Writers & Books in Art & Sculpture

I love reading and I started reading very early. There was a time when I read everything. I used to say that I will even read toilet paper if it has something written on it! I no longer try to read toilet papers, but I still read a lot. During my travels in different parts of the world, I have sometimes come across art, sculptures and monuments celebrating and remembering writers, poets, journalists and their books. This photo-essay is about those works of art that celebrate books and authors.

This photo-essay on art and sculptures about writers and their books brings together three of my passions - reading, art and photography.

About Books and Reading

If you love reading, you may have your favourite authors that you may cherish and remember even after decades. Most of my favourite authors from my childhood were from my father's collection of Hindi books - Krishen Chander, Nanak Singh, Shivani, Chatur Sen, Rangey Raghav, Muktibodh, and many more. They were not books for children, but that did not stop me from reading them!

Growing up, I discovered English books. Then, over the last decades while living in Italy, apart from Italian writers, I also discovered some Latin American and European writers. Through the images of this photoessay, I hope to make you think about your own favourite authors and books.

Let me start this photo-essay with two images of a sculpture by Italian artist Pietro Magni (above and below) that show a young woman lost in a book. This sculpture is displayed in the Brera museum in Milan and when I first saw it, I fell in love with it.

The next image in this collection is from the Innocenti building in Florence that hosts the UNICEF office and shows a boy sitting on a paper boat. I think that it wonderfully illustrates the capacity of a good book to transport you to far away lands of imagination.

The next image is of an unusual tower made of hundred white coloured books by the Italian sculptor Lorenzo Perroni, who specializes in sculptures of white coloured books. I clicked this picture during the visit of a group of American astronauts to the Sala Borsa hall in Bologna. So you can see the astronauts in the lower right corner, with people sitting on the ground in front of them and the white columns of books towards the left.

The next part of this photo-essay is divided according to countries where the pictures were taken.

America (USA)

There are two images from the Central Park in New York. The first one has a statue of Robert Burns, also known as Robbie Burns. He is considered to be the national poet of Scotland. According to the Wikipaedia, "He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature".

The second image is of a sculpture showing two characters of one of the most famous and enduring love stories of the world - Romeo and Juliet - by the British playwright William Shakespeare.

Austria

The next image is from Vienna and shows the writer and playwright Ferdinand Raimund (1790-1836) near the opera building. He is credited with a number of important books and plays in German. Bitten by a dog and afraid of a painful death due to rabies, because no treatment existed for this disease at that time, he committed suicide at the age of 46 years.

Belgium

The next three images are from Brussels, the capital of Belgium. The first one shows two lovers at the lake - they are Thyl and Nele, the characters of a book by the Belgian writer Charles De Coster. De Coster is considered to be the father of Belgian writing. This monument is the opera of the sculptor Charles Samuel, a fan of De Coster. The monument also has many other characters from De Coster's books on its sides - a cat, a cooking pot, a spinning rod.

The next image shows two of the principle characters (Captain Haddock and Tintin) from the iconic comic books about the adventures of a boy called Tintin. These comics were written and illustrated by the Belgian author and artist called Hergé (his real name was "Georges Remi"). Tintin is considered to be one of the most popular European comic books and these have been translated into different languages.

The third image from Brussels shows a statue of Charles Buls (also known as Karel Buls) placed in the Agoraplein square, close to the Grand Place square. According to Wikipaedia, "He was a Belgian politician and mayor of the City of Brussels. Buls was an accomplished and prolific author, not merely on educational and artistic issues but also publishing accounts of his travels abroad. Buls became Mayor of Brussels in 1881. However, along with these reforms, his most lasting achievement was the result of his opposition to the grandiose architectural schemes of King Leopold II, and the resulting preservation of old parts of Brussels. "

Brazil

The next five images are from Brazil.

The first one has the bust of famous Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran in the city of Goiania. He was 12 years old when his family emigrated from Lebanon to USA. He died at 48 years and wrote in both Arabic and English. His most well known book is "The Prophet".

Many of the words of Khalil Gibran have been quoted infinite number of times and will be familiar to readers across the world. For example, you must have heard these - "If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were." Another of his quotes that I like, says - "I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers." You can check many other quotes from Gibran at Goodreads.

The next image is from Pelorihno, the old city on the hill in front of the port of Salvador do Bahia, where the well known Brazilian writer Jorge Amado lived. His house in Pelorinhno hosts a museum and shops around sell his souvenirs including his paintings showing him with a pipe in his mouth.

The next two images are from the medical college in Pelorihno, showing two ancient Greek philosophers, writers and scientists - Hippocrates and Galen.

The last image from Brazil shows the house of Cora Coralina, an Afro-Brazilian slave during Portuguese occupation, in the historic city of Goias Velho. The house is located next to the river Rio Vermelho and there is a statue of Cora standing at the window, looking over the river. Cora was a poet, who wrote about the degradation of slavery and her poems inspired hundreds of other Afro-Brazilians to seek a life of dignity.

Czech Republic

The next image of this photo-essay is from Prague and shows the statue of a women writer - Bozena Nemcova (real name "Barbora Panklova). Writer of fairy tales and legends, she is best known for her novel Babicka (Grandmother), an autobiographical book about her childhood with her grandmother.

India

The next four images are from India. The first image has the iconic figure of Basvanna from Basavkalyan in Karnataka, who is known for his Vachana-sahitya. According to Wikipaedia, "He spread social awareness through his poetry, popularly known as Vachanaas. Basavanna used Ishtalinga, an image of the Śiva Liṅga, to eradicate untouchability, to establish equality among all human beings and as a means to attain spiritual enlightenment. These were rational and progressive social thoughts in the twelfth century."

The next two images are from the Hindi Bhawan in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and present two important personalities from the world of Hindi literature - national poet of India, Maithili Sharan Gupt and the iconic writer Munshi Prem Chand.

The fourth image from India shows Nobel laureate poet, writer, playwright and freedom fighter, Rabindra Nath Tagore.

Italy

The images of writers from Italy are more numerous than all the other countries in this photo-essay. This may be because I have travelled widely in Italy. Perhaps, this has also to do with greater willingness in Italy to honour artists and writers in the public spaces.

The first three images are from the gardens of Villa Borghese park in Rome. The first image shows the Ukrainian born Russian writer and playwright Nikolai Gogol. In her book "The Namesake", Jhumpa Lahiri had paid homage to Gogol by giving his name to her hero.

The next image has the Peruvian writer Garcilaso de la Vega known as The Inca, from Villa Borghese gardens of Rome. He wrote about the Spanish colonizers of Peru. The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, he is recognized primarily for his contributions to Inca history, culture, and society.

The third image from Villa Borghese gardens of Rome has a writer from a tiny eastern European country called Montenegro - Petar Petrovic Njegos, who was a nobleman and a poet. As the Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, he is credited with modernization of his country.

The fourth image is also from Rome, from the ruins of Traiano's baths near the Colosseum, and shows the statue of Italian journalist and writer Alfredo Oriani.

The next image is from Santa Croce square in Florence and shows the most well known Italian poet Dante Alighieri, famous for his epic poem "Divine Comedy".

The next four images are from a garden near Cavour square, close to the Brera museum of art in Milan. This garden has many statues of writers, journalists, philosophers and scientists.

The first of these images shows the well known Italian journalist and newspaper editor Indro Montanelli, writing on his old typewriter. He is shown as a young man, his severe face is focused on his writing. It is a remarkable piece of art.

The next images have 3 Italian writers - Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, Gaetano Negri and  the playwrite Giuseppe Giacosa from the Cavour square park in Milan.

The next image is from the city of Vicenza and it shows the writer, editor and publisher Neri Pozza. The sculpture is close to the bridge on the river Bacchiglione, just behind the famous Basilica built by Andrea Palladio. Neri Pozza is one of the reputed contemporary publishing houses in Italy, who have published the Italian translations of different Indian authors including Alka Saraogi and Anita Nair.

The last image of this photo-essay shows the statue of Irish writer James Joyce and is from the city of Trieste. Joyce is shown walking, crossing a bridge in the centre of the city. Joyce had lived in Trieste for many years. He is famous for his books like Ulysses and Finnegan's wake.

Conclusions

I have loved putting together this photo-essay, even though identifying the pictures for this post took me hours of going through my vast picture archives. It was frustrating that from many countries, I could not find any image related to a book or a writer or a journalist. For example, I could not find any such image from my image archives of UK or Switzerland. No country of Africa is represented in this photo-essay for the same reason.

Many countries do not put statues of writers in prominent public spaces, probably because often writers speak against their governments! Also because compared to national leaders, military persons and freedom fighters, for many countries writers and artists are not considered important enough to be remembered through art and sculpture. Finding images of art related to women writers is even more difficult - for this essay I could find only two of them.

I hope that you will enjoy going through these images and perhaps share with me your experiences of finding the statues of your favourite authors during your travels! I would love to hear about any art works related to writers and/or their books, especially from countries not represented in this post.

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Exploring Indian love lives

Ira Trivedi's book "India in Love" is about marriage and sexuality in contemporary India. Based on a sociological research, it focuses mainly on the enormous changes occurring in urban middle class India. And, it makes for an interesting read. This post is about Trivedi's book and also presents a selection of my pictures from different parts of the world on the theme of love and sexuality.

Introduction

Sexuality is a taboo area in India, though in recent times, some of the walls surrounding it have been breached, giving a glimpse of the different facets.

The discussions around sexuality are often linked to debates about traditions versus modernity, as well as to ideas of obscenity and pornography. Often they remain limited to innuendos and anecdotes that make for prurient reading without really helping in an understanding of the issues. Ira Trivedi's book "India in Love - Marriage and sexuality in the 21st century" (Aleph books, New Delhi, 2014) goes deeper for a more nuanced understanding of the issues.

India in Love

The book is divided into two parts - part 1 dealing with "sex and sexuality" and part 2 dealing with "love and marriage".

The first, "Sex and sexuality", part touches on different areas - the impact of last 2 decades on people's ideas about sex and sexuality; impact of access to pornography and the space occupied by porn stars in popular imagination; the coming out of the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and intersexual) groups; evolution of the prostitution; and the dark side of sexuality, including rape, violence and the impact of decreasing female ratios.

The second part, "Love and marriage"  deals with - increasing role of love in people's decision making about marriages; the old and the new matchmakers and their changing roles in arranged marriages; the commercialization of weddings; increasing divorces and separations; and, couples experimenting with live-in relationships and open marriages.

Comments

At places, Ira makes sweeping and superficial generalizations, but on the whole, the book presents stories and research findings in ways that illustrate the complexity of the issues. India is a continent with a huge population and thus most discourses about India usually lead to the following two conclusions:

(1) If something is true, its exact opposite will also be true - thus if you find examples of big changes, you also find examples of societies and persons steeped in traditions that refuse any change. The situation is also dynamic, thus the same persons may have different opinions at different points in their lives and what seems to be the truth of a specific group today, may be very different tomorrow.

(2) The diverse groups in India - rich, middle class and poor; big cities, small cities and villages; men, women and the other genders; persons of different religions, etc. - all have different aspirations and velocities of change. None of the groups are monoliths with common shared positions, rather each group shows a variety of positions along a spectrum ranging from the most radical to the most conservative.

Ira's book also respects these two conclusions. Book's language varies from academic and clinical ("she did fellatio", "he did not like doing cunnilingus") to more immediate and direct ("squeezing their breasts and groping their crotches").

While the book talks about the changing ideas and practices about sex, love and marriage in India, it also touches on the frustrations and dilemmas about the traditions among the immigrants from rural areas and small cities who can witness the changing norms but are mostly excluded from them.

It does not shy away from going deeper into complicated areas (".. there have been many positive influences such as education and health care but the missionaries tried to impose a certain way of life that wasn't original Khasi way of life. Our tribal culture is intrinsically open and non judgemental. Christianity is all about judgement and sin...").

Book's conclusions and their implications

In her conclusions, Ira writes:

"The love revolution will lead to the breakdown of the traditional arranged marriage. This is significant, because it also means the breakdown of joint family, of caste and community identity, and as divorce rates skyrocket, perhaps also of marriage itself. The switch from arranged to love marriage will be a slow, gradual one, but it is happening nonetheless, particularly in urban India. The India of ten years ago was substantially different from the India of today, and the India a decade from now will continue on the path we have paved.

The sex revolution does not just concern the physical act of sex. It is about changing laws, about loosening censors, and about more sexual liberty. It is about seeing women choosing to wear what they want and about accepting gays in our communities. It is about the burgeoning prostitution industry and pornography. It is about escaping hypocrisy and realizing we are making change happen. Above all, it is about exposing an entire generation to a heavily sexualized culture which is seeping into their lives."

I believe that in India we need many more such discussions and researches to understand the social changes and their impacts related to notions of love, marriage and sex. Trivedi's book is a useful addition to those discussions.

The book remains superficial about the increasing anxiety of patriarchal society and especially of men, linked to these changes. However, results of these anxieties are increasingly dominating the news in India. Different "news-making" events over the past decade - the attempt of Maharashtrian government to ban dance bars, the recent worries expressed by the health minister Dr Harsh Wardhan about sex education in schools, the comments by different bodies including khap panchayats and political leaders about appropriateness of women's clothes - are some of the reactions caused by these anxieties. This area needs much more understanding and research.

Another problem is that most discussions on sex and sexuality remain elitist, confined to English language and exclude a large number of persons who do not speak English in India, who have a significant interest in this area but do not have access to systematic and accessible information on the theme.

Images on love & intimacy from around the world

To accompany this post, I decided to search my picture archives for images related to the theme of love, togetherness and intimacy. Here are some of them from around the world - from Belgium, Brazil, Czech republic, Ecuador, India, Italy, Switzerland and Thailand.

I think that feelings of love, close friendships, and intimacy are perhaps the most important factors determining the quality of our lives. Living our sexualities in an open and fulfilling manner is equally important for all of us. However, societies' norms and expectations influence us and make us feel inadequate or wrong in expressing our desires about love, intimacy and sex. Sometimes, we ourselves do not understand our own desires.

Ira's book can helps you in understanding some of those issues. So read the book and think about yourself and what you wish from your lives, your companions, friends and families. Best of luck!

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Religions and human rights

My question was: can the countries that place their highest value on sharing of common religious beliefs, create "just societies"? My conclusion is that countries that choose specific religious beliefs to guide their national laws are inherently unjust. Injustice is part of their DNA. Let me explain why.

Some years ago I had read an interview of American singer Maxwell, around the time when he had won a Grammy award for his album "Black Summers night". The interviewer had asked Maxwell about the influence of his heritage on his music. Maxwell, son of a Haitian mother and a Puerto Rican father, who had grown up singing in a church choir in New York, had answered, "Your heritage is your heritage, but your soul is truly what you are."

People, not just those who do not know us, but sometimes even our friends, tend to slot us into spaces on the basis of where we come from - our religion, our country of origin, our family, our education. Sometimes we also slot ourselves in those spaces, probably because it is convenient or just a habit. Sometimes we draw walls around our spaces, finding comfort in that which is familiar, and excluding the unfamiliar.

May be similar beliefs lead to creating countries only for those who share similar religions. They choose a specific religion in their constitutions. I reflected on this issue during my recent visit to Israel and Palestine.

The contradictions of Israeli state

The foundations of a Jewish state in Palestine were laid in the 19th century to escape persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. Israel was created as a country in 1948 from what was the British colony of the "Mandatory Palestine". The holocaust under the Nazi Germany, during which millions of persons were killed, had created some international support for Jews to create their homeland. The creation of Israel had pushed communities of Palestinians living in that part of land, to the south.

Over the decades since its creation, Israel has gone through different wars, and has continued to push Palestinians in ever-decreasing pieces of lands, occupying them and controlling them.

Travelling in Israel-Palestine, it is not always easy to understand the boundaries of where one finishes and the other starts. I encountered different groups of Palestinians, each dealing with different levels of inequalities, barriers and difficulties under the Israeli occupation/control - the Arab-Israelis with Israeli passports, the Arab residents of Jerusalem, the Palestinians of West Bank and the worse affected, the Palestinians of Gaza Strip. I also talked to some persons working with Bedouins in Israel-Palestine.

I experienced some of these difficulties and humiliations that Palestinians experience when I crossed the Israeli check-points leading into Palestinian areas.

In many ways, Israel is a liberal society - groups that often face discrimination and exclusion in neighbouring countries including the women and the sexual minorities, seem to enjoy more liberties in Israel. Yet, at the same time, it is an unjust society in the way it treats Palestinians.

In the end, my conclusion was that one reason why Israel violates the dignity of every day lives of Palestinians is because it is a religious state. As long as Israel is a Jewish country, it will be unjust towards Palestinians and Bedouins, because injustice (giving preference to the Jewish people compared to persons of other religions) is part of its constitution that is guided by its fundamental idea of being a homeland for the Jews.

Example of Pakistan

I found an echo to my thoughts from an article by Kunwar K. Shahid in The Friday Times about the situation of minorities in Pakistan, another country created on the basis of religion:

It is very important for Pakistani Muslims (97 percent of the population) to differentiate themselves from Hindus. After all it’s precisely this difference that became our state’s raison d’etre in 1947. And differentiating is the first step en route to the development of hatred that eventually inflates into bigotry...

However, what needs to be understood and underscored here is that an Indian Hindu manifesting communal bigotry contradicts the ‘idea’ of India, while a Pakistani Muslim by doing so conforms to the ‘idea’ of Pakistan. Opposition to Hindus, and antagonism between Hindus and Muslims, form the founding principle of Pakistan...

Religions in the constitutions

Israel or Pakistan are not alone in having constitutions that justify and legalize discriminations - it is true for all countries that choose a specific religion to guide their laws. This is true for countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia where constitutions are based on Islam. It is true for countries like Russia, Uganda, South Sudan, and some countries of Latin America, where some laws such as those related to sexuality, marriage and abortion, are strongly influenced by Christian conservatives. In Myanmar and Sri Lanka, officially there is no state religion but the state shows preference for Buddhism and discriminates against persons of other religions.

In European countries like Italy and Ireland, though they are officially secular, in practice, many laws influencing daily lives continue to be influenced by Christian religious ideas. For example, the laws regarding abortion in Ireland. However, most European countries have lot of debates and more open discussions about the role of religions in societies and thus, laws that favour one religion, can be and are increasingly questioned. Thus, Spain, which also had laws strongly influenced by Christianity, has changed many of them.

It is true that culture, religion and traditions are all interlinked. Thus, it is not easy to separate them. For example, there have been discussions in UK about the Christmas lights and celebrations, as being signs of cultural domination of Christian ideas. Similarly there have been discussions in Italy about the presence of Christian crosses and the mandatory one hour for catholic religious classes in the government schools. Recently, during a visit in Cambridge, I was struck by the close links between the different university institutions and the Christian church.

However, such open discussions and acceptance of criticisms are exceptions because usually religions do not accept debate or dissent about what they consider as their fundamental principles.

Religions in the Indian constitution

In India, on the other hand, persons can choose between civil and religious laws. Paradoxically, any calls to end the discriminations and human rights violations inherent in the religious "personal" laws in India are considered as "communal" or against the rights of the religious minorities. Recently, the electoral victory of conservatives has provoked some debates about personal versus a common civil law.

For example, in a recent article, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, asked the new prime minister to ignore "the old and hackneyed demand for a Uniform Civil Code". He justified it by the argument that has been used often in India, that having one common law for all citizens will threaten the minorities.

However, the personal laws of different religions including Hindus, Muslims and Christians, do discriminate - for example, against women or sexual minorities. In another recent article, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, looking at the concepts of "federation of communities" and "zones of individual freedoms" feels that India by focusing on "federation of communities" where group identities are given more importance (through personal laws as well as many other practices), has moved away from the founding ideas of Indian constitution.

It is true that in India, people can choose the civil law but I think that such decisions are easier for educated and better off persons while, the socially disadvantaged groups find themselves mired in "personal" laws. Apart from "not hurting the feelings of the minorities", I have yet to read convincing arguments about how different religious-based laws for different groups of persons are more respectful of the human rights and equality of people.

Changing the world

When countries decide that their first criteria of belonging is going to be their religion, they do not see the diversities in their own religions. I do not know of any religion that is not divided into sects and where persons of different sects do not think that only they are the true followers of their religion. Invariably, some sects assume power and slowly over a period of time, start persecuting their coreligionists from other sects.

When we are part of a majority or powerful group, it is difficult for us to understand what does it mean to belong to a minority group. People from the minorities, especially the conservatives, also create their own power-bases in this system. Thus, changing the constitutions of countries based on religions is never easy.

In my opinion, the U.N. declaration of human rights sums up the best ideas of different religions. I feel that in today's world, the human rights declaration should be the guiding principle of all national constitutions. This is even more important in multi-religious countries like India, where periodically, conservatives of different religions take centre-stage and dictate conditions that go against the principles of human rights and equality of the citizens.

Conclusions

I consider myself as a deeply spiritual person. Growing up and living in an increasingly multi-religious family, it is easy for me to know and respect different religions. However, I feel that our religions belong to our personal spaces. I believe that imposing the ideas of any one religion on the societies through constitutions based on sacred books like Talmud, Koran, Granth sahib, Bible, Ramayan or Manu Smriti, leads to violations of our human rights and conflicts.

Going back to Maxwell's words I also believe that our heritage is just a heritage, but our souls are truly who we are. And, we can't let our souls be fenced in by religions dogmas - at least not in our constitutions. Let religions remain personal choices.

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The lakeside in Geneva (Switzerland) is a popular site for exhibitions on issues related to human rights. Here are some images from those exhibitions.

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