Down Hysterica Passio! The Stirring of the Beast Beneath

I used to write down interesting things I read, in notebooks, pre-internet days. I have 5 of them, I think I started in 1982, while I was at school - shy child whose only interactions were with people in books. I copied down this passage at age 21. I did not know then how true it is!

Later on in life I learned the hard way about the need to be angry at the right time, to use rightful anger to initiate positive action, make things better, ensure self-preservation, safeguard one's self-respect. I was surprised to hear myself tell someone recently - you don't have to show anger or be destroyed by it, you can use it as fuel to do amazing things. I wish I had that wisdom earlier, but better late than never. :)

"We all have something within ourselves to batter down, and we get our power from this fighting. I have never 'produced' a play in verse without showing the actors that the passion of the verse comes from the fact that the speakers are holding down violence, or madness - 'down Hysterica Passio'.

All depends on the completeness of the holding down, on the stirring of the beast underneath. Without this conflict we have no passion, only sentiment and thought."

W.B.Yeats, in a letter to Dorothy Wellesley. From 'Yeats: The Man and the Masks', by Richard Ellmann

Notebook 5, 12 June 1989

Related post, on the importance of discovering one's rage: https://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/2010/08/enkidu.html

Picture: Angry Samurai mask, from here.

A Yakshagaana Tale

This quiet shy colleague of ours happened to share our table at lunch, and we get to know that during his 6 years in the US, he used to act in Yakshagaana plays as part of the Kannada Sangha, and has travelled to other cities to perform with the troupe! He had this interesting story to tell about the man who started the troupe, who was totally into this art form and directed all those performances, while holding a full-time job.

When he was a small boy growing up in Sringeri in South Kanara, he used to go sit with the workers who came to de-husk the areca nut (betel nut) seeds at their farm. Now de-husking is a very monotonous, repetitive job that can become quite tedious when done throughout the day, for days together. To not succumb to this boredom, the workers used to switch on the radio, and listen to Yakshagaana songs all day. Yakshagaana performances used to be the major form of entertainment for people in those areas those days, they really connected to the songs, they could visualize the plays and the elaborate costumes in their heads, and talk about it.

And so the grandiose tales from our epics were played out in the little boy’s head, every emotion layered out with care, dwelled upon, lived, enjoyed, and suffered to its deepest core – and so was born a life-long fascination for mythology, drama and music.

When he grew up he learned Yakshagaana and took it all the way to the US with him, and spread it far and wide along with his troupe - and now that he is back here, he puts up performances in the city.

This strange mix of areca nuts and abhinaya somehow totally appealed to me. :)  I can so imagine the diffused sunlight coming in through the areca nut grove of thin parallel lines, the open space where the nuts are de-husked, the red-tiled house behind, the small black radio, the occasional sharing of comments within the circle, the enjoyment, the thread of the known running through them all, a bond like no other.

And it reminded me of Kathakali and all those epic mythological characters and the passage in Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' about "the Great Stories where you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t, and yet you want to know again…..."

Returning to the Great Stories, an earlier post.

*Photo from Google Images

The Secret Garden

Colby: If you have two lives
           Which have nothing whatsoever to do with each other
           Well, they're both unreal.

           ..It's simply the fact of being alone there
          That makes it unreal.

Lucasta: Can no one else enter?

Colby:  It can't be done by issuing invitations.
            They would just have to come
            And I should not see them coming.
            I should not hear the opening of the gate.
            They would simply.....be there suddenly.
            Unexpectedly.

            Walking down an alley
            I should become aware of someone walking with me.
            That's the only way I can think of putting it.

Lucasta: How afraid one is of.....being hurt!

Colby:  It's not the hurting one would mind
            But the sense of desolation afterwards.

'The Confidential Clerk', T.S.Eliot

7/2/1988, Sunday

But with you

Colby, playing the piano for Lucasta:

"As a matter of fact, I think I played better
I can't bring myself to play to other people,
And when I'm alone, I can't forget
That it's only myself to whom I'm playing
But with you, it was neither solitude
Nor.....people."

'The Confidential Clerk', T.S.Eliot

7/2/1988, Sunday

Burn

Agatha: There are hours when there seems to be no past or future
              Only a present moment of pointed light
              When you want to burn. When you stretch out your hand
              To the flames.

'The Family Reunion', T.S.Eliot

5/2/1988, Friday

The things to come that sit at the door..

"I am afraid of all that has happened,
and of all  that is to come;
Of the things to come that sit at the door,
as if they had been there always.

And the past is about to happen,
And the future was long since settled."

'The Family Reunion', T.S.Eliot

5/2/1988, Friday

Understand

"But how can I explain to you?
All that I could hope to make you understand
Is only events; not what has happened.

And people to whom nothing has ever happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events."

'The Family Reunion', T.S.Eliot

5/2/1988, Friday

Self

 Lord Claverton’s ghost: I’ve been freed from the self that pretends to be someone,

                                         And in becoming no one, I begin to live.

                                         It is worthwhile dying, to find out what life is.

‘The Elder Statesman’, T.S.Eliot

Notebook: 1986-87 

Illusion

Edward: And what is the use of all your analysis
              If I am to remain always lost in the dark?

Unidentified Guest: There is certainly no purpose
                                in remaining in the dark
                                Except long enough to clear from the mind
                                The illusion of having ever been in the light.

'The Cocktail Party', T.S.Eliot

Notebook: 1986-87

Stranger

We die to each other daily.

What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them.

And they have changed since then.

To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken.

We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)

Privacy

Harry: The things I thought were real
are shadows,
and the real
Are what I thought were private shadows.
O that awful privacy of the insane mind!

From
'The Family Reunion'
T.S.Eliot