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To prove her point, Rosy Singh
presents a semiotic analysis of "Notebook of Malte Laurids
Brigg", Rilke’s solitary novel that took him five years
to complete. His age, career and polyglot nature had a lot to do
with its writing. Singh does mention all these factors without
going deep into their implications for the type of novel that
came to be written. He was a young man of 30 then, writing
poetry in German, French and Russian at the same time. For all
this, he worked as secretary to Auguste Rodin, the celebrated
French sculptor, much taken up with impressionism then. As a
result, his structure of experience and feeling came to be
marked by a sort of a symmetry. It is this symmetry that defines
the technique, style and theme of this novel.
Without going
into this detail, Singh is perceptive enough to indicate
implications held out by these factors. The novel has as its
protagonist a member of the Danish aristocracy whose confidence
in his creative abilities is in discount. So love and death
become his obsessions. Their pictures flicker through his mind
in an impressionistic way. This flickering is not chaotic in any
way; for, the first part is taken up with death only. The
second, going in a similar vein, reflects on love as well.
Persons, animals and birds in all their diversity appear as
signifiers of death. They are shown dying at all places and
times not casually but obsessively. She is right to hold that
"there is no author other than Rilke, who has written so
fetishly about death and dying. Not without reason did Rilke
once describle himself as a pupil of death."
To sharpen its
impact, he employs all senses of sight, smell and sound. As a
result, the novel rolls up conglomeration, crescendo and
scenario into one echoing, presenting visual and aural and
impact of the process. From their midst arises the conflagration
of love reminding of the pangs which women, become paradigmatic
beloveds, suffered in the previous civilisation. The crux of
true love lies in distance or separation suffered by them
outside marriage, that for Rilke is one with mediocrity.
The chapter on
Kafka’s masterpiece "The Trial" is a counterpoint to
what is laid bare in Rilke’s solitary attempt at novel
writing. Though brief, Singh’s reflection upon Kafka’s life
in a Jewish milieu under his father’s strict authority,
coupled with his difficult involvement with women, is truly
engaging. Led to adapt herself to the unique interplay of the
fate that the manuscript of this masterpiece met with and the
semiotic method so apt for laying bare its mystery, she delves
deep into its diverse chapters. All signifiers relate to the
court, the magistrate, the labyrinth of stairs, stifling
atmosphere, the people on the way, the prosecution and acquittal
are so perceptively analysed. How the syntagmatic and
paradigmatic sequences criss-cross each other is brought out in
an insightful way. The diverse modes which coalesce into its
formation are also underlined.
There is no
disputing her conclusion that "Kafka internalised his
individual experiences in the family or in the office or in the
street and after a prolonged process of crystallisation,
transformed them into a surrealistic, atemporal dream world that
represents a seamless fusion of dream and reality". What is
to be disputed is her reluctance to pinpoint how this fusion
holds an accusing finger at authoritative regimes. It is in line
with her reluctance earlier to withhold herself from showing
Rilke as the advoate of authority in its most abstract sense.
For the
indigenous reader, the most interesting is the third essay,
"Human Dignity in Manto’s Writing". It deals with
three short-stories in the first and one "Thanda Gosht"
(Cold Flesh) in the second part. In the first part, there is
presented the semiotic analysis of "Hattak" (Insult)
followed by brief studies on the same pattern of another two
"Khushia" and "Nara" named after the central
characters. This semiotic analysis comprises two sections.
The first one
is a chronological presentation of the text with special
emphasis on the loci — the bed, floor, room and the other
paraphernalia. Like them are outer aspects of her body, thighs,
breasts, cheeks, lips, buttocks and the vagina that though
hidden is desired most by the customers. Such is the
commodity-like state of her body and mind that pimp Ram Lal
takes her down stairs at midnight to show to a customer. The
customer, a rich seth, comes there in a big car, rejects her
with contempt. He drives away leaving her stunned and insulted.
This drives her almost mad with anger and she has her revenge by
showering dirty abuses on all and sundry. In this state of mind
and body she drives away Madho who, under the pretext of
marrying her, has been pilfering her hard-earned money.
This
comprehensive analysis is followed by a look at the discourse of
the narrative in which her existential dilemma, "excessive
psychic mobility caused by physical immobility", her state
of mind obsessed with insult, on the one hand, and burdened with
humiliation, on the other, occur. An overlap between the two
sections is there but that is more manifest than latent. If the
first section deals with her physical discomfiture, in the seond
it is her mental turmoil that comes gushing forth. No doubt,
this is the best example of semiotic analysis in the book. There
is a sub-section in which this story is subjected to a
comparative study as well. Brecht’s, "The Good Woman of
Setzuan," Sartre’s "The Respectable Prostitute"
and Maupassant’s "Boule de Suif" are the writings in
comparison, with which it chalked out a distinct niche for
itself.
The last section deals with
"Thanda Gosht" one of the most memorable of Manto’s
partition stories. Through a rigorous analysis of signifiers,
syntactic repetitions, ellipses, deletions, abuses, changes in
voice and bodily postures, Rosy Singh bares all the qualities of
this haunting piece. Her anxiety to restore this much-maligned
author to a place of honour, even exaltation, is understandable.
It is worthy of appreciation also. What is missing is the
analysis of the multivalent blockage that obstructs Manto from
looking beyond partition. Though catastrophic, it was not
without an apocalyptic element. That is nowhere signified either
in the margins or the ruptures of this otherwise very
invigorating study.
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