review

New Statesman

About:

The New Statesman was founded over a series of gatherings hosted by Fabianists Beatrice and Sidney Webb whose aim was to disseminate socialist and collectivist ideas among the middle classes. Bernard Shaw, among others, donated money to fund the launch of the magazine. The tone of the magazine in its formative years is described on its website as ‘didactic’ and ‘no-nonsense’. Some two years after its launch, its circulation was second only to that of the Spectator among sixpenny weeklies.

As Christopher Hitchens writes in his introduction to Lines of Dissent, ‘embedded in the Fabian idea was an impression of British greatness’ – the logical conclusion of which was an imperialist stance (Howe, pp. 6-7). It was Kingsley Martin, who became editor in the early 1930s, who turned the paper largely away from this stance. Martin also oversaw the take-over of the Nation and Athenaeum, a magazine that had published writing by some of Britain’s most renowned writers of the early twentieth century, in 1931, and of the Weekend Review in 1934.

There are articles and reviews of books on the political situation in India throughout the four decades of the magazine. In the 1930s and especially the 1940s, increasing numbers of books (including fiction) by South Asians are reviewed, and one or two South Asians begin to contribute reviews or articles themselves.

Example:

de Zoete, Beryl, ‘An Indian Ballet’, review of Sakuntala ballet at the Embassy Theatre, New Statesman and Nation (6 April 1946), p. 245

Other names:

New Statesman and Nation (from 1931)

Secondary works:

Howe, Stephen (ed.), Lines of Dissent: Writing from the New Statesman, 1913–1988 (London: Verso, 1988)

Hyam, Edward, The New Statesman: The History of the First Fifty Years, 1913–1963 (London: Longmans, 1963)

http://www.newstatesman.com

Content:

In this review, Beryl de Zoete commends the performance of Sakuntala, commenting on its success in bringing together 'western' and 'eastern' cultural traditions and European and Indian dancers and musicians (including Narayana Menon, who directs an orchestra of Indian instruments), and on its 'warm reception' by the British public.

Date began:

12 Apr 1913

Extract:

This is the most successful effort hitherto made by West to meet East in the sphere of dance. Sakuntala is a ballet on the theme of Kalidasa’s famous dream, and is performed chiefly by Europeans, in an Indian dance-idiom. The idiom sometimes proves beyond their physical capacities, especially with regard to head and neck movements and facial expression, just as certain sounds in a foreign languages are almost impossible to acquire…Retna Mohini, a Javanese dancer who many will remember as Ram Gopal’s principal partner, introduces, of course, a very different standard of perfection, but her beautiful dances form part of a court entertainment, so do not clash too violently with the style of the Europeans. The same may be said of Rekha Menon, who, though not so fine or experienced a dancer as Retna Mohini, is a charming and authentic Indian dancer.

Key Individuals' Details:

Editors: Clifford Sharp (1913-30), Kingsley Martin (1931-60).

Relevance:

This ‘mainstream’ British magazine’s positive engagement with the production of an Indian ballet is indicative of a degree of openness to South Asian cultural production in Britain. This said, the fact that the majority of the dancers were European suggests a degree of cultural ‘translation’ in the production of the ballet, perhaps rendering it more accessible to its British audience and critics. While the ballet could be seen as an example of an emergent hybridized proto-British Asian culture, it appears to be conceived by the critic as the combination of two distinct cultures rather than as an original syncretic form. This is evidenced in particular by the allusion to the way in which the ballet avoids a clash between the Asian and European dancers.

Connections:

Contributors: C. F. Andrews, Clive Bell, H. Belloc, H. N. Brailsford, Marcus Cunliffe, Emil Davis, Havelock Ellis, Lionel Fielden, Bernard Fonseca, Roger Fry, David Garnett, Frank Hauser, Desmond Hawkins, Syud Hossain, C. E. M. Joad, Fredoon Kabraji, Desmond MacCarthy, Thomas Sturge Moore, R. G. Pradan, V. S. Pritchett, Peter Quennell, Lajpat Rai, John Richardson, Paul Robeson, Shapurji Saklatvala, Ikbal Ali Shah, George Bernard Shaw, Khushwant Singh, M. J. Tambimuttu, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Jinnadasa Vijaya-Tunga, Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb, Leonard Woolf, Beryl de Zoete.

Archive source:

New Statesman, Special Collections, University of Sussex

Books Reviewed Include:

Ali, Ahmed, Twilight in Delhi (London: Hogarth). Reviewed by Desmond Hawkins.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Across the Black Waters (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by Desmond Hawkins.

Anand, Mulk Raj, The Coolie (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by Peter Quennell.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Two Leaves and a Bud (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Reviewed by ‘S. K.’.

Dutt, R. Palme, India Today (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Dutt, Toru, Life and Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Kabraji, Fredoon (ed.) The Strange Adventure: An Anthology of Poems in English by Indians (London: New Indian Publishing). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Karaka, D. F., Betrayal in India (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by Bernard Fonseca.

Menen, Aubrey, The Backward Bride (London: Chatto). Reviewed by Frank Hauser.

Menon, V. K. Krishna et al., The Condition of India. Reviewed by C. F. Andrews.

Narayan, R. K., The Batchelor of Arts (London: Nelson). Reviewed by Desmond Shawe-Taylor.

Shah, Ikbal Ali, Islamic Sufism (Rider). Reviewed by J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Sister Nivedita and Coomaraswamy, Ananda, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (London: Harrap)

Rajan, B., (ed.) Modern American Poetry: Focus Five (London: Dennis Dobson). Reviewed by Marcus Cunliffe.

Rama Rau, Santha, Home to India (London: Gollancz). Reviewed by Lionel Fielden.

Shelvankar, K. S., The Indian Problem (London: Penguin). Reviewed by H. N. Brailsford.

Singh, Khushwant, The Mark of Vishnu (London: Saturn Press). Reviewed by John Richardson.

Tagore, Rabindranath, Gitanjali, The Home and the World and Gora (London: Macmillan)

Thompson, E. J., Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

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Tags for Making Britain:

Balachandra Rajan

About:

Balachandra Rajan was a scholar of poetry and poetics. He was Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, 1944–8. He was the editor of a series of slim volumes on literary criticism titled Focus which had at least four issues between 1945 and 1948 and was published by Dennis Dobson. The series had its beginnings at Cambridge, where Rajan co-edited (with Wolf Mankowitz) a collection of criticism titled Sheaf which was published by the university, and authored his own collection of poems, Monsoon and Other Poems. While in Britain, he also contributed poems to literary journals, including Life and Letters Today and Poetry London (indeed he was possibly the only South Asian to contribute to the latter, with the exception of its editor, Tambimuttu). Focus appeared to engage critically with work by some of the big literary names of the day, including Huxley, Sartre, Isherwood and Kafka. Contributors of essays include Kathleen Raine, D. S. Savage and Julian Symons, with poems by e. e. cummings, George Barker, John Heath-Stubbs and Vernon Watkins, as well as Rajan himself.

In 1948, Rajan left England for India where he served in the Indian Foreign Service until 1961, working also with UNESCO, UNICEF and as part of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. Later, he returned to academia, initially at the University of Delhi, before taking up a post at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Best known for his work on Milton, Rajan completed a critical book on Paradise Lost as well as an edition (with introduction and commentary) of this canonical work. He also wrote on Spenser, Yeats, Marvell, Eliot, Keats and Macaulay, and completed two novels.

Published works:

(ed.) The Novelist as Thinker (London: Dennis Dobson, 1942)

Monsoon and Other Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1943)

(ed. with Wolf Mankovitz) Sheaf (Cambridge: Trinity College, n.d. [1944?])

(ed. with Andrew Pearse) Focus One (London: Dennis Dobson, 1945)

(ed. with Andrew Pearse) Focus Two (London: Dennis Dobson, 1946)

Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader (London: Chatto, 1947)

(ed.) Focus Three (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947)

(ed.) Focus Four (London: Dennis Dobson, 1948)

(ed.) Modern American Poetry (London: Dennis Dobson, 1950)

The Dark Dancer (London: Simon & Schuster, 1958)

Too Long in the West (London: Atheneum, 1962)