Matrices of the Modernist Time in the Western

Discourses on the Novel and The Mahabharata

Arnab
Bhattacharya
Time is a recurrent motif in the Western discourses on the novel,
especially those written in the early half of the 20
th
century. Here I
am not talking about the narrativised time of the novel as against
the span of time in real life in which the events portrayed are
supposed to have taken place. This is the topic dealt with in
ikhail !akhtin"s idea of the #chronotope" $%& and books on
narratology like 'erard 'enette"s The Narrative Discourse. The
time that concerns me in this paper is the one in which the novel
came into being and started developing by leaps and bounds. The
discourses I will consider here are the ones which e(plore the
ontological dimensions of the novelistic time as part of a
contrastive design pitting it against the epical time and the time
of the ancient storytelling, highlighting features speci)c to the
novel as e(pressions of the time it embodies. The three
representative early 20
th
century discourses which I have selected
for discussion here are 'eorg *uk+cs" The Theory of the Novel,
written as a draft in the summer of %,%- and was revised into its
)nal version in the winter of %,%-.%/, ikhail !akhtin"s article
01pic and 2ovel3 in his book Dialogic Imagination, and Walter
!en4amin"s article 0The 5toryteller3 in his book Illuminations. y
aim will be to show how all these three discourses in their very
speci)c conceptuali6ations of modernist novelistic time and pre.
modernist epical7storytelling time are found wanting in e(plaining
the dissipative and, in many ways non.con4ugated time, which are
usually conceived as characterising the modernist narrative like
the novel, which inheres in and collaterally e(ists with the pre.
modernist time of the Indian epic The Mahabharata.
The Theme of Immanence of life inLukcs The Theory of
the Novel
*ucacs" 0The 1pic and the 2ovel3 begins with a strong note on the
#historio.philosophiocal" distinction between epic writing and
novel writing. In*uk+cs" words8
the epic and the novel, these two ma4or forms of great epic literature, di9er
from one another not by their authors" fundamental intentions but by the
given historico.philosophical realities with which the authors were
confronted. The novel is the epic of an age in which the e(tensive totality of
life is no longer directly given, in which the immanence of meaning in life has
become a problem, yet which still thinks in terms of totality. It would be
super)cial:a matter of a mere artistic technicality:to look for the only and
decisive genre.de)ning criterion in the ;uestion of whether a work is written
in verse or prose. $2&
It is thus not a ;uestion of form which di9erentiates the epic from
the novel, rather the realities in which these genres were nurtured
in two di9erent ages, and the philosophies which informed them
which, according to *uk+cs, were the motive forces behind the
development of their distinguishing features. It is, however, not
immediately obvious what point *uk+cs is driving at when he uses
the phrases #immanence of meaning" and #e(tensive totality". He
certainly cannot mean lack of )ssiparous elements in the epic
society, because these were superabundant in epical te(ts for
which no scholastic insight is needed. It probably indicates a self.
su<ciency, not obviously in economic terms $for that would be a
ludicrously na=ve analysis&, but in a cosmic sense which was
re>ected in the epic characters interpreted the world and
internali6ed the spirit of the time. This perception engendered a
sense of totality which the individual characters did not conceive
themselves as fragments of, but embodying it in their personas. It
is a sense which is there in the epic as a given form which the
epic action sprang, and the epic characters derived their
motivation, courage and strength. There is no ;uestioning it, no
doubting it, nor even a ;uest for it. *uk+cs elucidates a little later
in that article8
The epic gives form to a totality of life that is rounded from within? the novel
seeks, by giving form, to uncover and construct the concealed totality of life.
The given structure of the ob4ect $i.e. the search, which is only a way of
e(pressing the sub4ect"s recognition that neither ob4ective life nor its
relationship to the sub4ect is spontaneously harmonious in itself& supplies an
indication of the form.giving intention. Thus the fundamental form.
determining intention of the novel is ob4ectivised as the psychology of the
novel"s heroes8 they are seekers. $@&
Thus for *uk+cs the novelistic time is a struggle for )nding a
totality which is now no longer given, nor #rounded from within",
but #concealed", in need either to be uncovered or constructed.
The #search" is a kind of manifestation of Heideggerian
#homesickness" towards a #wholeness". As Heidegger e(plains,
What is all this, taken together8 world, )nitude, individuationB