Premchand

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Premchand ( Hindi प्रेमचंद Premacand ; born July 31, 1880 in the village of Lamahi near Varanasi ; † October 8, 1936 in Varanasi) is the pseudonym of the Indian writer Dhanpat Rai Shrivastav ( Hindi धनपत राय श्रीवास्तव Dhanapat Rāy Śrīvāstav ). He was one of the most important authors in the Hindi- speaking area (in contrast to other regional and national languages ​​and literatures such as Bengali , Marathi , Gujarati , etc.) as well as modern Indian literature in general. He is considered a pioneer of contemporary Urdu and Hindi romance.

Premchand was a versatile and very fruitful writer; In numerous short stories, plays, film scripts, translations, essays and novels, he deals with topics and problems of everyday Indian life of his time, both in the city and in the countryside: poverty, debt, corruption, land distribution, caste and religious prejudice and colonialism . As editor of the literary journals Hañs ("Swan") and Jāgaraņ ("Awakening") he discussed questions of literature and, as a politically committed social reformer, called for education for all strata of the population as well as a national awareness in the spirit of Gandhi .

life and work

Early years

Premchand's father was Munshi ("scribe") and a postman from the Srivastava or Shrivāstab caste, a sub-caste of the Kāyasth (also Kaet or Kaith , with the honorary title Lāla ), the caste of clerks and tax collectors in the countryside. at the age of eight Premchand lost his mother and the grandmother took over the upbringing; when she too died and the father remarried, Premchand became closer to his older sister. As a member of the scribes' caste he enjoyed an English education, but preferred Urdu (" Hindustani "), which differed in vocabulary and writing from Hindi, but was more elegant, then as now in poetics and music , which, although Hindu, he was eight years old in one Learned madrasa under the guidance of a mullah . Premchand was considered a bookworm and avid newspaper reader; he made his first attempts at writing in 1901.

Marriage and profession

Married against his will in 9th grade at the age of fifteen - the wife returned to his parents when Premchand left his village (1899) - he also lost his father at the age of sixteen and was now not only left to fend for himself, but as the eldest son also responsible for the stepmother and siblings. As a good student, he made money by tutoring better-off classmates and later passed his BA in English, Persian and history. As a result, he was a primary school teacher and deputy sub-inspector (school councilor) in the United Provinces (today: Uttar Pradesh ), which was then under English rule, especially in Bundelkhand , where he was on his inspection trips (in the ox cart, later his wife often accompanied) found material for his numerous stories. He was considered a mild superior and a good teacher, even if he lacked the organizational talent required for a school management or the occasional hardship required.

As a staunch social reformer and supporter of Arya Samaj , he married Shivarani Devi, widowed as a child, in 1906, who wrote a book about him after his death ( Premchand ghar mein , "Premchand at home"); this type of marriage was revolutionary in its time and earned him the opposition of the traditionalists. The couple had a daughter and two sons.

Writing activity

In 1910 his collection of short stories (Soz-e-watan "Elegy on the Nation"), which he had published in Urdu in 1907 under the stage name Nawab Rai in the Kanpurer magazine Zamana , came into conflict with the English school authorities. which drew the copies and placed them on the index .

Premchand wrote for the first time (since 1910) under his new stage name Premchand (Hindi "love moon"). After he had already made a name for himself as an Urdu writer as Munshi Premchand and is therefore also known as the "father of Urdu short stories" (urdu afsānā "story"), he began in 1914, also due to the insufficient number of copies of the Urdu Versions to be increasingly written in Hindi. He thus brought a realistic trend into Indian literature, which at the beginning of the 20th century was still linguistically characterized by graceful poetry in verse form and the content of religious, mythological or fantastic topics without reference to reality ( rāja-rāni literature). At the same time, Premchand created the basis of a "homely literature" (Gandhi) that helped prepare the unity of the country.

Premchand met Gandhi in Gorakhpur in 1919 , and when he called for non-cooperation with the British in 1921 , he gave up his post as a teacher and school councilor and, at great personal sacrifice, worked as a freelance journalist and newspaper editor; later he became the director of a school in Kashi . He published his literary contributions in the magazines "Hañs" and "Jāgaraņ", which he founded and which he had published since 1923 in his own printing house, the "Saraswati Press", which was housed in a building in Arya Samaj in Benares, and which he had - similar to Balzac in this respect - always caused great financial worries. Between his home village, where he inherited his parents' house and to which he felt a lifelong connection, and his often changing places of residence - next to Benares v. a. Lucknow , Allahabad , Bombay , Delhi , Aligarh , etc. - and the printing house, Premchand was constantly shuttling back and forth; It was financial reasons that led him to accept an annual contract with the film industry in Bombay as a script writer (1934-35). Although the job was well paid, it required him to be separated from his family for a year and - after deducting the high cost of living in Bombay - proved to be not particularly attractive.

In 1936, Premchand was elected the first president of the Indian Progressive Writers' Association IPWA. He died in 1936 at the age of 56 after a long period of suffering from a gastric ulcer ("gastritic ulcer").

Premchand wrote about 250 short stories, which were put together in various collections while he was still alive. a. as Prem Pacchisi ("Premchands 25 stories"), "Prem Battisi" ("Premchands 32 stories") and finally in the collection "Mānasarovar" ("Ocean of Thoughts", with 203 stories). He wrote a dozen novels, the most famous of which is "Godan" ("The Donation of the Cow"), and two plays. His works portray the life of the urban middle class as well as life in the country, with an emphasis on the coexistence of Christians, Muslims and Hindus.

Role models, influences, literary theory

Premchand is considered the first well-known Indian author to realistically portray social conditions; As a pedagogue, he was convinced of the educational, enlightening effect of literature without denying the independence of the literary work. Premchand took the works of Indian contemporaries, such as B. of the Bengali Rabindranath Tagore , the older Urdu writer Hālī , the writers who were friends with him Muhammad Iqbal , Mulk Raj Anand or Sajjad Zaheer , but shared the critical stance of the European authors he read, especially Tolstoy , Maupassant , Anatole France , TS Eliot , John Galsworthy , Charles Dickens and Chekhov to society. While Premchand deserved the stronger emotional instinct in Bengali literature, he saw his strength as a Hindi author more in prose, in observation and in analysis. Premchand commented on the foundations of his literary theory, especially towards the end of his life: literature should represent and promote "the true, good, beautiful" and go far beyond mere entertainment.

At the writers' congress of the IPWA (1936), to whose president he was elected, he spoke out against the then politically motivated division of literature into progressive and conservative: "A writer or an artist is progressive by nature; if he were not, he he wouldn't be a writer either. "

That Premchand was more of a Hindu and a pedagogue than he probably perceived himself is shown - entirely in the sense of Sanskrit literature - in the ideal of the pure soul, which by self-centeredness and the accidents of life such as religions, political and social conditions etc. A goal distracted and can only be purified through Satsang , Satyagraha and Darshan (dealing with good people, non-violent resistance and looking at the good), in short: through the victory of asceticism over power and property - an ancient Indian idea.

style

Premchand's writings are characterized by a coherent narrative structure and a language that is based on colloquial language and largely dispenses with Sanskrit influences. His style is characterized by satirical and humorous passages that serve to characterize his protagonists and make the often relentless, even merciless descriptions bearable for the reader.

Premchand's works have been translated into all languages ​​of India as well as into Russian, Chinese and many European and other cultural languages.

criticism

  • Premchand was accused of placing too much emphasis on death and misery compared to his fellow Bengali writers, Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (Chatterjee) or Rabindranath Thakur (Tagore); his works often lack the shining hero or the happy ending that is indispensable in Indian Sanskrit literature.
  • Although linguistically an opponent of English ("You have to tear this choke of English"), Premchand wrote much of his correspondence in English; his commitment to a uniform, transnational language was already met with skepticism among contemporaries. It was clear to him that the new national language to be created should be neither the pure Hindi of the learned Pandits nor the Urdu of the mullahs ; He, who had learned Persian in his youth, was closer to Urdu than Hindi.
  • Premchand's daughter Kamala received - as the daughter of a renowned writer and a social reformer - no school education except basic knowledge of Hindi.
  • Premchand Ideal was the propertyless, classless collective society, but this did not prevent him, as a printer's owner and entrepreneur, from pondering whether industrialists like Birla et al. a. could not warm to the establishment of a fund for his printing press; There were occasional strikes in his printing works, which he was able to settle peacefully. His caste pride occasionally contradicts the views he has expressed here and there about how far Premchand's nature was from being dogmatic.
  • Premchand was accused of plagiarism several times ; however, he was able to refute the allegations in each individual case.

Works

stories

  • Soz-e-watan "Elegy to the Nation" (1908): refers to the national struggle of the years 1910–1934, with sympathy for the national movement.
  • Mānasarovar "Ocean of Thoughts" or "The Lake Manāsa" (Benares 1936–1962, NA 1964 ff, NA 1984 ff.): Eight-volume complete edition of the stories, prepared during his lifetime, containing a. a. the earlier collective editions Prem Paccisi ("Premcands 25 Stories", 1923), Prem Pramod ("Premcands Glück", 1926), Prem dvādaśi ("Premcands Twelfth", 1926), Prem Caturthi ("Four Stories by Premcand", 1929), Prem Pancamī ("Five Tales of Premcand", 1930). - The subject variety of the collection is great: it is above all the life of the villagers and the oppression of the common people by usurers, brahmins, colonial officials and landowners, which Premchand describes with narrative verve and thereby characters, legal cases, the fate of the oppressed (women, Marginalized groups, castes) and even reviewing animals; v. a. Chekhov and Maupassant . - The collection is still considered to be one of the most important books in Hindi literature.
  • He also wrote historical short stories that thematize the light and dark sides of Indian history. B. the failure of the local nobility towards foreign intruders.

Novels

  • Prema (1904) and Nirmalā (1924): treat the fate of women
  • Sevasādan ("The House of Service", written in Urdu, published in Hindi in 1919): Determined by personal experience, a wealthy citizen of Varanasi sets up a women's shelter where the children of prostitutes and outcast women receive lessons (music, dance, poetry ). The Brahmaness Suman, the tall, beautiful wife of a tyrannical old woman , meets a courtesan and has to learn that she lives "inside purdah" ("with a veil", ie under strict gender segregation), but the courtesan lives "outside" ("without") , d. H. free; her life appears to her as prostitution with only one man. Suman is rejected by her husband and is now in danger of becoming a courtesan as well. The newly established women's shelter offers her refuge. - Thematically based on the frivolous Urdu brothel literature that was widespread at the time, he takes a stand against Western, but also against traditional and fundamentalist views. Premchand knows how to depict individuals and characters, but still let them emerge as types. Linguistically written in Persified Urdu, his first novel was rejected by the Urdu publisher because Premchand treated the subject from a Hindu point of view. Only after the rejection did the author translate the novel into Hindi, the difference being limited to changing the script ( Nastālīq in Devanagari ), as the Persian-Arabic-influenced vocabulary was retained, which characterizes the earlier Hindustani , the slang form of Urdu . Sevasādan was the first successful Hindi novel. - A film adaptation of the same name refers to a thematically similar novella, not to the novel.
  • Premaśram ("The Love Asylum ", 1922):
  • Vardān ("The Gift")
  • Rańgabhūmī ("The Stage", in Urdu 1924, in Hindi 1925): The planned construction of a cigarette factory on the end of the mountain pastures was prevented by the resistance of a single villager, a beggar, and a moral victory was achieved that led to the quarrel between them Village community unites; a love story between the factions creates mutual understanding. In 1928 he received an award for this novel.
  • Ġaban ("The Embezzlement ", 1930)
  • Karmabhūmī / Karmbhūmī ("The field of activity", 1932): The protagonists, a merchant from Benares and his rebellious son, have to prove themselves on the "field of activity" - the native India. The son flees from his father to Haridwar and supports the rural population in their fight against the corrupt abbot of a Hindu monastery. - Karmabhūmī provides a comprehensive picture of the national questions at the beginning of the 20th century. His sympathy for the marginalized groups of society, especially for Muslims and untouchables, becomes clear without having to offer any radical solutions; this connects him to Gandhi's political views.
  • Kāyākalp ("The Rejuvenation")
  • Godan ("The Cow Donation", in Hindi, 1936): In his last and most famous novel, the poor farmer Horī fulfills his most ardent wish: he buys a cow, the symbol of wealth and prestige par excellence in rural India . This soaring flight, which far exceeds his capabilities, costs him dearly: he finally succumbs to the cycle of debt, bad harvests and new debts. - The epic of the suffering of the Indian rural dwellers is considered to be the most important novel in Hindi literature due to its narrative art and love of storytelling, fine observation, realistic portrayal of urban and rural life, criticism of widespread romantic ideas and mastery of the language. Humor and satire take the pessimism of the work off the ground. - Godan was adapted for the stage in 1958 and filmed in 1963.
  • Mańgalsutr ("Textbook of Happiness", unfinished)

Translation expenses

  • Premchand. Collected short stories . Ed. by Anisur Rahman, Ameena Kazi Ansari. Oxford: OUP 2010.
  • The Oxford India Premchand . With an Introduction by Francesca Orsini. New Delhi: OUP 2007.
  • Premchand: Godan or the offering . From the Hindi by Irene Zahra. Afterword by Annemarie Etter. Zurich: Manesse 1979 (NA 2006).
  • Premacanda: the chess players . From d. Hindi practice by Konrad Meisig. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1989.
  • Premtschand: Nirmala or the story of a bitter life . From the Hindi. Translation, notes and epilogue by Margot Gatzlaff. Leipzig: Reclam 1976.
  • Dagmar Ansari: Chrestomathy of Hindi prose of the 20th century . Leipzig: VEB Encyclopedia 1967, v. a. Pp. 5–17 with text of the story "Der Tempel"
  • Premtschand: A handful of wheat . Stories. From d. Engl. Berlin: set up in 1958.

Film adaptations

Premchand's first and only work as a script writer was the now- lost film Mazdoor (1934), in which the author was even briefly seen in a film scene. Numerous other films were made of his novels and short stories.

literature

life and work

  • Śivarānī Devī Premacanda: Premacanda ghara meṃ . Dillī: Ātmārāma 2008 (EA 1952). - Shivarani Devi (born 1890) was Premchand's second wife, a child widow, and herself a writer and social reformer.
  • Madan Gopal: Munshi Premchand. A Literary Biography . New Delhi: Criterion 1990 (EA 1964).
  • Robert O. Swan: Munshi Premchand of Lamhi Village . Durham: Duke UP 1969.
  • Vishwanath Shridhar Naravane: Premchand. His Life and Work . New Delhi: Vikas 1980.
  • Manohar Bandopadhyay: Life and Works of Premchand . New Delhi: Publ. Division, Min. Of Inf. And Broadcasting, Gov. of India 1981.
  • Geetanjali Pandey: Between two worlds. An intellectual biography of Premchand . New Delhi: Manohar 1989.
  • Amrit Rai: Premchand. His Life and his Times . Transl. from the Hindi by Harish Trivedi. 2nd edition Delhi: OUP 2002 (EA Hindi 1962; English EA 1982, 1991). - With chronology and catalog raisonné. Amrit Rai (* 1921-), writer, playwright, biographer and staunch Marxist, is Premchand's second son.
  • Madan Gopal (Ed.): My life and times, Premchand. An autobiographical narrative, recreated from his works . New Delhi: Lotus Collection 2006.

Individual questions

  • Helmuth von Glasenapp : The literatures of India. From its beginnings to the present (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 318). Kröner, Stuttgart 1961, DNB 363784993 , p. 282 ff.
  • Peter Gaeffke: On the image of man in Premcand's stories . In: Viennese magazine for customers from South and East Asia. 10, pp. 6-65 (1966).
  • Gobinda Lal Ray: Premchand. A Bibliography . National Library, Calcutta 1980.
  • Shiv Kumar Misra (Ed.): Premchand. Our Contemporary . National Publ. House, New Delhi 1986. - Collection of articles.
  • Peter Gaeffke: Premchand . In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. (KNLL), Vol. 13 (1991), pp. 624-628. - Contains brief reviews of the novels Godan, Karmabhumi, Manasarovar, Rangbhumi, and Sevasadan.
  • Pramila Batra: Charles Dickens and Premchand. Novelists with a social purpose . Prestige, New Delhi 2001.
  • Muṃśī Premacanda Saṅgoṣṭhī, Landana, 2005, compiled by Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Seminar on Munshi Premchand, London, 2005 . Published: New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations 2007. - Congress papers and bibliographical material in English, Hindi (Devanagari) and Urdu.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rabindranath Thakur describes the everyday life of a postmaster in his short story of the same name.
  2. ↑ Hard-working, able to read and write, intelligent, eager to learn and well versed in languages ​​(Persian), the Srivastava opposed the intolerance of the Muslim invaders with less religious scruples than the socially superior Brahmins and therefore held important positions in the civil service, especially among the foreign rulers a; as village tax collectors, they were notorious for their cunning and trickery; RV Russell / Rai Bahadur Hīra Lāl: The tribes and castes of the central provinces of India. 4 vols. London. Vol. 3, pp. 404-422.
  3. ↑ Urdu, which is common in northern India and today's Pakistan, takes up the culture of the Muslim, Persian-Arabic cultural area in script and vocabulary, while Hindi draws on the script, ideas and vocabulary of Sanskrit.
  4. ↑ Instead of his Hindu name Dhanpad Rai, "Lord of Prosperity", his uncle Mahabir had always called him Nawab Rai , "Lord Nabob".
  5. ↑ Premchand learned Tagore never met in person, any more than he ever had in Calcutta was
  6. ↑ "Morality and literature have a common goal - they differ only in the way they represent it ... In the past religion held the reins of society, and ... its tools were sin and good deeds . Today literature has taken on this task, and the love of beauty is its tool ".
  7. ↑ Prime Minister Mirza Ismail of Mysore told him that the population had to decide for themselves on such a matter .
  8. ↑ Amrit Rai, p. 325.
  9. ↑ Amrit Rai, p. 336 and passim
  10. ↑ Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa (1858–1931): The Courtesan of Lucknow is worth reading . Translated from Urdu by Ursula Rothen-Dubs, Manesse, Zurich 1971, EA 1899. Ruswa's novel is based on real events and people.
  11. ^ Munshi and the movies in The Tribune, July 31, 2005.
  12. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.indiapicks.com

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personal data
SURNAME Premchand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shrivastava, Dhanpat Rai (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Lamahi , India
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1936
Place of death Varanasi , Benares