Humanities Underground

Akhand Sphota

  Amarjit Chandan ____________________________ [Born in Nairobi, Amarjit Chandan graduated from Punjab University. As a result of his active involvement in the Maoist Naxalite movement in his youth, he was imprisoned and spent two years in solitary confinement. Chandan has edited many anthologies of world poetry and fiction, including two collections of “British Punjabi” poetry and short fiction. Translated into Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian and various Indian languages, his work is included in several anthologies in India and abroad. He has participated in poetry readings in England, Hungary and at Columbia University. An active translator, he has translated work by Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet and Cardenal, among others, into Punjabi. There is a silence in Chandan’s poetry — a deep sense of the unspoken, and more accurately, the unspeakable. This is, no doubt, intimately connected with his years of solitary confinement in an Amritsar prison. In an interview (not included in this edition) he declares that his belief in “violence as a midwife of change” has long been buried. But what is not so easy to bury is memory: memory of torture, sleep deprivation and of the interminable hours in a prison cell, in which time frayed his nerves “like chalk screeching on a blackboard. You count your breaths, lose count and start again . . . I’m a poet, yet there are no words to explain these feelings, this loss of spirit.” ]   _________________ The history of the unequal relationship between English and Punjabi goes back to the early nineteenth century, when William Carey, a shoe-maker turned Baptist, published a ninety-nine-page Grammar of the Punjabi Language in 1812 in Calcutta, then the capital of British India. In 1849 the East India Company’s army occupied the sovereign state of the Punjab, the land of my ancestors. The Punjab came under the control of the British Crown government in 1858. Seven years earlier John Newton of the Ludhiana Christian Mission in eastern Punjab had published the first-ever Punjabi translation of The New Testament, entitled Anjeel (after the French – évangile), along with a new Grammar of the Punjabi Language. The three-pronged process of politics, religion and linguistics was in full swing, though the African formula of the Bible and the Land had not been charted exactly in India. The religious conversion was negligible and the linguistic one was enormous. The British left India in 1947 dismembering the Punjab, but English still rules there; so much so that the Punjabi syntax, now mirroring the English sentence structure, is changed forever.   With the steam locomotive came the colonial locomotive that was full of a new class of western-oriented Indian gentlemen, better known as baboos. Careerists – the offspring of Lord Macaulay’s agenda of educating Indians to craft a nation of petty clerks – soon learnt to take pride in attaining glibness in English. Lord Macaulay had said that ‘a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India’. In that belief, Indian schoolchildren of future generations were made to cram Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds…’, Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ and Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, ignoring their own linguistic and literary heritage. The loss was total.   There was a blessing in disguise, however. Thanks to English, a window on the world of knowledge opened. The Punjabis studying abroad in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and California established contact and interaction with Western thought. In the early twentieth century Puran Singh (1881-1931), the poet, was writing on Nietzsche in Punjabi; Kahan Singh (1861-1938), the great lexicographer, was collaborating with Macauliffe (1837-1913), on the English translation of the Sikh scriptures for his six-volume magnum opus The Sikh Religion; Dharam Anant [Singh], the Greek and Sanskrit scholar, worked on Plato, and Santokh Singh (1892-1927) introduced Marx in Punjabi. Two collections of Puran Singh’s poetry, and Dharam Anant’s treatise on Plato and Sikhism were published in London by J.M. Dent and Luzac. Mulk Raj Anand moved in the Bloomsbury literary group. Khushwant Singh, Ved Mehta and Zulfikar Ghose made their mark on English literature in the latter half of the last century.   II   On this sundry background of gain and loss, I started writing at the age of twenty in my own language Punjabi, which I had learnt simultaneously with English. I cut my literary teeth in a real Punjabi milieu. My father, a carpenter turned photographer and communist trade unionist, wrote poetry as well. My mother was illiterate. So my home language remained unadulterated.   I rarely write poems in English. The ones I have written were for my loved ones who did not know my language. When I translate such poems into Punjabi, I put the appendage sheepishly – ‘translated from English’.  Of course Punjabi is my mother language. I think, feel and dream in it. I live in it and I will die in it. No wonder, working with English poets, I could translate only one fourth of my original poems into English. Kundera, in his novel Testaments Betrayed, sympathises and bemoans Leoš Janáček’s determination to write his operas in Czech, thus limiting his audience. I feel that I am of his tribe.   The word for ‘translation’ in Punjabi is anuvaad. It is derived from Sanskrit Anu, meaning: which follows, close, near, corresponding, at the same time; and vaad is the idea behind a sound. The sound is the uttered word. The written word is silent. The poetic creative process can be defined in so many ways. Maybe the idea underlying the word anuvaad equally applies to the birth of a poem. Here an imagined reality takes shape in words. Perhaps my most recent poem written in English could relate that experience.   To Father As you taught me to write the first letter of Gurmukhi – the Punjabi script holding my nervous hand in yours You taught me to hold the camera to focus on faces     in the pupil of the eye and to press the button         holding my breath As if it were a gun loaded with bullets of life.

As Ores Run Through Rock Veins.

  Cyprian Kamil Norwid _______________________ Cyprian Kamil Norwid, one of Poland’s most outstanding and original poets, was also an artist, dramatist and sculptor. Besides, he also used to write exquisite and elegant letters. Norwid led a tragic and poverty-stricken life (once he had to live in a cemetery crypt). He experienced increasing health problems, unrequited love, harsh critical reviews, and increasing social isolation. He lived abroad most of his life, especially in London and in Paris, where he died. Literary historians view Norwid’s work as being too far ahead of its time to be appreciated,possessing elements of romanticism, classicism and parnassianism. Following his death, many of Norwid’s works were forgotten It was not until the Young Poland period that his finesse and style was appreciated.   Here are some of his poems and drawings: *** But Just to See But just to see a chapel like this room, No bigger: there to watch Polish symbols loom In warm expanding series which reveal Once and for all the Poland that is real. There the stone-cutter, mason, carpenter, Poet, and, finally, the knight and martyr Could re-create with pleasure, work and prayer. There iron, bronze, red marble, copper could Unite with native larches, stone with wood, Because those symbols, burrowed by deep stains, Run through us all as ores run through rock veins.   Fate Mischance, ferocious, shaggy, fixed its look On man, gazed at him, deathly grey, And waited for the time it knew he took To turn away. But man, who is an artist measuring The angle of his model’s elbow joint, Returned that look and made the churlish thing Serve his aesthetic point. Mischance, the brawny, when the dust had cleared Had disappeared.   Recipe for A Warsaw Novel Three landlords, stupid ones ; cut each in two; That’ll make six: add stewards, Jews and water Enough to give full measure: whip the brew With one pen, flagellate your puny jotter Warm, if there’s time, with kisses: that’s the cue For putting in your blushing gushing daughter Red as a radish: tighten up: add cash, A sack of roubles, cold: mix well, and mash.   Those of Love A woman, parents, brothers, even God Can still be loved, but those who love them need Some physical vestige, shadow: I have none. Cracow is silent now that its hewn stone Has lost what tongue it had; no banner of Mazovian linen has been stained to prove Art obstinate ; the peasant’s houses tilt ; The native ogives of our churches wilt; Barns are too long ; our patron saints are bored With being statues ; partitioned and ignored, Form, from the fields to steeples, can’t command One homespun wand or touch one angel’s hand. Tenderness Tenderness can be like a battle cry, Like the murmur of a hidden spring And like a funeral dirge… * And like a long braid of golden strands On which a widower hangs His ancient silver watch   What did you do to Athens, Socrates   What did you do to Athens, Socrates, That the people erected a golden statue to you, Having first poisoned you? What did you do to Italy, Alighieri, That the insincere people built two graves for you, Having first driven you out? What did you do to Europe, Columbus, That they dug you three graves in three places Having first shackled you? What did you do to your people, Camoens, That the sexton had to cover your grave twice, After you had starved? What in the world are you guilty of, Kosciuszko, That two stones in two places bear down on you, Having first had no burial place? What did you do to the world, Napoleon, That you were confined to two graves after your demise, Having first been confined? What did you do to the people, Mickiewicz? ***         adminhumanitiesunderground.org

Expenditure, Insolvency and Recovery in Manmohan’s ‘The Morsels of Ignominy” ( ज़िल्लत की रोटी)

_____________________ Prasanta Chakravarty The poems that make the collection ज़िल्लत की रोटी—The Morsels of Ignominy (Rajkamal Prakashan: 2006) must count as one of the finest that has come from the subcontinent in the past few decades. The collection itself is rather late in the career of its poet: Manmohan, who has been writing poetry since the 1970s. Much of that remains unpublished. There is a kind of near mythic status that is often ascribed to the poet—for his rather oxymoronic existence—as a recluse and as a rooted social and organic intellectual at the same time. It does not fall in my ambit, nor is it my intention, to speculate on his influence on the Hindi poetic and thinking world. My interest lies elsewhere—with one particular aspect of his poetics, namely, a form of general economy that he deploys in his poetic language. By the singular use of a particular form of expenditure is he able to effect an ascetic starkness which is the seal and sign of this particular collection. There are a hundred odd poems in this collection. But I shall concentrate on a few representative ones. The opening poem of the collection, that sets the stage, reads like this: इन शब्दों में __________ इन शब्दों में वह समय है जिसमें मैं रहता हूँ   ग़ौर करने पर उस समय का संकेत भी यहीं मिल जाता है जो न हो लेकिन मेरा अपना है   यहाँ कुछ जगहें दिखाई देंगी जो हाल ही में ख़ाली हो गई हैं और वे भी जो कब से ख़ाली पड़ा हैं   यही मेरा यक़ीन हैं जो बाकि बचा रहा   यानी जो ख़र्च हो गया वह भी यहीं पाया जाएगा   इन शब्दों में मेरी बची खुची याददाश्त हैं   और जो भूल गया है वह भी इन्हीं में है     In These Words ___________ In these words The time In which I live   If one can discern, The signs of that time could also be traced here Which absent Still are mine One can see some spaces here That have been vacated of late And those too Which are long left vacated That is my belief The leftover which is left That is to say, those spent and expended Will also be found here. In these words The vestiges of my memory And whatever has been forgotten Stay here too.   This is a meta-commentary about the poetry that is to come in the following pages, about the self of the poet and also about his times. The modernist minimalism works deftly. At the most outward level one can see how the self is scattered—across three vectors—the lyrical I, the historical I and the crafted words themselves. In the very first three lines these three coordinates are mapped: these words catch my time, which in turn is what makes me, declares the poet. A triangulation happens: Words. My time. And my self. This is my time—the contemporary. You may not see that time in a pronounced manner always in these pages but you can glimpse the vignettes, if you are a careful enough reader. But my time has not been smooth. It has been jagged and fractious. All solidarities, every promise, every friendship may not have been fulfilled. Hence, there are vacated spaces—both recently emptied and also other festering gashes. I walk in poetry therefore. And therefore the necessity of the distancing the lyrical I from the historically constructed I. Hence also, the necessity of poetry in the first place so that you, the reader, can have a sense of both history and my detached condition, filtered through the sieve of time in these poetic pronouncements. It is immediately clear that the poet reserves a tremendous confidence in the permanence of the art-form—in words and language that can capture and husband time. It is only the enunciated words which are able to store memory as well as etch that which is gone. This is a singular claim: that the words will be able to capture that which is not there anymore: the ever-receding I and my receding times. How can poetry capture an economy of such bankruptcy?  Make sense of an endurance that is provided by the spaces that are left vacated? How does someone craft the poetics of this triangular exchange?   The Poetics of Inverted Equivalence To have a sense of that process we must go back to the particular stanza in this poem which says: यही मेरा यक़ीन हैं/जो बाकि बचा रहा यानी जो ख़र्च हो गया/वह भी यहीं पाया जाएगा That is my belief/The leftover which is left That is to say, those spent and expended/Will also be found here.   In many of the poems in this collection, Manmohan works through a specific form of inversion and equivalency. Inversional symmetry is used in musical set practice. It relies on the concept that intervals and other sets of pitches are identical when inverted. The sets that are inverted can have remote connections to one another, but if the axis of symmetry is rightly measured and twisted, then one can draw equivalence in and through diametrically opposite modes or ideas.  Inversional equivalence can work if two conditions are fulfilled: one, an oblique or contrary motion should predominate. And two, the counterpoint must begin and end in a perfect consonance. In this case both the conditions are eminently fulfilled. And this is but one instance among numerous. The poet’s beliefs are often placed in and through a series of counterpoints in this collection. In this case the remarkable inversion happens between what is leftover and what is spent. The inversional equivalence is drawn between what is gone and expended with whatever has been shored. This is a truly momentous claim—that which is salvaged is perfectly equitable to what has been depleted. There is no loss. No gain. The key metaphor of expenditure is something to be marked. If we carefully look again at the poem now we shall see that this particular stanza about the belief

Jo Hona Tha Hona Tha, Jo Nahin Hona Tha Hona Tha: Poetry in Turbulent Times, HUG with 5 Poets in Varanasi

Poetry in Turbulent Times. HUG in Varanasi, with Ashtabhuja Shukla, Pankaj Chaturvedi, Vyomesh Shukla,  Avinash Mishra and Siddhant Mohan. ___________________   On the sidelines of the Hindi Yuva Kavi Sangam, 2016, held at Benaras (February 26-27, 2016), HUG met with five contemporary Hindi poets who nurture a strong sense of the aesthetic, political and philosophical struggles that rage in the deepest recesses of our land. The idea of the nation is naturally fractious in the arts, in poesie more so. In fact, civilization or nation make little sense in defining and then transforming our realities into art forms. For poetry addresses our times, sometimes by unleashing myths and metaphors, and at other times, through subtraction–starkly, wielding the precise markers of language in keen realization of what the moment might demand. And yet, communicating poetry also needs some kind of binding force, a register that is material and personal, even as we objectively see history unfolding through varied inflections in different parts of our land. What do we expect from the conjurers of language in such troubled times as we live now? Should poetry say things simply and directly to power? Or should it instead seek refuge in the structures of the timeless and the transcendental? Is it possible to marshal a language that dares to take the challenge head on? What can be learnt and discarded from the older forms of poetry? How much is worth renewing? In the video links below, these five poets candidly talk about their convictions and art practice by historically situating the contemporary. The whole discussion has been divided into three sections. Connect your system to the speakers and click on the individual links please : 1. HUG at Yuva Kavi Sangam, 2016, Varanasi, Part I 2. HUG at Yuva Kavi Sangam, 2016, Varanasi, Part II 3.HUG at Yuva Kavi Sangam, 2016, Varanasi, Part III   *** adminhumanitiesunderground.org