Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, Number 2. November 2018. ISSN: 2581-7094
From the Editor:
“Where there is much light the shadow is deep.”
--- Jonhann Wolfgag Von Goethe
Let us imagine with Socrates that a group of manacled prisoners have lived their lives inside a shadowy cave. A fire burns behind them at a distance. Unable even to turn their heads they sit watching the shadows on a wall projected by puppeteers passing behind them. They will assume the shadows to be real. If a prisoner ever breaks free to confront and perceive the reality that exists outside the cave rather than the manufactured reality of the shadows the inmates are in no position to believe in him. Yes, we are into Plato’s famous Cave Allegory (Republic 514a–520a) that puts to question our perceived reality. Are we living in shadows perceiving the world as has been professed to us through the ages to be understood only through binaries? Is there no other way for human minds to perceive the truth? Did Socrates have to die because he could walk out of the cave and it was difficult for the inmates to have believed in him?
Such is the power of shadows!
The material world has been perceived as a shadow of another world - the ideal world. Whether we are mere shadows of the ideal world is debatable, but our shadows never leave us as that of Peter Pan’s did. It is our faithful friend who changes and grows with us. In our journey through space and time we cast a variety of shadows; the umbra, the penumumbra, the antumbra. As long as there is light there will be shadows.
For Jung, shadows are the dark side of our personality –the Caliban in us. “Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." (Psychology and Religion, p83)
In depth psychology, shadow is the repressed hidden corner in us, but, paradoxically, the shadows we cast are superfluous and two dimensional. It is the shadows that have helped us compute time as early as 3500 BCE. Eratosthenus had measured the nearly accurate size of the earth by calculating shadows. Shadows can cure curses too. In China, Emperor Wu of Han (156 BCE – 87 BCE) who fell sick for he missed his deceased concubine was cured through shadows, giving rise to the art of Shadow Puppetry in China. Shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling. If we look at our shadows, they also tell a story. History is full of shadows- shadow stories - shadows of holocaust, famine, war. In the end we all cast our shadows behind us. However colourful our lives are our umbra always remains black.
I thank the Teesta Review team for giving me this opportunity of editing this interesting volume. The editing experience has been a wonderful one with all your support. We are showcasing thirteen poets in this issue, some of their poems are deceptively simple yet resonate a deep philosophy in- keeping with the theme of the volume. I thank the poets for giving us the opportunity to read their unique ways of looking at shadows. I thank the article contributors, the book reviewers and the translators for their brilliant inputs. My heartfelt thanks to the photo-gallery contributors who have captured shadows through their lenses making us pause and think with Eliot:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
Let us flow with Teesta through sunlight and shadows.
Editor
Volume 1 Number 2