Pythagoras
&
Music of the Spheres

There is geometry in the humming of the strings
... there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Pythagoras.

The History of Philosophy (c.1660) by Thomas Stanley.

Pythagoras

From Egypt we move across the Mediterranean Sea to the Greek island of Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras, whose ideas dominate most of the material in this course. We'll introduce Pythagoras and his secret society of the Pythagoreans.

We'll look at the Pythagoreans' ideas about numbers, as a prelude to our next unit on number symbolism. Finally, we'll introduce a new idea that will be recurring theme throughout this course, the musical ratios, which will reappear in discussions of the architecture of the Renaissance.

Our main link between Egypt and Greece seems to be Thales c 640-550 BC, father of Greek mathematics, astronomy, and Philosophy, and was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. A rich merchant, his duties as a merchant took him to Egypt, and so became one of the main sources of Egyptian mathematical information in Greece. It was Thales advised his student to visit Egypt, and that student was Pythagoras.

Raphael's School of Athens

Janson, H. W. History of Art. Fifth Edition. NY: Abrams, 1995. p.497

Pythagoras is shown in this famous painting, done by Raphael in 1510-11, which also shows most of the Greek philosophers.

Socrates sprawls on the steps at their feet, the hemlock cup nearby.

His student Plato the idealist is on the left, pointing upwards to divine inspiration. He holds his Timaeus, a book we'll talk about soon.

Plato's student Aristotle, the man of good sense, stands next to him. He is holding his Ethics in one hand and holding out the other in a gesture of moderation, the golden mean.

Euclid is shown with compass, lower right. He is the Greek mathematician whose Elements we'll mention often.

Slide 3-2: Pythagoras in Raphael's School of Athens Janson, H. W. History of Art. Fifth Edition. NY: Abrams, 1995. p.497

Finally, we see Pythagoras (582?-500? BC), Greek philosopher and mathematician, in the lower-left corner.

The Pythagoreans

Pythagoras was born in Ionia on the island of Sámos, and eventually settled in Crotone, a Dorian Greek colony in southern Italy, in 529 B.C.E. There he lectured in philosophy and mathematics.

He started an academy which gradually formed into a society or brotherhood called the Order of the Pythagoreans.

Disciplines of the Pythagoreans included:

We see here the roots of later monastic orders.

For badges and symbols, the Pythagoreans had the Sacred Tetractys and the Star Pentagram, both of which we'll talk about later.

There were three degrees of membership:

1. novices or "Politics"
2. Nomothets, or first degree of initiation
3. Mathematicians

The Pythagoreans relied on oral teaching, perhaps due to their pledge of secrecy, but their ideas were eventually committed to writing. Pythagoras' philosophy is known only through the work of his disciples, and it's impossible to know how much of the "Pythagorean" discoveries were made by Pythagoras himself. It was the tradition of later Pythagoreans to ascribe everything to the Master himself.

Pythagorean Number Symbolism

The Pythagoreans adored numbers. Aristotle, in his Metaphysica, sums up the Pythagorean's attitude towards numbers.

"The (Pythagoreans were) ... the first to take up mathematics ... (and) thought its principles were the principles of all things. Since, of these principles, numbers ... are the first, ... in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to things that exist ... more than [just] air, fire and earth and water, (but things such as) justice, soul, reason, opportunity ..."

The Pythagoreans knew just the positive whole numbers. Zero, negative numbers, and irrational numbers didn't exist in their system. Here are some Pythagorean ideas about numbers.

Masculine and Feminine Numbers

Odd numbers were considered masculine; even numbers feminine because they are weaker than the odd. When divided they have, unlike the odd, nothing in the center. Further, the odds are the master, because odd + even always give odd. And two evens can never produce an odd, while two odds produce an even.

Since the birth of a son was considered more fortunate than birth of a daughter, odd numbers became associated with good luck. "The gods delight in odd numbers," wrote Virgil.

1   Monad. Point. The source of all numbers. Good, desirable, essential, indivisible.

2   Dyad. Line. Diversity, a loss of unity, the number of excess and defect. The first feminine number. Duality.

3   Triad. Plane. By virtue of the triad, unity and diversity of which it is composed are restored to harmony. The first odd, masculine number.

4   Tetrad. Solid. The first feminine square. Justice, steadfast and square. The number of the square, the elements, the seasons, ages of man, lunar phases, virtues.

5   Pentad. The masculine marriage number, uniting the first female number and the first male number by addition.

• The number of fingers or toes on each limb.
  
• The number of regular solids or polyhedra.
  

6   The first feminine marriage number, uniting 2 and 3 by multiplication.
The first perfect number (One equal to the sum of its aliquot parts, IE, exact divisors or factors, except itself. Thus, (1 + 2 + 3 = 6).
The area of a 3-4-5 triangle

7   Heptad. The maiden goddess Athene, the virgin number, because 7 alone has neither factors or product. Also, a circle cannot be divided into seven parts by any known construction).

8   The first cube.

9   The first masculine square.
Incorruptible - however often multiplied, reproduces itself.

10   Decad. Number of fingers or toes.
Contains all the numbers, because after 10 the numbers merely repeat themselves.
The sum of the archetypal numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10)

27   The first masculine cube.

28   Astrologically significant as the lunar cycle.
It's the second perfect number (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28).
It's also the sum of the first 7 numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28)!

35   Sum of the first feminine and masculine cubes (8+27)

36   Product of the first square numbers (4 x 9)
Sum of the first three cubes (1 + 8 + 27)
Sum of the first 8 numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8)

Figured Numbers

The Pythagoreans represented numbers by patterns of dots, probably a result of arranging pebbles into patterns. The resulting figures have given us the present word figures.

Thus 9 pebbles can be arranged into 3 rows with 3 pebbles per row, forming a square.

Similarly, 10 pebbles can be arranged into four rows, containing 1, 2, 3, and 4 pebbles per row, forming a triangle.

From these they derived relationships between numbers. For example, noting that a square number can be subdivided by a diagonal line into two triangular numbers, we can say that a square number is always the sum of two triangular numbers.

Thus the square number 25 is the sum of the triangular number 10 and the triangular number 15.

Sacred Tetractys

One particular triangular number that they especially liked was the number ten. It was called a Tetractys, meaning a set of four things, a word attributed to the Greek Mathematician and astronomer Theon (c. 100 CE). The Pythagoreans identified ten such sets.

Ten Sets of Four Things

Gnomons

Gnomon means carpenter's square in Greek. Its the name given to the upright stick on a sundial. For the Pythagoreans, the gnomons were the odd integers, the masculine numbers. Starting with the monad, a square number could be obtained by adding an L-shaped border, called a gnomon.

Thus, the sum of the monad and any consecutive number of gnomons is a square number.

1 + 3 = 4

1 + 3 + 5 = 9

1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16

and so on.

The Quadrivium

While speaking of groups of four, we owe another one to the Pythagoreans, the division of mathematics into four groups,

giving the famous Quadrivium of knowledge, the four subjects needed for a bachelor's degree in the Middle Ages.

Music of the Spheres

Jubal and Pythagoras

Slide 3-4: Theorica Musica F. Gaffurio, Milan, 1492 Lawlor, Robert. Sacred Geometry. NY: Thames & Hudson, 1982. p.7

So the Pythagoreans in their love of numbers built up this elaborate number lore, but it may be that the numbers that impressed them most were those found in the musical ratios.

Lets start with this frontispiece from a 1492 book on music theory.

The upper left frame shows Lubal or Jubal, from the Old Testament, "father of all who play the lyre and the pipe" and 6 guys whacking on an anvil with hammers numbered 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16.

The frames in the upper right and lower left show Pithagoras hitting bells, plucking strings under different tensions, tapping glasses filled to different lengths with water, all marked 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16. In each frame he sounds the ones marked 8 and 16, an interval of 1:2 called the octave, or diapason.

In the lower right, he and Philolaos, another Pythagorean, blow pipes of lengths 8 and 16, again giving the octave, but Pythagoras holds pipes 9 and 12, giving the ratio 3:4, called the fourth or diatesseron while Philolaos holds 4 and 6, giving the ratio 2:3, called the fifth or diapente.

They are:

These were the only intervals considered harmonious by the Greeks. The Pythagoreans supposedly found them by experimenting with a single string with a moveable bridge, and found these pleasant intervals could be expressed as the ratio of whole numbers.

Pythagoras in the School of Athens

Slide 3-3: Closeup of Tablet Bouleau Janson, H. W. History of Art. Fifth Edition. NY: Abrams, 1995. p.497

Raphael's School of Athens shows Pythagoras is explaining the musical ratios to a pupil.

Notice the tablet. It shows:

The words diatessaron, diapente, diapason.
The roman numerals for 6, 8, 9, and 12, showing the ratio of the intervals, same as in the music book frontispiece.

The word for the tone, EPOGLOWN, at the top.

Under the tablet is a triangular number 10 called the sacred tetractys, that we mentioned earlier.

The Harmonic Scale

Slide 3-5: Gafurio Lecturing F. Gafurio, De Harmonia musicorum instrumentorum, 1518, Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. NY: Random, 1965. 43a.

This diagram from a book written in 1518 shows the famous Renaissance musical theorist Franchino Gafurio with three organ pipes and 3 strings marked 3 , 4, 6. This indicates the octave, 3 : 6 divided by the harmonic mean 4, into the fourth, 3 : 4, and the fifth, 4 : 6 or 2 : 3.

The banner reads, "Harmonia est discordia concors" or Harmony is discordant concord, propounding the thesis that harmony results from two unequal intervals drawn from dissimilar proportions. The diagram shows compasses, suggesting a link between geometry and music.

So What?

So after experimenting with plucked strings the Pythagoreans discovered that the intervals that pleased people's ears were

and we can add the two Greek composite consonances, not mentioned before . . .

Now bear in mind that we're dealing with people that were so nuts about numbers that they made up little stories about them and arranged pebbles to make little pictures of them. Then they discovered that all the musical intervals they felt was beautiful, these five sets of ratios, were all contained in the simple numbers

1, 2, 3, 4

and that these were the very numbers in their beloved sacred tetractys that added up to the number of fingers. They must have felt they had discovered some basic laws of the universe.

Quoting Aristotle again ... "[the Pythagoreans] saw that the ... ratios of musical scales were expressible in numbers [and that] .. all things seemed to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number."

Music of the Spheres

Slide 3-6: Kepler's Model of the Universe Lawlor, Robert. Sacred Geometry. NY: Thames & Hudson, 1982. p. 106

"... and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number... "

It seemed clear to the Pythagoreans that the distances between the planets would have the same ratios as produced harmonious sounds in a plucked string. To them, the solar system consisted of ten spheres revolving in circles about a central fire, each sphere giving off a sound the way a projectile makes a sound as it swished through the air; the closer spheres gave lower tones while the farther moved faster and gave higher pitched sounds. All combined into a beautiful harmony, the music of the spheres.

This idea was picked up by Plato, who in his Republic says of the cosmos; ". . . Upon each of its circles stood a siren who was carried round with its movements, uttering the concords of a single scale," and who, in his Timaeus, describes the circles of heaven subdivided according to the musical ratios.

Kepler, 20 centuries later, wrote in his Harmonice Munde (1619) says that he wishes "to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions."

And later, "I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions."

Systems of Proportions based on the Musical Ratios

Slide 17-1: Villa Capra Rotunda
citatation

What does this have to do with art or architecture? The idea that the same ratios that are pleasing to the ear would also be pleasing to the eye appears in the writings of Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, and St. Aquinas. But the most direct statement comes from the renaissance architect Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472), "[I am] convinced of the truth of Pythagoras' saying, that Nature is sure to act consistently . . . I conclude that the same numbers by means of which the agreement of sounds affect our ears with delight are the very same which please our eyes and our minds."

Alberti then gives a list of ratios permissible, which include those found by Pythagoras. We'll encounter Alberti again for he is a central figure in the development of perspective in painting.

We'll also discuss another architect who used musical ratios, Andrea Palladio (1518-1580), who designed the Villa Capra Rotunda shown here.

Summary

Slide 3-7: Correspondence School in Crotone W. S. Anglin. Mathematical Intelligence V19, No. 1, 1997

I always wanted to make a pilgrimage to Crotone, site of the Pythagorean cult, but this is all that's there to mark their presence. Pythagoras and his followers died when their meetinghouse was torched. We'll have more on the Pythagoreans later, in particular their fondness for the star pentagram.

Ray grew up in Calcutta, which in 18th/19th c. was the seat of the British Empire in India. The merger of the East and the West gave birth to the Bengali Renaissance and to the educated middle-class of which Ray and his family was an integral part. This fusion of the East and the West is deeply embedded in Ray's art-- the same kind of fusion one can find in Rabindranath Tagore's humanistic fusion of classical Indian tradition and Western liberal thoughts. Tagore himself was the principal architect and guiding spirit of the Bengali Renaissance and at one time Ray was a pupil of Tagore's art school at Shantiniketan. This kind of upbringing and education imbued Ray with traditional Bengali/Indian culture along with significant aspects of Western art and culture. Ray knew his cultures very well. David Ansen (Newsweek, 1981), the film critic of the Newsweek once wrote that few film artists could equal "the Renaissance man" for sheer cultural depth, which Ray possessed innately. How, when and where did he pick up such influences which eventually impacted on his art and craft, is an intriguing and an interesting question.

One major factor appears to be that Ray had learnt his art mainly from the Western cinema. The directors he repeatedly referred to, while talking about filmmaking, were Jean Renoir, Vittorio De Sica, John Ford and Frank Capra to name a few. He had also expressed admiration for directors as diverse as Bergman and Hitchcock. Ray met the French director Jean Renoir who was filming The River in Calcutta and it was Lindsay Anderson who asked Ray to write about Renoir for a Cine magazine called the Sequence, which Ray did by interviewing Renoir.

Earlier in his younger days, his two passions were films and music, in fact music preceded films in terms of his interest. He had grown up in an atmosphere of Bengali songs and Brahmo hymns where he participated in the family choir. But Ray hankered for something more dramatic than the vedic chants and Tagore songs, which he found in the symphonic music of the West. As he himself said: "At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music." (Sumit Mitra, 1983; p.73)

At the age of thirteen, Ray went looking for bargains in music shops of Calcutta with one of his school friends, and one of the treasures he found was Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and then he stumbled upon Mozart's Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. According to his friend, after the great discovery he lay awake the whole night. The logic, symmetry and the beauty of Mozart's music was not lost on Satyajit Ray. Ray once said : "As a small boy I had read about Beethoven in the Book of Knowledge, now I was listening enraptured to his sonatas and symphonies." Later in his professional life he learnt to play the piano which he played with "professional ease". His expertise in Western classical music was well recognized. Adi Gazdar, the Calcutta- based classical pianist once confirmed, that Ray was "one of the best connoisseurs of Western classical music in the country."

Jean Renoir was a major influence on Ray. Renoir was the first European director who warned Ray against Hollywood influence in Indian films. Renoir had noticed how the Indian film industry was churning out melodramas to cater to the taste of ever-enthusiastic Indian public. But he was optimistic that better films were going to be made and he blamed the current state of affairs on the Indian directors who found more "inspiration in the slick, artificiality of a Hollywood film than in the reality around him." Of all the films of Renoir, Ray admired La Regle du Jeu the most, a personal favorite of Renoir himself. Regarding filmmaking Renoir said that a filmmaker need not show a lot of things in a film but to show only the right things. Ray diligently followed the same advice that Renoir offered him in 1952: "You don't have to have too many elements in a film, but whatever you use must be the right elements, the expressive elements." From Renoir, Ray learnt that there was nothing more important to a film than the emotional integrity of human relationship in the film. No doubt technique was important but he said that it should not become the dominant force. "In America," Renoir said, "they worry too much about the technique, and neglect the human aspect."

Apart from Renoir, it was the Italian Neo-Realists who gripped Ray's imagination next. Ray noted in his book that his trip to London as an art director of an advertising agency was to seal the fate of his advertising career. He said that within three days of his arrival he had seen The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica which furthermore strengthened his resolve to make his first feature film Pather Panchali using natural locations and unknown actors as was the case with The Bicycle Thief. Ray says: "All through my stay in London, the lessons of The Bicycle Thief and neo-realist cinema stayed with me." Ray's praise for The Bicycle Thief knew no bounds as he says: "BT is a triumphant discovery of the fundamentals of cinema and De Sica has openly acknowledged his debt to Chaplin." He found that the universality of the theme, the effectiveness of the treatment and the low-cost production made it an ideal film to be used as a model by the Indian filmmakers.

Curiously, one of Ray's earliest introduction to sound films and one of the earliest influence in filmmaking was Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise. Ray pointed out that with the introduction of sound on film it was Lubitsch who integrated a story and the song to form a whole new work of art. Ray admiringly talked of Lubitsch as a director with "all wit and elegance and innuendo," "a director who had a permanent influence on all future filmmakers of sophisticated comedy." Incidentally, Lubitsch was also one of the few top rated European directors to really succeed in Hollywood.

In Calcutta, Ray often used to drop by Jean Renoir's hotel-room during the evenings to discuss Europeans films and filmmakers. Renoir would point out the distinctive and specific features of the landscape of Bengal which symbolised the essence of Bengal. For instance, a clump of banana trees, a small pond in a village or a waving paddy was quintessentially Bengal to Renoir. Like in Renoir's The River, the placid Ganges is a recurrent symbol in Ray's films including Aparajito. The film, shot in Benares, continuously shows man's dependence on the river as a source of life. Renoir even told Ray that if Indian filmmakers could get Hollywood out of their system, they would be making great films. (Marie Seton, Satyajit Ray, OUP, 1974; p. 145)

True to Renoir's advice, Ray focused on details which typified the city and the village in Bengal. The vast plains of Bengal, the rivers, the monsoon rains, and heavy moisture-laden clouds formed the backbone of Ray's earlier films.

In Pather Panchali, Ray introduced the neo-realist tradition of using non-actors and actually shooting on location while using an unadorned style of photography. The details of speech, behavior, habits, customs, rituals, substantiated the very simple structure and the narrative line. The film, almost a documentary, was simple enough to be comprehensible at all levels. Incidentally, the novel Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, from which the movie was adapted, was a sprawling saga whose slow speed, leisurely denouement caught the perfect rhythm of the rural Bengal.

At an interview given at the AFI (American Film Institute), Ray told the interviewer that the slow pace of the narrative in his films developed out of necessity -- the necessity of portraying the subtle and complex relations among the human characters. The relationship between Apu and his mother is so carefully and diligently handled that we realize, in due course of time, where the two stand in regards to each other. Apu's wonder at modern inventions and amenities like electricity, the printing press, and automobiles is like a great discovery. It is from such minute observations that a convincing picture of Apu's transition to maturity and independence is built up in Aparajito. This application of details and the focus on human-relationship is an aspect prevalent in the films of Italian neo-realists like De Sica, Rossellini, Fellini and others. In Aparajito, Benares is seen through the eyes of the curious Apu -- the narrow lanes, the sacred monkeys, the muscle builders, the boats on the river, the priests chanting their hymns, and the daily cleansing of bodies on the banks of the holy river Ganges. A parallel could be drawn between De Sica's The Bicycle Thief where much of the city life and city activities could be viewed through the wandering Bruno's eyes and Apu's wonder-filled eyes on his arrival in Benares.

European traits and facets are in abundance in Ray's films. Ray claims that, "they have been brought up to my notice that I can actually name them: irony, understatement, humor, open endings, the use of leit-motifs and a fluid camera and so on. I only try to tell a story in the best possible way balancing the needs of Art with the need to reach an audience. By no means a unique pre-occupation for a filmmaker, but perhaps involving more risks than usual in the context of India. The Western elements often perturbs the Indian viewer in the same way as the indigenous elements perturb the Western viewers." (Sight & Sound, sp. 1982 vol. 51; #2) Then later Ray adds: "What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure" (Sight & Sound, Sp.1982; vol. 51, #2).

Pertaining to cinema techniques and cinematography, Ray claimed to be in debt to Godard and Truffaut of the French. New Wave for introducing Western technical and cinematic innovations. The new cinema techniques introduced by Jean Luc Godard in films such as Breathless certainly had an effect on Ray who once said: "all artists owe a debt to innovators and profit by such innovation. Godard gave me the courage to dispense largely with fades and dissolves, Truffaut to use the freeze." (Sight & Sound, Vol.51 #2, Sp.1982)

But what impressed Ray the most was the innovation, "-- subtle, almost imperceptible kind of innovation that can be felt in the very texture and sinews of a film. A film like La Regle du Jeu - I defy anyone to give it a label. This is the kind of innovation that appeals to me," he said. (Sight & Sound, vol.51; #2, Sp.1982)

Ray's love of Western classical music has already been mentioned. Furthermore, Ray not only wrote his scripts, designed costumes and clothes, he also composed musical scores for his films. For Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Jalsaghar he used well-known Indian classical musicians to score but progressively he felt the creative urge to control the sound-track of the movie. He devised his own music for Teen Kanya and at one time he told Goerges Sadoul that he thought (Seton, 1974) endlessly of Mozart in connection with Charulata, and for that he himself had composed four musical motifs. Ray at one time claimed that his films had been influenced by the musical forms of a symphony and sonatas, and he was highly impressed by Sergei Profokiev's scores of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible; by Cicoguini's music for The Bicycle Thief and Miracle in Milan. Although Ray had no formal music education, he could pick out a tune or a melody by humming whistling or by tinkering on the piano and his scores for his films were usually very simple and straightforward, mainly with the use of a single instrument. Nonetheless, he also loved using Bengali folk songs and ballads as he did in Kanchenjungha, Charulata and later in the fantasy story Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne.

Western cultural behavior and mannerisms surface in quite a few of Ray's films. The depiction of life in the city, as in Mahanagar, appears fast paced, modern and contemporary. In his urban films, the themes appear to be universal and a part of any city life: rat race, unemployment, the working woman, and when dwellers behaving in much the same way as any other city folks the world over. The use of English language in some of his films itself indicates the influence of the British culture. English words and phrases used in the movies convey feelings and nuances for which Bengali language may have no equivalence. The use of English by the actors in Kanchenjungha for example actually indicates the degree of Westernization undergone by a set of characters in the film, consequently their class, social background and status in the society, as pointed out by an observer. There is ample eveidence to show that the elites of the Bengali society, who attended English-medium schools were in general more Anglicized and westernized than their counterparts from other social backgrounds. That the characters would break into English once in a while in the film clearly indicated their urban sophistication and the degree of westernization undergone by the characters. In the era when this film was produced such pronouncements were rare occasions but it is all too common nowadays.

In dealing with the subject of religion, superstition, and even death Ray stood squarely on the side of the Western rationalists. In general, Ray tended to avoid overly melodramatize and avoid sentimental approaches when dealing with these issues. In Devi, dealing with superstition and religiosity, Ray balanced the orthodox notion of a woman possessed of a great spiritual and psychic power with a rational and progressive household of a scientific-minded professor in Calcutta. The conflict between reason and superstition was approached with a deliberate sensitivity by Ray, avoiding what could potentially have become a bizarre situation. Instead of heightening the drama, the camera was used to contemplate the tragedy in a deliberate and a purposeful manner and gravity. In scenes of death there is no excessive show of grief. When the father/priest died in Aparajito we did not see his wife and son wailing but a beautiful symbolic shot of a flock of pigeons taking off in a soaring flight across the cloudy sky -- as if the soul had been freed from the body to now roam the universe as it pleased. When Apu's mother died, Apu was shown, briefly, crying with his head down under a tree -- and we moved on to the next scene. The discipline of Ray's inner self, not given to undue emotionalism, is reflected in his films and the structured images influenced by the Western classical music and some Western films, made Ray a true classicist and an integrated filmmaker according to some critics and scholars. (Seton, 1974).

By reviewing his films obvious questions arise and some of them have been clearly articulated by cultural critics like Ashish Nandy. He basically questions Ray's authenticity as an Indian filmmaker -- was he an Indian who was highly westernized, fully cosmopolitan but dealt with Indian themes merely because he happened to live in India? Or was he an Indian with Western aesthetic values even though the subject matters of his films remained Indocentric? Nandy hypothesizes that Ray's guiding principles of aesthetics and core values of his life were intrinsically drawn from the European Enlightenment of 17th-18th century.

Ray, no doubt, was a product of a "cultural implosion" that took place in Bengal in the 19th c., triggered by the British colonial intrusion and the European rationalism and values were a part and parcel of his consciousness. Nandy expounds that as a creative person Ray probably lived internally with a plurality of selves -- that a part of him was Indian and the other part was Western, imbuing his personality with a "bi-cultural component." Thus, true to his cultural and middleclass heritage, Ray was essentially a Calcuttan "babu" whose true cultural self expressed itself bi- culturally even in art. The peaceful co-existence within the two cultures, Bengali and English, once learnt as a technique of survival has now become a character trait of Bengalis and Indians in general, according to Nandy. If this is the case, then Ray was certainly open to Western and European ideas and thoughts throughout his life and related to Western filmmaking very strongly.

Many of the examples cited in this paper illustrate Ray's need to explore Bengal and the Bengali society both externally and internally, giving full vent to his multi-cultural self and exposing in its entirety the evolving post-colonial pluralistic society of Bengal and India. To do so, Ray not only took the story-telling techniques via celluloid from both the European and the Hollywood masters but also their music, narrative style, languages and other aspects of filmmaking.