Sunday, May 10, 2015

E Bronete the real SAINT

Vipin Choudhry 
May issue
It's Vipin Choudhry’s  Reading Week she always made complaint that I am not devoting time reading her writings especially she used to recite poems in front of me repeatedly even on her cell phone and asked to edit them any how this week    I've chosen something a little different from her different modes of writtings……….   As for  the poems she's best known for, Vipin Choudhry also writes (in her own words in hindi)  several  biographies, and translates, including a book on Emily Brontё(under publication). Actually, she used to extract some part of the book she translates and got it published in the prominent Hindi Magazine  aha-zindagi . Vipin  wrote on Emily's  and on her work. Interestingly, as the biography of Maya Anglou she translated is  around 200pp long, her biography of Emily is also just under 250pp. It seems to have been the natural length of her work, the length she was comfortable with. She wrote a book titled  “main roz udit hoti huan” in hindi on Maya Angelou. Prior to it she  wrote an article on her life in  aha-zindagi.Click lallowing links for her work on Maya Maya Angelou.
 Recently her article on Emily's lif I published in May 2015.
The method employed in the following pages is of analysis rather than synthesis, through which it is hoped to promote some fresh thoughts on the subject. The following essay is planned to reconstruct Emily Brontё's life story exclusively from documents concurrent with the events. 


I usually read the writings of her sister Charlotte Brontё  and she has been the main source for information about her sister. As I recollect my reading on the family of  Emily ……….from the morning when Branwell appeared in his sister’s room with a box of wooden soldiers & they each chose one, "Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey'." to weave stories around; to her nervous inquiries to friends as to how Emily behaved in company. Charlotte took the lead in everything from the decision for herself & Emily to go to Brussels to study to the publication of their poetry & novels. Charlotte's poignant letters to W S Williams (reader for her publisher, George Smith) chart the inexorable course of Emily's last illness, "She is a real stoic in illness: she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy. To put any questions, to offer any aid, is to annoy...You must look on and see her do what she is obviously unfit to do, and not dare say a word..." Charlotte wrote the Prefaces & Biographical Notices that set the tone for both Emily &her younger sis Anne's reputations.
 Goggling the  original documents, especially the few letters & diary papers written by Emily, a different picture emerges. Emily certainly didn't enjoy being away from home. Her brief periods at school & as a teacher, ended with a return to Haworth. Spark sees this not as defeat but as Emily creating the conditions she needed to work as she wished. She approved of the scheme to start up a school with her sisters only until she received a legacy from her aunt that meant she didn't need to work. The diary papers Emily wrote on her birthday (to be put away & opened several years later with Anne) are the most important documents we have in discovering what was in Emily's mind. They are full of snippets of information about her daily activities, her pets, what the family are doing as well as plans for the future. They're written in almost a stream of consciousness with little concern for spelling or punctuation,
Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said Where are your feet Ann Anne answered On the floor Aunt. Papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying Here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte. The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine. Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen. November 1834
  
It's a snippet of life in the Brontё kitchen with a bit of news about the Gondals (the imaginary people that Emily & Anne wrote a long-running saga about) dropped into the middle. A later diary paper, written in 1845, is full of family news & the tone is of contentment with her lot,
As Vipin searched ….searched and ……….searched   an found that ……Emily as the happiest of the sisters until the last period of her life. She had a real vision of herself as a writer & was able to create a life for herself at Haworth that allowed her time to write.Vipin  believes Emily was a natural celibate. She needed no relationships outside her own family & these completely contented her. She was single-minded about her work & allowed herself no distractions. Her idea of love was a universalised one which may have been unrealistic but which led to the universal declarations of love in Wuthering Heights. Catherine's cry, "I am Heathcliff" is an example of this.

Vipin  sees Emily Brontё as a writer who fulfilled her promise as far as she could. Maybe her mind became unbalanced in her last months &, when she realized that she could not control the tuberculosis that was killing her, she gave in to it. I found this a refreshing way to look at Emily Brontё's life. Vipin  brings a novelist's imagination to trying to understand a woman whose posthumous reputation has overtaken the real life she lived.
 For rest peek into  aha-zindagi.
xo

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