सच्चा सम्पूर्ण निश्छाय कालातीत शुद्ध क्षण वही होगा जिस में न स्मृति का संस्पर्श, न आकांक्षा का, और न तनाव का – ऐसा ही क्षण (मिले तो) जीवन्मुक्ति का क्षण होगा…

(Ajñeya, Bhavantī, Rājpāl & Sons, 1989 [1971]: 146-47)

“The true, complete, shadowless, timeless, pure instant will be one which is untouched by memory, by expectation and by tension – only such an instant (if attainable) could be the instant of liberation-in-life (jīvanmukti)”

(Ajñeya, Truculent Clay, Clarion Books, 1982: 123)

Introduction

 

If I were asked to state the main reason that made me select “Nāc” for the present contribution, I would answer by stressing the charming appeal of its enchanting iterative melody and its amazing capacity to epitomize in very few words some of the fundamental themes of Ajñeya’s writings. Moreover, as a teacher of Hindi, I take pleasure in using this poem as a challenging grammatical exercise for beginners as well as a source for limitless interpretations for more advanced students.

        Among the many possible interpretations that can result from an analysis of this poem, the present contribution offers a reading that leads to the following three conclusions, themselves summarizing some of the most distinctive aspects of Ajñeya’s literary career.

        First, the continuous to-ings and fro-ings of the dancer on the rope tight between the two poles undoubtedly evokes the cultural bridges Ajñeya built and repetitively crossed in both directions between India and other cultures on the one hand, and between Sanskrit tradition and the avant-garde literary movements he led on the other hand. Second, the tension, which is actually the propellant source of this incessant movement and which encourages the artist to obtain release, epitomizes the writer’s lifelong quest for freedom. Third, the fact that the several constitutive facets of the show – including the dancer – are ignored by the spectators, to the exclusive benefit of the dance and its specious bewitchery, symbolizes the veil of mystery that surrounds the poet’s writings as well as his continuous questioning of the habits with which people look at life.

        I will deal with these themes through a three-level analysis, starting with a syntactic analysis, pursuing with a semantic one and ending my paper with questions of epistemic and social nature, while putting into perspective the poem with other works of the writer belonging to the second half of the twentieth century. Making these levels interact with each other will help to provide the necessary information for the above-stated conclusions.

        The figure “3” will appear to be a recurrent number in this analysis. Linked to the number of conclusions and approaches, it is also based on the three main sections (A, B, and C) that divide the poem when the type of textual sequence – descriptive and explanatory – is considered as the determining factor of analysis.[ii] In section A, the speaker – who gives his voice to the dancer and main “character” of the poem – uses a descriptive sequence, progressively introducing the constituents of the show.[iii] This informative mode changes to an explanatory approach in section B, where the dancer discloses to the reader the real motives of his act – it is in this section that the internal focalization of the poem is most evident. The poem ends with section C, in which a new descriptive sequence is this time used by the speaker as a kind of conclusion. Although the attention of the dancer is again drawn on the audience which steadily looks at the dance, the reader, however, now knows that the fundamental reasons of this show, i.e. the tension and the release, are ignored by the audience.

        If this division of the poem into three main sections is the fruit of a personal analysis, it nevertheless corresponds to the typographical marks of the published text, which draw the attention of the reader by introducing indentations at the beginning of both sections B and C.

The syntactic level

 

At the syntactic level, the poem “Nāc” can be divided in various ways, depending on which aspect of the clauses is privileged for the analysis.

a) Sentence-based division

               If the grammatical sentence is to be taken into account, the poem has to be divided into nine parts (I to IX) of unequal lengths, although regularly progressing during the first two thirds of the poem. The first six sentences (upto line 19) are based on the grammatical use of relative and correlative clauses. Somehow, by the spinning effect of this constant use of relatives, the reader is himself drawn into the restless dance of the show and is mistaken or bewildered by the delusive impression given by the speaker in the first half of the poem.

               Together with the sixth sentence (VI) the next two grammatical divisions (VII and VIII), which may also be united into one long sentence, correspond to the “explanatory” section of the poem (B). The ending sentence (IX), which corresponds to the section C, sums up the antagonism between the personal reality of the dancer and the external point of view of the audience. It expresses the position of the dancer, who disapproves of the interpretation made by the public who is exclusively looking at the dance.

b) Rhymic division

This sentence-based division corresponds almost exactly to the division that can be made when the ending sound of a line is considered as the central criteria of analysis – it can also be called a “rhymic” division, as long as one does not think of it according to classical criteria of prosody. The correspondence fits perfectly up to the sentence-based division VII (line 22); later in the text, rhymic part 9 starts a line after the sentence IX, and a tenth rhymic part can be attributed to the last line of the poem. For a better intelligibility, each ending syllable is schematically reproduced below according to the rhymic division (the numerals correspond to the parts of the poem, the letters to the categories of the ending sounds):

1°      (a)          hū×

2°      (ab)        hū×, hai

3°      (ab)        hū×, hai

4°      (abc)      hū×, hai, hai×

5°      (babbc)   hai, hū×, hai, hai, hai×

6°      (aabbda) hū×, hū×, hai, hai, par, hū×

7°      (aa₁b₁)     hū×, dū×, ye

8°      (eabbc)  hī×, hū×, hai, hai, hai×

9°      (eeeee)   hī×, hī×, hī×, hī×, hī×

10°    (f)          nāc

               We can see that up to part 4 there is a regular, almost perfectly progressive, use of rhymes. In these parts, the speaker builds up the exposition by introducing at every step one or two new elements: the “dancer” (the “I” of the internal focalization) and the rope, then the pillars, then the light and the audience. The poem can be read up to that point as a kind of realistic description of a circus act.

               Although following this mode, the fifth part, however, introduces a slight change: its first line does not end with the present auxiliary hū× of the first singular person, like in all the previous parts, but with the present auxiliary hai of the third singular person. Even if this line still speaks of him, the dancer has now become, through the use of the third person pronoun, an object of the act; he is no more its actor. We can interpret this alteration as a way for the speaker to make the reader realize the effect of the interpretation by the audience of the autonomy of the dancer, and how a realistic, or objective, approach can objectify the observed actor. The speaker’s voice has thus momentously been subdued by the audience’s focus on the dance.

               At the beginning of the sixth part – which also opens the section B – the speaker once again uses the basic sequence of rhymes ‘aabb’, while grammatically attributing to the dancer the role of the subject. Thus, the dancer seems to have been able to get over the audience’s point of view of the previous part by reappropriating his first person identity. This part then continues according to the basic scheme of the poem, i.e. ‘ab’, giving the impression that the first, realistic approach was the correct one. However, in the fifth line of this part, a new ending sound is introduced – the word par. It shows that something has changed, that a new interpretation might be possible. This term, which is used here as the postposition “on”, can however also be considered as expressing its second meaning, i.e. the conjunction “but”, thus breaking the “naive” reading resulting from the first, purely descriptive sequence (A). Furthermore, this ending sound echoes the word par, which starts this part itself and which is used in its oppositional meaning of “but”.

               Part 6 then clearly shows a transition in the poem. Whereas it still makes use of the pattern of lines intertwining one another by the way of relative and correlative pronouns, it nevertheless differs from the five previous parts as it introduces a counterargument through the oppositional conjunction par, also used as an oppositional conjunction and as a new rhyme. The oppositional aspect of this part, with regard to the starting descriptive sequence, also gains in persuasiveness because of the expression “in reality” (asal me×) that opens the last line, while bringing back to the forefront the first person narrator.

               In the seventh part, the first two rhymes of the poem (hū× and hai) are reiterated, but now with a slight difference, which illustrates the new point of view of the dancer. Instead of ‘aab’ (hū×, hū×, hai) denoting the indicative mode, we have now a sequence that can be noted ‘aa₁b₁’, corresponding to hū×, dū× and ye, with the presence of the subjunctive mode in the last two lines. This “alteration” introduces a “dissonance”, which awakes the attention of the reader and reminds him of the fact that things and facts are rarely as they look. The grammatical usage of the subjunctive mode conveys the idea that the poem has now left the objective – but artificial and delusive – world of appearances to enter into the more subjective world of the dancer, which is however ultimately closer to his reality than the previous mode. Epistemologically, it calls into question the validity of the realistic approach – an approach which the poet started disapproving of several decades before.

               The next part (8) takes up again the sequence of the rhymes of the fifth part but for the first line which ends with a new rhyme: the sound ‘hī×’ from the adverb nahī×. Even if this sound also consists in a nasalized vowel, like for the first person singular auxiliary ‘hū×’, it is now the mark of a negative statement, introducing a new sensibility. Thus, after the four initial parts of the poem, which staged the dancer in a semblance of reality, and after his objectivation in line 9 (by the use of the third singular person auxiliary), introducing the idea that the realistic point of view denies the individuality of the dancer by making him an object, beginning of part 8 clearly puts forward the critical interpretation of the speaker by negating the delusive perception so far prevalent in the poem.

               This break is reiterated and reinforced in the next part (9), in which every line ends with the word “nahī×” (no), emphasizing the fact that each component of the show remains ignored and unseen by the audience. One aspect only is perceived by the audience, the dance, i.e. the manifest but delusive “reality” of the show: “they look at… the dance!” This line, which closes the poem, forms its last rhymic part (10), giving therefore a special importance to the interpretation made by the audience, although its inappropriateness is underlined by the use of the exclamation mark.

c) Division based on the first word of each line

If it is less common to base an analysis on the first word of each line of a poem, such an approach will however prove to be useful in our case. The resulting division happens to follow the above pattern, reinforcing thus the effect of the ryhmic division.[iv]

               The first four parts (1 to 4) once more display a unity in regard to the exposition of the elements of the show, making even more explicit its progression thanks to the numerals “one” (ek) and “two” (do) starting the lines 1 and 6 of the poem.[v] Moreover, in the fourth part, each word opening one of its three lines respectively echoes one of the initial words of the first three parts:

               do è ek (1°);           us è jis (2°);               jis è vah (3°).

               The fifth part introduces a change in tone in the poem, the same way it was observed above in the rhymic analysis. From an objective description, the poem suddenly turns into a succession of clauses starting with the negation “no” (na). This radical and iterated change only ceases with the last line of this part, which starts with the word “the people” (or “the audience”, log). This device (a succession of negations followed by the word “log”) highlights the fact that even more operative than an objective description is the biased perception and interpretation by the audience. Even if the latter may be wrong in looking at one specific aspect of the show to the detriment of the others, it nonetheless imposes its own interpretation at this stage. If we already perceived that change in the previous analysis, it becomes even more evident in the present analysis.

               The sixth part represents the opening to the second main section (B). Starting with the oppositional conjunction par, it first consists of five lines summarizing what has been perceived so far. Then comes a sixth line that rejects the validity of the audience’s interpretation by asserting in the first voice that “in reality I do not dance” (asal me× mai× nāctā nahī× hū×) – the negative statement being stressed by the fact that the present auxiliary is kept, contrary to the general usage in negative clauses expressed in the present tense.

               The next line (20), which starts the seventh part, begins with the word “I” (mai×). The use of the direct first person pronoun clearly marks a change of perspective: the dance is no more at the core of the picture; it is now the dancer’s inner voice that speaks. This part takes the form of an explanation: the dancer says what he is really doing and why (ki) he is doing it. Nevertheless, this short but fundamental part is soon attenuated by the next part (8), where the individual voice of the dancer gradually fades and disappears to the benefit, first of the tension (tanāv), which becomes the “actor” of the show, and second of the audience’s point of view.

               The five lines of the eighth part (lines 23-27) can actually be subdivided into three smaller parts, according to the grammatical subject of the sentence and to the degree of importance of the first person perspective. It starts with the oppositional conjunction “but” (par), thus introducing reservations about what has been postulated in the previous part. It results, in the second line of this sub-part (lines 23-24), in the shift for the first person pronoun from the initial place (part 7, line 20) to the second one, after the coordinating conjunction “and” (aur). The second sub-part (lines 25-26) also starts with “par” and makes the “tension” (tanāv) become the grammatical subject of the sentence, while the first person disappears behind the indefinite pronoun “everything” (sab kuch), which begins the next line. The third sub-part (line 27), starting once more with the word “and”, brings back to the foreground the couple dance-audience (literally “all”, sab), completing thus the process of alteration, from the first person explanation to its objectivation by an indefinite third plural person.

               The poem ends by the list of the components of the show, with the addition of the “tension”; a way for the speaker to remind us of their importance in the overall picture, although the audience prefers to ignore them to the benefit of the delusive dance.

               A last aspect should retain our attention at this level: the place and role of the pronouns and substantives figuring the “characters,” i.e. the dancer and the “people” (log) – or the audience – also named towards the end “everyone” (sab).[vi] The voice of the speaker is equated with the “I” of the dancer, providing an internal focalization. In front of him stands the audience, which can also be viewed, according to the pragmatic-discourse approach, as the poet’s readers and critics. Both “characters” illustrate the contrastive, if not opposite, points of view and understandings of the show together with its fundamental polarity: the tension vs. the dance.

               In the first seven lines (semantic part i) introducing the exposition, although the “I” (mai×) appears four times as the direct subject of the sentence, it is however always set in a relative clause; it is the rope, the dance, or the light that are used as the subjects of the main clause.[vii] This gives the impression that the dancer, even if he speaks at the first person, is actually only one of the several components of “his” act.

               In contrast to this introductory sequence, the next semantic part (ii), which runs from line 8 to line 13, displays the audience as the main subject of the sentence. Two other observations should be made accordingly. First, the direct “I” of the previous part has now become an object, a patient: “people look at my dance” (log merā nāc dekhte hai×, line 8), and “they do not look at me, who is dancing” (na mujhe dekhte hai× jo nāctā hai, line 9).[viii] Even if the dancer still wants to say “I dance”, the speaker now uses the third singular person to speak of him (jo nāctā hai). His status is now limited to that of an object, exactly like the other components. It can be added in this regard that the dancer has disappeared in the span of a few lines: while at the beginning of this part he is still perceived as the actor of his dance (merā nāc, line 8), by the end he has disappeared, and people “only see the dance” (sirf nāc dekhte hai×, line 13). The second observation worth mentioning is the strong link between the audience and the dance. The audience is systematically associated with the dance, thus linking the objective point of view with the delusive aspect of the dance.

               In the next part (iii), which consists of lines 14 to 19, the “I” now represents the true voice of the internal focalization. Starting with the strong oppositional conjunction “but” (par), this part puts the first person voice of the dancer at the forefront, trying to invalidate the mistaken perception of the audience: “in reality I do not dance” (asal me× mai× nāctā nahī× hū×, line 19). In this part, as well as in the next, the audience is completely absent, no more interfering with the voice of the dancer. And besides the affirmative signification of the adverbial locution “asal me×”, which adds to the veracity of the dancer’s voice in this part, the fact that the “I” is in this sentence the subject of the main clause, and not only of the relative, like in the first part, reinforces the claim of this first personal voice.

               If the next division (iv, lines 20 to 26) could be linked, in regard to the grammatical subject, to the previous part, it is however more meaningful to take it as a distinct entity. Although the first two lines (20 and 21), together with the line 24, maintain the first person voice as the subject of the clause, there is another “character” that appears in the show: the tension (tanāv). The tension, which makes the dancer continuously run from one pole to the other, is actually the main agent of the whole act. And if, in the first sub-division of this part (lines 20-22), it remains used as the grammatical subject of a relative clause and “only” as an opponent which should stop, in the second sub-division (lines 23-26) it becomes the main subject of the sentence and plays the role of an unavoidable helper of the show. In reverse to the ascendant importance of that tension, the personal voice of the dancer becomes the passive beneficiary of a goal he can not master, i.e. release (chu  ī). Confirming the lost of the predominance of the “I”, the second sub-division inserts the “I” between two clauses, while the tension gets the main role. And whereas the conjunction “but” (par), which twice precedes the word tanāv, reinforces the effect of the tension, the enclosed position of the “I”, which is itself preceded by the conjunction “and” (aur), diminishes the importance of the personal voice. The dancer’s voice fades for the second time in the poem, this time to the “benefit” of the tension, which is the real subject of the show.

               The last part (v, lines 27 to 33) reintroduces the audience – in its indefiniteness: “everyone” (sab) – as the grammatical subject and as the concluding perception of the show: all people focus their attention on the dance and on nothing else. We have already seen that this point of view does not seem appropriate for the dancer. The contrast between the personal voice of the dancer in part iii and the indefinite third person of this last part is sustained in a twofold manner: typographically by the indentation of parts iii and v, which gives to these two parts a special semantic weight, and grammatically by the iterative use of the negation after each element in part v, as well as by the exclamation mark that closes the poem after the word “dance” (nāc), strengthening the inappropriateness of the audience’s point of view.

               A last observation has to be made here. When the “I” is used as the main subject of the clause, or when the speaker explains what the dancer is effectively doing – and not just making a description, like in the beginning – this “I” is tied to the idea of “tension” – and to some extent also to the poles producing the tension. Whereas the affirmative “I” is linked to the notion of “tension”, the audience is systematically closely associated with the “dance”, while its link to the other components is always mediated by a negation.

The semantic level

 

In order to see whether the above results can be corroborated, or improved, by another approach, I will now turn to the semantic analysis, focusing on the meaning of the keywords of the poem. We can divide the terms retaining our attention for this purpose into two categories: 1) the components of the show; and 2) the concepts representing the motives and the issue of the poem.[ix]

a) The components of the show

Pertaining to the first category are the three concrete elements that form the show: the rope, the two poles, and the spotlight. Among them, the poles play a capital role in the poem. Without their presence the poem would have no meaning, and everything would collapse. They sustain the rope and allow the dancer to move on it, be it dancing or running. They create the tension without which the “dancer” would have no reason to run from one pole to the other in order to untie the rope. And last but not least, they create the conditions necessary to the possibility of release (chu  ī), which is the ultimate goal of the “dance”.

                     Transposed to the literary life of Ajñeya, these poles symbolize several contrasting areas of interest. One such polarity undoubtedly represents the tension between his “traditional” Sanskritic background and the contemporary trends – of Western and other origins – that attracted him.[x] Ajñeya never completely left one pole for the other. If sometimes – especially at the beginning of his literary career – he seemed to have radically abandoned his own traditional background – notably if one thinks of the topics and narrative devices of his novels and short stories – he nevertheless never fully dismissed it. In fact, his peculiar language and the way he dealt with issues in his texts never alienated him from his Sanskritic background – on the contrary.[xi]

               Another polarity can be seen in the way Ajñeya continuously and naturally moved from Indian sources and concepts to Western ones, and vice versa. Even if some readers thought and continue to think that he had rejected his Indian background for Western existentialism and psychology, or for Chinese philosophy and Japanese poetry, Ajñeya kept “coming back” to India in order to use and put to test his newly acquired interpretative tools in the frame of a context he was familiar with. Instead of thinking of this practice as a blind mimicry or a mere borrowing, it would be wise to read once again what he had to say about his way of writing. For him, these were just useful mediums to be used for contemporary times:

“Of course, there could be direct borrowing from writer to writer; but in fact a good writer rarely borrows techniques directly from another in this way. What is more likely to happen, and would lead to more fruitful consequences, is that a writer views other writers’ achievements in the light of the total contemporary possibilities of the particular medium and then naturally uses this richer and more developed medium.”[xii]

               In fact, one has to read his works as a perpetual dialogue between several cultures – and not only between “India” and “the West” seen as closed entities. Good instances – among many others – of this “dialogical” process are his short story “Bando× kā Khudā, Khudā ke bande”, his novel Apne apne ajnabī,[xiii] or the references and quotations he uses in Nadī ke dvīp together with the way he “translated” them in Islands in the Stream.[xiv]

               There could be many other instances of polarities symbolized by the poles of the poem. Let us sum up them by telling that Ajñeya’s literary and cultural approaches in many ways figured a bridge – or a path – linking these poles: a bridge between ancient and modern times, between Indian and foreign cultures, between social coercions and individual quests, between highly standardized forms of languages and no less highly innovative skills in poetry and other literary genres. More than a bridge – remaining fixed and inert – he was an active purveyor of culture and knowledge, who restlessly covered the distance between the “poles”, trying to find some temporary release in one place or the other, just in order to experience its value before leaving it for a new journey.

               If the dancer/author of the poem is viewed as a purveyor between poles/cultures, then it is the rope that figures the bridge, or the path. Textually, the rope opens the poem, appears regularly throughout it, and first of all is intrinsically linked to the idea of tension. The rope is said to be tight, from which result the continuous to-ings and fro-ings of the dancer in his helpless attempt to loosen it from the poles. It is also a key element as it prefigures the tension which is capital for the meaning of the poem. Semantically, it represents the perpetual comings and goings of Ajñeya during his life-long explorations and experimentations as a writer. We all know that he never definitely settled in any literary movement nor in any political or cultural framework. Actually, to figure the multiple paths he covered, one should rather think of a web of ropes than of a single rope.

               Besides the roads (rāstā) which it symbolizes, the tight rope (rassī) also suggests the idea of a thin edge on which the dancer/writer is always moving, looking for a brief and stable equilibrium, with the ever-present risk of falling from the rope, i.e. deviating from the difficult path he has chosen to follow, and thus missing the target. Although thin and “dangerous”, the rope/road/bridge must be solid and reliable in order to move ahead. How a loosen rope or, worst, an untied rope, would make possible the above quests? In fact, even if the dancer tries to untie the rope at one end or at the other, it is only in order to get some temporary rest. Otherwise, should he not rather cut the rope, so that the tension would definitively end?

                       As far as I understand Ajñeya’s philosophy, life had no real meaning for him unless it was driven by the will to explore new fields of research, new aesthetic and philosophical experiences, and first of all by exploring new paths leading to fleeting, but nevertheless essential, instants of freedom (mukti). Another expression of this movement symbolising a metaphoric bridge linking two distinct worlds, two human conditions, appears in his short story “Kalākār kī mukti” (1954):

जीवन में गति है, ठीक है ; लेकिन गति स्थानान्तर के बिना भी हो सकती है – बल्कि वही तो सच्ची गती है । कला की लयमयता – प्रवहमान रेखा का आवर्तन और विवर्तन – वह निश्चल सेतु जो निरन्तर भूमि को अन्तरिक्ष से मिलाता चलता है – जिस पर से हम क्षण में कई बार आकाश को छूकर लौट आ सकते हैं – वही तो गति है ![xv]

The lack of lasting quietness is eloquent when we compare the dramatic tension of the poem “Khule me× kha¨ā pe¨”[xvi] with the blissful experience of the observation of a solitary tree in a park in England, which was the source of inspiration of the poem, and which is described in Vatsyayan’s essay “Merī svadhīnătā: sab kī svadhīnătā”.[xvii] The different feelings that inhabit these two conflicting versions of a single and same experience raise the question of the interpretation. They illustrate the importance of the point of view and the fact that one event, as significant as it may be, can not be reduced to a unique interpretation. Actually, no object, no event, no act can be seen and interpreted without some light shed on it. In other terms, it is the light which gives to the object of perception and knowledge its form and colour, i.e. its appearance.

               Hence the “light” (rośnī) in the poem, whose presence can consequently be understood as the interpretative light shed on the show. If the light in itself is neutral with regard to its “intention”, it is nonetheless always moved by a lighting engineer who has the ability to choose the way the dancer and his act must be floodlighted, giving thus a specific perspective to the show. In regard to an act and to the goal sought by the actor, the light can play the role either of the helper or of the opponent. As a direct consequence, the light influences the way the audience sees the show.

               Which role does it play in “Nāc”? For the dancer, it is clearly an opponent. Instead of shedding light on all the constituents of his show, it projects a specific light on the dancer, which isolates him from the context and which gives to the audience the impression that the centre of interest is the dance itself and not the other components, which are left in the dark. The intense, bright light (tīkhī rośnī) prevents the public from seeing anything else than the dance, and objectifies the dancer by denying him any possibility to express his own interpretation. At the contrary, the kind of soft evening light that illuminates the isolate tree of the tale appearing inside “Merī svādhīnătā: sab kī svādhīnătā” would link the spectators with the core of the show. Their perception would be radically different.

               If the “light” syntactically does not play a central role in the poem, it nevertheless becomes extremely important when it is semantically analysed. This is also true in the case of the tension, and to a lesser degree for the other components of the show.

 

b) The concepts

The second category of keywords deals with the concepts representing the motives and the issue of the poem. These are the dance, the tension, and the release. We have so far seen that the dance is the only aspect of the show which is perceived by the audience. If we have understood that the voice of the dancer disapproves of this attitude, we do not know what this dance actually means for the spectators. Do they perceive it as an attractive entertainment? Are they fascinated by the apparent ease of the dancer? Do they feel that his dance is ridiculous, looking like the dance of a puppet?

               The poem actually does not attach much importance to this aspect – or, at least, does not say anything special about it, as the internal focalization is only linked to the dancer. According to this perspective, the dancer does not seem to care for the exact interpretation of the audience; the latter may laugh at him or be subjugated by his choreography, it ultimately does not matter. What matters for him, and for our understanding of the poem, is the fact that the audience – like many of the readers the poet had – does not listen to his voice nor does it understand the real motives behind the apparent dance. People disregard his individuality and ignore the complex composition of his act. This is expressed in the poem (in part 5°) by the objectivation of the “I”, which is then followed by its disappearance to the only benefit of the dance. The audience prevents the voice of the dancer from speaking and living as an individual.[xviii]

               The dance thus hides the tension, which is the real “fuel” of the dancer and of the show. As was said before, without this tension there would be no show at all. Then, why the people remain blind to it? It may well be because they do not want to see it. If they were willing to look at the show in its completeness and its whole complexity, they would be reminded of the tensions that pervade their lives and of the fact that “everything always remains as it is” (sab kuch vaisā hī banā rahtā hai, line 26). They prefer instead to ignore this tension, the plurality of contexts and approaches (the poles) which form the real life, the paths which link these positions, and the light which influences their perception. They paid for a diverting show, not for the tenseness and helplessness of the dancer.

               But does the dancer himself feel comfortable with this tension? Not really. On the one hand, he knows that this is the main agent of his running, without which he would not look for precious moments of release. On the other hand, he continuously tries to put an end to this tension, even though he has to recognize that it will never completely cease.

               Lastly comes the notion of “release” (chu  ī), also a fundamental concept even though it appears only once in the whole poem (line 22). This concept is nevertheless all the more important as it is rare and inaccessible to the dancer. Syntactically, its importance comes from its link to both the words “tension” and “dancer” appearing in the same line. Semantically, it is presented as an aim to be reached. The whole paradox of the situation lies in the fact that the dancer continuously tries to loosen (¶hīlnā) the tension of the rope in order to get some release, whereas there can be no release or freedom without the existing tension. Both are inexorably intertwined. When the actuality and effect of the tension ceases, the ideal of freedom too ends; when the very possibility of freedom disappears, the tension becomes meaningless: there is no more reason to run from one pole to the other.

               Although the poem, and especially its part iv, seems to evoke the impossibility of obtaining this release, with the dancer left in his solitude, we may ask whether it would be a relevant approach to compare this continuous running to the endless climbing of Sisyphus according to Albert Camus’s philosophy of the absurd? Can the poem give us a valid clue to this question when it is analysed as an autonomous entity as we did so far? Or should we say instead that without a comparison with other texts of Ajñeya and/or without some knowledge of his literary life, any interpretation of it can but prove to be inadequate? Let’s now see what can bring to our understanding an analysis based on epistemic and social concerns.

The epistemic and social level

When one compares “Nāc” to the other poems of Ajñeya, it becomes clear that the to-ings and fro-ings between the two poles, and the notion of a bridge linking these poles represent a significant aspect in the worldview of the writer. These notions regularly pervade his texts in one way or the other and suggest that there is no fixed position where to stay indefinitely or in isolation. We said at the end of the previous part that a Camusian point of view could well have been suggested by the incessant move of the dancer. However, if we look at other works belonging to the 1950’s-1970’s, such as “Conflict as a Bridge”[xix], “Merī svādhīnătā: sab kī svādhīnătā”[xx], “Kalākār kī mukti”[xxi], or Bhavantī[xxii], it appears that two notions are crucial for Ajñeya, which contradict Camus’s interpretation: relationship and renunciation.

               Relationship can be dealt with in a twofold manner: epistemologically and socially. In relation to the epistemic issue, Vatsyayan deplores the way the art has evolved until contemporary times. In his essay “Conflict as a Bridge: Some Aspects of the Fiction of Modern India”, he compares the situation of art in “classical” times with the one in the contemporary world. Whereas in classical times the members forming the public were expected to be endowed with the aptitude for identifying themselves with the object of “observation”, being therefore sahÛday, with the advent of the modernity things started to change: democracy in regard to the art allowed everybody to become part of the audience, even without being sahÛday. Consequently, because of the lack of shared artistic knowledge, the communion between the artist and his/her public was broken:

“Tous les hommes, du simple fait qu’ils étaient au monde, avaient le droit de devenir lecteurs, spectateurs, critiques, en un mot de faire partie du public : il n’était plus nécessaire pour cela ‘d’avoir un coeur’. A partir de ce moment, ce fut toujours l’artiste qu’on blâma lorsqu’il n’arrivait pas à imposer son art : ce fut toujours le livre qui parut sonner creux, jamais la tête à laquelle il se heurtait.”[xxiii]

               The point of view of the writer on the meaning of the artist’s performance and on its lack of intrinsic and self-sufficient truth is clear: the meaning of a performance, such as the dancer’s show of the poem, or of any kind of act, is foremost a matter of relation:

“l’art n’est pas dans la chose, l’objet, l’oeuvre d’art; l’art est plutôt ce qui se produit entre l’objet et le public, ou entre l’artiste et son public”.[xxiv]

As a direct consequence of this approach, the dancer in “Nāc” can do whatever he wants, whichever way he wants, his performance will nevertheless remain “useless” and ununderstood as long as the audience remains deaf to the message of the show. If the audience is not apt to “sympathize” with the message the artist is trying to share, his art is vain. And if both parties are unable to create together a “harmony”, a resonance, then what was considered as primordial in classical art is now impossible to realize: “the foundation of a bridge towards the ‘core of felicity’ inside experience”[xxv]

               We see that even if the symbol of the bridge remains one of the significant themes in Ajñeya’s writings, its ancient representation as a path towards Truth is no more valid as it used to be. The bridge, or the rope, maintains the dancer in a continuous to-ings and fro-ings instigated by the inescapable tension inherent to the modern show. A consequence of modernity and its loss of communion between the public and the “reality” the artist is expected to mediate, is the fact that now, argues Vatsyayan, the artist and his/her public are positioned in a relation of conflict; communion has been replaced by a continuous opposition.

               “Nāc” illustrates this situation by emphasizing the conflict of interpretation between the dancer and his audience. While the dancer vainly tries to draw the attention of the public on the tension which makes him run, the audience is naively engrossed in the dance. In this context, the tension not only figures a stimulating force for the poet; it also implies the idea of an epistemic utopia, figuring the illusion that has become the hope of a direct access to the “Reality”. The dancer experiences the epistemic change that has occurred, and knows that now nothing remains which would allow him to rest for a while. He knows why he is running from one pole to the other, to the contrary of the audience who is still dazzled by the dance – this simulacrum of reality looking attractive in the bright light of the show.

               In connection with the notion of social relationship, Vatsyayan’s philosophy maintains that an individual is really independent (svādhīn) and fulfilled only as long as he belongs to a free society, in which he lives as a responsible actor and in which his independence (svādhīnătā) is linked to the freedom of all its members.

उस की स्वाधीनता केवल उस की नहीं होती बल्कि जिस समाज का वह अंग होता है उस पूरे समाज के हर सदस्य की स्वाधीनता को भी वह अपने में सम्मिलित करता है । […]

और मैं यहाँ यह भी कह सकता हूँ कि यही मुझ को मिल सकने वाली एकमात्र ऐसी स्वाधीनता है जो किसी दूसरे पर निर्भर नहीं करती । […] यह एक स्वेच्छापूर्वक वरा गया कर्म है, एक स्वाधीन कर्म है । मैं इस लिए स्वाधीन हूँ कि मैं स्वाधीन कर्मी हूँ, कर्ता हूँ ।[xxvi]

               This standpoint clearly rejects the existentialist and the absurdist convictions of the fundamental solitude attached to the human condition. The actor in the writer’s worldview needs a witness, an audience, without whom his act would have no meaning. The last pages of Apne apne ajnabī, where Maryam (Yoke) asks Jagannāthan to be the witness of her voluntary death, illustrate the need of such a relationship, despite Yoke’s obsessive quest for individual freedom.

               The second notion linked to the concept of freedom, i.e. renunciation, runs through all Ajñeya’s works since the 50’s. In Bhavantī for instance, the meaning of life is said to depend on the state of renunciation:

पूरी बात यह कि वास्तविकता का पूरा अर्थ और सच्चा रूप उस मुक्तावस्था में दीखता है जो उत्सर्ग के, विदाई के क्षण में मिलती है । जीवन का अर्थ भी, इस लिए, मृत्यु के साक्षात्कार के क्षण में नहीं, मुक्ति के ही क्षण में दीखता है – उस मुक्ति के जो जीवन के उत्सर्ग के क्षण में मिलती है ।[xxvii]

The same kind of assertion is made in “Merī svādhīnătā: sab kī svādhīnătā”:

उस बोधिसत्त्व की कथा कई वर्षों बाद सुनी जिस ने मानव मात्र की मुक्ति के लिए स्वयं अपनी मुक्ति का मार्ग उत्सर्ग कर दिया था । और यह तो इस के भी कुछ वर्ष बाद समझ में आया कि यह उत्सर्ग ही सच्चा और एकमात्र स्वाधीन कर्म है ।[xxviii]

Renunciation (utsarg), looseness (¶hīl), dispossession, these are all attitudes without which the ego and the dependence to time would always stand as obstacles to the artist in search of freedom. Vatsyayan comments accordingly his short story “Kalākār kī mukti” and the choice of Pygmalion to reject the living statue:

“[L’artiste] est parvenu à un état de total dépouillement, ayant renoncé à la fois à son ego et à la faveur des dieux, le dépouillement étant la condition préalable de la liberté, et le renoncement ce qui rend l’art indépendant du temps.”[xxix]

               In conclusion to this part, a last comment should be made regarding the (absence of) contextualization in “Nāc”. The poem is indeed illustrative of the absence of any specified cultural background in many Ajñeya’s works. Nothing is said about the origin and the social background of the dancer, or about the audience. The show may be produced in any country, at any time. On the one hand, this method prevents the reader’s attention to be diverted from the real issue of the text. On the other hand, it gives to the issue a sense of universal validity. Like for most of Ajñeya’s short stories written after Independence, the lack of specific socio-historical contextualization in “Nāc” allows both the writer and the reader to focus exclusively on the characters, their acts, thoughts and perceptions, and on the essential elements that form the show.

               This way of describing the situation emphasizes all the more the misperception of the spectators who concentrate their attention on the dance when they should, according to the speaker, as well look at the other components of the show. Then only would they be able to feel the underlying and omnipresent tension – a tension in which lies precisely the possibility of release.

 

 

Concluding comments

Seeming at first sight a rather simple poem, “Nāc” proved to be a much more complex text than expected. However, to disclose its full complexity was possible mainly because of the multilevel analysis that was adopted in this paper – although several other readings may still be added. Dealing with the poem according to one single approach would have kept unveiled several of its most important aspects, and our interpretation would certainly have remained unilateral and biased. For instance, it is only through the three levels of analysis that it has become evident that the concept of “tension” is a key element of the poem. At the syntactic level, we saw that this concept is used by the speaker as one of the grammatical subjects of the central parts 7 and 8, thus receiving as much importance as the “I” of the dancer and as the audience. At the semantic level, it appeared that “tension” is essential to the understanding of the whole poem, either in regard to the apparent result of the show, i.e. the dance, or as the unavoidable counterpart of its real aim, i.e. release. And at the epistemic and social level, we have seen that tension – together with mukti and svādhīnătā – was since the beginning of the writer’s life a catalyst for his restless quest towards a fulfilled individual life in concord with the social environment.

               To sum up, the syntactic analysis has been useful in highlighting the opposition prevailing between the two points of view of the dancer and the audience, their dialogism, and the highly elaborated construction of the poem. The semantic approach has been helpful in explaining the symbolism of the elements of the show, which, otherwise, might well have been seen as mere objects without any special meaning. Finally, the results that were obtained through the semantic and social level of analysis have provided a wider understanding of Ajñeya’s philosophy and have helped diminishing the gap between the interpretations of the dancer and the audience in showing that both “characters” actually play a significant role in regard to epistemic issues.

               More generally, this poem should surely be read as the illustration of Ajñeya’s knowing that a veil would always remain between his writing, his acting, and the way we, readers and scholars, would interpret his work. It reminds us of the necessity to look at literary works, and especially poems, as creations whose meanings are never fully independent of our own relative and limited personal and socio-historical backgrounds and preconceptions. “Nāc”, “without doubt”, can be seen as an early specimen of postmodern literature, not so much because of the form of the poem, but because of the way it questions our habits to look at the “reality” of life and at its various shows.

References

Ajñeya, 1980, MahāvÛk· ke nīce (kavitāe× 1974-76). Dillī: Rājpāl & Sons.

Ajñeya, 1989, Bhavantī. Dillī: Rājpāl & Sons.

Ajñeya, 2001, “Kalākār kī mukti” (1954). In: Ajñeya k´ sampèrö kahŒniyŒ×. Dill´: RŒjpŒl & Sons, 599-603.

Ajñeya, 2002, “Merī svādhīnătā: sab kī svādhīnătā” (1978). In: Kavi nika·: Gadyakār Ajñeya. Dillī: Prabhāt prakāśan, 198-203.

Miśra, Vidyānivās & Śāh, Rameścandra (eds), 1995, Ajñeya kāvya-stabak. Nayī Dillī: Sāhitya akādemī.

Montaut, Annie, 1992, “Western Influence on Hindi Literature: A Dialogical Process (Ajñeya’s Apne-apne ajnabî)”. In: M. Offredi (ed.) Literature, Language and the Media in India. Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Amsterdam 1990. Delhi: Manohar, 117-137.

Pozza, Nicola, 2010, “Translating from India and the Moving Space of Translation (Illustrated by the Works of Ajñeya)”. In: M. Burger & N. Pozza (eds.) India in Translation through Hindi Literature: A Plurality of Voices. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Hindi Literature and Translation, Lausanne, 6-8 November 2008. Bern: Peter Lang (to be released in Fall 2010).

Vatsyayan, S.H., 1964, “Quelques aspects du roman indien contemporain”. Diogene 12(45), 52-68.

Vatsyayan, S.H., 1981, A Sense of Time: An Exploration of Time in Theory, Experience and Art. Delhi [etc.]: Oxford University Press.

Appendix A

नाच

A            I              1°            i         1     एक तनी हुई रस्सी है जिस पर मैं नाचता हूँ ।

            II             2°                     2     जिस तनी हुई रस्सी पर मैं नाचता हूँ

                                                3     वह दो खम्भों के बीच है ।

            III           3°                            4     रस्सी पर मैं जो नाचता हूँ

                                                5     वह एक खम्भे से दूसरे खम्भे तक का नाच है ।

            IV           4°                        6     दो खम्भों के बीच जिस तनी हुई रस्सी पर मैं नाचता हूँ

                                                7     उस पर तीखी रोशनी पड़ती है

                                    ii           8     जिस में लोग मेरा नाच देखते हैं ।

                V             5°                        9     न मुझे देखते हैं जो नाचता है

                                                10   न रस्सी को जिस पर मैं नाचता हूँ

                                                11   न खम्भों को जिस पर रस्सी तनी है

                                                12   न रोशनी को ही जिस में नाच दीखता है :

                                                13   लोग सिर्फ़ नाच देखते हैं ।

B             VI           6°       iii          14            पर मैं जो नाचता हूँ

                                                15           जो जिस रस्सी पर नाचता हूँ

                                                16           जो जिन खम्भों के बीच है

                                                17           जिस पर जो रोशनी पड़ती है

                                                18           उस रोशनी में उन खम्भों के बीच उस रस्सी पर

                                                19           असल में मैं नाचता नहीं हूँ ।

                VII          7°            iv          20   मैं केवल उस खम्भे से इस खम्भे तक दौड़ता हूँ

                                                21   कि इस या उस खम्भे से रस्सी खोल दूँ

                                                22   कि तनाव चुके और ढील में मुझे छुट्टी हो जाये –

                VIII        8°                            23   पर तनाव ढीलता नहीं

                                                24   और मैं इस खम्भे से उस खम्भे तक दौड़ता हूँ

                                                25   पर तनाव वैसा ही बना रहता है

                                                26   सब कुछ वैसा ही बना रहता है ।

C       IX                v          27           और वही मेरा नाच है जिसे सब देखते हैं

                        9°                   28           मुझे नहीं

                                                29           रस्सी को नहीं

                                                30           खम्भे नहीं

                                                31           रोशनी नहीं

                                                32           तनाव भी नहीं

                                10°                   33           देखते हैं –– नाच !

Appendix B

खुले में खड़ा पेड़

भूल कर

सवेरे

देहात की सैर करने गया था ।

वहाँ मैं ने देखा

खुले में खड़ा पेड़ ।

और लौट कर

मैंने घरवाली को डाँटा है,

बच्ची को पीटा है :

दफ़्तर पहुँच कर बास पर कुढ़ूँगा

और बड़े बास को

भिंचे दाँतों के बीच से सिसकारती गाली दूँगा ।

क्यों मेरी अकल मारी गयी थी कि मैं

देहात में देखने गया

खुले में खड़ा पेड़ ?

---