Japan and Brazil through the traveler's Eye.

JAPAN AND BRAZIL THROUGH A TRAVELER’S EYE

Introduction: Travel writing is about writing ones experience of travelling and visiting alien places. The writer, George Mikes, writes about his travelling experiences of Japan and Brazil in his work ‘The Rising of the Yen’ and ‘How To Tango’.

Japanese Manner: The writer is impressed by exquisitely well – mannered people of Japan. Though they live in a small over crowded Island, they respect others’ privacy. They don’t over hear the others conversation. So courtesy has a double function as it is courtesy and it is substitute for privacy. They conduct their confidential business transactions, intimate love quarrels in public in perfect privacy. A man’s telephone – receiver is his castle.


Bowing: Japanese bow to each other with a ceremonious and dignified way, yet with a great deal of natural grace. Bowing is a mania. Bowing is quainter, formal and oriental and infectious too. Japanese have a complicated hierarchy in bowing: who bows to whom, how deeply and for how long. The most complicated is if two Japanese bow, neither has to straighten up before the other stands erect in front of him. In some cases there are clear-cut differences in position. For e.g.: The basic rules inside the family like wife bows to her husband, the child bows to his father and so on. Even, when the mother carrier the babies in a little saddles, bows from the majestic height when mother bows.
Japanese stores employ bowing girls whose only duty is to bow to each and everyone.
The writer pen down the incidents of Nara, where he met a deer, which bowed ceremoniously but jumped at him and snatched the little bag of food. He compares then to Japanese, despite of their courteous bow they act like savage when they see the bus.

Eating soup: Has more dangers than anything else. One must make a fearful noise while eating soup as it is the sign of appreciation. If one makes a disgusting noise then its considered as ill-mannered lout.


Traffic Brazil: Brazilians are leisurely characters. They spend their time in decorating pavements with mosaic. If they get a steering wheel in their hands no speed is fast enough. Though the motor cars are extremely expensive in Brazil, motor vehicles are growing by leaps and bounds. Thus the life of pedestrians is hazardous.
The drivers are on the lookout for pedestrian, as they notice a pedestrian step off the pavement they take it as a game; aim at him and accelerates. He jumps, leas and runs for dear life. The war between the driver and pedestrian are compared to hunter and prey. They smile at each other with a notion “I win today you will win tomorrow”. Though the war between drivers are murderous but good tempered. They commit all heinous crime of the road, with no hostility or anger.
The worst place of Brazil is Avenida Presidents vargas. One cannot cross the road and need to contemplate for hours, without a ray of hope of an auspicious crossing. He exemplifiers it, as one man suddenly catches the sight of a friend on the other side and starts waving with a mystified look: “How on earth did you get over there?’ where the other yells, ‘How? I was born on this side?”

Audio link  :https://youtube.com/@momtokidsbymom544

I believe that Books will never disappear

I BELIEVE THAT BOOKS WILL NEVER DISAPPEAR

Mother:
Jorge Luis Borgers mother was an extra – ordinary and kind person. He feels guilty for not having been a happy man in order to have given her a deserved happiness. He generally his experience and says that children take their mother for granted, one realises the fact when she dies. They feel they have taken her for granted as we do with the moon the sun and the seasons. He believes that she had no enemies and was very kind to him.

All that is ear becomes far/can humiliation and misfortune be transmuted?
Borges, while speaking about blindness, says that Blindness has become a way of life. All persons must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose like humiliations, misfortunes and our embarrassments given to us as raw material as clay so that we may shape our art. We must transmute them, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our life to produce eternal work.
As Goethe says, ‘All that is near becomes far’, it refers not only to sunset but also to life. In Borges case visible world fortunately replaced by other things. So his duty is to accept and enjoy things.

A Book goes beyond author’s intention.
A book goes beyond author’s intention. In every there is a need for something more, which is always mysterious. Borges exemplify, when we read an ancient book we feel as though we were reading all time that has passed from the day it was written to our present day.
A book can be full of errors, we can reject its author’s opinions, disagree with him or her but the book always retains something sacred, something mortal and something magical which brings happiness. Borges quotes Bernard Shaw, ‘Every book worth being re – read has been written by spirit’. Thus he feels that when we read a book, what matters is not the author’s intention but what sense a reader get out of it.

Poetry:
According to Borges poetry is something so intimate and essential that it cannot be defined without oversimplifying it. It would be like attempting to define colour yellow, love and the fall of leaves in the autumn. Borges believes poetry is the aesthetic act. It takes place when the poet writes it and reader reads it. When the poetic act takes place we become aware of it. Poetry is a magical, mysterious and unexplainable although not incomprehensible event. If one doesn’t feel the poetic event upon reading it, the poet has failed.

The art of poetry is finding the precise words.
Borges believes that precise words elicit the emotions. It is important in the art of poetry, to find precise word. To exemplify this, he quotes the line of Emily Dickinson, “This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies”. The phrase gentlemen and ladies gives magic and poetic quality, than ‘men and women’. He says that it is important to have metaphors in poetry to be effective. He had reduced all metaphors to five or six; time and river, life and dream, death and sleep, stars and eyes, flowers and women.

Books will not disappear:
Borges believes that books will never disappear. Though the people assert that modern developments in communications will replace book with more dynamic that takes less time than reading. According to Borges, Book is the astounding invention of man. All others are extensions of our bodies. The telephone, is the extension of our voice, the telescope and the microscope are extensions of our sight, the plough and the sword are the extension of our arms. Only the book is an extension of our imagination and memory. Books are the great memory of our past. So its function is irreplaceable. Thus if books disappear, then history and man would disappear.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

The play, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, is the best romantic tragedy of Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is considered as the national poet of England. This play has been translated into every major language and is enacted. This poem is in the form of soliloquy, which is extracted from the play.

The two noble families of Verona, the Capulets and the Montagues, were staunch enemies. Romeo and Juliet belonged to rival families. Lord Capulet hosted a grand supper. Though Romeo was of Montague’s, he attends the party in disguise to see Rosaline. There he sees Juliet on the dance floor and he is fascinated by her beauty. After the dance he learns that she is the daughter of Lord Capulet. She too feels a prodigious birth of love for him.

Romeo glorifies Juliet’s beauty and feels that her beauty surpasses the bright light of the torch in the dark. Romeo uses similes’ to describe the mesmerising beauty of Juliet. He compares Juliet’s beauty to a rich jewel worn by an Ethiopian, which meant she outshines the other the ball.  He considered her as a divine soul and explains that her , ‘beauty too rich to use, for earth too dear’. Juliet is dancing with other women and Romeo is enchanted and compares her to ‘Dove’, which is the symbol of purity and her companions to the ‘crow’. Romeo is overwhelmed by her beauty and he resolves to watch her place of stand. He wants to purify himself by touching the hands of Juliet and be blessed. He contemplates asking himself whether he loved anyone before he had seen Juliet: ‘Did my heart till now?’. He asserts that Juliet was his first love. Thus he glorifies Juliet’s beauty in his soliloquy.

Juliet feels prodigious birth of love for a man from the enemy family. She stresses her intense and passionate love for Romeo and gives more focus to her eagerness to meet him. In Juliet’s imagination Romeo is a bright day in the night. She believes that he brightens her life. He looks whiter than a new snow on a ravens back, which symbolise the purity. She addresses the night ‘Gentle’, ‘loving’, and ‘Black-browed night’, and pleads the night to give her Romeo.

She wishes to immortalize Romeo after her death. She begs the fate to take him and cut him out in little stars and place him in the sky, when she dies.  Thereon he would glow in the sky, the face of heaven, and convinces the night that Romeo would replace the garish sun by brightening in the sky. She feels that people will fall in love with night and forget the garish Sun. Thus Juliet expresses her implicit feelings towards Romeo and makes him an immortal and eternal being.

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Audio link : https://youtube.com/@momtokidsbymom544

When You are Old by W.B Yeats

 When You Are Old
B.Yeats

In the poem, 'When You Are Old' by W.B.Yeats, expresses his unrequited love for Maud Gone, a woman who had rejected his love. The poem brings out many contrasts   between physical and inner beauty, true love and attraction, happiness and sadness. These contrasts suggest that physical beauty is not permanent but only true love is constant. 

The poem is a love lyric of 12 lines. The poet uses the time frame where he takes his love to the future and asks her to recall her past memories. He does so in order to warn her not to ignore him. He blends the past, present and future. He foresees his future and imagines his beloved had become old with full of grey hair and sleepy eyes , sitting in front of the fire place . Then her asks her to read the book of poems, which he was written by him and imagines her graceful youth and the people who loved her physical beauty and only he had loved her soul, a pilgrim soul questing for a true love.  His love was unconditional and would remain constant like a pole star. He holes that she regrets ,'little sadly', as she didn't understand how steadfast his love was and how foolish he was for taking no notice of it. By the time of realization, she would lose charm and he would become a star . 

Yeats uses personification,'love fled' like a person would and love hiding between the stars in heavens; love had disappeared from her life.Thus depicts her as a old woman and wishes that she might change her mind and decide to return the love for the man, who loves her soul and doesn't fade away as she loses her charm with age.

                                      

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