[ilds] Urdu, Message 3
Vivienne DuBourdieu
vidubo at gmail.com
Mon Jun 28 01:50:06 PDT 2010
Dear Richard,
That puts a different slant on things. Since you know this at first hand,
would it be possible for you to elaborate a little more?
As I'm new to the ILDS Digest, I've probably got a lot to catch up on.
Vivienne
On 27 June 2010 20:00, <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Hindustani (Richard Pine)
> 2. "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling." (Charles Sligh)
> 3. Fw: Hindustani (Richard Pine)
> 4. Re: "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> (Bruce Redwine)
> 5. Re: "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> (Charles Sligh)
> 6. Re: "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> (Bruce Redwine)
> 7. Re: "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> (Charles Sligh)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:17:55 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Richard Pine <rpinecorfu at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [ilds] Hindustani
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <365030.81624.qm at web65813.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Regarding Durrell's childhood familiarity with Hindi, cf Ashis Nandy, The
> Intimate Enemy pp. 65-6 re Kipling: 'He was not merely born in India, he was
> brought up in India by Indian servants in an Indian environment. He thought,
> felt and dreamed in Hindustani'.
> RP
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:00:57 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4C274B89.20406 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Richard Pine wrote:
>
> > Regarding Durrell's childhood familiarity with Hindi, cf Ashis
> Nandy, The Intimate Enemy pp. 65-6 re Kipling: 'He was not merely born in
> India, he was brought up in India by Indian servants in an Indian
> environment. He thought, felt and dreamed in Hindustani'.
> >
>
> In order to make a bold point, we might even say that, later in life,
> Durrell recalled /two/ languages from his childhood: Hindustani and
> Kipling.
>
> I think it is obvious that Durrell retained a lifelong fluency in
> Kipling. Cf. the following remark by Durrell in 1971.
>
> > Goulianos: So you think it would be better if the British were
> > still in India?
> > Durrell: I don't care fundamentally. The British have
> > obviously lost their drive, and these things go in rhythms.
> > I'm not pining for the Raj at all. I'm just saying that my
> > childhood was influenced there. And for an account of that
> > sort of life, Kipling.
> >
> > "The Fasting of the Heart," Lawrence Durrell" Conversations
> > (123-124)
>
>
> I will re-post below Kipling's major autobiographical and fictional
> statements on his Anglo-Indian childhood and "the vernacular idiom that
> one thought and dreamed in."
>
> Meanwhile, everyone should read more Kipling.
>
> C&c.
>
> Kipling, /Something of Myself/, "Chapter 1 -- A Very Young
> Person"
>
> > My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and
> > golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder. This
> > would be the memory of early morning walks to the Bombay
> > fruit
> > market with my /ayah/ and later with my sister in her
> > perambulator, and of our returns with our purchases piled
> > high
> > on the bows of it. Our /ayah/ was a Portuguese Roman Catholic
> > who would pray?I beside her?at a wayside Cross. Meeta, my
> > Hindu bearer, would sometimes go into little Hindu temples
> > where, being below the age of caste, I held his hand and
> > looked at the dimly-seen, friendly Gods[. . . .]
> > In the afternoon heats before we took our sleep, she or Meeta
> > would tell us stories and Indian nursery songs all
> > unforgotten, and we were sent into the dining-room after we
> > had been dressed, with the caution ?Speak English now to Papa
> > and Mamma.? So one spoke ?English,? haltingly translated out
> > of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in.
>
> Kipling, "Baa Baa, Black Sheep"
>
> > The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his
> > opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and
> > to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot
> > the
> > /ayah/ and Meeta and the /hamal/, and with difficulty
> > remembered a few words of the Hindustani once his
> > second-speech.
>
> Kipling, "The Potted Princess"
>
> > NOW this is the true tale that was told to Punch and Judy,
> > his
> > sister, by their nurse, in the city of Bombay, ten thousand
> > miles from here. They were playing in the veranda, waiting
> > for
> > their mother to come back from her evening drive. The big
> > pink
> > crane, who generally lived by himself at the bottom of the
> > garden because he hated horses and carriages, was with them
> > too, and the nurse, who was called the ayah, was making him
> > dance by throwing pieces of mud at him. Pink cranes dance
> > very
> > prettily until they grow angry. Then they peck.
> >
> > This pink crane lost his temper, opened his wings, and
> > clattered his beak, and the ayah had to sing a song which
> > never fails to quiet all the cranes in Bombay. It is a very
> > old song, and it says:
> >
> > Buggle baita nuddee kinara,
> > Toom-toom niushia kaye,
> > Nuddee kinara kanta lugga
> > Tullaka-tullaka ju jaye.
> >
> > That means: A crane sat by the river-bank, eating fish
> > /toom-toom/, and a thorn in the riverbank pricked him, and
> > his
> > life went away /tullakatullaka/?drop by drop. The /ayah/ and
> > Punch and Judy always talked Hindustani because they
> > understood it better than English.
>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:36:19 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Richard Pine <rpinecorfu at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [ilds] Fw: Hindustani
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <557641.49281.qm at web65816.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I should have added, that, in conversation with myself, recalling his
> childhood, LD said 'We all spoke Urdu'. Does this complicate matters
> further?
> RP
>
>
>
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Richard Pine <rpinecorfu at yahoo.com>
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Sent: Sun, June 27, 2010 3:17:55 PM
> Subject: Hindustani
>
> Regarding Durrell's childhood familiarity with Hindi, cf Ashis Nandy, The
> Intimate Enemy pp. 65-6 re Kipling: 'He was not merely born in India, he was
> brought up in India by Indian servants in an Indian environment. He thought,
> felt and dreamed in Hindustani'.
> RP
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:33:03 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> To: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <65B19039-4638-496A-9351-90EEF4D29E4B at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Pine also says, "I should have added, that, in conversation with myself,
> recalling his childhood, LD said 'We all spoke Urdu'. Does this complicate
> matters further?"
>
> Young Durrell a speaker of Urdu and Hindi? Possible but likely? What's
> the evidence for this in Durrell's later work and "stories" of his past? A
> few scattered words of Urdu or Hindi is not evidence for speaking either
> language. I know a few words and phrases of Spanish, learned in part from
> my mother who was a native speaker of Spanish, but I never spoke the
> language. I never learned Spanish.
>
> This is nitpicking? I don't think so. LGD's greatest gift was his use of
> metaphor. Read "From the Elephant's Back" ? it's packed with metaphors
> which Durrell uses to describe his method and vision/philosophy. He hauls
> in Einstein's Relativity again and now adds Quantum Mechanics. Does he know
> the physics and mathematics behinds these terms? Absolutely not. These are
> just metaphors he likes to play with. Now, his childhood in India became a
> metaphor for something lost, unattainable, and, if you will, "devoutely to
> be wished": the dream of Tibet. That idea is very close to the "blue
> flower" of German Romanticism, Novalis's "die blaue Blume." I'm suggesting
> that Durrell's dream of India was just that, largely a dream. It had some
> basis in fact, but he later used it as a metaphor which he embellished,
> elaborated, and turned into a dream. And that's the way I take his
> statements about speaking Hindi and Urdu. They're not statements of fact ?
> they're metaphors.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
> On Jun 27, 2010, at 6:00 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:
>
> > Richard Pine wrote:
> >
> >> Regarding Durrell's childhood familiarity with Hindi, cf Ashis
> Nandy, The Intimate Enemy pp. 65-6 re Kipling: 'He was not merely born in
> India, he was brought up in India by Indian servants in an Indian
> environment. He thought, felt and dreamed in Hindustani'.
> >>
> >
> > In order to make a bold point, we might even say that, later in life,
> > Durrell recalled /two/ languages from his childhood: Hindustani and
> Kipling.
> >
> > I think it is obvious that Durrell retained a lifelong fluency in
> > Kipling. Cf. the following remark by Durrell in 1971.
> >
> >> Goulianos: So you think it would be better if the British were
> >> still in India?
> >> Durrell: I don't care fundamentally. The British have
> >> obviously lost their drive, and these things go in rhythms.
> >> I'm not pining for the Raj at all. I'm just saying that my
> >> childhood was influenced there. And for an account of that
> >> sort of life, Kipling.
> >>
> >> "The Fasting of the Heart," Lawrence Durrell" Conversations
> >> (123-124)
> >
> >
> > I will re-post below Kipling's major autobiographical and fictional
> > statements on his Anglo-Indian childhood and "the vernacular idiom that
> > one thought and dreamed in."
> >
> > Meanwhile, everyone should read more Kipling.
> >
> > C&c.
> >
> > Kipling, /Something of Myself/, "Chapter 1 -- A Very Young
> > Person"
> >
> >> My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and
> >> golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder. This
> >> would be the memory of early morning walks to the Bombay
> >> fruit
> >> market with my /ayah/ and later with my sister in her
> >> perambulator, and of our returns with our purchases piled
> >> high
> >> on the bows of it. Our /ayah/ was a Portuguese Roman Catholic
> >> who would pray?I beside her?at a wayside Cross. Meeta, my
> >> Hindu bearer, would sometimes go into little Hindu temples
> >> where, being below the age of caste, I held his hand and
> >> looked at the dimly-seen, friendly Gods[. . . .]
> >> In the afternoon heats before we took our sleep, she or Meeta
> >> would tell us stories and Indian nursery songs all
> >> unforgotten, and we were sent into the dining-room after we
> >> had been dressed, with the caution ?Speak English now to Papa
> >> and Mamma.? So one spoke ?English,? haltingly translated out
> >> of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in.
> >
> > Kipling, "Baa Baa, Black Sheep"
> >
> >> The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his
> >> opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and
> >> to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot
> >> the
> >> /ayah/ and Meeta and the /hamal/, and with difficulty
> >> remembered a few words of the Hindustani once his
> >> second-speech.
> >
> > Kipling, "The Potted Princess"
> >
> >> NOW this is the true tale that was told to Punch and Judy,
> >> his
> >> sister, by their nurse, in the city of Bombay, ten thousand
> >> miles from here. They were playing in the veranda, waiting
> >> for
> >> their mother to come back from her evening drive. The big
> >> pink
> >> crane, who generally lived by himself at the bottom of the
> >> garden because he hated horses and carriages, was with them
> >> too, and the nurse, who was called the ayah, was making him
> >> dance by throwing pieces of mud at him. Pink cranes dance
> >> very
> >> prettily until they grow angry. Then they peck.
> >>
> >> This pink crane lost his temper, opened his wings, and
> >> clattered his beak, and the ayah had to sing a song which
> >> never fails to quiet all the cranes in Bombay. It is a very
> >> old song, and it says:
> >>
> >> Buggle baita nuddee kinara,
> >> Toom-toom niushia kaye,
> >> Nuddee kinara kanta lugga
> >> Tullaka-tullaka ju jaye.
> >>
> >> That means: A crane sat by the river-bank, eating fish
> >> /toom-toom/, and a thorn in the riverbank pricked him, and
> >> his
> >> life went away /tullakatullaka/?drop by drop. The /ayah/ and
> >> Punch and Judy always talked Hindustani because they
> >> understood it better than English.
> >
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > ********************************************
> > Charles L. Sligh
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of English
> > University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> > charles-sligh at utc.edu
> > ********************************************
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ILDS mailing list
> > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:37:25 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <4C277E45.2030608 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Bruce Redwine wrote:
> >
> > And that's the way I take his statements about speaking Hindi and
> > Urdu. They're not statements of fact ? they're metaphors.
> >
> >
> Yes, /now/ you are getting a sense of the thing.
>
> C&c.
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:02:35 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> To: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <1A94C8CF-D316-49C4-B918-387C9DF60A56 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Charles,
>
> The real question is, to what extent did Durrell know what he was doing?
> My opinion: sometimes he lied knowingly, but he did that so often that
> lies became Truth, for him anyway.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
> On Jun 27, 2010, at 9:37 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:
>
> > Bruce Redwine wrote:
> >>
> >> And that's the way I take his statements about speaking Hindi and
> >> Urdu. They're not statements of fact ? they're metaphors.
> >>
> >>
> > Yes, /now/ you are getting a sense of the thing.
> >
> > C&c.
> >
> > --
> > ********************************************
> > Charles L. Sligh
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of English
> > University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> > charles-sligh at utc.edu
> > ********************************************
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ILDS mailing list
> > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:27:30 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] "for an account of that sort of life, Kipling."
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4C278A02.9040102 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> I will give you the gift of a text.
>
> > But one can see the astute attendant Brahmans from here,
> > skilled in directing the heavenly intuitions of both men and
> > beasts to their own profit. The praises of kings as rehearsed
> > on these documents are monuments of hyperbole[. . . .] All is
> > done, however, with such an air of conviction and pious
> > purpose that we must use Dr. Johnson's kindly discrimination
> > and say they are not inexcusable, but consecrated liars.
>
> Lockwood Kipling, /Beast and man in
> India: a popular sketch of Indian
> animals in their relations with the
> people/ (1904)
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
> End of ILDS Digest, Vol 39, Issue 16
> ************************************
>
--
Vivienne DuBourdieu, MCIJ
vidubo at gmail.com
T: 01323 873046 or 07932 714063
http://strollingplayer.com
http://travlark.com
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