Khasak.pdf 722z2c

Monday, 26 October 2009 Preface This dissertation titled ART AS A RENDEZVOUS OF MYTH AND MIND: A PSYCHOANALYTIC AND MYTHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF O V VIJAYAN’S THE LEGENDS OF KHASAK explores how the judicious selection and use of literary theory can for the universal appeal of The Legends of Khasak, a belated self translated rendering of a famous regional work in Malayalam, Khasakkinte Ithihasam authored by the eminent writer O V Vijayan, and thus assert its artistic value. Divided into four chapters, the dissertation blends the kin theories of Psychoanalytic and Mythological criticism and applies it to the novel. The Introduction sets the ground for the analysis by exploring the scope of the novel in the comparative study of literature. It also asserts the author’s place in the regional and Indian English canons of literature and establishes his creative genius with reference to the work considered. The second chapter, titled The Dark Vault, studies the aspects of psychoanalytic theory which can be used in the analysis of the novel. It deals mainly with Freudian theories which explore the dark vaults of the psyche of the characters in the novel. The third chapter, titled Ancient Moulds, studies Mythological or Archetypal criticism and analyses the novel for recurring mythical and archetypal patterns. The concluding chapter studies how psychoanalytic theory and mythological studies can for the universal appeal of the work and also suggests areas for further research. Posted by Preethu at 02:05 No comments:

Introduction Literature, with its immense scope and appeal that goes beyond the horizon of zeitgeist, demands a touchstone with equally infinite bound, as it is a cultural product of humanity, and an offshoot of this is Comparative Literature which concerns itself with the basic structures which underlie every kind of literature. There is, “in theory, no limit to its scope.” (Pathak, 18). . Translation studies, another important offshoot of Comparative Literature, suits the kaleidoscopic richness of the multilingual scenario of India. Indian novels are best read from the multiple perspectives of comparative literature, translation and critical theory. Comparative studies diversify the putative unity of the nation. Translation of texts in regional languages to and from English ensures a text’s existence as a ‘pan-Indian’ object. Critical theory proposes interpretive paradigms with which to shift literary boundaries. This dissertation analyses the novel The Legends of Khasak penned by the eminent writer O V Vijayan via these perspectives. Being the magnum opus of O V Vijayan, The Legends of Khasak offers a fitting study for asserting his stance among the literary genius of the nation which forms an area of study of Comparative Literature. A self-translated rendering of a master piece that resets the history of Malayalam fiction, The Legends of Khasak is also a rich specimen for translation studies. Cast in an antique, surreal environs, yet narrating the tale of psychologically intricate characters whose lives are closely interlinked with myths, the novel offers fertile ground for the application of two core areas of critical theory- Psychoanalytic criticism and Mythological/Archetypal studies. Oottupulackal Velukkutty Vijayan, popularly known as O V Vijayan, holds the covetous position

of having reset the history of his language into what happened before and after the publication of his magnum opus. His literary progress was not swift as he had to tackle hurdles, hostile critics, prejudices and even insinuational plagiarism. On the whole, he has contributed six novels, seven collections of short stories, six collections of political essays and a volume of satire. He has also translated his own works into English. He was a true visionary and India’s foremost fabulist in the recent past. His writing is as evocative as that of William Cuthbert Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Speaking of his enormous range one can notice his transition from the angry young man to the mature transcendentalist in his novels. His economy of words, intensive brooding, and blooming imagination made his characters break the boundaries of region and religion. His strokes were bold and subtle, traditional and modern. He lifted himself to the rarified realm of literary icons with his iconoclasm as well as irony. Sex, satire and deep sorrow marks much of writing. Vijayan has remained a thoroughly Indian writer by sustaining a certain continuity of the tradition established by Vaikom Muhammed Basheer. He achieves this by delving deeper into the subcultures and the subtle dialectical variations of Malayalam. He was an inclusive writer, his mind and the little world around him were his oyster. Vijayan was chronicling a period wrecked by violent upheavals and made absurd by farcical political gains. He reflected the incomprehensibility and futility with an outward silence and an inward alertness all through. He created a magical Malabar in his works. “I have always felt that there are two kinds of writers: those who reflect the real world with its space and life and those who create a parallel world with its own space and life. Vijayan belonged to the second genre”, observed poet and once a Vijayan clone, K. Sachidanandan, secretary of the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi. He said the Legend of Khazak was perhaps the most widely read Malayalam fiction, after Changapuzha Krishna Pillai’s poetic opus Ramanan. (The Tribune) The Legends of Khasak, O V Vijayan’s debut novel and master piece, truly reflects his literary genius and the zenith of his creativity. It ranks him as one of the masters in Malayalam, if not Indian, literature. His credulity as an author who goes beyond regional barriers was reinforced by the quality of his own translations of his works. The Legends of Khasak holds a significant place in translation studies. No literary discussion in Kerala can progress without encountering O V Vijayan and his novel Khasakinte Ithihasam. The novel took twelve years of laborious drafting and redrafting to reach the present form. It shows that writing the novel was a meticulous engagement with experiences. This novel literally revolutionised Malayalam fiction. Its interweaving of myth and reality, its lyrical intensity, its black humour, its freshness of idiom with its mixing of the provincial and the profound and its combinatorial wordplay, its juxtaposition of the erotic and the metaphysical, the crass and the sublime, the real and the surreal, guilt and expiation, physical desire and existential angst, and its innovative narrative strategy with its deft manipulation of time and space together created a new readership with a novel sensibility and transformed the Malayali imagination forever. The novel is about Ravi, a great visionary in astrophysics, and his forlorn meanderings. Ravi lives at two levels, a mundane, instinctive level of lust and longing and a transcendental meditative level of detachment and spiritual quest. He is haunted by a sense of guilt for his past incestuous relationship with his stepmother and his desecration of an ashram by committing a sin with a yogini that prompts him to leave the peace of that shelter and walk into the blazing sun of Khasak to run a single-teacher school in that remote village. An intellectual who had tried to correlate astrophysics and Upanishadic metaphysics and was all set to go to the United States for

higher studies, Ravi was driven by his shame and came to Khasak to expiate his sin: he is an alien among the rustic folk, seeing them with a kind of philosophical detachment, even while mixing with them at the level of everyday experience. But here too, desire overwhelms him and at the end of a series of events, facing the threat of suspension, he keeps his word to his beloved Pa to leave Khasak: he lies down in calm detachment in the white monsoon rain, waiting for his bus, affectionately watching the blue-hooded serpent that had struck him withdrawing content into its hole surrounded by the newborn grass. And there are the rustic folk: Allapicha, the mullah, who considers modern schools the devil's institutions teaching the king's angular script and the kafir's sciences and is a potential foe for Ravi ending up as the school's peon; Nizam Ali, an orphan brought up by Allapicha, now a Khazi ing Ravi, the self-appointed representative of Sayed Mian Sheikh, the ghost of whose lean horse still gallops in the wheezy east wind and helps invalids and widows, carrying them on his back across the valley; Madhavan Nair, a tailor by profession, a Communist with Vedantic training and Ravi's confidante, Maimoona, the village beauty, once Nizam Ali's beloved and, but married by her father to the old and ugly Chukru; Appukkili (Appu, the Bird), a dull and deformed man-boy ever hunting for spiders and dragonflies in Khasak's valleys; Kuppu, a toddy-tapper, a victim of prohibition; Kuttadan, the temple-priest whose oracles twice a week were God's words to the villagers, trying hard to convince the educated Ravi of the authenticity of his revelations; Sivaraman Nair, a Hindu fundamentalist who `found' a conspiracy between Madhavan Nair the Communist and Ravi the anarchist out to destroy Hinduism. Vijayan weaves an intricate and complex web of human relationships. He brilliantly mixes deep philosophical questions with an almost brutal depiction of the people of Khasak. The story is intense as Vijayan mixes myth, reality and his personal experiences very effectively. The existential puzzle of man as to why he should exist is thoroughly explored in the novel. The novel used a new idiom which made use of all that was available in the repertoire of Malayalam: slang, dialects, politically and philosophically charged coinages, metaphysical interpolations, and so on. The power of Vijayan’s language is such that none other than himself dared to translate the novel. Interestingly, the English version is not a literal translation of the Malayalam one. It differs so much from the original in its sensibility that most readers prefer to read it as an independent novel. It is ironic that the translation happened much later and those who knew him through the English version identified his unique narrative mode with the magic realism of the Latin American masters. The other end of the absurdity was that a fiction writer in Malayalam accused Vijayan of plagiarising an ordinary realistic Marathi novel as that too had a teacher in a one-teacher rural school for its protagonist, like Ravi of The Legend of Khasak. Thus translation of the novel has raised its scope beyond the regional level so that it serves as a more substantial specimen of national literature with a wider readership. Moreover it has added a new novel to the cannon of Indian English literature. Moving on to the third perspective, critical theory is an important tool in analysing literature. It has numerous branches out of which psychoanalytic criticism and mythological/archetypal criticism are best suited for the present study. Mythology and psychology, though appealing to far different aspects of the self, have a unique thread linking them in that both deal with the motives that underlie human behaviour. While psychology deals with the personal aspect of life, that is the behaviour of human beings in the common environs where they live and interact, mythological studies transcend the barrier of the self. It deals with the collective or the cultural, where the experiences of the entire human race takes the centre stage, that is, the race as a whole is seen as a single mind consisting of the experiences of the entire humanity pooled into one.

Though different in the aspect or view from which the study is undertaken both mythological and psychological studies serve the same purpose- both enhance the experience of the art form. Both allow the reader to delve beneath the periphery of the art and gauge his own experiences from it. Literature or art in general, is the indispensable ingredient of any civilization. It is the channel which gives vent to the psychic phenomena lying latent within the layers of one’s mind or, in general, culture, and projects it into a tangible form. Thus mythological and psychological studies are closely interleaved. While the Freudian theories of the personal unconscious deals with the personal elements of the self or its discrete experiences, Jungian theory of the collective unconscious deals with a collective mind- a greater mind that incorporates the experiences of a group or race as a whole. Thus Freudian theory appeals to the personal element and finds its base in psychology, Jung’s theory appeals to the cultural element and applies itself to mythological studies. Thus psychoanalytic and mythological criticisms justify the universal appeal that the work could strike. Having a rich content and milieu which allows analysis from all three aforementioned perspectives justifies the selection of the novel The Legends of Khasak for this dissertation. The next chapter, titled ‘The Dark Vaults’, deals with the psychoanalytic criticism of the novel The Legends of Khasak. Posted by Preethu at 02:04 No comments:

The Dark Vault Psychology and literature have a very close bond to each other because literature is essentially psychological as it is an attempt to define selfhood. This chapter deals with the psychoanalytic criticism of the novel The Legends of Khasak in which theories of psychoanalysis are applied to probe into the depths of the psyche of the characters. Encyclopedia of Literature defines psychoanalytic criticism as: The literary criticism that uses psychoanalytic theory to analyse readers’ response to literature, to interpret literary works in of their authors’ psychological conflicts, or to recreate authors’ Psychic life from unconscious revelations in their work. (Encyclopedia of Literature, 913) It is a very widespread psychological type of literary criticism whose premises and procedures were established by Sigmund Freud and which has been practiced since the early development of psychoanalysis itself. It has developed into a rich and heterogeneous interpretive tradition. Like all forms of literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism can yield useful clues to the sometime baffling symbols, actions, and settings in a literary work. Psychoanalysis is a group of theories which concern the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, and psychoanalytic criticism or Applied Psychoanalysis refers to the two related forms of the application of psychoanalysis within literature: first, literature as illustrative of psychoanalytic concepts and, second, psychobiography. Psychoanalytic criticism can study four aspects of a literary work, namely the author (that is, how are the author’s psychological conflicts revealed in his or her work), the reader (the appeal of the work to the readers in relation to their own ability to work out hidden desires and fears), the construction and the content (an in-depth analysis of the characters if they were real people) What prompted a writer to write a particular work forms the core of psychoanalytic criticism at the level of the author. It can be studied under psychobiography. Khasakkinte Ithihasam is the fruit of twelve years of creative labour of O V Vijayan. He wanted it to be a novel with a difference. His stay in the village called Thasrak inspired him. It was a reflection of the unrest of

the times of which the author had a share in his psyche. The work, with its break with traditional form and language and also as a celebration of moral and sexual anarchy, reflects the rebellion in the author. The existential angst of Ravi, the protagonist, can be seen as Vijayan’s. The English version The Legends of Khasak, which was published after 25 years, is not a verbatim translation of Khasakkinte Ithihasam. There are omissions made by an author matured by years. The change in his mentality is reflected in these omissions. To on to the appeal of the work, The Legends of Khasak was indeed a new experience to the reading public. It was both applauded and criticized for being unconventional. The youth of the era who carried the embers of rebellion within them relished the novelty of the book. But as a misinterpretation of the Existentialist philosophy, it fostered the birth of a doped and lethargic generation which began to view life as meaningless. It was also criticised as a celebration of sexual anarchy. On the whole, it was a trendsetter in Malayalam fiction. But the author was not happy with the reader’s response. Once in consequence of disappointment he commented that his image of the diademed serpents riding the golden surf of the mirage went unnoticed. Thus, to conclude, the book brought out mixed response. The construction or form of a literary text is the work of the conscious mind. The artist’s mind, like a blotting paper, absorbs things easily yet intensively. A connection may come between two apparently unconnected things ed in the artist’s mind and a metaphor is born. The Legends of Khasak abounds in imagery. The author makes use of a fragment of his own childhood belief that the celestial beings drink the elixir of the Kalpaka fruit and throw the husks to earth. These dwellers of the sky drank the milk of the Kalpaka fruit, the elixir of immortality, and flung the empty husks down to the earth. If you gazed on the sky long enough, you saw the husks as transparent apparitions. The sky at noon was full of them. ( The Legends of Khasak, 4) It is a blend of fantasy (common in the oral tradition) as well as reality .O V Vijayan, in his work Ithihasathinte Ithihasam, says that the husks he counted as a child was the symptom of a genetic eye-disease called ‘swimming spots’. The language of The Legends of Khasak, with its novel images, was indeed a virginal experience for the readers. The comparison of the crescendo of the falling rain to the sexual act, the onset small-pox to the blooming of chrysanthemums , the image of the diademed serpents as a premonition to Ravi’s temptation to sin with his step-mother are just examples. The content of a work is the outcome of the unconscious part of the mind of the author. It springs out from the blue. Psychoanalytic criticism on the basis of content analyses the aspects of the text like characters and events. Psychoanalytic criticism offers scope for the in-depth analysis of characters as if they were real people. Ravi, the protagonist of the Legends of Khasak, is a psychologically complex character whose psyche holds a very important key in its darkest depths for the readers to understand the story. Other psychologically intricate characters are also analysed in this dissertation. Psychoanalytic criticism of this interesting character can take a therapeutic form which is very similar to psychoanalysis itself .It is a literary approach where critics see the text as if it were a kind of dream. This means that the text represses its real (or latent) content behind obvious (manifest) content. The process of changing from latent to manifest content is known as the dream work, and involves operations of condensation and displacement. The critic analyzes the language and symbolism of a text to reverse the process of the dream work and arrive at the underlying latent thoughtsThe raw material for literature is the unconscious wishes of the author and it is called the ‘ latent content’ which is expressed after condensation and displacement as the ‘manifest content’ which is intelligible. This dissertation

mainly uses Freudian theories of psychoanalysis to probe into the dark vaults of the psyche of the characters in the novel. Freud’s concepts of the conscious and unconscious mind, the tripartite model of personality, theories of psychosexual development and the psychology behind guilt are used for a psychoanalytic reading. According to Sigmund Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts: the conscious and the unconscious. Freud demonstrated that, like an iceberg, the human mind is structured so that its great weight and density lie beneath the surface. Most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very limited control. In The Anatomy of the Mental Personality, Freud discriminates between the levels of conscious and unconscious mental activity. The oldest and best meaning of the word “unconscious” is the descriptive one; we call “unconscious” any mental process the existence of which we are obligated to assume – because, for instance, we infer it in some way from its effects- but of which we are not directly aware….If we want to be more accurate, we should modify the statement by saying that we call a process “unconscious” when we have to assume that it was active at a certain time, although at that time we knew nothing about it.(99-100) Freud further emphasizes the importance of the unconscious by pointing out that even the “most conscious processes are conscious for only a short period; quite soon they become latent, though they can easily become conscious again” (100). In view of this, Freud defines two kinds of unconscious: one which is transformed into conscious material easily and under conditions which frequently arise, and another in the case of which such a transformation is difficult, can only come about with a considerable expenditure of energy, or may never occur at all….We call the unconscious which is only latent, and so can easily become conscious, the “preconscious”, and keep the name “unconscious” for the other. (101) The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences. That most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious is thus Freud’s first major premise. The second is that all human behaviour is motivated ultimately by what we would call sexuality. Freud designates the prime psychic force as libido, or sexual energy. This has been rejected by a great many professional psychologists, including some of Freud’s own disciples. His third major premise is that because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed (that is, actively excluded from conscious awareness). Starting from these three premises, we may examine several corollaries of Freudian theory which have been useful in this dissertation. Principal among these is Freud’s assignment of the mental processes into three psychic zones. According to Sigmund Freud, personality is composed of three elements known as the id, the ego and the superego which are rough equivalents of the unconscious mind, conscious mind and the conscience respectively. These work together to create complex human behaviors.

The id is the primary component of personality that is the source of all psychic energy. Present from birth, this aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes the instinctive and primitive behaviours. The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension. Id is amoral and asocial. Speaking metaphorically, Freud explains this “obscure inaccessible part of our personality “as: a chaos, a cauldron of seething excitement [with] no organization and no unified will, only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance with the pleasure principle.( The Anatomy of the Mental Personality,103-4) The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world and functions in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind. As Freud points out in The Dissection of Psychical Personality, “To adopt a particular mode of speaking, we might say that the ego stands for reason and good sense” (76). The ego operates on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id's desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The last component of personality is the superego. It is the aspect of personality that holds all our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society--our sense of right and wrong. It is, as Freud says in The Anatomy of the Mental Personality, the “representative of all moral restrictions, the advocate of the impulse toward perfection” (95).The superego provides guidelines for making judgments. It is based on the principle of morality and begins to emerge at around the age of five. There are two parts of the superego- the ‘ego ideal’ and ‘the conscience’. The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for good behaviors (these behaviors include those which are approved of by parental and other authority figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value, and accomplishment. The conscience includes information about things that are viewed as bad by parents and society (these behaviors are often forbidden and lead to bad consequences, punishments, or feelings of guilt and remorse) The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles. The superego is present in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Freud used the term ego strength to refer to the ego's ability to function despite these dueling forces. A person with good ego strength is able to effectively manage these pressures, while those with too much or too little ego strength can become too unyielding or too disrupting. According to Freud, the key to a healthy personality is a balance between the id, the ego, and the superego. In The Legends of Khasak. Allah Picha Mollakka (the Mullah) is a person whose psyche is the reflection of the tug of war between the Freudian super ego and id. Here, religion is the super ego and his worldliness is the id. Allah-Pitcha teaches religion to the children of the Muslims in Khasak. He would tell the saga of the origin of Khasak to generations of young listeners. He had immense faith in his religion and believed that God always came to the help of the needy. He says: When we grow bent with age, Allah will come and sit on our backs…. The Almighty will straddle the infirm and the destitute, as His hosts stand by in veneration…. (The Legends of Khasak, 11) The Mullah was a worldly man who had two wives. He also gets tempted by the effeminate

Nizam Ali. He takes the beautiful boy, whom he sees in the Sheikh’s valley, to his home. His insistence on having Nizam Ali’s head shaved on the night of every new moon (a religious practice among the Muslims) is a secret fear of his sexual urge towards the feminine boy’s tender serpentine locks .The serpent is the symbol of libidinal energy which is stored in the id . …he had been troubled…by a vision of soft tendrils curling round a face in the mirror, hair more voluptuous that Maimoona’s locks, or Thithi Bi’s, hair forever growing and reaching out as vile temptation.(The Legends of Khasak, 21) The Mullah tries to prevent children from going to school. He does it as if to protect his religion. He makes his pupil Kunhamina swear by the village deities, Sayed Mian Sheikh and Mariyamma that she would not go to the kafir’s school. When he made the girl take an oath on Mariyamma, he was taking no chances. It means that he believed in the deities of the other religions too. Later, he himself becomes the ‘masalji’, or the low paid maintenance person, in Ravi’s school for his need of money. But he never does full justice to the services required of him. His ego strength is too little. He cannot find a balance between the demands of his id and superego. It becomes unyielding, and later he becomes too pathetic a figure. Ravi can also be considered to be the symbol of the Freudian ego. The outer world is the superego and Khasak acts as the id. Ravi wishes to be in Khasak but he does not want to make his once beloved Pa sad. So he promises her that he will go with her, but dies in Khasak. Next we on to Freud’s stages of psychosexual development, a controversial theory concerning child psychology. Contrary to traditional beliefs, Freud found infancy and childhood a period of intense sexual experience. He has identified five stages in the psychosexual development of an individual. They are the Oral stage, the Anal stage, the Phallic stage, the Latent period and the Genital stage. If for some reason the individual is frustrated in gratifying these needs during childhood, the adult personality may be warped accordingly (that is, development may be arrested or fixated). During the oral stage, the infant's primary source of interaction occurs through the mouth, so the rooting and sucking reflex is especially important. During the anal stage, Freud believed that the primary focus of the libido was on controlling bladder and bowel movements. It is a time when the child becomes independent of the care takers. In the novel, Ravi seems to have completed these two stages successfully. He had a loving mother who took care of him. During the phallic stage, the primary focus of the libido is on the genitals. Children also discover the differences between males and females. Freud also believed that boys begin to view their fathers as a rival for the mother’s affections. The Oedipus complex describes these feelings of wanting to possess the mother and the desire to replace the father. Freud describes Oedipus complex as: …the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him. For a time, these two relationships [the child’s devotion to his mother and identification with his father] proceed side by side, until the boy’s sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates…An ambivalent attitude to his father and an object-relation of a solely affectionate kind to his mother make up the content of the simple positive Oedipus complex in a boy. (The Ego and the Id, 21-22) However, the child also fears that he will be punished by the father for these feelings, a fear Freud termed castration anxiety. In the Oedipus complex, a boy is fixated on his mother and competes with his father for maternal attention. At some point, the child realizes that there is a difference between their mother and their father. Around the same time they realize that they are more alike to one than the other. Thus the child acquires gender. The primitive desire for the one

parent may also awaken in the child a jealous motivation to exclude the other parent. Transferring of affections may also occur as the child seeks to become independent and escape a perceived 'engulfing mother '. A critical aspect of the oedipal stage is loosening of the ties to the mother of vulnerability, dependence and intimacy. This is a natural part of the child becoming more independent and is facilitated by the realization that the mother desires more than just the child. In the novel, Ravi’s first loss in his life is the death of his pregnant mother. She was a woman who pampered her child so much. She enriched his imagination with stories. She told him about his inheritance by attributing his features to herself and his father. Her loss made him an orphan, says Ravi. His sense of identity lay so merged with hers and due to her absence, he couldn’t get himself away from her influence as in the case with all children in the post-Oedipal stage. It remained with him. During Ravi’s adolescence, the guilt of having cheated his paralysed father by having a sexual relationship with his stepmother urges Ravi to leave home. Ravi’s relationship with his stepmother can be viewed as an extension of the unresolved Oedipus complex in him. It seems to be a negative one as he later hated or tried to ignore his stepmother. He never cared for her feelings, and it seems as if he wants to escape the sin by holding her responsible for the act as he was only an adolescent then.. He tries to escape from his father. Apart from guilt complex which will be dealt with later in the dissertation, it can also be viewed as an extension of the castration anxiety. Ravi fears that he would lose the love of his father due to his sin. Hence he flees from his father’s presence. During the latent period, the libido interests are suppressed. The development of the ego and superego contribute to this period of calm. The stage begins around the time that children enter into school and become more concerned with peer relationships, hobbies, and other interests. Ravi s college in Thambaram for his Honours in Astrophysics .He falls in love with the girl called Pa. Being a brilliant student, his theories attract the attention of a Princetonian professor which opens up new vistas for Ravi in America. But he carries within him the guilt. During the final stage of psychosexual development, the individual develops a strong sexual interest in the opposite sex. Where in earlier stages the focus was solely on individual needs, interest in the welfare of others grows during this stage. If the other stages have been completed successfully, the individual should now be well-balanced, warm, and caring. The goal of this stage is to establish a balance between the various life areas. It can be deduced that Ravi is fixated at the Phallic stage. He has not completed it successfully. It makes him a disturbed person. He leaves college on the eve of his final examination, unsure about his destination. Seven years of endless journey follows. He wanders like a dry leaf in the wind and ultimately reaches Khasak as a teacher Let us now on to the psychology of guilt. According to Freud, guilt complex is also a psychological disorder. He initially contended that sexual drives produce sense of guilt in the superego, the moral conscience of the mind. He later maintained, however, that guilt was associated with aggressive impulses. Freud felt that guilt was often confused with remorse, the former being an emotion signaling the presence of aggressive wishes, the latter a self-imposed punishment which occurs if the aggressive wish is fulfilled. The term guilt is most commonly used in traditional psychoanalysis, as a way of describing unconscious processes which may lead to neurotic reactions. Guilt is both a cognitive and an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes that he or she has violated a moral standard and is responsible for that violation. Guilt feelings may also inhibit one from falling short of one’s ideal again in the future. Individual guilt is an inner reflection on personal wrongdoing. Ravi was an adolescent when he, according to him, knew his stepmother. The step mother was a young woman who could not

probably satisfy her sexual needs with an old and paralysed husband. It is not mentioned whether it was she who seduced Ravi. When she feels guilty, he asks her what remorse is. But once she mentions her husband, Ravi’s sense of guilt is awakened and it remains with him for the rest of his life. Ravi suffers from both guilt and remorse. He sinned with his stepmother and is guilty of it, and he is also remorseful of his desires. Guilt can be deactivated, the conscience turned off. Some people never seem to develop a healthy sense of guilt in the first place, through a failure to develop empathy or a lack of appropriate limits, while others choose to turn theirs off. Guilt can be deactivated in two different ways. Either the person convinces him- or herself that the act was not a violation of what is right or he reasons that he or she has no control over the events of life and is therefore not responsible for the outcome. With no sense of personal responsibility, there can be no sense of guilt. Ravi chooses the second, that is, he tries to deactivate his guilt by reasoning that he has no control over the events of life. He is an escapist who seeks solace in the theory of Karma. He calls himself an “Avadhuta” (a mystic who has risen above bodily consciousness, duality and worldly concerns and acts without consideration for standard social etiquette). He wanders through ashramas and tries to seek comfort in transcendental philosophies. But it is evident that his sense of guilt never leaves him. Ravi is an over-sensitive young man haunted by guilt. He is a coward who could not face his conscience and tried to escape it. Though he says, “I wish to escape nothing… I want to be the sand of the desert, each grain of sand; I want to be the lake, each minute droplet. I want to be the laya, the dissolution” (The Legends of Khasak, 193), all he has been doing is trying to escape from his sin. He may have been able to overcome his guilt, but his remorse haunted him deeper. He could not control his desires even when he was guilty. He has relationships with women in Khasak. Yet another theory made use of in this dissertation is the theory of Atavistic Regression. It is a hypnosis-related concept introduced by the Australian scholar and psychiatrist, Ainslie Meares. Meares coined his term from the English atavism, which is derived from the Latin atavus, meaning a great-grandfather's grandfather and, thus, more generally, an ancestor. As used by Meares, for example, his 1960 work A System of Medical Hypnosis, the term atavistic regression is used to denote the tendency to revert to ancestral type: The atavistic hypothesis requires… a regression from normal adult mental function at an intellectual, logical level, to an archaic level of mental function in which the process of suggestion determines the acceptance of ideas. This regression is considered to be the basic mechanism in the production of hypnosis. (Meares, 59) Meares held the view that when in hypnosis, the higher (more evolved) functions of the subject's brain were switched off, and the subject reverted to a far more archaic and far less advanced (in evolutionary ) mental state. Khasak, a primitive land, is a dark and lost village. It is a land of the past. Ravi seeks refuge in the womb-like (or tomb-like) Khasak. He has sexual encounters with many women there. It is like himself pining for the lost ‘feminine presence’ (either the pre-natal bond or that of infancy). The village, with its myths, rituals and stories of Karma, presents an apt setting for Atavistic Regression. Ravi tries to return to antiquity and thus dissolve his sin. Ravi’s existential angst is not anything philosophical, but it is purely psychological. He wanders through Ashrams in search of the meaning of the existence but faces the ‘engulfing’ feminine presence everywhere. He is constantly reminded of his guilt .He is a man haunted by guilt, who tries to escape from it but in vain. He tries to believe in Karma and the meaninglessness of human life in the vast cosmos and it prompts him to leave behind prospects for a bright future. Towards the end of the

novel Pa comes in search of Ravi. She is like a door to the bright world that invites him with a lot of prospects. He agrees to leave Khasak and go with her, but in the end lies in Khasak, bitten by a snake. He enjoys his death. Ravi offers his foot to the snake as if he is playing. Ravi looked with fond curiosity at the little blue and black apparition that slithered out of the clods. The blue-black one looked up at Ravi, conversing with its flickering tongue. Ravi saw the tiny hood, outspread now. Infant fangs pierced Ravi’s foot. Teething, my little one? (The Legends of Khasak, 202) May be it is his belief in the Karmic bond that made him feel a love towards the snake or it can be an instance of suicide. Snake is the age old symbol of sin. Ravi may not have wanted to go back to his worldly life. He ends himself in his sin. Alienation is another psychological symptom exhibited by some characters in the novel. It is the state of being emotionally separated from others and from one's own feelings. Alienation is a powerful feeling of isolation and loneliness, and stems from a variety of causes. Alienation may occur in response to certain events or situations in society or in one's personal life. A man is aware of the limitation of his own knowledge, and of his own impotence before nature. The lack of knowledge about the nature brings sensorial and emotional inconveniences to the man. Sensorial inconveniences are the product of direct, painful relationship with the nature. Emotional inconveniences are the product of the reflective relationship with the nature. The most pronounced emotional state is the fear that is the consequence of insufficient knowledge, and/or impotence of the man to oppose natural inconveniences. The man rids of the inconveniences within the limits of his own possibilities. One may say that the man alienates from his own nature when he is not able to accept the limitations of his own nature. Alienation is a state where a man does not recognize values where they really are. He thinks the values are what really are not. Madhavan Nair is the alienated philanthropist who ran away from home to study Vedanta. It was an escape from the fear of his mother’s youthful body and his physical similarity to his father. They could not find sleep. He leaves her though she says that she will be all alone if he leaves. When he returns after five years with his blind guru, he finds her a prostitute. It shatters him and he becomes alienated. Madhavan Nair could not solve the puzzle of his guru’s finding peace in his blindness when he himself was tormented by the knowledge of vision. …he was content with the day and night, he saw butterflies mating in the sunlight, he saw the rain, the brook, the mountain, he saw disrobed thighs vibrate with the rhythm of death. Each seen object drained away the meaning of seeing…. ( The Legends of Khasak, 175) Chand Umma is the sinned against woman ,isolated due to a chastity myth in Khasak .her husband fell down from the Tamarind tree of the Goddess of chastity and died. It branded her unchaste. Her father also left Khasak. “This punitive widowhood brought on exclusion, and unbearable loneliness. “(The Legends of Khasak, 104) She lives for her children, but both die, leaving her all alone in life. Kuppu is the proud toddy- tapper turned village gossip in Khasak. His trade was an honest and fearless living for him. He wore the tapper’s mark of power-callouses on his hand and chest. He was obsessed with toddy-tapping, but the temperance Law made him close his toddy shop. Thus the epic of the toddy tapper ended. His wife Kallu left him. His long spells of hallucination ended, he withdrew into his hut. He hung the chest armour and the tapper’s knife on the wall, and never touched them again….In the hut that was once their home and toddy shop, Kuppu lay down for days…Then he wandered through Khasak, at each appearance looking thinner and more dessicated than at the one before.(The Legends of Khasak,

112) Then one day, he appeared on the load rest in front of Aliyar’s tea shop spreading rumours as revenge against the society which caused his fall. It can also be a way of asserting himself a place in the society. Nizam Ali, the feminine lad of sixteen, who accompanies the Mullah home changes to the selfordained Khazi of Sayed Mian Sheikh. He flees from home to become a beedi-roller and later becomes the owner of a factory. Maimoona’s marriage shatters him and he leaves Khasak. Later he returns and starts working, s the Union of workers and gets arrested for leading a Communist insurrection. He uses religion as a way to escape imprisonment and also to find himself a respectable place in the society.. He tells the Inspector that the spirit of the Sheikh has visited him and ordained himself the Khazi. He swears that he would be guided well by the spirit and would not go for any trouble. Thus he gets him out of the prison. Later he takes revenge on the Mullah using his own faith and means of living, that is, religion. He s the school when the Mullah said that it was against religion. People of Khasak were in confusion as to whom to believe. What is the Khazi’s truth?’ the troubled elders asked one another. They recalled the spell the mullah had tried to cast on Nizam Ali. They had seen the spell fail. ‘The Khazi’s truth,’ they told themselves, ‘is the Sheikh’s truth.’ ‘If that is so,’ troubled minds were in search of certitude,’ is Mollakka the untruth?’ ‘He is the truth too’ (The Legends of Khasak, 36) Nizam Ali is responsible for the death of Neeli whom he impregnates and tries to give some potion to abort it, but he takes care of Ravi when he is down with small pox. Thus he is both cruel and kind, or better, he is neither. Towards the end of the novel, he becomes Nizam Ali again, the ordinary human being and takes care of the sick Mullah. He becomes social again. If viewed under this light, the dark and primitive village ‘Khasak’ can be equated with the unconscious. It is the seat of primal drives and is based on the pleasure principle (id). Ravi tries to push off his guilt to the dark by being in Khasak. He tries to be a part of the place, sharing its instincts and drives. Towards the end of the novel, Pa comes from the outer world and the thought of return shatters him. He lies in Khasak waiting for death, offering his foot to a snake. Ravi’s Cinderella days of orphanhood has an image of the diademed serpents …one day, turning away from the hollows of the sky, he looked towards the miraculous horizon. It was then that they came riding the golden surf of the mirage- the winged and diademed serpents, calling him to play…. (The Legends of Khasak, 5) It is also a premonition of his relationship with his stepmother. Nizam Ali is first seen hunting for snakes. When the mullah asks him why he does not catch the reptile prince, he says that even a green snake can become as venomous when its time comes. It is a prediction of the change that happens to him later. Snake symbolizes evil and Nizam Ali turns revengeful when he is hurt. Chukru’s death is another event in the novel that can be psychologically interpreted. He dives into a well and commits suicide. He dived into the well, and deeper, into the well within the well. The water was like many crystal doors and curtains. Chukru made his way past crystal and silk, and moved towards the mystery that lured him all his life- the sacred dark! (The Legends of Khasak, 70) Darkness and depth symbolizes the unconscious. His suicide can be interpreted as a pushing off (repression) of his guilt to the unconscious. Thus, to conclude, The Legends of Khasak is a novel with a great scope for psychoanalytic

criticism. Closely linked to psychoanalytic reading is the mythological / archetypal criticism which is discussed in the next chapter titled “Ancient Moulds”. Posted by Preethu at 02:04 No comments:

Ancient Moulds Mythological criticism studies recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works and Archetypal Criticism, a close kin of Mythological Criticism, is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative. This chapter deals with the analysis of the novel The Legends of Khasak in a mythological and archetypal perspective. Encyclopedia of Literature defines myth as “A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical elements that serves to unfold part of a world view of a people or a practice, belief or natural phenomenon” (Encyclopedia of Literature, 794). Mythological criticism combines insights from a variety of academic disciplines like anthropology, psychology, history and comparative religion by demonstrating how the individual imagination shares a common symbols, images, and character types in a literary work and studies how it evokes a universal reaction from all readers It is similar to a psychological approach because it also is concerned with the things that underlie human behaviour as myths are symbolic of people’s hopes fears, values, and other philosophical ideas. As a form of literary criticism, it dates back to 1934 when Maud Bodkin published Archetypal Patterns in Poetry on the subject of archetypal literary criticism, applies Jung’s theories about the collective unconscious, archetypes, and primordial images to literature. Archetypal literary criticism’s origins are rooted in two other academic disciplines, social anthropology and psychoanalysis; each contributed to the literary criticism in separate ways, with the latter being a sub-branch of the critical theory. Archetypal criticism was its most popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Though archetypal literary criticism is no longer widely practiced, nor have there been any major developments in the field, it still has a place in the tradition of literary studies. Archetypal Criticism deals with archetypes which are similar ideas, motifs, and images found in many different myths. They are normally defined as “universal symbols". Examples of archetypes are images (such as water, sun, certain colors or numbers, circles, the serpent, garden, tree, desert) “the hero,” "the earth mother", "the soul mate," "the trickster," motifs or pattern, and genres The anthropological origins of archetypal criticism can pre-date its psychoanalytic origins by over thirty years. The Golden Bough (1890-1915), written by the Scottish anthropologist James G. Frazer was the first influential text dealing with cultural mythologies. The Golden Bough was widely accepted as the seminal text on myth that spawned numerous studies on the same subject. Eventually, the momentum of Frazer’s work carried over into literary studies. Frazer, who revived interest in myth studies in the twentieth century, defines ‘myth’ in his seminal work The Golden Bough as “A fiction devised to explain an old custom of which the real meaning and origin has been forgotten.” (The Golden Bough, 153) In The Golden Bough Frazer argues that the death-rebirth myth is present in almost all cultural mythologies, and is acted out in of growing seasons and vegetation. While Frazer’s work deals with mythology and archetypes in material , the work of Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss born psychoanalyst, is, in contrast, immaterial in its focus. Jung’s work theorizes about myths and archetypes in relation to the unconscious, an inaccessible part of the mind.

From a Jungian perspective, myths are the culturally elaborated representations of the contents of the deepest recess of the human psyche: the world of the archetypes. According to Jung: My life is a story of self-realisation of the unconscious. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation and the personality too deserves to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and express life more precisely than does science. (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 17) Jungian psychoanalysis distinguishes between the personal and collective unconscious, the latter being particularly relevant to archetypal criticism. The collective unconscious, or the objective psyche as it is less frequently known, is a number of innate thoughts, feelings, instincts, and memories that reside in the unconsciousness of all people. Jung’s definition of the term is inconsistent in his many writings. At one time he calls the collective unconscious the a priori, inborn forms of intuition, while in another instance it is a series of experiences that come upon us like fate. Regardless of the many nuances between Jung’s definitions, the collective unconsciousness is a shared part of the unconscious. To Jung, an archetype in the collective unconscious is irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas, due to the fact they are at an inaccessible part of the mind. The archetypes to which Jung refers are represented through ‘primordial images’, a term he coined. Primordial images originate from the initial stages of humanity and have been part of the collective unconscious ever since. It is through primordial images that universal archetypes are experienced, and more importantly, that the unconscious is revealed. . This collective unconscious was not directly knowable and is a product of the shared experiences of our ancestors. Jung believed it was primordial (that is, we, as individuals, have these archetypal images ingrained in our understanding even before we are born) and universal (these archetypes can be found all over the world and throughout history. The manifestation of the idea may be different, but the idea itself is the same). A Jungian analysis envisions the death-rebirth archetype as a symbolic expression of a process taking place not in the world but in the mind. That process is the return of the ego to the unconscious—a kind of temporary death of the ego—and its re-emergence, or rebirth, from the unconscious. The Jungian archetypal approach treats literary texts as an avenue in which primordial images are represented .This dissertation focuses mainly on the Jungian approach of Mythological criticism. In developing this concept, Jung expanded Freud’s theories of the personal unconscious, asserting that beneath this is a primeval, collective unconscious shared in the psychic inheritance of the human family. As Jung himself explains in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, If it were possible to personify the unconscious, we might thin of it as a collective human being combining the characteristics of both sexes, transcending youth and age, birth and death, and, from having at its command a human experience of one or two million years, practically mortal…It would have lived countless times over again the life of the individual, the family, the tribe, and the nation, and it would possess a living sense of the rhythm of growth, flowering, and decay.(349-50) Another major contribution of Jung is his theory of individuation. Individuation is a psychological growing up, the process of discovering those aspects of one’s self that make one an individual different from other of the species. As one matures he must consciously recognize the various aspects, unfavourable as well as favourable, of one’s total self. Jung

theorizes that neuroses are the results of the person’s failure to confront and accept some archetypal component of the unconscious. Neurotic individuals persist in projecting it upon some other person or object. In The Legends of Khasak Ravi fails in his individuation by not recognizing his sin as an archetypal component of the unconscious. He projects it to the philosophy of karma. According to Jung, there are three structural components of the psyche that human beings inherit- the shadow, the persona and the anima. We encounter symbolic projections of these archetypes throughout the myths and the literatures of humankind. The shadow is the darker side of our unconscious self which we wish to suppress. The anima is the “soul-image”, the spirit of a man’s élan vital, his life force or vital energy. Human psyche is bisexual, though the psychological characteristics of the opposite sex in each of us is generally unconscious, revealed in dreams or in projections on someone in our environment. It is a kind of mediator between the ego and the unconscious. The persona is the obverse of the anima in that it mediates between our ego and the external world. It was not until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary . The major work of Frye’s to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his essay The Archetypes of Literature is a precursor to the book. In the book, Frye has traced to define myth: “In literary criticism, myth means ultimately mythos, a structural organizing principle of literary form.” (Anatomy of Criticism, 341). Frye has also held that a myth is primarily mythos, a story, and narrative of plot, with a specific social function. Frye’s work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors. For Frye, literary archetypes play an essential role in refashioning the material universe into an alternative verbal universe that is humanly intelligible and viable, because it is adapted to essential human needs and concerns. It has been argued that Frye’s version of archetypal criticism strictly categorizes works based on their genres, which determines how an archetype is to be interpreted in a text. With brilliant audacity Frye identifies myth with literature, asserting that myth is a “structural organizing principle of literary form” (Anatomy of Criticism, 341) and in The Stubborn Structure he claims that: …mythology as a whole provides a kind of diagram or blueprint of what literature as a whole is all about an imaginative survey of the human situation from the beginning to the end, from the height to the depth, of what is imaginatively conceivable. (102) The French Structuralist Roland Barthes considered myth as a false created and perpetuated by bourgeois. Even within a single article, “Myth Today”, Barthes defines myth in so many diverse ways. He says: “Myth is a type of speech: a system of communication that is a message.”(“Myth Today”, 93) He argued that: Ancient or not, mythology can only have a historical foundation for myth is a type of speech chosen by history; it cannot possibly evolve from the nature of thing.” (“Myth Today”, 94) He cannot identify mythical speech with language. He considers myth to belong to the province of general science, co-extensive with linguistic which is semiology. According to him: “However paradoxical it may seem, myth hides nothing. Its function is to distort, not to make disappear.”(“Myth Today”, 107) Archetypal psychology was developed by James Hillman in the second half of the 20th century. It is in the Jungian tradition and most directly related to Analytical psychology, yet departs radically. Archetypal psychology focuses on the psyche, or soul, itself and the archai, the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the fundamental fantasies that animate all life. Archetypal

psychology is a polytheistic psychology, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths—gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives. The ego is but one psychological fantasy within an assemblage of fantasies. Archetypal psychology is, along with the classical and developmental schools, one of the three schools of post-Jungian psychology outlined by Andrew Samuels. Other than the founder of the movement, James Hillman, key adherents of this school include Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Thomas Moore, Rafael Lopez-Pedraza and Wolfgang Giegerich. Although not a psychologist but a scholar of Islam and Sufism, Henry Corbin has been depicted as relevant to the school. Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious is of prime importance in the application of mythological criticism in The Legends of Khasak. Khasak is a primitive land which abounds in myths and legends. It forms a part of the collective unconscious of the people. Let us analyse some of the myths of Khasak. The legendary origin of the ancient village named Khasak is associated with religion. Long, long ago, in times now unknown to man, there came riding into their palm grove a cavalcade of a thousand and one horses. The riders were the Badrins, warriors blessed by the prophet, and at the head of the column rode the holiest of them all---Sayed Mian Sheikh…the horse the Sheikh rode was old and ill…When the old horse could go no farther the Sheikh signaled his warriors to stop…the faithful animal died and was buried in a palm grove….”(The Legends of Khasak, 10) The tale of Sayed Mian Sheikh’s old horse which died in Khasak and turned into a benevolent spirit which helped the children and the aged is a reflection of the nature of the people of Khasak. They help each other. They feel the presence of Sheikh as their guardian. The story is ed on to younger generations by Allah Picha Mollakka, the mullah of Khasak, as a part of religious study. It thus forms a part of the psyche of Khasak. Religions co-exist in Khasak. All of them believe in the unity of Gods. The Muslims believed in the power of Nallamma, and the Sheikh was considered to be the guardian of Khasak even by the Hindus. There are myths about hedge lizards and dragonflies. Hedge lizards sucked the blood of children via air and hence it is considered evil. They believed that evil spirits, when exorcised, rode on hedge lizards to exile and hence used it in exorcism. Dragonflies were considered to be the memories of the dead. These myths suggest that the folk of Khasak did not confine themselves to the living world. They offered feasts to their ancestral spirits once in two or three years to appease them. They never believed that death is an end to life, quite obvious of a tribe who trusts in a spirit as their village deity In Myth and Reality, Mircea Eliade indicates that one of the most widespread motifs in immortality myths is the regressus ad uterum (a return to the origin of creation or to the symbolic womb of life). The village of Khasak, with its dark antiquity, is like the womb and Ravi tries to escape his sin by regressing into it. He feels a familiarity to the place when he reaches there. Chastity myths also find an important place in Khasak. The myth of the tamarind tree which can only be climbed by those men whose wives are chaste suggests the importance the people of Khasak attach to of chastity. It happened in the long lost time of Khasak, but it lived on, a brooding, avenging sorrow. The great tamarind tree which stood on the edge of the burial marsh was witness to that sorrow. Old beyond measure, Khasak believed the tree wouldn’t die until it was redeemed in some way. It was beneath this tree, in that lost time, that an old, widowed astrologer and his daughter had built their hut. A company of white cavalry came there in search of water for their camels. They killed the old star-watcher and raped the daughter. They left her to die on the marsh and went their way

towards the mountains, but as they went up the foothills scorpions crawled into their battle fatigues and black cobras bit the camels. Camels and riders perished in the wild, and the loam of the mountain settled over their bones. The dead girl rose from the marsh and made the tamarind tree her abode. Worshipped as a Devi, she was the guardian of the chaste. The tamarind tree grew to enormity and, despite its great age, bore fruit in abundance…few dared to climb up…the trunk was covered with slippery lichen and the canopy infested with venomous ants. But if the climber had a chaste wife, the Devi would turn the lichen into firm footholds, and the ants would make way. The men did not want to be brought to the test (The Legends of Khasak, 103) The myth brands an innocent woman, Chand Umma, unchaste. Her husband fell down from the tamarind tree. Khasak isolates her. The myth of the palm tree is also related to chastity. It is believed that: When flying serpents rested on palm tops during their mysterious journeys … the tapper made an offering of sweet toddy to please these visitants. He left flowers at the foot of the palm for the clan’s well-being. In those times, the tapper did not have to climb the palm bent down for him. It was when a tapper’s woman lost her innocence that the palm ceased to bend. (The Legends of Khasak, 109). Thus, the fact that no one dares to climb the tamarind tree and the tale of the palm tree suggests that the people of Khasak believes in the loss of chastity of their women. Another myth of Khasak is associated with journey. Ravi used to lose himself in the image of a journey during times of his lonely and pensive mood. In the chapter titled “Once upon a Time”, Ravi thinks about life as a journey. Soon it was dark, and the fantasy returned, the fantasy of the journey. The seedling house became a compartment in a train, and he the lone and imprisoned traveler. Dark wastes lay on either side; from them fleeting signs spoke to Ravi. (The Legends of Khasak, 48). Khasak is a land of inertia. Except the Pandarams (a migrant community), the people of Khasak seldom leaves the village. The Pandarams believe that Gods come riding the east wind and taps awake the mendicant of Khasak. It is a call hard to resist and they go on journey. Thus the people of Khasak their beliefs with myths and legends. The myth of rebirth is also present in Khasak. The story of a girl named Kunjuvella who possessed memories of her previous birth testifies their belief in rebirth. For them, even disease becomes a ritual. They believe that small-pox is the boon of Nallamma, the Goddess. They believe that she suckles the children to death. She is also viewed as the jealous mistress of the sick men. Thus the myths of Khasak help to provide a dark and ancient ambience to the place. It is reflected in the lives of its people. An archetype is a pattern from which copies can be made. It is a universal theme that manifests itself differently on an individual basis. According to Philip Wheelwright in Metaphor and Reality, archetypes are universal symbols which are: those which carry the same or very similar meanings for a large portion, if not all, of mankind. It is a discoverable fact that certain symbols…recur again and again in cultures so remote from one another in space and time that there is no likelihood of any historical influence and casual connection among them.(111) Archetypes fall into two major categories: characters, situations (symbols).Some of the archetypes used in this dissertation are: The archetype of the spider has a long history in human consciousness. In Greek mythology, Arachne was a mortal weaver who challenged Minerva to a contest of weaving. Arachne's skill was marvelous, both in product and in the act of weaving. She carried the sin of hubris, and paid

the price for it. A mortal cannot be as good as the gods, the myth goes, and she was going to be destroyed for her arrogance. However, since her skill nearly matched Minerva's, she was transformed into a spider. Celtic legend tells of prisoners who take the lesson of patience and persistence from spiders, who rebuild their webs daily when they are torn down. Native American symbolism sees the spider archetype as the keeper of the past and its connection to the future. In the novel, Ravi, when he kills spiders, is symbolically trying to kill his past which is tainted with guilt. In India the spider is the weaver of the web of Maya, illusion. In her web she stands as the center of the world. By killing it, Ravi affirms the impossibility of his escape from his past via the illusory nature of Khasak. The Horse archetype throughout the ages has been closely linked with our instinctive, primal drives. Jung thought the Horse's appearance could signify instincts out of control. The horse evokes intense feelings and unbridled ion instead of cool, collected thought. In many different situations and in many different ways, horses were enabling people to make with feelings they'd buried deep inside their shadow. Horses, by embodying one of the deepest archetypes in our consciousness, most definitely stir us up. All those things that are buried away or girdled safely up start swirling around in our psyches. Horses can be a direct connection into the unconscious. When we look at a horse, and especially when there's a horse strutting across the pen in front of us, we see the flesh-and-blood incarnation of powerful forces bottled up within us that we wish we had the guts to saddle and ride. These are the forces that Jung called the shadow self. Maimoona, the beauty of Khasak, is compared to a sacrificial mare whom none could lasso, save in dreams.” Often Maimoona turned her charms on her pursuers, reducing them to blushing boys. She was the sacrificial mare no one could lasso.” ( The Legends of Khasak, 25) She, like the horse, evokes intense feelings and unbridled ion in the men of Khasak. The symbols of rebirth are cave, egg, spring, tree, the cross, dawn, emerging out of the sea, snake, bird; a seed, arising from the earth or faeces, green shoot from a dead branch or trunk, phoenix; drinking alcohol or blood red wine, flame, a pearl and the womb. Rebirth is as difficult to face as death. It holds within it not just the memories of the struggles and difficulties of our own physical birth and growth, but also the challenge of becoming the unknown future, the dark possibility, the new. In the novel, some of these symbols are made use of. Nizam Ali spends his days in a cave after he proclaims himself the Khazi of Sayed Mian Sheikh. Thus it symbolizes his rebirth from an ordinary human being to a mystic. The festival of Onam is depicted in the novel and it stands for spring time. It makes Ravi think of his lost childhood ad in his mind he becomes a child again. Thus he is reborn. Dawn is a powerful symbol used in the novel. It makes Ravi philosophise about the nature of human destiny. It reminds him of his father. He gets into a realm of mind far removed from the mundane life. Snake is used as a symbol of rebirth in the climax of the novel. Ravi fondly gives his foot to a snake and gets bitten. It may be his way of ending one journey and beginning another into the unknown world. The snake bite is a window opening out from the world of guilt. The Water type is the Philosopher who brings to light that which is hidden, uncovering new knowledge, dispelling mystery, eroding ignorance. Like an old-time prospector, it sifts through the gravel of notions and beliefs, tireless in effort to apprehend the nature of reality. As the custodian of ancestral memories and dreams, water articulates our aspirations. Water symbolizes the mystery of creation, birth-death-resurrection, purification and redemption, fertility and growth, spiritual mystery and infinity and also eternity. According to Jung, water symbolizes the unconscious. Water, as an agent of purification and redemption, is seen as rain in the novel. It also symbolizes the birth-death-rebirth when rain falls on the dying Ravi.

The rain, nothing but the rain. White, opaque. The rain slept, it dreamt….The waters of the Timeless rain touched him. Grass sprouted through the pores of his body. Above him the great rain shrank small as a thumb, the size of the departing subtle body. (The Legends of Khasak, 203). Chukru, the Diving Fowl, commits suicide in a well. For him, water is a way of redemption from the sin of driving his daughter Abida away from home. The snake was one of the most widely used symbols associated with the goddess in many cultures of the Near East, where the Eve mythology had its roots. It is interesting that ancient men used the same symbol as the symbol for the goddess to depict death, the unknown, and the uncharted. In The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets Barbara Walker points out that practically every culture has a snake in its mythology, and most often it is seen as a symbol of wisdom, healing, initiation, and secret knowledge, or it is associated with eternal life and ongoing renewal. Snake is the archetypal symbol of the Great Mother Goddess, incarnate in one of her most universal forms. It is also a symbol of the Kundalini Shakti energy, the cosmic feminine energy that ignites and fuels our spiritual awakening process. Kundalini is a Sanskrit word meaning “coiled up”. The snake is a well-known symbol for sin and temptation. When the Mullah sees Nizam Ali for the first time, he is hunting for snakes. It symbolizes the Mullah’s attraction towards the feminine boy. The image of the diademed serpents riding the mirage and calling little Ravi symbolizes secret or forbidden knowledge. It prophesies his relationship with his stepmother. The snake that bites Ravi initiates him into a new and unknown life. Snake is also a symbol of the Kundalini Shakti, the cosmic feminine energy. Ravi seems to find the lost feminine presence via the snake bite. The palm tree is largely a solar symbol , considering the radiating fronds bursting forth at the very height of a towering climb. The head of the palm is visually comparable to our glowing sunstar, and so many symbolic meanings of the palm are related to solar attributes such as honour, truth, value, vitality, warmth, fertility, expansion, protection, aspiration, attainment, unification, resurrection and singleness of purpose. Sun symbols are predominantly masculine in their energetic tone. However, the palm shares its symbolic gender with succulent female qualities found in the fruit it bears. The erect, towering trunk representing the phallus – male power rising into action – followed by a flowering, expansive fireworks display of long supple leaves nestling an offspring of rich, nutritious fruits. In alchemical traditions, the palm tree is a symbol of androgyny as it possesses the perfect integration of both male and female attributes. As dream symbols, palm trees symbolize our ability to rise above conflict and spread our light brilliantly – letting it shine over the din of petty concerns – rising above disillusionment like the sun itself. Khasak is a land of palm trees and toddy tappers. Kuppu, the toddy tapper, calls the palm trees as his ‘black mistresses’. The Temperance law prohibited the brewing of liquor and Kuppu lost his occupation, rather his vocation. It reduced him to a mere gossipmonger. In the novel, the journey archetype pervades throughout its length and breadth. Unlike the quest motif associated with journey, the journey in The legends of Khasak is synonymous with life or destiny. Ravi, the protagonist, views his life as a journey initiated by a strong pang of guilt for cheating his father. For him, Khasak is just a ‘sarai’ or inn for him where he can have a transient stay. His existential angst and quest for the meaning of life forms the base of the novel. Ravi tells the story of the journey of two spores to his students. Long before the lizards, before the dinosaurs, two spores set out on an incredible journey. They came to a valley bathed in the placid glow of sunset. My elder sister, said the little spore to the bigger spore, let us see what lies beyond.

This valley is green, replied the bigger spore, I shall journey no farther. I want to journey, said the little spore, I want to discover. She gazed in wonder at the path before her. Will you forget your sister, asked the bigger spore. Never, said the little spore. You will, little one, for this is the loveless tale of karma; in it there is only parting and sorrow. The little spore journeyed on. The bigger spore stayed back in the valley…. A girl with silver anklets and eyes prettied with surma came to Chethali’s valley to gather flowers. The Champaka tree stood alone… As the twig broke the Champaka said, My little sister, you have forgotten me! (The Legends of Khasak, 61) The spore that stayed became the flora and the one that moved on became the human race and forgot the bond. Allah Picha Mollakka, the Mullah of Khasak, is often described as the wayfarer. His life is also viewed as a journey and his sore toe symbolizes his hardships. It hurt at first, later became malignant, and the Mullah died of it. Thus journey forms an important archetype in the novel. Darkness symbolizes knowledge in The Legends of Khasak. Chukru’s moving towards the darkness of the depth of the well and Madhavan Nair’s story of the blind guru asserts the fact. Thus having set the ground it is appropriate to write here how much the writer has succeeded in merging the elements of psychology and mythology together in the next chapter. Posted by Preethu at 02:03 No comments:

Conclusion One among the widespread criticisms that followed the publication of The Legends of Khasak was about the inappropriate use of the word ‘legend’ in the title of the novel that told the tale of mundane rural people. It seems that the magnanimity of the term embraced too wide a scope than fit for its content. Having dealt with the psychoanalytic and mythological/archetypal analysis of the novel, this dissertation justifies the use of the word ‘legend’ in The Legends of Khasak and attempts to challenge the common belief of some critics of literary theory that theory in literature does everything in its power to amputate the living soul of literature by incising its heart out and make the study of art a hard-edged science. This argument evolves through the three chapters. The Introduction asserts the importance of comparative studies and literary theory in the analysis of an Indian novel. The scope of the work selected is explored and the artist was placed in both the regional as well as Indian English canons of fiction. The second chapter, titled “The Dark Vault”, studies the novel on the basis of the psychoanalytic theory of criticism. It studies the important characters and their psychic dispositions are associated with universally acknowledged psychological theories. It helps in making them true to real life. The third chapter, titled “Ancient Moulds”, applies mythological criticism to the novel. Common patterns that recur in literature are identified in the novel and it helps in placing the novel as a universal work of art. In asserting O V Vijayan’s eminence, the visions of Jung and Freud about who a true artist is can also be analysed. Jung observed in Modern Man in Search of a Soul that a great artist is a person who possesses the primordial vision, a special sensibility to archetypal patterns and a gift for speaking in primordial images that enables him/her to transmit experiences of the inner world through art. According to him, “The primordial experience is the source of his creativeness; it

cannot be fathomed, and therefore requires mythological imagery to give it form”. (164) Evidence from mythological analysis conducted on the novel leads us to the conclusion that O V Vijayan possessed the aforementioned primordial vision. Vijayan’s brilliance lies in his capacity to go back and forth in time: from history to mythology, from dates to datelessness, and from the real to beyond what is apparently real. These anachronistic flights, sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, sometimes allegorical, sometimes satirical and humorous, led him to the realization that what is propagated as history is a bunch of fairy tales. Vijayan’s vision and style springs out of the archetypal experience of the pre-modern India. His nascent postmodernist sensibility enabled him to bring out the essence of the pre-modern in a scorching flaming narrative style. Freud says that it is the power of a genius to mould the artistic medium into a faithful image of the creatures of his imagination, as well as into a satisfying artistic form. About Vijayan’s perspective, he looked at the world from a window, one that was framed by his intensely personal views of men, women and matters. As a writer, he was intense but as a commentator he maintained an essential detachment. His creative self often involved in polemical exchanges between the introspective writer and the analytic thinker in him. Vijayan, like the protagonist, changed into a spiritual wanderer, an agnostic seeking spiritual truths and values such as comion and eternal grace, by the time the novel was completed. This truthful self descent has made the novel which otherwise would have been nothing but a mundane village romance, a seminal work that addressed some of the deeper issues of an enlightened individual’s existence. From the studies conducted in this dissertation, the universal appeal of the novel is ed for. Now let us analyse the ‘legend’ behind the universal appeal of the novel. It is said that myths merge with everyday life and legends are born. Or in other words, a legend is a myth retold with a personal flavour. The ‘legend’ behind the success of The Legends of Khasak is that rather than touching on the surface of the readers mind or expressing the use of the finer nuances of the English tongue, it derives an appeal from within through a story retold in a simple setting. The original version has struck a resonant chord within the readers. Both myth and common life are blended together into a fine mix in the novel. The mythical aspects set the stage for a perfect read by providing an ambience of antiquity and fantasy and it appeals to the collective unconscious. The fact that myths transcend time gives the novel a universal appeal. Vijayan mixes myth, reality and his personal experiences very effectively. Common or ordinary life is portrayed well in the novel. The characters that evolved from Vijayan’s pen were like people whom one commonly encounters in life. Hence the reader could easily associate with their mental state and think of their experiences from a personal perspective. Perhaps the fact that contributed most to the success of this work in appealing to the deep inner layers of the mind is that the fine portrayal of the characters in the novel enables the readers to respond to the psyche of the author and the character. This dissertation asserts that O V Vijayan is a great artist and the analysis based on the critical theories s for the success of the work which is a belated translation of the older work. To conclude, this dissertation asserts how the appeal of a work of art is elevated by adhering to myths and mind that is both personal and collective. Both transcend time and space. The blend of myth and mind thus makes art a true ‘legend’. This dissertation also offers scope for further research in the field of mythological and psychoanalytic theory. Exploring the novel by blending these with the theory of structuralism opens new vistas of study. For instance, the psychoanalytic aspect of the oedipal myth can be blended with structuralism and it offers a very different aspect to the study. The novel turns out

to be feminine, the author masculine and the very act of reading becomes the reflection of the oedipal desire to possess the mother by challenging the father, which can be used in The Legends of Khasak. Moreover, the language and imagery of the novel is so rich and dense that a Lacanian study is also a fruitful area of research in which language and the unconscious are related to each other