tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12372202127428269252024-02-06T23:36:27.549-08:00The Reader and the TextOn the reader and the text
Reader text om Iliad Nom de père
To be or not to be but the question is hv = mc²Anirban the Filmmakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02374048556625541972noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1237220212742826925.post-50912777256344609892013-09-18T07:39:00.001-07:002013-10-29T08:18:00.088-07:00The Writer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Writing of the Mahabharata is perhaps the most ancient record of writing in action.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ten Commandments which Moses got, on tablets, on Mount Sinai may be the oldest memory of writing. But, the writer was absent there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">They were God's own writing in light(ening). Apouresheya like the Rg Veda. The writer is conspicuously absent there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ganesha, on the other hand, was very conspicuous as a scribe. The Mahabharata starts with the story of his writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ganesha was also the first reader and critic of the Text. Vyasa, from the great Editor Clan of the Vedas, wanted to create a compendium of knowledge centered around power play (ie, business of life.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Shudras were banned from the Vedas, in ancient India. Even the upper classes could only hear the Rks from the priest class only.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Vyasa wanted a democratization of knowledge for some reason. But, he was not to wield the pen himself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">He wanted a writer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">And Ganesha was the writer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Mahabharata challenges the tradition of oral translation of heritage across generations. Thus, it also challenges restriction of knowledge to certain powerful classes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, in later recital of the Mahabharata, by </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 12.800000190734863px;">Vaiśampāyana, and even later by Sauti, that restriction was </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 12.800000190734863px;">partially reimposed.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The tradition of orature, and learning through guidance, returned.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But, the idea of objective transfer of knowledge had been established in the clan memory, by then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">And the new narrators were not necessarily Brahmins! Sauti was not Brahmin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There were two reasons behind Vyasa's conditions imposed on Ganesha. He asked Ganesha to write non-stop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">He made a further imposition that Ganesha would not write even a single word without understanding its meaning and context fully.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Why did Vyasa need a writer?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Could he not write himself?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Or, did he create the verses and the prose sentences in a hypnotic trance? He could not write as he did not want the outpouring of the unconscious to break.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Was it automatic narration? And Ganesha played just the role of the psychoanalyst?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Even today when a writer writes, what does s/he writes?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Where does writing originate? Does the ideas raise their heads from the traditions in which the writer is submerged?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Are the diction and the style guided by schooling?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Is the discourse always popular discourse, either pro-culture or counter?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Where the does the writer stand vis-à-vis the text and the reader?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Is the writer's biography totally absent in the text?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Is the text serving the writer as an autobiography only?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Are the writer and text always in a dialectical relationship?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What does the writer want?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Do the texts write themselves through the external agencies of the writer?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">May the writer literally die now, in the machine age?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Would texts write themselves through the external agencies of the externalized consciousness called the net?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Writer is dead. Long live the Writer!</span><br />
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Anirban the Filmmakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02374048556625541972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1237220212742826925.post-80924084544748498872013-08-19T13:23:00.002-07:002013-08-19T13:23:26.748-07:00The Text<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The text comes before the reader. Natural. Ain't it?<br /><br />Or, can this be challenged?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Naturally, you think, if there is no text, how can its reader exist? But, texts are not born out of the air. Texts are not written for none. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">They are targeted to someone. When I read my daily journal, and make that private with specific settings, am I being transformed?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Am I born again, after the text is born? Does that give birth to a new me, inside the apparently same physical brain?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I create the text. So, I can proudly call myself its creator.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But, am I self-born? Who created me, created this text too? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Long back, in the university days, we all went through Eliot's questions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We all accepted the role of traditions in the birth of individual talents. We learnt to see ourselves as mediums - as the vessel. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The tradition flowed through the vessels, modified with time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Each vessel produced a separate text. Each text furthered a string of texts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">These texts demand to be read. Rarely anyone reads them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We learn to celebrate the texts. We learn to bow before them, never questioning their birth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This blog tries to do that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In a modest way. </span><br />
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Anirban the Filmmakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02374048556625541972noreply@blogger.com0