The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

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The Signature of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of bestseller ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ came out with another book in 2013 called ‘The Signature of All Things.’  ‘Eat, Pray and Love’ was a semi-autobiographical account in which she suffered from midlife crisis and after a heartrending divorce travelled on a spiritual quest to Italy, Indonesia and India. Julia Roberts played the role of the author in the film adaptation, but the verdict remained uncontested that the book was better than the film.

‘The Signature of All Things’ is a big book set in a big century, the 19^th century. The heroine Alma Whittaker, born at the dawn of the century, represents the age of enlightenment. She is an independent woman, a botanist with a thirst for knowledge of the living world. Her study of human beings (their compulsions and actions) and her engagement with mosses leads her to write a treatise on the evolution of the living world. Coincidentally her work overlaps with the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The brilliance of the Elizabeth’s book rests on the premise of how the author takes the reader through interludes with people and plants on to the theory of evolution. The book ultimately questions the basic paradigm in Darwin’s theory i.e. if evolution is the story of survival of the fittest through natural selection, what place do altruism and sacrifice of human beings have in this picture of fierce competition?

Elizabeth holds the reader from the word go with an engaging character Henry Whittaker, Alma’s self-made father. He is an illiterate vagrant in Sir Joseph Bank’s Kew Gardens and a deck hand on Captain Cook’s HMS Resolution but his expanding knowledge of botany (inherited from his gardener father) catapults him into an experimental realm of medicinal and ornamental plants. With his maverick spirit and die-hard “I shall win,” attitude, he becomes the richest man in Philadelphia and one of the three richest men in the Western Hemisphere.

Alma is her father’s daughter. “She looked precisely like Henry, ginger of hair, florid of skin, wide of mouth and abundant of nose.” Henry takes great pride in her intelligence and resourcefulness. Right from the age of four, she is allowed to sit at the dining table at White Acre (their country estate in Philadelphia) and converse with intellectuals flourishing in commercial enterprises by dint of their ingenious ideas. Venerable philosophers, well-regarded men of science, promising new inventors, respected thinkers, translators and actors are summoned to their house, and discussions go on late into the night. Brought up on immense wealth combined with the best of ideas and diligent hard work, no doubt Alma grows up to be an intellectual consumed by logic and science. Her immersion in the study of moss and its snail-pace growth dynamics is interspersed with her great cravings for physical satiation and family relationships.

“The Plum of White Acre”, as her father endearingly calls her, is loved by everyone but she has a strained relationship with her adopted sister Prudence. Whereas Alma is plain, highly intelligent and practical, Prudence is beautiful, not so bright and extremely austere. Each covets the other’s quality and is jealous. Though they never get along on the surface, they sacrifice for each other. Prudence gives up the love of her life George Hawkes (for Alma), and Alma her entire wealth and estate for Prudence’s abolitionist causes and charity.

The book is polyphonic, peopled by an interesting gamut of characters, each propelled by innate compulsions and quests. These different voices lend varied dimensions to how life is lived by people according to their perceptions.  A wide spectrum of behavioral patterns lends a richness to the human story of the living world.  Henry, the unethical owner of immense wealth does not want to share his fortune outside his blood family. Reverend Welles, who is on a mission of spreading Christian values, regards every human being as his family and is non-judgmental and an extremely forgiving human soul. Dees Van Devender, a wealthy Dutchman, is a family man, very cautious and given to charity secretly without any recognition.  Georges Hawkes, the sensitive scholar who loves Prudence (Alma loves him too) and on a rebound marries dimwit Rhetta when Prudence turns down his proposal in favour of her sister. Ambrose Pike, the botanist and a highly spiritual human being who meets a horrible end when his search for purity and high consciousness brings him defeat and immense disappointment from his loved ones (Alma and Tomorrow Morning) Alma and the Tahitian Tomorrow Morning are mortals with human desires and sensations seeking bodily fulfillment, which clash fatally with Pike’s aspirations of meeting with angels.

The large number of characters are intertwined with real historical philosophers and scientists – like Alfred Wallace Stevens, a scientist who admired Darwin and nearly published his theory of evolution on the same lines but refrained to do so and happily shared in Darwin’s success and luminosity. The tableaux of human souls, real and fictional, etch out Alma’s own quest to understand the human world in tandem with the plant world. It’s as if Elizabeth makes Alma the conduit for the search of unanswered questions on the origin, survival and futurist evolutionary trends of the living world. She is asking - Why do we do the things we do, Who directs us, Why do we clash, Why we choose what we choose, Where are we going, What is dying? And innumerable such mystifying questions.

The writing is pacy and packed with ideologies of the enlightenment era. The landscapes from London to Tasmania, Philadelphia, Tahiti and Amsterdam feature man’s herculean efforts to tame Earth and its resources (natural or living) for his needs and desires. The story also reflects how religion or more specifically, the beliefs propagated by the word of God are interpreted by men which then shape their destiny.  

No wonder the writing turned out to fill pages after pages, an ongoing quest!

Antonio Piedade da Cruz's art

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Cruzo’s Homecoming!         

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer and historian of Renaissance and is most famous for his treatise ‘Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects.’ Often called "the first art historian”, Vasari compiled artistic biographies, immortalizing works and lives of artists of his era. By this argument, Ranjit Hoskote, the cultural theorist, art critic, curator and poet has become the ‘Vasari’ of contemporary times. Through his writings and meditations, which range between poems, essays, monographs and biographies, he has chronicled the works and lives of many artists. His latest curatorial work on the twentieth century Goan artist Antonio Piedade de Cruz is on display at Sunaparanta, The Goa Centre for Arts.

In retrospect, Hoskote writes that during his student days’ in the 1980s, he had often sighted Cruzo’s studio marked with red metal letters on the first floor of Stadium House on Bombay’s Churchgate Street. After Cruzo passed away, the studio had fallen into obscurity with time, given India’s negligence towards its art and heritage. Sixteen paintings, which are now on display in their magnificence, had been relegated to oblivion, shut in the abandoned dark studio in Bombay’s humid weather conditions. Dataraj Salgoankar chanced upon them in the old studio and realized the treasure he had found. He commissioned the restorer Kayan Marshall Pandole to resurrect the paintings and called upon Hoskote to research and curate the exhibition. Thus began the ‘Quest for Cruzo.’

During the opening of the exhibition at Sunaparanta this month, Hoskote dwelled upon the importance of Cruzo’s art in the history of Indian art history. Cruzo spanned a tumultuous and eventful era in Indian and European cultural milieux in the twentieth century. Born in Verlim, Goa, Cruzo studied at the J.J.School of Art, Mumbai and further went to Germany to study painting at the Academy of Arts in Berlin – the Akademie der Künste. His influences included Dhurandhar, a renowned faculty at JJ, known for his mythological and historical subjects. In Germany, he was under the tutelage of history painter Arthur von Kampf, the nationalist artist Ferdinand Spiegel, and the church painter and poster artist Paul Plontke. Dusseldorf school of painting, dramatic poster art and Christian art against the backdrop of First World War and build-up of nationalistic fascist regimes must have left an imprint on his persona. His loud claim to be identified as an Indian colonial subject rather than a Portuguese national (Portugal had granted citizenship to Goans) during his exhibition at Lisbon speaks of his rootedness and belongingness to his native soil.

Hoskote has streamlined the curatorial construct of Cruzo’s works into three sanctums. At the beginning is the ‘Sanctum of the Self.’ In this curatorial walk at the exhibition, he defined portraitist art of a painter as a search for self. In the journey of self-exploration, an artist finds himself in his portrayal of the other. In his times, Cruzo was in great demand for portraits by the Indian elite, expatriates and the British administrators. Life-like paintings of his clientele boast of Cruzo’s patronage and popularity within prestigious circles of colonized India. Amidst these, his two self-portraits acquire a significance of their own. With a brush and palette in hand, he is flanked by a nurse on one side and a lively skeleton with a violin on the other. About this piece, Hoskote writes in his catalogue essay, “Da Cruz tunes the convergence of art, intellect and medicine to a hallucinatory intensity. The rival claimants exerting their hold on the artist suspend us in a paradox. Is the nurse life or Love or inspiration or Stasis? Is the skeleton Death, or Art? Does sanity ossify, or is art fatal? ” He says that the painting mystifies and does not leave us a simple Manichean choice between clear opposites (black or white/good or evil)

The other two sanctums, of the Mahatma and of Christ, though presented in linearity for easy comprehension at the exhibition, are a reflection of Cruzo’s internal strife. He may have reveled profitably in his portraitist art but his core resonated to the beat of a different drummer. Torn apart by the misery and anguish of India’s anti-colonial struggle, the Bengal famine, the Partition, the exigencies of poverty and hierarchy of caste system, his artwork conveys his complex inner miasma of despair. There is no denying the anguish and agony largely writ through the expressionist lingo of his art form.

The unquestionably arresting and dystopic tableaux ‘You Crucified Me Again’ and ‘Mother India’ intertwine realism with allegory. In the former, the crucifixion is projected on a backdrop of modern warfare (painted during the Vietnam War and the continuing Cold War) portraying bombed multi-storeyed buildings, marching soldiers and battle tanks. The atmosphere is painted with rough dark brush-strokes complementing the subject, incorporating the Danube school of painting, says Hoskote. Mother India, evoking the striking poster art of Paul Plonke, is a dramatic, defiant figure open to any challenge, for she has seen the ultimate – fratricidal war in which a Hindu brother has fatally crossed with his Muslim kin.

These allegorical works through symbolism and allusions also direct the viewer’s attention to the recurring motif of a redeemer in his paintings - Christ, Buddha or the Mahatma. Whereas Buddha is merely alluded to through pictorial tropes, the life-like figures of Gandhi and Christ surrounded by people merge to invoke the liberation theology of the oppressed - God is after all on their side. 

Hoskote also alludes to the Mexican votive in these works, which represent a narrative of a personal story of miracle or favor received rather than static images of saints. Hoskote opines that the Christ iconography of Cruzo can be contemplated in tandem with the Indianized Christian art studies of Angelo da Fonseca and the biblical art of FN Souza.

The Quest for Cruzo’ has just begun, and will keep gathering substratum with Hoskote’s ceaseless strivings on the path to fortify a cultural legacy of our times. Maya Angelo believed in leaving gaps and holes in her prose, such that a reader could enter and actively engage with it, and in the process of participation complete it. Vocalizing a similar thought, Hoskote says that Cruzo’s creative art too can be interpreted in myriad ways. Finally it’s the engagement which matters!

The Mill and the Cross

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                                   The Mill and the Cross

‘The Mill and the Cross’ was featured by Sachin Chatte in the Wednesday film club at Sunapranta last week. Wonder of wonders, the film brings three creative arts together – painting, writing and visual arts.  The film is based on the book with the same title by art historian and critic, Michael Frank Gibson, which itself is a lively rendering of his scholarly work dedicated to a sixteenth century painting-  ‘The Way to Cavalry’ by Peter Bruegel. 

It takes the reader close to the painting and unravels the elements of symbolism, aesthetics and allusions in the artwork of the Flemish painter. Gibson’s book and Majewski’s film examine the painting through a magnifying lens, thereby becoming brilliant feats of artistic research and deliverance themselves. Paying a tribute to Bruegel and his spectacular masterpiece in their own ways, they make the renaissance political artwork relevant to contemporary times.

Bruegel (played by Rutger Hauer) was a poet and a painter in sixteenth century Flanders, Netherlands. He was a flaneur who walked amongst the people observing, recording and sketching. His works express his emotional and intellectual connect with the land and its people. “The essence of his artworks like Hunters in the Snow and The Tower of Babel was based on the fact that you can delve into them, you want to touch these people, walk among them. When I look at Hunters in the Snow I hear the crunch of snow, I can feel it in my gums. I can hear the snap of the fire, the yells of people on frozen lakes, crows and ravens, I can feel the icy air,” says Majewski.

Majewski, too, is a poet and painter. He wanted to paint with a video camera and studied film-making.  He became the avant garde of everything that was happening in visual arts. He recognized that Italian filmmaker Michaelangelo Antonioni’s film ‘Blow-up’ was one that came close to such an endeavor, and set out to do something on similar lines. His first film ‘The Knight’ is a nod to renaissance painting. He was amazed by Gibson’s book and decided to make the subject matter (Bruegel’s – Road to Cavalry) a visual gaze that extends beyond a viewing in an art gallery.

Shot mainly in front of a blue screen, the film was put together with a number of CGI graphics and took two years to attain an image as close as possible to the work by Bruegel.

 It became a symbol of cinematic freedom because its prime focus never strayed from the painting. All the shots are contained within its frame to portray a live vibrant life peopled by characters, opening up a whole array of meanings, providing a great deal of knowledge about the painting and its maker, as well as the times in which it was painted.

The film opens with a close shot of the painting and the camera enters the painting taking the viewers along to showcase an evocative picture of peasant life in erstwhile Flanders. Their hard working spirit is mirrored amidst simple moments of indulgence and fun. A group of children alight the screen with their pranks and laughter. But the ever-pervasive shadow of the red-tunic cavalry of the Spanish king pilfering and punishing infidels (heretics- Protestants) casts a darkness of doom and injustice on the pastoral setting. Innocuous men are beaten-up and hoisted on a cross to be preyed upon by birds and half-alive women are buried in open graves.

The commentary and monologues of Rutger Hauer in the film personify Bruegel and highlight the different aspects of the painting developing around the stories of people that he witnesses. His representation of the plight and pain of the peasants in the name of religion and the injustice of the mighty, is wrought against a backdrop of Christian culture since antiquity.

During Bruegel’s days, myths commanded lives of people and their imprint in the arts was discernible. A craggy high rock surmounted by a colossal windmill (Cosmic Mill) represents the universal law of God. The mill owner views the entire scene non-committally perched on a high platform, as the grinders of his mill crush grain ceaselessly.

The unseen Jesus in the middle of the painting carries a cross to Cavalry for his crucifixion and the red-tunic soldiers personify the Roman guard of Pontius Pilate. Thus, the Passion of Christ is superbly juxtaposed with the passion of Flanders, being crucified by the Spanish king’s army, in Bruegel’s days. The sunny side on left of the painting is balanced by the darkness of press of people to the right who have come to witness the crucifixion on the Golgotha hill. The theme of Precession of the Equinoxes is invoked to explain the deep-rooted tradition of passing of ages. The painting conveys binaries of progress and regression in succeeding ages of earth and repeated patterns in the story of mankind.

Another marked feature of the film was expressions of people on way to cavalry – unconcerned and hardened against injustice, lest their remorse should invoke soldiers’ ire. They are inured, moving from one horrifying spectacle to another, preserving their own skin, till time indicts them. Thus, the elements of the painting which appear incomprehensible or unconnected in the beginning, weave themselves into a connected whole at the end of the film.

This creative endeavor by Majewski is an attempt to preserve legacy of art and history for posterity and is a savoury sampling in contemporary times. Sachin’s comment at the end of the film – “How cruel human beings can be” rang in my ears long after it was over. A must watch!  

Literature for Young Adults

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                                                       Literature for Young Adults

In our ongoing posts about the reading habit, today we shall focus on youth literature.  Research studies in 1920 concluded that youth literature was a category by itself.  The literary world had turned its attention to writing exclusive books for young readers.  As a result, there came into being a segregation between children’s literature (which was about candy floss, fairy tales, wishes coming true etc.) and writings for young adults (where the subject matter differed greatly).  Youth literature focused on age related issues from 13 to 16 years and then 17 to 25 years. This is a period of life where growing children experience puberty and come into their own. They want to think for themselves and make independent choices. It is a tumultuous phase of weaning away from parental pressures, choosing academic careers, and vocations for themselves and striking out on their own in the adult world. ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Lord of Flies’ written in the 50s were breakthrough books which boldly portrayed such issues to young readers. ‘The Outsider’ by S.E Hinton is another such western novel dealing with the dark side of adolescence.  Susan Eloise was 17 years old when she wrote it.  The novel came to be a cult teen read for young adults.

Cultural context becomes important when we consider the subject matter for teen literature.  Issues which may be relevant in a western society may not hold well in the Orient.  However, in our global world today, cultural boundaries are dissolving and changing this paradigm. Cosmopolitanism has led to a common culture and shared themes. Reading literature from varied writers introduces young readers to different perspectives and altered realities preparing them to be global citizens. Internationally successful books by Rior Riordon, Stephenie Meyer are a craze with young people everywhere. Other notable mentions include the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy, ‘Lord of the Rings’ and the ‘Infiniti Ring’ series.  Let’s also discover other classical gems in this genre.  

‘Anne of Green Gables’ written by award-winning Canadian writer L. M. Montgomery is part of school curriculums across the world. Robert Browning’s quote “When God’s in heaven, all’s is well with the world” forms the last line of the first book in the series. In the book, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, siblings in their fifties and sixties, decide to adopt a boy from an orphanage to help Matthew run his farm. They live at Green Gables – their Avonlea farmhouse on Prince Edward Island.  Through a misunderstanding, the orphanage sends Anne Shirley. The novel recounts how Anne with her youthful idealism and spirituality makes her way with the Cuthberts, in school and in town. She has a very wild imagination.  Her unfailing positive energy propels her to impart the most innovative names to insipid and fabulous places alike.  The red-haired, freckle-faced girl faces the world with the sheer force of her personality.  She opines, “It’s so easy to be wicked, without knowing it.” The book series, thereafter, chronicles her life’s trials and tribulations through adolescence to adulthood.

Judy Blume and Jacqueline Wilson share something common regardless of their origins and writing styles. They both came in for censure for their themes of writing for young adults, even though their books were published half a century apart. Their focus on controversial subjects of sexuality, divorce, foster homes, adoption, mental illness, menstruation, masturbation, birth control and death had the adult world up in arms against their books.  Airing of taboo topics always creates a furore. Nonetheless they persisted in their writings and their books became bestsellers. Teenagers wanted to read them because they felt that the issues, many of which could not be discussed with their parents and teachers, were very relevant to their lives.  A young reader said, “I felt empowered to face the world after reading Blume’s books.”  ‘Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret’ and ‘Blubber’ are Blume’s famous works based on sexuality and bullying. In contemporary fiction, Wilson has received great acclaim on similar lines for her lifetime contribution as a children's writer and she was a UK nominee for the International Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2014.

Another safe bet when browsing for books to read is to look for award-winning young adult authors.  The 1970s through the mid-1980s have been described as the golden age of young-adult fiction. Lois Lowry became widely known for her book ‘The Giver’. A book reviewer said, “Lowry’s exceptional use of metaphors and subtle complexity makes it a book that will be discussed, debated and challenged for years to come...a perfect teen read.”  By the turn of the new millennium, this rage caught on and the World Wars and the Holocaust were the mainstay of many writers for young adults. ‘The Book Thief’ by Australian author Marcus Zukas and ‘The Boy in Striped Pyjamas’ by the Irish author John Boyne topped bestselling lists for years. John Green’s ‘Paper Towns’, ‘Looking for Alaska’, Sherman Alexie’s ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian’ are some of the hits today.

The graphic novel was a revolutionary trend to hit the teen book world in the 80s. ‘A Contract With God’ and ‘Maus’ laid a strong foundation, and then there was no looking back. In a way, the genre opened ways of tackling sensitive and explosive subject matter with greater expressive ease using pithy text and graphics. ‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Hellboy’, ‘Invisibles’ and ‘The Tale of One Bad Rat’ have a following that seems to be ever on the increase.

Lastly the age-old classics, not of a particular age but for all time, lure young readers with their heavy contemplations and asides. Authors such as Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott remain favorites. Amongst timeless characters, Philip Pirrip in Great Expectations (Pip) grips readers at an early age. Like him, many youngsters harbour hopes of escaping the loving, but limited, quotidian world that surrounds them at home. And like Pip, they learn to be ashamed of those good people that they love and then bitterly ashamed of that shame. On the other hand, Pip’s uncle, the modest and sweet Joe Gargery, brings out the best in young readers. He motivates and at the same time humbles young readers to let go their big EGO and to LOVE unconditionally.

The list is never ending but I hope my three-part series on the reading habit for children has given readers a glimpse into the wonderful world of books. I wish and pray that many will take to this journey of lifelong companionship with books.

The Reading Habit

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                                                             The Reading Habit

In the previous post, we explored literature for children between age groups four and eight years. Publishing houses in India, Tara, Katha, Tulika, Rupa and Navneet, to name a few, have done wonders by publishing reading material for very young children. Today we delve into reading material for preteens where a lacuna exists in terms of Indian children’s fiction for age group 8 years and above.

As parents we are primarily concerned with improving academic proficiency of our children. Little or no attention is paid to let children imbibe the pleasures of reading for reading sake. If we want children to inculcate habits of self-discovery through reading, we must stop being didactic, preachy and moralistic in our outlook. The idea of reading books with the sole aim of improving communication skills needs to be thrown out lock, stock and barrel.  A few Indian authors are contributing in this regard; the preteen book market is a significant market and publishers and distributors need to tap it better.

Ranjit Lal’s books like ‘Faces in the Water’, ‘Battle for No. 19’ have a following as they deal with contemporary issues such as female foeticide, terrorism and riots, deftly using children characters to tell stories.  Manjula Padmnabhan’s ‘Unprincess’ is about a maverick girl who takes up her own battles and knows her mind. This shift in portrayal of female characters is liked and appreciated by young readers. Subhadra Sen Gupta has made historical fiction writing her forte and she churns out a fine blend of fact and fiction to hook her readers. This is a good example for how history can be relayed through colorful and imaginative stories instead of a series of dates in dry prosaic text.  

Luckily, in today’s global world, our children also have access to foreign literature. Authors abroad understand the need for fast and pacy action in their books for young readers. Their books are oriented to thrill and charge their young readers like a video game. Geeky personalities, technology wars, adventurous characters and myths keep children glued to books like Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, Big Nate, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter series. While Enid Blyton, Geronimo Slilton and Roald Dahl still remain favorites, new age fiction has become quite varied for kids today.

Kirsty Murray, an Australian author of children’s fiction, is another good example. Her writing speaks to children who have outgrown candy floss and are not yet clouded by the consciousness of an adolescent - an ebullient set, who are no longer naïve and have a mind of their own. They think actively and search for answers to questions that tweak their curiosity. She says it is a moment in space between childhood and adolescence. Murray’s book ‘The Year It All Ended’ deals with female protagonists grappling with post World War I trauma and death. In ‘The Secret Life of Maeve Kwong’, the bold heroine goes looking for her Irish father across the globe, even when he does not know about her existence. 

Beverly Cleary, a Newbery awardee, was a children’s librarian before she became a full-time author. She guided children to select books of literary merit comprising characters that they could identify with. After years of helping young readers and hosting live storytelling sessions, she started writing her own stories. Thus Henry Huggins, his dog Ribsy and the Quimby sisters Breezus and Ramona were born as literary characters. Beverly Cleary series are a craze amongst young readers. The responsible Ramona clearly becomes a role model for young girls in the twin books - ‘Ramona and her father’ and ‘Ramona and her mother’, where she helps her parents overcome great hardship.

Children’s classics can become a delightful read for preteens with guidance and follow-up discussions. They work best in book-club meets and story-hours with an interested adult.  Beware of abridged, excerpted versions that many small-time publishers try to pawn off as good classical reads. The mantra is slow, careful reading chapter by chapter, interspersed with book-readings from contemporary bestsellers. Background contexts, old world places and map work flesh out characters and bring stories into focus. Robert Louis Stevenson, Johanna Spryi, Frank Baum, Daniel Defoe, Rudyard Kipling, Frances Hogdson Burnett and Eleanor Estes are authors that young teens can explore and have fun with. Such an engagement would grow on a young reader, and make them appreciate good literature.

Previously, the culture in India did not encourage literature on any of the erstwhile taboo topics - love, sex, money or death - for young readers. Many children stopped reading beyond 10 years of age, because they did not find literature that stimulated their minds. But today, the story is very different and children are spoilt for choice. There is a book for each one out there!

(to be continued…)