Seven Summers

Raj Anand Mulk

Description

Seven Summers, first drafted when Mulk Raj anand was a student at London University but not published till 1951, recreates teh events and feelings of the first seven years of the writer''s life, or what he called his ''half unconcious and half conscious childhood''. first of the seven volumes of autobiographical fiction that Anand conceptualized but never completed, this book is full of memorable scenes and people observed through the eyes of a child. the most impressive of them all being the Coronation Durbar in Delhi to which our young hero is smuggled wrapped in a blanket so that the Sahibs might not object to the presence of ''so discordant an element into so gorgeous a ceremony''. this edition of Seven Summers is a special reissue of the classic autobiography to commemorate Anand''s birth centenary.

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• English
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Date de parution: 22 juin 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184754520
• Langue: English

Extrait

MULK RAJ ANAND
Seven Summers
A Memoir
Edited, with an Introduction, by Saros Cowasjee

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Introduction
Mulk s Day in Khandala
PART I The Road
PART II The River
A Select Glossary
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
SEVEN SUMMERS
Mulk Raj Anand was born in Peshawar in 1905 and educated at the universities of Punjab and London. After earning his PhD in Philosophy in 1929, Anand began writing for T.S. Eliot s magazine Criterion as well as books on cooking and art. Recognition came with the publication of his first two novels, Untouchable and Coolie . These were followed by a succession of novels, including his well-known trilogy The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940) and The Sword and the Sickle (1942). By the time he returned to India in 1946 he was easily the best-known Indian writer abroad.
Making Bombay his home and centre of activity, Anand threw himself headlong into the cultural and social life of India. He founded and edited the fine arts magazine Marg , and has been the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, several honorary doctorates and other distinctions.
Saros Cowasjee is Professor Emeritus of the University of Regina in Canada. His published works include two novels, Goodbye to Elsa (1974) and The Assistant Professor (1998), critical studies on Sean O Casey and Mulk Raj Anand, and several anthologies of fiction, including The Oxford Anthology of Raj Stories (1998) and A Raj Collection (2005).
To the memory of my Mother
Ah! that childhood of mine, the great highway in all weathers, supernaturally sober, more disinterested than the best of beggars, and proud of possessing neither country nor friends-what foolishness it was-and only now I perceive it!
-R IMBAUD
Introduction
Seven Summers (first published in 1951) was conceived in 1925-26 while Mulk Raj Anand was studying for his doctoral degree in philosophy at the University of London. Lonely and homesick, he had fallen in love with Irene, the beautiful daughter of a science professor at the University of Wales. At her behest, he began a confession, which he would read to her on weekends. Love, not expediency, motivated the writing, and the happy weekends decided the length of the work. Soon it ran into 2000 pages. Irene promised to marry him if he could find a publisher for his confession, but by the time he found one she was justifiedly married to someone else. The work, however, did not go to waste: the narrative became the source of many of Anand s novels, short stories and of his most ambitious undertaking, The Seven Ages of Man .
Seven Summers recreates, in Anand s own words, the first seven years of my own half unconscious and half conscious childhood . Written with candour and sharp insight into a child s mind, the book deserves to rank alongside some of the better-known autobiographies of childhood, such as William Hudson s Far Away and Long Ago (1918), Gorki s My Childhood (1915) and Tolstoy s Childhood (1852). Anand comes closest to Tolstoy insofar as he took for his literary model the latter s Childhood -a work not strictly autobiographical. Like Tolstoy, Anand shows a remarkable capacity for wonder that allows him to enter childhood as few people can. Also, the two writers are among the first in their own countries to describe the life of a child from within-from the child s point of view.
Seven Summers is divided into two parts: The Road and The River . Both headings are appropriate and symbolic. The keynote of the book is struck in the opening paragraph:
Dividing the barracks and the bungalows is the road, lined with casuarina trees, which stretches from end to end of the horizon. I stand for a long while with my thumb in my mouth, wondering where it comes from and where it goes. Then I run round in circles on the little clearing under the grove surrounding the Persian wheel well in a wild delirium of movement, oblivious of the past and the future, excited by my own happiness at finding myself wandering freely in the wide open world
The road symbolizes the journey of life. It also symbolizes the divide between the rich and the poor, between the barracks of the sepoys and the plush bungalows of the officers. But above all else, it embodies the author s love of the earth, -the road which I crossed from the protection of one line of casuarinas trees, stirred by the nimble breeze, to the other, the road in whose dust I rolled, the road where I held conversation with men and beasts and birds, the road which dominated my life with its unknown past and its undiscovered future . Such, indeed, is the love of the earth that on one occasion Krishan, our young hero, chewed the mud and liked the sweet dry, dusty taste of it . Anand concludes the first part by saying that the road later became for him an ever present reality .
Anand does not dwell on the symbolism of the river with the same precision as he does on that of the road. Still, the symbolic meaning of the river is not hard to perceive. The road is something one takes; the river is something one flows with. Krishan, as he grows up, is carried by the current of the stream. He occasionally exerts himself and changes course, but by and large he flows with the river of life. And the river takes along not only him but hundreds like him. The river is emblematic of the merging of the individual with the vast and varied stream of life. The road that Krishan saw and looked at with amazement is, in a sense, left untrodden, for human choice is circumscribed by human responsibilities and by the rigours and strictures of the society one belongs to.
Having assumed the name Krishan, Anand writes about himself and his family with much frankness. The reviewer of the Times Literary Supplement referred to him as as Freudian a baby as was ever born in English fiction of the twenties and the thirties , one whose seven summers are hot with his physical love for his mother and aunts . He was equally attracted to young girls and their very touch thrilled him. When lacking company, he would imagine a female playmate and call out to her aloud. His superstitious mother thought that her boy had the gift of seeing things invisible to others-that he might indeed be the god Krishna, his namesake, playing with his gopis! .
Among other salient features of the young hero are his spirit of inquiry and his zest for life-two attributes that Anand retained throughout his long life. Krishan is continually pelting his parents with questions. He inquires of his devout mother: Who made God ? ; he asks his all-knowing father (the most learned man among the illiterate sepoys!): Who made the world? And why is it not possible to know everything? There are the obstinate questionings which Wordsworth spoke of, and in the manner of Wordsworth, the adult Anand speaks of childhood: What was the magic of those days which is not here today? Was it in the innocence of one s soul or the sheer vitality of one s body?
In both, perhaps. But with each new summer, the shadows of the future fall upon the child s path. The longing for school is chilled by the master s rod, the adoration of his father by the latter s dark moods; the comfort he found in the lap of his mother and his aunt take on a renewed sensuality when he plays with his girl cousin. The change from innocence to experience is gradual and the mood ambivalent, as in some of Blake s finest poems like The Echoing Green and Ah! Sunflower .
What most characterizes the book is Krishan s animal vitality, his lust for life, the wildly exulting stream of joy he manifests despite the prevailing violence around him. A bear dancing to the small drum of the juggler is a common enough sight in India. But Anand s description of one captivates us, not because he has anything new to offer but because we see the show through the eyes of a child, who is able to transmute his joy with a freshness we seem to have lost in our adulthood. The same is true when Krishan visits the zoo. Nothing untoward or unusual happens; there are no birds or beasts not to be found in an average zoo. Yet, such is the unalloyed clarity of the child s vision that we ourselves are transported into a world of joy. As we look at the world through the child s eyes, we recall our own childhood.
The most unforgettable episode in the book is Krishan s visit to Delhi to witness the Coronation Durbar of King George and his consort, Mary. He rides concealed in a special train in which the General Officer Commanding of the Nowshera Brigade (the brigade to which his father is attached) is travelling. He is kept covered with a blanket so that no Sahib might see him. In Delhi, too, he is kept out of the sight of the Sahibs, who might object to the presence of so discordant an element into so gorgeous a ceremony . But that is a small price to pay. From his inconspicuous seat in the vast concourse, he reconnoitres the pageantry with open-eyed awe and wonder-taking us back to our childhood and to a world which was once innocent and untainted by human experience.
It would be amiss not to mention the book s one flaw. The story is interspersed with the author s editorial comments. Most of the time they serve their purpose well, but there are occasions when rather than enlightening the reader they merely re-emphasize what the reader should discover for himself. In spite of this, Seven Summers remains a rare achievement-the best autobiography of childhood yet written by an Indian novelist in English.
Saros Cowasjee
University of Regina, Regina
Canada, 2005
Mulk s Day in Khandala *
As always, Mulk wakes up at 5 a.m. Earlier he would have gone for a walk, but that he can no longer do. He has his bath and gets ready for the day.
His day begins with tea and three Shrewberry biscuits. He insists on writing-at least a few lines. We give him his writing board and ruled paper. He sits contemplating for a while, staring at the blank sheet before him. The