Dear Reader,
Now that the new year is upon us, I am looking forward to a fresh crop of books while mulling over the books read, the literary connections made, the knowledge gained in 2023. One of the books that stood out for me is J.M. Coetzee’s The Pole and Other Stories, although, I must confess, I am an unabashed fan of Coetzee. The first story, “The Pole”, is about a moderately famous Polish pianist who singles out his host for a musical evening, a woman named Beatriz, as his Beatrice, his muse, much to the bafflement, borderline irritation, and a degree of pleasure of the lady.
Told in Coetzee’s dry, humorous, wicked style, the story reveals the gaps between the perceiver and the perceived, the word and its suggestions, the emotion and the reaction. The meaning slips constantly, creating something fluid, like music, which too makes airy shapes out of invisible notes.
This takes me to a poem by Rumi that a dear friend, writer and critic Geeta Doctor, shared for Christmas. It is worth quoting in full.
There is a morning when
a presence comes over you, and you sing
like a rooster in your earth-coloured shape.
Your heart hears and, no longer frantic,
begins to dance. At that moment
soul reaches total emptiness.
Your heart becomes Mary,
miraculously pregnant,
and body, like a two-day-old Jesus,
says wisdom words.
Now the heart, which is the
source of your loving,
turns to light,
and the body picks up the tempo.
Where Shams-i-Tabriz walks,
the footprints become musical notes,
and holes you fall through into space.
Rumi is talking here of that ecstatic moment of inspiration/ love/ divine bliss when all gaps close and we become Mary, filled with something we hardly understand. While all of us aspire to this oneness, artists crave it especially because without it there is no art. As Arundhati Roy said when we asked her, along with a few other leading authors, about the challenges ahead for writers: “The challenge for writers is and will be what it always has been—how to minimise the gap between thought and language… Previously the challenge of minimising the gap between thought and language was a question of honing your language skills. But now it is more than that.”
This “more”, as explained by the writers, takes different forms—the rise of Artificial Intelligence, which threatens the very act of writing; increasing state surveillance; decreasing tolerance for conflicting viewpoints; self-censorship; even cats, who, by reigning over Instagram reels, are taking authors’ attention away from writing! Read all their thought-provoking comments here.
We ended 2023 with a list of top 10 books in fiction and non-fiction that you can find here. Do add to the list. I hope that in 2024 the publishing houses will not just remain as prolific as they were in 2023, but also be brave enough to bring out books that go against the grain, that cater not just to the market but also to the head and the inquisitive heart.
For myself, I hope that in 2024 there is more time to read, to brood, to stare at snow peaks with a book in hand. Is that asking for too much? Fingers crossed!
See you again soon,
Anusua Mukherjee
