Skip to main content

Dilettante

Image courtesy here


The following quote that I came across quite by chance struck me simply because it seemed to reflect me quite as a mirror does. “I am nothing but a dilettante, a dilettante in painting, in poetry, in music, and several others of the so-called unprofitable arts. Above all else I am a dilettante in life. Up to the present I have lived as I have painted and written poetry. I never got far beyond the preparation, the plan, the first act, the first stanza. There are people like that who begin everything and never finish anything. I am such a one.”

The self-description belongs to the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from whose name came the word ‘masochism’. The writer was certainly not chuffed with that coinage contributed by an Austrian psychiatrist who justified it saying, “I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly ‘Masochism’ because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to his time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings.” Masochism is the derivation of gratification from one’s own pain or humiliation.

I don’t enjoy pains at all though I have had to endure quite a lot of that because of my personality characteristics. It is those characteristics that make me similar to Sacher-Masoch and not what the psychologist fabricated out of his name. Dilettantism. That is what I share with the writer.

I am a floater by nature. Like the butterfly that goes from flower to flower savouring the honey. The butterfly doesn’t stop to look at the flower beyond the honey. The sorrows of the flower don’t become the pains of the butterfly. Nor are the joys taken. The dilettante takes just what he wants to take.

Dilettantism is an integral part of the butterfly’s DNA. The little creature is incapable of asking something like, “My darling rose, won’t you tell me your sorrow so that I can kiss it away?”

My cats do the same to me. They come and go as they please. When it pleases him, Bobby jumps on to my lap and lies there purring. He can go to sleep there without ever bothering to ask me whether I am free to let him do that. But, on the other hand, if I pick him up and put him in my lap in a moment of pet-ernal affection, he will protest and jump out. Bobby is an absolute dilettante. His love is frivolous.

I don’t complain, however. I know Bobby. I know the limitations of his DNA. When I accept those limitations, am I accepting my own ones?

If I keep contemplating that, I might become a Buddha and discover the fundamental sorrow that underlies all existence. That will make my life more miserable. I will found a religion of sorrows, create a goddess of perpetual grief, and make mine as well as a few others’ lives miserable. The Buddha couldn’t ever smile because he had not discovered the blessings of dilettantism. The great soul never knew the simple joys of life.

Today, in the post-truth world, dilettantism is the ideal religion. It helps me to smile when the MLA whom I voted for sells himself for a few crore rupees to another party that is diametrically opposed to all that I voted for. When the US Securities and Exchange Commission reports that the Oracle Corporation paid $400,000 in bribes to certain Indian politicians in Goa and Assam and my government which is otherwise eager to send a barrage of investigative agencies to ensure that truth always triumphs (Satyameva Jayate) chooses to turn a blind eye, the dilettante in me can smile and look for new flowers. When a hyperactive investigative agency actually arrests a person for being honest, I can look for yet another flower. This dilettantism is a good religion. Wanna join?

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    No - I chose to linger and find the depths of a thing... ☺ YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Having numerous interest can do this to one.I am not far away from it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Subhuman Social Media

Illustration by Copilot Designer I disabled Facebook on my phone yesterday. There’s too much vulgarity, subhuman crudity, on it. And the first thing I read this morning was a Malayalam weekly – Samakalika Malayalam from the Indian Express group – whose editorial lamented the treatment meted out on social media to Dr M Leelavathi, renowned Malayalam writer. Leelavathi refused to celebrate her 98 th birthday because she said she was distressed by the pictures of innocent children dying of human-made hunger in Gaza. She was trolled by the Hindu right wing in Kerala for saying that. The editorial mentioned above requests the “Hindutva handles” to leave alone Leelavathi. If Kerala’s beloved poet and educationist was moved to tears by the sight of little children behaving like insane creatures as soon as they espy some food, it only reveals the deep humanity that sustained her poetry as well as her world vision. The editorial went on to mention that 20,000 children were killed by Is...

Death of Humour and Rise of Sycophancy in India

Front pages of Newspapers in Delhi on Modi's birthday Yesterday the newspapers in Delhi (and many other places too) carried full page photo of Narendra Modi to celebrate his 75 th birthday. It was sycophancy at its zenith in the history of India’s print media. At no other point in the country’s history had the newspaper industry stooped so low. The first Prime Minister of the country was a man who encouraged the media to be critical of him. Nehru appreciated cartoons that caricatured him mercilessly. Criticism, particularly in the press, helped Nehru keep his ego under check. Shankar’s Weekly was the best cartoon magazine of those times. Launched in 1948 by K Shankar Pillai, the weekly featured political cartoons, satire and humorous articles. It criticised politicians mercilessly by caricaturing or satirising them. Nehru was a prime target. And the PM wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he appreciated Shankar Pillai’s efforts to make the nation, particularly its political leade...

A Man Called Ove

Book Review   Title: A Man Called Ove Author: Fredrik Backman Translation from Swedish: Henning Koch Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, London, 2015 Pages: 295   Ove is a grumpy old man. Right in the initial pages of the novel, we are informed that “People said he was bitter. Maybe they were right. He’d never reflected much on it. People also called him ‘anti-social’. Ove assumed this meant he wasn’t overly keen on people. And in this instance he could totally agree with them. More often than not people were out of their minds.” The novel is Ove’s story It is Ove’s grumpiness that makes him a fascinating character for the reader. Grumpiness notwithstanding, Ove has a lot of goodness within. His world is governed by rules, order and routines. He is superhumanly hardworking and honest. He won’t speak about other people even if such silence means the loss of his job and even personal honour. When his colleague Tom steals money and puts the blame squarely...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...