THE GHOST RIDER by ISMAIL KADARE

The first poesy taught to children in creches had to be the one that follows:

O dear friends, I have three mothers;one at home,one at school and the other is my mother,the party.

It would be hard to find any Albanian at least 25 years old who was not taught this poesy in the first days of creche

-FALMA FSHAZI on Albania under Enver Hoxha

         Without referring to Falma Fshazi,I do not think I can begin this review of  The Ghost Rider ,a novel by Ismail Kadare.It is her doctoral thesis that helped me understand Albania better.

        We have indeed other sources to read about Albania.A brief history of Albania as we read in Wikipedia can teach us only a few basic facts about the country.I also referred to a few other encyclopedias.I re-read my own review (published in a periodical a couple of years ago) of Ismail Kadare's novel 'The File on H'`But nothing can excel the direct experience of a native of  Albania. Especially when a writer like Ismail Kadare tries to debunk the myth that the Balkans may have about themselves,a study like the aforesaid thesis can help us a lot.

        To read The Ghost Rider,it is necessary to have an idea of the history of Albania.  A poem about Albania written by Lord Byron in the 19th century is as follows:

Land of Albania! Where Iskander rose,

Theme of the young,and beacon of the wise,

And he his name-sake,whose oft-baffled foes

Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize:

Land of Albania!let me bend mine eyes

On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!

The cross descends, thy minaret arise,

And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen,

Through many a cypress-grove within each city's ken

(XXXVII,CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE)

        Note the last four lines and you get what he meant.After nearly 200 years,Falma Fshazi writes about the Hoxha regime:

The ban of religion,the intervention in the family until deciding who would marry whom,the hard ideological indoctrination of education and the pressure was made to the citizens to accept a priori and apply the requirements of being 'the new individual as the individual of the party' profoundly damaged the spiritual,social and cultural individual integrity of every Albanian

Falma Fshazi

        I think this is where I can give you the brief summary of The Ghost Rider. The promotional description on the back cover itself is enough to give an idea of it.

An old woman is awoken in the dead of night by knocks at her front door.The woman opens it to find her daughter,Doruntine,standing there alone in the darkness.She has been brought home from a distant land by a mysterious rider she claims is her brother Konstandin.But unbeknownst to her,Konstandin has been dead for years.What follows is a chain of events that plunges a medieval village into fear and mistrust.

        Although the blurb tells the reader clearly that the novel is set in medieval Albania,a peruser cannot refrain from linking it to the impetus behind the work.What made Kadare choose such an ancient tale for his novel?

       It is not just because 'The Ballad of  Constantine and Doruntine' is known wherever Albanian is spoken.As in his early novels,he does not want to be the representative of his 'small nation'.The narrator is not eager to use 'we','our people' ,'our land' etc in this novel either.

          Who is the ghost rider?

         The novel answers this question.It was written in the late seventies.It was first published in 1980.In 1975,Kadare was rusticated to the provincial city of Berat following the controversy over his poem 'Red Pashas'.Those who learn the history of Albania know who Pasha (Ali Pasha)was.In a country where 'red' connotes communism the title infuriated the Pashas of the society.

        Ms Fshazi writes that every single piece of individual life was made collective by the party.In her words,it robbed the citizen of all personal properties.

       The belief that was widely propagated in Albania could be written as follows:

The enemy within :Clergy

The enemy outside:capitalism

'Others are plotting against Albania.'

    At the same time,like the communists elsewhere,Indians also believed that Albania was heading towards the dream of communism.

        K.Venu,the leader of one of the Naxalite parties in India then analysed the Albanian communism in his book titled 'Philosophical Problems of Revolution'(I am probably one of the few who still have a copy of the book in English).He had,however,opined that Albanian communism was being mechanical.At least a few naxalites like him had started thinking that the great China itself  was on its way to capitalist restoration.It was not a premonition or sense of foreboding.

        In his introduction to The Ghost Rider,Prof.David Bellos says that it relates the legend of Doruntine to the emergence of the famous(or infamous?)Albanian besa,the foundation stone of Kanun.In his view,the novel broaches the question of surviving oppression or a kind of cultural hegemony.A brief and relevant history of Albania is given in the introduction to equip the reader for its proper perusal.

       Stres,the precursor of today's police detective is the person who tries to unravel the mystery.

     The rumour of Konstandin’s resurrection worries the church authorities. Resurrection is  the monopoly of only one name.Attributing it to a common man is blasphemous. It cannot be allowed. The archbishop himself summons Stres to know about the progress of his investigation.Stres tells him that all except a minority believe in Konstandin’s resurrection.

                                “Then you must see to it that this minority becomes the majority.”The Archbishop says. He orders Stres to find the young man who brought the young woman back. He continues:

        “And if you do not find him, you will have to create him.”

Before long ,an itinerant seller of icons is arrested.

       “I am an honest man. I was arrested while lying on the roadside in agony. It’s inhuman!”wails the man.

        “Put him to torture” Stres orders relentlessly and exits quickly so as not to hear the prisoner’s cries. Yet he hears some indistinct whs and ehs sounds.

       “God be praised, he has confessed!”The messenger says,

       “Scarcely had he seen the instruments of torture when he broke down.”

    Contented archbishop,later,in his speech suggests what unimaginable catastrophes could result if such heresies were permitted to spread freely. He also notes the efforts by the Church of Rome to exploit the heresy, using it against the Holy Byzantine Church, as well as the measures taken by the latter to unmask the imposture. Schisms within the medieval churches are beautifully brought to our notice here.

       Stres also gets opportunity to give his own account of the events. During his speech, he asks the gathering:

            “In these new conditions of the worsening of the general atmosphere in the world, in this time of crime and hateful treachery that could be called unbelief, who should the Albanian be? Shall he espouse the evil or change his features to suit the masks of the age?”

ENVER HOXHA

         These are the questions of  Kadare himself and our mind suddenly leaps from the generic Middle Ages to the contemporary Albania. Albanians’ besa,Kanun,family feuds, bloodshed violence, sudden shifts in climatic conditions that reflect the Kanun-bound tradition ( I remember some descriptions and situations in Kadare’s The File on H .) etc indeed regurgitate.

This is what Kadare said about his childhood:

My father was against the Communist regime; my mother and her family were for it. They did not quarrel about it, but they teased each other with irony and sarcasm. At school I belonged neither with the children from poor backgrounds who were pro-Communist, nor with those of rich families who were terrified of the regime. But I knew both sides. That made me independent, free from childhood complexes.  

       Only certain aspects of communism are good,in his view.'The practice of it in Albania was terrible' 

      In an interview Kadare makes his idea of 'Negative creation' clear.To him,Negative creation for a writer is what he doesn’t write. One needs a great talent to know what one shouldn’t write, and in a writer’s consciousness nonwritten works are more numerous than the ones he/she has written.

       The world that Kadare's words create, however, makes reading a unique experience.It successfully debunks the Albanian myth and mirrors the Balkan dilemma to a great extent as well.The Ghost Rider,therefore, travels beyond the Balkan peninsula and reaches the mind of all those who are aware of our world society.

SECRET SON by LAILA LALAMI

   I am writing this review of this novel, Secret Son by Laila Lalami(published by Viking, a Penguin Group,2010),from Kerala, a southern state in India. This is June, rainy season in this part of India. Drought  is something which we have heard of. Seasons do their role almost very punctually and we,therefore,get rain, hot weather,spring,winter etc in time. Although there have been exceptions, nature ‘s schedule seems to be fixed here every year. We therefore find it interesting when we read the beginning of ‘Secret Son’ with the sentence ‘Rain came unexpectedly, after nearly three years of drought. ‘But  Youssef’s and his mother’s living conditions are not unfamiliar to us. Especially ,a single room with grimy walls, doors and roof is what you can find even in our cities which can boast of skyscrapers.

   When it rains unexpectedly, the first priority of both the lady and her son is made clear. She grabs the soup pot by its ears and takes it to the one room home.Meanwhile,Youssef takes the framed black and white photo of his father who gazes back at him with the looks of a gentle man in his twenties.

   This beginning itself tells us about their meagre belongings and the novelist,Laila Lalami makes the setting clear. The narration is such that you never feel the pressure  to quit reading out of boredom. You read about Hay-An-Najat,a poverty stricken rural hilly area where the mother and her nineteen year old son live in one of the tin-roofed houses.

    In a moment of self realization,the teenager understands who he is: He is none other than a slum dweller, the son of a hospital clerk, a man with no illusions about his place in his society.

   The title ‘Secret Son’ denotes the secrecy behind his birth. Although his mother is known as a widow in Hay-An-Najat,the son is the fruit of her fornication, in a sense or in other words, a Mr Nabil Amrani,a well-known business tycoon of  Morocco is equally or more responsible for his birth. The unglittering realities surrounding the secret son leads him to the situations in which even running errands for his mother seems insurmountable for him. At a point, home becomes his only place to hide from the inquisitive eyes around.

   Youssef’s friend Amin tells him once:

   “I should have known better to befriend a son of a whore.”

   The words sting his heart leaving a stark burning sensation. The very thought of his existence tortures him.

   The novel  is introduced as a tale of contemporary Morocco. Where exactly is Morocco in the world map?

   I looked up the map to find it in Africa. It is only a few kilometres away from Spain too. We can guess the answer to the question why the country has not been a member of African union yet. As we know why  Indians are still proud of speaking English(at least the rank and file),we can understand why the ‘widow’-as Youssef’s mother is scornfully considered by the villagers-is said to put on airs, simply  because she can speak French flawlessly. Although it is a positive element in the society, it exacerbates the resentment of the people towards her.Similarly,Youssef’s half sister Amal is suspected  to be an Arab by a middle aged school registrar in the U S first.Later,when it is found out that she is from Morocco, the man says that she ‘does not look Arab’ in a tone that suggested it was a compliment. When she sells her car too, the American car dealer asks her if there are hidden explosives in it.

   The teenager Youssef goes in search of the secrecy behind his birth and finds Nabil Amrani,his rich father. He enjoys the affluence of his father’s set up for some time only to be  thrown to utter disappointment later. As his mother has often told him, ‘appearances are deceiving’ and he realizes it.

   The novel has four parts but it does not make any change in the serial number of its chapters. The part three ends with chapter 14.Then as we can see before the beginning of each part, words of a well-known writer are given. You  read the following words of Joseph Conrad before you enter chapter 15:

The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.

   It hints at the catastrophe and tells us what can happen to secret sons or sons of poverty in a society into which Islamic fundamentalism digs its claws.

   We can find the novelist,Laila Lalami in both Rachida(Youssef’s mother),an embodiment of the morality of the rural poor  in a country like Morocco and Amal(Nabil Amrani’s daughter),a girl who prefers the American life style with her partner Fernando, a U S citizen, to the traditional life of a woman in one of the richest families in Morocco.

   I would say, here is a fantastic novel which takes you to many live issues of the contemporary world without letting you feel that it invites you to those issues deliberately.
http://youtu.be/3wD8lT-4EWg

THE ARCHITECTURE OF LANGUAGE by NOAM CHOMSKY

                               

Where shall I begin the review  of this book?

        It begins with the editors’ preface. The editors-Nirmalangshu Mukharji,Bibudhendra Narayan Patnaik and Rama Kant Agnihotri-  are Indians. They themselves are of the opinion that popular, prolonged and intellectual debates are seldom seen in Indian academic scene.But,in their view, Noam Chomsky’s lectures in India in 1996 generated unprecedented enthusiasm in the academic community here.

        The editors’ preface to the book indicates certain serious issues to be touched before we read Chomsky. One of them is the mere marginal realization of the general conceptual goals of a research programme generally.

        After the preface you have only two parts to read. The first one is Chomsky’s Delhi lecture in 1996 and the second, its discussion that ensued. The 30 pages of the lecture and the 38 pages of its discussion make the reading of this book a simple task. The remaining pages contain the preface and clarificatory notes.

      Although Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures was published in 1957,I did not get opportunity to read it even in early nineties.Meanwhile,the books which I read then on psychology published by Progress Publishers, Moscow could, in fact, present nothing much better than the behaviourist theories of learning. The two names which caught my attention in the books were  V I Lenin and Ivan Pavlov.

        ‘According to Lenin, mind is a highly organized matter.’

        The authors’ attempt seemed only to substantiate this point with the help of the history of psychology. The books  created an impression that Pavlov’s was probably the greatest contribution to psychology till then. Psychologists like Sigmund Freud were  thought to be in the idealists’ block.They,therefore,hardly give any significance to such well-known psychologists

         "A child’s brain is not a blank slate after birth but it is pre-equipped with a biologically determined ability to learn languages."


(-Chomsky in his Rules and Representations,I think)

         This was the statement that linked me to Chomsky’s world.Cognitivism was widely discussed in India and popularly prescribed grammar books such as ‘Guide to Structural Patterns’ by A.S.Hornby  became almost a joke later. In second language learning, mechanical drills lost their charm.Chomskian thoughts almost revolutionized the field. English teachers  everywhere experienced it.Besides,communists,especially the communists in Kerala, welcome Chomsky mainly because of his severe criticism of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of the US power. May be ,this has left him uncriticized by the communists to a great extent.

         The question,therefore,remained in my thoughts was this:

        How much do Chomsky’s views correspond to materialism- whether dialectical or not?

        Although it is apparent that language learning is not so simple as behaviorists analysed it, to me, Chomsky seems to mystify things a bit especially when he states in his Delhi lecture that ‘science is a strange activity and it only works for simple problems’.

        He further makes it clear as follows:

      “The idea that deep scientific analysis tells you something about problems of human beings and our lives and our inter-relations with one another and so on is mostly pretence in my opinion-self-serving pretence which is itself a technique of domination and exploitation and should be avoided.”

         An interesting detail in the beginning of his lecture is the following interaction of Chomsky with the audience:

“Can you hear me?”

(Section of the audience):No

If you say ‘no’, then you can.

         In ‘Discussion’, there are a number of serious questions from the audience and Chomsky’s answers to them. Some of the questions are anyway a bit funny(I do not mean they are silly).For example:

QUESTION:

Is it possible to have bilingual or trilingual children out of mixed marriages?

CHOMSKY:

It doesn’t make any difference. These things are all totally independent. It is like asking: Can you have long arms coming out of mixed marriages? Or an interest in Greek philosophy?

I am going to read two other books by Chomsky.See them below. 

Of these books, On Language(Penguin Books,2002) discusses linguistics mainly. Necessary Illusions-Thought Control in Democratic Societies(Viva Books Private Limited 2007) is Chomsky’s social criticism. I think, reading the two books  together will help me understand Chomsky better.An amalgam of his social criticism and linguistic theories in my mind........I am waiting for such an experience.I hope I will get something better to tell you then.

MYTHOLOGIES by ROLAND BARTHES

        " Idle reader,beware:you are about to begin a corrosive,insolent,strange,cold and yet witty book."

           Louis Althusser killed his wife during one of his bouts and ,in my view,that delineates his arguments to a certain extent.Whatever were his theoretical assumptions,what they led him to is sufficient for a critical reader to rethink of them.(Of course,it may be ridiculous to attribute his periodic mental illness to his 'thoughts'.Words from a 'sound' mind need not be better than those from a mind suffering from periodic bouts either.However,if you come to know that a teacher who has moralized a lot is a lesbian,you start reviewing her words.)
         I know these are not the right words to introduce Roland Barthes' Mythologies.Its significance cannot be belittled by any distractive thoughts either.I just want to say that there is a possibility to think of the mold when you see a pot.

         I have just read Mythologies by Roland Barthes.It was my second reading.I first read it about 20 years ago.I had studied neither linguistics nor ELT then.(I do not mean that one has to learn either of them to read Mythologies).I had no better understanding of the terms like ‘sign’ and ‘signified’.What prompted me to read such a book was a kind of enthusiasm-I thought of it as an intellectual curiosity then-that was aroused from the perusal of the essays by writers like Prof.K.Sachidanandan,who introduced  new lefts and a lot of post-colonial writers to the voracious readers in Kerala.But the revolutionary youth had already  realized the whims and fancies of some of their leaders.(For instance,read these words of Charu Majumdar,a leader of Naxal movement in India): 

“By the end of 70-s Hindustan will be full of the Red Army(Indian revolutionary forces) marching forward to sabotage the bourgeois government.” 

        In reality,anti-communist marchers stormed the streets of Moscow and brought about the downfall of the U.S.S.R –though in 1991-shattering the dreams of enthusiastic communists elsewhere.

        Let us come back to ‘Mythologies’.Roland Barthes started authoring those essays in the early fifties.The English version of the book was first published in 1972.Today you get the new copy of it with its introduction to the 2009 Edition.The quoted warning to the 'idle readers' under the title above is from the beginning of the introduction.

         Reading a book like ‘Mythologies’ gives us different meanings each time we read it.

         The prose style this time reminded me of a noted critic in Kerala, Prof.M.N.Vijayan.Probably there are some similarities at least in the way facts are elucidated by the both to substantiate their points.In an article,M.N.Vijayan draws the analogy of an elephant keeping intact the hook slanted on it by its mahout while he is away for his recreations, to connote the way the state apparatus keep us loyal and servile to its power.Similarly Roland Barthes exemplifies the myth of a wrestler whose gestures signify suffering,defeat and justice.

“The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign,which like a seed contains the whole fight.But this seed proliferates,for it is at every turn during the fight, in each new situation,that the body of the wrestler casts to the public the magical entertainment of  a temperament which finds its natural expression in a gesture.”

Wrestling is ,therefore,like a diacritic writing.

       Referring to the Roman characters in films,he writes:

“The intermediate sign,the fringe of Roman-ness or the sweating of thought,reveals a degraded spectacle,which is equally afraid of simple reality and of total artifice.For although it is a good thing if a spectacle is created to make the world more explicit,it is both reprehensible and deceitful to confuse the sign with what is signified.And it is the duplicity which is peculiar to bourgeois art.”

In another article,he traces the mythological development of ‘ Holidays’.The essay titled ‘The Writer on Holidays’ analyzes the myth of being a writer in a bourgeois society.Bourgeois society liberally grants a glamorous status to its spiritual representatives so long as they remain ‘harmless’.

In ‘The Poor and the Proletariat’,Barthes analyzes Charlie Chaplin’s misconception of the poor and the proletariat.In his view,it makes Chaplin’s films like ‘Modern Times’ apolitical despite the fact that it has a proletarian theme.

         In ‘Novels and Children’ he begins with a comment on the photograph of 70 women novelists. A woman of letters is a ‘remarkable zoological species’

“Women are on the earth to give children to men;let them write as much as they like provided that they do not depart from their Biblical fate.”

These words of sarcasm bring out the attitude of the male chauvinist society.In his preface to the 1957 edition of ‘Mythologies’,Barthes writes:

“In the account given of our contemporary circumstances,I resented seeing Nature and History confused at every turn,and I wanted to track down,in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying,the ideological abuse which,in my view, is hidden there.”

Roland Barthes was a structuralist.His autobiographical texts suggest that he was a homosexual too.I would say that these things are associated although that is not the topic to be discussed here right now.

“There are ,in any petit-bourgeois consciousness, small simulacra of the hooligan,the parricide,the homosexual,etc.,which periodically extracts from its brain,puts in the dock,admonishes and condemns:one never tries anybody but analogues who have gone astray:it is a question of direction,not of nature,for that’s how men are.”

He examines the myth on ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.On the right,the oppressor’s language is rich, multiform,supple,with all possible degree of dignity at its disposal.When the language of the oppressed aims at transforming,that of the oppressor aims at eternalizing.

Roland Barthes analyzes tautology too.To define poetry you quote poets like William Wordsworth and P.B.Shelley.But none of those definitions is found apt and finally,you say ‘poetry is poetry’.Barthes says that tautology is a faint at the right moment,a saving aphasia.It is a death or perhaps a comedy,the indignant ‘representation’ of the rights of  reality over and above language.

I remember what one of my friends,a teacher, said about her student who asked her the question ‘Why does one use the word ‘I’ to refer to oneself,when every thing else is called in the name of its own?’In her view,the student who asked such a question was a ‘moron’.

          As Barthes says, “The usual  reply at the end of ones tether is: ‘because that is how it is.’

          It is the reply when one is at the loss for an explanation indeed.

          Whatever may be his idea of myth,as the introduction to the 2009 edition of ‘Mythologies’ indicates,an idle reader may not be able to apprehend the profundity of its content.The book demands critical perusal each time you read it.


(Kindly feel free to comment on this review,which will undoubtedly keep me going.)