Conversations in Bloomsbury is a 1981 memoir that depicts writer Mulk Raj Anand's life in London during the heyday of the Bloomsbury Group, and his relationships with the group's members. It provides a rare insight into the intimate workings of the English modernist movement, portraying such prominent figures as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Anand challenges the cultural narrative that many have received about these literary figures.
Anand leaves a snapshot of the Bloomsbury Group for posterity, focalizing the individuals within the group through issues of colonial prejudice. His revelations, written decades after his experiences, and retrospectively framed by a postcolonial perspective, often give uncomfortable perspectives on the racist and casually jingoistic attitudes of a seemingly liberal movement. Commentary often engages with the significance of the British 'civilising' mission. Comments include T.S. Eliot's remark 'I wish that Indians would tone down their politics and renew their culture'.[1] Retrospectively, it is possible to point out shortcomings of these writers, inviting a re-examination of their work.
The text gives a highly subjective reading of the Bloomsbury Group, one which is elevated from a biographical recording to a complex and amusing satire of intellectual prejudice, by virtue of Anand's position on the margins of the group. The form of the text allows Anand to set up an ironic distance between the voices of the Bloomsbury Group and the silent undercurrents of their conversations. The prejudices and biases of the group become glaringly obvious because Anand guides the reader to see the dismissal of colonial cruelties that the insular nature of the group prevents them from seeing themselves.
Anand expresses particular disillusion with the group's ignorance of other cultures, arguing that this is an obstacle to the modernist endeavour. He is also critical of their disengagement with both national and international politics, particularly on the issue of Indian independence.
Genre and form
Published in 1981, the text's frame of reference leads the reader to question the veracity of Anand's account. Most of the people he comes across have extensive bodies of work, and the reader cannot be sure where the line is between the people he met in 1920s London and the perceived personas of these writers years later. Described by Anand in the dedication to the 1981 edition as 'gossip' and as 'reminiscences' by Saros Cowasjee (Introduction), Conversations can be classified as life writing. It resembles a memoir, with the 'snapshot' style of the narrative implying that there is an element of entertainment to its construction. The text shows stylistic influences as wide as melodrama and travel writing. Anand shows the personalities of historical figures outside of their literary context. The text also shows a self-conscious understanding of its author's own intellectual maturation.
Ultimately, Conversations in Bloomsbury takes the form of the memoir rather than an autobiography; the episodic conversations are structured around Anand's personal interest rather than any particular narrative. This makes his recollections of his relationships deeply personal and thereby potentially unreliable. Although the conversations may not be recorded verbatim, he gives a sense of the personalities and opinions of each figure. The very literary nature of his encounters and conversations are sometimes strained and point towards a certain degree of implausibility. For example, in chapter eighteen, Anand asks "is it about India?" as his first question of a new novel. He requires an alert reader to realize the ironies embedded within his writing which echoes a modernist approach to writing. The conversations in structure also are never truly resolved; this echoes the colonial and subsequently post-colonial issues that trouble Anand throughout his narrative. Martha Jane Nadell in "Modernism and Race" points towards the traditional tension between race and modernism as modernism, though apparently progressive, ignored issues of race. Conversations in Bloomsbury realises this tension through his unfinished conversations, inability to express himself and follow strict codes of English conduct.[2]
Purpose
As a text that blurs the lines between memoir, fiction, and autobiography, Conversations enacts numerous textual aspirations. It is at once a portrait of an Indian ingenue and autodidact making his way, problematically, at times, into the inner circle of the Bloomsbury group; a biographical snapshot of the group's venerated literary figures; and the ways in which Anand attempts to assert himself, and by extension, India and Indian culture, into the conversations surrounding empire and colonialism in the progressive circle of the Bloomsbury group.
Anand demonstrates how the canonical modernists' discussions and texts, despite the progressive views that they represent, nevertheless demonstrate their heritage of an imperial discourse. He shows that "modernism sought energies in the strangeness and distance of the other... in the terms that seemed to fit into its essentially Eurocentric framework".[3] The conversations—inaccessible as they are—are way of situating Indian culture at the same level as English culture. By depicting multiple conversations between himself and canonical British authors such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, Anand equates himself as one of the Bloomsbury group. Although this could be seen as a mere tool of self-promotion, it also makes the point that the Indian culture Anand comes from is just as important as British culture.
Historical disparities
The historical gap between the writing, subsequent publication and the experiences depicted in Conversations in Bloomsbury gives Anand license to imagine the past and the Bloomsbury Group. However, almost contradictorily Anand is legitimised by the undeniable fact that he was there. This contradiction is allowed for by the fact that Conversations is a memoir.
The substantial distance between experience and publication allows for an extremely critical perspective, contrary to Anna Snaith's perspective of the bloomsbury group as representing "a Britishness to do with bohemian modernity and intellectual freedoms",[4] we are shown a collection of individuals who, although perceiving themselves to be at the forefront of liberal Britain, are often in fact ignorant in their conduct as regards Anands own culture and experience of British rule in India.
As Anand publishes his conversations in the 1980s, the authors he engages with have already been firmly cemented within the English literary modernist canon, only confirmed by the fact that most of them had passed away. He chooses to publish his book at a time when postcolonial critical theory is at its height, suggesting that perhaps he is deliberately satirising the revered status of the Bloomsbury Group at a time when it was popular to scrutinise modernist ideas under postcolonial light, playing on their affirmed celebrity status, made possible only by this historical gap.
There is a distinct tension in the text between its presumed purpose as an exposé of the Bloomsbury group and as an homage:
The second edition of the text is dedicated to the memory of Leonard and Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, suggesting a deferential and reverent attitude towards the famous Modernist circle. This is evident in the text in Anand's presentation of himself as a nervous young student of the writers her portrays; he is awestruck and nervous at meeting famous figures such as T.S Eliot and Aldous Huxley. Eliot seems to act as Anand's mentor and he does menial work for Hogarth Press of which there is no record of payment. He constantly demonstrates self-consciousness of his cultural Otherness and attempts to assimilate his behaviour with English customs. For example, he tries to eat soup quietly like an Englishman rather than slurping it in accordance with Indian stereotypes.
However, at the same time there is a distinct undercurrent of cultural critique and social satire of both the literary figures and London as a metropolitan centre. The parallels drawn between the Indian caste system and the separation of Public and Private bars in London reveals how Anand is critical of the notion that the metropolitan centre is superior to its colonial counterpart. Anand constantly presents the famous figures as prejudiced against and ignorant of Indian customs and culture. These writers put forth their opinion on Indian culture without recognition of their ethnocentrism. For example, T. S. Eliot is shown to be narrow-minded about Indian religion despite its inclusion in his famous poem The Waste Land. Similarly, Clive Bell is depicted as ignorant of the wealth of Indian art, calling it 'crude craftwork' because it does not fit in with his Western notion of art for art's sake.
Depiction of colonialism
Conversations in Bloomsbury depicts the London literary scene of the 1920s and 30s. A theme that runs throughout the conversations is Indian independence and the value of Indian culture. Anand brings this topic up with almost every writer featured. His own position is in favour of independence from British rule, demonstrated by his support of Gandhi's movement and being briefly jailed for his activism.
Writing in a post-independence India, Anand focuses on the variety of positions he encounters within the London literary elite. These vary from the dismissal of Clive Bell to the more progressive anti-imperialist attitudes of E.M. Forster and Leonard Woolf.
The Bloomsbury Set
Anand presents the majority of the Bloomsbury Set as being relatively anti-imperialist, citing ethical objection as Leonard Woolf's main motivation for leaving the Civil Service in Ceylon. The Woolfs' Hogarth Press notably published a number of anti-imperialist texts and marginalised writers.
E.M. Forster is also portrayed as anti-imperialist in his writings and attitudes. Anand specifically cites A Passage to India as a superior and more sympathetic representation of India, in contrast to Rudyard Kipling's Kim, which is praised in the opening chapters by Bonamy Dobrée.
Although most of the Bloomsbury Set are relatively kind and embracing of Anand and anti-imperialist attitudes, Gretchen Gerzina has argued that whilst 'the Bloomsbury Group may have been radicals in Edwardian English society, they were not radical enough. To take seriously a viewpoint utterly removed from their own intellectual aesthetic world.'[5] Anand aligns with this statement in his portrayal of core member Clive Bell, whose portrayal is far more negative than the Woolfs and other members of the Bloomsbury Set. His attitude towards Anand and Indian art in general is highly dismissive, as he criticises the aesthetics that don't align with his own definitions. Anand highlights his distinction between art and craft, and dismissal of Indian art as 'merely craft'.
His book that he never seems to actually write or think about
Little focus on his interiority
He's just as clever as he was then
He also only talks about the exciting members
Naive: Eliot orders for him
The form (memoir) mimics the erudite yet shallow nature of the conversations, which is also how he sees the Bloomsbury Group.
Indian: adoption of "european techniques": cf Untouchable, London as I see it (flaneur)
His accent/language: he slips into his own "lingo", self-deprecating
He works in their basement on a pointless project - (Leonard and Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism - Helen Southworth)
A lot of what he says seems to come from Dance of Siva by Coomaraswarmy: he's finding out about his own country from a book of "fourteen Indian essays" that he only found out about
As a text that blurs the lines between memoir, fiction, and autobiography, Conversations enacts numerous textual aspirations. It is at once a portrait of an Indian ingenue and autodidact making his way, problematically, at times, into the inner circle of the Bloomsbury group; a biographical snapshot of the group's venerated literary figures; and an illustration of the ways in which Anand attempts to assert himself, and by extension, India and Indian culture, into his conversations with the coterie of Bloomsbury intellectuals surrounding politics (imperialism), philosophy, and literature.
Anand demonstrates how the canonical modernists' discussions and texts, despite the progressive views that they represent, nevertheless demonstrate their heritage of an imperial discourse. He shows that "modernism sought energies in the strangeness and distance of the other... in the terms that seemed to fit into its essentially Eurocentric framework" (Simon Gikandi in 'Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism and Modernity') The conversations—inaccessible as they are—are way of situating Indian culture at the same level as English culture. By depicting multiple conversations between himself and canonical British authors such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, Anand equates himself as one of the Bloomsbury group. Although this could be seen as a mere tool of self-promotion, it also makes the point that the Indian culture Anand comes from is just as important as British culture.
As an Indian living in a society with a strong imperial presence in India that held the prejudice that came with it, Anand struggled to find his place within the intellectual community of Bloomsbury. He found himself having to assimilate to the culture in order to fit in. In the text, he describes how he exercised self-restraint over his strong political views, and engages in an internal dialogue in which he examines the role that race plays within literary modernism. The text gives an insight into how his cultural background contributed to shaping his experience as a writer working within Eurocentric structures. He dismantles the image of modernist writers by exposing and critiquing the prejudices that influence their work.
Despite his critical view of his modernist contemporaries, Anand was nonetheless influenced and inspired by them. Conversations alludes to the influence of writers such as James Joyce and his introspective novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on Anand's own emergence as a young writer.
In the memoir, Anand perceives himself as a social commodity for the Bloomsbury group; he feels accepted more for his cultural identity than his intellect and personality. The group's members seem to think they already understand Indian culture. They use Anand's company not as an opportunity to learn, but rather to have their judgments received and ratified by a colonial subject.
Related Research Articles
Modernism is a philosophical, religious, and art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King's College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts." Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.
Leonard Sidney Woolf was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own work and his wife's novels. A writer himself, Woolf created nineteen individual works and wrote six autobiographies. Leonard and Virginia did not have any children.
Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction. In many respects, their criticism echoes what William Wordsworth wrote in Preface to Lyrical Ballads to instigate the Romantic movement in British poetry over a century earlier, criticising the gauche and pompous school which then pervaded, and seeking to bring poetry to the layman.
The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond, in which they began hand-printing books as a hobby during the interwar period.
(Helen) Hope Mirrlees was a British poet, novelist, and translator. She is best known for the 1926 Lud-in-the-Mist, an influential fantasy novel, and for Paris: A Poem (1920), an experimental poem published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press, which critic Julia Briggs deemed "modernism's lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity, scope and ambition."
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, recognised for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He became known for his protest novel Untouchable (1935), followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). He is also noted for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English, and was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan.
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases of the critic setting the dates. The critic/poet C. H. Sisson observed in his essay Poetry and Sincerity that "Modernity has been going on for a long time. Not within living memory has there ever been a day when young writers were not coming up, in a threat of iconoclasm."
John Carey, is a British literary critic, and post-retirement (2002) emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He is known for his anti-elitist views on high culture, as expounded in several books. He has twice chaired the Booker Prize committee, in 1982 and 2003, and chaired the judging panel for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005.
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious separation from traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of the time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century. In Modernist Literature, Mary Ann Gillies notes that these literary themes share the "centrality of a conscious break with the past", one that "emerges as a complex response across continents and disciplines to a changing world".
American modernism, much like the modernism movement in general, is a trend of philosophical thought arising from the widespread changes in culture and society in the age of modernity. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States beginning at the turn of the 20th century, with a core period between World War I and World War II. Like its European counterpart, American modernism stemmed from a rejection of Enlightenment thinking, seeking to better represent reality in a new, more industrialized world.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi was an Indian Urdu language poet, author, critic, and theorist. He is known for ushering modernism to Urdu literature. He formulated fresh models of literary appreciation that combined Western principles of literary criticism and subsequently applied them to Urdu literature after adapting them to address literary aesthetics native to Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Some of his notable works included Sher-e-Shor Angez (1996), Ka’i Chand The Sar-e Asman (2006), The Mirror of Beauty (2013), and The Sun that Rose from the Earth (2014). He was also the editor and publisher of the Urdu literary magazine Shabkhoon.
Monk's House is a 16th-century weatherboarded cottage in the village of Rodmell, three miles (4.8 km) south of Lewes, East Sussex, England. The writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, the political activist, journalist and editor Leonard Woolf, bought the house by auction at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, on 1 July 1919 for 700 pounds, and received there many visitors connected to the Bloomsbury Group, including T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. The purchase is described in detail in her Diary, vol. 1, pp. 286–8.
The Nation and Athenaeum, or simply The Nation, was a United Kingdom political weekly newspaper with a Liberal/Labour viewpoint. It was formed in 1921 from the merger of the Athenaeum, a literary magazine published in London since 1828, and the smaller and newer Nation, edited by Henry William Massingham.
This article is focused on English-language literature rather than the literature of England, so that it includes writers from Scotland, Wales, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from former British colonies. It also includes, to some extent, the United States, though the main article for that is American literature.
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown is an essay by Virginia Woolf published in 1924 which explores modernity.
Paris: A Poem is a long poem by Hope Mirrlees, described as "modernism's lost masterpiece" by critic Julia Briggs. Mirrlees wrote the six-hundred-line poem in spring 1919. Although the title page of the first edition mistakenly has the year 1919, it was first published in 1920 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. Only 175 copies of the first edition were distributed. In 2011, the poem was reprinted in an edition of Mirrlees's Collected Poems, edited by Sandeep Parmar, which helped create more critical interest.
References
↑ Mulk Raj Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1995) 150.
↑ Bradshaw, David (2006). A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
↑ Doyle, Laura (2005). Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism and Modernity. Indiana University Press. p.49.
↑ "'The Hogarth Press and Networks of Anti-Colonialism'". Anna Snaith. Leonard and Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism. Helen Southworth, Oxford University Press 2010.
↑ Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook. 'Bloomsbury and Empire' from The Cambridge Companion to the Bloomsbury Group. Cambridge University Press. p.113.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
