Part 1

One of the reasons I refuse to be interviewed by newspapers, or on television, is that they always ask inane questions like: what is your favorite book? How is it possible for anyone to pinpoint a favorite book or, for that matter a favourite film? You can nominate your favorite dish which may be bangers and mash because you have a partiality for it. By nominating it you wish to convey that given an option you would rather have bangers and mash and not fish and chips or biryani. But when you declare, let us say, Brothers Karamazov to be your favorite book, you are saying that given half a dozen books to read, you would rather read Brothers Karamazov.

Books are for me pure magic, festive, curious, and full of other lives and voices and quiet existences raised to the point of exuberance and excitement. Books portray and unearth characters who are perfectly ordinary to begin with and become extraordinary. Books reveal to us the world as it is and, sometimes, as it ought to be. I pity those who are getting into the habit of reading a book on a computer. They do not know the pleasure of savouring the type faces and the binding and the feel of well-made paper. When you read a book there is no danger of seeing green pixels against a black background, nor mushrooms tumbling out of the upper margins of the screen.

Books are the only testament to the humanity of human beings. My favorite book is the last excellent book that I finished, which, if you must know, was ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ by Ambrose Bierce.

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 I am frequently dubbed as a classicist. I do not mind this even though I know that the implication is that I belong to a breed conservative in taste, thoroughly insensitive to all modern endeavors and blind to the wonders of the computer age. It speaks volumes for the anti-intellect culture which has spread all around us, that the ‘Classics’ is regarded as something terribly old- fashioned, appreciated only by fuddy-duddies.

What is Classics? What is Classicism? Why are these words so off-putting? The fault lies partly with ordinary dictionaries which tell you that it pertains to ancient Greek and Latin literature and art. I like the simpler definition that Classics and Classicism relates to objects of acknowledged excellence, outstandingly important.

I would like to submit that any creative work of the past -- be it sculpture, painting, architecture, drama, poetry -- which stimulates the depth of your imagination is Classics. Needless to say that all things ancient are not classics, just as classics do not necessarily belong to an ancient world.

And so I find the Parthenon, the Stupas of Sanchi, and Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Lope de Vegas and Ghalib and Goethe and many other works of prose and poetry to be Classics. Except for the environment in which we live today, the terms Classics and Classicism when applied to anything from painting to music, from novel to drama, are normally terms of approval and admiration. The debates that Classics initiate are only about which works of literature and drama are the very best.

The Greek mythology is one of the most common ways that Classics first come to our notice. A great deal of theorizing has gone into the accounting of this mythology, especially in the 20th century. The story of Oedipus opened a new vista in the study of psychology and   Freud gave us the term ‘Oedipus complex’.  Other terms such as ‘Narcissism,’ ‘Epicureanism,’ ‘Bacchanalia’ and their interpretations have proliferated throughout the world.

The Greek tragedies (classics already as far back as the 4th century BC) show us that unless there are norms and limits, which a human society must fight to maintain, it will burst into chaos and ruination. From the time they were written, twenty five hundred years ago, these tragedies have been performed not only in Greece but in far-flung places from Macedonia to Egypt.

And why, you may well ask? What is the fascination of these plays that depict the implacability of the gods and the stubborn -- sometimes justified -- defiance of the mortals? The answer is that they manifest the indomitable courage of men and women who choose death and destruction for their convictions. It is the human spirit that these tragedies glorify; the audience is ennobled through a process of Catharsis.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, classicism, more or less, died. It was not until the Italian renaissance, centuries later, that it made a reappearance. Renaissance classicism introduced a lot of new elements into European culture. What was considered to be classical was now more orderly, more structured. Trade -- and contact -- with Islamic cultures had a lot to do with it. The Muslims brought a flood of knowledge about and from the ancient Greeks plus their own contribution to mathematics, geography, physics, medical sciences, logic and celestial mechanics. The period also brought revival of ancient art forms like the Greek tragedy. It is always worth bearing in mind that Shakespeare was a product of Renaissance classics.

Classics are not just a highly scholastic three years course for a degree at Oxford or Cambridge. Classics is the calm restraint exercised over a savage and grisly world.  The trouble is that we are always taught Classic as ‘High Moral Purpose’ and this is what alienates us from the Classics.

Let me hasten to add that Classicism is not the sole prerogative of the West. In art as well as architecture, in poetry and pottery, we have an enormous heritage of classics. In India the Sanskrit drama established itself as a distinct art form about the same time, if not earlier, than the birth of Greek tragedy. It was a form in which the spoken word, poetry and heightened prose remained subservient to the music and dance, central to the dramatic concept. The most lasting and enchanting classical art of the sub-continent is the raga-based music which is still pursued and practiced with great flourish.

Our experience of Classics is invariably influenced by those who have gone before us. We experience Classics in the light of what previous generations have said, thought, and written about the ancient world. The classic cultures of Athens and Rome were themselves influenced by the Semitic and African cultures that were their neighbors. Part of the contemporary appeal of Classics lies in the way that ancient writers confronted traditions of their world. In their works we see them debating what we now call ‘multi-culturalism’ of their own societies.

Classics do not simply enlighten us; they also jolt us out of our erroneous perceptions of certain epochs.

(to be continued)