POETRY, POETICS AND POLITICS

Our Language

2009-05-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

When you and I talk, we don’t use

the language we use everyday

in conversation. We refuse

common words, common thoughts. Let’s just say:

our tongue sprouts new meanings for words,

that sit across wires like birds.

Our love is like a secret cult:

it has its rituals and its rites,

and its language is symbolic

woven like fine silk in the nights.

You and I know it since you bit

the apple; others can’t learn it.

When you and I walk, hand in hand,

through little streets and the broad streets,

no one will ever understand

our words, the rhythm of our feet.

They’ll stare: in the street, on the bus;

stares that say: “Us and Them! Them and Us!”

So while the city will engage

in riots and in carnival,

we’ll withdraw into our garden

and write our songs – political;

and our language is symbolic:

we critique what in the state is sick.

They’re suspicious of us, and the

police have recorded our names;

but our language is allegoric,

and on us, they can’t pin the blame.

They’ll stare: in the street, on the bus;
stares that say: “Us and Them! Them and Us!”

My Friend

2009-05-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve made you from my ribs, my little one:

crushing these soft bones into dust and clay,

moulding you with my strong fingers all day:

your back, stomach, hand, heart, head… little one,

until both you and I were hardened by the sun.

Your body rises like mountains

rise to the skies – to meet my hands,

and then falls back upon the sands,

where little birds peck at your feet.

Your feet, your knees, your breasts, your head

rise like sand dunes to meet the sea

of my desire.

Little birds:

they hide in the dark cavity

into which the sea must retreat.

I’ve made you from my ribs, my little one:

to absorb all my seas.

And I’ll tell you all – all, my friend,

from the very beginning to the very end…

Nightmares

2009-04-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a thousand mares,

leaping out of your wet black hairs.

Your body is like a meadow:

sprouting golden-red flowers, wet grass,

from your mouth, eyes, head, breasts, navel,

and hiding your cruel laughter,

like shards of broken glass.

I have seen the black wild mares run free,

on your soft, beautiful body.

I’ve seen them eat the golden flowers

from between your legs, your wet mouth,

your eyes, head, throat, stomach, navel,

laughing in the moonlight on your

breasts.

Their laughter is most uncouth.

I have seen you surrender your treasure,

moaning in the moonlight,

overcome with pleasure…

* * * * *

I wake up trembling as if I’m in a fit,

I wake up, I vomit…

Betrayal

2009-04-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

“Yet she must die, else she will betray more men”

-- Shakespeare, OTHELLO, V.i.6

I have smelt other men in your hair,

they have left the mark of their teeth

on your breasts, smooth and white, beneath

your reckless throat, slender and bare.

I have smelt other men in your hair,

on your skin: smooth, and white, and bare.

Where is the onyx swan I gave

you? You were asked to hide it in

the cavity between your legs, the cave

from which all orange trees begin.

But you have broken it, thrown it away,

and can’t return it when I ask today.

I have smelt other men in your hair,

on your skin: smooth, and white, and bare.

Exercise a little reason,

and tell me: what is the retribution for high treason?

Let your throat be not so reckless, Love,

for I may clasp it with my iron fist,

and drown you in your pillows, bed clothes, bed,

or cover your eyes with black mist…

But you eat me up, like a common whore,

and vomit me out upon the black shore.

I have smelt other men in your hair,

on your skin: smooth, and white, and bare.

2009-03-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Your songs I may forget..."

Your song I may forget,

your letters I may burn,

but there are a few things of yours,

which I’ll never return:

your thoughtless, cruel words,

a few strands of your hair,

none can say they belong to you,

so to ask them back wouldn’t be fair.

On my pillow you left your hair,

black rivers across a white land,

a sad, sad land, unjust, unfair:

the rain will not yield a grass in the sand;

and rainless it has been so long,

the men are sad, the trees are sad,

for we calculated it wrong,

and soon shall we all be mad…

2009-03-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

Learning to fly…

Evenings without you are like storms without thunder.

Winter dusks are curious: arriving before

their time at coffee, naked with a hat

of rain, filling vacuums that do not exist;

like a black horse entering the city

from the sky, surprised, like a double edged

sword,

eating up the flowers of the afternoon,

on which the dew falls like weeping.

I was

lonely, reclusive, solitary –-

unaccustomed to the sword of the thunder

unsheltered storms. Then I tasted your song:

I savagely wanted to eat your song.

I want to love you like the searing desert wind

loves the cacti.

I want to explode

into the inverted fishbowl of the

dawn, like the goldfish of the gulmohar leaves.

I wish to learn to fly with you like kites

learn to fly in the azure mountain air.

2009-03-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

The City

oh yes, we saw the trams burning,

bullets were exchanged in the street,

and the mob threw stones at cars that morning;

children were crushed by running feet,

as mounted policemen came down

and turned greater heat upon lesser heat…

but troubles are not new in my town,

mobs and marches, burning, looting,

have happened so often that we have grown

indifferent to what it might mean

at a place less political,

for we are unused to a quieter scene,

but it’s on streets where bastards shout,

and not in some glade, cool and green,

that poetry, kicking and screaming, comes out…

2009-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

A Case Study of the Obscenity Suit Against Ishmat Chughtai’s ‘Lihaaf’

By Uttaran Das Gupta

In December 1944, Ishmat Chughtai (1911 – 1991), the famous Urdu writer, received summons from the Lahore High Court for a suit of obscenity brought against her by the then English colonial government for her short story ‘Lihaaf’. The story was published in 1942, in Abad-e-Lateef, an Urdu magazine edited by Shahid Ahmed Dehlavi. Dehlavi was publishing a collection of Chughtai’s short stories that had been published in his magazine and included ‘Lihaaf’ in this collection. The suit was brought against this book. Along with Chughtai, Dehlavi and the calligrapher of the story was also convicted in the case. Interestingly, Saadat Hasan Manto, a friend and fellow writer of Chughtai was also convicted in the same suit for his short story ‘Bu’. However, the fate of ‘Lihaaf’ is more important to my purpose. In this paper, I shall trace the court case over ‘Lihaaf’ and how Chughtai received both official censure and public notoriety for a story that was considered to be “obscene”.

What was it in ‘Lihaaf” that ruffled so many feathers? It was story about a lesbian relationship between a sexually deprived Begum Jan of Agra and her maid and sexual partner, Rabbo; seen through the eyes of a small child, who is the narrator of the story. ‘Lihaaf’, or the quilt, is symbolic of the suppressed sexual desires of the two women who can experience sexual pleasure only under the covering of a quilt. For the observant child and narrator, the quilt becomes monstrous, and she imagines that there is a wild elephant under it. The story is written in a lucid and conversational style with the characteristic wit that readers of Chughtai are familiar with. She describes the composition of the story: “I was staying with my brother when I wrote ‘Lihaaf’. I had completed the story at night. In the morning I read it out to my sister-in-law. She didn’t think it was vulgar though she recognized the characters portrayed in it. Then I read it out to my aunt’s daughter who was fourteen years old. She didn’t understand what the story was about.”[1] Chughtai had already gained some fame as a writer before this but with ‘Lihaaf’, all hell broke loose. Chughtai says: “The culture and the ways of life of the landed gentry had made the women of the house suppress their desires, feelings and ideas. I have depicted these very women and their psychological contradictions in my stories. ‘Lihaaf’ was one of these stories. These stories created a storm. The custodians of culture were shocked!”[2] My personal opinion is that the story is neither obscene, nor pornographic but a sensitive portrayal of a relationship that is not granted either recognition or language in a society obsessed with morals.

The year in which Chughtai wrote the story was 1942 – the same year in which Gandhi called for “Quit India”. It was a troubled decade for India and the world at large which was fighting for freedom form colonial rule as well as the fascist forces of Hitler and Mussolini. But homosexuality remained a subject unaddressed, and no thought freedom of a nation or society would also address freedom for individuals whose sexuality did not conform to the need of the dominant patriarchy. Chughtai had dared to raise her voice: it was essential to suppress her.

So, on a fine winter afternoon, as Chughtai was preparing milk for her two month old daughter, an officer from the Mahim police station came to her house with the summons from the Lahore High Court. Chughtai was living in Bombay with her husband, Shahid Lateef, the film director, and she describes the arrivals of the summons with her characteristic wit:

As I read the heading – “Ishmat Chughtai vs. The Crown” – I broke into laughter. “Good God, what complaint does the Exalted King have against me that he has filed the suit?”

“It’s no joke,” said the Inspector severely. “Read it first and sign it.”

I read through the summons but could barely make any sense of it. My story ‘Lihaaf’ had been accused of obscenity and I had to appear before Lahore High Court in

January. Otherwise the government would penalize me severely.[3]

Though Chughtai describes this and the subsequent incidents with her characteristic humour, the genuine concern she felt at the turn of events seeps through. In fact, she admits: “Though I put up a courageous front I felt quite embarrassed.” Her situation is not unfamiliar to students of censorship and her sense of embarrassment and confusion is understandable. She had been identified as a person who had ignored the status quo, and now the witch hunt had begun.

Soon the papers carried the news that Chughtai had written an “obscene” and “pornographic” story. Her father-in-law wrote to her husband: “Try to reason with dulhan. Tell her to chant the names of Allah and the prophet. A lawsuit is bad enough. That too on the charges of obscenity. We are very worried. May God help you.”[4] Her husband too was not happy with what was happening and they often had bitter quarrels. Around this time, she was also a member of the Bombay based Progressive Movement, which included writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, Kaifi Azmi and Habib Tanvir. When the story was published in English, they reacted with nonchalance by neither coming to her defense, nor disowning her. The only person who supported her at this time was Hasan Manto, who was of course a mariner in the same boat.

She also received a significant amount of hate mail abusing her and questioning her sexual morality:

Then the filthy letters began to arrive. They were filled with such inventive and convoluted obscenities that had they been uttered before a corpse, it would have got up and run for cover. Not only me, but my whole family including Shahid and my two month old child were dragged into the muck.

I am scared of mud, muck and lizards. Many people pretend to be courageous, but are scared of dead mice. I began to fear my mail as though the envelopes contained snakes, scorpions and dragons. I would read the first few words and then burn the letters. Whenever they fell into Shahid’s [her husband] hands, he would repeat the threat of divorce.

Beside these letters there were articles published in newspapers and debates in literary and cultural gatherings. Only a strong-hearted person like myself could put up with them.

The only manner in which an outraged patriarchy can attack a woman is by bringing her sexual behaviour into question and demonizing her because she refuses to conform. A similar case in point is Tasleema Nasrin, who was hounded out not only from Bangladesh but also from India because she had run fowl with orthodox and fundamentalist Islam. The descriptions of sexuality in her writings were presented as evidence against her to prove that she was demoniac and immoral. The case of Chughtai was no different: she was a woman and she had written on the subject of lesbianism; and thus it was essential to condemn and silence her.

For some her detractors, the concern was more about how a “respectable and educated woman” could write on such as subject? A certain Mr Aslam, another writer, whose house Chughtai visited in Lahore, “blew his top over the alleged obscenities in my writings.” She replied in her characteristic manner:

“You have used such vulgar words in your Gunaah ki Ratein! You have even described the details of the sex act just to titillate,” I said.

“My case is different. I am a man.”

“Am I to blame for that?”

“What do you mean?” His face was flushed with anger.

“What I mean is – God has made you a man, I had no hand in it, and He has made me a woman, you had no hand in it. You have the freedom to write whatever you want, you don’t need my permission. Similarly I don’t feel the need to seek your permission for writing the way I want to.”

“You are an educated girl from a decent Muslim family.”

“You are also educated. And from a decent Muslim family.”

“Do you want to compete with men?”

“Certainly not. I always endeavoured to obtain higher marks than the boys in the class and often succeeded in that.”

I knew that I was being pig headed as usual. Aslam Sahab’s face was red hot with anger. I was afraid he would hit me or his jugular vein would burst. Sahid Sahab was aghast, almost in tears. I assumed a softer tone and said humbly, “Aslam Sahab, actually no one had told me that it was a sin to write on the topic with which ‘Lihaaf’ is concerned. Nor had I read in any book that such a… disease… such aberration could not be written about…”[5]

The argument between Chughtai and Aslam that I have quoted here is typical of all debates on obscenity. The argument that Aslam puts forward is that it is improper for “decent” Muslim women to write on a subject such as lesbianism even though men can do just the same. On the contrary, Chughtai’s counter argument is that she does not need permission from anyone to write, in other words, the freedom of speech. She also undercuts the difference between men and women with her personal polemic of feminism. Mid-1940’s is still far away from the feminist movements of the 1960’s and Chughtai exercises personal censorship and apologizes by saying that she was ignorant that such “aberration” could not be written about.

This invites a second line of argument against her:

“Wasn’t any religious education imparted to you?”

“Aslam Sahab, I’ve read Behishti Zevar. Such explicit things are written there…” I said innocently. Aslam Sahab looked upset. I continued, “When I read it in my childhood I was shocked. Those things seemed vulgar to me. But when I read it again, after my BA, I realized that they were not vulgar, they were important facts of life about which every sensible person should be aware. Well, people can brand the books prescribed in Psychology and Medicine vulgar if they so want.”[6]

The question on religious education is important because Islam condemns Homosexuality and it is stated in the Quran that it is a form of disease that needs to be borne with patience like any other disease. The punishment for Homosexuality for individuals is stoning to death; and destruction of entire cities like Sodom and Gomorrah. However, it is interesting to note that homosexuality has flourished in Islamic literature from the eight to the thirteenth century from Central Asia to North Africa under the Abbasid Caliphate. In North Africa, where Islam comes into contact with the Swahili culture, even lesbian verse is found around this time. In India too, homosexual topics were addressed in pre-modern Urdu verse, though the subject was not explored in prose until the middle of the twentieth century.

David Greenberg argues that there was some sort of acceptance of homosexuality in all non-Western culture. However, the emerging dominance of Western culture, as a result of colonialism, imposed a Judeo-Christian legal system that outlawed homosexuality.[7] (Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Chughtai came into conflict with such a legal system.) However, my belief is that there were far more complicated forces at work such as the emergence of a mercantile class and the concerns of nation building at the time of Independence. However, before I discuss that aspect, tell us look in some detail at the proceedings of Chughtai’s case in the Lahore High Court.

The case had been in accord with the obscenity laws of The Indian Penal Code, 1860. The first hearing of the case was in January, 1945. There was not much interrogation, but the lawyers for the prosecution and defense discussed the case among themselves. The second hearing of the case was in November, 1946. There was quite a crowd at the court to witness the proceedings. In Chughtai’s own words: “The roads would get blocked with the number of people who came to see the woman a pornographic story. They felt terribly disappointed when they saw me, a hefty, dark woman in a white sari, no make up.”[8] The lawyers for defense invited the witness for prosecution to point out what they found obscene in the story, which threw them into confusion:

“Which word is obscene: ‘collect’ or ‘lover’?” The lawyer asked.

“Lover,” replied the witness hesitantly.

“My lord, the word ‘lover’ has been used by great poets most liberally. It is also used in naats, that is, poems written in praise of the Prophet. God-fearing people have accorded it a very high status.”

“But it is objectionable for girls to collect lovers,” said the witness.

“Why?”

“Because... because it is objectionable for good girls to do so.”

“And if the girls are not good, then it is not objectionable?”

“Mmm… no.”

“My client must have referred to the girls who were not good. Yes, madam, do you mean here that bad girls collect lovers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this may not be obscene. But it is reprehensible for an educated lady from a decent family to write about such things,” the witness thundered.

“Censure it as much as you want. But it does not come4 within the purview of law.”

The issue lost much of its steam.[9]

There were a lot of people who advised Chughtai and Manto to render an apology, and Chughtai admits that she would have done so if she were alone. However, Manto would hear of no such thing. The judge ruled in their favour, and expressed his own opinion privately to Chughtai: “I have read most of your stories. They aren’t obscene. Neither is ‘Lihaaf’. But Manto’s writings are often littered with filth.”

“The world is also littered with filth,” I said in a feeble voice.

“Is it necessary to rake it up then?”

“If it is raked up it becomes visible and people feel the need to clean it up.”

The judge laughed.[10]

Chughtai claims that the charges of obscenity could not be proved because she had not written the word dildo through ignorance:

You see, I didn’t know the word dildo at that time, so I used three dots wherever I had to refer to it. …They said you left it out because it is obscene. I told them, No; I just don’t know what it is called.[11]

Chughtai was well aware that it was not the government or the crown that had attempted to censor her but certain people with personal interests. Chughtai doesn’t specify what those interests might be, but I think it is possible for us to understand how this case was related to National politics.

In 1946, The Muslim League had started expressing in a loud voice their demand for a separate nation. Political negotiations would soon give way to violence. The motives behind the construction of a “Muslim” nation of Pakistan could not tolerate such a subversive piece of writing such as ‘Lihaaf’. It is interesting to not that the case was filed in the Lahore High Court and the city of Lahore would eventually become a part of Pakistan. So many things put together could surely not be merely a coincidence. Though Chughtai does not attribute the greater mechanisms of politics behind the censure of her short story, it surely was as can be seen in the construction of morality and censorship that went on across both India and Pakistan in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The support of legal constructions such as the Censor Board for Films and obscenity laws of Act 8, 1952 and Act 36, 1961 also allowed to fuel public outrage at works of art which were thought to be obscene and subversive. However, the cause of subversion is more important because a state mechanism will only suppress and censor that which is a threat to its own existence and preservation. Alberto Manguel states: “Gay history extends along a road largely lit by the bonfires of the censors.” My assertion is that these bonfires are lit more out of political purposes in the garb of religious morality. Chughtai’s story had run foul with the politics of a certain form of nation construction and thus religious morality was evoked to censor her.

Bibliography

· Ishmat Chughtai, ‘Lihaaf’, from The Quilt & Other Stories. New Delhi: Kali for Women. 1996, pp. 7-19 (3rd edition). Translated by Tahira Naqvi and Syeda S. Hameed.

· Sukrita Paul and Sadique (eds.). Chughtai Her Life, Her Times. New Delhi: Katha, 2000.

· David F Greenberg. The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

· CM Naim. Urdu Texts and Contexts: The Selected Essays of C.M. Naim. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004.

· Zafar Khan, ‘Islamic View about Homosexuality’ from www. islamawareness.com.

[1] Ishmat Chughtai, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan, translated by M Asaduddin, p 52, from Ishmat. Her Life, Her Times, ed. Sukrita Paul Kumar and Sadique (New Delhi: Katha, 2000).

[2] Ishmat Chughtai, from an interview by Afsar Farooqui, from Ishmat. Her Life, Her Times, ed. Sukrita Paul Kumar and Sadique (New Delhi: Katha, 2000).

[3] Ishmat Chughtai, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan, translated by M Asaduddin, pp 48

[4] Ibid, pp51

[5] Ibid, pp56.

[6] Ibid, pp 56

[7] David F Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

[8] Ishmat Chughtai, from an interview by Jyoti Punwani, first published in The Independent, quoted here from Ishmat. Her Life, Her Times, ed. Sukrita Paul Kumar and Sadique (New Delhi: Katha, 2000).

[9] Ishmat Chughtai, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan, translated by M Asaduddin, pp 62.

[10] Ibid, pp 63.

[11] Ishmat Chughtai, from an interview by Jyoti Punwani, first published in The Independent, quoted here from Ishmat. Her Life, Her Times, ed. Sukrita Paul Kumar and Sadique (New Delhi: Katha, 2000).

2009-02-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Forest

Though we have worked hard at our simple craft,

we are idlers for them, good for nothing,

and they will abuse us, even stone us when

we first begin to sing.

But remember:

a poet has certain obligations

which we mustn’t forget.

I’m cultivating

a forest in my room, a tropical

forest: of carnivorous flowers, and trees

so green and tall, evergreen; and creepers,

and trailer: all growing towards the sun.

They have no wings of feather and of wax,

which can melt, so they shall not fall like him…

They only have roots that grow deep into the soil.

But even an evergreen tropical tree falls,

its soft white roots infected with maggots;

and its fall bringing down its dependant creepers

and crushing the saplings beneath its dark shade,

and leaving a void in the sky of the forest.

It is here in the floor of the forest,

beneath the dark undergrowth, where the wood

of the fallen tree rots and grows soft

and is eaten by centipedes and worms:

It is here that the seed of poetry

falls from its pod into the wet soil.

It is here that the first leaves of the sapling

of poetry opens itself to the sun.

We are like gulls, flying out over the sea,

to drop softly over the waves and catch

the fish for our pains.

It is not easy

to negotiate the stiff wind, the waves,

and the critical storks trying to steal our fish.

It’s not easy with the fishermen tempting

us with crumbs of bread, trapping us for sport;

But a poet has certain obligations

which we mustn’t forget.

Yes, we know:

you’ll abuse us, stone us, crucify us,

or burn us at the stake for being wizards;

but remember: it’s with our incantations,

our words, that we summon the rain-clouds from the seas…

A poet has certain obligations,
even to those who don't know what sins they commit

2009-02-14T23:29:00.000-08:00

Two Girls and the City

Those girls are always full of light,

their fingers artful, their teeth sharp,

their eyes are cunning, their hands white,

and their voices sing like a harp.

Two girls, I know, they wait for me,

Rosa and Luna are their names;

and they shall take me to the sea,

where we shall play the children’s games.

Instantly, they cover my eyes,

they talk to me of magic lands,

and sing in my ears with their sighs,

such magic songs; they bind my hands.

With me, they run into my room,

holding me captive with their charm,

I’m terrified, trembling, confused,

but they assure me: they are warm.

Their artful fingers explore me,

they kiss my lips, my chest, my throat,

they bite my ears, they pull my hair,

and then their hands pull off my coat.

My blood is throbbing with the heat,

their breasts are pressing ‘gainst my arm;

my knees are weak, also my feet,

I feel my stomach growing warm.

A tree is growing between my legs,

a gnarled tree, that bears the fruits of pain,

this tree bears fruits in the dark,

and bears its fruits without the rain.

Someone knocks at the door and shouts,

inside the closet we must hide;

there, in the cobwebs, they’ll eat me:

they are my grooms and I’m their bride.

They want to undress me – they drink –

they fumble with my clothes – I fly –

but my legs betray me – they wink –

I fall overpowered – I die –

* * * * *

Just then, I opened the window:

the city hit me on my face

(like something unpleasant, rotting)

to my utter shame and disgust.

I wanted nothing to do with it,

I had only wanted to sleep,

but now I’m exposed and naked

and dank odours rise from the deep,

my room is not mine anymore,

the odours come in like a mist,

through the open windows, and the door,

the city opens like a fist…

2009-02-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

Coming of the rains

Like an express train I race through the night,

toiling, sweating, burning over my tracks;

under my wheels, the dry plains develop widening cracks,

yet, I speed faster than light.

Look: blue storms scream ahead of me,

summoning monstrous clouds from the sea,

spinning new sprung forests behind my wheels;

I race faster each hour towards the day,

behind me, recedes the green bay;

I come: sweet smelling earth kissing my heels,

bridging flooded rivers, tunneling mountains:

you wait for me with ripe mangoes and rains.

2009-01-30T10:51:00.000-08:00

My Room

My room is like
a coffin:
here I write
unaided
by the wind,
or rain, or sunlight.
The only wind here
is dead air,
dead
like
the stagnant water
of a rotting
pond.
The only rain here
is the memory
of
rain,
one thousand years
ago,
on an endless beach.
The only sun here
is the naked
bulb:
its cold light
on the walls
is stark
and clear;
so clear,
like a mirror
of narcissistic
double suicide.

Sometimes,
the walls
close in on
me,
like a fist
crushing paper.
I shrink:
my hands and legs
grow shorter;
the room grows
smaller yet:
the roof falls,
the walls
cave in;
the city
contracts too,
its streets,
monuments
and buildings
contract
within its walls.
The world itself
shrivels
like
an orange-shaped
balloon,
losing the gas
that had bloated it,
through a pin-point
hole
on its skin;
and the universe
too
counter expands,
stars and planets,
matter
and anti-matter,
and all
going out
like
burnt out
match sticks…
click click
click…
retreating into a
claustrophobic
black hole.

The black hole
is my room.
Sometimes, the light
in my room
expands
like yellow mist
on a green sea.

The walls
of my room
are like paper:
like the walls
in a Japanese house:
paper in wooden frames.
Dirty paper,
bespattered with
ink.
The spots of ink ---
little black holes ---
blot
on the coarse paper
and expand
like petals,
(alphabetic petals:
ascenders and descenders
and minims)
of black roses
in a field of snow.
Dirty snow.
A rose is a word,
so perfect
and meaningless,
a sign
of the hysteric
consensus
of men.
A bunch of roses
is a phrase,
incomplete;
and a bouquet,
complete,
is a sentence.
A garden ---
a paragraph;
and the entire
valley
from mountain
to mountain,
thousands of black roses
swaying in
the wind,
in the field
of dirty
snow,
is my book.
My book is
a black hole too
absorbing
the crunching universe,
and then
exploding
like a sunless,
colourless, nuclear
mushroom

2009-01-27T09:18:00.000-08:00

Escape From “Civilization”: Travelling Through The Americas With Guevara And Kerouac

By Uttaran Das Gupta

In January 1952, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara de la Serna set out with his friend Alberto Granado to explore South America, on Alberto’s motorcycle. Later, Guevara described his experiences on this journey in his book The Motorcycle Diaries (translated from the Spanish Notas de Viaje). In 1957, Jack Kerouac published his semi-autobiographical novel, On The Road, describing his hitch-hiked journeys across North America. Both the books became gospels for the ‘beat’ generation and the ‘counter-culture’ of the 1960’s. My paper shall study these two texts parallely and explore the purposes and philosophy that fuelled such travel. It might seem anachronistic to even attempt such a study considering the fact that Guevara was a revolutionary and Kerouac, a professional writer and their influences are so different. However, I shall argue that within the two texts I consider, their journeys converge and become parallel. The alienation from a “stultified’, ideological, intellectual University life and from a normative bourgeoisie home in particular, and from “civilization” in general; travel as an utopian escape from this alienation; the identification of the self with the “hobo” or the vagabond and the identification of the travel with “epic” explorations; the similarity of the experiences in such travel and the similarity of the language used by both writers to describe these experiences: these are some of the features that I shall discuss.

The title of my paper was suggested by a sentence from Guevara’s book: “it was an acknowledgement of our changed circumstances and of the horizons we were seeking, free at last from ‘civilization’” Guevara is describing a photograph taken by his friend Granado, after they had spent a week at a hospital in Choele Choel in north Argentina. He puts the word civilization within quotes and this at once communicates to the reader his intention of divorcing his person and his narrative from the general conceptions of the word and the preconditioning it implies. The term “civilization” is defined by The Oxford English Dictionary as: “1. advanced stage or system of social development; 2. peoples of the world that are regarded as having this.” The phrase “system of social development” should at once make us aware of an ideological discourse that must govern this system. In Marxian terms this system would be the relation between “the base and superstructure” and an individual existing within the parameters of this system would have his or her consciousness framed by the prevalent discourse. Both Guevara and Kerouac seek travel as a hedonistic escape from this “civilization” and its preconditioned parameters.

Kerouac and Guevara, emerge, in their later lives as very different individuals. However, at the point where the two journeys begin, they are very similar: both are students of Universities where they find themselves frustrated; both have a power of imagination which is a possible cause for their frustration; and both embark on transcontinental journeys unaware of the magnitude of the distances they wish to travel, with very little money and complete belief in improvisation. Guevara writes:

I had also quit my job, but unlike Alberto I was very happy to leave. I was feeling uneasy, more than anything because having the spirit of a dreamer I was particularly jaded with medical school, hospitals and exams….The trip was decided just like that, and it never erred from the basic principle laid down in that moment: improvisation….The enormity of our endeavour escaped us in those moments; all we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometres in our flight northward.

In almost similar language, Kerouac describes his desire to travel:

Yes, and it wasn’t only because I was a writer and needed new experience that I wanted to know Dean more, and because my life hanging around the campus had reached the completion of its cycle and was stultified… Although my aunt warned me that he would get me in trouble, I could hear a new call and see a new horizon, and believe it at my young age…I was a young writer and I wanted to take off.

The University and the routine it imposed on their lives and the normative bourgeoisie homes that constricted their spirits were the major causes of their frustration. Travel for Guevara and Kerouac, as the title of my paper suggests is a form of hedonistic escape from this condition. Guevara, later describes his impulse to join the Cuban revolution: “I had thought it quite doubtful when I first enrolled with the rebel commander, to whom I was linked from the beginning by a liking for romantic adventure and the thought that it would be well worth dying on a foreign beach for such a pure ideal.” The impulse governing both their travel is the desire for the romantic adventure. The only significant difference in their travels is a material one: Guevara takes one journey from south to north and Kerouac travels east to west, a few times. Their style of narrating their experiences is of course very different: Guevara writes a travel diary where the narrator and the writer are the same; Kerouac, on the other hand writes a semi-fictional, autobiographical novel where he invents the name Salvatore Paradise for himself and the name Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady, with whom he had actually travelled.

Though the primary reason for this travel is pleasure, they are at pains to identify themselves as different from tourists. The primary difference is that a tourist travels because he or she can afford to, travel as tourism is a form of entertainment for them. For Guevara and Alberto, on one hand; and Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise on the other, travel is a necessity: they can hardly afford it, they are constantly broke and need to borrow money, depend on charity and do odd jobs to finance their travel. The tourist also has a specific plan about the journey, when to embark on it, where to go, what to do and when to return. Guevara or Paradise do not have any such plans: it is, as we have seen earlier, completely based on improvisation. Paradise intends to hitch-hike across the country trying to test the limits of the American dream and the unlimited freedom it promised. Guevara and Alberto set out on Alberto’s motorcycle La Poderosa II: a 500 cc Norton and they too are forced to hitch-hike vast distances. For the tourist, travel means a journey from his or her immediate society to a different one with no intention of losing his or her identity as a member of a civilized society. For Guevara and Kerouac, the desire to travel is a desire to negate their constructed identity; both Guevara and Kerouac describe their alienation:

…and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen… and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.

This is the most poignant description of the negation of one’s identity and the feeling of alienation: the inability to identify one’s self and therefore imagining the self as a stranger. He realizes that there is a difference between the person he used to be and the person he is now and therefore he gets the liberty to pursue a different lifestyle, with different motives. Guevara too describes, how, as soon as they are on the road, there is a certain alienation from the life that they used to have. This becomes evident to them through the reactions of people they meet:

…We covered the distance easily in a morning, arriving just in time for a steak lunch, receiving a genial welcome from the friend and a not so genial welcome from his wife who spotted the danger in our resolutely bohemian ways.
“You have only one year left before you qualify as a doctor and yet you are going away? You have no idea when you’ll be back? But why?”
We couldn’t give precise answers to her desperate questions and this horrified her. She was courteous with us but her hostility was clear, despite the fact that she knew (at least I think she knew) ultimately victory was hers – her husband was beyond our “redemption”.

The “redemptions that they seeked could only be had through travel which is an escape and it was three-fold: 1. The identification of the self with the figures on the margins of society; 2. By romanticizing the travel; and 3. By believing that the destination of this travel is a utopia.

Both Kerouac and Guevara find themselves as marginal members of society in their texts. They identify themselves and sympathize with marginal and underclass characters they meet on the road: the itinerant labourers, the Mexicans, the African-Americans and ethnic Americans and their lives are romanticized. There is a desire to be the Other: both Guevara and Kerouac identify themselves as the “hobo”, the vagabond, who travels because he has no permanent residence. Guevara describes their condition after their motorcycle breaks down permanently in Chile:

We had come to a new phase in our adventure. We were used to calling idle attention to ourselves with our strange dress and the prosaic figure of La Poderosa II, whose asthmatic wheezing aroused pity in our hosts. To a certain extent we had been Knights of the road; we belonged to that long standing “wandering aristocracy” and had called cards with our impeccable and impressive titles. No longer. Now we were just two hitchhikers with backpacks, and with all the grime of the road stuck to our overalls, shadows of our former aristocratic selves.

This self confessed change in their condition is what I refer to as the point of rupture with their former lives. Henceforth, Guevara becomes more conscious and comments in great detail about social injustice that he witnesses all around them. A few pages later Guevara describes how a stray dog had followed them, probably attracted by their “hobo” appearance. Later, he also describes, how “A doctor …showed us as much disrespect as an established, financially secure bourgeois can show to a couple of hobos.” The term “hobo” is also used by Kerouac to describe a close friend of his with whom he had spent much time:

In my earlier days I’d been to sea with a tall raw-boned fellow from Louisiana called Big Slim hazard, William Holmes Hazard, who was hobo by choice….Big Slim and I spent many nights telling stories and spitting tobacco juice in paper containers.

Thus there is the self conscious identification with the vagabond. To couple with this is the juvenile criminal past of Dean Moriarty, their bohemian lifestyle and Kerouac’s assertion that his friends were mad, places them squarely outside the margins of society. Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet had dedicated his infamous book Howl and other poems, to his New York circle of friends like Kerouac, began his poem with the often quoted line: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…” Therefore it is clear to us that the rationality that governed the poets and writers of the Beat generation and ‘Che’ and his contemporary revolutionaries was an alternate one, not conforming to the conventional rationale and there was some self consciousness about it. In western culture, there has always been a certain relationship between madness and travel: the physical travel of the body being related to the unhinging of the mind. The physical restlessness is attributed to the mental restlessness. Kerouac’s claim that he is a “strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic” adds to this a metaphysical colour. Guevara’s final arrival at the leper-centre in Peru has a close connection with this which I shall explore a little later.

The reaction of “civilized” society to such behaviour is censorious. Both Guevara and Kerouac are careful to note the pejorative reactions they invite due to their attire and behaviour. Guevara describes a chance meeting with some friends:

The poor guys were embarrassed enough – unsure of whether to introduce us to these “distinguished ladies of Chilean society”, as in the end they did, or play dumb and pretend not to know us (remember our unorthodox attire). But they managed the tight spot as skilfully as possible and were very friendly – as friendly as people could be from worlds as different as theirs and ours at that particular moment in our lives.

Kerouac at the beginning of the second book of his novel describes the arrival of Dean Moriarty and two other friends at a house of a relative in Testament, a southern town:

There was utter confusion in the following hour. My Southern relatives had no idea what was going on, or who or what Dean, Marylou, and Ed Dunkel were; they dumbly stared. The Southern folk looked at one another and shook their heads in awe. ‘What kind of friends does Sal have, anyway?’ they said to my brother. He was stumped for an answer. Southerners don’t like madness the least bit, not the Dean’s kind. He paid absolutely no attention to them. The madness of Dean had bloomed into a weird flower.

Therefore their status as outcasts from their own societies was guaranteed but this did not mean that they have been absorbed into the society of the underclass. Guevara records how they are excluded by “Indians” who refuse to communicate with them:

In general they didn’t communicate with us, as is typical of the subjugated Araucanian race who maintain a deep suspicion of the white man who in the past has bought them so much misfortune and now continues to exploit them. They answered our questions about the land and their work by shrugging their shoulders and saying “don’t know” or “maybe”, quickly ending the conversation.

This is like Friday in JM Coetzee’s Foe who has no tongue and thus refuses to communicate with his masters. For Kerouac, the situation is a little more complicated: Dean is the physical manifestation of the dream he is chasing. Dean has no illusions about the end of the road. Dean is the embodiment of “Beat – the road, the soul of Beatific” who could provide him with the richness of experience itself. However, this experience, this communication is denied to both of them because they are unable to translate themselves completely into the outcast: their adopted identities remain only a level of ritual performance. The reason for this inability is the intellectual apparatus they carry with them, as an extra item of baggage with their backpacks. They do not merely experience, which was the initial motive but need to closely scrutinize and analyze each and every experience. Kerouac and his friends are familiar with the writings of Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Spengler, Marquis of Sade, Kafka and Hemmingway. Guevara quotes Miguel Otero Silva, a left wing Venezuelan poet, and displays awareness about Latin American literature. The fact remains that they must construct their narration in the normative language: they are after all University students who are unable to completely negate their constructed identities and this is the cause of their tragedy.

Both Kerouac and Guevara romanticize their actual physical journey. Guevara theorizes his idea for travel:

The first commandment for every good explorer is: An expedition has two points, the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don’t think about the means – because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are ways of “finishing”. That is to say, the means are endless.

Kerouac has no time for such theorization, his breathless prose is attempting to capture the real experience of his travel; but Sal is given the mantra of beat travel by Dean: “You spend a whole life of non-interference with the wishes of others …and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make your own way. …What’s your road man? – holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road.”

The romance of the journey emerges as a result of these theories being qualified by the colourful imagination of the two narrators. Kerouac describes it to be the only “noble function”: “We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.” Guevara is more poetic in his description:
Our arrival, with the sun rising behind us, casting our reflections against the purest blue of the morning sea, seemed like something out of A Thousand and One Nights.
The actual conditions of the journey were however rather harsh: there are constant descriptions of hardships endured, of the lack of food and shelter, of winter nights spent in the open and unfriendly hosts. It reminds me of the description of travel in TS Eliot’s poem, ‘Journey of the Magi’:

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’

However, in spite of all troubles, they continue with the endeavour like the Magi. The reason for this is the constant dream of the destination as a sort of utopia.

Both Guevara and Kerouac have convinced themselves at the beginning of the journey that the destination or the culmination of the journey is a utopia. Both describe the utopia in almost similar terms: Kerouac writes; “Now I could see Denver looming ahead of me like the Promised Land, way out there beneath the stars, across the prairie of Iowa… like jewels in the night. Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything, somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.” Guevara writes, “Easter Island! …This marvellous place where the weather is perfect, the women are perfect, the food perfect, the work perfect (in its beatific non-existence). What does it matter if we stay there a year; who cares about studying, work, family.” However, this proves to be a completely elusive dream as it never materializes. Where ever they go, they find just the contrary: a dystopia of human suffering and the image of the utopia is cast back on them and on their places of origin. Guevara and Alberto are provided with a strange new description of their own country by a poor, rustic Peruvian Indian: “We were like demi gods to this simple people: …we had come from that wonderful country Argentina, where Peron lived with his wife Evita, where the poor have as much as the rich and the Indian isn’t exploited or treated as severely in this country.” Kerouac describes a similar experience with a girl at Cheyenne:

I said to the blonde, ‘What’s up?’ She said she wanted to go home, in Colorado just over the line south of Cheyenne. ‘I’ll take you in a bus,’ I said.
‘No, the bus stops on the highway and I have to walk across that damn prairie all by myself.’
‘Ah, listen, we’ll take a nice walk in the prairie flowers.’
‘There ain’t no flowers there,’ she said. ‘I want to go to New York.’
‘Ain’t nothing in New York.’
‘Hell there ain’t,’ she said with a curl of her lips.

This is the classic case of the grass being greener on the other side: the Argentina and New York that they had found restricting and frustrating is in fact, as they discover, the image of utopia for many.

So are their journeys destined only to be an epic failure of promise and unfulfilment? I don’t think so: because the journeys have been as much meta-physical as physical; it has as much been a journey inward as outward; as much a journey of the discovery of one’s inner self, as the discovery of new place. Guevara’s arrival at the leper colony is a significant fulfilment of all the motives of his journey: he has arrived at an alternate form of society outside the parameters of “civilization” and has become an outsider in that respect. Michel Foucault has described European leprosariums as belonging “to the non human” and these leprosariums would later be converted into houses of confinement or asylums for those who did not conform to the language of reason, the language of “civilization”. His birthday being celebrated in the leper colony is a symbolic gesture of the birth of his new self outside social parameters. He is no more the vagabond, but a different type of outsider: the Rebel. For Kerouac, the fading away of the dream of the vision results in a new dream: that of his novel which he composed in an extraordinary manner, which Ann Carter describes:

A rapid typist, Kerouac hit on the idea of typing non-stop to get the ‘kickwriting’ momentum he wanted. Like the poet Hart Crane, he was convinced that his verbal flow was hampered when he had to change the paper at the end of a page. Kerouac taped together twelve-foot-long sheets of drawing paper, trimmed at the left margin so they would fit into his typewriter, and fed them into his machine as a continuous roll. Holmes visited his apartment while this version of On the Road was in progress and was amazed at the thundering sound of Jack’s typewriter racing non stop. …Kerouac started writing his book inn early April, 1951. By April 9, he had written thirty-four thousand words. By April 20, eighty-six thousand word. On April 27, the book was finished, a roll of paper typed as a single-spaced paragraph 120 feet long.

Though he revised the novel many times over, the breathless rush of images and the lucid narrative creates a reading experience that is unpreceded. As a Beat writer, he definitely is also a non-conformist, one who seeks to change society and its discourses as we know it by subverting the language itself. His extraordinary feat of writing a novel in three weeks is sneered at by such main stream writers as Truman Capote who said: “That isn’t writing; it’s typing.” However, his friend and fellow Beat writer William Burroughs gives a more accurate account of the effect it had on its contemporary culture: “On the Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso machines, and also sent countless kids on the road… the alienation, the restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road.”

Albert Camus writes in The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays: “On all essential problems (I mean thereby those that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify the passion of living) there are probably two methods of thought: the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote. Solely the balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve simultaneous emotion and lucidity.” The paths of Guevara and Kerouac are that of evidence and lyricism respectively, but both of these intensify for them the passion of living and the passion for death. Their paths diverge: Guevara becomes a political revolutionary fighting for the emancipation of oppressed people in Cuba, Congo and Bolivia, where he finally captured and killed; Kerouac becomes a prophetic voice for the cultural revolution of the sixties and the seventies. Both of them remain icons for the restlessness of the mind and the body that has inspired travel and revolution in the Americas and the world in the second half of the twentieth century.