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From India to India: The Performative Unworlding of Literature1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2017

RASHNA DARIUS NICHOLSON
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Abstract

World literature has recently been critiqued for its normative, world-making force and, not unrelatedly, for its genealogical ties to orientalism. This article shifts the focus in world literature from the ‘world’ to the ‘literature’ by suggesting that within a nexus of politics, religion and knowledge production, the stylistic requirements of literature were fundamental to the reification of numerous performative modes that were not predicated exclusively on language's semantic dimensions. Literature, as a ‘vanishing mediator’, thus enabled not only translations but also comparative valuations – philological, mythological and racial – of entire cultures in an unethical epistemological encounter. Through the examination of the circuitous route of the Sāvitrī myth, which was translated from Sanskrit into Italian, English, French and German as ‘dramatic literature’, and finally to Gujarati as a play for theatrical production, this article uncovers performance's potential to problematize the figuring of text as world-encompassing entity.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 5 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2017 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to acknowledge Rustom Bharucha, Gool Ardeshir, Christopher Balme, Gerson da Cunha, Richard Bösel, Carla Nobre Sousa and the Graduiertenkolleg Globalisierung for their assistance in the course of writing this article. All translations from Italian, French and Gujarati are my own. The ALA-LC transliteration system has been used for the Gujarati.

References

NOTES

2 Cheah, Pheng, What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), p. 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 3.

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6 Ibid., p. 17

7 Ibid.; and Mufti, ‘Orientalism and the Institution of World Literatures’, p. 461.

8 Mufti, ‘Orientalism and the Institution of World Literatures’, p. 488; and Jones, William, The Sacontala: or the Fatal Ring (Calcutta: Trübner and Co., 1875), pp. i–iiGoogle Scholar.

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10 For a description of darshan as visual communication with the deity see Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 173 Google Scholar.

11 Wilson, Select Specimens, p. ix.

12 Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 4 Google Scholar.

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16 Subsequently, a few orientalists such as Christian Lassen, Albrecht Weber, Félix Néve, Richard Pischel, Hermann Jacobi, Ernst Windisch and Abel Bergaigne threw light on several aspects of the history of the Indian theatre. Nevertheless, they all relied to a large extent on Wilson's work, and in turn on the premise of the superiority of classical Sanskrit literature over vernacular forms. De Gubernatis, Angelo, Storia Universale della Letteratura, Vol. I (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1883), pp. 22–3Google Scholar.

17 Wilson, Select Specimens, p. vii; and Apter, Emily S., Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London: Verso, 2013), p. 3 Google Scholar. Hence, for example, in Wilson's Select Specimens, classical Greece and Sanskrit India take prime place, not unlike the Companion to the Longman Anthology of World Literature (2005), in which David Damrosch professes, ‘the Iliad and the Odyssey in fact provide astonishing homologies to the Mahabharata and Ramayana’. Damrosch, David, Teaching World Literature: A Companion to the Longman Anthology of World Literature (New York: Longman, 2005), p. 10 Google Scholar.

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20 De Gubernatis, Angelo, Dizionario Biografico Degli Scrittori Contemporanei (Florence: Le Monnier, 1879), p. xiv Google Scholar. See de Gubernatis's Dizionario Biografico for details of both the beginnings of his career as an orientalist and his establishment in Italy of the field of Indology along the lines of the much older scholarly tradition in England, Germany and France.

21 Dornis, Jean, Le théâtre italien contemporain (Paris: C. Lévy, 1905), p. 128 Google Scholar; de Gubernatis, Angelo, Il Re Nala (Torino and Florence: Fratelli Bocca Librai, 1870), p. 207 Google Scholar; de Gubernatis, Dizionario Biografico, p. xxvii.

22 De Gubernatis, Il Re Nala, pp. 217–20; de Gubernatis, Angelo, König Nal, tr. Marx, Federico (Hamburg und Altona: Verlag von J. F. Richter, 1870), p. 18 Google Scholar; de Gubernatis, Drammi Indiani (Florence: Tip. Ed. Dell'Associazione, 1872), p. 181; de Gubernatis, Dizionario Biografico, p. xxviii. Władysław Tarnowski (1836–78) was a playwright, musician, translator and poet who had an intimate friendship with de Gubernatis.

23 Dornis, Le théâtre italien contemporain: ‘[S]on oeuvre dramatique est plus parallèle au théâtre, que directement écrite pour la scène’ (p. 127). See p. 129 on the impossibility of isolating the count's dramatic works from his other scholarly work.

24 See Numark, Mitch, ‘Translating Dharma: Scottish Missionary–Orientalists and the Politics of Religious Understanding in Nineteenth-Century Bombay’, Journal of Asian Studies, 70, 2 (2011), pp. 471–500 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 472, for an explanation of how orientalism aided missionary attacks against indigenous religious traditions.

25 De Gubernatis, Letteratura Indiana, pp. 95, 112, 113; de Gubernatis, Drammi Indiani, p. 232.

26 De Gubernatis, Storia Universale della Letteratura, Vol. I, p. 22.

27 Ibid., p. 40.

28 Dunham, John, ‘Manuscripts Used in the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata: A Survey and Discussion’, in Sharma, Arvind, ed., Essays on the Mahābhārata (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2007), pp. 1–18, here p. 14Google Scholar.

29 Apte, Vaman Shivaram, The Practical Sanskrit–English Dictionary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965), p. 601 Google Scholar.

30 Roux, Amédée, La littérature contemporaine en Italie: Troisième période 1873–1883 (Paris: E. Plon, 1883), p. 130 Google Scholar.

31 Gubernatis, De, Savitri, tr. da Cunha, J. Gerson (Bombay: Râninâ’s Union Press, 1882), pp. 13, 24Google Scholar.

32 Gubernatis, De, Savitri (Firenze: Successori Le Monnier, 1878), pp. 23–4Google Scholar and de Gubernatis, Savitri, tr. da Cunha, pp. 21–2.

33 De Gubernatis, Savitri, tr. da Cunha, p. 6.

34 De Gubernatis, Savitri, p. 3.

35 Adorni, Daniela, ‘Margherita di Savoia, regina d'Italia’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 70 (2008)Google Scholar, at www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/margherita-di-savoia-regina-d-italia_(Dizionario-Biografico), accessed 18 November 2016.

36 De Gubernatis, Savitri, pp. 4–5.

37 Ibid.

38 The German translation was undertaken by Siegfried Trebitsch, who would gain renown as George Bernard Shaw's translator. Gubernatis, De, Savitri Dramatische indische Idylle in zwei Acten, tr. Trebitsch, Siegfried (Vienna: Carl Gerold's Sohn, 1889)Google Scholar.

39 As Lugol declared, ‘All that I wish to say, at a time when deplorable misunderstandings and unpleasant divisions exist between the two Latin nations, whose vital interests would be understanding and unity . . . all that I wish to say is that Count Angelo de Gubernatis is a fervent admirer and a resolute friend of our dear France’. de Gubernatis, Angelo, Savitri, tr. Lugol, Julien, (Paris: Alphons Lemerre, 1889), pp. 6–10 Google Scholar, my translation.

40 ‘Death of Dr. Da Cunha’, Times of India, 14 July, 1900, p. 5.

41 Moraes, George Mark, ‘Dr. José Gerson Da Cunha’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, 39–40 (1967), p. 24 Google Scholar.

42 George Mark Moraes, ‘Dr. José Gerson Da Cunha’, pp. 24–25; de Gubernatis, Dizionario Biografico, p. 331.

43 De Gubernatis, Dizionario Biografico, pp. 330–1.

44 De Gubernatis, letter from José Gerson da Cunha to Angelo de Gubernatis (Hotel Minerva, Rome 27 October 1878), quoted in Vicente, Filipa Lowndes, Other Orientalisms: India between Florence and Bombay 1860–1900 (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012), p. 202 Google Scholar.

45 De Gubernatis, Savitri, tr. da Cunha, p. 7.

46 de Gubernatis, Angelo, Sāvitrī, tr. Rāṇīnā, Nahānābhāi Rūstamjī (Bombay: Union Press, 1883), p. 5 Google Scholar.

47 Mr. Ranina.’, Rāst Goftār tathā Satya Prakāś, 14 January, 1900, p. 49.

48 The standardization of Gujarati was instigated by the need for a unified script for Hindustan through its romanization; the Parsis were initially at the forefront of this process. However, the census of 1871 strengthened Bania Hindus’ claims for the officialization of ‘their’ Sanskritized Gujarati. This was because a language could only be publicly ratified if it was claimed by the majority of speakers, in this case the Bania Hindus’ Gujarati.

49 For a description of the place of the Parsi theatre in the Parsi social and religious reform movement and its subsequent development see Nicholson, Rashna Darius, ‘Corporeality, Aryanism, Race: The Theatre and Social Reform of the Parsis of Western India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38, 4 (December 2015), pp. 613–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Letter from José Gerson da Cunha to Angelo de Gubernatis (Hornby Road, Bombay, 2 February 1883), quoted in Vicente, Other Orientalisms, p. 203. See also ‘Production of a New Native Drama’, Times of India, 29 January 1883, p. 3; and ‘A Hundred Years Ago’, Times of India, 28 January 1983, p. 8.

51 N.t., Kaysare Hind, 25 February 1883, p. 149; de Gubernatis, Sāvitrī, tr. Rāṇīnā, p. 5; ‘Parsee Dramatic Company’, Times of India, 3 March 1883, p. 3.

52 ‘Parsee Dramatic Company’, p. 3.

53 ‘Production of a New Native Drama’, Times of India, 29 January 1883, p. 3.

54 Rāst Goftār tathā Satya Prakāś, 25 February 1883, p. 148; 28 October 1883, p. 865.

55 Rāṇīnā and Kābrājī (1842–1904) were allies in the Parsi reformist movement and worked closely together in the institution and development of the Parsi theatre, Gujarati journalism and organizations such as the Dnyān Prasārak Maṇḍalī (Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge) and Rahnoomai Mazdiasni Sabha (Parsi Religious Reform Association). Their friendship was further evidenced in the Bombay production of Savitri when Kābrājī granted Rāṇīnā the permission to use his songs.

56 De Gubernatis, Sāvitrī, tr. Rāṇīnā, p. 7.

57 De Gubernatis, Savitri, tr. da Cunha, p. 7.

58 De Gubernatis, letter from José Gerson da Cunha to Angelo de Gubernatis (39 Hornby Road, Bombay, 1 November 1882), quoted in Vicente, Other Orientalisms, p. 202; and A., ‘Nāṭaknũ Ceṭak’, Rāst Goftār tathā Satya Prakāś, 20 June 1880, p. 406.

59 Hence in the second edition, ‘poems written according to laws’ such as those of Savitānārāyaṇ Gaṇpatinārāyaṇ, Edaljī Dādābhāi Mīstrī, Dalpatrām Dāhāyābhāi and Kekhuśro Kābrājī’ were included. De Gubernatis, Sāvitrī, tr. Rāṇīnā, pp. 9–10.

60 Quoted in Cusati, Maria Luisa, ‘Angelo de Gubernatis and Goa’, in Borges, Charles, Pereira, Oscar and Stubbe, Hannes, eds., Goa and Portugal: History and Development (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 2000), p. 374 Google Scholar.

61 ‘Parsee Dramatic Company’, p. 3.

62 Apter, Against World Literature, pp. 8–9. See also Cheah, What Is a World?

63 Rajadhyaksha, Ashish and Willemen, Paul, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 245 Google Scholar; Chabria, Suresh, Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema, 1912–1934 (New Delhi: Wiley Eastern, 1994), p. 170 Google Scholar; Rangoonwala, Feroze, Indian Cinema Past and Present (New Delhi: Clarion Books, 1983), p. 51 Google Scholar. This is corroborated by the Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema, which states, ‘the film flopped in India in 1924–25’. Gulazāra, Govind Nihalani and Chatterjee, Saibal, Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema (New Delhi: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2003), p. 34 Google Scholar.

64 Il rondone, ‘La vita cinematografica’, Turin, 5, 15 March, 1924, cited in Bernardini, Aldo and Martinelli, Vittorio, Il Cinema Muto Italiano: I film degli anni venti (Torino: Nuova ERI), p. 286 Google Scholar. See also Gulliver, ‘La rivista cinematografica’, Torino, 6, 25 March, 1924, cited in ibid., pp. 285–6; and ibid., p. 8.

65 See Kapur, Anuradha, ‘The Representation of Gods and Heroes: Parsi Mythological Drama of the Early Twentieth Century’, Journal of Arts and Ideas, 23–4 (1993), pp. 85–107 Google Scholar.

66 Butler, Judith, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 12 Google Scholar.