CHAPTER – I

INTRODUCTION

Art, one might easily surmise, has a history as old as

human civilization. Although art depends largely on one’s

personal perspective, it has also led to the birth of many schools of

thought and practice. So to say, it is a product of a particular social

and cultural milieu. Art is such an integral part of our everyday

life that it can take any form or content. For these reasons, art

becomes subjective and means different things to every single

person on earth. That is why, any discussion on art is a very

difficult endeavour. However, there is no doubt that art influences

the individuals involved in the process. Art also helps to express

through the medium of one’s choice. The person involved in the

process of expressing one’s emotions and thoughts creatively,

becomes an artist. The twin aspects - Art and An Artist - are so

very engaging and they cover a broad spectrum of activities related

to art and life. All in all, we can have only a comprehensive

definition of Art.
 Art is a product of human activity, made with

the intention of stimulating the human senses

as the human mind; thus art is an action, an

object, or a collection of actions and objects

created with the intention of transmitting

emotions and ideas. Beyond this description,

there is no general agreed upon definition of

art, since defining the boundaries of art is

subjective, but the impetus for art is often

called human creativity. 1

This is how Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on the

internet, tries to define art. Certainly, the impetus for art could be

observed, even in the pre-historic man when he tried to express his

joys and sorrows creatively. It satisfies one’s innate desire to

follow and imitate. Even before the evolution of languages, the art

started to influence human mind and civilization. Of course, the art

of those times might have been quite different from the

sophisticated forms of arts of now. As the civilization evolved, the

various forms of arts too got refined and customized under

1
< http:www:wikipedia.org/wiki /Ar t > 18 Aug. 2007.

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patronages. In the course of this evolution of art, there emerged

many theories and schools of art too.

Of them, not many might have considered Art as an

inessential component of life. In the western civilization, Plato in

Republic Book – II advocated the banishment of artists from the

ideal state. Plato argued that all art is a copy of the world of

senses, which is itself an illusion beyond which the wise man must

be trained to penetrate and that the works of art are thrice removed

from reality.2

The credit of upholding the need for art in life and

identifying the humanizing factor in art goes to Plato’s student,

Aristotle. In Poetics, he defended the uses of Art to an ordinary

man and also analyzed the theory of imitation and pleasure. Scores

of theories have evolved from Aristotle’s Poetics until now in the

western civilization.

Likewise, Art is interpreted by various schools of

thoughts in India also. However, in the Indian context, the concept

of art is also considered as one of the paths to realize, to experience

2
House, Humphery. Aristotle’s Poetics, A Course of Eight Lectures. Ludhiana: Kalyani
Publishers, 1970, pp.22-23.

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the Supreme God. Ananda Coomaraswamy, an eminent scholar on

Indian aesthetics feels, ‘Religion and art are thus names for one

and the same experience – an intuition of reality and identity’.3

T.N. Sreekantaiyya in Indian Poetics explains the phrase,

Kavyanando Brahmananda Sahodaraha in the following

paragraph, while discussing the benefits of poetry -

The delight, which is the necessary fruit of

poetry, should be included in the list of human

values. Theorists praise this delight as

resembling the enjoyment of Brahman, when

tasting poetry, the ego and the self-interest of

reader slip off. He forgets his love and hates,

becalms his restlessly agitating mind and loses

himself in a super mundane delight. It is true

that this poetic delight is temporary, limited to

the moment of reading the poem and seeing the

play. It is true that even during the period of its

experience; there will be no definite awareness

of the ultimate reality. But it is also true that, in

3
Coomaraswamy, K. Ananda. The Dance of Shiva. New Delhi: Sagara Publications, 1968,
p.41.

4
 this limited context itself the soul of man will

have escaped from the afflictions of mundane

life and have the first taste of divine bliss which

is available to great ascetics. Poetry also is

yoga; it is the yoga of a layman.4

The important thing is that even in the religious rites

[Pujas] there is a form of art called Astavadhana Seva, where

dance and music are offered to god in the form of services. Thus,

it could be understood that in the context of India, any art is closely

related to the spiritual life. The inclination towards spiritual

awareness through art could be considered as the unique feature of

Indian Arts.

India has a rich cultural heritage having existed for many

centuries. It consists of various art forms such as Sangetha,

Nrithya, Natya, Nataka, Shilpashastra and others. Marga and

Desi forms multiply the number of those art forms. There are

thousands of internationally celebrated artists in these art forms.

There is a well-organized and established art and aesthetic theories

4
Sreekantaiyya, T.N. Indian Poetics [Tr. N. Balasubrahmanya]. New Delhi: Sahitya
Academy, 2001, pp.197-198.

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in India. The arts that were being learnt in the traditional Guru-

Shishya Parampara once are now taught in the Universities as core

subjects at both U.G. and P.G. levels. Besides this, the number of

students who opt to learn various fine arts has increased. There are

thousands of 'Sabhas' in India, which are working hard to promote

Indian dance and music. In Chennai alone, there are around a

hundred ‘Sabhas’. Both the Central and the State Governments are

sponsoring various scholarships to promote fine arts in India. They

also organize various art festivals right from the regional level to

national and international level. Both Governmental and Non-

Governmental Organizations are sending troops of artistes to other

nations under the cultural exchange plan. All in all, Indian Arts is

in a vibrant form now. Surely, it won’t be an exaggeration if one

said that Art has emerged as one of the major strands and guiding

forces of life in India.

It is an acknowledged fact that the creative writings

reflect the mores and experiences of contemporary life. ‘It is true

that the artist draws his sustenance from the society he lives in, but

it is equally true that he breathes new life into it, invigorates it and

renders the drab life a shade better than he found it’, Dr. C.D.

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Narasimhaiah observes.5 When this is the fact, do we get

proportionate number of Indian creative writings, which discuss the

rich cultural heritage of India as their major theme? An interesting

thing here is, when we talk about writers on art, they too belong to

the class of artists. Their works on art become their impressions of

another form of art. It could be perceived as one form of art

reacting to another form of art, leading to the synthesis and a new

organic experience. This harmony between two different forms of

art would certainly enrich the experience of the readers, if handled

effectively by the artists, here the writers. But the question is how

effectively have the Indian writers utilized this rich cultural

heritage in their creative works?

The number of art fictions, which use art and artists as

their themes (here after called as art-fictions only) is not as

discouraging in the regional languages as in the case of Indo-

Anglian literature. There are a few art fictions (novels), which

use art and artists as their subject matter, in the regional

languages. For example, in Kannada literature we have

Aa.Na.Kru’s Sandhyaraga, Ta. Ra. Susbha Rao’s Hamsagethe,

5
Naik M.K. (ed.) Aspects of Indian Writing in English, Essays in Honor of Professor K.R.
Srinivasa Iyengar. Delhi: The Macmillan, 1979, pp.172-173.

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Masti Venkatesha Iyengar's Subbanna, Dr. K. Shivarama

Karantha’s Moga Padeda Mana, Dr.S.L. Byrappa’s Mandra.

But the situation is not so in the case of Indo-Anglian

Literature. Even though it has successfully depicted various

facets of Indian life to carve its own niche in the world literature,

it is intriguing that the number of art fictions in English is not

very significant. Dr.Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Music for Mohini

[1952], R.K. Narayan’s The Guide [1958], M.V. Rama Sarma’s

The Bliss of life [1979], Kunjapur Nigamantha Gopalan’s Hema

[1993], Anitha Nair’s Mistress [2005] are a few titles that straight

away come to ours mind in Indo-Anglian Literature. When

compared with the use of English in the day-to-day life in India,

the number of art fictions, which try to probe deep into Indian art,

is perhaps disproportionate. The one possible reason could be

that the native culture or art could be discussed easily in the

native languages. The direct relation between culture and

language might have offered a privilege of natural speech to

Indian native languages to provide penetrating insights into art.

The other important reason could be the limitation of a writer, for

he may lack the understanding of finer aspects of Indian art and

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 aesthetics to use it in the creative writings. They might have

preferred to remain on the peripherals of Indian experiences

instead of penetrating deep into the Indianness, as Raja Rao did in

his novel The Serpent and the Rope.

There might be many essays on art and artists in

general. But essays, rather critical essays based on the available

art fictions in Indian English are still rare. Recently Kshama

Gupta’s essay titled Narayan’s The Guide in the light of Rasa

Theory6, tries to interpret The Guide in the light of Indian

aesthetics. Any discussion on art helps to validate or rectify and

to spread the existing values and convictions. Thus, the works of

a creative writer (a novelist) reflect the mores and experiences of

contemporary life around him. Eventhough India has the vibrant

cultural ambience, still it remains a puzzle that art-fictions are

rarely discussed from the perspectives of art and culture.

In this study, an attempt is made to initiate a

meaningful literary discussion on two art fictions, The Guide by

R.K.Narayan and Mistress by Anita Nair. R K Narayan, one of the

6
6. Agrawal, Matti. [ed.] New Perspectives on Indian English Writings.
New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2007, p. 206.

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trinities of Indo-Anglian literature, hailed from the culturally rich

city Chennai and lived in Mysore -again a place of rich heritage.

He is recognized as a writer having a peculiar vision of life. While

some have called it ‘comic vision’, yet others (like Prof. M. K.

Naik) have preferred to brand it as ‘ironic vision’. He wrote The

Guide in the year 1958, which won the Sahithya Akademy Award

also in 1960. There comes Rosie alias Nalini as a Bharathanatyam

artist in this novel. The character of Rosie is discussed in this

study as an artist. Anita Nair, who hails from culturally rich state

Kerala and lives in Bangalore, is the other novelist of our interest.

The 426 – page novel Mistress was published in the year 2005.

The Asian Age has described Anita Nair’s third novel Mistress as a

novel where, ‘Fiction and research go hand-in-hand’7. Most of the

English dailies and weeklies and a few literary journals too have

appreciated Anita Nair’s attempt to focus the discussion on art and

artistic concerns from a new point of view in her novel Mistress.

The two novels are selected as the benchmarks for the discussion.

The two novels, which belong to different periods of time and

space and voice their concerns towards art and aesthetics, and it is

hoped it would help us to trace the changes in the socio-cultural

7
Mukundan, M. “When Art is a Metaphor for Mistress”, Asian Age, 27 Sept.2007. p.12.

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aspects of life. In this study, an attempt is made to analyze the

artistic concerns, and artistic integrity in the characters as well as in

the novelists.

It may be observed that whenever the writers make

use of a form of art other than theirs (dance, music, painting or

drama)along with their medium of expression (words) it brings an

added value to their art, writing. The moment The Guide and

Mistress are considered as the art novels, it draws the attention of

the readers to the artistic qualities, concerns and convictions,

visions of the characters and of the novelists too. Usually the

characters are set on the move by the novelist and later the

characters grow themselves in the given socio-cultural setting. The

characters could grow independently because of the experiences in

their life - of course, in the hands of an artist-novelist. Otherwise,

the characters may emerge as mere puppets who mouth the ideas of

the writers, like in the novel Hema by Kunjapura Nigamantha

Gopalan. Here is a possibility of exploring the world of artists

presented by the novelists, who are another kind of artists and the

world in which the artist characters live, act, enjoy, suffer, lament

or realize something. The discussion on art could be concentrated

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further by focusing on the individual artists and investigating

whether the artists have sacrificed anything on their way to

understanding art or compromised with demands of life. If they

have succeeded in understanding the concerns of art, it is necessary

to trace their path of success. If they have not then it is even more

important to find reasons for their failures. The failure could be

because of their inability to grasp the realities of their artistic lives.

It could also point at their limitation or failure to apply or

implement what they have understood or realized about art in the

course of life. The failure could also be the result of partial view of

art and life instead of a better understanding, which could bring

harmony between life and art. The partial view results in constant

tension, conflict between convictions of life and convictions of art.

This conflict may lead to unbridged gap between life and art. The

same question could be rephrased. Have these writers addressed

the artistic concerns of their chosen field to which their

protagonists belong? Then it would become a typical case study of

Art versus Artist, a critical study of how art suffers or gains at the

hands of the exponents of another art. The fascinating question

here is whether to attribute the successes or failures of the artist

characters in the novels to themselves or to the creator of those

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characters, the novelist. Probably if the artists themselves try to

write an art-fiction the above question may not arise at all because

they can write authoritatively an art and aesthetics, using their first

hand experience. But then the novel can suffer. Otherwise, the

creative writer must depend both on his intuitive understanding or

must get the practical experience through its study to portray the

artist-characters effectively. When a novelist indulges in a serious

discourse, he would succeed to create a character in flesh and

blood. The protagonist’s views then might be closest to the views

of the novelist. Unless a creative writer has a clear picture of the

art in his 'inner eye', how is it be possible for him to create a

genuine artist-protagonist? If the protagonist fails to impress as an

artist having artistic and aesthetic concerns then it could be the

shortcoming of the novelist and may not be the shortcoming of the

protagonist. Thus, art may suffer at the hands of other artists. In

an attempt to answer these questions, it is proposed to approach the

novels from a new point of few.

The chapterisation of this dissertation is designed in this way:

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION:

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 This chapter attempts to make some references to important

theories on art and aesthetics, with the emphasis on the Indian

aesthetics. Then the vibrant form of art in India is discussed and

the attention is drawn towards the availability or non-availability of

art-fictions in Indian Literature, especially in Indo-Anglian

Literature. The reasons for selecting the two art fictions for this

critical study on Art versus Artist are also discussed along with the

important questions on Art versus Artist concept. At the end, the

matrix of the dissertation is presented.

CHAPTER II – SEARCH OR NO SEARCH ? :

This chapter attempts a critical analysis of R.K. Narayan’s The

Guide. Keeping in mind the questions raised in the first chapter,

this chapter tries to analyze the character of Rosie alias Nalini as an

artist along with the analysis of other characters on their views on

art. Later in the chapter R.K. Narayan’s role as a novelist in

evolving a discourse on art is also examined. This chapter tries to

answer the question as to how deep or faithful the search of an

artist in this novel is.

CHAPTER III - THE SEARCH AND RESEARCH:

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Here an attempt is made to analyse and interpret the quests of the

characters in the novel Mistress, besides that of the novelist, Anita

Nair. It tries to explore the unending quests of the characters in the

novel to have their identity and to find words and expressions to

their views on art. An earnest attempt is made to understand and

analyse discourse that the novel offers through the protagonist.

The artistic merits of the novel Mistress are also probed in this

chapter.

CHAPTER IV –
ENTERTAINMENT versus ENLIGHTENMENT:

This chapter compares and contrasts the two novels, The Guide and

Mistress in the light of the questions raised in the first chapter.

Literary and artistic merits along with the limitations of the two

novels and of the novelists are discussed in this chapter. The

chapter also scrutinizes the question how a literary text gains the

advantage when it provides enlightenment along with

entertainment.

CHAPTER V - CONCLUSION:

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This chapter analyses the question whether art suffers or gains

when a man of letters uses another art form for his or her discourse

on the selected field of one’s choice (i.e. art fiction). The possible

changes that might have taken place in the field of art are also

discussed here. The chapter summarizes the argument of the

dissertation and draws the attention towards the need to continue

the discussion further.

It is to be acknowledged that the intricacies of art

could make any literary discussion on art and artist very arduous

-even unending. Still an attempt is being made here to raise

meaningful questions leading to a fruitful literary discussion of two

art-novels with a view to understand artistic as well as artists’

concerns and to present an organic view on art and life. It is hoped

that this investigation will expand the horizon of our knowledge, in

a small way though.

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