This is small introduction to Ivan Turgenev’s classic novel Fathers and Sons. To those of us who do not know the Russian society, its intense engagement with the questions of life, politics and philosophy at the turn of the 19th century Fathers and Sons is a must read. Turgenev achieves the serene detachment of Tolstoy…
Long ago I read a Russian short story. The protagonist, whose wife has recently passed away, discovers a small note book which she had kept as a record of her personal feelings and observation. He reads through the diary entries and that sets him thinking. He realizes how little he knew about his wife. He…
Yesterday KNR was talking about the 1977 cyclone in A.P; the Diviseema Tragedy. The topic came up from the Sardar Sarovar project which KNR had visited that day. He said he remembers it all even now, 1977 when he was just 14 years old, he had seen it. Tragedy struck A.P that year. His Grandmother was talking about her days when the tidal waves (that struck the villages that day) were last seen a good 90 years ago.
Gabriel Marquez was an unknown writer for me in the year 1991. One of my friends casually mentioned that I should read this book and gave me One Hundred years of Solitude. I remember having read it in less than 72 hours and when my friend asked me about it, I had no words to…
The epic nature of Paradise Lost is justified by the exactitude with which it adheres to the epic conventions. In brief the epic conventions are “ Statement of the theme of the epic in the first few lines, Starting in medias res ( in the middle of things), Invocation of the muse, Grand style, and…
Somewhere deep inside all the Russian writers must have been philosophers and thinkers. There is no other Literature which looks so much at the society with such concern, angst and emotion. Let there be no doubt that it was not only intensely engaging with the questions of the outward reality, but also very inward looking….
“O God! that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long O Lord how long?” Saint Joan by GB Shaw “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story”…
Is there a distinction that one can make with certainty? Literature is generally what has stood the test of time and can appeal to a number of people because of its inherent greatness, that transcends region, language, culture or genre. The great epic poems of the world, the great tragedies of Shakespeare, the novels of…
Hamlet by Shakespeare When I read Hamlet or when it was taught to us, I was not moved by any overwhelming feeling. But when I watched the celluloid version (Hamlet played by Lawrence Olivier) I was overwhelmed by the ringing resonance of Shakespeare’s diction and by the powerful presence of a noble human being fitted…
An enthralling and riveting work. It is a biography which does justice not just to Charlotte but also to the sisters, Haworth in Keighley, Bradford, and the rest of the West Yorkshire countryside. So much of the personal character; their behaviour, the world view of the Bronte sisters was shaped by the natural scene around…