O.V.Vijayan
OV Vijayan is undoubtedly the early exponent of modern fiction in Malayalam.
Cartoonist, novelist and short-story writer, Vijayan has to his credit five novels besides several short stories, articles
and a book on his own masterpiece, 'Itihasathinte Itihasam' (The Story of the Saga).
Starting his career as a lecturer,
Vijayan soon opted for full-time journalism and left Kerala in 1958 to pursue his active interest in the world of cartoons
in Delhi.
History of modern fiction in Kerala can be halved in to two, pre-Khasak and post-Khasak period. Such was
the influence of his maiden effort ('Khasakinte Ithihasam'- Saga of Khasak, 1969), the imaginary land of Khasak and its characters
Maimuna, Naizamali, Alla-picha-mollakka etc. penetrated the subconscious mind of Malyalee readers and formed the ethos of
literary world. Though some characters and the land depicted in the novel were real, they served only as creative sparks to
ignite the literary imagination of Vijayan.
The language of Vijayan is very vibrant and it encompasses the whole rhythm
of earth. By recreating the movements and essence of every activity that's going on around him in nature, he brought in elements
like Wind, Bloom, Tree, Sand, Expanse of space etc. in his literary efforts.
He often took the liberty of reinterpreting
history to suit the needs of his story line. He pitted contemporary reality against the age-old insights propounded by Indian
philosophy.
'Dharmapuranam' (Indian political situation), 'Khasakinte Ithihasam ' (Degeneration of ideologies), 'Madhuram
Gayathi' (Attacks on Environment), 'Gurusagaram' (Materialist attitudes of the society) and 'Pravachakante Vazhi' (Prediction
about the future of the land) stand testimony to this.
Apart from personal contributions to the world of novel, Vijayan
has left impressionable imprints in short-story scenario. 'Kadaltheerathu', 'Kattuparanjakatha', 'Parakal' etc. were path
breaking in its character and content. His political writings were noted for their visionary insights on the political developments
of the contemporary circumstances and clarity of thought.
Apart from the interpretation of existing reality through
his characters, his illustrations acted as powerful vehicles to portray thought-provoking ideas. He is one of the finest of
cartoonists to emerge from Kerala.
He is the first Malyalee author to highlight the issue of environmental degradation
through prose and the creative mind in him very much feared a nuclear holocaust, as is evident from his writings.
Often
criticized for attacking the approach of socialists, he was labelled as being one who developed a soft corner for fundamentalism,
which eventually resulted in developing an affinity towards religion and its cult leaders. This change is very much evident
in 'Gurusagaram'.
His prophecy relating to the destiny of Keralite society through his writings are often visionary.
The day-to-day crisis in politics, imposition of emergency, degeneration of the congress party, rise of fascism, degradation
of environment etc. were all subject matter for his writings.
Gabriel Gárcia Márquez , mGabriel José García Márquez was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, a town in Northern Colombia,
where he was raised by his maternal grandparents in a house filled with countless aunts and the rumors of ghosts. But in order
to get a better grasp on García Márquez's life, it helps to understand something first about both the history of Colombia
and the unusual background of his family.
Colombia
Colombia won its independence
from Spain in 1810, technically making it one of Latin America's oldest democracies, but the sad fact is that this "democracy"
has rarely known peace and justice. In
the beginning, there was of course Spain and the Indians, happily hating each other as the Spaniards tore the land up in quest
for gold, El Dorado, religious converts, and political power. The English, too, played their part, with Drake attacking Riohachi
in 1568 and the countless colonial squabbles of the next few centuries. Declaring itself independent from Spain when Napoleon
ousted the Spanish King in 1810, the new country experienced a brief period of freedom and then was quickly reconquered in
1815 by the unpleasant and bloody campaigns of General Murillo. So much did their internal bickering allow their fledgling
country to fall to the sword of Murillo, the period is immortalized in Colombia's history with the colorful name of la
Patria Boba, or "The Booby Fatherland." Round two, however, fell to the Colombians, when Simón Bolívar reliberated the
country in 1820 and became its very first president. In 1849, the country was sufficiently advanced enough to concretize their
squabbling in the form of two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, who exist to this day. These two parties
form the political framework for much of García Márquez's fiction, and understanding their true natures is both a key to his
writing and, unfortunately, an important insight to Latin American politics in general. Although initially forming around the nucleus of two distinct and different ideologies, long years of bloody
conflict have served to significantly erode the distinctions between the parties. The Conservatives and the Liberals are more
like warring factions or clans than any parties with firmly established and radically different ideologies. Both tend to be
repressive, both are corrupt, and both terribly abuse power when it falls into their hands; and throughout the sad history
of Colombia, both parties have been more or less at war. It has often been said of Colombia's parties that you do not join
them, you are born into them; and indeed they act more as territorial and familial units than as peacefully functioning parties
with distinct political platforms. In addition, the country is split into two main regional groups -- the costeños
of the coastal Caribbean, and the cachacos of the central highland. Both groups use those terms as pejorative of the
other, and both view the other with disdain. The costeños tend to be more racially mixed, verbally outgoing, and superstitious.
They are primarily the "descendants of pirates and smugglers, with a mixture of black slaves," and as a whole are "dancers,
adventurers, people full of gaiety." The cachacos, on the other hand, are more formal, aristocratic, and racially pure,
who pride themselves on their advanced cities such as Bogotá and on their ability to speak excellent Spanish. Traditionally,
the tropical Caribbean coast has been a Liberal bastion, and the cool mountains and valleys of the interior tend to the Conservative
side. García Márquez has often remarked that he views himself as a mestizo and a costeño, both characteristics
enabling his formation and development as a writer. Throughout the nineteenth century, Colombia was wracked by rebellions, civil wars of both the local and
national variety, and several coups d'etat.This century of bloodshed had its culmination in 1899, when the War of a
Thousand Days began -- Colombia's most devastating civil war, a conflict that ended in late 1902 with the defeat of the Liberals.
The war claimed the lives of over 100,000 people, primarily peasants and their sons. García Márquez's grandfather fought in
that war, and many of its veterans would eventually find their way into immortalization as fictional characters in his work. Another event that would influence his work
was the prevalence banana industry and the massacre of 1928. Although coffee is generally considered Colombia's main export,
for the first few decades of the twentieth century, bananas were also of crucial importance to the economy. The banana trade
had its principle manifestation in the United Fruit Company, an American outfit that had a virtual monopoly on the banana
industry, which at the time was the only source of income for many of the costeño areas, including Aracataca. The UFC
had unlimited economic power and tremendous political clout, but it was a corrupt and amoral company that abused its Colombian
workers terribly. In October of 1928, over 32,000 native workers went on strike, demanding, among other such unreasonable
things, toilets and payment in cash rather than company scrip. One night a huge crowd of them gathered to hold a demonstration.
In order to quell the incident, the Conservative government sent in the troops, which fired on the unarmed workers, killing
hundreds. Over the next few months, more people simply vanished, and finally the whole incident was official denied and struck
from the history books. García Márquez would later incorporate the incident in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The next significant event that would eventually
affect his writing was a period of time that he himself would live through, a horrible period of time called la violencia,
or "the Violence." The Violence has its roots in the banana massacre. At that time, one of the only politicians courageous
enough to take a stand against government corruption was a man named Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a young Liberal member of congress
who convened meetings to investigate the incident. Gaitán began to rise in prominence, a champion of the peasants and the
poor, but an annoyance to the powerful members of both parties, who viewed him with something akin to fear and loathing. Using
radio as his medium, he heralded a time of change, a time when the people would take part in a true democracy and corporations
would be forced to act responsibly. By 1946, Gaitán was powerful enough to cause a split in his own party, who had been in
power since 1930. The split caused a Conservative return to power, and fearing a reprisal, they began organizing paramilitary
groups whose ultimate purpose was to terrorize Liberal voters; which they did admirably, killing thousands of them by the
end of the year. In 1947 the Liberals gained control of the Congress, putting Gaitán in charge as party leader. (Despite the
Conservative's efforts, the voter turnout was at a record high.) Tensions rose, and on April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated
in Bogotá. The city was convulsed
by lethal riots for three days, a period called el Bogotázo and responsible for 2500 deaths. La violencia entered
a more deadly phase. Guerrilla armies were organized by both parties, and terror swept through the land. Towns and villages
were burned, thousands -- including women and children -- were brutally murdered, farms were confiscated, and over a million
peasants emigrated to Venezuela. In 1949, Conservatives even gunned down a Liberal politician, in the middle of giving a speech
in the very halls of Congress! The Conservatives finally dissolved Congress, declared the country to be in a state of siege,
and Liberals (now conveniently branded "communists") were hunted, persecuted, and murdered. The country was ripped apart;
la violenciawould claim the lives of some 150,000 Colombians by 1953. The Violence would later become the backdrop
to several of García Márquez's novellas and storiesost notably In Evil Hour.
Richard Bach
In spite of being criticized for sharing simple philosophies on life, love,
and reincarnation in Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Bridge Across Forever, new age American author, Richard
Bach, inspires and encourages readers to appreciate life, never give up, and discover one's true potential.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a simple book about a seagull
who loves to fly and wants to reach perfection in flight. Readers, however, enjoy this book because of the deeper inspirational
meanings found within the pages. Unlike the other seagulls that simply fly for food and survival, Jonathan loves to fly and
spends all his time trying to reach the fastest speed and turning mid-flight while performing these feats. Many of us find
similarities to Jonathan in that we dont always "fit in" with what everyone else does. Few of us, though, have the courage
he has to defy the accepted ways and strive for what we feel is right for us.
One day while Jonathan is flying he reaches terminal velocity in a vertical
dive, but loses control while trying to change direction and flies straight through the flock. He then flies off and tries
again. After many tries he is able to control himself! He begins flying back to the flock full of excitement and thinking,
"We can lift ourselves of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn
to be free! We can learn to fly!" (Bach 30). We can use his example in our lives. Persistence leads to perfection.
When returning to the flock to show them what he has discovered, the elders
are waiting for him. After he lands, they call him into the circle and banish him for endangering the lives of his brothers
by his careless behavior. We all have felt like this in some point in our lives. Often we feel as if weve done something extraordinary,
and no one recognizes it. After being banished, he lives on the cliffs at the far end of the shore and practices his flying
daily. During his time living here, he finds that he is content and happy when doing what he loves and that he doesn't need
others to be whole. Many of us depend on each other to make ourselves feel good, when really, we can only find true happiness
when we are happy with who we are.
While flying one night, two seagulls, who have a bright glow about them, join
him and match his abilities. Jonathan follows them to a place he thinks is heaven but finds it astonishing how few seagulls
there are if this is heaven. He inquires about this and his instructor, Sullivan, answers, "Most of us came along ever so
slowly. We went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where we had come from,
not caring where we were headed, living for the moment" (Bach 61). Here is yet something more we can relate to, most of us
waste our lives by not striving to be the best we can be. Sullivan then continues by saying, "We choose our next world through
what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights
to overcome" (Bach 62). This is a little harder for us to accept simply because our society does not often speak of reincarnation.
Though, regardless of what comes after death, why not learn all we can while
were here? Why not try to overcome the limitations that make us think we could not be perfect? Sullivan's message is to strive
for perfection, and eventually you'll find it, whether its in this life or one to come.
One evening Jonathan goes to the elder of the flock, Chaing, and asks, "This
world isn't heaven at all is it?" (Bach 64). Chaing replies, "No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place
and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect" (Bach 64). After that, Jonathan starts learning from Chaing how to attain perfect
speed: being there. According to Chaing, "The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number,
everywhere at once across space and time" (Bach 80). After Jonathan learns all he can from Chaing, Chaing departs from that
world and Jonathan begins instructing other new-comers. Soon he decides that his place is back with his original flock because
he wants to help them find the perfection he has found. This is truly a noble act. Jonathan does not hold a grudge against
those who scorned him, rather, he wants to teach them, enlighten them, and help them find the perfection he has!
After Jonathan returns he meets a seagull, Fletcher, who is outcast as Jonathan
had been. Jonathan begins teaching him all he knows and eventually gains six more students. One day Jonathan announces to
his students that they are going to return to the flock and show them the wonderful flying they can do. His students are very
nervous but decide to follow their wise teacher. When they return, the elders of the flock announce that anyone who even looks
at the outcasts will be outcast themselves. Jonathan and his students continue their lessons there.
Slowly, some brave seagulls ignore the consequences and ask Jonathan to teach
them as well. One day, a group of seagulls is watching what Jonathans students are able to do and one makes a comment that
Jonathan and his students are special and gifted. Jonathan wisely replies, "The only difference, the very only one, is that
they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it" (Bach 114). So many of us think that we
can never be as good as someone else or that we could never do something we think is too hard. Jonathan explains that it is
only our own minds that limit what we can do. If we don't think we can do something, we will never be able to do it. If we
never give up, we will eventually achieve our goals. Eventually, Jonathan tells Fletcher he is going to leave and Fletcher
will take his place. He then tells Fletcher these encouraging words, "Look with your understanding, find out what you already
know, and youll see the way to fly" (Bach 125). We already know what it takes to reach our goal, its just knowing we can do
it.
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka, the son of Julie Löwy and Hermann Kafka, a merchant, was born
into a middle-class Jewish family. After two brothers died in infancy, he became the oldest child, remaining forever conscious
of his role as older brother; Ottla, the youngest of his three sisters, became the family member closest to him. Kafka strongly
identified with his maternal ancestors because of their spirituality, intellectual distinction, piety, rabbinical learning,
eccentricity, melancholy disposition, and delicate physical and mental constitution. He was not, however, particularly close
to his mother, a simple woman devoted to her children. Subservient to her overwhelming, ill-tempered husband and his exacting
business, she shared with her spouse a lack of comprehension of their son's unprofitable and possibly unhealthy dedication
to the literary "recording of [his] . . . dreamlike inner life."
The figure of Kafka's father overshadowed Kafka's
work as well as his existence; the figure is, in fact, one of his most impressive creations. For, in his imagination, this
coarse, practical, and domineering shopkeeper and patriarch, who worshiped nothing but material success and social advancement,
belonged to a race of giants and was an awesome, admirable, but repulsive tyrant. In Kafka's most important attempt at autobiography,
"Brief an den Vater" (written 1919; "Letter to Father"), a letter that never reached the addressee, Kafka attributed his failure
to live--to cut loose from parental ties and establish himself in marriage and fatherhood--as well as his escape into literature,
to the prohibitive father figure, which instilled in him the sense of his own impotence. He felt his will had been broken
by his father. The conflict with the father is reflected directly in Kafka's story Das Urteil (1916; The Judgment). It is
projected on a grander scale in Kafka's novels, which portray in lucid, deceptively simple prose a man's desperate struggle
with an overwhelming power, one that may persecute its victim (as in The Trial) or one that may be sought after and begged
in vain for approval (as in The Castle). Yet the roots of Kafka's anxiety and despair go deeper than his relationship to his
father and family, with whom he chose to live in close and cramped proximity for the major part of his adult life. The source
of Kafka's despair lies in a sense of ultimate isolation from true communion with all human beings--the friends he cherished,
the women he loved, the job he detested, the society he lived in--and with God, or, as he put it, with true indestructible
Being.
The son of a would-be assimilated Jew who held only perfunctorily to the religious practices and social formalities
of the Jewish community, Kafka was German both in language and culture. He was a timid, guilt-ridden, and obedient child who
did well in elementary school and in the Altstädter Staatsgymnasium, an exacting high school for the academic elite. He was
respected and liked by his teachers. Inwardly, however, he rebelled against the authoritarian institution and the dehumanized
humanistic curriculum, with its emphasis on rote learning and classical languages. Kafka's opposition to established society
became apparent when, as an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist. Throughout his adult life he
expressed qualified sympathies for the socialists; attended meetings of the Czech Anarchists (before World War I); and, in
his later years, showed marked interest and sympathy for a socialized Zionism. Even then he was essentially passive and politically
unengaged. As a Jew, Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but as a modern intellectual he was also alienated
from his own Jewish heritage. He was sympathetic to Czech political and cultural aspirations, but his identification with
German culture kept even these sympathies subdued. Thus, social isolation and rootlessness contributed to Kafka's lifelong
personal unhappiness. Kafka did, however, become friendly with some German-Jewish intellectuals and literati in Prague, and
in 1902 he met Max Brod; this minor literary artist became the most intimate and solicitous of Kafka's friends, and eventually
he emerged as the promoter, saviour, and interpreter of Kafka's writings and as his most influential biographer.
The
two men became acquainted while Kafka was indifferently studying law at the University of Prague. He received his doctorate
in 1906, and in 1907 he took up regular employment with an insurance company. The long hours and exacting requirements of
the Assicurazioni Generali, however, did not permit Kafka to devote himself to writing. In 1908 he found in Prague a job in
the seminationalized Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. There he remained until 1917, when
tuberculosis forced him to take intermittent sick leaves and, finally, to retire (with a pension) in 1922, about two years
before he died. In his job he was considered tireless and ambitious; he soon became the right hand of his boss, and he was
esteemed and liked by all who worked with him.
In fact, generally speaking, Kafka was a charming, intelligent, and
humorous individual, but he found his routine office job and the exhausting double life into which it forced him (for his
nights were frequently consumed in writing) to be excruciating torture, and his deeper personal relationships were neurotically
disturbed. The conflicting inclinations of his complex and ambivalent personality found expression in his sexual relationships.
Inhibition painfully disturbed his relations with Felice Bauer, to whom he was twice engaged before their final rupture in
1917. Later his love for Milena Jesenská Pollak was also thwarted. His health was poor and office work exhausted him. In 1917
he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis, and from then onward he spent frequent periods in sanatoriums.
In 1923 Kafka
went to Berlin to escape from his paternal family and devote himself to writing. In Berlin he found new hope in the companionship
of a young Jewish socialist, Dora Dymant, but his stay was cut short by a decisive deterioration of his health during the
winter of 1924. After a brief final stay in Prague, where Dora Dymant joined him, he died in a clinic near Vienna.
Jean Genet
French novelist, playwright and poet Jean Genet
was born in Paris on December 19, 1910. Abandoned by his parents, he spent much of his youth in an institution for juvenile
delinquents. At the age of ten, he was accused of stealing. Although innocent of the charge, having been described as a thief,
the young boy resolved to be a thief. "Thus," wrote Genet, "I decisively repudiated a world that had repudiated me."
Between
1930 and 1940, he wandered through various European countries, living as a thief and male prostitute. Eventually, he found
himself in Hitler's Germany where he felt strangely out of place. "I had a feeling of being in a camp of organized bandits.
This is a nation of thieves, I felt. If I steal here, I accomplish no special act that could help me to realize myself. I
merely obey the habitual order of things. I do not destroy it." So Genet hastened on to a country that still obeyed a more
conventional moral code.
In 1943, after being imprisoned for theft, Genet began writing. Ignoring traditional plot
and psychology, Genet's plays rely heavily on ritual, transformation, illusion and interchangeable identities. His experiences
in prison would inform much of his work. The homosexuals, prostitutes, thiefs and outcasts of his plays are trapped in self-destructive
circles. They express the despair and loneliness of a man caught in a maze of mirrors, trapped by an endless progression of
images that are, in reality, merely his own distorted reflection.
Genet's first dramatic effort is a poignant examination
of the oppressed and the oppressor. In Deathwatch he experiments with a murderer in the role of hero. The play revolves around
three inmates who struggle for domination of a prison cell while an unseen fourth prisoner watches on.
In his next
play; The Maids, Genet portrays a ritualistic act of two maids who take turns acting as "Madame," abusing each other as either
servant or employer. The ceremony reveals not only the maids' hatred of the Madame's authority, but also their hatred of themselves
for participating in the hierarchy that oppresses them.
First staged at a private club in London because it was considered
too scandalous for Paris audiences, The Balcony is set in a brothel of "nobel dimensions," a palace of illusions in which
men can indulge their secret fantasies, perhaps as a judge inflicting punishment on a beautiful thief, or as a dying Foreign
Legionaire being succoured by a beautiful Arab maiden. But outside the brothel, the country is caught up in the throes of
revolution, and these false roles become confused with the real roles of "bishop," "judge" and "general" until nothing is
certain.
In The Blacks, a troupe of colored actors enacts before a jury of white-masked blacks the ritualistic murder
of a white of which they have been accused. The last of Genet's plays to be produced during his lifetime, The Screens, is
his comment on the Algerian revolution. Like all of Genet's works, these plays are grotesque, sometimes bewildering, savage,
and haunting. Simultaneously cultivating and denouncing the stage illusion, they exude a strange ritualistic, incantatory
quality that successfully transforms life into a series of ceremonies and rituals that bring stability to an otherwise unbearable
existence.
In addition to his plays, Genet wrote several novels and film scripts. "Our Lady of Flowers" is a Popular
novel of Genet."Thief's Journal" is an autobiographical kind of Novel. He also produced a silent picture, Un Chant D'Amour
(1949). Genet died in Paris on April 15, 1986.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet and playwright, was
born June 5, 1898 at Fuentevaqueros in the Spanish province of Granada. He began writing poems in his late teens, reciting
many of them in the local cafes. In 1919 he left to study law at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. There he met and
became friends with film director Luis Bunuel and painter Salvador Dali, among other Spanish notables of his generation. Lorca
came to national prominence in 1927 when his play Mariana Pineda was first staged. His initial book of poems Gypsy Ballads
was published the following year. During a trip abroad, which also took him to England and Cuba, Lorca spent nine months in
New York City beginning in June of 1929. His poems of that period were later collected in the volume entitled Poet In New
York.
In 1931 Spain became a Republic which gave hope to many, Lorca included, that Spain's standard of living would
be improved, its lliteracy reduced and its culture more widely disseminated. Lorca became director of a student theater company
which toured small villages and in the face of harassment by Fascist partisans presented the Spanish classics to the peasants.
His first great play, the rural tragedy Blood Wedding, was staged in 1933. It was immensely popular in Spain and in
Argentina which he visited late that year. In 1935 he presented his second village tragedy, Yerma, and completed his third,
La Casa de Bernardo Alba.
Lorca spent much of early 1936 preparing Divan Del Tamarit, a cycle of poems written in
tribute to Granada's old Arab poets whom he had read in translation. In July, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War, he went to vacation in Granada which had fallen to the fascists on the first day of the conflict.
Although he
had no political affiliations Lorca was known to be a friend of left-wing intellectuals and an advocate of liberty. Apparently
this was enough of an indictment for those Falangists who arrested him on August 16th. On or about August 18, 1936 Federico
Garcia Lorca, along with a white-haired schoolmaster and two anarchist bullfighters, was driven to the village of Viznar at
the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There at dawn they were executed by a right-wing firing squad. Although his remains
are presumed to lie with those of hundreds of fellow victims in a shallow trench among the grove of olive trees adjacent to
the Fuente Grande spring, the actual whereabouts of Lorca's grave are unknown to this day.
Civil War - a Poem
Of Garcia Lorca ----------------------------------- I understood I had been assassinated. They searched the cafes
and the cemeteries and the churches. They opened barrels and cupboards. They destroyed three skeletons to tear out
the gold teeth. But they did not find me. They did not find me? No. They did not find me. --Federico Garcia Lorca
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13, 1906, near Dublin, Ireland.
Raised in a middle class, Protestant home, the son of a quantity surveyor and a nurse, he was sent off at the age of 14 to
attend the same school which Oscar Wilde had attended. Looking back on his childhood, he once remarked, "I had little talent
for happiness."
Beckett was consistent in his loneliness. The unhappy boy soon grew into an unhappy young man, often
so depressed that he stayed in bed until mid afternoon. He was difficult to engage in any lengthy conversation--it took hours
and lots of drinks to warm him up--but the women could not resist him. The lonely young poet, however, would not allow anyone
to penetrate his solitude. He once remarked, after rejecting advances from James Joyce's daughter, that he was dead and had
no feelings that were human.
In 1928, Samuel Beckett moved to Paris, and the city quickly won his heart. Shortly after
he arrived, a mutual friend introduced him to James Joyce, and Beckett quickly became an apostle of the older writer. At the
age of 23, he wrote an essay in defense of Joyce's magnum opus against the public's lazy demand for easy comprehensibility.
A year later, he won his first literary prize--10 pounds for a poem entitled "Whoroscope" which dealt with the philosopher
Descartes meditating on the subject of time and the transiency of life. After writing a study of Proust, however, Beckett
came to the conclusion that habit and routine were the "cancer of time", so he gave up his post at Trinity College and set
out on a nomadic journey across Europe.
Beckett made his way through Ireland, France, England, and Germany, all the
while writing poems and stories and doing odd jobs to get by. In the course of his journies, he no doubt came into contact
with many tramps and wanderers, and these aquaintances would later translate into some of his finest characters. Whenever
he happened to pass through Paris, he would call on Joyce, and they would have long visits, although it was rumored that they
mostly sit in silence, both suffused with sadness.
Beckett finally settled down in Paris in 1937. Shortly thereafter,
he was stabbed in the street by a man who had approached him asking for money. He would learn later, in the hospital, that
he had a perforated lung. After his recovery, he went to visit his assailant in prison. When asked why he had attacked Beckett,
the prisoner replied "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur", a phrase hauntingly reminiscent of some of the lost and confused souls that
would populate the writer's later works.
During World War II, Beckett stayed in Paris--even after it had become occupied
by the Germans. He joined the underground movement and fought for the resistance until 1942 when several members of his group
were arrested and he was forced to flee with his French-born wife to the unoccupied zone. In 1945, after it had been liberated
from the Germans, he returned to Paris and began his most prolific period as a writer. In the five years that followed, he
wrote Eleutheria, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, the novels Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and Mercier et Camier, two books
of short stories, and a book of criticism.
Samuel Beckett's first play, Eleutheria, mirrors his own search for freedom,
revolving around a young man's efforts to cut himself loose from his family and social obligations. His first real triumph,
however, came on January 5, 1953, when Waiting for Godot premiered at the Théâtre de Babylone. In spite of some expectations
to the contrary, the strange little play in which "nothing happens" became an instant success, running for four hundred performances
at the Théâtre de Babylone and enjoying the critical praise of dramatists as diverse as Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh,
Thornton Wilder, and William Saroyan who remarked, "It will make it easier for me and everyone else to write freely in the
theatre." Perhaps the most famous production of Waiting for Godot, however, took place in 1957 when a company of actors from
the San Francisco Actor's Workshop presented the play at the San Quentin penitentiary for an audience of over fourteen hundred
convicts. Surprisingly, the production was a great success. The prisoners understood as well as Vladimir and Estragon that
life means waiting, killing time and clinging to the hope that relief may be just around the corner. If not today, then perhaps
tomorrow.
Beckett secured his position as a master dramatist on April 3, 1957 when his second masterpiece, Endgame,
premiered (in French) at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Although English was his native language, all of Beckett's major
works were originally written in French--a curious phenomenon since Beckett's mother tongue was the accepted international
language of the twentieth century. Apparently, however, he wanted the discipline and economy of expression that an acquired
language would force upon on him.
Beckett's dramatic works do not rely on the traditional elements of drama. He trades
in plot, characterization, and final solution, which had hitherto been the hallmarks of drama, for a series of concrete stage
images. Language is useless, for he creates a mythical universe peopled by lonely creatures who struggle vainly to express
the unexpressable. His characters exist in a terrible dreamlike vacuum, overcome by an overwhelming sense of bewilderment
and grief, grotesquely attempting some form of communication, then crawling on, endlessly.
Beckett was the first of
the absurdists to win international fame. His works have been translated into over twenty languages. In 1969 he was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature. He continued to write until his death in 1989, but the task grew more and more difficult with
each work until, in the end, he said that each word seemed to him "an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." -----------------------
Ernest Hemmingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois.
His father was the owner of a prosperous real estate business. His father, Dr. Hemingway, imparted to Ernest the importance
of appearances, especially in public. Dr. Hemingway invented surgical forceps for which he would not accept money. He believed
that one should not profit from something important for the good of mankind. Ernest's father, a man of high ideals, was very
strict and censored the books he allowed his children to read. He forbad Ernest's sister from studying ballet for it was coeducational,
and dancing together led to "hell and damnation".
Grace Hall Hemingway, Ernest's mother, considered herself pure and proper.
She was a dreamer who was upset at anything which disturbed her perception of the world as beautiful. She hated dirty diapers,
upset stomachs, and cleaning house; they were not fit for a lady. She taught her children to always act with decorum. She
adored the singing of the birds and the smell of flowers. Her children were expected to behave properly and to please her,
always. Mrs. Hemingway treated Ernest, when he was a small boy, as if he were a female baby doll and she dressed him accordingly.
This arrangement was alright until Ernest got to the age when he wanted to
be a "gun-toting Pawnee Bill". He began, at that time, to pull away from his mother, and never forgave her for his humiliation.
The town of Oak Park, where Ernest grew up, was very old fashioned and quite religious. The townspeople forbad the word "virgin"
from appearing in school books, and the word "breast" was questioned, though it appeared in the Bible. Ernest loved to fish,
canoe and explore the woods. When he couldn't get outside, he escaped to his room and read books. He loved to tell stories
to his classmates, often insisting that a friend listen to one of his stories. In spite of his mother's desire, he played
on the football team at Oak Park High School.
As a student, Ernest was a perfectionist about his grammar and studied English
with a fervor. He contributed articles to the weekly school newspaper. It seems that the principal did not approve of Ernest's
writings and he complained, often, about the content of Ernest's articles. Ernest was clear about his writing; he wanted people
to "see and feel" and he wanted to enjoy himself while writing. Ernest loved having fun. If nothing was happening, mischievous
Ernest made something happen. He would sometimes use forbidden words just to create a ruckus. Ernest, though wild and crazy,
was a warm, caring individual. He loved the sea, mountains and the stars and hated anyone who he saw as a phony. During World
War I, Ernest, rejected from service because of a bad left eye, was an ambulance driver, in Italy, for the Red Cross. Very
much like the hero of A Farewell to Arms, Ernest is shot in his knee and recuperates in a hospital, tended by a caring nurse
named Agnes. Like Frederick Henry, in the book, he fell in love with the nurse and was given a medal for his heroism. Ernest
returned home after the war, rejected by the nurse with whom he fell in love. He would party late into the night and invite,
to his house, people his parents disapproved of. Ernest's mother rejected him and he felt that he had to move from home.
He moved in with a friend living in Chicago and he wrote articles for The
Toronto Star. In Chicago he met and then married Hadley Richardson. She believed that he should spend all his time in writing,
and bought him a typewriter for his birthday. They decided that the best place for a writer to live was Paris, where he could
devote himself to his writing. He said, at the time, that the most difficult thing to write about was being a man. They could
not live on income from his stories and so Ernest, again, wrote for The Toronto Star. Ernest took Hadley to Italy to show
her where he had been during the war. He was devastated, everything had changed, everything was destroyed. Hadley became pregnant
and was sick all the time. She and Ernest decided to move to Canada. He had, by then written three stories and ten poems.
Hadley gave birth to a boy who they named John Hadley Nicano Hemingway.
Even though he had his family Ernest was unhappy and decided to return to
Paris. It was in Paris that Ernest got word that a publisher wanted to print his book, In Our Time, but with some changes.
The publisher felt that the sex was to blatant, but Ernest refused to change one word. Around 1925, Ernest started writing
a novel about a young man in World War I, but had to stop after a few pages, and proceeded to write another novel, instead.
This novel was based on his experiences while living in Pamplona, Spain. He planned on calling this book Fiesta, but changed
the name to The Sun Also Rises, a saying from the Bible. This book, as in his other books, shows Hemingway obsessed with death.
In 1927, Ernest found himself unhappy with his wife and son. They decided to divorce and he married Pauline, a woman he had
been involved with while he was married to Hadley. A year later, Ernest was able to complete his war novel which he called
A Farewell to Arms.
The novel was about the pain of war, of finding love in this time of pain.
It portrayed the battles, the retreats, the fears, the gore and the terrible waste of war. This novel was well-received by
his publisher, Max Perkins,but Ernest had to substitute dashes for the "dirty" language. Ernest used his life when he wrote;
using everything he did and everything that ever happened to him. He nevertheless remained a private person; wanting his stories
to be read but wanting to be left alone. He once said, "Don't look at me. Look at my words." A common theme throughout Hemingway's
stories is that no matter how hard we fight to live, we end up defeated, but we are here and we must go on. At age 31 he wrote
Death in the Afternoon, about bullfighting in his beloved Spain. Ernest was a restless man; he traveled all over the United
States, Europe, Cuba and Africa.
At the age of 37 Ernest met the woman who would be his third wife; Martha
Gellhorn, a writer like himself. He went to Spain, he said, to become an "antiwar correspondent", and found that war was like
a club where everyone was playing the same game, and he was never lonely. Martha went to Spain as a war correspondent and
they lived together. He knew that he was hurting Pauline, but like his need to travel and have new experiences, he could not
stop himself from getting involved with women. In 1940 he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and dedicated it to Martha, whom he
married at the end of that year. He found himself traveling between Havana, Cuba and Ketchum, Idaho, which he did for the
rest of his life. During World War II, Ernest became a secret agent for the United States. He suggested that he use his boat,
the "Pillar", to surprise German submarines and attack them with hidden machine guns. It was at this time that Ernest, always
a drinker, started drinking most of his days away. He would host wild, fancy parties and did not write at all during the next
three years.
At war's end, Ernest went to England and met an American foreign correspondent
named Mary Welsh. He divorced Martha and married Mary in Havana, in 1946. Ernest was a man of extremes; living either in luxury
or happy to do without material things. Ernest, always haunted by memories of his mother, would not go to her funeral when
she died in 1951. He admitted that he hated his mother's guts. Ernest wrote The Old Man and the Sea in only two months. He
was on top of the world, the book was printed by Life Magazine and thousands of copies were sold in the United States. This
novel and A Farewell to Arms were both made into movies. In 1953 he went on a safari with Mary, and he was in heaven hunting
big game. Though Ernest had a serious accident, and later became ill, he could never admit that he had any weaknesses; nothing
would stop him, certainly not pain. In 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Toward the end, Ernest started to travel
again, but almost the way that someone does who knows that he will soon die. He suddenly started becoming paranoid and to
forget things. He became obsessed with sin; his upbringing was showing, but still was inconsistent in his behavior. He never
got over feeling like a bad person, as his father, mother and grandfather had taught him. In the last year of his life, he
lived inside of his dreams, similar to his mother, who he hated with all his heart. He was suicidal and had electric shock
treatments for his depression and strange behavior. On a Sunday morning, July 2, 1961, Ernest Miller Hemingway killed himself
with a shotgun.
Ernest Hemingway takes much of the storyline of his novel, A Farewell to Arms,
from his personal experiences. The main character of the book, Frederick Henry, often referred to as Tenete, experiences many
of the same situations which Hemingway, himself, lived. Some of these similarities are exact while some are less similar,
and some events have a completely different outcome. Hemingway, like Henry, enjoyed drinking large amounts of alcohol. Both
of them were involved in World War I, in a medical capacity, but neither of them were regular army personnel. Like Hemingway,
Henry was shot in his right knee, during a battle. Both men were Americans, but a difference worth noting was that Hemingway
was a driver for the American Red Cross, while Henry was a medic for the Italian Army.
In real life, Hemingway met his love, Agnes, a nurse, in the hospital after
being shot; Henry met his love, Catherine Barkley, also a nurse, before he was shot and hospitalized. In both cases, the relationships
with these women were strengthened while the men were hospitalized. Another difference is that Hemingway's romance was short-lived,
while, the book seemed to indicate that, Henry's romance, though they never married, was strong and would have lasted. In
A Farewell to Arms, Catherine and her child died while she was giving birth, this was not the case with Agnes who left Henry
for an Italian Army officer. It seems to me that the differences between the two men were only surface differences. They allowed
Hemingway to call the novel a work of fiction. Had he written an autobiography the book would probably not have been well-received
because Hemingway was not, at that time, a well known author. Although Hemingway denied critics' views that A Farewell to
Arms was symbolic, had he not made any changes they would not have been as impressed with the war atmosphere and with the
naivete of a young man who experiences war for the first time.
Hemingway, because he was so private, probably did not want to expose his
life to everyone, and so the slight changes would prove that it was not himself and his own experiences which he was writing
about. I believe that Hemingway had Catherine and her child die, not to look different from his own life, but because he had
a sick and morbid personality. There is great power in being an author, you can make things happen which do not necessarily
occur in real life. It is obvious that Hemingway felt, as a young child and throughout his life, powerless, and so he created
lives by writing stories. Hemingway acted out his feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness by hunting, drinking, spending
lots of money and having many girlfriends. I think that Hemingway was obsessed with death and not too sane. His obsession
shows itself in the morbid death of Miss Barkley and her child. Hemingway was probably very confused about religion and sin
and somehow felt or feared that people would or should be punished for enjoying life's pleasures. Probably, the strongest
reason for writing about Catherine Barkley's death and the death of her child was Hemingway's belief that death comes to everyone;
it was inevitable. Death ends life before you have a chance to learn and live. He writes, in A Farewell to Arms, "They threw
you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. ... they killed you in the end.
You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you."
Hemingway, even in high school, wrote stories which showed that people should
expect the unexpected. His stories offended and angered the principal of his school. I think that Hemingway liked shocking
and annoying people; he was certainly rebellious. If he would have written an ending where Miss Barkley and her child had
lived, it would have been too easy and common; Hemingway was certainly not like everyone else, and he seemed to be proud of
that fact. Even the fact that Hemingway wrote curses and had a lot of sex in his books shows that he liked to shock people.
When his publisher asked that he change some words and make his books more acceptable to people, Hemingway refused, then was
forced to compromise. I think that the major difference between Hemingway and Henry was that Henry was a likable and normal
person while Hemingway was strange and very difficult. Hemingway liked doing things his way and either people had to accept
him the way he was or too bad for them. I think that Hemingway probably did not even like himself and that was one reason
that he couldn't really like other people. Hemingway seemed to use people only for his own pleasure, and maybe he wanted to
think that he was like Henry who was a nicer person.
In the book, Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Farewell to Arms, Malcolm
Cowley focuses on the symbolism of rain. He sees rain, a frequent occurrence in the book, as symbolizing disaster. He points
out that, at the beginning of A Farewell to Arms, Henry talks about how "things went very badly" and how this is connected
to "At the start of the winter came permanent rain". Later on in the book we see Miss Barkley afraid of rain. She says, "Sometimes
I see me dead in it", referring to the rain. It is raining the entire time Miss Barkley is in childbirth and when both she
and her baby die. Wyndham Lewis, in the same book of critical essays, points out that Hemingway is obsessed with war, the
setting for much of A Farewell to Arms. He feels that the author sees war as an alternative to baseball, a sport of kings.
He says that the war years "were a democratic, a levelling, school". For Hemingway, raised in a strict home environment, war
is a release; an opportunity to show that he is a real man.
The essayist, Edgar Johnson says that for the loner "it is society as a whole
that is rejected, social responsibility, social concern" abandoned. Lieutenant Henry, like Hemingway, leads a private life
as an isolated individual. He socializes with the officers, talks with the priest and visits the officer's brothel, but those
relationships are superficial. This avoidance of real relationships and involvement do not show an insensitive person, but
rather someone who is protecting himself from getting involved and hurt. It is clear that in all of Hemingway's books and
from his own life that he sees the world as his enemy. Johnson says, "He will solve the problem of dealing with the world
by taking refuge in individualism and isolated personal relationships and sensations". John Killinger says that it was inevitable
that Catherine and her baby would die.
The theme, that a person is trapped in relationships, is shown in all Hemingway's
stories. In A Farewell to Arms Catherine asks Henry if he feels trapped, now that she is pregnant. He admits that he does,
"maybe a little". This idea, points out Killinger, is ingrained in Hemingway's thinking and that he was not too happy about
fatherhood. In Cross Country Snow, Nick regrets that he has to give up skiing in the Alps with a male friend to return to
his wife who is having a baby. In Hemingway's story Hills Like White Elephants the man wants his sweetheart to have an abortion
so that they can continue as they once lived. In To Have and Have Not, Richard Gordon took his wife to "that dirty aborting
horror". Catherine's death, in A Farewell to Arms, saves the author's hero from the hell of a complicated life.
Octovio Paz
Octavio Paz was born in 1914 in Mexico City.
On his father's side, his grandfather was a prominent liberal intellectual and one of the first authors to write a novel with
an expressly Indian theme. Thanks to his grandfather's extensive library, Paz came into early contact with literature. Like
his grandfather, his father was also an active political journalist who, together with other progressive intellectuals, joined
the agrarian uprisings led by Emiliano Zapata.
Paz began to write at an early age, and in 1937, he travelled to Valencia,
Spain, to participate in the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. Upon his return to Mexico in 1938, he
became one of the founders of the journal, Taller (Workshop), a magazine which signaled the emergence of a new generation
of writers in Mexico as well as a new literary sensibility. In 1943, he travelled to the USA on a Guggenheim Fellowship where
he became immersed in Anglo-American Modernist poetry; two years later, he entered the Mexican diplomatic service and was
sent to France, where he wrote his fundamental study of Mexican identity, The Labyrinth of Solitude, and actively participated
(together with Andre Breton and Benjamin Peret) in various activities and publications organized by the surrealists. In 1962,
Paz was appointed Mexican ambassador to India: an important moment in both the poet's life and work, as witnessed in various
books written during his stay there, especially, The Grammarian Monkey and East Slope. In 1968, however, he
resigned from the diplomatic service in protest against the government's bloodstained supression of the student demonstrations
in Tlatelolco during the Olympic Games in Mexico. Since then, Paz has continued his work as an editor and publisher, having
founded two important magazines dedicated to the arts and politics: Plural (1971-1976) and Vuelta, which he
has been publishing since 1976. In 1980, he was named honorary doctor at Harvard. Recent prizes include the Cervantes award in 1981 - the most important award
in the Spanish-speaking world - and the prestigious American Neustadt Prize in 1982.
Paz is a poet and an essayist.
His poetic corpus is nourished by the belief that poetry constitutes "the secret religion of the modern age." Eliot Weinberger
has written that, for Paz, "the revolution of the word is the revolution of the world, and that both cannot exist without
the revolution of the body: life as art, a return to the mythic lost unity of thought and body, man and nature, I and the
other." His is a poetry written within the perpetual motion and transparencies of the eternal present tense. Paz's poetry
has been collected in Poemas 1935-1975 (1981) and Collected Poems, 1957-1987 (1987). A remarkable prose stylist,
Paz has written a prolific body of essays, including several book-length studies, in poetics, literary and art criticism,
as well as on Mexican history, politics and culture.
I will add write ups about many more
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