By: Aanya Mitra
Author Bio:
Aanya is a final year English Literature student who has deepened her fondness of modern and post-modern writing across her degree. Also having recently discovered her liking for life-writing, in this review she argues Anand's memoir is a must-read for any classic's reader, shedding another light on some of our favourite authors that are reckoned with the British Literary Canon.
THE REVIEW:
“Conversations in Bloomsbury” by Mulk Raj Anand is perhaps the most silently thought-provoking autobiographical text I have encountered yet. I use the term 'silently' because its impact on my relationship with literature remains subdued until I read an essay by Virginia Woolf or a criticism by T.S. Eliot, at which point it emerges as a whisper, compelling me to reconsider these texts through the ambivalent lens that Anand's memoir has equipped me with.
An Indian scholar in England during the height of the British Raj, Anand encounters the most prominent literary figures in 1920s London. These include, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, E.M. Forster and several others. So, we have a non-White foreigner in England, relaying his perspective of writers who would come to be known as the 'Bloomsbury Group'. Obviously then, this text is preoccupied with the intersections of literature, politics and identity. Through his conversations Anand (brilliantly) illustrates the margins he is forced into, and attempts to carve a space for himself in a circle that seems to wordlessly declare a ban on 'external' (non-Western) political discourse, clearly stemming from a lack of awareness (or education) and biased view of the topic. The distance that Anand sets between himself and his own Literary idols is mediated by this unawareness which, to me it seems, Anand felt was his burden to reverse.
The way Anand chooses to depict these conversations is also tactically done. His conversations make up the form of the memoir, however these conversations are obviously reimagined. After all, who is able to regurgitate conversations verbatim from memory? Even if Anand was capable of this, I believe he would choose to reimagine them in his text. In doing so, he beckons his readers to consider the truthfulness of the conversations. If you think about it, conversations are really just opportunities for the exchange of opinions, a space for confrontations, valuations and, most importantly, representations of different cultures and ideas, which is exactly what distinguishes Anand from the Bloomsbury writers. This is particularly resonant for the pages that Anand solely devotes to his interaction with T.S. Eliot, the creator of The Wasteland. In this exchange, we are introduced to the enigmatic poet, whom Anand seems to consider the most famous (Modern) poet after Yeats and Wordsworth in the Romantic period. These interactions struck me as the most interesting as Eliot and Anand engage in philosophical discussion where Anand tries to understand Christianity and the general Western mind through Eliot's depiction of his understanding of the Indian mind and religion.
The way Anand's discourse situates the British political landscape at the time is hugely significant, due to his unique perspective as a minority, which, I argue is essential for any classic reader's attention, as Anand navigates the margins imposed on him by his literary heroes in their brilliant, yet ignorant, glory. The reimagined autobiographical conversations trace Anand’s struggle to balance his nationalistic roots with his admiration for his literary idols, often met with their ambivalence towards Indian independence. Through his text, Anand encourages readers to question the classics, reminding us that every text, and by extension, every author, is a product of their time. I recommend this text mainly because it compels us, as readers, to reevaluate, perhaps, the sometimes blissful ignorance of our literary heroes and interrogate the texts we inherit, love and, indeed, teach.
To quote Anand: ‘I hope Conversations in Bloomsbury will illumine the present-day intelligentsia about apperceptions of a brash, young Indian writer of an earlier generation, when most of the upper British intellectuals remained above the battle!’
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