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Contents Gurman Singh Café, 12:37
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Gurman Singh The Toothless Yawns of Existence Anagha Gopal Katha-jodi
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Anagha Gopal Unnamed
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Vinu Casper Words. 10 Ishwari Deka To Take
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Medhavi Dhyani Lost and Found
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Shubham Dabas Cracked House
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Kashish Komal The Journey of Life
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Arunima Spellbound 14 Apoorva Dimri “Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation, and Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”: Marxist Aesthetics in Brecht’s ‘The Mother’ 17 Rosemary Sebastian Tharakan Silence, Sexuality and the Awakening of RevoRenu Susan Jacob lution in K R Meera’s The Gospel of Yudas and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things 23 Jhilam Roy The Diary Ideal
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Café, 12:37
Gurman Singh Third year, B.A. English (H)
I grow mad in silence as those vague garrulous punks with their frozen screeches intrude upon the secret harmony of the puddles of tea that escaped the vacillations between the cup and my lips I shouldn’t – haven’t I enforced a tenuously arranged wall of alienation and seclusion, behind which to turn inwards and retreat into the surreal bleak shapes that my melancholy makes? A curious ensemble of etiolated skin and crushed coiffure set atop a pair of bared shoulders which slip into coarse charcoal grey fabric – do I muster the will to yearn for what heaves beneath? I raise the cup with shivering digits to my lips and partake in a contemplative, conflagrating sip as I bid a rueful refusal to the restless sense of adventure that hangs in the air: I taste the visions of grandeur at the burnt tip of my tongue I get up and enact a violent dance of senseless prurience and brute fetishism – oh, such glorious geysers of restive blood! – as I sip my tea and cross my legs and sink into the caned discomfort of my chair I see a haggard road slump against the purple wounds of the horizon; the elusive rendezvous of land and sky offers its gravelled sprawl stretched thin no refuge Yes, I do care about you, my detached darling, but I find within my corrupted lonesome confines no sanctuary for the callous grief and howling hope of our engagement – All I long for now is to choke you amidst strident declarations of ardour and passion with limp hands and a passionless heart drained of all semblance of emotion There is an itch under my arm that reminds me of the delicious shuddering sensation of an ant dancing upon one’s skin, and I stab myself in the underarm until the knife rips through the skin and protrudes from the shoulder: I sigh in masochistic relief
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A conscientious rehearsal of opinions and camaraderie and validation and bonhomie squirms haggard between the teeth of everyone under furtive pleading gaze and above limbs performing subtle gesticulations of solidarity against the fearsome beast that gallops across the endless dreary terrains of their isolated souls The tea never reaches the parched corridors of my bloodstream; it mingles with the stale nicotine hoarded up amongst the dense shrubs of my lungs – I feel the sickening sensation of tea against the sweet phlegm of the back of my throat I seek an orchestra of heightened emotions and sensory excess to lose myself within, settling instead for an underwhelming concurrent montage of stark humdrum bleakness of tepid rhetoric and flaccid shrivels of implicitly accepted defeat I tuck my chin into the defiant stiffness of my collar and sink into my phone: it stares back dispassionately, warming my palm with its sterile light and arbitrary vibrations; I break focus by depositing spittle onto its screen through my old man’s cough The day outside swells bloated and miserable against the windows, like a harried simian chewing greedily on cigarette stubs, its glum perspiring corpulence an unsubtle vile horror to witness from behind the yellow sheen of the windows – I want to grab a gun and shoot myself I bruise my delicate translucent limbs and climb my walls of detachment and isolation, and behold the nuanced blue melancholy that pulses hidden under the carnivalesque contrivance of systems and routine to lose oneself within I experience a pristine sadistic shiver, mindful of the sheer relentless terror of realization that shall afflict these poor bastards when they behold what I behold Do I draw any pleasure from the sullen privilege that this knowledge of mundane futility and understated tragedy grants me? Oh, go fuck yourself.
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The Toothless Yawns of Existence Gurman Singh Third year, B.A. English (H) A listless croissant – I eat breakfast afloat a pool of circulated eyes Perforated sighs – I clean the wreckage of my presence Amidst the din of sightless flies I slow my dissolution and sink into The lazy bleached glaze of an unsure afternoon Couples locked in courtships Endless streams of jumbled narratives I could pick any one of them And colour the toothless yawns of my existence. An awareness of the inside of the buccal cavity: Traces of ice cream persist in its absence I’m revolted at this sudden bout of lucidity I wrench my jaw off Toss it into the dustbinv Which accepts my odious alms And congratulates me On the violent gift of silence. The sky is an endless shrill whistle Coiled tight along the horizon until The vacant anxiety of space Wrenches the sky away from the earth And lets it undulate into cavernous nullities. Breathless sheets of the sun wrap around my head Set my hair on fire Fuel my silence – the louder I talk, the more insular my essence Jovial masquerades keep fellow passengers of this aimless locomotive From second-guessing my performance of a persona I have no essence, you fools Even the harshest shrieks of the sun Will collapse into the most serene soft blue.
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Katha-jodi
Anagha Gopal Third year, B.A. English (H)
There were two rivers. On the banks of the Katha-jodi you said he put his arms around you And you put your fingers around his fingers, Cupping a decade of dreams on muddy shores You had found what you'd looked for in tears. I never called - it'd been months and maybe You figured out that I wasn't the kind of person who'd call. So what you found in months, I heard in an hour And my hours of not finding, found you With his arms around you on the banks of the Katha-jodi. Back when we were still weaving stories, you asked once "Don't you ever want to be the girl who gets all the guys?" Laughing, I'd said, "I like seeing you in that role". This friendship of odds and ends not fitting in Made spaces in words in drooling stories That wished more than they did anything else. "We make good stories" Katha-jodi. To think I never called. On the banks of the Mahanadi you said you tried that one time To decide whether he would be worth it Yes. The way this story ends you'd think there won't be another, Even I for all my mismatches and ill-found arguments Accept that this time the held hands were really holding something. And then you asked, "What about you? Is there anyone?" "No." In your world of rivers and decisions, how could I hold up A lyric like an argument, how would I offer against your bodies A dream like a mirror, an identification of elbows, A person like no other, a no like a knife? How could I slice Your precision with a story of a balcony open to the wind? I do not know how to swim. There were two rivers. And if on the banks of each I could only see myself, then what about me, there isn't anyone Is there-?
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Unnamed
Anagha Gopal Third year, B.A. English (H) I like houses, and curtains flapping Evening wind, and summers, And when the mechanic comes To fix the radio. You know I only Listen to the same FM most days. I am talking of ten years ago, Of course, if I ever learn to drive I would listen again in the car. But I like houses, and coming back To the same one once in a while. So you bring your forests and shoes And I'll make sure I web check-in On the return tickets. Lover of no returns, There is no free fly in my sleep. I like my alone painted on walls With stencils, standing on the bed. You like your alone. Then how can we not?
We cannot not. This similarity of our bookshelves Is a trap like a family heirloom In the wrong hands I am told I will be left a box Of wood with ivory inlay work I have shelves and shelves of things How will I keep? How will you keep up? It might take many bricks And many days. You will have to wait the ways Of a writer with rumpled feathers. I am a strange traveller Of sleeper trains and push back buses I need convincing to leave, And convincing to leave again.
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Words. Unbeknownst To the rest of the world, Reality and my thoughts Lay together Under the roof of my mouth. Twisting in forbidden agony, Rolling with my tongue. They wrestled against each other, In the throes of blind love. I say blind because Reality never saw how fragile My thoughts were. And my thoughts never minded How harsh reality got. Sometimes those two Didn't know when to stop. Sometimes my lips would tremble, And out would slip poetry. Sometimes in scribbles behind a margin, Most times in sighs. So if, by chance, You happen to hear an extra breath on the wind, Know that it's laced with love. Know that it's paced with patience. Know that it's inconsequential. No, that's not same as unimportant. No, that is not being careful with words. You can't throw caution to the wind, And expect it to stick. Words have always courted danger. But when has that ever stopped the poets? When has that ever kept scrawled words, On letters, in hearts, and on birds of origami In cages? When has inhibition ever handcuffed A boy with post-its? When has prying eyes ever silenced A girl with a paintbrush? Saying that is not much,
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Vinu Casper Fourth Year, Computer Science and Engineering But words, When stained with the right shades of hope, Are both the light of a candle, And the rising smoke at the end of its use. Art is forever, they told me. Art is dead, far before we even got to see it. Read between the lines at the museum, The people who read, and write, and go see them. Words are the sharp end of a blade, And the block it carves. Unforgiving, paralysing and irresistible. Yearning for a poem to break your heart. For a sentence to make you feel. Unbeknownst, To the rest of the world, Between my lips Are magic. The kind that promises infinity naively Or reassures a worried parent Or eases a troubled friend. No matter how this voice may crack, Under the weight of the moment, Words are allusion to sight, and belief. Not always in that order. Words have broken time's sickle, And have been forgotten nonetheless. Unbeknownst To the rest of the world, I mixed cheap wine and a story And out flowed honesty. And honestly, Teary eyes see the clearest. We are haunted By all we want, And I must tell you, my dearest. Words are. Two words, two syllables, Too simple to hold all that they do. But they do.
To Take
Ishwari Deka Third year, B.A. English (H)
I took a moment. Stretched it into minutes, months and years Until it became indistinct. Coloured in sepia tones And a bokeh haze of careless metaphors Treasured for you to pick up And admire for their imperfections. I took a feeling. Stole it from the dark corners of a mellow night When you sought veins beneath my sleeves. And stored it in mason jars And unkempt pages With mornings of careless singing under Laburnum trees. I took a smell, Bittersweet. Sniffed it from the skin and bones Of a boy I once loved. Only to smell it Through open windows of rundown cars In harvest fields and windswept courtyards. I took a dream And watched it disintegrate Under the burden of unspoken words. In abysmal afternoons, I watched As it slowly crumbled like sandcastles in air. Only to long, leave And slowly disappear. All taking was quite futile.
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Lost and Found
Medhavi Dhyani First year, B.A. English (H)
I have looked for you In boxes of board games covered with layers of dust, In worn-out bed sheets turned into rags with holes That you loved to see the world through. I have looked for you In grandma’s refrigerator filled with new delicacies each afternoon, In books that weaved stories of pixies and wizards, And lullabies that put your tired soul to sleep till the sun set. I have looked for you In the sweet fragrance of cool October mornings, In the feeling of the wind on my face, as I race across all-too-familiar paths And end up running in circles. I have looked for you In photographs with frayed edges and frozen laughter, In the faded memories in the back of my mind Of you spinning round and round till the world turned into A halo of a million shades of light. I have looked for you In the universe of all things lost, Only to find That you were always there Tucked inside a corner of my heart – Warm, safe, forgotten.
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Cracked House
Shubham Dabas B.A. English (H), Class of 2016
I grew up and the house shrank. During the last seven years I haven’t been around To witness its sad decay into This decrepit shell of memories; And neither does it have any recollection Of my painful sprouting into youth. The once colourful walls, which housed An unfragmented family, are now flaking off To reveal the cracks that had been there all along. Like a villain retired from his evil deeds, The store room, once an uncharted territory Full of giant rats and boogie monsters, Is now just a shadow of its own past? Only the house lizard and the common spider Lurk here now, revelling in the putrid odours Of their own faeces. Summer nights under the starry sky Or winter mornings under the bright sun, The terrace was where the family came together, To love, laugh, share stories and console. Sometimes the peacocks came too, Sometimes they didn’t. But never was the terrace as devoid of our voices As it is today When the howling wind Slapping across my face makes the only noise On this frigid wasteland. The smooth floor of the veranda extended Into one-half of the courtyard. When the sky poured down I would Slide all over the place on my naked Tummy. I wouldn’t do it now, The cracked floor would tear me open, Just like the cracks in our family Tore open the house.
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The Journey of Life
Kashish Komal First year, B.A. History (H)
Is Of love, life and laughter, Of smiles and a happily ever after. Of a fearless expedition of self discovery, Of blurred lines and a fleeting memory. Of unfulfilled desires and unquenched thirst, Of unrequited love and suppressed lust. Of regrets and roads not taken, Of the bitter taste of dreams forsaken. Of firm footsteps devoid of stumble, Of unholy shrines and pedestals humble. Of unshed tears and untold stories, Of will and reverting to former glories. Of unrelenting courage and unabashed confessions, Of exploring talents and finding obsessions. Of unwavering resolve and unflinching loyalties, Of dreaming and rekindling forgotten histories. Of the colour of the sky on a clear winter morning, Of an unplanned adventure from an unheeded warning. Of raging passions and ignited fires, Of shining and building large empires. Of the distant echo of a forlorn voice, Of walking without faltering and living by choice. Of awaiting destiny with bated breath, Of a head held high and embracing death.
Spellbound
Arunima First year, B.Sc. Physics (H)
Spellbound, she stood, Gazing at the stars, Wondering what they hold For her, ages apart. The beauty is that You don’t know What fate holds for you, God gives you what you Need, and you have no clue.
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“Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation, and Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”: Marxist Aesthetics in Brecht’s ‘The Mother’ Apoorva Dimri M.A. English- 1st Year CES, JNU 23rd March, 2017
If you have an empty plate How do you expect to sup? It’s up to you to take the state And turn it over, bottoms up Till you have filled your plate Help yourself- no need to wait! (Brecht, 42)
T
hese lines from ‘The Song of What To Do’ featuring in Brecht’s ‘The Mother’ encapsulate the very essence of the didactic message of this ‘propagandist’ play of 1930-1931. The aforementioned stanza calls for action on part of the oppressed masses, by stressing the urgency of the same, in consideration of the fact that this action is a pre-requisite to ensure survival. The plates are empty, and for them to be full, the exploited class has to “take the state/ and turn it over, bottoms up”. The pun on the word state is more than obvious wherein the word has been wittily used by the playwright to mean not only the condition marking the socio-economic and political context of an exploitative class society but also the geo-political entity itself, the power of which has to be seized by the revolutionary proletariat to fill their plates. ‘The Mother’ then becomes a dramatic representation of this clamant appeal to the workers of the world, “Help yourself-no need to wait!” The paper seeks to study Brecht’s ‘The Mother’ as a propagandist play, primarily concerned with the delineation and elucidation of the core of the Marxist theory of class struggle. In doing so, the play throws light on the revolutionary activities of a class-conscious section of
the working class. In this context, the leading role played by the Mother constitutes the cornerstone of the play, and is therefore worthy of special consideration. It is the narrative’s focus on the`se activities that accounts for the overwhelming and all-encompassing Marxist aesthetics of the play. The paper also aims to look at how the narrative of the play enables Brecht to explicate, expose and comment on the various instruments and institutions of the State that systematically curb resistance and maintain the status quo. Additionally, it aims to look at the ways Brecht reveals the latent subversive potential of the masses that allows them to turn the very arenas of oppression into spaces symbolizing the fight against the same. Collectively, these tropes contribute to the Marxist aesthetics in the play. Finally, the paper will contextualize the play with respect to the Brechtian theory of epic theatre, and how this form of theatre helps Brecht to achieve the goal that he sets for himself as a playwright. I am the playwright. I show What I have seen. In mankind’s markets I have seen how humanity is traded. That I show, I, the playwright. (Brecht, 73)
The play begins with a beautiful rendition of the idea that the personal is the political, wherein a recent cut in the wages of the worker Pavel has a direct bearing on the quality of the soup that his mother prepares for his breakfast. The distressed mother who has to make do with meagre resources conveys the tragedy of the situation in the following words, “It’s such a shame to pour out soup like this for my son. Yet I can’t put more fat in. Not even half a spoonful. Only last week they took a kopek an hour out of his wages and there’s nothing I can do to make up for it.” (Brecht, 37). But the depiction of a tragic situation is not Brecht’s goal; the playwright
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aims to stir the people in to action so as to instigate them to step out and change this tragic situation. Thus, the “Revolutionary Workers” in their song to the Mother make it clear to her that, “the meat not there in your kitchen/ won’t get there, if you stay in your kitchen!” (Brecht, 39). These lines assume greater significance in light of the patriarchal oppression that women are subjected to in class societies, wherein the kitchen becomes a significant marker of imposed domesticity and systematic confinement, both literal and metaphorical. Hence, the literal and the figurative act of stepping out of the kitchen for the Mother is culturally and ideologically charged, with respect to both her gender and class. By virtue of her economic dependence on working class men, she also belongs to the same class, and her initial involvement in the communist movement can only be defined in relation to her son’s revolutionary activities; it is only as a concerned mother that she proposes to distribute leaflets in the factory as she feels that such rebellious activities would land her son in danger. However, this stereotypical representation of the self-sacrificing mother figure, who engages in organized politics only to the extent as is made permissible by the gender roles that confine her, soon paves way for the mother’s involvement in the movement at a different, and certainly a higher level. As the play moves forward to show the brutal police crackdown on May Day demonstrations and the consequent police repression unleashed on the agitating workers, the mother undergoes a revolutionary transformation in favour of a developed class-consciousness. The post-transformation phase of the Mother’s character shows her as a revolutionary in her own right, fighting not for her son’s cause, but for the people’s cause; in fact the “common cause” of communism gives rise to a new relationship of comradeship between her son and herself. Thus, she is no longer fighting as the Mother but as Pelagea Vlassova. In light of this, the seemingly exclusive concern of the play’s title, ‘The Mother’, with her role
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and identity as a mother, both in the personal and political arena is problematic just as are the following lines from Brecht’s ‘Letter to the New York Workers’ Company ‘Theatre Union’ About the Play ‘The Mother’’ Still a mother Now even more a mother, mother of many now fallen Mother of fighters, mother of unborn generations, she embarks On a spring-clean of the State. (Brecht, 70).
While on the one hand it is important to safeguard against this stereotypical valorization and glorification of the mother figure so as to not fall in the trap of reinforcing the traditional conceptions of motherhood, on the other hand it is equally important to place Pelagea Vlassova’s revolutionary activism within its proper historical context. Recognizing that the complete liberation of women is impossible in an exploitative class society, Lenin argues, “But you cannot draw the masses into politics without drawing in the women as well. For under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed. The working woman and the peasant woman are oppressed by capital, but over and above, even in the most democratic of the bourgeois republics, they remain, firstly deprived of some rights…and secondly – and this is the main thing- they remain in the “household bondage”…(Lenin, 161). The primary reason for the second-sex treatment meted out to women in a capitalist society is what Lenin calls the “awe of ‘sacrosanct private property’ ” that accounts for the structural and systematic control of women’s freedom and sexual autonomy. Explaining the structural confinement of women in the domestic space, Nivedita Menon in her book ‘Seeing Like A Feminist’ exposes the capitalist rationale operational behind the sexual division of labour in the super structural and equally oppressive institution of the family. She argues, “Women are responsible for housework; that is the reproduction of labour power. The
labour that goes in to making people capable of working day after day is provided by women… the sex-based segregation of labour is the key, to maintaining not only the family, but also the economy, because the economy would collapse like a pack of cards if this unpaid domestic labour had to be paid by somebody.” (Menon, 11). Considered from the vantage point of these arguments, Pelagea Vlassova’s leadership in the proletariat movement is a two-pronged sword, aimed at liberating herself and her female comrades from oppressive and exploitative class and gender relations.
every spark of the class struggle and of popular indignation into a general conflagration.” (Lenin, 166). He calls the distinction between the illegal and the legal press, “that melancholy heritage of the epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia”, while stating that “the entire illegal press was a party press.” (Lenin, 44). The Mother becomes an embodiment of the Party which itself is the overarching symbol of Marxist aesthetics in the play. Her dedication serves to evoke Brecht’s ‘Praise of the Party’: Who do you think is the Party? …Who is it?
It is this fight of Pelagea, Pavel and other revolutionaries that creates the space for the Marxist aesthetics of the play, manifest in the various activities of the struggling working class. Every object comes to acquire symbolic meaning and every action becomes a tool of dissemination of revolutionary education. As a result the play can be seen as Marxist theory in performance. For instance, the Mother’s efforts to unveil the truth behind the war, to instruct the ‘ignorant’ masses is evocative of Lenin’s belief “if socialism is not victorious, peace between the capitalist states will be only a truce, an interlude, a time of preparation for a fresh slaughter of the people”. Her labours are directed at reminding the people that “Peace and bread are the basic demands of the workers and the exploited”. (Lenin, 386). Her endeavours aimed at the integration of the struggles of the proletariat and the peasantry can be traced back to Lenin’s call for a united class struggle of the exploited, “Forward, workers and peasants, in the common struggle for land and freedom!” (Lenin, 43). The party newspaper, the leaflets distributed among the workers, and the illegal press set up by the Mother and her comrades, all become important markers of Marxist aesthetics in the play, as each of these find special significance and place in communist politics. For the party newspaper, Lenin says, “This newspaper would become part of an enormous pair of smith’s bellows that would fan
We are it. You and I and them- all of us. (Brecht, 63)
If the symbols are culturally charged and ideologically loaded, so are the spaces that Brecht makes use of in the play. Although theses spaces function as sites of exploitation and oppression, owing to the revolutionary actions of the struggling proletariat, their subversive potential is soon exposed and appropriated. Thus, the home or the domestic space that in a class society serves as the arena of women’s oppression is turned into a site from where Pelagea Vlassova’s revolutionary activism begins. The super structural role of the family as an institution to sustain exploitative gender relations is thwarted when, as Brecht points out, “the walls around her (the Mother’s) stove start to crumble.” (Brecht, 70). The factory- that ultimate and undisputed space of capitalist class oppression, becomes an arena of the fight against the same when inside the factory itself, radical literature is stealthily distributed among the ignorant proletariat, when attempts at dilution of the cause and “revisionism” of theory are overcome and the workers are summoned to strike. The subversive actions of the proletariat in the factory serve as a dramatic rendition of Marx and Engels’ observation that, “The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition,
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by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates [its] products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (Marx and Engels, 60). The Prison, where the concentrated power of the State finds the most brutal expression, becomes a site of the mockery of the same, as under the nose of a police constable, the Mother intersperses her maternal concerns with her revolutionary zeal, to find out from her son, the addresses of the peasants to whom the party newspaper has to be delivered. On the contrary, the street that the workers reclaim on May Day to commemorate their united struggle against class oppression and exploitation, becomes an arena where State power is unleashed on the demonstrating workers, as the police cracks down on the peaceful march and subjects the workers to brutal repression. However, the police crackdown does not deter the workers and if some of them are detained, even killed (like the young Pavel), the revolutionary ideas never die; the Red flag of the proletariat passes from one to another, and the Mother, who is carrying the flag, as if reiterating this point says, “when I am tired, then I’ll give it to you and you will carry it.” (Brecht, 131). Thus, at the end, the streets are reclaimed once again while the revolutionary workers make it clear that, “the victims of today will be victors of tomorrow/ And Never is changed into Today.” (Brecht, 131).
Althusser would call the ‘Repressive State Apparatus’, religion, that serves to dull the masses into unquestioning conformity, functions as a part of what collectively is called the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’. It is a part of her revolutionary transformation that The Mother is able to intellectualize the role of religion in the suppression of the oppressed masses. The understanding that she displays with regard to this ideological tool of consent-generation draws upon the idea that, “Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression…those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward…religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.” (Lenin, 83, 84). When she refuses to accept the Bible that her neighbours intend to give her as a source of comfort and solace in the event of her son’s murder by the State, she exhibits the traits of “the modern class-conscious worker” who “contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself [or herself ] here on earth.” (Lenin, 84). The Landlady’s insistence that God has taken away her son Pavel from her, can only elicit one response from the Mother, “Oh no; it was the Tsar, the Tsar is who took him from me. And I don’t forget why, either.” (Brecht, 116). That the modern capitalist State, working on the behest of the ruling class, relies on the nexus of Repressive and Ideological State Apparatus to maintain the status quo through coercion and consent, Louis Althusser’s conception of the State Appa- respectively is well communicated through the ratus can be taken as the theoretical reference following song from ‘The Mother’: point to understand the functioning of State inThey own law books and ordinances stitutions and instruments that serve to systemThey own prisons and penitentiaries; atically curb resistance and agitation, while siTheir “deterrent measures” we needn’t multaneously working to sustain the dominant mention! ideologies of class and gender. While the police …they own newspapers and printing presses that is deployed by the State to suppress disconThey use them to attack and to silence us; tent through violent means, is a form of what
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Their statesmen we needn’t mention! …they own tanks and cannon Machine guns and hand grenades; Their
blackjacks
we
needn’t
mention!
(Brecht, 88)
Education, particularly institutionalized education, can also be seen as an instrument of consent-generation in support of the ruling ideology. In this regard, it would be noteworthy to look at Brecht’s views on formal education, according to whom it is tantamount to a “commercial transaction”, a “commodity” that is “acquired in order to be resold.” (Brecht, 7). The teacher in the play, Nicholai Vessovchikov, seems to be a product of such a system of education, who, despite his sound knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of Marxism, is only willing to extend token sympathy for the cause, without denouncing his armchair intellectualism to join the active struggle of the proletariat. On the other hand, education can also be appropriated as a subversive tool to ferment discontent and instigate the masses into action aimed at the revolutionary transformation of society. Lenin’s message, “Theory turns into a material force once the masses have understood it!” (Lenin, 135), finds a verbal echo in the ‘Praise of Learning’: Study, man in exile! Study, man in prison! Study, wife in your kitchen! Study, old-age pensioner! You must prepare to take command now! …You who starve, reach for a book: It will be a weapon. (Brecht, 79).
It is within the context of this ‘Praise of Learning’ that one can place Brecht’s propagandist plays as well as his theory of epic theatre; for Brechtian theatre is primarily concerned with the dissemination of education for the instruction of the masses to raise and develop their class consciousness. The primary technique deployed for
the accomplishment of this goal is what Brecht calls the “A-effect” or Alienation. In Brecht’s words, it is a “technique of taking the human social incidents to be portrayed…as something striking, something that calls for attention,… not to be taken for granted, not just natural. The object of this effect (A-effect) is to allow the spectator to criticize constructively from a social point of view.” (Brecht, 24). Brechtian songs, which make up a large part of the Marxist aesthetics in his plays, contribute overwhelmingly to this end. At the same time, Brecht insists on simple, unembellished language, “with no frills” (Brecht, 69) as the target audience of the play comprise the most marginalized and impoverished sections of the masses. According to Brecht, “The Mother was written in the style of a Lehrstuck (“play for learning”)...The play’s dramaturgy is anti-metaphysical, materialistic and NON-ARISTOTELIAN…its concern is to teach the spectator a most definitely practical conduct that is intended to change the world...” (Brecht, 133). The setting of the play calls for some attention in this regard. ‘The Mother’ an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’, is set in pre-revolutionary Russia, a Russia seething under Tsarist oppression and the First World War, but also a Russia on the verge of a proletariat revolution that promises to herald a new, stateless, classless society that will mark an end to “all forms of exploitation of man by man”. Nevertheless, the hierarchies, inequalities, and injustices that mark the socio-economic and political context of the play could be extended to understand any capitalist society of the early 1930s. Suklinov Works could be any capitalist-owned, exploitative factory, just as the repressive prison could be that of any modern capitalist nation-state. Tsarist despotism could be an oblique reference to Hitler’s dictatorial rise in the Germany of the early 1930s, engulfed by the extreme right-wing politics of Nazism. Another noteworthy feature of the play is the ending itself. Unlike Gorky’s novel, where the mother loses her life, thereby becoming a mar-
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tyr to the cause of the working-class revolution, the play ends with PelageaVlassova carrying the red flag of communism. Where Brecht could have conveniently ended the play with the culmination of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he leaves the spectators midway; at the crucial juncture where the Revolution is underway. This lack of closure helps sustain the bottled up
will to affect change so that the spectators step out of the theatre with the same revolutionary fervour with which the Mother steps out of her house to commence her revolutionary journey of taking the united struggle of the working class forward. The Brechtian masterstroke lies in the forward looking end wherein he closes the play, “leaving the issue open”.
Works Cited Brecht, Bertolt. Bertolt Brecht Bad Time for Poetry. Ed. John Willet. London: Methuen Publishing Ltd., 1995. 63-64, 69-75. Print. .... “Brecht’s Notes to ‘The Mother’”.The Mother. Trans. Lee Baxandall. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965. 133-158. Web. .... “Brecht on Theatre”. Modern European Drama Background Prose Readings. Delhi: Worldview Publications, 2014. 1-30. Print. .... The Good Person of Schezwan. Ed. John Willet, Ralph Manheim. New Delhi, London: Bloomsbury, 1962. 1-109. Print. ....The Mother. Trans. Lee Baxandall. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965. 35-131. Web. Engels and Marx. “Bourgeois and Proletarians”. The Communist Manifesto. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1952. 40-60. Print. Lenin, V.I. “For Bread and Peace”. Collected Works Vol. 26 September 1917-February 1918. Ed. George Hanna. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964. 386-387. Print. .... “International Working Women’s Day”. Collected Works Vol. 32 December 1920-August 1921. Ed. Yuri Sdobnikov. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. 161163. Print. .... Collected Works Vol. 10 November 1905-June 1906. Ed. Andrew Rothstein. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. 40-43, 44-49, 83-87. Print. .... “Can a Newspaper Be a Collective Organizer?”.What is To be Done? Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. 156-167. Print. Menon, Nivedita. “Family”. Seeing Like A Feminist. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2012. 3-49. Print.
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Silence, Sexuality and the Awakening of Revolution in K R Meera’s The Gospel of Yudas and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things Rosemary Sebastian Tharakan Renu Susan Jacob M.A(F) English St. Stephen’s College
T
he God of Small Things and The Gospel of Yudas are similar in many ways. Set in Kerala with the Naxalite movement playing a major role in the development of the texts, they hold a nostalgia for revolution and suggest that the silencing of a revolution begets its own successor. The central women protagonists, Ammu and Prema, are agents of revolution in a space marked by silence. Growing up in a present which is haunted by the revolutionary fervour of the previous generation, Prema cannot fully live within it. Excited by the fervour of the Naxalite movement which would have endowed her with a revolutionary purpose in life, she regrets the fact that she could not be a part of it, and is burdened by the knowledge of her father’s role in violently suppressing the movement. Ammu’s present is empty and purposeless as she fears that she has already lived her life and will now have to watch her days wither away. As a divorced woman who had already made the mistake of marrying outside her religion and as part of a society which doesn’t allow her to have a share in paternal property, Ammu has a life of dependence to look forward to in which the existence of her, and her children, is contingent on how well she plays her role as a devoted mother, obeying the Love Laws of “who should be loved, and how” (Roy, 23). Both yearn for a revolution that they just cannot seem to reach. Prema was too young to be a part of the Naxalite movement when it was at its peak, but being surrounded by people whose days are still marked by the movement, like her father and Yudas, she feels the purpose of her life is to fight for the Naxalite cause. When her
daughter Rahel says that she had spotted Velutha in a Naxalite rally, Ammu hopes that Velutha nursed “a living, breathing anger against the smug, ordered world that she so raged against” (Roy, 116). Both novels are tinged with nostalgia for revolution and a dread that the present is empty of potential and bereft of purpose. Both Ammu and Prema see the body of the guilt-ridden marginal male-figure as the most fertile soil for reliving a thwarted revolutionary past and for planting seeds for the future. Aijaz Ahmed criticizes Arundahti Roy for indulging in the tried and tested formula of Forbidden Love. The author, he feels, “succumbs to the conventional idea of the erotic as that private transgression through which one transcends public injuries” (Ahmed, 115). He opines that “in depicting the erotic as Truth it also dismisses the actually constituted field of politics as either irrelevant or a zone of bad faith” (Ahmed, 115), and that had Ammu lived on, “she would have to face the fact the erotic is very rarely a sufficient mode for overcoming real social oppressions” (Ahmed, 116). This dismissal of the erotic can be extended to The Gospel of Yudas as well, where Prema seeks to submerge herself in revolution by loving Yudas. We would like to argue against the idea that the erotic limits the potential of politics and that sexual fulfilment is a private transgression, cut off from the larger world of social oppression and power politics. Both Ammu and Prema are part of a world that is rife with the divisions of gender politics. Therefore, it is significant that it is they, and not the men they love, who are the initiators of action. Yudas is completely in contrast to Prema’s energy and desire to be a revolutionary. Tormented by his guilt at having betrayed his comrades during sessions of brutal police tor-
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ture and haunted especially by the death of the brave Sunanda, the woman he loved, he fishes out corpses from the river as an act of penance. He runs away from Prema, finding it unbearable to bear the idealism she associates with the Naxalite movement and the contrast it strikes with his painful memories. He re-lives the revolution as penance. Through her love, Prema seeks a definite path for identity formation. In her chase of him from the age of fifteen to thirty-seven, when the novella ends, she has become the revolutionary that she had always yearned to be. While the chances of Yudas embracing Prema’s passion for revolution may seem slim, especially with both of their sick bodies posing a threat to any hopes of a bright future, in the end, Prema may offer Yudas the possibility of coming to peace with his past. She retraces his tragic past as a means to gain his love and in doing so completes his penance for him. If he had thrown the dead body of Sunanda into the gorge, she would have recovered her niece’s body from the same gorge. The revolution that was silenced with the burial in the gorge is reborn as the gorge vomits out the next victim. Prema’s love therefore sparks off the new fight. In The God of Small Things, Ammu’s desire for Velutha is very much grounded in politics. Velutha’s participation in a Naxalite rally is what first connects her to him. In her hopes that it had indeed been him whom Rahel spotted at the rally, Ammu identifies a possibility that she can connect to his mind. Brinda Bose argues that “parallels can be drawn between the politics of Ammu and the rather more obvious Leftist leanings of Velutha, and that hers are probably as viable, though more personal” (Bose, 125). In fact, Ammu’s politics is visible throughout the text. Her rage at the helplessness of her situation is seen in her regular satirical bantering with Chacko and her bursts of anger and moodiness. Everyone recognizes that Ammu has always had an “unsafe edge” (Roy, 28), and it is telling that her rage is compared with that of a
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suicide bomber. The sense that her rage is about to burst is suggested throughout the text, and her decision to break the boundaries of caste and gender roles by initiating the encounter between her and Velutha is a natural culmination of her politics. It is Velutha who is wary of breaking the caste codes, the Laws of Love, while for Ammu, loving the Untouchable Velutha, whose prodigal talents would have turned him into an engineer had he been of a higher caste, is a means to rebel against the strictly ordered society she is a part of. In her act of love, she draws a parallel between their politics, between their similar positions as victims, as people existing on the edges of society. Her sexual transgression has terrible consequences in the larger social and political world – resulting in the death of Velutha, the separation of her kids, and finally, her death as well. Her attempt at revolution is stifled by a rigid society whose attitude is characterized in Baby Kochamma’s disgust at the thought of how Ammu could bear the smell of an Untouchable. While the desire to give birth to a powerful future through the direct fulfilment of passions is thwarted, with the death of Velutha and degrading bodies of Yudas and Prema, the revolutionary impulse is kept from fading into darkness through the power of language. Both texts are set in a world defined in revolutionary terms. Prema was just five years old when the Emergency was declared. In 1985, when the novel begins though the Emergency was called off years ago, Prema laments over the state of emergency that was never called off at her home. The severe censorship of her home makes her dream of a Naxal who will liberate her from the feudal setup, silently chanting “Naxalbaari Zindaabad. Long Live the Revolution”. While we see that the vocabulary of revolution makes its presence felt explicitly in The Gospel of Yudas, Roy weaves in the idea of revolution within the subtleties of her narrative: its playfulness with words and grammar, the to and fro jumping between prose
and poetry and the idea of crossing the lines which runs throughout the novel— “Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much” (Roy, 117). The twins break the stability of grammar and as a result are declared by an upset Miss Mitten to have ‘Satan in their eyes’ (Roy, 119). This phrase is then written backwards and immediately followed by the accidental death of Miss Mitten caused by the “reversing” of a milk-van. The movement of the novels becomes a journey towards understanding the significance of slogans, of phrases and the consequences of its rebirth in different contexts.
He yelled… I am Yudas. Judas, the betrayer.” (Meera, 18) Here again, the name functions as an inhibitor forcing the person to constantly confront a torturous past. The self-christening is an act of penance, a torture brought upon oneself. We see that at the beginning of both the novels, men are shown to possess the power of speech to the extent that their words can determine their fate as well as of those around them. Mammachi lives all her life in the shadow of Pappachi’s war with names, Ammu has to often negotiate her way through the towering presence of Chacko’s decisions and indecisions and Das’ Yudas-ian existence denies Prema a life that she yearns for. What follows however, is a constant questioning of this rigid classification by some of these women characters and, in The God of Small Things, as the earlier example shows, by the child-like minds of Estha and Rahel. The quest for meaning keeps the sense of revolution alive. Prema chants the Naxalite slogans without any particular intention, but manages to shake the willfully constructed language politics of Yudas. She repeatedly questions him on what he feels when he touches the dead underwater. His inability to answer the question prompts her to feel it for herself. She dives into the gorge to recover the body of Sangeetha “until her mouth tasted bitter blood”. This act, which was a consequence of a life-long hunt for answers and meanings, transforms her into another person. This willingness to confront the state of things conquers the sense of debt or incompleteness. “I took back what he’d given to the gorge. I have proved that I had the courage for a revolution and that I have kept secrets. Yet I am alive. In this world, for poor people like us, shouldn’t the sheer act of being alive be counted as a revolution in itself? (Meera, 96)” thinks Prema after recovering the dead body of Sangeetha, the niece of Sunanda.
Anna Clarke points out that the importance of language lies not just in its ability to indicate who we are in the world but also our ability to name and give meaning to things. (Clarke, 133) In The God of Small Things Pappachi considers his greatest failure that he was not able to name a moth he had discovered after him. Clarke considers this naming as the pinning down of a mobile, living being as an act of constraining and thus controlling meaning. In The Gospel of Yudas, Prema’s father would regurgitate the bloody tales of his working days after having quit his job when the Emergency was withdrawn. “During his daily drink binges, the fond old tales of brutal tortures from his camp were preferred over the pickle condiment. We were to stand in attention and listen to him repeat the bloody tales of his butchery on the inmates at the camp lockup.” (Meera, 1) The daily tales were meant to be memorized by Prema and then vomited out whenever he wanted to conduct a mock test session. Her father’s “homage” to the torture camp Kakkayam was a means for him to keep his past alive, constraining the movement of time, making it stand still and thereby preserving it like the lepidopterist Pappachi would preserve a rare species of moth. Das’ rechristening of himself as Yudas functions as another example. Language is used to create a reality which it only claims to describe. “I am not Das! The act of being alive is the undoing of estab-
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lished meanings as well as the only way to ensure that the pain of the past is not forgotten. It is about finding the language to bear the pain and to conquer oppressing meanings. While coming back from visiting Kakkayam with Sethu Master, they stop at the house of old Ittichan, one of the forgotten camp inmates. The meeting of the old comrades rekindles Ittichan’s silenced memories. He shouts out the need to keep talking about the days of the past, to prevent history from repeating itself. “…or else such times will be back. Remind ourselves to talk about it- all the time, and to everyone.” (Meera, 78). The memories of Yudas, Sethu Master, Ittichan, her father and Parameswaran Sir make Prema realize that there is no finality or fixity about meanings and the experience of words. It is through this realization that she enables Yudas to understand. Though the fire of her youth has reached its last stages, she has realized the importance of staying alive. “I will take him to my shore when he wakes up…one would have to stay awake in
order to drape the dead in white clothes and burn incense sticks. One of us, or perhaps all of us.” (Meera, 109). These final words, while admitting the realistic gruesomeness of death, uphold the need to stay awake in order to carry on the strife. Ammu’s final words to Velutha were also, “Naaley. Tomorrow.” (Roy, 221). Though constrained within the claws of a deadly society, the “tomorrow” makes its return with Estha and Rahel breaking the love-laws, just like their mother. Their love does not end in death but with a much-needed comfort and a furthering of hope, towards a future revolution. To conclude, as Prema says, “the burning hearts of those who fell in love with the vanquished [will] never cool. (Meera, 108)” The word and the body will ensure that the fire of revolution is never extinguished. The defeated, warrior-like revolutionary/outsider will go through the crucible to reclaim what he had lost and in this process; the fight will continue.
Works Cited Ahmed, Aijaz. ‘Reading Arundhati Roy Politically’. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Ed. Alex Tickell. Routledge. Oxon. 2007. Pgs. 110-119. Print. Bose, Brinda. ‘In Desire and in Death: Eroticism as Politics in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things’. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Ed. Alex Tickell. Routledge. Oxon. 2007. Pgs. 120-131. Print. Clarke, Anna. ‘Language, Hybridity and Dialogism in The God of Small Things’. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Ed. Alex Tickell. Routledge. Oxon. 2007. Pgs. 132-141. Print. Meera, K.R. The Gospel of Yudas. Trans. Rajesh Rajamohan. Penguin Books. India. 2016. Print. Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, a division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1998. Print.
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The Diary Ideal
Examining the “Ideological Rebellion” in the diaries of two teenagers who lived during the Holocaust.
Jhilam Roy Lady Shri Ram College for Women
Abstract Emma Goldman has said, “If I can’t dance to it, then it’s not my revolution”. Revolutions have diverse origins, forms, and manifestations – all chartered on the face of earth by any human hand, which is able to afford ink and paper. The present paper seeks to locate the sense and sensibilities of “Revolution” in the “Holocaust Diaries” of two Jewish teenagers – Yitzhak Rudashevski, and Moshe Flinker who lived in Eastern Europe and the Low Countries during the Second World War. Though not as vivid as Anne Frank’s diary, their journals document the spread of belligerent ideology (militant Communism, Anti-Semitism, Ideas of Democracy, etc.) in the war years, and the reception of those ideas in areas far removed from the main theatres of war. Their journals are expressions of contemporary (young) Jewish dissent, and reflect the countenance of an advanced and modern ethnicity; which has been swept under the carpet by unsympathetic Nazi propaganda. The paper will attempt to trace the concept of “Revolution” in the minds of these young teenagers, their reception of the ideas, and the enacting of the derived ‘ideals’. It is an attempt to bring to light the “ideological and silent rebellion” in the mind of the teenager in Nazi – occupied Europe: ‘areas’ that have been analysed by providing primacy to Anne Frank’s diary, neglected in scholarship, and entertained as mere ‘wartime stories’ aimed at stereotyping the ‘characters’ who lived in the perilous time.
Keywords Holocaust; Journals; Teenager; Mind; Yitzhak Rudashevski; Moshe Flinker; Ideological Revolution; Silent Rebellion; Nazi; Europe.
I
n 1925 when Hitler started writing his autobiography, he filled it with disillusioned frenzied German patriotism, a crippling antagonism for the unhappy alliance of the young German Reich, and the illusionary Hapsburg State, and above all the promise that he “will protest against the fantasies of pacifist ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development”1. Almost two decades later, he went on to inflict a similar sentiment of delegacy on the European countries; armed with ruthless aggression, and conceited faith in a paradox coated ideology. The most notorious of the war crimes included his dutifully striving to eliminate the Jewish “scapegoat” in the process of creating the “Aryan Homeland”; but this unwittingly forged the hors d'oeuvre to 1
faithfully capture his brutality. The Jew wrote, scribbled, composed and stitched in protest – creating a plethora of accounts that spoke of the horrors of the Holocaust. Where physical rebellion waned, mental dissent stepped in; and the battleground proved more than a mere fray of shellshocks, and sub-machine guns – it was the struggle of an ‘alternative’ ideology against the Hitlerite ideology. The ‘roads not taken’ were enacted out, battering out the Aryan State; and delivering proof of tenacious survival in the face of atrocity. The purpose of this paper is to dwell on two teenage ‘patrons’ of alternate ideologies in the Nazi occupied territories of Europe: Yitzhak Rudashevski, and Moshe Flinker. They were the “black-haired Jewish youth [lying] in wait for
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Delhi: K.R.J Book International, 2006), 257.
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hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people”2. They were the part and parcel of the Jewish youth who dealt in dangerous ideas and ideals, as Arnold Leese puts it:
intellect, in the hands of the Jews was considered “a weapon highly suited to meet their needs in the war for survival.”4 These two teenagers maintained journals, documenting their lives as accurately as possible, and more so the oppression, humiliation, and deprivation. The diaries5 reflect a unique fragment of the respective author’s lives, but taken together, they provide The general plan is to penetrate every efan unbroken (albeit varied) and grave inquiry fective means of influencing what is called into the reasons behind the war, the nature of “public opinion” and then to wear down human sufferings, the moral and ethical dimenthe morale of his unsuspecting enemy and sions of persecution, and the combat of hope host by means of unsound ideas: Of these, and despair. What’s of interest here is that, in “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” “no disthe absence of physical channels of happiness, tinction of race, creed or colour,” are the they held onto ideas that catered specificalprincipal shibboleths used to appeal to the ly to the essentiality of survival under imposinferiority complex of the mob to promote sible circumstances; a claim demonstrated by the tolerance of the Jewish influence in our the contents of the diaries of the said teenagers. midst. On the Liberal and Socialistic founYitzhak of Vilna (Lithuania) had communism; dations thus secured, they build up Marxand Moshe of The Hague (Holland) prided his ism, Bolshevism, perverted forms of Chrisreligion and the ideologies that came with it. tianity, and anti-Nationalism disguised as Despite being composed by ‘confined’ authors – Internationalism, all for the destruction of Yitzhak wrote as a ghetto inmate, Moshe wrote Gentile civilization. Through control, direct in hiding - the journals speak for themselves, and indirect, over the Press, the Cinema, portraying flamboyantly an advanced race in the Wireless and the doctrines of masonry, the heartland of Nazi tyranny; in their refleca censorship is imposed upon anyone who tion of the contemporary Jewish mind-set. Exhas become aware of what is going on and hibiting a picture very different from what the attempts to sound a warning … The ultiruling propaganda advocated, the accounts are mate objective appears to be a world domifar from the ‘indifferent’ diaries of the brainnated by Jewish influence supported by an drained Hitlerite youth like Brigitte Eicke, or oriental capacity for hatred towards one’s Helga Weiss, who ‘were cogs in the wheel that opponents and a desire for revenge which kept the Nazi State turning’6. These were writit is difficult for the Aryan people to underten with the hindsight of a scrutinizing and stand.3 intellectual young generation, who were conscious of their perilous ‘heresy’, yet unafraid to Particularly Journalism, an expression of the speak their radical, uncensored minds. The ide2 Ibid., 264 3 Excerpt from “The Jews Declare War” in Arnold Leese, The Jewish War of Survival (Berlin, 1945), 32. 4 Ibid. 5 There are three categories of children’s journalism during the Holocaust: journals written by refugees/ partisans who escaped the German-controlled territories, in hiding, or as ghetto and concentration camp inmates. See Holocaust Encyclopedia, s.v. “Children’s Diaries During the Holocaust” (accessed March 21 2017), https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007952. 6 See Tony Paterson, “Diary of Second World War German teenager reveals young lives untroubled by Nazi Holocaust in wartime Berlin”, Independent, June 15 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ europe/diary-of-second-world-war-german-teenager-reveals-young-lives-untroubled-by-nazi-holocaustin-8660484.html.
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ologies in their diaries constituted a rebellion in themselves; a last resort against the dictatorial regime’s ideology that looked to a traditional and historical mirage, superficial racism, and wanton inhumanity to sustain itself.
We see the whole horror of which puts such a dark stamp on human life. The Ninth of November, that is the day when the German people, the exhausted soldiers of the front, raised the red flag of freedom. The wrath of the people spilled over into the famished
Indeed, Yitzhak Rudashevski’s embracing of communism is a reflection of the affection that Jewish Vilna reserved for Soviet rule, one as injuriously bigoted7 as the Nazis. Given that the sixteen year old (1927-1943) was a product of the intellectual hubbub of Judaism, which accommodated the “sun of the Stalinist Constitution”8 in a new curriculum that advocated the revival of the Hebrew Yiddish, as well as modernity that ‘shook off the dusts of the past without forsaking the Jewishness’9; it is no surprise that he writes in Yiddish about how ‘he ran several kilometres to meet the first Soviet tanks’10 in the summer of 1940. He modelled himself as a communist, wore the red star, necktie and red scarf of the Pioneers, joined communist scouting rallies, and even vowed to “see that the calm Red Army soldier standing guard in (their) yard will not perish”11. He devoured Communist novels like The Doctor’s Plot and the Soviet Solution, The Hero in Chains, and Bernard Kellermann’s The Ninth of November, even dedicating an admiring composition of his Communist Gospels in his diary:
streets. Ackermann, the hero of the book, the front soldier with three wounds in his broad unbuttoned coat – how beautifully, how idealistically his soldier image appears in the light of the revolution! I copied many splendid excerpts; strong, eternal words which proclaim the freedom of nations.12
This was the foremost aspect of Communism that drew Yitzhak to it – its political tone which sung against hate and exploitation, and Anti – Semitism. Taking after the principal of his school, Mira Bernshteyn, Yitzhak saw Communism as a bulwark against Nazism, and the path for revival of Yiddish culture and schools; and rallied against the Lithuanian and Polish population who welcomed the Germans in 1941. The Communists retreated, and with them, his inspiration; yet he “lived with tomorrow/ Not with today”13. He was soon moved to the Vilna ghetto, robbed of his learning and freedom; but he kept himself busy with the journaling of his ghetto life (of the mad craze of the Shayne14, the
7 The Soviet occupation of Vilna saw a repression of the Jewish community there. They banned organizations, political parties, and publications; as well as prohibited the teaching of Hebrew and Jewish History. The new laws seized Jewish property, leaving them poor and vulnerable. Also thousands of the Jews were deported to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and other inhospitable parts of Siberia. See Jacob Boas, We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1996), pp.41-42. 8 Yitskhok Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto: June 1941 – April 1943 (Israel: Ghetto Fighters’ House and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1973), 18. 9 Boas, We Are Witnesses, 40. 10 Ibid., 42. 11 Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, 31. 12 Boas, We Are Witnesses, 42. 13
Ibid., 63.a
14 The Shayne (in Yiddish) was a special work certificate that the Vilna ghetto inmates needed to secure a job. The certificates came in various formats (with or without photographs), colours (white, pink, blue, green, violet, red, yellow), and other combinations. The certificates granted ‘immunity’ to the holder, the spouse, and two children. Yitzhak notes how his father acquired, with difficulty, a white Shayne in early 1941 for a job at a munitions storehouse; nonetheless the white ‘colour of life’ got replaced by yellow in mid-October. The ever-changing certificates with the equally fluid legal treatment of the Jews magnified the psychological blow the Ghetto, as an institution, dealt on the Jewish identity and unity in Vilna. The lapse of each certificate’s tenure saw thousands of Jews deported, killed, and kidnapped, or the eruption of chaos and crime within the community itself. The Jews pleaded, bribed, married, and killed for the expen-
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desperation for maline15, the mortal “Pink Pass Action”16, the terror struck by German supervisors, and the humiliating subjugation of his peer inmates), and giving innocent expression to his intellectuality17 (manning a literary club, editing the newspaper Within Walls, Yet Young, and recording ghetto folklore, Yiddish poetry, and personal interviews). Behind the façade, he actively engaged himself in the discipline and conspiracy of the resistant F.P.O. He aided the poets Abba Kovner, and Abraham Sutzkever in transporting clothing collected from the Vilna residents for the German depot, to the Soviet prisoners of war interned outside the ghetto. Again he acted as the others around him, inflamed by communist loyalty, and hopeful of communist encouragement to the militant organization. Unfortunately for Yitzhak, his tenacious fidelity must have wavered at the long wait for the glorious Soviet saviour; a despair that echoed in the final words of his diary – “We may be fated for the worst”18.
consolation of religion. He reflects on the Jewish past, simultaneously challenging and befriending it: humans prominently feature in his account, never the Divine. He thrives on intellectuality, supporting the cultural body and soul of the ghetto; religion comes across as silently naught, for which he fails to see the logic of Hitler’s Anti-Semitism. Quite contrarily, Moshe “Harry” Flinker’s journal hinges on zealous Jewish religiosity19; which he, himself, acknowledges – “Obviously my outlook is a religious one. I hope to be excused for this, for had I not religion; I would never find answer to the problems that confront me”20. His ‘diary reads like a book from the Old Testament’21: Our sufferings have by far exceeded our wrongdoings. What other purpose could the Lord have in allowing such things to befall us? I feel certain that further troubles will not bring any Jew back to the paths of righteousness; on the contrary, I think that upon experiencing such great anguish, they
Yitzhak’s diary surprisingly never features the
will think that there is no God at all in the
sive permits, whose price jumped from 50 rubles to 15000 rubles. In fact, the certificates delivered the accusation of ‘illegal existence’ in a silver platter to the Nazis, and created motives behind the inhumane purges. Each purge had an established quota for the number of Jews to be killed on a certain day. The gathering of the Jews to meet the said quota was the “Action” that met it fatal conclusion at the forest of Ponar. See Scott Noar, “Story of the Vilna Ghetto”, Noar Family, April 10 2001, http://www.noarfamily.net/Vilnaghetto.html. 15
Yiddish for “hideout”.
16 The Pink Pass was another of the ‘life permits’ that was introduced in the Vilna Ghetto in November 1941. In December of the same year, the round-up of people without the Pink Shayne was initiated, and it claimed another thousand lives, raising the total number of Jews killed since the beginning of the German occupation to 33, 500. This came to be infamously dubbed the “Pink Pass Action”. See Boas, We Are Witnesses, pp.56-57. 17 Hitler wrote of his 1908 Vienna sojourn in the Mein Kampf – “I am thankful for that period of my life, because it hardened me and enabled me to be as tough as I now am ... I was handed over to Adversary as to a new mother … It was during this period that my eyes were opened to the two perils of Marxism and Judaism”. See Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.3334. His notion of Marxism was shaped by the poverty and work force unrest at the Austrian metropolitan capital, and the dealing of that unrest by the Austrian State; the concept of Judaism evolved, as he writes, from “the Jewish activities in the Press, in art, in literature, and the theatre … [that inflicted] a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected. It was worse than the Black Plague of long ago.” See Ibid., 62. It was this cultural ‘streak of objection’ that the Vilna Jews choose to exert their rebelliousness. Obviously, to Yitzhak, the Jew was a ‘cultural entity’ absorbed in cultural pursuits; this was the dominant perception of their enemies as well. Interestingly, like Hitler, Yitzhak is seen to undergo a similar development of ideologies at the Vilna metropolis. He used the cultural paradigms to assert his defiance; much like Hitler who attempted to engage himself with art and publishing during his Vienna days. In a way, both drew from the cultural environment around them, interpreting observations with political convictions. 18 Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, 98. 19 Moshe’s journal has abundant description of the Jew as a “religious entity” and not a “racial” one. He wrote in classical Hebrew, used the Hebrew calendar, and quoted Jewish hymns in his entries. He believed that he was a Jew in exile, and the Jewish God would send a Messiah for the redemption from the Nazi persecutions. Possibly, it was a conscious defiance of the new and dominant race hierarchy – a rebellion generated from faith, and not diplomacy. 20 Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1971), 28. 21 Boas, We Are Witnesses, 84.
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universe, because had there been a God, He
I asked myself what are the real spiritual
would not have let such things happen to His
values of these boys and girls who may well
people. I have heard this said many times al-
be regarded as a typical sample ... While
ready – and indeed, what can God intend by
millions more risk their lives for the sake
all these calamities that are happening to us
of ideas, whether correct or distorted but
in this terrible period? It seems to me that
at least with the honest and consecrated
the time has come for our redemption, or
intention of ensuring the world a better fu-
rather, that we are more or less worthy of
ture – at the same time, these boys and girls
being redeemed.
sit there and by their expressions you would
22
never guess that anything had happened in
Like Hitler, he believed that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and the Jewish Question was simply His will to test their patience. He questioned the purpose of the persecutions, and like the ‘good Dutch protestant’ he professed to be, concentrated all his hope on religious redemption .i.e., salvation through God. In Moshe’s eyes, ‘the very magnitude of the catastrophe was proof that deliverance was at hand’23, for which he half-heartedly blames the Nazis. He rallied against the Allies, and against the Jews, accusing them of not having sinned enough to deserve salvation. His other concern was the spirituality of the passive and gay people around him, who had turned a deaf ear to the horrors of the war. He held the Hitlerite youth in the deepest disregard –
the world or that lawlessness and violence are the order of the day. Shallow youth, with neither ideas nor ideals, without any kind of content whatever, are really completely worthless.24
In his mind, the ‘casual’ response of the non-Jewish youth set them apart from the suffering “youth of the [Jewish] nation, where the young girls no longer laugh, and the young men are melancholy”25, thus compelling the need of a “Promised Land” .i.e., Israel of Biblical fame. This entry spearheaded his passionate Zionism 26 , and the subsequent journal entries would betray his blaming of the exile-mindedness of the Jewry for failing to bargain for a Jewish homeland; as well as his ambition of becoming “a Jewish statesman in the Land of Israel”27. In
22 Wigoder, Young Moshe’s Diary, 113. 23 Boas, We Are Witnesses, 88. 24
Ibid., 95.
25
Ibid., 101.
26 Unlike Yitzhak, Moshe’s Zionism ran knee deep; though his brand of Zionism was more religious than political! This is demonstrative in the employment of the Jewish prayers and hymns in his writings. Both in concentration camps and the ghettos, most of the poets created poetry less as a means of self-expression than as succour, a vehicle of mitigating daily disasters. This phenomenon reflects the tradition of Jewish literature that responded to over two millennia of Jewish suffering with poetry, threnodies, and liturgy of consolation. Interestingly, consolation was drawn from earlier paradigms of calamity: Even when the catastrophe was perceived as being unprecedented, the historical song, with its use of biblical quotations, its liturgical framework and its theodicy, all served to console the listener, to mitigate the disaster, to render the actual, time-bound event into something trans-temporal. This is because, in the traditional Jewish view, the greater the scope of the destruction, the more it recalls historical precedent. The concerns of these poems are similar to those in the Holocaust- namely, the eternal suffering as a major component in Jewish history and the role of the Jewish God during the greatest tragedy in that history. The poetry that confronts the impending destruction has profundity, maturity of feeling, artistic quality, nostalgia and yearning for freedom, for the lost pre-war world. Poems put to music were especially popular in the Holocaust. This phenomenon reflects the Yiddish folk tradition, for as “Dos lid, dos glaykhvertl, dem sharfn vits-hobn bagleyt dem Yiddn shtendik un umetum: yen er iz gegangen tsu der arbet, yen er iz geshtanen in rey nokh a shisele zup, yen men hot im gefirt tsu der shkhite, un yen er iz gegangen in kamf”: The song, the proverb, the witty joke, have always and everywhere accompanied the Jew: when he went to work, when he waited on a soupline, when he was driven to the slaughter, and when he marched in combat.” See Frieda Aaron, Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettoes and Concentration Camps (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 1-15. One can say cherishing poetry was an essential part of 20th century Zionism, and Moshe followed in the footsteps. He wasn’t, however, remotely involved with political Zionism; compared to Yitzhak who actively worked with the F.P.O. 27
Ibid., 110.
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31
fact, he unconsciously linked spiritual and ter- as the respective reasons to fight the depressing ritorial freedom, in his spiritual ‘torment’ and hours; yet both complain of “emptiness30. They grasp the reason behind their subjugated humilwith the stroke of a pen: iation – Jewishness – and question it. At times, they unanimously fail to ‘appreciate’ their own The name of the almanac is “My Homeland”. Each time I stand to say the Eighteen Benehistory; in others, they console themselves with dictions, I direct my whole soul to my lovely a tough fidelity. This perception of the Jewish land, and I see it before my eyes; I see the identity is central to the interpretation of the coast, I see Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Haifa. Then I new racial (race for religion) order in Europe, see Jerusalem, with the Mount of Olives, and and their justification for the contemporary I see the Jordan as it flows from Lebanon to plight of the Jewry in states like Germany, Pothe Dead Sea. I visualize all this when I stand land, Russia, etc. Both accounts echo a similar to pray … Oh, how my soul earns for you, my tone of ‘hesitant looking back’ to their past for homeland, how my eyes crave for the sight consolation – of you, my country, the Land of Israel.28 Yitzhak: We have a court, prosecutor, de-
Nonetheless, like Yitzhak, Moshe soon ran out of conviction, especially his faith that God would deliver the redemption of his children. His final undated entry in the diary reads – “Two thousand year have we brought into this world, children who are doomed to suffer. Lord our God, is Lord of Israel? … Pity us, have mercy, Lord, on Thy people, do not tarry, do not wait, for soon it will be too late.” 29 ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ Yitzhak and Moshe’s diaries are remarkable testimonies to the Holocaust. These two accounts are chosen for analysis (in the paper) because of their subjective portrayal of two lives, albeit disgraced, in an imprisoned ghetto, and in deliberate hiding. The two protagonists seek out ‘paradoxical’ means, aspectual of Semitism, to clash against a common enemy – the Hitlerite ideology of the Nazi State. The former’s intellectual ventures, and the latter’s pious musings act 28
Ibid., 107.
29
Ibid., 113
fence counsel, defendant, and a whole succession of persons from history who serves as witnesses. Now the hardest task is … to work out the indictment and to prepare a series of questions for the witnesses on behalf of the prosecution.31 Moshe: Every time I read those chapters that speak of the future, of the end of days, of the time of Israel’s troubles, I feel every letter, from every single part of every letter, these words refer to the present.32
Both attempt at a ‘reconfigured’ tailor-made past to accommodate those ideologies they find solace in; nothing different from Hitler. Yitzhak is reminiscent of the legitimizing power of the Jewish Past, much like Hitler who states – “Was the Germany of the past a country of little worth? Did she not owe a certain duty to her own history? Are we still worthy to partake in
30 Both talks of “emptiness” – indeed they have sensed void in Yitzhak’s love for learning and Moshe’s spirituality. In another sense, they are talking of the emptiness of negative emotions that have descended on the Jewish race with the Holocaust. 31 Rudashevski, The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, 141. Yitzhak writes the above lines on November 11, 1942 in reference to the preparation of a school assignment concerning the public trial of the historic Herod. It was a mock trial carried out by some prominent ghetto inmates (a committee of teachers, historians and elders) on December 21, 1942. He had made the first speech for the prosecution, whilst the director of his school, Leyb Turbovitsh had been the defendant; the committee ruled Herod to be guilty despite his good intentions toward the welfare of the Biblical Jewry. In fact, the trial was a veiled accusation of Jacob Gens, the chief of the Judenrat (the Jewish council of the Vilna Ghetto) who frequently resorted to the “Trolley Dilemma” to save the Vilna Jewry. 32 Wigoder, Young Moshe’s Diary, 137.
32
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the glory of the past?”33 Moshe thinks of the Fatherland of Israel (a state yet to be created when he was journaling), establishing a concurrent, virtual imagery of his liberated land on scriptural descriptions; much like Hitler’s Aryan Homeland. Both partake in a passionate aggressive nationalism hankering for Lebensraum34 – Hitler’s Nazism, and Moshe’s Zionism hardly comprise a different overview. Secondly, with the true ignorant fervour of the Fuhrer, both fail to find faults with the objects of their idealization. The Soviet crimes committed on the Jewry of Vilna appear nowhere in the young communist’s account. Moshe’s religiosity could do no wrong: to him, the Jews are the divinely chosen lot suffering in the hands of others for no fault of their own. Appearing faithful to one’s conviction isn’t the fault; it is the total elimination of the possibility of any flaw in their system of beliefs. The Second World War was an uncertain time for certain ideas, and staunch cognition. Perhaps, all got caught up in the game!
are those of the enemy; but they can hardly be branded revolutionary. Their rebellion35 is the continued adherence to a dangerous religion, and culture. Unlike the Hitlerite youth who embraced the unilinear “Aryan” narrative as imposed by the State, and their Elders; these Jewish children questioned the ‘underlying story that relates their origins, gives their lives meaning and determines their place in the world’36 aka the mythical dimension of not just religious Judaism, but also political Nazism. The Jews were the first ones who ‘gave the world meaning in history in that they were the first people to invest their story of origin with historical importance’37 – this made them an easy target for Hitler, for he had accusation roped on the historic imperial. They desperately searched for the more feeling, progressive “alternative” to the existing ideology and peer plight. Their greatest “revolutionary” legacy is their mode of ‘ironic’ observation .i.e., detached wonderment.
Neither Yitzhak, nor Moshe speak of a “revolution”; in fact, their journals don’t even betray rebel tendencies. Their advocated ideologies 33 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 181. 34 German for “living space”. The geo-political concept of ‘inevitable expansion’, Lebensraum was incorporated in the Nazi ideology and provided a racist justification for territorial expansion to manage population, reserve resources, and uphold the honour of the German race. See Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia, s.v. “Lebensraum” (accessed March 9 2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum. 35 The ‘activities’, physical and mental, recorded in the two journals are rebellious in accordance to Hegel’s (Yitzhak), and Marx’s (Moshe) philosophical standards of rebellion. Hegel’s philosophy combined a deep commitment to human freedom with a profoundly historical sensibility embracing the notion that reality unfolds and moves forward through the interaction of contradictory tendencies. Each of these tendencies contain elements of “truth” that can only be understood adequately as part of a complex, multi-faceted, always-evolving totality. Hegel developed concepts and categories to help comprehend the almost impossibly complex, dynamic, contradictory reality in which all of us are enmeshed. On the other hand, Hegel’s philosophical idealism gives primacy to the intellectual constructs, with actual realities represented as manifestations of the abstract principles contained in the realm of ideas. ‘Starting from the necessity of conceptual thought, Hegel ended with a system in which one category automatically produces another until a whole system results which, it is claimed, ‘must’ be an adequate account of reality, The basically idealist thrust of his philosophy did not simply result in his claim that ideas were the moving force in the world. Ironically, it also forced him into crude, deterministic assertions about the empirical world as well.’ Yitzhak’s lavish vignettes of a melancholic ghetto embroiled in the pursuit of ‘cultural rebellion’ are thus a constructed reality in the provided philosophical parameter. On the other hand, Marx’s and Engel’s dialectic concept of totality, change, and contradiction can be seen in Moshe’s explanation for the cause of Jewish misery, the culmination of their sufferings, and redemption of the Jewry in a new era ushered by a divine Messiah. This materialist conception of history (and rebellion) is grounded in this analytical approach: Society is taken to be in a process of constant change. Such change involves the totality of relations - economic, political, ideological, and cultural - of which the society is composed. This process of total change is a result of internal contradictions, manifested as class antagonism, which reconstitute society anew by both transforming and renewing the forces that first gave rise to the initial contradiction. See John Rees, The Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1998). 36
Jocelyn Hellig,v (Oxford: One World Publications, 2003), 100.
37
Ibid., 225.
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Works cited Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Delhi: K.R.J Book International, 2006. Leese, Arnold. The Jewish War of Survival. Berlin: Unknown Publisher, 1945. Holocaust Encyclopedia, s.v. “Children’s Diaries During the Holocaust” (accessed March 21 2017), https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007952. Paterson, Tony. “Diary of Second World War German teenager reveals young lives untroubled by Nazi Holocaust in wartime Berlin”, Independent, June 15 2013, http:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/diary-of-second-world-war-germanteenager-reveals-young-lives-untroubled-by-nazi-holocaust-in-8660484.html. Boas, Jacob. We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1996. Rudashevski, Yitskhok. The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto: June 1941 – April 1943. Israel: Ghetto Fighters’ House and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1973. Noar, Scott. “Story of the Vilna Ghetto”, Noar Family, April 10 2001, http://www. noarfamily.net/Vilnaghetto.html. Wigoder, Geoffrey. (ed.). Young Moshe’s Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1971. Aaron, Frieda. Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettoes and Concentration Camps. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia, s.v. “Lebensraum” (accessed March 9 2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum. Rees, John. The Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition. New York: Routledge, 1998. Hellig, Jocelyn. The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism: A Short History. Oxford: One World Publications, 2003.
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