The Ailing Planet (2 of 5) by Nany Palkhiwala-English for Class XI-CBSE ...

The Landscape of the Soul by Nathalie Trouveroy

 The Landscape of the Soul by Nathalie Trouveroy

Questions and Answers: Short Answer-type Qs (30-35 Words each)

Q1. What is the Chinese view of art?

Ans. A classical Chinese landscape is not meant to reproduce (present/copy) an actual view. He does not choose a single viewpoint. The artist creates a path for your eyes to travel up and down, then back again, in an easy manner.

Q2. What is the European view on art?

Ans. . The European painter wants you to borrow his eyes and look at a particular landscape exactly as he saw it, from a specific angle.

Q3. Who was Wu Daoji? Why did he make the landscape?

Ans. Wu Daozi was a famous Chinese painter. He lived in the 8^th century. the Tang Emperor Xuanzong ordered him to make a painting to decorate a wall of his palace.

Q4. What happened when the painter clapped?

Ans. The painter clapped his hands, and the entrance to the cave opened. The painter entered the cave, but the entrance closed behind him. The painting had vanished (disappeared) from the wall.

Q5. Why are anecdotes so popular in Chinese art?

Ans. Anecdotes or stories played an important part in China’s classical education. They helped the master to guide his disciple (pupil/student) in the right direction. Beyond the anecdote /ˈæn.ɪk.dəʊt/ (story/tale). They are deeply revealing (expressive) of the spirit in which art was considered.

Q6.How did Metsy succeed in marrying his beloved, the daughter of the great painter?

Ans. A master blacksmith, Quinten Metsys, fell in love with a painter’s daughter. The father was not ready to accept a son-in-law in such a profession. So Quinten sneaked (entered secretly) into the painter’s studio and painted a fly on his latest panel (board). It was so real that the master tried to swat (hit) it away. The painter was impressed and allowed him to marry his daughter.

Q7.What is ‘figurative painting’?

Ans. The figurative painting creates an image that is very close to reality. It is the realistic view of the painter. The person feels an illusion of the real object in the painting.

Q8. Why is the viewer’s participation necessary to observe a Chinese painting?

Ans. Chinese painter does not choose a single viewpoint. So Chinese painting requires the active participation of the viewer. He can decide the places where he wants to travel through the painting. This participation is both, physical and mental.

Q9. Define Shanshui?

Ans. Shan-Shui is a traditional art of Chinese painting, in which a brush and ink are preferred to conventional paints. In this art form, mountains, rivers, and waterfalls also are important in this art form.

Q10. What is Daoism?

Ans. Daoism does not believe in the separation between body and soul. It recognises that physical actions have a spiritual effect. Daoism accepts nature and is spontaneous in human experience.

Q11. Why is the blank space in Chinese painting compared to Pranayam?

The Middle Void is essential. Nothing can happen without it. The Middle Void is where their interaction takes place. This can be compared with the yogic practice of pranayama in which we breathe in, stop the breath, then breathe out. Meditation occurs in the suspension of breath in the Void (empty space in the stomach). Similar is the importance of the white, unpainted space in the Chinese landscape.

Q12. What is outsider art?

Ans. Outsider art is called raw art. This is made by people who have received no formal training in making mainstream paintings. But they have deep insight into showing their art in paintings. Such works are also called art brut. Examples of Art brut or raw art:

 

Multiple Choice Qs/Ans.

Q1.When did Daoji lived?

 Ans. in the 8^th century.

Q2.Which king commanded Daoji to make a landscape for his palace?

Ans. Xuunzong

Q3.Where was the apinting hidden?

Ans. A screen

Q4.In which thing did Wu Daoji vanish?

Ans. A cave

Q5.Whose books contained stories/anecdotes that played an important part in China’s classical education?

Ans. The books of Confucius and Zhuangzi

Q6.What is Antwerp?

Ans. Antwerp is known as the City of Rubens,

Q7.Who was Metsy?

Ans. A master-blacksmith

Q8.Who invented the term ‘Art Brut’

Ans. Jean Dubuffet

Q9. What did Metsy paint on his father-in-law’s painting?

Ans. A fly

Q10.What name is often given to Western or European painting?

Ans. Figurative Art

 

 

 

 

 

Father to a Son

 Father to a Son

(A)                       Short Answer-type Questions (About 30-40 words each)

Q1.  Explain the lines: “Yet have I killed 
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine?”

Ans. the father means to say that he has sowed the seeds of his ideas into his son’s mind, but his ideas did not cause any fruitful effect there. The son did not shape his own personality in the frame that his father had desired.

Q2. Explain the lines:“This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share. 
Silence surrounds us…..”

Ans. The meaning in the above lines is very much clear. The father says that the son has a full physical resemblance to him.

 Q4. What is the reason for this kind of relationship between the son and the father in the poem?

Ans. It is communication gap that is responsible for such a bad type of relationship between the father and the son. Sometimes fathers behave like a boss. So, sons do not feel comfortable in sharing their ‘joys and sorrows’ with them. They feel more comfortable with their mothers.

Q5. What can be estimated about the son’s state of mind from the lines, “He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief. 
We each put out an empty hand, 
Longing for something to forgive.”

Ans. From the above lines, one thing is clear the son is confused about ‘something’. A constant struggle may be going on in his mind. It may be about making a type of compromise that is made when one fails or feels helpless to proceed further with the present odd situation.

It is a kind of compromise which takes place when one is defeated. The son may have struggled hard to make his career but may have failed in this competitive world. Now he might be thinking to come back to his father’s house.

Q 6. Explain the lines:  “We each put out an empty hand, /Longing for something to forgive.”

Ans. In the above lines, ‘we’ stands for ‘the father’ and ‘the son’. The father says that each of them extends his empty hand forward to shake and long to forgive each other. The question arises here as to why the adjective ‘empty’ is used in front of the noun ‘hand’.

 When a person shakes hands with another person, the hands are always empty. But if the meaning is taken at a deeper level, the hand is never empty. It has the warmth of love.  But in this case, the emotion of love is missing at present. It has to take place in the new relationship that will emerge out of ‘sorrow’.

(B)                       Some Important Stanzas for Comprehension

 Stanza 1

“I do not understand this child
 Though we have lived together now
 In the same house for years.”

Q1. Who is “I” in the above stanza?

Ans. It is the father in the above stanza.

Q2. Why does the “I” say that he does not understand that child?

Ans. The father does not understand what the son wants.

Q3. Who is the child mentioned in the stanza?

Ans. The child is the son of the father, the narrator in this poem.

Q4. Name the poem and its poet.

Ans. The title of the poem is Father to Son  and the poet is Elizabeth Jennings 

Stanza 2

“Yet have I killed 
The seed I spent or sown it where
The land is his and none of mine? “

 “We speak like strangers, there's no sign
Of understanding in the air. ..”

“This child is built to my design
Yet what he loves I cannot share. 
Silence surrounds us…..”

Q1. For What does the ‘seed’ stand ?

Ans. It stands for the seed of ideas.

Q2. Why does the father say that he has spent the seed he had sown?

Ans. He says so because his son’s mindset is different from his own. He expected the same ideas as he has in his mind.

Q3. Why do they behave like strangers?

Ans. No ideas were common between them. That’s why they speak like ‘strangers’.

Q4. What is the reason for this kind of relationship between the son and the father in the poem?

Ans. It is the communication gap that is responsible for such a bad type of relationship between the father and the son. Sometimes fathers behave like a boss. So, sons do not feel comfortable sharing their ‘joys and sorrows with them. They feel more comfortable with their mothers.

 Q5. What is meant by the word ‘design’ in the poem?

Ans. Here ‘design’ means physical structure and resemblance.

Q6. Explain the expression: ‘what he loves I cannot share’.

Ans. When the father says that ‘what he loves I cannot share’, he means to say that his son has different likes, dislikes, tastes and so many other ideas.

Stanza 3

“I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father's house, the home he knew, 
Rather than see him make and move
His world….”

Q1. Who is a prodigal son?

Ans. ‘A prodigal son is the one who has left his family to do something that his family did not allow him to do, and after some time, he has returned home feeling sorry for his mistake.

Q2. What does the father want?

Ans. The father wants that the son should return to his house unconditionally.

Q3. What does the words ‘his father's house indicate?

Ans. The use of the words ‘his father's house shows that the father does not want his son not to make his claim on the house. It shows the father’s possessive nature also. He wants his son to possess him like a thing.

Q4. Explain the line:  “Rather than see him make and move/His world.”

Ans. The father would like his son should come back and he would not like to see him making his own house, making his own world where he can move of his own.

The above line “Rather than see him make and move/His world.” shows that the father does not like that his son should become independent and develop his own world of his own and where he could move freely. If he returns home, he would forgive him. Thus, after forgiving him, he would shape (develop) a new relationship out of the sad one that was there already between them.

Stanza 4

“I would forgive him too, 
Shaping from sorrow a new love. 
Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land.”

Q1. What does the father want to shape now?

Ans The father wants to shape a new relationship out of the sad one.

Q2. What thought has forced the father to develop a new relationship out of the old one?
Ans. The father reaches the conclusion that both the son and the father must live together in the same house.

Q3. What meaning does the line ‘On the same globe and the same land’may convey?

Ans. The same globe stands for the earth and the same land means the same nation/country.

Stanza 5

“He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief. 
We each put out an empty hand, 
Longing for something to forgive.”

Q1. Who is ‘He’ in the above lines?

Ans. “he” is the son in the above lines.

Q2. Who cannot understand and what?

Ans. The son cannot understand why anger grows in him from grief.

Q3.  What do each of them long?

Ans. Each of them long for something to forgive each other.

Q4. What could be something in the above lines?

Ans. It could be the past behavior that they showed towards each other.