Esprit D'Escalier

The tone of his voice had that peculiar hint - which one experiences for the first time when elders in the family blow an adolescent's self-esteem off in a moment - that I should listen when wise men talk. It was not my intention to provoke him. But I hate to see people peeved without adequate justification and have an irrepressible urge for rectitude when they do so. I, therefore, decided to give a new twist to the conversation so that light-heartedness replaces solemnity and I do not quite look the interloper in the artists' den which admittedly I was.

"What I wanted to know, Mr. Mukerjee, was that, conceding that Michelangelo had a fairly good idea of what had happened in Ajanta before his time and had replicated it in some form without acknowledging it source, don't artists frequently resort to practices which are not always above board ? I think Rembrandt did it himself." I knew it was risky to be audacious without a true apprehension of Mr. Mukerjee's alacrity.

Mr. Mukerjee fixed a fairly disdainfully look in my direction. But perhaps anticipating that I could not be silenced by a mere look, he continued more aggressively, "Rembrandt, as you obviously do not know, signed his poor disciples' works so that they could sell, and only when they conformed strictly to his own style. This was pure altruism. He didn't go around picking starving artists' works to pass them as his own."

"Perhaps you'd have sufficient evidence to prove Rembrandt's generosity. But there could always be a new kind of morality in the modern age. Ends have always justified means in human history, and one can perhaps expect blatant plagiarism to be a valid device in art of the future."

"History is easier to deal with than futurology, my friend," exclaimed Raza, looking somewhat alarmed by my new born intransigence, and added, "But I feel both of you have a valid standpoint." I was resentful of his condescending role in a debate in which I thought I could hold out on my own.

"I am not too sure of what is happening in the world of arts today, but a lot that passes off as social science research is thirty percent plagiarism, twenty per cent deductions made from ideas which are borrowed, and twenty per cent interpretation which may be only marginally original. But this can be done blatantly as long as one acknowledges the sources from which one has stolen. There could be a moral justification if part of the royalties go to the names mentioned in the footnotes and bibliographies. I would say that this is only a stage in our academic evolution, and we may be nearer a dawn when art and literature will be dissociated from the egocentricity of authors and become a truly universal property. You have certainly heard of Bakhtin's dialogical quality of history and culture in which no possibility is ever foreclosed."

The glow on Mr. Mukerjee's face suggested that he had found the right touch again, and he focussed his heavy-lidded gaze directly at my face. "You mean you want to eliminate Bergson's elan vital from the process of creativity ? In that case, let the bloody society collectively write its own novels, compose its own music, paint its own paintings, and collectively own the shit and all rights to it as well !"

By now, both Raza and I had realised that the evening had become somewhat pedantic, and the potential for entertainment had evaporated from the content of our discussion. We exchanged a smile to acknowledge that the two of us had also contributed in no uncertain terms to the process.