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Literary Review
Outside the fold
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The Arts and the Sciences are intricate cultural complexes and our universities need to come out of a strict compartmentalisation of disciplines. Only then can we develop insights and aesthetic experience through active participation in the cultural patterns of our society, says SHELLEY WALIA.
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TO develop a technique of general critical analysis by which we can arrive at our own evolution and judgment of the correlation between various disciplines is to develop insights and aesthetic experience through active participation in the cultural patterns of our society.
The fields of literature, history, science and arts concern themselves with the problem of value, of the life-giving beliefs and ideas made visible and audible through diverse media used by men who gave new energy to civilisation and expanded our understanding of the world and ourselves. In any event, the artist had a certain, well-defined function in mind which was always determined by his age, patronage and his own personality.
Hence, the interface between philosophy, history, music, art, science and literature is as old as civilisation. The Greeks produced an expressive and eternal art because of a high degree of imagination, of realism and of humanism. The education of the Greek citizen was to facilitate him to see culture as part of living and not superfluous to the demands and anxiety of life. It is a fact that all free men in Athens could play a musical instrument and, when called upon, sing in the chorus of the drama.
When the glory had departed from Athens, time was ripe for Zeno's stoicism and its opposite Epicureanism. To keep the slaves in subjugation, you needed Zeno's philosophy of destiny and to counter this you had Epicure who was convinced that apathy is impossible. The artistic glory that lived with Plato and Aristotle faded into an era of sensuousness and sentimentality. The Greeks themselves fell victims to their Roman conquerors.
Humanities, let it be clear, is not at the periphery of university education or the scientific world. At the end of the day, the computer nerd or the yuppie does unwind in the West End or Broadway, enjoying drama, or spends an evening in the company of a book or music.
And who says that science is not pertinent to social sciences? The scientific finding that chaotic systems embody deep structures of order is one of such widespread implications that it has attracted interest across a spectrum of disciplines, including the Humanities. Varying ideas of order and disorder enable original readings of scientific and literary texts from Newton's Principia to the hyper-real "Cyberia" of Baudrillard, from Dadaism to the post-industrial force of production. For instance, Cézanne saw an inherent movement in all that we see; things are never fixed and change their appearance with change in light. The inconsistency of perception and discernment became unmistakable to him through the familiarity with geometric solids that finally showed the way for the movement of Cubism. Percussion and piano blending into a tonal texture in which they are remarkably complementary is part of Bartok's music where complicated rhythmic patterns, dissonances, clang of tonal quality reflect the freshness and spontaneity as well as the subtleties of contradictory feelings typical of the 20th Century.
But this "uncertainty principle" was formulated not by these artists but by the physicist Werner Heisenberg, as a consequence of Quantum Mechanics, a theory that states that there is always uncertainty in simultaneous measurements of the position of particles. The notion of uncertainty gradually is hijacked by deconstruction and postmodernism, which see all language and representation as floating and unstable, thereby protecting all ideas pertaining to freedom and rejecting any totalitarianism of interpretation or the conservative values of the bourgeoisie.
Lowering of standards of values in a democratic society poses a danger to its very existence. At no time in history have the Humanities been challenged with a greater opportunity to uphold all values which scaffold our world and yet retain the dynamism and change so essential to a living culture. Renaissance of the Humanities in the liberal arts programme comes invariably through attention to the study of arts for broadening of cultural understanding of the heritage of the past and our awareness of the exigencies of the present. For such developments, this interdisciplinary approach at a level which takes into consideration the non-professional's limited technical knowledge and experience will go a long way to make sure that we are never oblivious of the social forces reflected in the works of art. In view of this close connection between art and life, it is observable that art engages several aspects of experience relevant to the artist's religious affiliations and the religion of the public, his economic status and that of his audience, his social status and the social status of the public.
Add to this personal and social history, the geographical location and the prevailing politics of the time, and you have a new training in understanding, hearing and seeing all those vital forces that have a direct bearing on the production of any art form. In this approach lies the close analysis of one's cultural inheritance.
The broken sword, the dying horse, and the dead child in Picasso's Guernica all suggest a feeling of alarm and butchery that was a part of the artist-historian's communication and a war-torn world. Instrumental music, on the other hand, rejects such objectivity associated with specific symbols, but nevertheless, even in abstract music rhythmic or melodic patterns, are often representations of the emotive state so integral to the time of its making. The idea of heroism in Beethoven's Eroica is obvious from the vibrant power and splendour of the onrushing sweep of the composition. Valiant, churning strokes and profoundly contrasting colours in Van Gogh's The Starry Night indicate the essential vigour of the artist himself. The rhythmic motives in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony suggest the notion of the knocking of fate at your door. Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People is a self-assured diagonal movement united with the atmosphere of sombre colours against the smoke-filled background, intensifying our own feelings about self-determination and struggle.
My purpose here is, therefore, to show that as we move through the pages of history, we clearly notice the function of art as the consequence of cultural patterns and trends in religion, economics and other important areas of human activity. It is unquestionably problematical to make a distinction between thought and feeling, and I am certain that an amalgamation of words and music, colour and movement can broaden human experience in a way that words alone and unaided cannot do. Ruskin rightly said: "Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their arts. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last". For understanding Auden's poetry, familiarity with Jazz and its rhythms make not only reading aloud an exhilarating experience, but also throw light on the history of the African's alienation with his inexperienced surroundings in America, expressed so well through "barrel music" with its jarring tones emanating from rusted and badly tuned pianos. If I had to say which was telling the truth about the early 20th Century racism and feeling of homelessness, a speech by a political Black leader or Black music, I should believe in the latter. A thorough knowledge of their music or art offers pointers to their intellectual and social life.
For example, the art of Boucher created for the court of Louis XV is very different from that of Picasso, yet each in his own way represents the culture of his time; Boucher depicts enchanting enticing subjects to boost the art of love, whereas Picasso, living in the machine age, seeks to paint in a style appropriate to the technical world. The difference in attitude toward religion and other institutions shows clearly in the works of Bach who wrote for his Lutheran flock during the early 18th Century and of Hayden who composed specifically for his patron Prince Esterhazy half a century later.
And though much is in common with their contemporaries, all such artists have left a stamp of their personality on their art as well as their age. This obvious interaction between cause and effect is so visible in Leonardo da Vinci who transformed Renaissance into a enormous artistic age, and in turn humanism was what made him illustrious; Richard Wagner too exemplifies German nationalism through the opera, but at the same time he was carried forward on the escalating passion of nationalism.
These are some ways of critical appreciation of art or music, a schooling that allows us to project our minds into experiencing art and the period of its creation. Such agile flexibility permits us to explicate what we see and hear in terms of the larger forces and monuments of any civilisation. Only when we get to this intimacy with art, can we become a part of the artist's experience. And such aesthetic experience can be cultivated by study and training, by coming out of strict compartmentalisation of disciplines and moving to intertextual experiences. Our education is incomplete without such an implementation. We, at the university, feel that a culture of excellence must grow around teaching and research, especially by emphasising academic activities that include seminars, colloquiums, workshops, and the exchange of ideas through formal and informal groups. We must also ensure that our students have viable academic options. That is why we have diversified into many areas keeping in view international standards and developments. This has resulted in a major overhaul of the existing courses and the introduction of several new courses with students being encouraged to undertake projects which involve comparative study. It is envisaged that this would create a situation for a more organised, and well-coordinated interaction with other departments in the university.
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