May 17, 2015

 

Students and teachers of literature, music, performing arts, photography as well as those who are engaged with the art and science of the ‘virtual’ world gathered on 17 May, 2015 at the Calcutta School of Music to witness the e-launching of a unique peer reviewed e-journal of international status. Known as Caesurae: Poetics of Cultural Translation, this e-journal (www.) has on its advisory board eminent personalities like Bill Ashcroft and Mohan Ramanan. As was clearly evident on the day, it had assumed an important cultural responsibility for itself. Derived from the Latin stem caedere, "to cut down," and now meaning a pause, specially for the sake of sense, the word ‘caesurae’ conveys a sense of ‘intervention’ particularly in the context of debates inherent in interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogues. One may legitimately expect that dismantling the old structures of meaning and building up new structures of signs for a hungry generation of readers and viewers will obviously be one of the important duties of this e-journal. In fact, the keynote speaker Professor Ananda Lal, Professor of English, Jadavpur University, and a theatre critic of repute, initiated the discussion on this aspect in his keynote address by referring specifically to the connotations of the term. He welcomed the birth of the ‘baby’ carrying the ‘signs’ of a bright future. The trace of his own ‘intervention’ in the meaning of ‘caesurae’ found echoes in the interactions that followed.

 

The programme began with Dr. Jayita Sengupta, the Managing Editor of Caesurae and Associate Professor of English, Sikkim University, welcoming the guests and spelling out the objectives of the introduction of yet another e-journal. Then followed the keynote address by Professor Lal who spoke highly of the initiative. Then the young and energetic webmaster Surjo Sengupta, a First year student of Electronics in KIIT, BBSR, and his assistant Pritha Sen, a student of Computer Engineering, KIIT, web-launched the e-journal which was greeted with applause and enthusiasm.

 

One of the main attractions of the programme was a panel discussion on “Cultural Translation” in which  Suddhaseel Sen (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Presidency University and a musicologist), Meena Banerjee (vocalist and music critic), Ramkumar Mukherjee, (a writer and the Director, Granthana Vibhaga, Visva-Bharati) and Saikat Majumdar (a novelist and an academician, Stanford University, USA), participated. Debasish Lahiri, the Chief Editor of “Caesurae” as well as a poet and academician, moderated the session. Different aspects of cultural translations were discussed from various perspectives. The panel did not just discuss Euro-American texts, contexts and theories; Indian experience of cultural translations mainly figured in the interactions. Personal and empirical experiences, in many instances, formed the core of the discussions.

 

The programme closed with some performance of vocal and instrumental music.  A short composition was presented by a group of young musicians which included both Surjo and Pritha. Santosh Kumar, Assistant Professor of Music, Sikkim University, offered a flute performance in which he was ably assisted in table by Supratik Chatterjee, a Software engineer from the TCS. On the whole, this programme demonstrated the richness of an interdisciplinary and intercultural experience.

 

                          Himadri Lahiri

 (Professor of English, Burdwan University)