Translation is not just about words, it is about carrying a culture, a history, a whole world into another language. Translations do not just bring languages closer to one another, they also introduce us to diverse modes of imagining and perceiving different cultures.

Image courtesy OUP

To mark the International Translation Day, celebrated on 30 September, the Indian Cultural Forum will be doing a series of posts to emphasise the power and importance of translations.

Camels in the Sky: Travels in Arabia has been written by V Muzafer Ahamed, edited by Mini Krishnan, and translated into English by PJ Mathew. The book is a travelogue exploring the history, archaeology, legends, folklore and travails of migrant Asian workers in the Arabic world.

This is an excerpt from the chapter “The Bedouins and the Gaaf Tree” of the book.

The Bedouin and the Gaaf Tree

A dying gaaf tree | Photograph by Muhammed Nowfal

The deserts have rains that man cannot see. The briefest of rain—a single drop which cools but a single cell, and which only a tree can feel.
The secret of this rain and the trees is known only to the Bedouin, who are privy to the deep mysteries of nature and the universe. They call it the single-drop rain. This rain will shed just a drop into the vast expanse of the desert and vanish instantly.

It is extremely difficult to spot the single-drop rain but the Bedouin will recognize it if it falls on a gaaf tree that is nearly dead from prolonged exposure to heat and lack of water. The Bedouin believe that the gaaf will sprout at least a single green leaf with that drop. They claim that this one-drop, one-sprout phenomenon is the mysterious poetry of the desert. And only the Bedouin can spot the gaaf tree with the single green leaf in the vast and mysterious recesses of the desert’s arid sand dunes. To outsiders, the gaaf would appear only as a collection of shrivelled-up twigs ready to die and merge into the sands. Of course, a single drop of rain may not be enough to create a green leaf. In such circumstances, that drop is guarded in the underbelly of the tree as a potent green vein, not readily discernible to a non-Bedouin.

Desert life is guided by signs. It is based on their science of signs that the Bedouin estimate the weight a camel can carry and how far it can travel in the desert. They do it by feeling the camel’s knees. Much like the Sufi s who heal the human body’s damages by feeling the pulse and stroking the nerves, the Bedouin have formulated all their survival philosophies by reading the signs.

The gaaf tree found amidst the sand dunes of the desert is an appropriate metaphor for the Bedouin’s life. The tree resembles driftwood in the hot desert and betrays no sign of harbouring any life. Even the feeblest signs of life would appear to have been blown away in the intermittent sweep of sandstorms. But, in reality, it might probably have been standing still for decades. But with just one shower, it would turn green and fl ourish. The next rain might be another decade away, but the gaaf would not have given up. The Bedouin certify that the gaaf tree will survive for three decades with just two rains, each a decade apart. What they say about the tree is, in fact, true about themselves.

A Bedouin grandfather who had seen a century in the desert asked me how many rains I had seen in my life. How many rains would a Keralite have seen in his life? Has anyone cared to count? Does anyone count? I said I must have experienced countless rains. He said he knew exactly how many spells of rain he had seen—less than 50! He remembers the details of all the rains he had seen.

The one that he remembered most vividly was the rain when his camel was in labour. There was great uncertainty and anxiety. The mother and the calf were at risk of dying when the rain came. In the midst of her labour, the camel swung its eyes towards the falling raindrops. The shower gathered intensity and the camel forgot her pain and eased out the calf. And the Bedouin said the camel ran out into the rain even before licking its newborn clean. What was he doing then, I asked the grand old man. Of course, he had run out into the rain even before the camel did, he said, chortling artlessly.

Those gaaf trees that receive a good shower would then survive for several decades. Its seeds survive in the desert’s depths for ages. They rear their green heads and come overground soon after a rain. The survival of the gaaf tree symbolizes not only the life of the Bedouin but also all of life in its varying layers of existence. In them are ingrained the secrets of human survival. That is why there exists a rain that is visible only to the gaaf.

Once, in the midst of a journey, I noticed a page of Arabic stuck on the branch of a gaaf. It looked as though the tree was hugging the letters. Words (the imperishable) hugging the icon of survival! How that leaf from an unknown book survived the winds and came this far into the desert was a mystery. But its survival seemed to eloquently convey a message. The winds did not allow the paper to stay stuck to one tree. It kept taking it from one tree to another. At times, it wafted down to a sand dune, before being blown away again to a far-off tree. A piece of paper that could easily have been shredded by the winds was surviving, probably to certify the imperishability of words!
I came across several signs of desert life when I stayed in tents in the desert: snakes’ sloughs, bits of goats’ legs reeking of dried blood, footprints of birds, and trails of creeping creatures just outside the tents in the morning. Once, curiously, I dreamt of two green leaves and the wings of a butterfly shining in the breaking light. Colourful feathers were strewn around.

V. Muzafer Ahamed is the periodicals editor of Madhyamam Daily, Kerala, India, and winner of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2010) for travel writing.

PJ Mathew is a bilingual journalist with two decades of experience in English journalism and three decades in Malayalam.

Mini Krishnan is Editor, Translations, at Oxford University Press. So far she has edited 62 literary translations, four of which have won the Crossword Award for translation. She is an advocate of translation education in universities and colleges and is on the National Translation Mission, which operates under the National Knowledge Commission.

These are excerpts from Camels in the Sky: Travels in Arabia written by V. Muzafer Ahamed, translated by P.J. Mathew and published by Oxford University Press. Republished here with permission from the publisher.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

The post The Mysterious Poetry of the Desert appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava (31 July 1880 – 8 October 1936), better known by his pen name Munshi Premchand was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindi-Urdu literature

With his salt-and-pepper hair, tiny moustache and dhoti-kurta, he looked like my relatives who lived in villages. Premchand was like a nana or a dada telling stories to tiny tots. And he lived a Spartan life. In a letter to his friend, Premchand said that he never craved for bungalows and cars. All he needed was dal-chapati and a spoonful of ghee. Modern doctors would have frowned upon Premchand ‘s love affair with ghee (clarified butter). Like Munni, ghee has also become quite “badnaam” nowadays. But those were good, old days. Cholesterol was unheard of. And nobody bothered about clogged arteries. So, Premchand got away with his shuddh desi ghee and penned heart-warming stories. Most of his immortal stories were written on a broken khatiya (string-bed). Unlike modern writers who produce heaps of trash, writing on laptops in air-conditioned cafes!

Coming back to Premchand’s short stories, they are still embedded in my heart. “Eidgaah” is a story about a poor Muslim kid Hamid who buys a “chimta” for his old grandma because she burnt her fingers when  making rotis. The story is so moving that I shed copious tears every time I read it. Premchand has depicted the child psychology brilliantly. The way Hamid defends his humble “chimta” against fancy toys bought by his friends is heart-rending. And when the story ends, both Hamid’s dadi Ameena and the reader are in tears. Then there is “Raksha Me Hatya” a story about two innocent kids who are so obsessed with protecting pigeon eggs that they finally break them! Noble intentions gone haywire.

“Panch Parmeshwar” is a story about two bosom friends Algoo Chaudhary and Jumman Sheikh and dynamics of village panchayats. Algoo testifies against Jumman when Jumman’s old khala (aunt) accuses Jumman of ill-treatment. The panch (judge) should not let friendship come in the way of justice. In “Namak Ka Daroga”, an honest salt-inspector Munshi Vanshidhar refuses to succumb to temptation, loses his job but honoured in the end by the same Pandit Alopideen who tried to bribe him. And “Poos Ki Raat“. A poor farmer Halku refuses to leave the warmth of fire even when his field is grazed by cattle.

“Shatranj Ke Khiladi” shows the decadent feudal culture of Lucknow. Mirza and Meer continue to play chess as the British forces march into Awadh. The legendary Satyajit Ray made a movie on this story. Ray’s only movie in Hindi.

Premchand himself was a starry-eyed idealist in his real life. Listening to Mahatma Gandhi’s call, he quit his Government job. Premchand married a child-widow Shivrani Devi. His son Amrit Rai called him Kalam Ka Sipahi. Born as Dhanpat Rai, Premchand wrote in Urdu. When the British Govt seized his book Soz-e-Watan, he switched over to Hindi and took Premchand as his nom-de-plume.

Premchand taught me many things. His stories shaped my character. He made me a staunch secularist. I learnt that Algoo and Jumman can be bosom friends despite their different religions. If I regularly attend iftar at my Muslim friends’houses, the Algoo-Jumman friendship inspires me. He sowed in me seeds of empathy with the poor. I always see a Hamid in poor kids. And he taught me to stick to my principles, much like Munshi Vanshidhar, the incorruptible  namak ka daroga. And lessons in simplicity.

A writer who ate simple dal-chapati but strode the world like a colossus. I salute you, Munshi Premchand. Koti – koti naman!

(Mr. Amitabh Kumar Das is a 1994 Batch IPS Officer.)

First published on http://www.themorningchronicle.in
 

The post Premchand Jayanti: Growing Up With Premchand’s Stories appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Write Down ‘I am a Miyah’
by Hafiz Ahmed
Write
Write Down
I am a Miya
My serial number in the NRC is 200543
I have two children
Another is coming
Next summer.
Will you hate him
As you hate me?
Write
I am a Miya
I turn waste, marshy lands
To green paddy fields
To feed you.
I carry bricks
To build your buildings
Drive your car
For your comfort
Clean your drain
To keep you healthy.
I have always been
In your service
And yet
you are dissatisfied!
Write down
I am a Miya,
A citizen of a democratic, secular, Republic
Without any rights
My mother a D voter,
Though her parents are Indian.
If you wish kill me, drive me from my village,
Snatch my green fields
hire bulldozers
To roll over me.
Your bullets
Can shatter my breast
for no crime.
Write
I am a Miya
Of the Brahamaputra
Your torture
Has burnt my body black
Reddened my eyes with fire.
Beware!
I have nothing but anger in stock.
Keep away!
Or
Turn to Ashes.
Translated by Shalim M. Hussain

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post I Am ‘Miya’ — Reclaiming Identity Through Protest Poetry appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Pablo Neruda, another great poet of our times, advocated “impure poetry” in his 1935 manifesto,  Towards an Impure Poetry,  a poetry that  carries the dust of distances and smells of lilies and urine: “ The used surfaces of things, the wear that hands have given to things, the air, tragic at times, pathetic at others, of such things, all lend a curious attractiveness to reality that we should not underestimate…”He had said in that manifesto. In 1966, again he wrote:  “I have always wanted the hands of people to be seen in poetry,” and added: “I have always preferred a poetry where the fingerprints show. A poetry of loam where the water can sing. A poetry of bread where everyone may eat.” We know how this intuitive connection to the masses remained a feature of his oeuvre right from his Residence on Earth and became more intense as he grew turning him into a biblical prophet of sorts, the voice of the voiceless, reminding us of  another great poet of our time, Czeslaw Milosz the Polish poet., to whom poetry was “a participation in the humanly modulated time” and who believed that the poetry that does not address the destiny of nations is useless. According to him,  “in a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”. He warned the wrong-doers: “You who have wronged a simple man/ Bursting into laughter at his suffering…/Do not feel safe. The poet remembers./You may kill him- a new one will be born./Deeds and talks will be recorderd” ( You Who Have Wronged).

The greatest poets of our time, from Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht and Mahmoud Darwish  to Rabindranath Tagore ,Faiz Ahmed Faiz  and Bei Dao are united by what Paz calls the apocalyptic element: that one  finds in the  poets we have cited besides a range of poets from   Walt Whitman, Garcia Lorca, Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Yannis Ritsos  and  Cesar Vallejo to Paul Eluard,  Louis Aragon, Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Nazim Hikmet, Mahmood Darwish, Anna Akhmatova, Cavafy, Zbignew Herbert, , Wislawa Szymborsca and  Ko Un, not to speak of earlier poets from Shakepeare to Alexander Pushkin, William Blake, Baudelaire, Rilke , Mallarme, Machado  and Alexander Blok.  just to take a few names.  Their texts instantly make visible the now-obscure links between mantic practices and poetry, between magic, shamanism, possession and oracle on the one hand and poetic vision, inspiration, power and incantation on the other. The poet thus reenchants the disenchanted world by turning poetry into a symbolic act intended to transform the world. Like all genuine poetry, their works oppose totalization, generalization and standardization and are hard to be appropriated by those who turn art into a commodity in the great culture market as well as those who loudly declare their commitment to a simplifying ideology or a political monolith proving that art is oppositional and questions all hierarchies and all the rigid systems and regimes that produce violence of every kind.

This apocalyptic and symbolic function of poetry has assumed a new urgency in our time that , to me, has been marked primarily by violence in its diverse incarnations. Thedore Adorno, the well- known thinker from Frankfurt once said that poetry is impossible after Auschwitz. The statement, clearly, was not meant to be literal; it was an intense comment on the violence of our times that works against creativity of every kind. Indeed the Holocaust produced its own variety of great poetry: remember Nelly Sachs, Abba Kovner, Paul Celan and several others who still remind us of those ominous days of the genocidal mania. It was about such poetry that the Polish poet Tadeuz Rozevicz had said in his introduction to the anthology of post-War Polish poetry: “…a poetry for the horror-stricken, for those abandoned to butchery, for survivors, created out of a remnant of words, salvaged words, out of uninteresting words from the great rubbish dump.”

The history of poetry in our time has also been a history of censorship, exile and martyrdom. We have the examples of Lorca and Neruda, Nazim Hikmet and Ossip Mandelstam,  Anna Akhmatova and Bella Akhmadulina, Ai-Ching,  and Stu Tao, Shamsur Rahman and Tasleema Nasrin, Benjamin Molois and Kensaro Wiwa, Cherabandaraju and Saroj Dutta, Subbarao Panigrahi and Safdar Hashmi, Najet Adouni and Al Idrisi Kaitouni,  Sepide Jodeyri and Zuhair Kutbi, Wael Saad Eldieu and Adel Labad, Mehdi Moosavi and Muawiya al Rawahi , Saw Wei and Jin I Choi, just to take a few examples,   who had all raised their voice against some form of dictatorship, discrimination and injustice for which they had to suffer insult, imprisonment, life in a labour camp, exile or death. Plato who had kept poets out of his ideal republic should be pleased that he has had several followers in our time: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Pol Pot, Mao, Pinochet, Id-i-Ameen, Sani Abacha, Ayatolla Khomeini, Saddam Husain and many other champions of totalitarianism and fundamentalism of diverse hues, from Burma, Tibet , Indonesia  and  the Koreas to Russia, China, Iran, Egypt , Syria, Turkey ,Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia, at times even avowed democrats eager to defend the status-quo. They have found their new heirs in many of the present leaders of the world from Trump and Brexit to Modi and Orban, whose power, once free from the democratic system that restrains them to an extent, can be fatal to cultural freedom and every form of diversity. James Joyce once said of writers, “Squeeze us, we are olives”, meaning the writers yield their best under oppressive environments. While it is true that various forms of oppression have produced some of the most passionate poetic works of our time, it is equally  true that they have also silenced a lot of real and potential poets. Brecht was right when he asked, “Will there be poetry in dark times?”, and answered,  “Yes, poetry about dark times”. Remember, in his poem ‘To the Posterity’ he had bemoaned the cruel times when a talk about trees could be a crime since it also carried a silence about so many crimes. We too are passing through a bleak time when all optimism looks facile and the only honest poetry seems to be of despair and  sarcasm.

And yet, whatever the mode of response, it is impossible for the genuine writer today to ignore the violence that threatens to drown our beautiful world. Blood floods our bedrooms and our drawing rooms are strewn with corpses and that is often the blood and corpses  of those who have neither drawing rooms nor bedrooms. Even the ivory towers of pure aesthetes are being swept by the winds of violence and change. Poets can no more be comfortable with ahistoricity, even if they transmute it, as Paz says, into apocalyptic visions.

Violence in our time springs from so many sources. Indeed there are the big and small wars often engineered by divisive forces and imperialist agencies, we have seen, from Vietnam to Iraq to Syria how wars can be conjured up by hegemonic nation states. Tagore had seen Nationalism itself as a violent ideology as it is based on hatred of other nations and peoples than the love of one’s own nation and people and led to a form of collective hubris and greed that inevitably led to direct or indirect war. Today we understand his meaning even better as Nationalism is being turned into a ritual performed under pressure, a form of theocratic jingoism based on othering and discrimination that claims omnipotence.

Another form of violence springs from social inequalities: of class, caste, race and gender. Capitalist violence that emanates from greed and consequent exploitation- “capitalism comes into the world dripping blood’, said Karl Marx-, upper caste violence based on discrimination, denial of opportunities and silencing of historical memory, the violence of the White races against the Blacks and Browns,  non-tribal people  against tribal populations, and   patriarchal violence that takes several forms from linguistic  and emotional violence to the physical one, inevitably produce counter-violence from the victims who try to resist the violence from above; but even counter-violence, however sympathetic we are towards it, is also violence and as Brecht says, even anger against injustice contorts our human features. By now any intelligent student of history knows that violence cannot end violence and “an eye for an eye only turns the whole world blind”, to recall the words of the greatest spokesman of non-violence in our times. We have seen this dark logic at work in the countries that sought to change their destiny through violence: they had to employ greater violence to sustain their regimes until some of them  collapsed for lack of any means to know the truth, why, to know even their own people’s thoughts, as they had silenced  all opposition by brute force- which is blindness of the worst kind.

Another is communal violence, of which we have seen some rabid outbursts in India recently. This happens when religion gets divorced entirely from ethics, from God, if you want, gets congealed into dogma and fanaticism and begins to create a scape-goat, an ‘other’ in its own image held responsible for  every suffering that one endures. It shows patriarchal proclivities, manufactures an artificial tradition and a distorted history dismissing elements that do not suit its design and uses racial symbols and archetypes to appeal to the popular unconscious. Thus it is also a form of cultural and historical violence. This communalism shares with fascism its basic features, what Umberto Eco calls ur-Fascism in his book , Five Moral Pieces, an ideology  that sees dissent as betrayal, defines nation  negatively to the exclusion of minorities thus  promoting xenophobia, fears difference, advocates action for the sake of action, rejects modernism, looks at pacifism as collusion with the enemy, scorns the weak, appeals to the middle classes, encourages the cult of death, upholds machismo as a value and opposes all non-conformist sexual behaviour, treats people as a monolith, derides parliamentary governments, promotes what George Orwell would call ‘new speak’ that sees everything as black and white , and avoids  any kind of intellectual complexity, limits the tools available to critical thinking, fears writers , artists and thinkers  and creates a cult of tradition taking truth to be already known.

Techno-fascism too is a form of corrupt power as it ruins our physical and spiritual environment, exploits the natural resources with no consideration for posterity, pollutes our air, earth and water and imposes on everything the tyranny of the rational, measuring everything in numbers and quantities and rejects all that is incalculable, immeasurable and unsayable-which is the very substance of poetry-as they are impossible to digitize.  It also produces speed that Milan Kundera in his Slowness calls the ‘ecstasy of technology’. The speed of modern life leaves little room for meditation or even the pleasure of reading and writing. He speaks about the need to retrieve that lost joy of slowness, of lying on the meadow, ‘idly gazing at God’s windows’, a joy getting lost in the louder and faster entertainment provided by the machines.

Another kind of violence comes from the market that forces the writer to be loud and to join the bidding in the culture market while art demands subtlety, suggestion and understatement: it is like a subterranean current that slowly works on the foundations, uproots the  status-quoist values and creates new ones. Market is the new Midas turning everything it touches not into gold, but into commodity and artists who answer its temptations are sure to sell their soul to this Mephistophilean spirit since genuine art, by its very nature defies commodification and totalization.

Baudrillard spoke of globalisation as the  “greatest violence of our times” as it imposes cultural amnesia in its victims, forcing them to forget their indigenous traditions in art, culture and knowledge and turning them increasingly into unthinking mimics of the West. Local cultures are the  repositories of culturally learned responses built up over thousands of years from which  poetry often draws its sustenance. Its loss is no less dangerous than the loss of genetic diversity. Western universalism is trying to drown the pluralistic and polyphonic cultural mosaic of countries like India. The agenda  of globalisation is monoacculturation, that is, to homogenise and  standardise cultures whereas difference and diversity are the very soul of many cultures in the East. Globalisation kills languages both through jargonisation and the selling of the monolingual idea. It is more a command from above than a decision from below; it anthropologises culture by reducing ethnicity into a brand name. It is a form of recolonisation that brings back  colonial imaginaries.

Poetry moves from subjects to gestures and is essentially political  not only because of the messages and sentiments it conveys concerning the state of the world  nor only because of the manner in which  it might represent society’s structures or social groups, their identities and conflicts. It is political because of the type of space and time that it institutes and the manner in which it frames this time and peoples this space. The defence of aesthetics is the defence of imagination, pleasure, sensual and intellectual freedom, curiosity, play, experimentation and openness.  It opposes the capitalist world view by resisting utilitarian co-option: the shape of a poem, cadences, surprises, sounds and spaces cannot be commodified nor taken as booty. Art is anathema to oppressors as it always generates new ideas, forms, desires, possibilities, energies and love of existing in the world.

Poetry opposes all forms of regimentation and invests the quotidian with layers of meaning. Avant-garde poetry is the inscription of the unresolved contradictions between the aesthetic promise and the realities of oppression in the world. It breaks down the obvious orders and unsettles traditional patterns in an attempt to redefine the sensible. It resists simple interpretations..  The aesthetic regime disrupts the boundaries between and redistributes the sense created by other practices. Poetry, by its very nature, interrogates the hierarchical organization of the community and creates experiences that disrupt the results of domination in everyday life.  Poetry contributes to resistance by reconfiguring the realm of appearances  and reframing the way problems have been posed. It contests the way capacities, voices and roles have been apportioned in the existing order. Poetic practices redefine what can be seen and said (as defined by the hegemonic forces that constitute and embody the State) and the implicit estimations placed on the members of communities. They deny the rigid identities stamped upon us by the police order and provokes counter-histories that would offer new forms of experience and exchange between art and life.

Genuine poetry has always opposed violence in its direct and oblique, tangible as well as intangible, forms, and more than ever it needs today to raise its profoundly human voice against all forms of violence, the ones we spoke of and the ones we may have overlooked. Paz had foreseen the contemporary situation: “Reality has cast aside all disguises and contemporary society is seen for what it is: a heterogeneous collection of things ‘homogenized’ by the whip or by propagandas, directed by groups distinguishable from one another only by their degree of brutality. In these circumstances, poetic creation goes into hiding.” Poetry, even with its element of play, is no mere combinatorial game that a machine can play. It is more than a mere permutation of  a restricted number of elements and functions. It always tries to say what it cannot say and its power comes from its willingness to give a voice to what is voiceless and  a name to what is nameless.  It advances on the blank page as Nicanor Parra would say. Poetry becomes important, as Italo Calvino says of literature in general, not when it reproduces established values, given truths or ready-made slogans .It is an ear that hears beyond the understanding of common sociology, an eye that sees beyond the colour-spectrum of everyday politics. It promotes self-awareness through a criticism of the status quo and the cultural and material violence it perpetrates. The truth it discovers may not necessarily be of immediate use, but it is sure to gradually become part of social consciousness It is the undeclared mission of poetry today to retrieve the past without being atavistic, to disentangle the effects of power from representations, to re-establish the almost-lost connections between man and nature, to redefine the boundaries between the self and the other and the self and nature in the context of man’s species- arrogance that cripples the environment as well as his own   moral and spiritual life, to resensitize man to suffering, alienation and solitude and to give positive non-violence and love which is its greatest expression  the central place it ought to have in all human discourse.

Lorca who spoke of the “duende”, that  sudden epiphany , the vision of godhead, the intangible mystery  in the context of Arabic music, also was speaking of the thrill and  terror of  what Paz calls the apocalypse.  But this is not a moment of ignorance, but of awareness of the highest kind, an awareness filled with deep concern for all living things that the Buddha, that great pioneer of the philosophy of non-violence, would have qualified as ‘karuna’ or compassion.

Let me conclude with Paz’s own inspired words before I read some poems as an appendix : “We must find the lost word, dream inwardly and also outwardly,/ decipher the night’s tattooing and look face to face at the noon day and tear off the mask” so that finally we can say, “ I am history/ A memory inventing itself/I am never alone/ I speak with you always/ You speak with me always/ I move in the dark/ I plant signs.”

K Satchidanandan is an eminent Malayalam poet.

First published in Newsclick.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Vijay Nambisan 

The post We lost another poet. And so young. Feels I’m burying poetry every second day appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Bob Dylan in 1991. Xavier Badosa, CC BY-SA

One side of the debate was occupied by those who deny that a songwriter should be identified as a poet. The Swedish Academy, supported by popular opinion, presented the counter-argument, and Dylan is now listed first among the “Most Popular Literature Laureates”, ahead of such luminaries as Pablo Neruda, Albert Camus or Toni Morrison.

This is a surprising spot in literary history for someone who once described himself as a song and dance man, but Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Sara Danius insists that Dylan “can be read and should be read, and is a great poet in the grand English poetic tradition”. Dylan himself seems to demur: toward the end of his Nobel address he says, “songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read”.

The sung-not-read distinction has long been a key issue in this debate. Composer Pierre Boulez argues that specialisation has divided speech from music, so that now each must obey discrete and specific laws of semantics and structure. They are no longer necessarily in harmony, though they still find points of connection, in song. As poet and critic David Orr notes, “A well-written song isn’t just a poem with a bunch of notes attached; it’s a unity of verbal and musical elements”.
Orr doesn’t offer the Academy’s argument that a songwriter can be a poet, insisting instead that there is a distinction between a poem and a song. He has a lot of support for this, because though there are songs that are remarkably poem-like; and poems that work better in spoken than in written form, there are distinct differences, in terms of genre and of function, between the two forms.

Poems, generally speaking, behave on the page, and operate against silence. Song lyrics, generally speaking, perform in sound, and operate in a relationship with musical apparatus.

The use of language differs too, in the two forms. Both song lyrics and poems exploit and rely on linguistic devices such as imagery, expressiveness, rhythm, cadence, concision, and word association. Poets have at their disposal little more than grammar, syntax and lexical choices.

Musicians have all that, plus a stack of sonic resources. These include melody, harmony and instrumentation; the stressing or slurring, and stretching or truncating of words, as needed to fit the musical shape; as well as meaningless but useful utterances. While rarely found in any but the most experimental of poems, oo-oo-oos and la-la-las can perfectly punctuate a song, enrich its song texture, and capture its listeners.

Songs also make more use of repetition than do poems: in part because the music may demand that a phrase or line be repeated; in part because the conventions of song include the use of a refrain, which is rare in contemporary poetry, largely because it doesn’t suit the poems though it is often vital in a song. Tom Wait’s Time — a very poetic song — includes a chorus that is all repetition:
 

And it’s time time time / and it’s time time time / and it’s time time time / that you love / and it’s time time time.

I love this, when Waits sings it, and it provides an important transition between the wild imagery of the verses. But when I read these lines, in the absence of the music and the voice, I feel as though I am in the presence of a mistake.

Does any of this matter — need the boundaries between song and poem be patrolled and policed? Possibly not. After all, as 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico suggests, we humans came to language through song; and song and poetry together built the linguistic domain we now inhabit.

But there’s more to it than theory; there’s also taxonomy, and the distribution of resources that follows cultural classifications. Musicians can become rich and famous from their work; poets rarely do. Musicians can compete for the distinction associated with what is still called “high” culture, but poets rarely get to enjoy the rewards of “popular” culture.

Bob Dylan, for example, has won a shelf full of Grammies for the same body of work that delivered his Nobel Prize in Literature. Oxford Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage has won the Ivor Novello Award, but that was specifically for his song lyrics: his poetry was not eligible.

As long as the river flows in only one direction, it seems likely that poets will continue to resist attempts by songwriters to occupy their patch.
 

Jen Webb, Director of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Learn your lines. Shutterstock

But Brother D could have added another word to his to-do list: “Versify”. Verse has a long history of resisting oppression and rallying opposition in the face of overwhelming odds. Here are five poets every protester should read.
 

1. Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni’s My Poem from 1968 is one of the key works of a group of young writers who came of age alongside the American civil rights movement. As demands for greater human rights and fewer governmental wrongs grew, the bloody violence that was meted out by the army and police saw an increasingly strident, anguished, and collective response in verse.
 

Giovanni (1943-) sums up the fear and the lack of privacy that any artist could encounter if they raised a voice in dissent. She states: “My phone is tapped, my mail is opened”, and laments that she’s “afraid to tell my roommate where I’m going / and scared to tell people if I’m coming”. The poem’s power lies in the defiant refrain that ends each of its five verses. Whatever the government or the poet herself may or may not do, Giovanni repeats the fact that “it won’t stop the revolution”.
 

2. Denise Levertov

Levertov (1923-1997) famously fell out with poet Robert Duncan over the best way to write political poetry. The issues that their argument raised were concerned with whether one should comment directly upon particular political issues or should write verse that engaged in a more abstract, less polemical manner. Of the two paths, Levertov took the former. Making Peace (1987) opens with a statement that affirms her desire to think through these problems:
 

The poets must give us / imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar / imagination of disaster. Peace not only / the absence of war.
 

As the poem continues, Levertov explores how poetry can make the world anew. She concludes with the hope that:
 

A cadence of peace might balance its weight / on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, / an energy field more intense than war, / might pulse then, / stanza by stanza into the world, / each act of living / one of its words, each word / a vibration of light—facets / of the forming crystal.
 

3. Diane Di Prima

Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters (1971) is one of the most powerful and thorough explorations ever written into the ways in which a poet can act to change the culture. Confident without being bombastic, confrontational and also compassionate, ecstatic as well as desperate, Di Prima brings the revolution home by initiating the change from home.
 

Kids, lovers, friends and opponents are all part of the struggle. One problem that political poets face is the question of how simple sloganeering can also be good poetry. Revolutionary Letters does this through giving the reader a domestic and particular world, written with a Beat poetics, within which is played out a very open and public politics. Revolutionary Letter #50 runs, in full:
 

As soon as we submit

to a system based on causality, linear time

we submit, again, to the old values, plunge again

into slavery. Be strong. We have the right to make

the universe we dream. No need to fear “science” grovelling

apology for things as they are, ALL POWER

TO JOY. which will remake the world.
 

4. Martin Carter

Carter’s poems locate their struggle in British-occupied Guyana in the 1950s. Poems of Resistance (1954) charts Carter’s growing political consciousness and his belief in the emancipation and empowerment of all oppressed people.
 

Carter (1927-1997) spent time in prison and time in government – a path that is far from unusual in 20th-century politics – and continued to write poems of rare humanity and power throughout his life. He is best known, however, for Poems of Resistance. I come from the Nigger Yard (1954) explores the circumstances of his life and traces his journey towards emancipation. It concludes:
 

I come to the world with scars on my soul

wounds on my body, fury in my hands

I turn to the histories of men and the lives of the peoples

I examine the shower of sparks, the wealth of dreams

I am pleased with the glories and sad with the sorrows

rich with the riches, poor with loss.

From the nigger yard of yesterday I come with my burden.

To the world of tomorrow I turn with my strength.
 

5. Nazim Hikmet

Hikmet (1902-1963), is a Turkish national hero, yet much of his life was spent in jail or in exile. A poet in the expansive, democratic mode of Walt Whitman and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hikmet wrote tirelessly of the need to be free from any form of authority and about lives of the everyday people of Turkey. His poem about a child killed by the A-Bomb in Hiroshima is well-known in English as the song I Come and Stand at Every Door.
 

Hikmet was a courageous opponent of the mid-century Turkish government, and, in 1950, went on hunger strike to protest their record upon human rights. His constant question is: what should one do in the face of oppression? And his answer is: be ready to fight. In Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison he tells the world: “It’s not that you cannot pass / ten or fifteen years inside / and more— / you can, / as long as the jewel / on the left side of your chest doesn’t lose its luster!”
 

In fact, that’s the message of all five of these poets. Agitate, educate, and organise! Well, that and William Carlos Williams’ demand to fellow poets: “Write good poems!”
 

Tim Atkins, Reader, University of East London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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कुछ ऐसी शाख्सियत के मालिक थे रमाशंकर यादव 'विद्रोही'। जिन्होंने दुनिया की लिखी-लिखाई बातों के बहकावे में न आकर अपनी बात कहने की कोशिश की। उपरोक्त लाइनों से ही उन्होंने समाज के उन लोगों को आईना दिखाने की कोशिश की जिनके लिए ढोंग, पाखंड और ध्रुवीकरण ही एकमात्र धर्म है। 

 
हिंदी साहित्य के हलकों में रमाशंकर यादव 'विद्रोही' भले ही अनजान हों लेकिन दिल्ली स्थित जवाहरलाल नेहरु विश्वविद्यालय (जेएनयू) के छात्रों के बीच इन कवि की कविताएं खासी लोकप्रिय रही हैं। प्रगतिशील परंपरा के इस कवि की रचनाओं का एकमात्र प्रकाशित संग्रह 'नई खेती' है। इसका प्रकाशन इनके जीवन के अंतिम दौर 2011 ई. में हुआ। वे स्नातकोत्तर छात्र के रूप में जवाहरलाल नेहरु विश्वविद्यालय से जुड़े। यह जुड़ाव आजीवन बना रहा। 
 
उनका जन्म 3 दिसम्बर 1957 को उत्तर प्रदेश के सुल्तानपुर जिले के अंतर्गत अइरी फिरोजपुर गांव में हुआ था। उनकी आरंभिक शिक्षा गांव में ही हुई। सुल्तानपुर में उन्होंने स्नातक किया। इसके बाद उन्होंने कमला नेहरू इंस्टीट्यूट में वकालत में दाखिला लिया। वे इसे पूरा नहीं कर सके। 
 
उन्होंने 1980 में जवाहरलाल नेहरु विश्वविद्यालय में स्नातकोत्तर में प्रवेश लिया। 1983 में छात्र-आंदोलन के बाद उन्हें जेएनयू से निकाल दिया गया। इसके बावजूद वे आजीवन जेएनयू में ही रहे।

विद्रोही मुख्यतः प्रगतिशील चेतना के कवि हैं। उनकी कविताएं लंबे समय तक अप्रकाशित और उनकी स्मृति में सुरक्षित रही। वे अपनी कविता सुनाने के अंदाज के कारण बहुत लोकप्रीय रहे। 2011 ई॰ में इनकी रचनाओं का प्रकाशन 'नई खेती' शीर्षक संग्रह से हुआ।

नितिन पमनानी ने विद्रोही जी के जीवन संघर्ष पर आधारित एक वृत्तचित्र आई एम योर पोएट (मैं तुम्हारा कवि हूं) हिंदी और अवधी में बनाया है। मुंबई अंतर्राष्ट्रीय फिल्म महोत्सव में इस वृत्तचित्र ने अंतर्राष्ट्रीय स्पर्धा श्रेणी में सर्वश्रेष्ठ वृत्तचित्र का गोल्डन कौंच पुरस्कार जीता।
 
रमाशंकर यादव 'विद्रोही' की कुछ कविताएं-

नई खेती
मैं किसान हूं
आसमान में धान बो रहा हूं
कुछ लोग कह रहे हैं
कि पगले! आसमान में धान नहीं जमा करता
मैं कहता हूं पगले!
अगर ज़मीन पर भगवान जम सकता है
तो आसमान में धान भी जम सकता है
और अब तो दोनों में से कोई एक होकर रहेगा
या तो ज़मीन से भगवान उखड़ेगा
या आसमान में धान जमेगा।
 
औरतें
…इतिहास में वह पहली औरत कौन थी जिसे सबसे पहले जलाया गया?
मैं नहीं जानता
लेकिन जो भी रही हो मेरी मां रही होगी,
मेरी चिंता यह है कि भविष्य में वह आखिरी स्त्री कौन होगी
जिसे सबसे अंत में जलाया जाएगा?
मैं नहीं जानता
लेकिन जो भी होगी मेरी बेटी होगी
और यह मैं नहीं होने दूंगा।

मोहनजोदाड़ो
…और ये इंसान की बिखरी हुई हड्डियां
रोमन के गुलामों की भी हो सकती हैं और
बंगाल के जुलाहों की भी या फिर
वियतनामी, फ़िलिस्तीनी बच्चों की
साम्राज्य आख़िर साम्राज्य होता है
चाहे रोमन साम्राज्य हो, ब्रिटिश साम्राज्य हो
या अत्याधुनिक अमरीकी साम्राज्य
जिसका यही काम होता है कि
पहाड़ों पर पठारों पर नदी किनारे
सागर तीरे इंसानों की हड्डियां बिखेरना।
 
जन-गण-मन
मैं भी मरूंगा
और भारत के भाग्य विधाता भी मरेंगे
लेकिन मैं चाहता हूं
कि पहले जन-गण-मन अधिनायक मरें
फिर भारत भाग्य विधाता मरें
फिर साधू के काका मरें
यानी सारे बड़े-बड़े लोग पहले मर लें
फिर मैं मरूं- आराम से
उधर चल कर वसंत ऋतु में
जब दानों में दूध और आमों में बौर आ जाता है
या फिर तब जब महुवा चूने लगता है
या फिर तब जब वनबेला फूलती है
नदी किनारे मेरी चिता दहक कर महके
और मित्र सब करें दिल्लगी
कि ये विद्रोही भी क्या तगड़ा कवि था
कि सारे बड़े-बड़े लोगों को मारकर तब मरा।
 
प्रगतिशील चेतना और वाम विचारधारा का गढ़ माने जाने वाले जेएनयू कैंपस में 'विद्रोही' ने जीवन के कई वसंत गुजारे। 'विद्रोही' बिना किसी आय के स्रोत के छात्रों के सहयोग से ही कैंपस के अंदर जीवन बसर करते रहे। हालांकि कैंपस के पुराने छात्र उनकी मानसिक अस्वस्थता के बारे में भी जिक्र करते थे, पर उनका कहना था कि कभी भी उन्होंने किसी व्यक्ति को क्षति नहीं पहुंचाई है, न हीं अपशब्द कहे हैं।
 
वे कहते थे, "जेएनयू मेरी कर्मस्थली है, मैंने यहां के हॉस्टलों में, पहाड़ियों और जंगलों में अपने दिन गुज़ारे हैं।" अंतिम समय में उन्होंने ऑक्युपाई यूजीसी में जेएनयू के छात्रों के साथ हिस्सेदारी की। इसी दौरान 8 दिसंबर 2015 को उनका निधन हो गया।

Courtesy: National Dastak
 

The post आसमान में धान बोने वाले रमाशंकर यादव ‘विद्रोही’ की पहली बरसी appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image credit:  Amit Mehra

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