During the dark early decades of Chinese Communist rule in Tibet meaningful literary work effectively ceased. However, as Deng Xiaoping initiated political and economic reforms in China in 1978, and restrictions in Tibet eased, there was a veritable explosion of literary activity. Traditional literature, generally conservative and strongly religious in tone, re-emerged. Separately, a host of young Tibetan authors arose. Largely educated in the Chinese “Nationalities Universities”, they were seen as the vanguard of a new movement. The styles, genres, and subject matter they introduced, through the novel media of literary journals, were highly innovative. The division between the traditional and modern forms of literature, established in the early 1980s, remains to the present day. Separate literary corpora and philosophies distinguish the two as much as their distinct authors and styles. The Tibetan diaspora played no part in the new literature's initial development. Members of the exiled community, who perceived themselves as the custodians of traditional culture, adhered to the conventional writing style. Only with the arrival of writers from Tibet in the 1990s did the new literature begin to make some impact upon that community.
Lama Jabb's work is an informative introduction to modern Tibetan literature. As its title indicates, it is organized around two central theses, related to literary continuity and nationhood. Firstly, it argues that in their enthusiasm to focus upon the revolutionary and pioneering nature of modern writing commentators have exaggerated the extent of its break with earlier literature. Hence the author draws attention to various thematic and stylistic correspondences that he asserts represent lines of continuity, linking the two literatures. Secondly, previous works, most notably Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change, edited by Lauren Hartley and Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), the first major academic volume on modern Tibetan literature, approached it through a multiplicity of perspectives. This work instead resolutely places politics centre stage, arguing that the movement cannot be seen as separate from the issue of nationhood.
The author advocates that the sense of identity constructed upon shared ties of language, religion, history, culture, territory, myth, and collective memory (characterized, more recently, by a shared sense of loss) constitutes a Tibetan “national” identity. He maintains that because modern literature continues to project Tibetan identity and consciousness, Tibetan nationhood remains its primary topic (although, of course, the Chinese authorities tolerate no overt reference to Tibetan nationhood in a political sense). The author even suggests that the Tibetan situation demonstrates the possibility of a “stateless nation”, one without any sovereign power.
Instead of providing a comprehensive picture of the modern movement, or a detailed chronology of its development, the book's seven chapters present varied and contrasting areas and themes that paint a vivid picture of the literary landscape. Following the introduction (Chapter 1), the author explores notions of continuity and nationhood in chapters devoted respectively to Tibetan music, social criticism, expressions of cultural trauma, a new generation of poets, erotic poetry, and the book's conclusion.
Despite limiting discussion to Tibetan-language material (unlike the aforementioned earlier volume), the author's concept of literature is broad, as illustrated by Chapter 2, examining the lyrics of popular folk songs known as dunglen. The chapters' shifting tones, as much as their contents, make this book an engaging read. Thus literary analysis, the history of Tibetan writing, and the political backdrop to the modern literature are described in an academic fashion. Chapter 4, however, dealing with literary representation of cultural traumas, has an emotional and personalized voice, and includes the author's own mother's eyewitness account of a massacre. Conversely, Chapter 6, analysing Tibetan erotic poetry, sometimes borders on the sensational.
Tracing continuity, the author switches rapidly between writing from different eras: from the earliest recorded compositions, of the Tibetan imperial age (seventh–ninth centuries CE), right up to those of the present day, appearing in the dynamic new media, such as online Tibetan literary forums. The continuing revolutionary spirit, manifest in some portions of the movement, is illustrated in Chapter 5, dedicated to the self-proclaimed “Third Generation” of Tibetan poets, who challenge what they judge to be the complacency of the established poets (the original new wave, who came to prominence between the 1980s and 1990s).
The modern movement is credited with the introduction into Tibetan writing of the novel and free verse poetry. The author's discussion about the latter illustrates his argument about continuity. Since its popularization by Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251), the poetic form dominant in Tibetan literature was inspired by the Sanskrit kāvya compositional style. Laden with highly stylized figures and technical poetic synonyms, presented within an unyielding, stanza-based format, this scholarly lingua franca was entirely detached from everyday life. Modern free verse, more concerned with mundane themes, and closer to patterns of normal speech, challenged not only poetic conventions, according to the traditional model of scholarly learning, but also its understanding of the role of the arts. However, countering the view that modern free verse was a revolutionary break with tradition, the author argues that prior to scholarly enchantment with kāvya, an ancient and more naturalistic style of indigenous versification, known as mgur, had prevailed.
Throughout, the author displays an impressive command of the sources, and manages to combine subjects as diverse as contemporary literary criticism with the role of oral literature in his own nomad upbringing. The overall experience for the reader is a satisfying one.
It is, however, disappointing that no Tibetan originals of texts are included. The gulf between traditional and modern writing styles is inadequately conveyed by translation alone. Tibetan originals would have helped readers of Tibetan (modern literature remains a mystery to many outside Tibet). And no knowledge of Tibetan is required to see the contrast in the visual image: traditional stanza verses are the epitome of ordered regularity, the converse of the asymmetry of much modern writing, which, in its more avant-garde manifestations, approaches a chaotic scrawl, or series of short eruptions, swathed in foreign punctuation marks.
The author seems over-generous with his references to Western literary theories and figures. Further expansion on their relevance to his argument would have been welcome. Also, some of the generalizations about Buddhism (specifically Tibetan Buddhism) seem questionable. On occasions, the author simplifies sequences of events, and literary categories. Thus modern free verse and kāvya-inspired verse sometimes resemble binary oppositions: the latter, a byword for rigidity. However, inflexible stanza-based versification had been the norm in translations and prayers since imperial times, long before kāvya popularization. Also, historically, mgur is not the self-evident and consistent category that the author suggests. For him mgur seems to represent a very specific format. But even this is still, like its hyperbolic kāvya-inspired cousin, a metric form. The actual picture seems more complicated than the author suggests, and his notion of correspondences and antecedents somewhat loose.
Elsewhere, to support his contention that the themes of modern erotic poetry are not new to Tibetan literature, the author supplies copious examples from pre-modern writings. These range from the cryptic sensuality of some kāvya-inspired lines, to the outright crudity and bawdiness of more popular literature. This is a revealing and entertaining journey through a regularly overlooked area of Tibetan writing. The relevance of some examples here, and even whether they all belong in a single category, seems more debatable. The universality of the themes of sex and bodily functions makes it difficult to depict their reappearance as a literary continuity. Correspondences and recurrences, especially spread over so many centuries, do not necessarily represent continuation. Doubts about categories and continuity might also be raised in relation to the author's discussion on “the Tibetan Tradition of Social Criticism” (Chapter 3).
I welcome the author's decision to place politics centre-stage. Rather than a mere backdrop, the political situation is the crucible in which modern Tibetan literature has been forged. The battle between censorship and creativity continues to shape this most vibrant and dynamic form of Tibetan literature. However, in emphasizing the continuity of indigenous writing, the book underplays debts to foreign literature. In the essay and short-story genres (also innovations by the modern movement) these are especially obvious, but this volume hardly mentions them. A majority of the influential first-generation writers attended the same educational institutions. Their compositions reflect their exposure to an array of traditions: Chinese, Western, and Communist, as well as Tibetan. The richness and brilliance of much modern writing derives in no small part from this concoction of influences.
This book presents modern literature within the framework of the bigger issues and causes. It does not address the authors' smaller-scale, personal conflicts: the battles between integrity and naked ambition, the authors' struggles with modernity, juvenility, public and self-image, machismo, and occasionally with each other. Most importantly, one has a sense that the attitudes of many individual authors to their literary and cultural heritage are extremely conflicted. My own contacts with writers and readings of the literature lead me to the belief that it is ambivalences and ambiguities (as much as certainties and convictions), and the authors' struggle to resolve the irreconcilable tensions between feelings of pride and despair in their cultural and historical inheritance that are essential to understanding the literature.
My reservations about this book are relatively minor: they relate only to certain aspects of the argumentation and the occasional limitations imposed by its framework. The journey that this work takes one on is extremely rewarding. This is an absorbing and illuminating read. It is composed in a style that should appeal both to the academic community and a wider audience. For anyone with a specific interest in modern Tibetan literature this is essential reading. Equally, it can be recommended to anyone wishing to learn about contemporary Tibetan culture, and even the traditional literary heritage of Tibet.
