Introduction
Welcome!
You're all welcome to my desk. I shall appreciate your enthusiastic and intelligent questions relating to literature.
I'm particularly grateful to Shourabh and Sumon of the old third year for providing me with this opportunity to meet you electronically and universally. It is safe and reasonable to meet thus in times out of joint, when intimacy is misunderstood, misinterpreted and unfairly scandalised. I quote a line from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: 'One must be so careful these days.' Our is a nervous time hag-ridden with paranoia from our hawk-eyed watchful assassins. Our classrooms are mousetraps where every utterance goes on secret record; dockets are collected and dossiers maintained. Days of execution are counted with digital precision. We wait and wait with bated breath for the final hour to strike. Then, we hit the headlines or are consigned to some obscure columns of newspapers, and then mourned in one-minute silence, and by and by forgotten and lost in the mist of time.
An ideal university is, among all other things, is the fountain head of knowledge, not at all of knowledge shored from the frowsty museum or musty annals of history or mouldy pages of dead scholars.But here we create our own version of every piece of knowledge appropriate for ourselves and our time. It is the place where the old knowledge is scrutinized, tested and then retained or rejected with enlightened replacements. We chew the cud like cattle in schools and colleges, because then our brain is watery . Credulity is the sign of idiocy, ignorance and inertia, unforgivable in the adult body. Only those old ideas die that cannot change with changing times. We, too, meet with the same fate intellectually if we get our feet stuck in the quagmire of the past. If we become derivative we get farther and farther away from the original where lies the true force of the creative ferment and thereby become weaker and weaker by the moment; and lacking the vigour and purpose of the original, we collapse in animal rage, slash and tear at each other, thus ending in a spatter and pool of gore. Emerson tells in his celebrated essay Nature: 'Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.' In principle, university education is expected to save us from degenerating into such thoughtless derivatives, that is, automatons and humanoids.
University is a battle ground of ideas: ideological conflicts are healthy when they do not play into the hands of musclemen, thugs, cut-throats and ruffians. We can only have healthy ideas from healthy debates. There is always a way out if we do not want only to win but are willing also to lose. All universal ideas have been created by consensus; not by dissensus. Before we can make the best pick (the superlative), we had better shop around for check and comparison among a wide variety. Do not buy your pigs in a poke. Open every sack to see its contents lest they should be a bluff. I believe a university academic is a shopkeeper of ideas. It isn't his business to advise his clients but it certainly is his ethical responsibility to tell the whole truth. When he does so honestly, it is the guarantee of his integrity as an academic. Then, no utterance is his faith or belief; it is truly a sin in him to reflect his personal faith, belief or choice, the veritable sin of proselytizing. He ought to be passionate with the spout of his intelligence, far less rather than the surge of his emotion. For a good academic, it's quite possible to be passionate without being emotional or sentimental. He allows classroom colloquy to encourage free speech, courageously faces questions without the mentality of always beating his or her interlocutor and winning points and nurtures no future grudge against their betters. The new knowledge is thus born, and changes the course of human history. Our aim is not personal victory but the good of all. Our personal benefit from there is what we get in the way of wisdom: both tutor and taught learn and develop in the process from their self-knowledge of epistemological dearth. I can think of no other way by which we can know about the dark areas of our mind. I don't think that the purpose of the academic is to read books and translate them for the weak-stomached sickly students pathetically seeking certificates on humanitarian grounds. Nor is it his or her duty to translate difficult texts for God's sake! Surely, this department is neither for him or her nor for those sulking weaklings. God bless them both!!
I might not measure up to all that I have said. But my wistful gaze is upon that distant misty peak.
15 comments:
Dear Sir,
I just peeped into your desk and at the same time my desk here on the sixth floor got some light from the sun. I don't know if I am scribbling these words on the right corner but I really felt an urge to translate my few feelings into words. I believe ur pupils will felt something different after going through what you wrote in the welcoming notes of your desk. It’s pretty much true that our dept never gave us the feelings of urgency to do something or to create something. May be the blame will go to the students' side but still an institutional incentive or encouragement is a big boost-up. And that’s where we r lagging far behind. At last we r really happy to know that some creative battles will hit mind of the learners of English dept by the graceful deed of Sourabh and Sumon. Thanks to them.
The way u mentioned about the universality rather than the individuality of knowledge is encouraging and stimulating, of course.
Thanks once again.
Ashraf (from Masters)
Dear sir,
I m your student of English Department.I just have completed my masters exam and viva voce. I've gone through your welcome note thoroughly and repeatedly.Perhaps this is the first time in my life I've read any welcome note more than once,let alone in computer.I m really so hasty a character that I never read any terms and conditions before clicking I ACCEPT.But I read your welcome note with real patience. It seems to me that the welcome note has become a piece of Modern Cyber Literature!You r really so encouraging but You are so frequently misunderstood.Sir, in this virtual cyber world the only thing that I can give you is some words and with all that words I wanna give you thanks. Thank you sir for making me feel that you are with me with all of us. Sir I was in your tutorial group and I was afraid to meet with you personally to submit my assignment on W.B. Yeats as I was a bit late in submitting my assignment. This is the reason I kept my assignment in your box. I tender my apology for being late but I really studied a lot to make my assignment rich. Hopefully You'll understand my predicament.
With respects.
Md.Safiul Azam(Mahfuz)
Department of English
Student of M.A.(final)
Session-2003-04
Exam Roll 2004/22
Ashraf & Mahfuz,
I'm exceedingly pleased to see your comments. I wish you had seen the sad undercurrent in the writing; that is, the circumstances that compel a corporeal being to be spirited away to an uncharted virtual space. In a way it's a transformation of a being into a non-being (a phantom, really!). As for myself, I'm saddened by this transubstantiation and gratuitous transcendence, though sometimes it gives me the rare pleasure of experiencing the afterlife in the flesh here and now if you think in terms of public reactions to the deceased. Is it a kind of life-in-death that enables you to rehearse transmission of wisdom from hereafter? Whatever the case, I'm a damned postmodern cyborg now, a queer artifact of machine and mind. Something like that phantom king in Satayjit Roy's 'Gopi Gayen Bagha Bayen'who confers boons on the two hoboes that eventually change their fortune dramatically. I might do the same, who knows?
Cheers!
Sir,
sometimes it feels better to make virtual contact with pupils rather than meeting them in person. Your presence is more important; how u r meeting that necessity, people should not pull their hair for that. I herard recentky u have writing some poems. Hope u will find some relief to express urself. However, dont be scared for those scandal mongers. We all want u to do something that will remind us of the Dept. when we will be away for this barren campus.
Ashraf
sir,
sorry for some unexpeced and hasty spelling mistakes in the last comment. I was in a hurry to go give my class.
Ashraf
Ashraf,
Thanks for encouraging words. Never mind those spelling scruples as long as your mind glimmers with gold fish of ideas! As for those scandal mongers, I don't care. I control both. Let me put it this way: I make both scandals and scandal mongers. When girls swing with me (this area is particularly their fleshpot and pathological fondler ), they get burnt up beyond healing by the knowledge of their own impotence and my capacity. When they suffer and I rejoice, the ghost of Marquis de Sade puts his hand on my shoulder affectionately. Thanks for participating in this forum and I'll look forward to your continued interest in, and contribution to HOM.
I don’t know how this allusion be happened. But I am surprised, and excited. I am a devout admirer of any kind of classics (infect I am doing this comment from my nokia classic phone!).
However, "HOM", a kind of plant, the juice of which, from the context of Zoroastrianism, was a sacred drink. The Parsees used to have this drink to pursue "the good" for mankind. They believed that this "hom" can bring the ultimate calmness in this hazardous earth.
Classical Greek is the root or the inspiration of all "Hymns" as well as "Hymn of Muses". If we call our site- "the HOM" in short, it never would be a misnomer.
We are not Greek, we are "Indian". If we be guided by our ancestors view, what wrong will be there? Who knows, may be the plant hom can become more mature tree by our "neo-neoclassical" aspiration!
Sumon.
''PAIN has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself, 5
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.''
--by Emily Dickinson (from the poetry collection on Life)
Sir,
May be Emily Dickinson also stored some underlying current of pain inside her throughout her whole life as you do.
How are you?
Ashraf
Ashraf,
Thanks for asking after me.
To say that ED had stored 'some' pain in her life is to understate her case terribly.If you mark her words, you can see that she saw pain not from outside but from inside. She is an insider of pain, to say the least. What you see in this particularly classically stoical poem is that she familiarizes pain so thoroughly that pain is anesthetized by her superiority of suffering. Does she tell in this same poem that 'After Great Pain formal feeling comes'? I forget (I quote from my vulnerable memory). Anyway it is a great poem on pain. Cheers!
People should read this.
Dear Sir,
A look at your desk convices me that you are performing some 'new-age' and/yet 'enriching' services towards your students. I hope they appreciate this.
It is amazing and heart-warming to know that at least one teacher in the country is still dedicating much time to his students and his profession!
Kudos!
Subi
dear Sir, what was the title of your Ph. D thesis, and at which university u did this?
Feedback for Anonymous
LAUNCHED INTO ETERNITY: An Eschatological Study of Emily Dickinson's Poems & Letters (University of Dhaka) to be published by Writers.Ink & distributed by UPL in August, 2009.
Sir,
Nice to see the comments and your replies. They made me nostalgic, it felt like dwelling in past. The difference in thoughts between this part of the world and that is so obvious, its cruel and unfair. One day when I have less committment I will come back to you - to learn. Take care
Ayesha
cu english students lack much in reding different type texts. if somehow manage to read can not analyze.
Iftekhar
Eng, cu
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