Subhash Jaireth

On 14 April 1993, the day I landed in Moscow, it was snowing. 'The
spring is late this year,' said Zhenia, the final-year literature student
at Moscow State University who had come to meet me at the airport.
It snowed for the next three days. The snow was soft and soon melted,
leaving puddles and sticky mud on the potholed streets of Moscow.
This was not the best time to come to Moscow. The grand Soviet
capital of the past looked like an old, unkempt metropolis trying desperately
to show some tiny signs of rejuvenation.
Next day I went to Yuri Lyubimov's Taganka Theatre to, buy tickets
for the coming shows. An old lady at the box-office looked at me
and said, 'All plays for the week have been cancelled.' When I asked
her why, she shook her head, and, guessing that I was a foreigner,
smiled and replied, 'Yuri Lyubimov arrived last night from Israel and
the troupe is rehearsing Dr Zhivago - its new play. After a week the
troupe is flying off to Europe for the premiere.'

This poem was written nine years ago about an elephant that perished in the Kabul zoo. It seems quite relevant to the sad news coming from the zoo in Kharkiv where animals are dying from the bombing in the Ukraine War. Sadly, pain, suffering and death of animals in wars is rarely reported, bemoaned, and remembered.

In 2008 I went to Brisbane to see Peter Brook's production of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor. A week before the trip I re-read the relevant chapter in The Brothers Karamazov and noticed the bits underlined in pencil-the traces of my earlier reading. My first encounter with the book occurred in 1974. I was a student in Moscow then and like many Muscovites often carried an extra book in my bag. One late evening, a middle-aged woman, probably a schoolteacher, sitting next to me m the coach saw me reading and said, "I see, you are reading Dostoevsky.'' But before I could say anything, she spoke to me again, "Must be hard for you, he is so very Russian." "Yes, he is," I remember saying. I had gone to Moscow in 1969 and in the five or so years had learnt to read, write and speak Russian well, at least that's what my Russians friends often told me. However, of that first reading of the book I don't remember much at all.

In this montage-essay I want to explore the co-being of two forms of visuality in contemporary culture: the photographic and the cinematographic. But this is not my main concern. The more important thing for me is to unravel the notion of translation as movement between them. For this purpose, I'll focus on Stephen Poliakoff's movie Shooting the Past 1. I'll also show that a similar translation/movement takes place in various sections of the text that makes this essay. I will examine translation, as an act/event, at three different but interrelated levels: at the level of the film, that is, within the cinematic narrative; at the level of this essay, that is, in the process of writing and reading this essay; and at the most general level, the level of signification.

On 28 April 1937, The Times (London) published George Steer’s report, The Tragedy of Guernica. Picasso read similar reports published in French newspapers, dropped the project he was working on and began sketching for a new painting which would become Guernica. The painting was finished in June 1937 and was displayed in the pavilion of the Spanish Republic in Paris. A full-size tapestry-copy of Guernica hangs at the entrance of the United Nations (UN) Security Council meeting room. According to Maggie Farley, the staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, on 5 February 2003, as the US Secretary of State Colin Powell ‘came out of the meeting for a press conference, after presenting evidence to help UN to decide whether or not to go to war in Iraq’, the journalists noticed that the tapestry hanging behind his back had been covered by a blue curtain (Farley 2003: 1).
Why did Powell find the presence of the painting unsettling? By covering it, was he acknowledging its power? How does a painting like Guernica acquire that power? Does it reside in the truth it represents, or does it originate from the intense emotions we experience looking at it?
In my essay I compare Picasso’s Guernica with Steer’s newspaper report. I also bring into focus Gernika, a poem written by the Basque poet Telesforo Monzon about the same event. Does the poem possess the same power? What kind of emotional experience does the poem offer to its readers? In what way does that experience differ from the one that Picasso’s Guernica or Steer’s newspaper report provides?

Abstract (Full paper available on request)
An article by Terence Wright in the book Anthropology and Photography contains an intriguing photograph. The caption reads: Monk of the German Trappist Mission directing the pose, Mariannhill, Southern Africa, c.1890.(1) The photograph shows three groups of people clustered at three different points. On the left margin there are five black Africans, three of whom are holding spears, getting ready to pose in front of the camera. A monk in a white gown and a black hat is standing with them. His right hand is raised, pointing at the camera placed near the right edge of the photograph. He is standing at the edge of the photo, and we can only see his right leg, right arm, face and part of his hat. The second group is in the centre of the photo but pushed into the background. This is a group of women and children. All except one are sitting on the ground. The third group is placed close to the right edge of the photo. This group constitutes the foreground and the iconic centre of the photo. A wide format camera on a tripod is surrounded by a young woman and three children. The place meant for the photographer behind the camera is taken by an African warrior. His spear is lying on the ground near his feet. He is leaning against a hut and his head is hidden under the black cloth. He is looking through the eye of the camera at his friends, being directed by the monk. Humps of four huts constitute the background of the photo. What is so interesting about this photo? First, there are two simultaneous acts of displacement. The authoritative place of the photographer, who presumably is also an "anthropologist", has been taken over by the one who is his "object". To compensate for this, the monk standing with the warriors has been turned into an object, although it is he who is directing the pose. But he is not in full control because while he busies himself with this, the other African takes control of the camera. We can assume that when he moves to the camera to be photographed as a photographer, the warriors whose pose he had tried so earnestly to direct will free themselves from it, albeit not completely. The pose they will arrive at will be the one which has been negotiated between what the monk wants and what he is allowed to achieve. The visual space of the photo thus is filled with a tension between the "seeing" of the monk, i.e. the way the monk wants the Africans to be seen, and the "seeing" of the Africans, the way they see themselves. The second interesting aspect of this photo is the way it is framed by the "seeing" of another photographer. He, because in all probability it's a man, is physically outside the photo, in front of it, although his "seeing" is present in the photo as the singular most powerful organising agency. He is the one who has photographed the visual events in the photo. He also brings to us the four groups of looks which create the pseudo-three-dimensionality of the photo. All eyes except those of the young warrior under the black cloth are looking at the camera. In fact, the eye of the camera outside the photo also seems to be focused on the camera in the photo. The camera appropriated by the African warrior thus becomes the iconic centre of the photo. This photo, in my opinion, frames the practice of anthropological photography. If there exists an element of coercion in anthropological photographs, this photo reveals the mechanics of coercion. Most photographs mask this, by presenting a detached, scientific and so-called objective representation. This photo shows the struggle through which such a representation is realised. I don't possess a photographer's eye but I have a weakness for "good" photos. They never leave me untouched.

A twelfth century bronze from Tamilnadu, Shiva as the King of Dance (Natraja) shows Shiva crushing with his right foot a dwarf crouching on a lotus. His left leg is lifted across his body. He has four hands. One of his right hands reassures the devotee. The second right hand plays a small hand drum, while one of his left hands showing the half-moon gesture is holding fire. His legs and four arms convey a sense of blissful and energetic dance. So does the hair, flying on both sides, and the long end of his sash. His flying hair seems like waves of water. In the hair, not far from
the hand holding a drum, I can see a tiny figure of the river goddess Ganga. Shiva, the Natraja is embedded in the centre of a ring of fire. The ring is joined to a tall crown placed on his head. On his forehead, right at the centre, one can see a small upright, almond-like indention.

'Space and place', notes Yi-fu Tuan, the Chinese-US geographer and philosopher, 'are basic components of the lived world. What begins as an undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value' (Tuan 1977: 6). Uluru represents such a place, its placeness constructed by the living and knowledge practices of Anangu people and their ancestors, displaced and erased by European colonisers and settlers who imposed their ways of living and knowledge practices on the land. As a geologist I have been trained to look at Uluru from within European post-seventeenth century paradigm of modern science. However, in this essay I challenge what I have learnt as a geologist about Uluru by introducing Tjukurpa of Anangu into the story of my learning and un-learning. I tell the story with the help of four real and metaphoric maps: a geological map of the Rock; Rockholes near the Olgas by Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjari; Untitled (Uluru with shadows) by Long Tom Tjapanangka; and the installation Unfolding Memories by Rosario Lopez.

If language is the house of being of a poem, what is the house in which a translated poem comes to reside? Following Paul Ricoeur, I call that metaphoric house the house of remembering and mourning. This is because translation, Ricoeur suggests, involves both the ‘work of remembering’ and the ‘work of mourning’. The work of a translator advances the original piece by ‘salvaging’ it but is also accompanied with ‘some acceptance of loss’. This loss he notes is where the seeds of mourning begin to sprout.
In this essay I discuss translation of Osip Mandelshtam’s Russian poems into German by Paul Celan. In 1958 Celan experienced a close encounter with Mandelshtam’s poetry, an encounter he began to describe as Begegnung (encounter). Celan began working with the poems in 1958 and, in less than one and a half years, translated 45 poems by the Russian poet.
In an essay, ‘The meridian’, Celan describes poetry as Gespräch, ‘a conversation or dialogue and often a despairing dialogue.’ I can spot traces of despair in Celan’s translation of Mandelshtam and this despair, I argue, is the source of mourning translators more often than not experience.

In 18I6 Thomas Hickey, an English colonial painter, painted a portrait of colonel Colin Mackenzie, the first surveyor general of colonial India. Mildred Archer, an expert on Indian colonial painting, describes Hickey as 'a very weak painter, a painter of moderate attainments', who 'was brilliantly skilful in the capture of likeness.' I Hickey was seventy five when he painted Colonel Mackenzie who in 1871, a year later, became the first Surveyor General of India. Mackenzie was sixty seven, when, I assume, he posed for the portrait. In the portrait he doesn't look that old although tinges of grey in the hair betray the age somewhat, but there is no doubt that he has been painted to be the central figure of the portrait. In fact without him it would be hard to imagine if this painting would have ever been painted. His red tunic, the ceremonial sword and shining black boots, his eyes looking
straight at you, indicate a presence imbued with power.

‘I came to think of translating,’ you write in Nox ‘… as a room, not exactly an unknown room, where one gropes for the light switch.’ I read your words and imagine you standing in a dark room, your hand thrust forward for a handshake with Catullus’s Poem 101. Paul Celan, the poet you admire, once wrote to a friend that he saw no distinction between a handshake and responding to a poem. But the handshake between a translator and a poem is of a special kind; the first touch is often tentative and timid but once the hand has been grasped, to let it go becomes impossible.

The whole essay can be read at: http://cordite.org.au/essays/remembrance-and-mourning/

ln a few weeks I shall be going to Delhi to see my daughter, our first
meeting since she went back to India with her mother five years ago.A lot
has happened in those five years. I am no longer an lndian, my passport
tells me. And like every other Australian, I have to apply for a visa, and in
the application mention three addresses in India where I am going to stay.
It sounds funny but it's true that-perhaps because of the passport
and the visa-[ have started behaving like a tourist. Like a diligent tourist,
I have bought the Lonely Planet dry guide, checked their internet site
for additional details, and booked a room in a hotel near Connaught
Place, New Delhi's main shopping and business centre. The inside front
cover of the guide carries a map of Delhi. I like the map. its simple, almost
cartoonish look. In the past, first as a schoolboy and later as an academic,
I had found the city familiar and homely. Often it felt like a big town,
too chaotic to be contained within the limits of a map. On the Lonely
Planet map. Delhi looks like a city. It has a shape. a structure, rartionally
defined by a neat pattern of straight roads, roundabouts, and green patches
of boulevards, parks and gardens. The meandering blue outlines of the
River Yamuna painted along the eastern margin of the map makes the
city picturesque.

The 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. When announcing their decision, the Swedish Academy praised Alexievich’s ‘polyphonic writings’, describing her work as ‘a monument to suffering and courage in our time’.

Three days later, the Belarusian election results were announced: Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled since independence was declared in 1991, was re-elected for a fifth term. His victory was comprehensive, having captured close to 84 per cent of the vote. The runner-up was not even a candidate, but rather the ‘Against all’ option on the ballot paper. International monitors described the vote as ‘falling short of democratic standards’.

Speaking with acclaimed Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov, a well-known contemporary Russian film director, as part of St Petersburg’s Open Library series, Alexievich described Lukashenko as a clown, noting that ‘without the aura of power, [he] is pretty average [and] easy to poke fun at’. The two artists were discussing Alexievich’s latest book, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets.
To read the article as it appeared in the magazine go to: https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-226/essay-subhash-jaireth/

... [5] The first fi lm poster for an Indian fi lm appeared in 1913. It was a picture-less advertisement of DG Phalke's fi lm Raja Harishchandra. ... It has been discussed by Jackie Stacey for Hollywood cinema and by Behroze Gandhi and Rosie Thomas (1991) for Bollywood cinema. ...

In 1974 I bought a photo enlarger. A few weeks earlier, jointly with
my friend, I had bought a second-hand Russian camera, Zenith. It was
a German design but the design and the factory were handed over to
the Soviet Union as part of reparations. We were both in love with the
camera and the photos it helped us to conjure. It was a time in our
friendship when we realised that we needed something more direct,
immediate and surrealist to be able to communicate. Words, it
seemed, had begun to leave long silent shadows.

I have to admit this but it is true that my book shelf contains several "readers". I have a "reader" in Marxist philosophy which I bought in the seventies in Moscow and I also have the Foucault Reader edited by Paul Rabinow and two critical"readers", one on Heidegger and the other on Derrida. Some of these "readers" are thematic, focusing on disciplines
whereas the others are author-centred.

THE 1862 CALCUTTA EXHIBITION showed for the first time a large number of photographs taken by colonial photographers in India. A year before the exhibition, local governments had been instructed to collect photographs of tribes and castes under their jurisdiction. The project had the blessing of Charles, Earl Canning who was appointed die first viceroy of India in 1858.
Canning who was appointed die first viceroy of India in 1858.

As my initial essay was shortened from ~ 5000 words to ~ 3000 words, I wrote another essay with the same material but focusing on Svetlana Aleksievich's documentary novel, the Unwomanly Face of War. The introductory section of the two drafts are identical but in this essay one can read English translation of excerpts from the Unwomanly Face of War. This essay was rejected by a literary magazine. I was asked to rewrite it either as a scholarly piece or as work of creative non-fiction. Because I don't understand the difference between the two styles of writing, I haven't rewritten it.

In 2016 I wrote this essay. The 5200 word long essay was accepted by the Overland Literary Journal. However it was edited and shortened to around 3000 words. The literary journal didn't include bibliography and references. This draft paper presents the original manuscript

In his new collection of essays Subhash Jaireth traverses the globe in an exploration of the personal and collective memory held within natural and built landscapes.

His roving curiosity takes us from his early life in Delhi to his years as a student in Soviet-era Moscow. We travel to Burma with George Orwell and battle windmills in Spain with Don Quixote. Jaireth walks us through the landscapes around Uluru, Canberra and Sydney with the sharp gaze of a geologist and the imagination of a poet. We follow the roots of an old banksia tree in his garden, the traces left by ancient rivers and seas, and stories passed down from time immemorial.

In George Orwell’s Elephant & Other Essays, Jaireth draws his life’s emotional map right on the soil under his feet, and in the process unearths narratives, characters and places that leave us aware of the layers of memory and meaning that shimmer all around us.

The book is published by Gazebo Books (Sydney). Ebooks available from Amazon and ibooks