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Chapter 1: What journey does Subhash Jaireth take through literature and geography?
This is an ABC podcast. Alright, this is going to be good, isn't it? So I thought I really have to hook the reader at the beginning to give them something to care about. The most beautiful pages that I've ever read. But I read that at least once a year. And the whole novel is a song. It is phenomenal. I just had to go back over and over to suck the marrow out of these stories.
And I think she is the most extraordinary writer. And I love her books. I think they're brilliant. The descriptions are sublime.
And as a reader, I want it all.
Where do books take you? That's a real question, isn't it, in these COVID-restricted times? Hi, I'm Kate Evans, and this is a podcast extra edition of ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf. And today we meet a reader and writer whose life took him from India to the then Soviet Union and on to Australia, and whose reading has taken him everywhere, both imaginatively and philosophically.
Subhash Jaireth is a writer and translator who lives in Canberra, but as you'll hear, his bookshelves stretch all across the world. and the latest book he's written is Spinoza's Overcoat, Travels with Writers and Poets. I spoke to him last year, but it's a bookshelf for the ages. Subhash Jairith, thanks for joining us on the bookshelf.
Oh, thanks for having me in. It's a privilege.
Now, your latest book, Spinoza's Overcoat, travels with writers and poets. It's like an extended version of the Bookshelf That Made Me segments that we do here on the Bookshelf. But how would you describe this book of yours? What did you want to do with it?
Oh, it's a book about books and poets and their poems and about cities where these books and poems were conceived and written. I sort of conceived these essays, which I call them story essays. as biographies and autobiographies of poems, books, and through them poets and writers and places.
Let's just pause on that idea because I think it's really important that people get a clear sense of what you're doing. So you're writing biographies of books. So some of them are historical, some are sort of speculative. But what does it mean to write a biography of a book or a poem?
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Chapter 2: How does Subhash Jaireth define his book, Spinoza's Overcoat?
And that was many, many years ago. I studied geology there. And what is good about the Russian or Soviet education system was that though I was a student geology of the engineering faculty at the time, it was compulsory to do units in literature, in philosophy and political economy.
So I had a good exposure of the humanities then and that from there I picked the love for literature, which was always with me because I started writing short stories when I was eight or nine years old. So I loved that training in Russian literature and language, which went alongside my science subjects. I'm very thankful for that sort of total education.
So the Russian literature that you were reading, were you reading it in Russian or in translation?
Oh, absolutely, in Russian. And actually, we were not allowed to speak English in the class when we were learning Russian. And all the communication was in Russian. And everything we read was in Russian. In fact, before I went to Moscow in 1969, I had read Dr. Zhivago in English translation.
And the first book which I read in Russian was Dr. Zhivago in Russian when I landed up there, just to see what was the difference.
And that's by Boris Pasternak, of course.
Oh, yes, yes.
What did that book mean to you?
Oh, that book meant a lot because when I was reading Dr. Zhivago in English in a small town in Punjab as a school, studying in high school, I used to wonder the changes in the weather described by Pastor Naik so nicely in the book, Winter and the Autumn. And I used to feel it would be lovely to see how it all happens in Punjab. real time, real place.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of writing biographies of books and poems?
And to help him, the devil steps in and the devil then starts doing tricks throughout Moscow to take revenge against these officials, apparatchiks of the Writers' Union in Moscow. Perhaps that's what people didn't, the government didn't like it. The Soviet authorities didn't like it, that it was very subversive.
It was exposing the going-ons, not only in the Union, but in the broad Soviet society at the time.
And you say in your chapter on that book that a book like Master and Margarita stimulates good reading as well as writing. It is re-read and re-written and in the process it outgrows its own beginnings. What do you mean by that?
Oh, good books actually demand time and engagement. And when you read those books, they challenge you. Not only are they a source of information, but much more than that. They tell you about yourself, about your own deep time and small time. And you start questioning your whole being in this world. And this was one of the books.
And when I read that book, lots of things which I was not very aware of became making sense to me. And I use in the essay a term like a pointer on a road, which tells you the way which I had arrow pointing backwards, telling me what I have traveled and traversed, and the forward arrow where I will go and where the book will take me. And that's what happened to me.
And I realized that Bulgakov and his wife had realized that this is the book Bulgakov, and to a certain extent, I considered his wife to be a co-author of the book because without her help, this book would not have been written. and that this is the book he has to write before he dies. He felt morally and ethically compelled to write that book.
And that's the biggest lesson I learned from this book, that if you really want to write, you have to write on a topic, on a subject, on a question that really morally compels you. That is, without writing about it, you'll feel crippled, you'll feel dead. So moral and ethical compulsion for me is an important ingredient for any writing.
And most of the writers and poets who I describe in my essays follow that pattern. That is, take, for instance, Simin Behabhani, the Persian poet, Iranian poet. She wrote wonderful poetry. and very critical poetry of the regime in Iran without leaving Iran. But she wrote because she felt morally compelled to write about those things.
Can I just take you up on something else that you mentioned there with talking about Bulgakov, which is travel and movement? Because one of the things that you've done in this book of yours is trace not only your reading, but the way in which it has created places and cities.
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