[ilds] Indian Mertaphysics

[G. R. Taneja]

<<<<On Nov
18, 2015, at 12:45 AM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:

 

<<<<Gulshan's article echoes the full-length
study by Ravindran (Ravi) Nambiar, "Indian Metaphysics in Lawrence
Durrell's Novels" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) - anyone read it?

RP 

       I am sure
I would have benefited from Nambiar's book in the writing of my paper. But, as
James pointed out,  I wrote my paper about 6 years before the Nambiar book
appeared and I read it  in 2009 in a Toulose
conference. In actual fact, I had written it for Richard for an event in Corfu
to which I was not able to go and that would have occurred even a year or two
before the Toulose presentation. 

But I did read Nambiar’s article of 1992, ‘The Resonance of India in the Novels of Lawrence Durrell’ (The
Literary Criterion 27.1-2 (1992): 43-49. There were others who had by then written
on
this aspect of Durrell and I had access to this material. When Ian MacNiven visited India and met Nambiar
in 1996,  he wrote an article in a local journal with which Nambiar was
asssociated, ‘Lawrence Durrell: Writer of East and West’ (S.B. Academy
Review, V, i (1996) 7-10).  Ian MacNiven also wrote an article
which is relevant to the current discussion: ‘Forgetting A Homeless Colonial:
Gender, Religion and Transnational Childhood in Lawrence Durrell’s Pied
Piper Of Lovers’, It appeared online on a Univ of alberta website
which if memeory serves right, James was in charge of.  

      I am sure all this is familiar matter.
But the point that I want to make is that for long been  there has existed a belief among the western as
well as the Indian scholars (the latter come across as much more firmly
committed to this notion), that a western writer-artist who brushes past India,
however brief the brush,  shall not
return home without his body, mind and soul duly stamped with a metaphysical-spiritual
water mark.      
      This kind of innocence is touching. In India, Elizabeth Gilbert, in
complicity with Julia Robers, have made matters worse. But this is not what
academics do. 

      Durrell always knows the best: To Henry Moore who planned
to write a monograph on him, Larry advised: ‘For God’s sake don’t go to India.
Just read Kim’.

      All this is this is one man’s view. And I not a
Durrrell scholar. But of course we get together here to express our personal
opinions and learn from each other. I am sure I shall be a new man after I have
looked through Ravindran’s take on Durrell. 
Gulshan





In-between Website: 
<http://sites.google.com/site/inbetweeneslc>



G. R. Taneja 
 /  Editor

In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism

Department
 of English, R. L. A. College, University of Delhi

Anand Niketan 
Colony, Benito Juarez Marg,

New Delhi-110 021,  India 

From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 12:11:53 -0800
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
CC: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net
Subject: [ilds] Indian Mertaphysics

No, I haven’t read it.  But I seem to recall this book was being sold at the Vancouver meeting in 2014.  My sense is that the study is a positive take on Durrell’s Indian “metaphysics.”  Sex seems to be a big part of this.  Nambiar’s article, “The Spirit of Tantric Maithuna in The Avignon Quintet,” appeared in Deus Loci, NS10 (2006-2007):  167-76, where he concludes:  “I look upon Durrell as a liberator even of Indians from the puritanical tradition which they have inherited.”
Bruce




On Nov 18, 2015, at 12:45 AM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:Gulshan's article echoes the full-length study by Ravindran (Ravi) Nambiar, "Indian Metaphysics in Lawrence Durrell's Novels" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) - anyone read it?
RP 


_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20151122/e22c4953/attachment.html>