French literature influences writers and politicians in Kerala: Tharoor

T'puram: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor stressed the cultural bond between France and Kerala, stating that French literature had a deep influence on writers and politicians of the state.

Speaking at the launch of the ‘Pardon My French' bookshelf at DC Books, organised by the French Institute of India on Thursday, Tharoor said, "French culture and ideas have seeped into our consciousness through political writing, appreciation and values of democracy, liberty, equality and fraternity." He noted that the extraordinary contribution of French writers opened new ways of thinking.

"More than 100 years ago, in a transformative act of literary vision, Nalappat Narayana Menon translated Victor Hugo's Les Misérables into Malayalam as ‘Paavangal'. It was a cultural transplantation and the soil of Kerala received it not just out of curiosity but with gratitude and a bit of revolutionary fervour. Our famous communist leader, EMS Namboothiripad, said ‘Paavangal' was one of the sparks that led him to communism. Writers like Thagazhi and O V Vijayan have said that in the translated works of French writing, they found a new idiom of empathy, a new narrative possibility and a new lens through which to view the oppressed and the invisible. With ‘Paavangal', Malayalam found a weapon for awakening and that engagement partly contributed to the decades of remarkable visionary and social ferment in Kerala from the 1930s onwards," Tharoor said.

He also mentioned that many other Malayalis started to translate works of French and Russian fiction and modernist works and that's how the doors to people like Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo and Émile Zola were opened to Malayali minds. "That's how many Malayalis discovered the challenges of realism and introspection in a literature that mirrors society and questions it," he added.

"The French, in many ways, have a cultural affinity to us, including in our great conversational habit. The habit of sitting around and discussing over coffee. The Bengali adda, the Malayali tea shop. This is France, except that it is taking place in our languages," he said.