Workshop on various Art forms - Day 1

        

       Today on 24^th September, I have attended a workshop related various art forms. It was organized by Balvant Parekh centre, Vadodara, and Department of Gujarati MK Bhavnagar University.

Here is the brochure:

      As it is mentioned in the brochure, the painter Amit Ambalal has came to talk about paintings; Ratilal Kansodariya has talked about an art of sculptures and Rajendra Kumar sinh has discussed about the caves and paintings of Ajanta caves.

       

     The session has started at 11 a.m. but we reached there at 10 a.m. to help the students of Gujarati Department and I have observed that the students were working under the guidance of the professors of Gujarati Department. It takes really hard work to organize such event.

                          

    After welcoming the guests by books, the first session was film screening – “Art Chronicles” which was a documentary film on Amit Ambalal’s life. It was directed by Jigar Kapadiya and Ronak Suparivala. In the film Amit Ambalal was telling his journey from childhood to a most popular painter. In the starting of the film Amitsir has described ‘art’ by saying that,

“Art is a combination of person’s history of life with inner sense”

  

     This definition of art reminds me the essay by T. S. Eliot “Tradition and Individual Talent” that artist (poet) is a medium and the experience and feelings creates art. The second important thing he explained was that the modern art is a sudden expression and classical art has spiritual touch as it is recollected emotions in tranquillity. The fellow  artists
of Amitsir noticed that he has a narration of an event in his paintings, it has its own environment.

Here I have shared some of his paintings with his elaboration:

      In this painting, the man is practicing Yoga and an animal is watching it with curiosity like it is saying that “I am an animal and I don’t need to do any effort to be an animal, but why you need to prove yourself again and again that you are human”

       Another important symbolism in his paintings was monkey and crow, which is interpreted by Prof. Dilip Barad also in his Facebook post, you can refer it by clicking here.Monkey is very much related with science (evolution of human species) and Religion (God Hanuman)

      He also painted corporate world by painted abstract images of managers and employees, and their artificiality. In some of his paintings there were children, he mentioned in his documentary that he was not able to enjoy his childhood as he should and the reason is very interesting for an artist because to express such suppressed emotions in art is the best way.

      There were some art pieces created by him like gestures of humans when they are thinking, it reminds me the play by Samuel Becket and how Vladimir asks Lucky to think. Only an artist could observe such very ordinary things in an extraordinary way. there were so many interesting paintings like, “Tiger and Tulips”, “You can have all the burden. I will play flute”, “God of small pains” and many more, those paintings cannot be collected in this blog of less than 1000 words.

     The second session was about various sculptures and the speaker was very famous artist Ratilal Kansodariya. You can view some photographs of his sculpture here(FB wall of Dr. Dilip Barad). Ratilal Kansodariya has describes the techniques of making sculptures and the process needs really hard work and dedication. We can feel the touch of his whole life and childhood experiences in his art.

    The last speaker was Rajendrakumar Sinh. He is doing research on Ajanta caves from last 22 years and he shared such important facts about caves, and coonected the dots of archaeology – Art – Religion (Buddhism) – history with contemporary world.

    After each session there were 15-30 minutes have given for the discussion and question answers and students have expressed their curiosity by asking so many interesting questions.

    I have enjoyed as well as learned so many new things from the first day of workshop and waiting for tomorrow... for the next session.

"She walks in Beauty" - Lord Byron

She walks in Beauty

-          Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron)

        Lord Byron was Anglo- Scottish poet and important figure in Romanticism; he was a scholar and widely read, because of his abilities he was mostly known as “Lord Byron”. Famous works of Lord Byron is “Don Juan”, “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage” and a short lyric “She walks in beauty”.

      

        Here I am sharing my favourite poem “She walks in Beauty” which I have also studied in my Bachelors. Lord Byron has written this poem for his cousin sister, who was widow and wearing a black dress. This concept of admiring the beauty of widow reminds me the poem I have studied in my Masters, “The Fakeer of Jungheera” by Henry Derozio, who described the beauty of Nuleeni – a Sati. The poem includes pain, darkness with the brighter elements of a girl, her eyes, her beauty and her innocence is more powerful than her black dress and mourning for her husband.

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

    

       From the very first stanza there is a contradiction, “like the night”.  It suggests that night is beautiful with the stars and moon but night has a darkness which suggests the mourning of a girl and her dress. The best elements of dark and night meet in her eyes, like she has the best things from darkness and brightness. The light of a lady is tender and not gaudy, which suggests that it gives pleasure to eyes rather than making the viewer blind with shining, the comparison could be with day/sun light which is more powerful and night/moon light which gives us peace.

    

      “One shade the more, one ray the less” clearly suggests that her beauty is very perfectly beautiful. Poet is not able to give a name to her grace, he addresses her grace as a “nameless grace”. If we find the meaning of “raven trees” in google images, it shows a black tree with almost no leafs, the hair of lady is very similar like branches of tree, it gently placed over her face.

     In the third stanza poet describes her soft smile, with the help of her cheek and brow, and when she smiles the blush on her face makes her more beautiful. Her smile is all because of her days which she has spent in goodness, and this is the reason that she could smile innocently. The lady’s heart is innocent and her mind is pure, without any bad thought for anyone.

     In this poem Lord Byron has very beautifully presented the connection between inner beauty and external beauty. The lady has fair skin and big eyes but she also has innocence in her eyes and purity in her mind. Without purity and innocence the beauty is just physical, but this lady walks in beauty, and the word ‘beauty’ is used for pure love, innocence, gentleness, calmness, and peace, and all these elements are necessary for life.  

"Dream" and "I Desire" - Contemporary Bengali Poems translated in English

         Few days ago when I was in library of Department of English, I was finding a book of poems and I found “Contemporary Bengali Poems” written by different contemporary Bengali writers and translated in English by Tapan Kumar Maity, Supriya Chatterjee, Ananta Das and Debashis Chattopadhyay. The book is edited by Tapan Kumar Maity and Ananta Das.

         

        

       When I started reading this book, in Foreward, the first paragraph was about ‘translation’. It’s all about hard work of a translator,

“Translation is a very difficult work in the field of literature. Mere linguistic knowledge is not sufficient. A translator must be equally familiar and proficient in two languages and must have linguistic control.”

       

       A writer can write at his/her own but when it’s about translation, the writer has to choose proper words and language structure to express the same emotions which the original writer wanted to express. It is all about being bilingual, first to read in a native language and then translate it into any other language with same expression. The most interesting thing about this book is, on the left side there a poem in Bangali language (the original one) and on the right side there is a translation of it in English.

Here I have took two poems which I liked most from the book,

Dream

Sometimes you calmly stare at me unwinkingly

As the moon peeps through grill of the window.

In which thought are you absorbed! Or sunk in dream!

I’ve spent the days by dreaming since childhood.

Dream is deceit, dream is false, dream is incense

Being a bird dream spreads its wings of sorrow.

One who cares little of gain or loss

He also dreams in reality the word sleep

Is inseparably knotted with life.

   

The poem is written by Arup Panti and Translated by Ananta Das.

            

      The poem is all about dreams and how it is deeply related with our life. We dream from childhood and it most of the times, they are just dreams... dreams are absurd and leads us towards absurdity, but we still enjoys it and wants to dream every night. As poet has said that dreams are deceit, false and incense, it leads us to our unfulfilled desires and gives us sorrow, but the metaphor of bird and wings gives a positive feeling of freedom and delight, dreams are also like this, it gives a satisfaction and also provocation to our desires. They are knotted with our life, without dreams a person can’t live, a deep psychology of dreams works for our life.

I Desire

Day by day by growing

I exceeded the height of palm tree

Exceeding palm tree

Surpassing breeze

Dodging the aqua-cloud

I reached very near the blue star

Spreading its blue gleam

The star speaks of the earth

Spreading blue glow the star speaks of the home

Love and pain dropping down from the blue portrait

Within my heart reverberation of humming of swollen waves

I desire

I strongly desire

I desire from the core of my heart

There will be a home of ours in the radiated azure of you...

I am beside you

and the blue portrait by the side of you.

The poem is written by Chitra Lahiri and translated by Ananta Das.

       

       Our desires are the reason of both, our rise as well as fall. The poetess explains that the desire is growing like palm tree, the metaphor of ‘palm tree’ is very significant because a palm tree contains history with humans as old as the first societies and palm trees most of time grows in a sandy and in soil salinity, a land which contains salt. Desires are also as old as human lives. Finally the palm tree of desire reaches to the blue star by surpassing the aqua-cloud. The blue stars are very hot, brighter and rare stars in the universe, and after reaching there, there is a reverberation of swollen waves, ultimately the desire of poetess is to reach near “you” this ‘you’ can be anyone from her life, and when ‘we’ are reading, ‘you’ could be from our life, and when a person reaches to his/her desire love and pain drops down, and what remain is I and you, souls.