Mulk
Raj Anand
Compactness
Anand knows the value of a well-built and
compact novel. That is why when he commenced his literary career; he paid great
attention to the compactness and proper form of his books. He tells us that
when he found his long confessional narrative of over two thousand pages
unmanageable and shapeless, he picked up some characters from it and built
around them short and compact novels. Nevertheless, he was worried about, and
dissatisfied with, them because he found them “still formless”. However new the
theme and the ‘implied value judgments’ of a prose-narrative may be, it becomes
a novel only when it is “couched in the language of fiction, with some respect
for the integral pattern”. If the form of the novel is loose, the novelist has
to explore the technical devices in order to make it artistically satisfying.
True, Anand does not approve of the looseness of the form of the novel. It is
on this ground that he finds fault with Munshi Prem Chand’s masterpiece in
Hindi language, Godan. The novel, according to him, is an art form, and has its
own integral pattern.
Anand
affirms that the novel, being something sober and true to life, should be built
on a plot which is free from artificiality and sensationalism. He dismisses
Kipling’s long narrative, the Naulakha, as something other than the novel
because it abounds in artificiality and sensationalism, and is, therefore, not
worthy of serious attention. True, the novel should not be sentimental and
melodramatic. Anand avers that even the best craftsmanship can only result in mawkishness
and vulgarity, if the book lacks in a genuine appreciation of the social,
political, psychological and other problems of people. The structure of the
nineteenth century novel with a definite beginning, middle and an end does not
find favour with Anand. The twentieth century fiction writers like James Joyce,
Marcel Proust and others have convincingly proved that a prose narrative can
assume the novel-form and can be created out of anything, provided it is imparted
a pattern. As a matter of fact, he is fascinated by the new structural trend in
the modern novel; the replacement of the traditional structure-a beginning, a
middle and an end-by “the poetic pattern without plot”. Several of his novels,
including the first-viz. Untouchable, evidence it.
Anand
attaches due significance to conscious craftsmanship. Though he may not be as deliberate
and painstaking an artist as Jane Austen, Henry James, Hemingway and Joyce Cary,
yet often he works hard to revise and redraft his book so as to make its
meaning and form as artistically satisfying as possible. Like Joyce Cary who
laboured indefatigably on his first novel, Aissa Saved and Hemingway who
re-wrote The Old Man and the Sea over a hundred times, Anand repeatedly read
and re-read, shaped and re-shaped his first novel, Untouchable. He recalls: “I
would cut, but find the sacrifice of my previous words difficult. Then I would
add marginal corrections and leave it”. This tortuous process of revising the book
continued tirelessly for years. He assiduously worked on it for nearly five
years. Indeed, Anand regards meticulous craftsmanship as very important for a
good novelist. He admires R. K. Narayan as an adept craftsman, who interprets
the moods of his characters and imparts a definite pattern to the book without
obvious imposition and intervention. He offers value judgments quite often; but
these comments, instead of appearing inessential and deliberate in the design
of the book, interpret the will of the characters. This is the reason why he is
able to achieve “organic composition as on canvas, where comparison and
contrasts bring out the internal crisis of the human personality”.
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