"The Quotations Project" - Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt & Virginia Woolf

Walter Benjamin

Ever since I first read Hannah Arendt's introduction to "Illuminations", the great German-Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin's collection of essays and reflections, something seemingly minor in that original New Yorker piece has stuck with me.

Hannah Arendt

Arendt writes, "From the Goethe essay on, quotations are at the center of every work of Benjamin's. ... Benjamin's ideal of producing a work consisting entirely of quotations, one that was mounted so masterfully that it could dispense with any accompanying text, may strike one as whimsical in the extreme ...". But as a reader, that ideal did not strike me as whimsical. I have often thought the same thing as I have read and suddenly found myself vigorously nodding in approval or scribbling notes of agreement in the margins. In these moments it has seemed to me that an artful arrangement of quotes would be far more representative of my mind and a better work of creation than anything I could inarticulately say about myself. The sources, as much as the words, would tell something of a story of my thoughts, reflections and preoccupations. Even if my personal thoughts are not all that interesting to anyone, whoever reads these quotations will bring their own meaning and interpretation to those words.      

Later in that same paragraph Arendt goes on to quote Walter Benjamin again:
"No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener". 

To me, Benjamin's words mean that no work of art can be concerned with how it will be read, seen or listened to. People, with their disparate ideas, personalities and experiences will imbue the work with their own meaning, often bearing little resemblance to any original intent.


Towards the end of her book on Montaigne, "How to Live", Sarah Bakewell comments on all the readers of "Essays" over the centuries and how they have been in a continuous dialogue with Montaigne and his words. She then alludes to Virginia Woolf's wonderful vision of generations talking to each other through the words of others.


"Over the centuries, this interpretation and reinterpretation creates a long chain connecting a writer to all future readers - who frequently read each other as well as the original. Virginia Woolf had a beautiful vision of generations interlinked in this way: of how 'minds are threaded together - how any live mind is of the very same stuff as Plato's and Euripides . . . It is this common mind that binds the whole world together; & all the world is mind.' This capacity for living on through readers' inner worlds over long periods of history is what makes a book like the Essays a true classic. As it is reborn differently in each mind, it also brings those minds together."
("How to Live - or - A life of Montaigne" - pg. 315)




With these thoughts in mind, I plan to share quotes from my readings more frequently in the future. The quotes I share will have somehow struck a chord in me but I will avoid commentary "so as not to ruin everything with explanations that seek to provide a ... connection". Hopefully the quotations can create another small community of "minds threaded together".  In homage to Benjamin and his "Arcades Project", I will name this series of assembling the creations of others, "The Quotations Project".   

The Pleasures of Raga Shuddh Kalyan

In my many years of loving Hindustani classical music, I have noticed my clear and strong affinity for certain Ragas and Raga families (called "Thaats") over others. Listening to great masters perform khayal in "bara" ragas like Asavari, MiyaN ki Todi or Multani, I can certainly appreciate the craft and structural beauty. But, the music doesn't viscerally knock me over in the way performances of Yaman, Bhupali, Allahiya Bilawal, Khamaj, Tilak Kamod, Desh, Kedar, Durga and Pahari do. Other than realizing that many of the latter ragas take more of their inspiration from folk music I don't have a good explanation for why I love the ragas that I do.

A raga I love is Shuddh Kalyan and one of my favorite YouTube channels is "The Dream Journey". A couple of years ago a few friends of Pakistani origin decided to undertake a journey all across Pakistan to discover, listen to, record and then share performances by classical and qawwali musicians from across the country. The result is a video catalog of some wonderful mehfils and artists, captured for posterity, and made available for lovers of South Asian music everywhere.

Tarana in Shuddh Kalyan by Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan is a short but lovely little performance by this representative of the Sham Chaurasi gharana. I wish this was a longer performance as it ends too soon before one fully loses oneself in the elaboration of the Shuddh Kalyan melody.

Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan is inspired by Ustad Amir Khan of Indore and in this video above, he mentions and praises the wonderful performance of this very Tarana by the Indore maestro. Here is Ustad Amir Khan's heavenly version:

Shuddh Kalyan was a favorite of the Kirana Gharana and it was a key part of their repertoire. All the leading lights starting with the founder, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, have left great recordings of this raga. His children Hirabai Barodekar, Sureshbabu Mane and Saraswati Rane regularly performed the raga as did Roshan Ara Begum, Gangubai Hangal and Bhimsen Joshi. Arguably one of the most popular bandish in this raga is Sadarang's "Baju re mondar". I have a scratchy recording of Abdul Karim Khan sahib's version but probably the most familiar recent recording is Saraswati Rane singing it for the 1977 Shyam Benegal film, "Bhumika".

And here to end this post is a majestic version of "Baju re Mondar" by the pride of Pakistani classical music, Roshan Ara Begum!