Creating Drama: the life of an academic.

The set up for this week’s readings was very interesting and informative for how the tradition of literary criticism continues today - illustrating that the practice of commentaries will not die anytime soon. We look back at these old texts and see the commentaries below them, but if we look at our own scholarly world one realizes that all the book reviews and many articles are following the same format – taking what has already been said and either bringing it down with all their might, or trying to decipher what exactly was being said.

I actually quite liked the first reading “Aethetic Rapture”- it was full of interesting biographical information (ex. pg. 5) and little things that made me smile. There was a fantastic selection of quotes throughout this reading. Particularly on pg. 37 involving love from the BhNS. I would like to comment of the same quote Antonia concluded her blog with, possibly because it is the best quote I have ever read.

“Most people always want happiness. And women, of infinite variety, are the source of happiness.”
“One practices austerities for the sake of religion. And after all, we are (only) concerned with religion because we want to be happy. The source of happiness is women, and we want to make love to them.” (from somewhere in the BhNS - found in MP pg. 37)

I would love to see where this came from originally, unfortunately we do not have the end notes, but I intend to look it up. Basically the only reason one does austerities (and, well, “one” obviously refers to men only...) is because they really want to make love to women! Does this comment not make religion void because women are the only true path to happiness? Sex is the only true religion, apparently! Therefore there is no reason to practice austerities.

Masson and Patwardhan mention how Abhinava believed that “poetry should be enjoyed, it should not be studies. Abhinava has nothing but scorn for the purely “intellectual” pursuit of poetry, for the curse of the academies.” (pg. 20) I wonder how this could be true. Does not Abhinava spend a great deal of time studying poetry? If he just simply enjoyed it I am sure he would not have written the commentaries he has. If we all simply enjoyed poetry would literary criticism exist as a discipline? It could be argues that we need the fleshing out and the over analysing of the poetry to truly understand the work, and thus appreciate it. But it often become an over analysis. Part of enjoying poetry for yourself is to interpret how you feel it should be interpreted. Not write long commentaries on how it must be interpreted!

I was entertained when they described the Dhvanyaloka as “more often that [sic] not it deals with the theme of a woman trying to make a traveller understand that she wants to sleep with him.”(pg. 7) (This illustrates the Gerow and Aklujkar critique of spelling errors!!) Masson and Patwardhan do not appear to be the greatest fans of poor Ananda – nor of the discipline of literary criticism. This might be an explanation for why there were so many mistakes in the article. I seriously wonder why two people who do not appear to like over analysis attempt to become specialists in over analysis! Maybe someone should over analyse this conundrum.
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Even though I was entertained by this reading - and was able to think to myself “hmmm, strange” a few times about what was being said - I obviously do not have such a knowledge in this material to have picked out all the apparently horrible mistakes that were in this reading. Luckily we have Gerow and Aklujkar’s article to shine light on all the mistakes. It is indeed amazing that so many mistakes could have passed, why was this book written in such haste, and with so many biases present.

I know Dr. Aklujkar well, he was my first Sanskrit professor and the person who first introduced me to Indian philosophy and literature – he is actually the reason I am here now! - so reading this harsh criticism was funny because he is the nicest, sweetest man ever!

Antonia mentioned she was surprised this was published. But it is important for something of this nature to be published as many people would just take what was being said, nod their heads saying “oh ok” and not question things. People have biases, people have opinions - it is so hard to know what is actually correct, who to actually trust. Especially, when one does not have such a vast background knowledge in the topic at hand.

A similar structure is found with the second set of articles for this week’s readings. K.C. Bhattacharyya’s article was an interesting discussion fleshing out rasa theory even further – it appears as though this theory can be discussed until the end of time! It contains a good description of rasa and it was interesting to have an account of what is considered beauty and ugliness. Mohanty’s presentation paper discussed the previous article, yet in a much less aggressive light compared to Gerow and Aklujkar’s article!