A little magazine in English,
called the little magazine (that's
the name of the magazine – in little letters with no capitals!), I came across
at the Vijayawada Book Festival in January 2005 made me think about the history
of the little magazine movement. I put down in my diary the information I had
collected as well as my thoughts on the subject. I chanced upon the notes this
morning while looking for something else, and it was a pleasure to read the
diary entry seven years after it had been recorded.
The
term "little magazine" can be applied to a range of different
publications, but it is often used with reference to literary magazines which
carry serious writings. The writings are
usually avant-garde and non-commercial and may not be acceptable to mainstream
publications either because they deviate from the established moral or
aesthetic norms, or because the writers are little known.
The
aim of the earliest little magazines published in the late nineteenth century
was to establish a literary movement. In the twentieth century, the little magazine
became a fixture in the cultural and political life of several nations,
especially, the United
States , the United Kingdom , France and Germany . The first three decades of the century saw
two kinds of little magazines – those which laid emphasis on literary and
aesthetic form and theory, and left-wing magazines. To the former belong Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, edited by Harriet Monroe and Ezra
Pound; Others, edited by Margaret
Anderson; and Dial, edited by
Marianne Moore. The most significant of
the proletarian or left-wing magazines was The
Masses, published from New York .
The
little magazines published since the 1940s have been supported and sustained by
writers in academic circles. Two of the
most noteworthy examples are The Kenyon
Review, founded by John Crowe Ransom in 1939, and Scrutiny, edited by FR Leavis.
Several
famous writers have had their first publication in little magazines. The list includes T S Eliot, Robert Frost,
Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. Joyce's Ulysses
had its first US
printing in The Little Review, after
which the magazine was completely broke!
How is
the Indian little magazine scene? In the
last quarter of the twentieth century, hundreds of little magazines were being
brought out in different languages.
Printed on the cheapest possible paper, on presses run by printer's devils,
they were a real eye-sore. While most of
them have disappeared for want of readership, some still survive. They not only survive but have taken an
attractive form, thanks to the institutional support they receive from some
publishers. I have watched with
amazement the evolution of Kanaiyazhi,
a little magazine in Tamil to which I was a subscriber for two-and-a-half
decades and an occasional contributor. I
no longer subscribe to it, having switched my loyalty to two other little
magazines, Subhamangala, which was
wound up a few years ago when its editor, Komal Swaminathan died, and Kalachuvadu, published from Nagercoil in
Tamil Nadu, but Kanaiyazhi is so
attractive in its modern avatar that it doesn't look a little magazine at all!
The little
magazine I came across at the book festival is very well produced with a
variety of engaging features and is edited with great competence by Antara Dev Sen, formerly Senior
Editor with the Hindustan Times.
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