Tuesday, March 29

Literature Vs. _________

No, don't ask me if I have free time.

I am still stuck on the thousands of books from the 5th century while everyone else keeps on writing more and more books right this minute. I have the Tubadours lyrics to finish, the Le Morte D'arthura to complete, the Ovid poems to translate and that is just completing the first half of the century.Then comes not only Chaucer but also his different translation and of course we being the proud literature students are never satisfied with just one translation, we have to dig deep trying to find the French translation, Italian translation, Walsh translation and every translation that has been made possible. And then finally like most Bhutanese are so fond of pointing out, we have to master the Master of English, Shakespeare, himself. Furthermore, it is not one play per year, it is one play per hour and we are suppose to finish the whole of his Thirty-seven plays within the semester. If citing Shakespeare's work as the paradigm where English language began and his language as the best and hardest of all that the language has to offer is an excuse to remove his work from your study, then don't for you haven't even tried reading one of the scripts that some of the Scribes wrote in earlier days. Try thinking about the plays you so naively considered 'difficult' when you were in high school, then try imagining the whole lot of them being thrown in on your head to be completed in a single hour, then try asking do I realy have free time?

You shudder at the though of reading one poem by just one of the poets, a single 500 pages novel, imagine how it feels to be Us.There is Austen,Wordsworth,Keats, Blake,Shelly,Plath and on and on goes the name. It never stops, it just continues on adding name after names. We have to study the whole set of poems that has ever been written, the whole set of novel that has ever been published and search for meaning where it is sometimes impossible to depicter. Believe me, sometimes it feels like it is the Creation of the world that we are reading about, that is how massive it is. And we are not satisfied with just the authors, we need to know about the whole movement that each history goes through -The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Transcendentalism, The French revolution and so on and still we are not satisfied. We have to analyse, study and interpret everything in every possible way. And it is never a simple case of a single interpretation for a single text, we are expected to read the author's point of view, the society's criticism of it, the reader's own view, intertextuality and whatever the any person deems possible to interpret!

Furthermore, it  is not enough that one study the Classic. Ask anyone and they will tell you, the person who study classics are either book-worms or nerds with total lacking social skills! Come to think of it,go to a party and try talking about Jane Austen or William Wordsworth, most of the people will think you are a bore, not to mention it would be difficult to find anyone who is even willing to listen in the first place. And why would want to be a bore right? So Yes, we go and read. Read all the popular book that comes up, every new sensation that has taken the world by storm - Twilight, Vampire dairies, or any latest Celebrity's autobiography and discuss it like we can't live without them for God forbid, if it is revealed that we didn't read the latest fancy doing the rounds, how are we,literature students suppose to survive without knowing about the latest book? How on earth is it possible for us not to have read the book? Aren't we suppose to be the one who likes book? Take the most popular book that you avow so much to a literature class and look how easily it is shred to pieces by the people around the tutorials, discussing the good point, the bad points, the narrative style, the voice, the desire, the tension....Then tell me if I am suppose to like the newest chick-flick you are such a fan of, that you so consider to be of the utmost literary quality.

One complains that they can't 'express' their feeling properly to their loved ones, imagine what we have to do. An individual person has so much trouble explaining their own feeling to someone they know, imagine how hard it is for us to interpret the thought and feeling of so many writers -writer that we don't know personally - so many times over and over again. And to be addressed to one's Tutor who is going to grade you according to your expression, decide if you are good enough or not, don't tell me 'expressing' your emotions to someone you already know is that hard!

We know you have work, I am sure you work is as hard as it is ours but we never presume it is easy for you. We never deduce that just because you spend more time writing things down on a paper, you gain any less idea than we do in our own respective fields. So what makes us so different? Why be so - for lack of a better work- partial to our work?

So No, do not ask me if I have free time and Yes, stop and think before you go on accusing me of not having too much work, stop and think before you go on and ask me what the use of my Arts Degree is.Because believe me,if you had to do all the works we do and still face as much criticism as we do then you would have given up a long time ago.

2 comments:

  1. I bought this book about two months back " short stories by Guy de Maupassant " , I couldn't even finish 2 stories from that . I had to read each story for atleast 6 times to get the whole meaning of it , I don't know how do you guys manage with these classic books ,Hats off. B/w we don't think that who reads classic are nerds...its just , its very difficult for us who has mediocre English to understand people who speaks above average English ( Personal experience my cousin is English literature student ). Ha ha....sometimes I feel instead of deriving some boring formulas , its better to get engrossed with the classic books which teach something for life .

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  2. Hey Anu, Sorry I am a bit harsh on these notes,I was a bit tired of some of my friends assuming I have free time just because I read books :)And I can imagine there are so many people who write way better than any literature student! You included :)

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