Taste versus Nudity in Letters

R. S. Tiwary

(A)

The use “Taste” in literary jargon is traceable to the rise of Renaissance in Italy and Spain which used the term metaphorically to denote Pleasure, Amusement, etcetera. The systematic use of the term, however, in the aesthetic domain took place in France. Discussions centred round ‘good taste’ and ‘bad taste’ and by the beginning of the 18th Century, the term established itself in Germany and England. And now today also we speak of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste when we talk about art and poetry.

(B)

Experience, however, dictates that Taste is primarily subjective which rules out any absolute conception of Taste. It has been noticed that Taste changes in accordance with age as one advances in ‘the vale of years’. A pertinent example bids fair to be cited here from Shakespeare. In his earliest poem, ‘Venus and Adonis’, he depicted the Goddess Venus as entreating the young, rather adolescent Prince Adonis, fond of hunting, to enjoy her sexually to which the latter is not easily agreeable. A direct perusal of the lovely poem, bubbling over with deep spurt of eroticism, will convince the careful reader that Taste, after all, is subject to what stage in years one has reached. This truth is wholly applicable in the case of poets and fiction-­writers. The unrestrained invincibility of the emotion of Love, Sexual Love, has never been repeated in any of the plays, produced by the Bard of Avon in his mature years. The Romances of his ‘Sunset Years’ delineate a picture of Love, calm and restrained. Let us also observe that Taste also varies according to the racial heritage of the creative writer. A poem of the type of ‘Venus and Adonis’ has not been come across by us in classical Sanskrit poetry or drama despite the fact that the Sanskrit poetry after Valmiki, the celebrated author of the famous national epic of ‘The Ramayana’ has been largely erotic. In the classical Indian poetics, ‘Shringara’ or the Erotic Relish has been by and large recognised as the Moola Rasa, the Original Relish. The Indian ‘Sahridaya’ has been defined by Acharya Abhinavagupta as one who is capable of becoming ‘Tanmaya’, that is, ‘Absorbed’ in the matter delineated in a poem or play and of establishing ‘Hridaya-samvada’, that is, Inner Rapport with the protagonist or the other characters as the case may be. But, this absorption or rapport has been mainly aesthetic inasmuch as both the poet and the reader to purely aesthetic level. Restrictions were formulated confined by the Indian Canonists in the matter of delineating the Emotional Complex within the ambit of the Rasa Siddhanta or the The Doctrine of Relish, the permanent component of the Human Psyche in order to assure that ethical values were not infringed. We have no room to discuss the Rasa Doctrine here. We only mean to drive home the fact that the question of Taste differs also according to the racial cultural drop in which the poet or dramatist is creating a work.

Taste, in its crude form, is a matter of the Senses. But, this sensuous aspect undergoes a sea-change, as it were, when a poet or artist is absorbed in the work of creation. Croce’s enunciation that Taste is primarily an offspring of the ‘judgement of the sense’ seems deceptive, but examined closely, this judgement of the senses is also a conditioned affair in the ultimate analysis. That leads us to the point that wanton play of the senses is not the true character of Art or Poetry. Gross, vulgar imitation was also not countenanced by Aristotle. Accordingly, sensuous perceptions need to be purged of their wholly freshly accretions before they are enshrined in Poetry. Addison (1672-1719) proclaimed in an issue of the ‘Spectator’ (No. 409) that “Taste is the faculty of the Soul which discerns the Beauties of an Author with Pleasure and Imperfections with Displeasure.” Edmund Burke, following Addison, pleads for ‘good taste’ in his celebrated treatise ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime’.

To put the issue in a nutshell, from the earliest times of civilisation up to the twentieth century, broadly speaking, a general consensus had come to be attached to the Concept of Taste and distinction of good and bad taste had come to command universal acceptance. Poets, though products of the milieu and the moment, had, by and large, been silently governed by considerations of Social Acceptance lest the social fabric be violently disrupted.

It may be noted here, however, Psycho­analysis had already succeeded in bringing out a whole range of emotions lying suppressed or inhibited in the inmost layer of the conscious by extraneous restrictive factors and in comprising them all within manifestations of libido, broadly speaking the Drive of Sex. This Psychological Realism had deeply affected poetic creativity the world over. But, with the rapid march of the vogue of Realistic Thought and untrammelled Expression, essentially begotten by the political concept of democracy, poetic creativity came to take avid delight in depicting the inner urges and drives in an uninhibited manner in the twentieth century. The Creed of Confession, especially promoted by women writers, both in the west and in India recognises no validity in negating or avoiding portrayal of sexual realities. Rather, they find Pleasure of Self-fulfilment in depiction of unvarnished realities of Sex which also imparts them an inner sense of Freedom from the restraints ofa male-oriented society. What is denied them in actual life is sought to be enjoyed in creative writing. And, quite naturally, therefore, consideration of Taste, good or bad, has been pushed into oblivion by such individualistic women writers. This constitutes a Phase of Feminism to be reckoned with.

In the context of this explosion of Sex and Gender overtaking the creative realms, the question of Taste and Nudity gathers importance.

(C)

Certain learned friends of mine themselves respected “Citizens of the Creative country” endeavour to draw a line of divide between Nudity and Nakedness. Let us instantly comment that difference between nudity and nakedness tantamounts to difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Lexicon makes no distinction between the two terms. Rather, in common parlance or writing ‘nudity’ seems to be conscribed in usage as compared with ‘nakedness’. We often speak of ‘naked greed’, ‘naked violence’ et cetera; we never speak of nude greed et cetera. That means that in popular conception, ‘naked’ is endued also with metaphorical association whereas ‘nude’ is possessed exclusively of verbal meaning or sense. ‘In other words, ‘nude’ gives out the exclusive meaning of ‘being completely stripped of clothing’. This nudity today is the common ‘dish’ of sensuous viands, being served by T.V. serials. Beauty competitions, too, are promoting love of nudity, calculated to sexual satisfaction in the psychological way. It appears marriage between Taste and relishability has been entered into by silent mutual understanding between the technically Feminist Writer and the Electronic Media. Freud is providing a glorious life of glamour both in the ‘realms of gold’ as well as on the coloured screen.

Needless to observe that this holy or unholy alliance obliquely floats the crucial question: “Is uninhibited portrayal of nudity at all to be countenanced?

We would like to pinpoint the cardinal psychic truth that Man is innately sensitive to sensations of shame that generate the kindred feelings of decency and decorum in his inner being. That is to say, Taste comes into play in crucial moments and it is this Taste which, developed and conditioned in the course of living life, has ultimately given rise to Culture and Civilisation. Now, will Poetry choose to disrupt the fabric of the life and thought and feelings of the ‘homo sapiens’ established in the course of millennia or elect to make it smoother, oriented to better performance?”

(D)

Granting the essential freedom of creativity, the sixty-four dollar question still arises as to who will determine or define this question of freedom of the creative writers–The Social Confessionists or the greater majority of poets and fiction writers who are governed in their writings by an unconscious impulse of toning up the human responses to situations? Nudity is not Beauty. Beauty is what attracts spontaneous admiration. And it resides in concealment rather than open exposure. In practical life, you will immediately close your eyes witnessing a nude woman albeit the components of her Beauty are exposed to your full view. That means that your inner psyche instantly militates against that vulgar nudity. And if you argue that one who shuts one’s eyes at nudity, is not the real Man, we shall ask: “What do you mean by ‘real man’?” Do you mean the man who is governed by morbid pleasure in nudity? You may hurl the observation in our face. Civilisation conceals the real man. Then our counter comment will be: “We are writing for the Man as he has been innerly ‘conditioned’ through the roll of millennia”. And surely, you will not like that the hands of the clock move in the contrary direction inasmuch as Civilisation and Culture, evolving through the process of ‘conditioning’, have been mostly and predominantly the product of ‘forward-marching’. The Indian Seers’ exhortation of ‘Charaiveti’, points to the truth that human enlightenment has been the product of ‘looking ahead’ rather than ‘looking ’.

Accordingly, your ‘Real Man’ has now acquired a New Reality in the way being cultured and civilized and therefore the argument of ‘down-to-earth’ realities being depicted in “Belles-lettres” amounts to turning the hands of the clock. The question of ‘Reality in Letters’ has to be viewed in the overall context of ‘bettering’ the inner psyche of man rather than of thrusting it into the limboes of psychological degeneration which leads to moral degeneration. We cannot be cavilled at on the question of Ethics. Our contention is mere this: The Real Man, in your words, has changed unconsciously into another “Real Man”.....reality always changing as in the short range so in the long range of the life of Man. And that is reducible to this: That is Good Taste which helps this Inner Betterment of man and that is Bad Taste which pushes this silent process.

It is true, as seems to have been pointed out, that ‘Kama’ happens to be one of the Foursome of the ‘Purusharthas’, Ends, to be accomplished, propounded in our ancient­ culture. But here the preponderant fact has to be remembered that in the ordering of the Four Goals, ‘Kama’ occupies the ‘third place’: Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha. It has to be profitably noted that, to quote a political phraseology, a system of ‘checks and balances’ has been prescribed by our Seers of old in that the Foursome of Goals start with “Dharma” (Duty towards Self and the Super-­Self) and closes with “Moksha”, that is Salvation. “Artha” and “Kama”, the pursuit of Libido and Lucre, have been recognised, but in the ultimate analysis, their pursuit has been conscribed by the dual ‘checks’ of Dharma and Moksha. It does not require any elaboration to establish the concept that Sex has never been awarded the palm of primacy in the Indian scheme of values. Why, after all, ‘down-to-earth’ and why not ‘above­the-earth’? Being tied down to the earth is countenanced neither by culture and philosophy nor even by Science and Technology: How will you explain the modem craze of Science to soar higher and higher into space to explore secrets: not visible to your eyes? The Cult of Feminist, chiefly originating in the political context, has invaded the realms of ‘Belles-lettres’ today in the name of Women’s Emancipation from the fetters of masculine domination. Even a wholesome order of things becomes obnoxious if it is carried to extreme.

Furthermore, one significant fact is lost sight of by these ‘down-to-earth, novelists: Our vast bulk of feminine: population resides in the country-side where the problem is not so much sexual as economic. Cannot these literary champions of Feminism utilise their creative energy in highlighting the social and economic hardships under which women in the rural sectors have to pass their every day sombre existence?

(F)

The Question of Reality to be enshrined in letters, humane literature, not technical letters, has come, willy-nilly to occupy unbalanced importance in contemporary creative and critical writing. Poetry or Fiction has always grown and prospered in the Soil of Reality, being provided a pleasurable “infra structure” of the play of imagination. But that does not grant you licence to exaggerate an nausem biological realities in creative writing so as to pervert the entire perspective, the full perspective in which life should be viewed and judged. And here the question of Taste versus Nudity acquires importance. Pedlars of Nudity should profitably realise that Poetry or Drama or Fiction can never be allowed to pollute the fundamental texture of life even if allusion to Ethics be regarded as an anethema by the Clan of Ultra Modems who are all for unbridled freedom in all provinces of life and thought.