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Suffering from our poetry
| Every poet writing seriously in our region, witness to atrocities on an unprecedented scale, will build his or her poem on the resistance to false attempts at justice. What other ideal can a writer have, asks JAYANTA MAHAPATRA. |
THE Hungarian composer Bela Bartok once wrote in a letter to a friend: "I have lost confidence in people, in countries, in everything." This was in 1941, when the Second World War was at its height. Today, 60 years after he said this, the truth of these words cannot be denied. I suppose one cannot be both tragic and human at the same time, especially in times of crisis such as war or revolution or terrorism; and each is an event of utmost misfortune for us. These are moments when the illogical becomes the logical, and a victory turns to loss.
The countries in this region are the victims of terrible acts, imprisonments, killings and burnings. One doesn't even know how many undiscovered graves there are around us. It is difficult for a writer to foresee the ultimate aim of these things. Can I, as an Indian, living far away from the valleys of Kashmir, think of the apples ripening on the trees when 40 people are killed without reason in a single barbarous act? Can I forget, as an Oriyan living amidst so-called civilised human beings, the cruel and savage act of the burning to death of a missionary and his two young children simply because they belonged to another faith? Any sensitive person would not be able to put aside the thought of the agony and the cries of the two children on that cold January night. And a poet is supposed to be a sensitive, feeling person, probably more than the man who delivers your morning paper or your milk. And so the poet will write about what he sees — and what we might call the poetry of witness — in his longing for truth through his own manner of direction and his innocence.
A long time back, I read Laxmi Prasad Devkota's poem titled "Make Me a Sheep, O God!" in an English translation. The Nepali poet's commonplace words still keep ringing in my ears:
Or with an artificial imagination.
Let me not create distorted magic of variegated colours out of magicless truth.
Let me not become a Brahmin to live on dirty water washing away other's sin.
Let me not reform to expose the world.
Let me not patch up the old and tattered things.
Let me lit the light of life,
Like the simple, beautiful, and unbeautiful light of nature,
When dying
Let me reach higher up than the sage
Perhaps art or literature or the word is seen by this Nepali poet (and other poets of this region whom I've read in English translation) as a moving, unsettling experience. This is something that appears to challenge the writer's and reader's vision of our world:
Say it, don't be afraid,
Against the tyranny
Which doesn't allow us to hold our heads high,
Against the poetry which does not allow us to speak,
Against the poetry which does not allow us to live,
Against the ignorance which allows us to know nothing
Such lines by another Nepali poet, Gopal Prasad Rimal, depend on bare-bone simplicity. Many will find fault with such writing, written in conditions of extremity, and which rely on the immediacies of direct address. But this is an intimate, naked sort of poetry — a poetry in which lurk signs of hope, and which has been practised by the great poets of Eastern Europe and Latin America. Like these poets, some of our poets live inside history, the history of their respective countries, and under the lingering, overall shadow of colonisation. Therefore, it would be right to insist that their imaginations are enlivened by that very perspective.
It is well known that atrocities have happened, and are still taking place on an unprecedented scale in the countries of this region for many years. Such monstrous acts have come to be regarded as almost normal. One has only to open the morning newspaper to find evidences of these acts. And it becomes easier to forget than to remember, and this forgetfulness becomes our defence against remembering. Perhaps a reader would tend to reject such a poem as one filled with unnecessary sentimentality. Earlier, I referred to a cruel incident in my own State of Orissa. So if I write a poem about this, or about a recent starvation death in Orissa, would it only be a futile exercise in sentimentality?
For instance, when Al Mahmud writes such a poem from his native Bangladesh, do we dismiss it as just another sentimental narrative? I'd like to quote from his "Wing-breaking":
I cry as those birds cry, rising like black flags crying aloud
Why do such sounds of weeping arise today? Until now,
tortoises of the Bastami pool's turbid water
were the pattern of living; who, hoping for long, easy life,
used to catch and seize thrown-away food.
Crimson meat-pulp-like, greed would come spattering
and falling slimily everyday on the landing steps.
In the whole country's deep roar
the sound of my name has surrounded my body
and like cricket-swilling pervaded the village.
And, in another poem, he says, thinking of Van Gogh:
Rats run away leaving in the poet's notebook
the severed ear of the artist.
And like a near-blind poet,
groping for my tobacco pouch,
I pick up the just-cut ear of Van Gogh.
Is this mere sentimentality? I wouldn't say so. Al Mahmud's feeling-lines come from, and are a record, of experience — his own. Consequently, the poem becomes an exhortation and a plea against despair.
One could go on to cite such examples of poetry written in other SAARC countries; poems that are not merely cries for sympathy but are a call for strength. We speak about our visions and our aspirations in the new century we find ourselves in today, but these visions will only depend on what our societies and countries do for us. The history of our time does not allow for any anaesthetic of progress. Perhaps we can only retell this history in the fragmentary images of our time. Like contemporary poets elsewhere (James Fenton, the British poet, in "Lines for Translation into Any Language" offers the same bleak analysis: the story of war, or life in and around a cemetery) our poetry too will only go on to reflect the darkness of this vision.
Therefore one can understand when the Sri Lankan poet, Siri Gunasinghe speaks of "a long journey, / a grief-filled journey." And that journey progresses "from darkness to darkness." Every poet writing seriously in our region will build his or her poem on the resistance to false attempts at justice by people and by governments everywhere. What other ideal can a writer have? His poetry may take different forms; it can be impassioned or ironic. It can speak in the language of the common man or in an esoteric language that is not easily understood. But the poet wants to be heard. He wants the world to know him, in the way he lives and dies. He writes with a view; a view that the planet in which we live remains a place fit for human habitation. And his recklessness shows, like that of Iftikhar Arif of Pakistan, when he writes:
All armies are the same, all swords are the same.
Light mowed down by hooves of horses.
It's always the same.
And every time the aftermath — a realm of total silence.
A silence that swallows
the terror and horror of victorious drumming.
How very true these lines sound today! The protest of these writers against violence will not be easily forgotten. We need to remember, as we go on hearing their words — and realise that poetry is always more than what words can say. Kedarnath Singh, the Hindi poet, wrote in one of his poems: "I am in the place/ where things no longer exist." Like him, I too feel unsure where I am; and whether I am on my way to paradise or to the heart of darkness doesn't matter much to me.
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