By Prof. Govinda Raj Bhattarai, PhD
Culture is the bedrock of any civilization on which grows everything—art, science, literature. So literature sounds secondary because it is also replete with or soaked in culture. It is a fixed value though nothing changes as fast as culture does in modern-day society. Accordingly, literature also changes very fast, yet the creation in art and cultural artifacts symbolizes beauty, permanence, altruism, and greater heights or depths of civilization.
I would like to define the concepts ‘Literature’ and ‘Culture’ before entering their details or before making a comparison between their assets in the present-day situation. Because the topic I am going to discuss in passing is a relationship between culture and literature. But instead of using the term relationship, I better use an interface. A dictionary defines the word interface as a place at which independent and often unrelated systems meet and act on or communicate with each other. Each is an independent value but then, literature and culture act on the same ground, perform at the same level—of human psyche that is shaped by human society. However, their tools and means are different, though they have a similar goal—the glorification of human existence, the exaltation of human civilization.
To put in Walter Lippmann’s words, Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and their speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossips, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture, it is the climate of their civilization The last phrase ‘climate of their civilization’ is the crux of the notion ‘culture’. Like a climate, it is a living and so a changing entity too. Our parents lived in one climate, we are in a different one. Thus, culture forms the layer of society, which decorates a nation and distinguishes it from the rest, for the time being. Conversely, what we create in words is the reflection of culture. Literature paints culture and revokes it, which loosely binds the life of a society. But a society resists all bondages and struggles for a change. Literature is the archive of culture; it keeps records of how culture keeps changing over time.
While evaluating the importance of culture, Albert Camus has said, ‘Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. So literature is rightly called the mirror of society, it is the archive of all times–from the unknown past to the unknown future.
But there are two obvious divisions of culture; each confines the scope of culture differently. These are High Culture and Low Culture. The high culture subsumes MLA that is Music, Literature and Art whereas the Low Culture subsumes BBV, that is, Beliefs, Behaviors and Values. The term Low connotes a slight derogation, though there is no distinction in terms of beliefs in postmodern world, moreover such classifications need to be mitigated gradually and human values need to be reestablished. Now new people call this Mass Culture or Pop (Popular) Culture as well.
A mass culture is widely disseminated by mass media and they become immensely popular worldwide instantly—music, film, sports, food items, fashion industries have hypnotized people today. They have destroyed originality and they have shattered the possibility of endless natural varieties. Machine simulates the original so the world is suffering from the great loss of the real. The mass consumes simulation fastest of all. Machines overtook everything; commercial world has accelerated speed and promoted uniformity similarity. Until a few decades ago folklore was the main source of mass culture but gradually machine reproduction destroyed the real source and product. Consequently, contemporary world is managing to live with the machine aided unreal. With the rise of publishing and broadcasting in the 19th and 20th centuries, the scope of mass culture expanded dramatically. It replaced folklore, which was the cultural mainstream of traditional local societies. With the growth of the Internet since the 1990s, many distinctions between mass media and folklore have become blurred. So the distinction is debated as well. A hybrid picture has overshadowed everything today.
These are interdependent
The question ‘how does culture influence literature and how does literature influence culture’ has created endless debates. Ultimately it has been proved that every part of nature (geography) inspires man to adopt a particular culture and conversely the culture influences literature. Likewise, a literature influences culture as well. They impact each other. Culture and literature, though national properties, can no more be confined to a place or time, they have become universal. Nepalese practice Japanese Haiku poetry, Korean Gangnam style dance, South American salsa, the young generation has learned everything and has accepted a borderless world.
Likewise the impact of literature permeates the world. In order to prove this they cite an example of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a masterpiece of the 20th century English fiction. No other work is as powerful as Animal Farm that led to the great change of Russian political system. The change in that system is the change in its political culture that controls and subjugates many other subcultures. Now it is time to give equal importance to every culture, people resist every type of hegemony, every type of grandnarratives. They demand identity and on the ground of equality, that is, status based on equal footing and respect to each other. This is the call of modern democracy.
Culture permeates into literary creation very slowly. Nepal does not have sea culture, voyage culture, desert culture and the tradition of fighting the harsh nature. This is permeated deep in the minds of those people who live by the sea or such topographies. Therefore, the readers of a landlocked country like Nepal will find books like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; R L Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, pictures from unfamiliar worlds. They change the readers’ mind by revealing about unthought-of pictures of alien worlds. Likewise, very few will experience the serene beauty and breathe-taking look of the gigantic mountains of Northern Nepal if the readers come across books like Jon Krakaueur’s Into the Thin Air or, Joesph Ryane’s Into the Thin Air of Everest which have portrayed a heavenly life. Through literary creations we can experience such strange, un-thought of cultures. A writer is influenced b y the events around him. He includes social beliefs in his creation.
Conclusion
Nepal is now creating new literature that embodies new changes; she is dropping the beliefs of earlier days like the dry leaves of a tree. New foliage appear every spring. For instance, women were considered secondary and so their position in literature was also far behind. A case in hand is Nobel Laureates since 1901. So far 117 writers have gained the Nobel Prize for literature; of them only 15 are women. People practiced caste system, and untouchability was an acceptable norm. Today none can advocate this in their writing. Likewise, agrarian culture prevailed in Nepal. Most of our writings were related to land holdings, ownership, laborers’ life and their harsh exploitation, their life among cattle and plough land. Now with a change in the industrial world, most people rush to the urban centers creating and following completely new cultures. Traditional values are fast giving in; women, elderly, children and marginal society are struggling for freedom and equality. Today’s lifestyle has changed completely—the style of education, means of transportation, items of food and drink, festivities and social settings—everything has changed and traditional division of labor has almost disappeared. Nepali culture was shaped by literary, classic creations but now new creations follow a different social order. Thus every bit of progress forms a new culture; every bit of culture encourages new literature. Which reflects society, which reflects man’s desire for new change.
So culture is always shaky, always at a risk of sudden change. New sprouts come every spring. There is an endless cycle of change in culture and in literary creation as well. No culture is permanent; no literary creation introduces ultimate truth.
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[Prof Govinda Raj Bhattarai, PhD (b. 1953) is a poet, novelist and critic of high repute. Professor of English at Tribhuvan University, he retired from his job a few years ago, and has since then devoted himself fully to literary works. He made his debut in writing quite early. His seminar works of repute include novels Muglan, Socrates Footsteps and Socrate’s Diary, theoretical non-fictions like Kavyik Andolanko Parichaya (Introduction to Poetic Revolutions), Aakhyanako Uttaradhunik Paryawalokan (Postmodern Study of Fiction), Paschimi Balesika Bachhita (Drops of Western Eaves), Uttaradhunik Aina (Postmodern Mirror), Uttaradhunik Bimarsha (Postmodern Discourses) and Samayabodh ra Uttaradhunikta (Time Consciousness and Postmodernism). He is also among Nepal’s pioneering translators and essayists. He can be reached at tu.govinda@gmail.com]