Arun Kolatkar and Literary Modernism in India Moving Lines

In this first scholarly work on India's great modern poet, Laetitia Zecchini outlines a story of literary modernism in India and discusses the traditions, figures and events that inspired and defined Arun Kolatkar. Based on an impressive range of archival and unpublished material, this book also aims at moving lines of accepted genealogies of modernism and 'postcolonial literature'.

Zecchini uncovers how poets of Kolatkar's generation became modern Indian writers while tracing a lineage to medieval oral traditions. She considers how literary bilingualism allowed Kolatkar to blur the boundaries between Marathi and English, 'Indian' and 'Western sources; how he used his outsider position to privilege the quotidian and minor and revived the spirit of popular devotion.

Graphic artist, poet and songwriter, storyteller of Bombay and world history, poet in Marathi, in English and in 'Americanese', non-committal and deeply political, Kolatkar made lines wobble and treasured impermanence. Steeped in world literature, in European avant-garde poetry, American pop and folk culture, in a 'little magazine' Bombay bohemia and a specific Marathi ethos, Kolatkar makes for a fascinating subject to explore and explain the story of modernism in India.

This book has received support from the labex TransferS: http://transfers.ens.fr/

Series Editor's Preface

Introduction

Introduction
On 'selective traditions' and Kolatkar's invisibility
Modernism in India: 'Newness enters the world through acts of displacements'
Life of a poet: Some elements of context

I. Bombay Bohemianism, Bombay Cosmopolitanism
The 'city of Strangers' and the 'fantastic conglomeration of clashing realities'
The Kala Ghoda bohemians: Dissent, deracination and belonging
'Welcome to the conspiracy': Little magazines and small presses
A 'rooted errantry' or the cosmopolitan local

II. Marathi and English Cycles of Give-and-take: on Issues of Bilingualism and Translation, Orality and Reinvention

Kolatkar's multilingualities: The poet as piebald animal
Poetry India is Translation India
Bhakti re-sung: The speaking voice, the singing voice and 'Americanese'

III. Seeing the World Anew: Recording and Defamiliarizing the Ordinary
'Keep it'
'Look with all your eyes, Look!': the Kala Ghoda stage
Turning around: converting, disturbing and defamiliarizing perception

IV: From Scrap to Art: recycling and transfiguring the world
The art of assemblage: The 'old junk shop', the poet and the rag-picker
A malleable world: Second lives, new beginnings and wobbly lines
Divine ready-mades: In praise of the impermanent present

V. The Politics of Kolatkar I
Life Turned Upside Down: Orchestrating and Exposing Chaos
'All laws break down': The jaywalking poet and the challenge of dharma
Sarpa Satra: The impossible-to-sanitize ritual of purification
Foundational refuse

VI. The Politics of Kolatkar II
Reclaiming History and Multivocality
Voices of History, voices of sorrow: The poet, the storyteller and the unforgetful
Historicity against Nativism: Challenging Hindu Nationalism
Literature, censorship and the straightjacking of Indianness

VII. By Way of Conclusion: the Trope of 'Outsidedness' and the Poet as Stranger

Index

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