Notes
159 Notes chapter 1 1. Rushdie’s introduction appeared originally in the 1997 New Yorker issue dedicated to Indian writing in English under the title “Damme, This Is the Oriental Scene for You!” 2. For some examples of such criticism, see M. Mukherjee (1999, 26), J. Rege (1999, 187–88), P. Mishra (1999, 49–51), and especially Orsini (2002), a fine essay that shares critical ground with my overall argument. 3. Perhaps it is necessary to note that postcolonialism is used sometimes to refer to a historical condition and sometimes more narrowly to a form of cultural and historiographical criticism and theory. This book is mainly concerned with the adequacy of certain versions of the latter to deal with the former (especially , but not exclusively, the literature that emerges out of it). It is, I think, clear from the context which meaning is meant where. 4. See also the critical anthology coedited by Bartolovich and Lazarus (2002). 5. Varadarajan’s History of Tamil Literature (1970) is an abridged English version of an important, if dated, introduction to Tamil literature written originally in Tamil. In chapter 4 I take up the terminological relationship of “classical ” to “vernacular” in some detail. 6. See Subramanyam (1994). The poem was first published in Poetry India 1 (April–June 1966): 9. 7. My translation. When Gnanakoothan refers to previous poets, he has in mind the great Tamil poets of antiquity he has just listed. But it is readily evident from Ka Na Su’s work that he was an avid reader of English literature and was especially conversant with the modernists. In this context, Tamil readers may consult Ka Na Su’s prefaces and critical essays in Puthu Kavithaikal (1989). K. N. Subramanyam (Ka Na Su, 1912–89), one of the most prominent figures of 160 | Notes to Chapter 1 modern Tamil literature, was a poet, a critic, and a novelist. “In his novels,” R. Parthasarthy says, “prose fiction in Tamil reached its apotheosis” (1994, 254). While this assessment by Parthasarthy is contestable (Puthumaipithan and Mowni could easily lay rival claim), Parthasarthy’s admiration for Ka Na Su on aesthetic grounds is widely shared in Tamil literary critical circles. 8. For a recent study of New Poetry, see Rama (2003). 9. As is well known, Tagore dissociated himself from overt nationalist forms of thought. However, because a song by Tagore is the national anthem of India, Tagore is also often linked to the cultural forms of the nation. Ka Na Su’s poem, it seems to me, means to indicate this association. “National” is my way of identifying this association without assimilating Tagore into an ideological position that he often argued against. 10. For an overview of the concept of cultural imperialism, see Tomlinson (1991). 11. Pound’s centrality for some of the most important strands of modernism is well known. Nicholls describes him as one of the “canonical modernists” (1995, vii), and one of Hugh Kenner’s influential studies of the age of modernism is simply titled The Pound Era. The interesting echoes in Pound for postcolonial criticism are also worth noting. Pound writes in his poetic epitaph for “E. P.” that “he had been born / In a half savage country, out of date” (1975, 98) and that in the modern age “Caliban casts out Ariel” (99). Such references bring to mind the postcolonial essays by Fernández Retamar (1989) on Caliban and “America.” 12. The notion of a Tractor Art itself should also be scrutinized. No doubt there was much reductive literary and artistic representation under the Soviet Union. But whether all Soviet literature and art deserves this dismissive label is worth consideration. 13. For Bhabha on the “mimic man,” see “Of Mimicry and Man” (1994, 87–88). Later Bhabha speaks of “colonial man” (91). Although the notion of mimicry would seem to suggest a mode of enunciation (mimicry) rather than a property of identity (hybridity), these passages illustrate the manner in which Bhabha’s argument repeatedly begins with the former and ends up with the latter. For discussion of related aspects of Bhabha, see Sinfield (1996), Parry (1994), Easthope (1998), and Lazarus (1999, esp. the chapter “Disavowing Decolonization”). Alan Sinfield observes, “Bhabha’s case for hybridity is related to his argument that the ‘mimicry’ of the colonial subject hovers, indeterminately , between respect and mockery” (1996, 282). 14. In chapter 4, I discuss in some detail my translation of Water! into English. The translation was published by Asian Theatre Journal in the United...
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