The novel was born from the awareness of being able to reject all forms of power in circulation.
The first novelist in the Bengali language, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, did not articulate his thinking about the novel. But Bankimchandra did write a note in the fourth edition of his novel Rajsingha, published in 1893. I quote a few disconnected sentences. "The objective of history can sometimes be fulfilled by the novel. The novelist is not always bound by the chains of truth. He can resort to the imagination at will, in order to realise his desires. In order to preserve the 'novelness' of the novel, I have had to insert many figments of my imagination into the book…There is no requirement that everything in a novel be historical."
I shall draw your attention to two of the statements here. First, that the writer of a novel is not always shackled by truth. And second, that not everything in a novel needs to be from history. The truth that Bankimchandra is referring to is not facts of nature like the existence of the sun and the moon. It is the kind of "truth" that is constructed socially at a particular time in a particular country. And the history that he’s alluding to is not an oral description of the lives of a community of people ‒ this "history" is a social construct, written history.
The novel rejects power
Who has the right to construct these "truths" and this "history"? Those who are in power. In order to establish such power, some facts and some history are required. Moreover, truth and history are wedded to each other. Truth is history and history, truth. It used to be said even a few years ago in my very own Bengal that "Marxism is all-powerful, there is is true". Could anything be more laughable?
Our colonial masters gifted us the concepts of truth and history. The significance of truth and of history in sub-continental civilisation is different. To Bankimchandra, they were actually the truth of power and the history of power. Why else would he have rued, "Bengalis have no history"? By history he referred to the history of power in the European tradition. Which was why he personally entered his novels repeatedly to establish the truth in them. Here is the beginning of Chapter 29 of Bishbriksha (The Poison Tree).
Beyond Truth and History
This is the moralist Bankimchandra, besotted by "truth" and "history". But what of the novelist Bankimchandra? Characters like Kunda, Nagendra, Suryamikhi, Heera or Devendra tear apart his notion of truth. So the writer Bankimchandra is compelled to say that the novelist is not always shackled by the chains of truth, or that not everything in a novel has to be historical. He has listened to the varying voices of so many different characters from his novels, ranging from Durgeshnandini to Sitaram, that the fiction-writer Bankimchandra cannot be duty-bound to truth and history in his novels. He has no choice but to make room for Ayesha’s voice, throbbing with love, "The prisoner is my beloved."
There were actually two Bankimchandras. One was the intellectual and moralist, who was determined to establish the truth and history of his times. The other was the novelist, who could transcend contemporary truths and histories to arrive at a different century. This is the wonderful ability of the novel. That is why it has no fixed framework, for the novel is conceived by the seed of dialogue. It is not a monologue like epics or poetry ‒ the novel is born from a chorus in multiple voices.
We shall now turn briefly to Mikhail Bakhtin. This Russian outcast had arrived at the heart of the matter when he said that it’s not philosophy, not history, not sociology. The subject of the novel is living humans and their conversations. Dialogue is the life of a novel. A novel is not dominated by a single perspective ‒ crossing one story after another, building truth and breaking it continuously, the narrative advances towards unending freedom.
Multiple voices
Bakhtin wrote about two sorts of novels: those with a single voice and those with multiple voices. Following the tradition of English romances, Bankimchandra wrote the first kind. He wanted to establish the exalted, Sanskrit-depended language of his times, along with the specific style it required.
There is practically no difference between the language he uses for the narration and the language used by his characters for dialogue. This is how single-voice novels are written. And yet the resonance of multiple voices does insinuate itself into such works. That Bankimchandra suddenly enters his own novel to establish his opinions is because there is an opposing point of view too, with which he conducts an incessant conversation. If a reader so wishes, he or she can hear this opposing voice while reading Bankimchandra’s viewpoint. This is how the novel holds on to the contradictory voice.
The true calling of the novel is to strip naked whatever the establishment specifies, whatever is fixed. The events that take place in epics are from a past that has no relationship with contemporary reality. In epics the characters undergo no change from beginning to end. There is no room for questioning or doubts in the narrative, for everything has been preordained by destiny.
But from its very moment of birth the novel is so connected to its contemporary times, it questions the truth and history of these contemporary times so vehemently, that the very idea of something being pre-ordained is destroyed.
Questions, not statements
This questioning nature is born in the lower strata of society. Those in power want to establish only a single truth, a single history. People from the lower strata seek to destroy this single truth, this single history, with their festivities and music and oral art.
With humour and laughter they question the commentary of the powerful. They oppose the single voice of those in power with their own, multiple voices. Different narratives of history are created. Not a history, but histories.
The first two novels in the world, Gargantua and Pantagruel and Don Quixote have captured such multiplicity of voices of unknown men. None of the characters in these two novels is a hero in the sense of the epic ‒ on the contrary, they are fools, clowns, losers, weirdos. But they demolish the monotone of power. You could say the strip naked the history that those in power seek to establish.
This is the second of the two forms of the novel that Bakhtin speaks of. Bankimchandra did not belong to this tradition, but since he was a novelist, he had no choice but to listen to multiple voices. These voices have ambushed his single-voice novels in a way that the intellectual in Bankimchandra could not counter.
That he understood this natural logic of the novel is evident in Kamalakanta and Muchiram Gur, which, despite their presence in the essays section of the Collected Works, I consider novels. As Bankimchandra advances from the single voice of his romances towards the multiple voices of Kamalakanta and Muchiram Gur, it becomes clear that the novel has no pre-ordained framework, that it is an ever-expanding universe, where there is a rhythm and a symmetry.
Such a long journey
We have come a long way since Bankimchandra’s ideas about the novel were formed. There have been many changes in the history of the novel. We shall no longer write novels like Bankimchandra’s, but I believe that the writer who wants to write a novel must face Bankim. For Bankimchandra had stood up against the soap-opera like stories that we identify as novels.
In his novels - no matter how single-voiced they may have been - Bankimchandra had wanted to capture ideas and the conflicts between them. Even as he was writing a historical novel, it broke through the pre-ordained notion of history. Even in the process of establishing a single truth, the unascertainable narrative of his novel demolished that every truth.
And so the novelist is not a commentator on history. Rather, he is an invader who seeks to demolish the framework of history. Of course, the novel is a sort of commentary too, for we can never go outside the text. For this entire universe is a text to us too, an extended chronicle.
Rabisankar Bal writes novels, short stories and poetry in Bengali. His best-known novel is the award-winning Dozakhnama.
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The first novelist in the Bengali language, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, did not articulate his thinking about the novel. But Bankimchandra did write a note in the fourth edition of his novel Rajsingha, published in 1893. I quote a few disconnected sentences. "The objective of history can sometimes be fulfilled by the novel. The novelist is not always bound by the chains of truth. He can resort to the imagination at will, in order to realise his desires. In order to preserve the 'novelness' of the novel, I have had to insert many figments of my imagination into the book…There is no requirement that everything in a novel be historical."
I shall draw your attention to two of the statements here. First, that the writer of a novel is not always shackled by truth. And second, that not everything in a novel needs to be from history. The truth that Bankimchandra is referring to is not facts of nature like the existence of the sun and the moon. It is the kind of "truth" that is constructed socially at a particular time in a particular country. And the history that he’s alluding to is not an oral description of the lives of a community of people ‒ this "history" is a social construct, written history.
The novel rejects power
Who has the right to construct these "truths" and this "history"? Those who are in power. In order to establish such power, some facts and some history are required. Moreover, truth and history are wedded to each other. Truth is history and history, truth. It used to be said even a few years ago in my very own Bengal that "Marxism is all-powerful, there is is true". Could anything be more laughable?
Our colonial masters gifted us the concepts of truth and history. The significance of truth and of history in sub-continental civilisation is different. To Bankimchandra, they were actually the truth of power and the history of power. Why else would he have rued, "Bengalis have no history"? By history he referred to the history of power in the European tradition. Which was why he personally entered his novels repeatedly to establish the truth in them. Here is the beginning of Chapter 29 of Bishbriksha (The Poison Tree).
The poison tree whose account we are about to present, starting with the sowing of the seed and ending with the giving of fruit and its consumption, is planted in the garden of every home. Its seed is an excess of passion; it is sowed in every single circumstance in the course of unfolding events. There is no human whose nature is untouched by anger, jealousy, lust and other vices. But the difference between one person and the next is that some can, and do, curb their surging propensities - they are great souls; while others do not control their nature, which leads to the seed of the poisoned tree being planted. The lack of self-restraint is the germ, it is what makes the tree grow. This is a robust plant; once it has received nutrition it cannot be destroyed anymore. And it is exceedingly beautiful to look at; its variegated foliage and exultant blossoms are most delightful in appearance. But its fruit is poisonous; anyone who consumes it perishes.
Beyond Truth and History
This is the moralist Bankimchandra, besotted by "truth" and "history". But what of the novelist Bankimchandra? Characters like Kunda, Nagendra, Suryamikhi, Heera or Devendra tear apart his notion of truth. So the writer Bankimchandra is compelled to say that the novelist is not always shackled by the chains of truth, or that not everything in a novel has to be historical. He has listened to the varying voices of so many different characters from his novels, ranging from Durgeshnandini to Sitaram, that the fiction-writer Bankimchandra cannot be duty-bound to truth and history in his novels. He has no choice but to make room for Ayesha’s voice, throbbing with love, "The prisoner is my beloved."
There were actually two Bankimchandras. One was the intellectual and moralist, who was determined to establish the truth and history of his times. The other was the novelist, who could transcend contemporary truths and histories to arrive at a different century. This is the wonderful ability of the novel. That is why it has no fixed framework, for the novel is conceived by the seed of dialogue. It is not a monologue like epics or poetry ‒ the novel is born from a chorus in multiple voices.
We shall now turn briefly to Mikhail Bakhtin. This Russian outcast had arrived at the heart of the matter when he said that it’s not philosophy, not history, not sociology. The subject of the novel is living humans and their conversations. Dialogue is the life of a novel. A novel is not dominated by a single perspective ‒ crossing one story after another, building truth and breaking it continuously, the narrative advances towards unending freedom.
Multiple voices
Bakhtin wrote about two sorts of novels: those with a single voice and those with multiple voices. Following the tradition of English romances, Bankimchandra wrote the first kind. He wanted to establish the exalted, Sanskrit-depended language of his times, along with the specific style it required.
There is practically no difference between the language he uses for the narration and the language used by his characters for dialogue. This is how single-voice novels are written. And yet the resonance of multiple voices does insinuate itself into such works. That Bankimchandra suddenly enters his own novel to establish his opinions is because there is an opposing point of view too, with which he conducts an incessant conversation. If a reader so wishes, he or she can hear this opposing voice while reading Bankimchandra’s viewpoint. This is how the novel holds on to the contradictory voice.
The true calling of the novel is to strip naked whatever the establishment specifies, whatever is fixed. The events that take place in epics are from a past that has no relationship with contemporary reality. In epics the characters undergo no change from beginning to end. There is no room for questioning or doubts in the narrative, for everything has been preordained by destiny.
But from its very moment of birth the novel is so connected to its contemporary times, it questions the truth and history of these contemporary times so vehemently, that the very idea of something being pre-ordained is destroyed.
Questions, not statements
This questioning nature is born in the lower strata of society. Those in power want to establish only a single truth, a single history. People from the lower strata seek to destroy this single truth, this single history, with their festivities and music and oral art.
With humour and laughter they question the commentary of the powerful. They oppose the single voice of those in power with their own, multiple voices. Different narratives of history are created. Not a history, but histories.
The first two novels in the world, Gargantua and Pantagruel and Don Quixote have captured such multiplicity of voices of unknown men. None of the characters in these two novels is a hero in the sense of the epic ‒ on the contrary, they are fools, clowns, losers, weirdos. But they demolish the monotone of power. You could say the strip naked the history that those in power seek to establish.
This is the second of the two forms of the novel that Bakhtin speaks of. Bankimchandra did not belong to this tradition, but since he was a novelist, he had no choice but to listen to multiple voices. These voices have ambushed his single-voice novels in a way that the intellectual in Bankimchandra could not counter.
That he understood this natural logic of the novel is evident in Kamalakanta and Muchiram Gur, which, despite their presence in the essays section of the Collected Works, I consider novels. As Bankimchandra advances from the single voice of his romances towards the multiple voices of Kamalakanta and Muchiram Gur, it becomes clear that the novel has no pre-ordained framework, that it is an ever-expanding universe, where there is a rhythm and a symmetry.
Such a long journey
We have come a long way since Bankimchandra’s ideas about the novel were formed. There have been many changes in the history of the novel. We shall no longer write novels like Bankimchandra’s, but I believe that the writer who wants to write a novel must face Bankim. For Bankimchandra had stood up against the soap-opera like stories that we identify as novels.
In his novels - no matter how single-voiced they may have been - Bankimchandra had wanted to capture ideas and the conflicts between them. Even as he was writing a historical novel, it broke through the pre-ordained notion of history. Even in the process of establishing a single truth, the unascertainable narrative of his novel demolished that every truth.
And so the novelist is not a commentator on history. Rather, he is an invader who seeks to demolish the framework of history. Of course, the novel is a sort of commentary too, for we can never go outside the text. For this entire universe is a text to us too, an extended chronicle.
Rabisankar Bal writes novels, short stories and poetry in Bengali. His best-known novel is the award-winning Dozakhnama.
