextual references to classic Indian myths, history and folk traditions. Besides, Sen has actively encouraged the conversion of his words into visual art, crossing the border between text and image, and employing different formats, not just illustrations but also digital art forms (employed for instance by the Mexican artist Diana Magallón) and base-relief (as seen in his poem "Imagination" illustrated by sculptor Bimal Kundu, below). Furthermore, although Sen himself has illustrated many of his poems, he has also invited artists from diverse cultures to put images to his words. This is a direct way of involving his audiences into co-creation, making his own work more open, public, and intersubjective and

Anjan Sen is also happy to find the reflection of the tolerant coexistence of multiplicity of world views and religious symbols and tropes in his own poetry and in the poetry of the young Bangladeshi poets. In his critical works, Sen has explained that "In the literature of every language there are some elements which are the properties of its own. This is seen in that a particular image, subject or idea or context comes back again and again in that literature. Perhaps it changes its external form in the hands of different poets, but it does not become another text or influence. It manifests itself in intertextuality" (Sen: 1991, p. 36-37) References such as anno (food) and dhan (paddy) are reminiscent of folk life. They are found, for instance, in an old spell about dhenki (a wooden pedal used in husking rice).

("Krishir" [Of agriculture], translated from Bengaly by Khandakar Ashraf Hossain) Similarly, "The Hunger" expresses the need for a return to the mythical and the traditional; the need to stay hungry, to dominate the capitalist desire to consume until everything is exhausted, including creativity. Again, the simple visuality of the poem is easily accessible

These metaphors bring back the awareness of the native soil.

The farmer's daughters walk round the heaps of paddy

Tell me – who will you eat, and eat how much That 'll make you fat as a grampus

Fire in the large hearth does not quench

Life becomes a listless corpse as it corrodes You 'll eat corpse cadaver – you 'll eat all And will grow into a pile in the capital market Killing the deceased over and over again

So many seeds grew into plants So much gold was reaped

Making the shrill 'uloo' sound The festival continues all morning

The dream of more anno After that dry soil again No seed no water

Melts glass molten iron Crops get burnt out Even that will you lap up Devour sweetness and its joy ?

to the reader:

less private and individual.

Flowers bloom in the footsteps of one who goes Pulling away all attractions and burdens And while going, sweat stains the chosen path. Flowers bloom, the journey becomes meaningful. A flurry in the path of speech Oblique attractions Started, one hesitates And goes again And in going words become fire and water Earth and universe. Speech continues And the earthly rhythms of common speech Become verses Going.

("Journey" translated from Bengali by Amlan Dsgupta; Illustrated by Diana Magallón 1989)

The philosophy of *UttarAdhunikata* does not see distinct cultures as mapped and detached realities, but rather as a system of inter-relations in continuum influx. Unlike the nostalgic modernist use of myth to capture the past in the present moment, West Bengal poetry understands temporal happenings as eternal recurrences, in line with traditional Indian conceptions of the universe. Time is a continuous wave of states of being which include past, present and future simultaneously. The individual moment is contemplated in relation to eternity or timelessness. And since the 'reality' of time is always set against the background of space, timeless time can only be thought within spaceless space, that is, infinity. Both eternity (the temporal dimension) and infinity (the spatial dimension) of humanity are, according to ancient Indian traditions, in perpetual flux or change.

("Journey" translated from Bengali by Amlan Dsgupta; Illustrated by Diana Magallón

The philosophy of *UttarAdhunikata* does not see distinct cultures as mapped and detached realities, but rather as a system of inter-relations in continuum influx. Unlike the nostalgic modernist use of myth to capture the past in the present moment, West Bengal poetry understands temporal happenings as eternal recurrences, in line with traditional Indian conceptions of the universe. Time is a continuous wave of states of being which include past, present and future simultaneously. The individual moment is contemplated in relation to eternity or timelessness. And since the 'reality' of time is always set against the background of space, timeless time can only be thought within spaceless space, that is, infinity. Both eternity (the temporal dimension) and infinity (the spatial dimension) of

humanity are, according to ancient Indian traditions, in perpetual flux or change.

Flowers bloom in the footsteps of one who goes Pulling away all attractions and burdens And while going, sweat stains the chosen path. Flowers bloom, the journey becomes meaningful.

And in going words become fire and water

And the earthly rhythms of common speech

A flurry in the path of speech

Oblique attractions Started, one hesitates And goes again

Earth and universe. Speech continues

Become verses

Going.

1989)

One of the striking characteristics of Anjan Sen's poetry is its simplicity. It comes across despite the intertextual references to classic Indian myths, history and folk traditions. Besides, Sen has actively encouraged the conversion of his words into visual art, crossing the border between text and image, and employing different formats, not just illustrations but also digital art forms (employed for instance by the Mexican artist Diana Magallón) and base-relief (as seen in his poem "Imagination" illustrated by sculptor Bimal Kundu, below). Furthermore, although Sen himself has illustrated many of his poems, he has also invited artists from diverse cultures to put images to his words. This is a direct way of involving his audiences into co-creation, making his own work more open, public, and intersubjective and less private and individual.

Anjan Sen is also happy to find the reflection of the tolerant coexistence of multiplicity of world views and religious symbols and tropes in his own poetry and in the poetry of the young Bangladeshi poets. In his critical works, Sen has explained that "In the literature of every language there are some elements which are the properties of its own. This is seen in that a particular image, subject or idea or context comes back again and again in that literature. Perhaps it changes its external form in the hands of different poets, but it does not become another text or influence. It manifests itself in intertextuality" (Sen: 1991, p. 36-37) References such as anno (food) and dhan (paddy) are reminiscent of folk life. They are found, for instance, in an old spell about dhenki (a wooden pedal used in husking rice). These metaphors bring back the awareness of the native soil.

So many seeds grew into plants So much gold was reaped The farmer's daughters walk round the heaps of paddy Making the shrill 'uloo' sound The festival continues all morning The dream of more anno After that dry soil again No seed no water

("Krishir" [Of agriculture], translated from Bengaly by Khandakar Ashraf Hossain)

Similarly, "The Hunger" expresses the need for a return to the mythical and the traditional; the need to stay hungry, to dominate the capitalist desire to consume until everything is exhausted, including creativity. Again, the simple visuality of the poem is easily accessible to the reader:

Tell me – who will you eat, and eat how much That 'll make you fat as a grampus Fire in the large hearth does not quench Melts glass molten iron Crops get burnt out Even that will you lap up Devour sweetness and its joy ? Life becomes a listless corpse as it corrodes You 'll eat corpse cadaver – you 'll eat all And will grow into a pile in the capital market Killing the deceased over and over again

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 93

("Sravan", translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta; Illustrated by Diana Magallón,

Krishnanjan Bhattacharya indicates that *UttarAdhunikata* recognizes cultural continuity and does not see distinct cultures 'detached realities', but rather as a system of inter-relations in continuum influx. (Bhattacharya 2004:184). The dynamic conception of *UttarAdhunikata*, unlike the nostalgic modernist use of myth to capture the past in the present moment, understands temporal happenings as eternal recurrences; a continuous wave of states of being which include past, present and future simultaneously (see Nikan 1967, Gupta 1991, Nundy 1992). Therefore, the question of seizing a moment of recollection as if suspended in time, present in Wordsworth's romantic poetry, in Joyce's notion of 'epiphanies' or in

A post-post-modern conception (if labels were still in vogue) would be closer to what Anjan Sen has in mind: the inter-relatedness, dynamic and rhythmic, song-like flow of time and life, and of the substances of which life is made, both material (Sen's uses the mythical basic symbolism of earth, water, air/sky) and psychological (an emphasis on the affective and the aesthetic). The feelings that such a vision enables are captured in the metaphor of flowing and cleansing waters in Anjan Sen's poems below, and in the illustrations that accompany

their shoulders heavy with the sacrosanct water

The rock has been washed by many monsoons.

Virginia Woolf's 'moments of being' does not arise in *UttarAdhunikata.*

Standing rock- deep in the holy river, the hibiscus sky

("Flow" 1989; Translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta)

UttarAdhunikta seeks to consider social accounts (both mythical and historical), alongside individual perceptions within the aesthetic. What this means is, in fact, an attempt to question the traditional division between myth, history and poetry, and formulate a kind of

History, as formulated by Aristotle in his *Poetics,* has always been associated with chronological narratives of political events, frequently wars and the establishment of new

The flowing locks of the destroyer, in mountains

Pouring water - Sravan takes a shower Once again the song of desire for grain

Mexico)

the poems:

And flows goes on

And sing its praises Call the river their mother,

inter-generic hybrid position.

Sing hymns

Flowing

Where hast thou come O river

Life flows on through the rain, And men discuss it as hope

In their primal, magical belief Sky rain mountain river water

When the fire of the skies cool, water Drenches the soil and soothes the eyes

My hunger lies in his hidden tongue Tell me how much more will you eat How much more that' ll make you immense

("Hunger"; Translated from Bengali by Udaya Narayana Singh)

"Sharavan" is also about creativity; Here Anjan Sen uses metaphors of harvest and fertility. During the month of Sravan, a large section of Indian people perform a ritual in which they carry water on their shoulders and travel for around 50 Km to pour this water on god Shiva, the Indian god of fertility and harvest. Sen suggests that grain hardens and becomes a stone (*ShivaLinga* is the symbol of fertility, a black stone in the shape of a phallus).

In *The Myth of the Eternal Retour*, Mircea Eliade explains how many of these ancient agricultural and fertility rituals may have travelled from their original contexts, translated and interpreted in new cultures. Rituals around the world have many resemblances, possibly not just due to the fact of mutual influence, but also owing to the basic structures needed to maintain human life in Neolithic times. Grain is a sources of food and energy and a symbol of new life and creativity (i.e. holy bread in Christian Communion) Water is a sources of cleanliness and new life (i.e. Baptism) and helps grain to grow properly on the land, just as food helps human physical and spiritual growth. Echoes of these rituals can also be found in the Egyptian *Book of the Dead* and in ancient Celtic fertility rituals (see *The Golden Bough* by Sir James Frazer, and Jessie L. Weston's *From Ritual to Romance,* both sources of T.S. Eliot *The Wasteland*). These myths are related to a cyclic conception of time in which the ritual is used again and again at the end of the cycle in order to clean, and prepare the land for a new start (also in a metaphoric sense where the land stands for the physical and spiritual human body). As Eliade explains, the cyclic ritualistic (*illo tempore*) conception of time (still welcomed in contemporary societies every "New Year") provides a sense of relief against the linear flux that ends in death. In most religions, after the "apocalyptic" moment of the end of physical time (life) there would be a possibility of return (reincarnation or resurrection).

The sky shivers with the swing of rains the rain drip-dropdrenching the visionary world O grace . O thunderous grace, quench the cosmic thirst In the rice field, the festival song is on In the roots, the swing of the rains Towards their rock the pilgrims move

"Sharavan" is also about creativity; Here Anjan Sen uses metaphors of harvest and fertility. During the month of Sravan, a large section of Indian people perform a ritual in which they carry water on their shoulders and travel for around 50 Km to pour this water on god Shiva, the Indian god of fertility and harvest. Sen suggests that grain hardens and becomes a stone

In *The Myth of the Eternal Retour*, Mircea Eliade explains how many of these ancient agricultural and fertility rituals may have travelled from their original contexts, translated and interpreted in new cultures. Rituals around the world have many resemblances, possibly not just due to the fact of mutual influence, but also owing to the basic structures needed to maintain human life in Neolithic times. Grain is a sources of food and energy and a symbol of new life and creativity (i.e. holy bread in Christian Communion) Water is a sources of cleanliness and new life (i.e. Baptism) and helps grain to grow properly on the land, just as food helps human physical and spiritual growth. Echoes of these rituals can also be found in the Egyptian *Book of the Dead* and in ancient Celtic fertility rituals (see *The Golden Bough* by Sir James Frazer, and Jessie L. Weston's *From Ritual to Romance,* both sources of T.S. Eliot *The Wasteland*). These myths are related to a cyclic conception of time in which the ritual is used again and again at the end of the cycle in order to clean, and prepare the land for a new start (also in a metaphoric sense where the land stands for the physical and spiritual human body). As Eliade explains, the cyclic ritualistic (*illo tempore*) conception of time (still welcomed in contemporary societies every "New Year") provides a sense of relief against the linear flux that ends in death. In most religions, after the "apocalyptic" moment of the end of physical

My hunger lies in his hidden tongue Tell me how much more will you eat

How much more that' ll make you immense

("Hunger"; Translated from Bengali by Udaya Narayana Singh)

(*ShivaLinga* is the symbol of fertility, a black stone in the shape of a phallus).

time (life) there would be a possibility of return (reincarnation or resurrection).

The sky shivers with the swing of rains

In the rice field, the festival song is on In the roots, the swing of the rains Towards their rock the pilgrims move

the rain drip-dropdrenching the visionary world O grace . O thunderous grace, quench the cosmic thirst their shoulders heavy with the sacrosanct water Pouring water - Sravan takes a shower Once again the song of desire for grain The rock has been washed by many monsoons.

("Sravan", translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta; Illustrated by Diana Magallón, Mexico)

Krishnanjan Bhattacharya indicates that *UttarAdhunikata* recognizes cultural continuity and does not see distinct cultures 'detached realities', but rather as a system of inter-relations in continuum influx. (Bhattacharya 2004:184). The dynamic conception of *UttarAdhunikata*, unlike the nostalgic modernist use of myth to capture the past in the present moment, understands temporal happenings as eternal recurrences; a continuous wave of states of being which include past, present and future simultaneously (see Nikan 1967, Gupta 1991, Nundy 1992). Therefore, the question of seizing a moment of recollection as if suspended in time, present in Wordsworth's romantic poetry, in Joyce's notion of 'epiphanies' or in Virginia Woolf's 'moments of being' does not arise in *UttarAdhunikata.*

A post-post-modern conception (if labels were still in vogue) would be closer to what Anjan Sen has in mind: the inter-relatedness, dynamic and rhythmic, song-like flow of time and life, and of the substances of which life is made, both material (Sen's uses the mythical basic symbolism of earth, water, air/sky) and psychological (an emphasis on the affective and the aesthetic). The feelings that such a vision enables are captured in the metaphor of flowing and cleansing waters in Anjan Sen's poems below, and in the illustrations that accompany the poems:

And flows goes on Standing rock- deep in the holy river, the hibiscus sky Where hast thou come O river The flowing locks of the destroyer, in mountains When the fire of the skies cool, water Drenches the soil and soothes the eyes Life flows on through the rain, And men discuss it as hope And sing its praises Call the river their mother, Sing hymns In their primal, magical belief Sky rain mountain river water Flowing

("Flow" 1989; Translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta)

UttarAdhunikta seeks to consider social accounts (both mythical and historical), alongside individual perceptions within the aesthetic. What this means is, in fact, an attempt to question the traditional division between myth, history and poetry, and formulate a kind of inter-generic hybrid position.

History, as formulated by Aristotle in his *Poetics,* has always been associated with chronological narratives of political events, frequently wars and the establishment of new

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 95

Hayden White's classic *Metahistory* works on the idea of "emplotment", a literary re-writing of events interwoven in figurative speech where the play between selection, organization of events, tropes and figures of speech problematize the borders between fact and fiction. White observes the tendency towards event dissolution as basic temporal occurrence in

Historian and literary critic, Dominick LaCapra has also questioned the borderland between historical discourse and fiction in an attempt to unveil the so-called "historicist phallacy" that alludes to the impossibility of explaining historical texts simply as contextual. In *History and Criticism* (1985), LaCapra considers two levels, intra-textual and extra-textual and questions if the opposition between fact and fiction is a polarity that excludes or, if on the

Michel De Certeau (1988) proposed to examine the role of fiction and the unconscious in the production of a historical text. According to him, the notion of "anecdote" is fundamental because it allows for the creation of a gap in the narrative continuity of a larger story (grand narrative vs. petite histoire) and allows the irruption of chance events and discursive contingencies, bringing forth a break in temporal flux, a point of retrospection. For De Certeau, history can only be understood as a "lieux de mémoires", a social space that translates de exercise of memorializing in monuments to remember the past, a position close to that of Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever, where he points out the "presentness of the

The above suggestions problematize the differences between "fact" and "event", and between the re-workings of individual memory and the sociological symbolization process implied in the valuation of events in order a story into history. In 1946, Robin George Collingwood had also attempted to establish a separation between an inside and an outside of history. For him, the outside of a historical event consisted on the placement and movement of bodies in a given historical moment that happened in the past. The inside component was made of the thoughts of historical agents who relate historical events imaginatively, motivated by conscious thought processes that can be re-thought. However, Collingwood left out unconscious motivations, such as emotions and passions, signalling a cognitive human mind all made up of pure rationality (for the importance of the unconscious in autobiography, see Eakin 1985: 9; see aslo H. Porter Abbott and James Clifford 1987 for the importance of individual recollection in social memory and culture) Meir Sternberg has noted that inference-making relies on objective knowledge as much as in anticipation, prediction and other affective and interpersonal qualities, and explains that Aristotle's theory of catharsis builds emotions into a poetics of impact, chiefly regulated by affects (mimesis arises from pity and fear). Sternberg adds that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is the result of this particular attention to

To summarize the above discussion, one can argue that historical reality is comprised of a multitude of varied life experiences (events) which need to be negotiated into common experience (facts), both at the psychological personal and sociological levels. Events take the symbolic form of values that can be applicable to other times and other context, carrying more than one level of meaning. Values and morals are not simply thoughts and ways of

contrary, both exist in a continuum of complex mutual interrelations.

impact (comic, tragic, comic, persuasive, illusionist, sublime, etc.)

modernist narrative. (67)

past", using it to project into the future.

Fig. 1. Ganga -painting in mixed media by Ganesh Pyne // pen & ink drawing by Ganesh Pyne

communities and nations. As such, it has been considered a 'serious' discipline, not to be associated with fictional narratives or myth. Research on narratology (i.e. Dorrit Cohn and Käte Hamburger) has signalled this separation as unfounded, based on the distinction between fact and event and on the separation of the narrative voice from its authorial origin in order to follow the empirical need of objectivity. The essential difference between historical writing, myth and fiction, is the claims of the first to be a truthful account, the record of fact. Fictional writing, on the other hand, is characterized by a built-in license to create an individual personal world, including the right to flaunt that license. The desire to break the borders of history (official collective memory), myth and poetic fiction (personal memories) is, therefore, related to the understanding of life as inter-subjective flux where the social and personal, objective and subjective, real and imaginary, factual and fictional, merge.

Another criterion for distinction between historiography and fictional texts is the overall configuration of the time sequence of events. Historical narratives are generally chronological and forward-looking, moving from cause to effect (teleology). In fictional narratives the characters' recollection and memory may preserve only some of the reported order. A retrospective de-chronologizing memory based narrative moves from effect to cause and the characters might eventually disclosed in opposition to the reader's previous assumptions. However, the fracture of time-sequences might also occur in non-fictional genres such as autobiography, which is predicated on a necessary forgetting or distancing to achieve objectivity.

While potentially a source for remembrance, the material traces of the past might be structured by omissions, restrictions, repressions, and exclusions that incite, even as they thwart, total recall. As such, they expose the ever present system of inter-relations inherent in processes of selection, assemblage and ordering whereby events are made into facts, and also into symbols. The fact is that which is affirmed (statement) of the event, and events need to be described so as to appear as facts. Thus, we can say that an event is a fact subject to description that is, telling. Fictionalization is involved in this process, since it can be considered the provision of a description that transforms an event in a possible object of analysis, that is, a fact.

Fig. 1. Ganga -painting in mixed media by Ganesh Pyne // pen & ink drawing by Ganesh

communities and nations. As such, it has been considered a 'serious' discipline, not to be associated with fictional narratives or myth. Research on narratology (i.e. Dorrit Cohn and Käte Hamburger) has signalled this separation as unfounded, based on the distinction between fact and event and on the separation of the narrative voice from its authorial origin in order to follow the empirical need of objectivity. The essential difference between historical writing, myth and fiction, is the claims of the first to be a truthful account, the record of fact. Fictional writing, on the other hand, is characterized by a built-in license to create an individual personal world, including the right to flaunt that license. The desire to break the borders of history (official collective memory), myth and poetic fiction (personal memories) is, therefore, related to the understanding of life as inter-subjective flux where the social and personal, objective and subjective, real and imaginary, factual and fictional,

Another criterion for distinction between historiography and fictional texts is the overall configuration of the time sequence of events. Historical narratives are generally chronological and forward-looking, moving from cause to effect (teleology). In fictional narratives the characters' recollection and memory may preserve only some of the reported order. A retrospective de-chronologizing memory based narrative moves from effect to cause and the characters might eventually disclosed in opposition to the reader's previous assumptions. However, the fracture of time-sequences might also occur in non-fictional genres such as autobiography, which is predicated on a necessary forgetting or distancing to achieve

While potentially a source for remembrance, the material traces of the past might be structured by omissions, restrictions, repressions, and exclusions that incite, even as they thwart, total recall. As such, they expose the ever present system of inter-relations inherent in processes of selection, assemblage and ordering whereby events are made into facts, and also into symbols. The fact is that which is affirmed (statement) of the event, and events need to be described so as to appear as facts. Thus, we can say that an event is a fact subject to description that is, telling. Fictionalization is involved in this process, since it can be considered the provision of a description that transforms an event in a possible object of

Pyne

merge.

objectivity.

analysis, that is, a fact.

Hayden White's classic *Metahistory* works on the idea of "emplotment", a literary re-writing of events interwoven in figurative speech where the play between selection, organization of events, tropes and figures of speech problematize the borders between fact and fiction. White observes the tendency towards event dissolution as basic temporal occurrence in modernist narrative. (67)

Historian and literary critic, Dominick LaCapra has also questioned the borderland between historical discourse and fiction in an attempt to unveil the so-called "historicist phallacy" that alludes to the impossibility of explaining historical texts simply as contextual. In *History and Criticism* (1985), LaCapra considers two levels, intra-textual and extra-textual and questions if the opposition between fact and fiction is a polarity that excludes or, if on the contrary, both exist in a continuum of complex mutual interrelations.

Michel De Certeau (1988) proposed to examine the role of fiction and the unconscious in the production of a historical text. According to him, the notion of "anecdote" is fundamental because it allows for the creation of a gap in the narrative continuity of a larger story (grand narrative vs. petite histoire) and allows the irruption of chance events and discursive contingencies, bringing forth a break in temporal flux, a point of retrospection. For De Certeau, history can only be understood as a "lieux de mémoires", a social space that translates de exercise of memorializing in monuments to remember the past, a position close to that of Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever, where he points out the "presentness of the past", using it to project into the future.

The above suggestions problematize the differences between "fact" and "event", and between the re-workings of individual memory and the sociological symbolization process implied in the valuation of events in order a story into history. In 1946, Robin George Collingwood had also attempted to establish a separation between an inside and an outside of history. For him, the outside of a historical event consisted on the placement and movement of bodies in a given historical moment that happened in the past. The inside component was made of the thoughts of historical agents who relate historical events imaginatively, motivated by conscious thought processes that can be re-thought. However, Collingwood left out unconscious motivations, such as emotions and passions, signalling a cognitive human mind all made up of pure rationality (for the importance of the unconscious in autobiography, see Eakin 1985: 9; see aslo H. Porter Abbott and James Clifford 1987 for the importance of individual recollection in social memory and culture) Meir Sternberg has noted that inference-making relies on objective knowledge as much as in anticipation, prediction and other affective and interpersonal qualities, and explains that Aristotle's theory of catharsis builds emotions into a poetics of impact, chiefly regulated by affects (mimesis arises from pity and fear). Sternberg adds that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is the result of this particular attention to impact (comic, tragic, comic, persuasive, illusionist, sublime, etc.)

To summarize the above discussion, one can argue that historical reality is comprised of a multitude of varied life experiences (events) which need to be negotiated into common experience (facts), both at the psychological personal and sociological levels. Events take the symbolic form of values that can be applicable to other times and other context, carrying more than one level of meaning. Values and morals are not simply thoughts and ways of

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 97

Fig. 2. Kalpana (imagination) -relief work by sculptor Bimal Kundu

recollected events).

illustration

kind of perpetual search of a memory that "is inscribed with a force proportional to the mediations punctured or evaded." (537) Lacan had argued that this void can itself be reduced to a kind of object which appears when the imaginary order ceases to fill up the concrete holes in signifying chains with illusions of wholeness. In this fragmented telling, which reappears in a stark encounter with anxiety, the memory of "fact" reappears as narrated "event", where conscious and unconscious, (objective) reality and its interpretation (or subjective fiction) meet (according to Lacan, the symbolic is structured as fiction, with traumas producing holes, gaps, voids and enigmas in the narration of

Some of Anjan Sen's poems capture this quality of postcolonial trauma. In many, the combination of myth, history and folklore is felt as a kind of nostalgic encounter, an attempt to fill the void of a postcolonial experience of loss. "Sorrow" captures this sense of trauma, both in its words (translated by Jesse Knutson) and in Diana Magallón's

reasoning; they are experiences. The root of values lies in the way experiences have a profound emotional impact on us, as if they were aesthetic experiences. Thus, it makes sense to explore the symbolic forms that represent values because the repetition of symbolic forms affects psychic and non-explicit levels giving way to their interiorization, both in personal and sociological terms. It is also possible to defend that fictionalization and myth are essential to the creation of the transitional realm that renders the representation of affective life experience in terms of generic hybridism, as the *UttarAdhunikta* proposes.

In his poem "Imagination", Anjan Sen uses the Indian concept of *Kalpa,* which refers to the endless fulfilment of desire related to the mythical cycle of creation and destruction. The poem points intertextually to Meghaduta-Kalidasa's Sanskrit epic in its desire to establish an inter-relationship between myths, history and poetry. *Kalpadruma* or *kalpa*-tree roots the future firmly into the past, but the dynamism of the circular time is achieved in the poem through various metaphors that emphasize floating up and down ("a grey cloud floated down") and falling ("dust kept falling"; "diamond coals …falling"), the oscillation of bright ("diamonds") and dark ("coal", evening, etc.), and transformation (cutting wood, "the eyelid flickered"; "one bird…become Bihag"). Bihag is an Indian evening melody.

From the Kalpa began imagination From the leaves of the Meghduta , a grey cloud Floated down in front of us. The Kalpadruma shuddered Gold Silver dust kept falling Diamonds coals mud kept falling The eyelid flickered One bird is flying become Bihag A woodcutter was gathering wood from Kalpadruma

("Imagination"; Translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta)

Research on the psychological aspects that encourage creativity started with Sigmund Freud's *Mourning & Melancholia* (1917), developed in the context of his personal experience in mourning the death of his father in 1896. Two years before, Freud had also written about the traumatic experiences of the World War in *Thoughts for the Times on War & Death.* His study *On Narcissism* was published in 1914, where he develops further the relationship between mourning and melancholia as long-term outcomes of trauma, "even if the patient is aware of the loss that has given rise to his melancholia." (1917: 254) Dominick LaCapra introduced a distinction in the notions of absence and loss. The first involves the perception of something that was never present to begin with. Loss refers to a particular thing/person/event, but "when loss is converted into (or encrypted in an indiscriminately generalized rhetoric of absence, one faces the impasse of endless melancholy, impossible mourning" (LaCapra "Trauma, Absence, Loss" 1999: 698). Characteristic features of trauma are the secrecy and the silence surrounding it, symptomatic of an event whose core meaning has been permanently displaced--not known directly. Trauma can only enunciate itself as an enigma until such event can be brought back into consciousness through the act of speech, in which a listener or audience needs to be necessarily involved (psychoanalytic therapy or creative writing/art). Geoffrey Hartman also describes this feature of the symptom as the

reasoning; they are experiences. The root of values lies in the way experiences have a profound emotional impact on us, as if they were aesthetic experiences. Thus, it makes sense to explore the symbolic forms that represent values because the repetition of symbolic forms affects psychic and non-explicit levels giving way to their interiorization, both in personal and sociological terms. It is also possible to defend that fictionalization and myth are essential to the creation of the transitional realm that renders the representation of affective

In his poem "Imagination", Anjan Sen uses the Indian concept of *Kalpa,* which refers to the endless fulfilment of desire related to the mythical cycle of creation and destruction. The poem points intertextually to Meghaduta-Kalidasa's Sanskrit epic in its desire to establish an inter-relationship between myths, history and poetry. *Kalpadruma* or *kalpa*-tree roots the future firmly into the past, but the dynamism of the circular time is achieved in the poem through various metaphors that emphasize floating up and down ("a grey cloud floated down") and falling ("dust kept falling"; "diamond coals …falling"), the oscillation of bright ("diamonds") and dark ("coal", evening, etc.), and transformation (cutting wood, "the

life experience in terms of generic hybridism, as the *UttarAdhunikta* proposes.

eyelid flickered"; "one bird…become Bihag"). Bihag is an Indian evening melody.

From the Kalpa began imagination

Floated down in front of us. The Kalpadruma shuddered Gold Silver dust kept falling Diamonds coals mud kept falling

One bird is flying become Bihag

The eyelid flickered

From the leaves of the Meghduta , a grey cloud

A woodcutter was gathering wood from Kalpadruma

("Imagination"; Translated from Bengali by Amlan Das Gupta)

Research on the psychological aspects that encourage creativity started with Sigmund Freud's *Mourning & Melancholia* (1917), developed in the context of his personal experience in mourning the death of his father in 1896. Two years before, Freud had also written about the traumatic experiences of the World War in *Thoughts for the Times on War & Death.* His study *On Narcissism* was published in 1914, where he develops further the relationship between mourning and melancholia as long-term outcomes of trauma, "even if the patient is aware of the loss that has given rise to his melancholia." (1917: 254) Dominick LaCapra introduced a distinction in the notions of absence and loss. The first involves the perception of something that was never present to begin with. Loss refers to a particular thing/person/event, but "when loss is converted into (or encrypted in an indiscriminately generalized rhetoric of absence, one faces the impasse of endless melancholy, impossible mourning" (LaCapra "Trauma, Absence, Loss" 1999: 698). Characteristic features of trauma are the secrecy and the silence surrounding it, symptomatic of an event whose core meaning has been permanently displaced--not known directly. Trauma can only enunciate itself as an enigma until such event can be brought back into consciousness through the act of speech, in which a listener or audience needs to be necessarily involved (psychoanalytic therapy or creative writing/art). Geoffrey Hartman also describes this feature of the symptom as the

Fig. 2. Kalpana (imagination) -relief work by sculptor Bimal Kundu

kind of perpetual search of a memory that "is inscribed with a force proportional to the mediations punctured or evaded." (537) Lacan had argued that this void can itself be reduced to a kind of object which appears when the imaginary order ceases to fill up the concrete holes in signifying chains with illusions of wholeness. In this fragmented telling, which reappears in a stark encounter with anxiety, the memory of "fact" reappears as narrated "event", where conscious and unconscious, (objective) reality and its interpretation (or subjective fiction) meet (according to Lacan, the symbolic is structured as fiction, with traumas producing holes, gaps, voids and enigmas in the narration of recollected events).

Some of Anjan Sen's poems capture this quality of postcolonial trauma. In many, the combination of myth, history and folklore is felt as a kind of nostalgic encounter, an attempt to fill the void of a postcolonial experience of loss. "Sorrow" captures this sense of trauma, both in its words (translated by Jesse Knutson) and in Diana Magallón's illustration

Western and Eastern Ur-Topias: Communities and Nostalgia 99

has stretched beyond the borders of a well-known social network and onto these pages, cutting across the artificial divisions between social sciences and humanities, across East and West differences and commonalities, across nostalgia and dreams, helping unveil the shared

**Anjan Sen is** National Tagore Scholar, poet and artist, his works seek a return to the

**Khandokar Ashraf Hossain** (Prof. of English at Dhaka University) is one of the leading literary figures in Bangladesh. He has translated many of Anjan Sen's poems. For more

**Amlan Das Gupta** (Prof of English at Jadapur University, Kolkatta) is a noted scholar of Classical and Biblical Studies, English Renaissance literature and an authority on Miltonic

**Udaya Narayayana Sing** (Pro-Vice Chancellor, Viswa Bharati University, Linguist, poet, critic) A major linguist, translator, lexicographer & creative writer who has translated many

Ur-topias and community relations of the 21st-century.

dialogue with others and with nature. Collections of poems in Bengali:

PaathBharatbarsha (reading India) with illustration of Ganesh Pyne ,1981

For a complete list of his poetic works, essays, and links to webpages see:

http://www.ucm.es/info/siim/descargas/AnjanSenBriefCV.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khondakar\_Ashraf\_Hossain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amlan\_Das\_Gupta

of Anjan Sen's poems. For more information see

http://www.visva-bharati.ac.in/at\_a\_glance/unscv.pdf

Edited collections of essays in Bengali Jointly with Anjan Sen:

KobitaarBhaashaa (The Language of Poetry) 1987, 2nd edition 2012 UponyaaserSahityatatwa (The Poetics of Novel) 1989, 2nd edition 2010

Eurokendrikata o SilpoSamaskriti (Eurocentrism and Art, Culture) 1992

Myth ,Sahitya o Samaskriti , (Myth literature and Culture) 1990 2nd edition in press

BaanglaarUttaraadhunikSaahityachinta (The Urraradhunik literary Ideas of Bengal) 2004

**Ganesh Pyne** has illustrated some of Anjan Sen's poems. Pyne is known for his small tempera paintings, rich in imagery and symbols. He is one of India's foremost contemporary

Tin Bisswe Din Rattri (Days and Nights Over Three worlds) 1988

**6. Acknowledgments** 

Kathabarta (conversation) 1974

Goud Bochon (The Gaur Speech) 1989

Ghor Bahir (The room the outside) 2007 Chobir Kobita (Poems of the pictorial) 2010

http://www.ucm.es/info/siim/35.php

information see

studies in India

GoudBochonKothonBisswo (The Gaud Speech) Bhando Bevando (From earthen pot to universe) 2002

This short poem is about the sadness of migration. Because of globalization, many fertile agricultural lands in India are being taken over by state and industrialists as Special Economic Zones (SEZ). Farmers are not getting enough compensation and they are forced to abandon their houses and their previous lives and head into poverty. Asked by Anjan Sen to comment on "Sorrow", I imagined the white cloud as a kind of letter, a walking stick or a kind of inverted path. Its ghostly quality contrasted strongly with the colour red, frequently associated with blood and passion in many cultures. The two black lines that cut across unevenly conveyed the idea of fragmentation, but also three-dimensionality, just as the black typography of the text. The irony in word "dear" and the mention of McLuhan's famous reference to the world as "Global Village" took on multiple meanings.

In a dialogue with Sen, paradoxically enabled by the virtual environment of the World Wide Web social networks, he advised me to revise the mythical roots of the sound of the cloud and *Meghnad* in relation to the *Ramayana*. The idea of sending hidden messages in the form of a cloud made me return to the idea of loss and trauma. It would be interesting to explore to what extend the generic hybridism present in Anjan Sen's poems stage the crossings between rational and irrational experiences, both personal and social. It would be interesting to explore how the trauma of the postcolonial opens up in this dialogue of Sen and his illustrators and critics. In my unstable position of a reader/listener who tries to understand, a critic who tries to speak/write, and a semiotician who tries to discover, I encountered Sen. His desire to be both author and object of interpretation struck me. I see him as attempting to cross not just the limits of author/critic relationships, but also the boundaries of inter-texts, and of intermedial forms of representation. The dialogue between Sen and I, between Sen and his illustrators, readers and critics, seems to be pregnant with a desire to cut-across intersubjective positions and intercultural differences. A dialogue that has stretched beyond the borders of a well-known social network and onto these pages, cutting across the artificial divisions between social sciences and humanities, across East and West differences and commonalities, across nostalgia and dreams, helping unveil the shared Ur-topias and community relations of the 21st-century.
