SUPERNATURALISM:HOWS AND WHATS

                "....the fault was his.Shaded,soft-shaded lights by the bed-but he had been so careless as to leave on the bright electric chandelier in the centre of the ceiling.....She raised her eyelids-saw his glance at the chandelier,understood.Her eyes glittered.She murmured,`My beloved,don't worry-don't move....'

                 And she reached out her hand.Her hand grew larger,her arm grew longer and longer,it stretched out through the bed-curtains,across the long carpet,huge and overshadowing the whole of the long room,until at last its giant fingers were at the door.With a terminal click,she switched out the light."

                 And then it is all an unfathomable abyss which no soul can precisely language!At least Alfred Hitchcock,from whose"Stories they wouldn't let me on TV"the above is an excerpt,will not,not`cannot',of course.Because the excerpt is the end of A WOMAN SELDOM FOUND,an eerie tale of the supernatural by William Sansom,for,to be more precise,language on,supernatural gone.De la Mare's host of phantom dwellers must speak tongueless to lend tongue to the atmosphere of silence in The Listeners.Indeed,silence and destitution are very pet-children of supernaturalism,for they both are off-shoots of darkness.Bacon speaks our hearts:"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark."

                  O L Zangwill,the noted psychologist,argues that fear may be viewed as a progressive inhibition of the highest brain centres which gradually spread to lower functional levels of the nervous system.On the positive side,activities governed by subcortical centres may make their appearance and eventually dominate the total picture.

                  Once again,Hitchcock on the issue,why supernaturalism?"Civilization has become so screening and sheltering that we cannot experience sufficient thrills at first hand.Therefore,to prevent our becoming sluggish and jellified,we have to experience them artificially,and the screen is the best medium for this."

                   Truest word is then-`thrills'.We need them to escape the boredom of life,and this boredom lies,not in the strenuous activities of bread-earning,not even in the tax and toil of our profession,but in the loyalty-bound repetitive actions of our days,as if we are to childishly and unquestionably surrender to the tick-tick of a watch day in and day out,no respite, no digression,no variation.A time comes soon when we are to recite to ourselves the following,taken from De Musset:

                    "Who comes?Who calls me?No one.

                      I am alone.One o'clock strikes.

                      O Solitude!O Misery!"

                    Called`rugged individualists'in America,Daniel Boone,Davy Crickett and John C Fremont account for drug- taking,alcoholism,fast driving,even aerial rides and jumpings behind this shoot-out of bestial`thrills' in the toil-worn man.Hence their desperation to clutch the concept of` Saturdayness' in young Americans' life to-day.Yet fascination for the abracadabraic experiences does not lose their weightage to them.But,if put to narcotic tests,these people would only mutter these words, spelt long long ago by Lamb from his own within:"Who first invented work and bound the free and holiday-rejoicing spirit down?"

                     Supernaturalism has,however,another dimension.As witches are born of earth's bubbles,ghosts of tombs,owls of ruins,supernaturalism is believed to have issued out from our superstition,which is to the rationalists no better than primitive religion.C E M Joad remarks in this context:"Early religious ideas are a mixture of fear and cupboard love".

                      As often we look for pickles and chilly sauce in our menu-card,so do we look for`thrills'in life.After all`Variety is the spice of life'.In order to undo the theory,held by Virginia Woolf that "Life is not a series of gig lamps,symmetri-

cally arranged,it is a luminous halo,a semi-transparent envelope"we indulge in supernatural findings;but what they cater demands to be rubbished,to quote from Shakespeare,into "That undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns",never,never,never.

 (The above is my stimulant- reaction-vocalization in viewing the video`Ghosts' inserted by Samar Das.Thank you,Samar.)