No.131 Seminar ： Why We Love Sad Songs: Perspectives from South Asia
- Kiyokazu Okita(The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2017/06/20 4:30pm
- The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research (Research Administration Building 1F)
- English(This seminar is open for students and researchers at Kyoto Univ.)
Summary
“Why We Love Sad Songs: Perspectives from South Asia”
Why she had to go? I don’t know she wouldn’t say’ sang the Beatles. From Yesterday to Romeo and Juliet, the world is filled with songs and dramas with the theme of unrequited love. We listen to and watch them repeatedly and some of us even cry. However, if we reflect on our own experience of broken hearts we remember resentment, anger, disappointment, and injured pride. It is mostly a negative experience, something we do not wish to be reminded of again. So why do we sing songs of separation and watch dramas with tragic love stories?
In this talk, I first address this question using the aesthetic theory propounded by Abhinavagupta, the polymath from Kashmir in the 9th century. He layed the intellectual foundation for the classical Sanskrit theory on aesthetic experience. Then I will present the view of Rupa Goswami who was a poet and an intellectual in 16th century North India, and whose works constituted the focus of my Hakubi research project. While acknowledging and incorporating Abhinavagupta’s theory, Rupa developed his own theory based on his devotional commitment. At the end of the talk, I will briefly summarise my activities during the past four years as a Hakubi researcher, and will give frank reflections on what I consider to be my successes and failures from research, to marriage, to child-birth, and to job-hunting.