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Voyages Across the Web of Time: Angkarn, Nietzsche and Temporal Colonization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
Abstract
To compare the twentieth-century Thai writer Angkarn Kalayanaphong and the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche may seem absurd. Yet both reveal a particular concern with time, responding to the unprecedented acceleration of their respective cultures. Their numerous points of similarity and divergence raise broader questions concerning global capitalism's domination of time, and efforts to resist that domination.
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1999
References
We wish to express our gratitude to Narumon Kanchanathat and Naengnoi Promsuwa from Prince of Songkla University for their assistance in the development of this essay.
1 Angkarn Kalayanaphong, “The Eye of Time” [Waewta khong wela], trans. Rutnin, Chamnongsri L., in Treasury of Thai Literature: the Modern Period, ed. by the National Identity Board Office of the Prime Minister (Bangkok: Amarin, 1988), p. 194.Google Scholar
2 Derrida, Jacques, “Différance”, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 3–27.Google Scholar
3 Angkarn, “The Eye of Time”, p. 194.
4 Chongstitvatana, Suchitra, “The Green World of Angkhan Kalayanaphong: A Vision on Nature and Environment”, in Thai Literary Traditions, ed. Chitakasem, Manas (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1995), p. 148.Google Scholar
5 The term Hinayana, or “little vehicle”, distinguishes the dominant form of Thai Buddhism from the Mahayana (“great vehicle”) Buddhism most commonly practised in China and Vietnam.
6 Kalayanaphong, Angkarn, “Inscription from the Past” [Charuek Adit], Collected Poems, 2nd edition (Bangkok: Suksit Siam, 1970), p. 99. Quoted in “The Sense of the Past in the Poetry of Angkarn Kalayanaphong”Google Scholar, Nagavajara, Chetana, Comparative Literature from a Thai Perspective: Collected Articles, 1978–1992 (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1996), pp. 202–203.Google Scholar
7 Vespada, Dhanate, ”Lila Nai Ngarn Roikaew Khong Angkharn Kalayanaphong” [Style in Angkarn Kalayanaphong's Poetical Prose] (Masters thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 1990), p. 15.Google Scholar
8 Kalayanaphong, Angkarn, Khui Kap Kawi [Chats with a Poet] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Siam, 1991), p. 29.Google Scholar
9 ”Farang” is the popular Thai term for fair-skinned foreigners.
10 Chetana Nagavajara, “The Sense of the Past”, p. 211.
11 In traditional Thai poetry, references to a mythical past, regarded with nostalgic longing, are plentiful. The theme is evident, for example, in the nirat (travel poetry) of the famous writer Sunthorn Phu (1786–1855): “Induced by loneliness, I begin to think/ Of the good old days.… /At the landing fronting the governor's house/Tears well up, thinking of the past” (from “Nirat Phukhao Thong”, in Sunthorn Phu: An Anthology, ed. Umavijani, Montri [Bangkok: Amarin, 1990], pp. 71–72).Google Scholar
12 Agger, Ben, Fast Capitalism: A Critical Theory of Significance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 58.Google Scholar
13 Baudrillard, Jean, The Transparency of Evil: Essay on Extreme Phenomena, trans. Benedict, James (London: Verso, 1993), p. 19.Google Scholar
14 Pinkney, Tony, Introduction to Williams, Raymond, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (London: Verso, 1989), p. 3.Google Scholar
15 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Human, All Too Human, trans. Faber, Marion and Lehmann, Stephen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994), p. 126.Google Scholar
16 For a detailed discussion of Nietzsche's peculiarly literary qualities see Nehamas, Alexander, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
17 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar
18 Nietzsche, Friedrich, “The Anti-Christ”, in Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, trans. Hollingdale, R.J. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 142.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., p. 154.
20 Nietzsche, Friedrich, “The Gay Science”, in A Nietzsche Reader, ed. and trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 249–50.Google Scholar
21 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Daybreak”, in Nietzsche Reader, p. 234
22 , Angkarn, “Ayudhya”, in Three Thai Poets, ed. Sivaraksa, Sulak (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1979), p. 13. Ayudhya, or Ayutthaya, the capital of the kingdom known to foreigners as Siam from the 14th through 18th centuries, was destroyed in 1767. Angkarn is not the only poet to eulogize that historical site as a “lost paradise”. The poetic nostalgia of Sunthorn Phu, for instance, also finds expression there:Google Scholar
The City as I see [it] now makes me sad
I hear only the noise of birds.
On both banks are thick brambles.
The life of the city is over by fate.
Our grandparents used to tell us stories;
When the city of Ayutthaya flourished,
A long succession of kings ruled it.
No sorrow then, only happiness for all.
Even the ruins we see now are impressive.
— from “Nirat Phrabat”, in Sunthorn Phu: An Anthology, pp. 36–37.
23 Extract from “A Poet's Pledge” [Panithan khong kawi], in Chetana Nagavajara, “Art in Place of Nirvana: Western Aesthetics and the Poetry of Angkarn Kalayanaphong”, in Comparative Literature from a Thai Perspective, pp. 213–14.
24 Ibid., p. 215.
25 Suchitra, “The Green World”, p. 153.
26 Agger, Fast Capitalism, p. 81.
27 Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. O'Brien, Justin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).Google Scholar
28 Chetana Nagaravajara, “Art in Place of Nirvana”, pp. 213–28.
29 A translation of the poem by Borthwick, Meredith is in Angkarn Kalayanaphong, a Contemporary Siamese Poet, ed. Wright, Michael (Bangkok: Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, 1982), pp. 44–46.Google Scholar
30 Kalayanaphong, Angkarn, “Grandma” [Ya], trans. Phillips, Herbert P. and , Vinita, in Treasury of Thai Literature: the Modern Period (Bangkok: Amarin, 1988), p. 195Google Scholar. See also Phillips, Herbert P., Modern Thai Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 80–87.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., pp. 196, 199.
32 Ibid., p. 199.
33 Brown, Norman O., Life Against Death: the Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1959).Google Scholar See also Don DeLillo's fictional discussion of the subject as it pertains to the contemporary United States in the novel White Noise (London: Pan, 1985).Google Scholar
34 As in novella, Milan Kundera'sSlowness, trans. Asher, Linda (London: Faber & Faber, 1996), for instance, which deals with oppressive speed in contemporary France and expresses disillusionment in terms no less nostalgic than those of Angkarn and Nietzsche: “Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear?” (p. 4).Google Scholar