|
|
Faiz, however, does not provide the typical example. As Said
notes after meeting the poet in Beirut, he could freely relax
only with his fellow Pakistani, political analyst Iqbal Ahmad.
This is also partly true of Brecht in American exile, but
certainly not true of intellectual exiles like Arthur Koestler
or George Mikes (author of "How to be an Alien") in
Britain. This is definitely not true of Said’s paradigmatic
intellectual exile, Eric Auerbach, about whom he writes with
admiration and feeling.
Auerbach, a
fugitive from Hitler, sought and found refuge in Turkey and
America.. Here he could rediscover his "narrative and
relational explicitness" and produce a work of grand
scope, "Mimesis", that encapsulates his European
tradition of realism as an act of rehabilitation,
"collection and presentation".
In Svetlana
Boym’s sense, Auerbach transcends his exile in the act of
re-figuring (Dante’s concept) the entire tradition, just as
his mentor Dante did in his great work. Regrettably, the
connection with Dante escapes Said, but it is necessary to
remember that Auerbach could have been following his mentor in
an unbroken meditation on creation, of shoring up the memory
of lost home. Only in the academic "stillness" of
America could this be possible. German intellectuals in
America are the best adapters.
Except for
his recent memoir, there is no evidence in Said’s prolific
output of such an attempt to shore up his Palestinian
heritage. By the very nature of his self-designated place in
the American academy, he remains a cosmopolitan in the best
sense of the word. Nor is there evidence in the much-hyped
writing of the Indian diaspora in America that a serious
attempt has been made to recover tradition. There are,
however, laughable gestures towards it in Manil Suri’s
recent "Death of Vishnu", now being hailed in the US
media as a possible successor to Marquez’s "Hundred
Years".
May be this
is due to the fact that the contemporary intellectual exile
sees in his/her condition an opportunity to dramatise what are
supposed to be multiple identities. They value the very same
qualities of experience that genuine exile enforces —
namely, uncertainty, ambiguity and fragmented identity. This
is how post-modernism takes the sting out of the shame of
exile and makes nomadic and diasporic conditions fashionable
in intellectual discourse. This has the dubious advantage of a
superficial internationalism..
Throughout
these essays, Said seems to revel in his hybrid, syncretic
identities, as do other post-modernists, but with none of the
gravitas that Said possesses. The jarring disconnections of
homelessness become for the intellectual exile conditions for
self-dramatisation, though Said can be capable of standing
back and looking beyond, as he does in his essays on Naguib
Mahfouz, R.P. Blacmur, the Egyptian popular singer Um Khaltoum,
and classical western music.
Svetlana Boym’s
discussion of Brodsky, Nabakov and other exile writers in the
section "On Diasporic Intimacy" is conducted in the
light of what she perceives after Freud to be the feeling of
heimlich. But this feeling is part of nostalgia that she
diagnoses as a permanent condition of displacement. Brodsky
and Nabokov may have overcome their homelessness in the new
home, the English language that they mastered to perfection.
Yet they could not overcome their passion for Russian language
and the scenes from their Russian past. The fact that they
kept their Russian and English verse separate testifies to
this dual allegiance, which, given the "stillness"
of the American scene, is not allowed to grate.
In Boym’s
scheme of things, nostalgia and memory play significant roles
in keeping alive the links between exile and the pre-exile
integral living. That is why she not only comments extensively
on Baudelaire’s poems and Benjamin’s writing, but revisits
the cities mostly associated with exile in our time: Moscow,
Berlin and St Petersburg. Whereas Benjamin, Baudelaire and
Nietzsche provide her with philosophical, poetic and critical
perspectives on longing and memory, revisiting Berlin, Moscow
and St.Petersburg inspires meditations on the very pain of
displacement and its management.
Of the three
cities, St Petersburg is the one closely linked to the power
of Russian dissident writing. Not only do Brodsky, Mandelstam
and Anna Akhmatova belong to the city’s cultural past, the
very mention of the city creates a sacrosanct feeling in their
poems.
Nadhezda
Mandelstam’s "Hope against Hope" and "Hope
Abandoned" are classics of the city’s literature of
alienation in a communist society, and Brodsky’s evocation
of the city as an Enlightenment haven is a major literary
accomplishment in itself. On her visits Boym discovers the
anarchic side of this most cultured city— in the writings of
Victor Shklovsky as well as in the bustle of the aspiring
youth..
In Moscow and
Berlin, she sees hectic attempts to undo the communist past
and restore the pre-revolution icons. One is reminded here of
Benjamin’s "Moscow Dairy" in which, in the late
twenties of last century, he saw a surface aridity suppressing
a relatively vibrant soul. What she says about Berlin is true
of all the cities: "This other Berlin exists in stolen
air and unlicensed spaces", places that were choked in
the communist past. Revisiting these places is for her like
recapturing the "imagined communities" that existed
before she left for her own voluntary exile in the USA.
Like Harold Pinter’s
"No Man’s Land", this solid book charts the hiatus
between desire and its deferred fulfilment.
|
EXILE
literature would be characterised as the literature of
"restorative nostalgia", which puts emphasis on
nostos and proposes to "rebuild the lost home and patch
up the memory gaps". As against this is "reflective
nostalgia" which "dwells in algia, in longing and
loss". This would approximate to Said’s refugee
literature.
