Alice Boner Diaries (India 1934-1967) (An Old and Rare Book)

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Apart from an insight into Alice Boner's keen observation of Indian temple- architecture and art the present selection of her diary entries also depict the struggles of Alice Boner, the artist. In her work she strove to represent the spirit of India which her intensive experiences of over 40 years in the country revealed to her. Her experiences also included contact with personalities of the calibre of Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Laxman Joo, Sarojini Naidu, Ustad Alauddin Khan, and her admiration of Mahatma Gandhi.

As a remarkable diarist Alice Boner puts her thoughts to pen in an elegant, eminently readable style. The reader feels with her the thrill and awe at the ancient monumental sights all over India, reads about her vision of the principles of sacred art, and shares with her the inner conflict of one torn between the two worlds of Europe and India. Over and over again this unique woman, with roots in the European culture, expresses her deep attachment to India.

Most of the diary entries are in German and English and these have been retained for the sake of the originality of her fine expression, interspersed with a selection of sketches from her vast repertoire. In addition, the German portions have been translated here for the benefit of English readers.

Alice Boner (1889-1981), was a sculptor and painter who settled in Varanasi, India, in 1936 and became one of the outstanding scholars and interpreters of Indian sculpture and temple architecture. For her unique contribution to the understanding of Indian art, she was awarded the 'Padmabhushan' by the President of India in 1974, and an honorary Doctorate by the University of Zurich. After her first book, Principles of Composition in Hindu Sculpture: Cave Temple Period (Leiden 1962), she also published Śilpa Prakaśa (Medieval Orissan Sanskrit Text on Temple Architecture, Leiden 1966), New Light on the Sun Temple of Koņarka (Varanasi 1972) and Vastusutra Upaniṣad (Delhi 1982).

A Commemoration Volume was published in her memory, Rupa Pratirupa (Delhi 1982). Since 1989 the Kala Bhawan of the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, has a permanent exhibition 'Alice Boner: Artist and Scholar'.

On January 9, 1930 Alice Boner boarded a ship belonging to Lloyd Triestino in Venice. Her first journey to India thus began. The ship was called "Gange". In January 1936 she moved into an old, half-dilapidated house on the holy river Ganges in Banaras, which then became her permanent home. The ship "Gange" truly bore a symbolic name.

India was Alice Boner's dream. Oriental art fascinated her from her early youth on. On April 7, 1926 she saw Indian dance for the first time in Zürich. A short note in her diary says: "Evening in the Kursaal: a lot of kitsch and a revelation." This revelation was Uday Shankar. His dance convinced her that Indian art has something special to say to Europeans.

Alice Boner met Uday Shankar again in 1929 when he performed in Paris with his French partner Simkie. Uday Shankar was no longer happy with the accompanying music of records. He then planned to return to India in order to form a group of dancers and musicians. He wanted to present authentic Indian dance dramas to the West with an original ensemble. Alice Boner was thrilled by the idea and decided to collaborate. She hoped to arouse sympathy for this culturally important undertaking and to obtain active assistance in India.

This was the reason for Alice Boner's first journey to India. Already on the way, she wrote on January 14, 1930:

"Awoke on the ship in the Red Sea. A grand morning. Bright, almost transparent chains of mountains bordering the water-surface on both sides. A wide, as yet uninhabited, solitary world. Yellow stretches of sand in front of the steep slope of the mountain, zig-zag silhouettes, slightly moving play of waves. It becomes more and more beautiful. The mountain ranges increase and disperse, at the same time, into the air, into light and ether, delicately fading away. Ships appear and disappear in waves and smoke, majestic in the distance, almost touchable when near.

A sunset of immense intensity. For the first time one feels the southern spheres. The basic tone of the sea is deep dark, green-violet. In the distance, blue mountain-tops and above them the magic, fiery play, of red, yellow and greenish glow. Here the world has more form, more depth and much, much more bliss." (Quoted from Indien, mein Indien, Zürich: Werner Classen Verlag, 1984).

The expected help in India never materialized. Nevertheless, the two courageous adventurers, Alice Boner and Uday Shankar, did not let themselves be deterred. They returned to Paris in Autumn with only a single professional musician and with a team of Uday's talented, yet untrained brothers the youngest is today the world-famous sitar player Ravi Shankar and with other relatives. Uday's mother accompanied the group as the guardian angel. They could obtain some instruments and material as gifts, others they could buy.

Alice Boner rented a house in Boulogne s/Seine near Paris with a room for rehearsals. They prepared for the performances here: choreography, music, dance.

"In a diary one is one's own witness", Alice Boner wrote on September 14, 1952. This long series of diaries from 1934 to 1967, edited by her sister, Georgette Boner, together with Luitgard and Jayandra Soni, give one an insight into her life, covering more than a quarter of a century. And we, as readers, may indeed feel grateful to participate in its spiritual wealth. And what a richness has this unique lady conveyed to us of her way of life! We accompany the traveller along the outer journey to the East and the West, and along the inner journey of the seeker. We share her meetings with people of various disciplines. We experience how she perceptively opened herself to reality and conveyed it vividly. Indeed, we may undertake with her the crossing-over beyond reality into the unformed All-One, from which all phenomena originate, and into which they all return. We accompany this tireless art-explorer who discovered its secret structural principles and who then, after years of search, was rewarded by finding written instructions in palm-leaf manuscripts attesting her discoveries. We experience through this introspective and eloquent artist the struggle with the great work which finally took shape. And we are also allowed to read about the meditator's contemplation, the artistic-religious apprehension, the silent calmness, the serenity and joy.

Man as homo viator. Alice Boner was a pilgrim of the world, she undertook inwardly and outwardly the constant transformation of being on the way. "Caminando nos cambiamos" (journeying, we transform ourselves) can well be the motto of her path. For her the aim of life was what the Spanish call "hacer el camino", the pilgrimage of the traveller of worlds. Alice Boner went the way of the White Clouds, she followed the call of her inner destination: more and more to her self, realizing her self (atman), open to the mahatman, to being.

"Earth and sky are my home", she wrote on January 26, 1953 to be definitively at home nowhere on earth, this is the destiny of a person who has set out for the development of consciousness. Europe was not a permanent domicile, nor India. The real home is being, blissfully intuited in consciousness: Sat-Cid-Ananda.

Alice Boner did not, however, by-pass the richness of reality: she exposed herself to it, she let herself be open to it in order to cross over it into the One, amidst the richness of samsara, yet unwaveringly further towards the original source. All forms: the sea and the river, mountains, valleys, forests and deserts, animals and people, were messengers of ultimate reality for her. In change, in allowing one's own metamorphosis, in the waves of the stream of consciousness, the development of an individual towards ever greater openness for the message that comes from all beings is accomplished: the relation of all beings and the participation of each in the all-encompassing One. "Plants and animals and all forms emerge from a common uterus, in which all existence originates" (August 4, 1949). Dedicated in this way to the stream of coming into being and passing away, Alice Boner experiences the fullness: "something all-encomapassing lives in me above all, the correlations" (April 29, 1951).