Rhythms of Revolution: A Rhythmanalytic Study of Everyday Somaesthetics in Tagore’s Tasher Desh and Raktakaravi
摘要
Henri Lefebvre’s “rhythmanalysis” as a tool can be apt for analyzing certain works by Rabindranath Tagore, who was both a poet and a musician. Drawing its rationale from poetic exercises as well as a musical analogy, rhythmanalysis can shed new light on certain traits of music and rhythmicity that recur in Tasher Desh and Raktakaravi. In view of the transformations that Lefebvre’s methodology has undergone since its inception, we have provisionally adapted and extended rhythmanalysis for our purposes, seeking to gain fresh insights into the workings of the methodology and the object of our study. Lefebvre’s concepts of arrhythmia, eurhythmia, and isorhythmia have been adapted to understand how Tagore's conceptualization of revolutions is akin to a rhythmic phenomenon that steers a nation-state toward “becoming-eurhythmic”. The applicability of Lefebvre’s concept of isorhythmia as a tool to investigate totalitarian systems of governance is explored vis-à-vis Tagore’s heterotopias of Yakshapuri and the land of the cards. The rhythmicity of revolutions is linked to everyday somaesthetics in its operative logic. Examining how and why everyday rhythms become (dys)functional, this rhythmanalytic study of everyday somaesthetics in Tasher Desh and Raktakaravi explores new ways of theorizing rhythmicity, body politics, literature, and ideological moorings expressed through these mediums, discerning their connection, concomitance, and disjunction.