| Username |
Post |
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 11:33 AM
On the general subject of quality in poetry: What do people think of this excerpt? Good, bad, clumsy, or divine? Should it be beyond criticism?
##
Priyamvada, presenting her, did add:
"Sixteen her summers; but she brings the spring
In wintry days! And beauteous as a bower
We think—blush not, my dear, I speak the truth."
Saucy Anasooya could not forbear
To add: "And sweet and ripe for marriage-bed
For bridegroom meet—or else the God of Love,
Cupid himself—will her to temple take."
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 01:31 PM
Sally,
Pretty interesting... :) Hence the the endorsement of of "Bal Biwaha", child marriage!
I have read similar in Manusmriti, I thinks!
As a sociologist, I have read, "Kids having kids"( forget the exact title); on teenage pregnancy!
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 01:32 PM
I thinks= I think!
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 01:35 PM
Hmmm, but you didn't say if you liked it.
You probably have figured that I didn't write it :-)
|
| Suna |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:03 PM
"kids having kids"
hehe
sorry to have digressed but this really tickled me! ;)
|
| Suna |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:05 PM
my humble novice opinion: for a layman, the poem is kind of hard to follow. I had to read it again to make sure I was getting it right!
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:21 PM
My also humble opinion: for ANYONE, or at least anyone living outside of Victorian England (who wouldn't have had the chance to read it, because it wasn't written then), it's kind of hard to follow. That's part of what it means for a poem to be awkward.
It's supposed to have been written, in English, by Devkota.
Apparently there was a bit of a stir in KTM about whether Devkota's English writing is good or not. From this example, I think it's awkward and derivative, if it was even written by him. Does anyone know if he really wrote it? Cuz the English level (though very 19th century) is awfully high. I'm no scholar; I'm just giving my uninformed gut reaction.
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:34 PM
Sally....
Deceptive words....!!!!!!!!!!
I DON"T like it!
:)
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:44 PM
Unh-oh, watch out, Sitara. First Leonardo, then Devkota ... who's next on your hit list, Shakespeare? Picasso? :-)
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 02:49 PM
Nope..!!!
FREEDOM of thoughts, words, deeds!!!
A Conscious Choice....A deliberate action! .....MINE!
Society "makes" the "norms" and bench marks.... ART and LITERATURE hath no "standards" of measurements!
:)
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 03:06 PM
Hmmm. I don't agree that art and literature has no standards, although I DO agree that society makes those standards. Yes, the choice is ours, but our own standards are also influenced by society, right? We exercise our freedom of thought within the perameters we've been taught.
Which doesn't mean we have no choice. Part of excercising freedom of thought (within the perameters we've been taught) means that we choose to reject certain things; I just don't think we can get away from being creatures of our own time. So to me, yes, there are standards; but if part of what you're saying is that the standards have no absoluteness and are certainly not timeless, then I agree with that.
In fact, that's part of why I agree with you that Mona Lisa is overrated. That's not a quality judgment--I have no doubt the quality is terrific, whatever that means--but we've simply been so exposed to it that there is no way to judge, so there's no way to "rate" it free of the context of all those years of hearing how terrific it is. We can't really see it.
Although, of course, people can always so "I like it" or "I don't like it," and that doesn't have to be a standards-based reaction. Just personal. For instance, I don't care for Picasso, and that's entirely personal and has nothing to do with whether I think he's "good" or not. His art just makes me think too much of cigars.
Anyway, enough rambling ...
|
| Suna |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 03:34 PM
(totally on a tangent! Sally did you not get the email I sent through sajha??)
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 03:45 PM
I did send a reply, but I just checked my mail and I see I have a "delivery failure notification." Sorry ... the sajha networking goes to my personal email rather than my work email, so I don't always see it quickly if I'm either (a) swamped or (b) a lazy bum. There are equal chances of my being either one on a given day. I'll resend.
And YES Suna, it's a tangent. What a naughty girl you are today. You're supposed to stick to the subject here and talk about cigars. Or kids having kids. Or maybe kids having cigars. Get with the program, girl.
|
| Suna |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 04:07 PM
cigars? ummmmmmm billlllllllllly :)
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 09:10 PM
sally,
let me present my opinion on this issue:
That poem is somebody's creatiobn, let's admit it. And creations are good, we can't judge it.. add adjectives.. its their feelings translated into words., The edirtors of the Martin Chautari wrote something like " Devkota tried writing poems in english which were clumsy" . His son, a Prof. of English at TU's central department of English says, no one can say that "devkota tried to write in English" because he "wrote it" and made it public for everyone to read it. No creation is clumsy for me. it expresses artists/potes emotions.. so, i wouldn't say clumsy.
in the article to defend his father, Padam devkota writes, if you are to judge poetry by the use of language./words, then by modern standard Chaucer's english is incomprehensible and shakespear's english is bad . [ And i don't undedrstand a single poem by John King or Lord Byron, does that mean their poems are clumsy or they didn't know english or they just tried tow rite poems in English?]
just a freaky thought
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 09:17 PM
and one importanrt thingL:
I don't know anything about literature. i wasn't traiend to read literature.., and i didn't develop a habit of reading literature either..
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 09:22 PM
From TKP , Nov 9
An Other Voice : Cultural misrepresentation
By Padma Devkota
Martin Chautari released An Other Voice: English Litera- ture from Nepal at the end of October 2002. It includes fifty-three prose and poetry items by twenty Nepali and non-Nepali writers. Quite obviously, nationality is not an important criteria here. The editors are clear on the issue of who to include in the collection: "We chose to limit our selections to original English literature being written by Nepali citizens, and by expatriate writers who regard Nepal as home, and are involved in Nepali letters." This makes the collection one of English literature from Nepal, not necessarily of Nepali writing in English, and justifies the subtitle.
Unfortunately, this encompassing vision of the editors is marred by a blunder that no conscious literary critic would ever make. The Preface to An Other Voice: English Literature from Nepal makes a culturally detrimental remark in the second paragraph: "English literature from Nepal can be traced back to the 1940s, to the clumsy attempts by the most famous name in Nepali literature, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, trying his hand at composing poems in English" (my emphasis). Leaving aside my filial devotion to the memory of my competent father, I have no hesitations in declaring the above statement as both inaccurate and uncritical. Were it malicious too, this would have been an instance of cultural terrorism.
The statement is inaccurate because Devkota is the best—not just the most famous—poet of Nepal even after forty-three years of his demise in 1959. This is true whether we look at him in terms of his literary output in English or in Nepali. He did not just try his hand at composing poetry; he produced a bulk of epics and other short and long poems that carry a great cultural weight of the whole nation. No other poet has ever represented the peoples and the languages of Nepal to the extent that Devkota has.
Besides the content, his mastery of both the English and the Nepali languages remains uncontested even today. The early generation of Indian writers in English suffered from a lack of confidence whenever they wrote in English because they could not get rid of their colonial experience. This did not happen to Devkota. Even in the acquired language, he wrote with a confidence and clarity that the native might emulate. There is no Nepali writer in English today who has produced a work that can parallel the literary merits of Shakuntala, which many fake scholars have mistaken for a posthumous translation of the Nepali epic. Devkota’s short, sonorous lyric titled "The Brook" presents a better onomatopoeic use of language than Tennyson’s poem of the same title. Anyone who has read the translations of Nepali poems into English in the two bi-lingual editions of Indreni, the poetry magazine of Kavya Prathisthan, cannot possibly claim such accusations hurled at Devkota to be true unless if it be with deliberate malice. Many native and non-native speakers of English have tried translating Devkota’s "Pagal." None of them have been able to do a better job than the poet himself: "The Lunatic," now prescribed at the Diploma level, is the best rendering into English of the Nepali poem.
Laxmi Prasad Devkota did not go to St Xavier’s or Budhanilkantha. He was a product of an ordinary government school that did not have the facilities that are available to students today. Even a public library did not exist at that time. The government fined him and his friends for trying to start a public library. Books were rare commodities that were bought in India. Very few people knew any English at all, the language of the "beef-eater," which was shunned by the holy caste. To have acquired such a mastery over the English language at all as Devkota did during the Rana Regime is in itself a wonderful thing. It is possible that the editors who have made the culturally detrimental remark about Devkota thought that his language is not contemporary. But then they should also accuse Tennyson and Browning for not writing modern English. From this perspective, Shakespeare’s language is horrible and Chaucer’s is incomprehensible. Shall we call them "clumsy"?
Another aspect of Devkota’s English education is that, in the 1920s, he was taught nineteenth century English in school. He grew up appreciating the Romantics and the Victorians. This does not mean that he did not read Sigfried Sassoon or T S Eliot. He was a voracious reader in a country where people still have not acquired a reading culture. In a nation of people who still have not developed a working culture or ethics, his industrious habit too has been grossly misunderstood.
To make a detrimental remark on a national figure like Devkota without paying attention to the time when he was writing and without seriously studying his original literary productions in English is a gross mistake. Deepak Thapa, "the books editor at Himal Books," and Kesang Testen "a writer and filmmaker of Tibetan origin," were trusted by Martin Chautari to edit the book. The editors have blundered in a way that is very harmful for the cultural image of Nepal. Foreigners who take this prefatorial remark seriously are bound to mistake its ineptitude for authenticity. This is a gross cultural misrepresentation of Nepal.
In fact, nowhere is Devkota "clumsy." Neither is he simply "trying his hand at writing poetry in English." Both these accusations can be easily hurled at certain pieces included in the collection itself. With all respect to Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, I could not appreciate the poem titled "The Contest," which talks about a pissing contest. I do not see what this poem represents or states, or even why it is included in the collection at all. Were the editors thinking of going global by this and some other inclusions? At least, we in Nepal like to remain glocal: that is, we do not desire or seek to forsake the local for the sake of pleasing the global communities of the world.
The worst part of it all is that the Japan Foundation Asia Centre has invested money in a project that undermines the best poet of Nepal and pretends that an upcoming generation that has a long way to go is the most representative. What is Japan doing here?
|
| NK |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 09:58 PM
"The word, Saucy,doesnot fit in this poem. It is so out of character when you look a the whole poem. This particular word makes the poem a kind of trying-to-hard. But, I sort of like this poem.
Mona Lisa overrated? I think it is us who keep on talking about makes it bigger than it is. I don't think Leonardo thought he was creating a masterpiece. And definitely, you kind of feel let down when you actually see the painting behind that glass plate in its original place after hearing so much aobut it.
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 10:40 PM
IF,
Thanks so much for posting the very articulate and well-argued KP article. I'd missed it earlier, and I'm so glad you brought it to people's attention here. I'll get to it (inadequately, probably) in a minute.
First, you wrote, "Creations are good, we can't judge it.. add adjectives.. its their feelings translated into words."
I agree that we can't judge somebody's "feelings." But yes, we can judge how they're "translated into words." If I say, "My feeling is xasdfajkljkl," that is poor expression, because it doesn't communicate. It may be nice that I've created something, and my feeling may still lie beyond the realm of judgment. But art isn't just about self-expression. It's also about communicating, and communicating artfully.
Of course, there are always going to be disagreements about whether or not a particular piece communicates, and to whom, and who gets to judge, and why. Those are interesting questions, but they're not addressed by saying that whatever someone chooses to call art is art, and therefore beyond judgment.
I do happen to think it's not cricket to critique an artwork by someone who's not trying to "make art" but is just being expressive. But it's NOT bad form to critique Devkota or anyone else who is a serious writer.
Which takes us to the KP article. I have to note that I have NOT seen the book, I am hardly an expert on Devkota (!!!), and I don't claim to have any serious insight. I'm just a reader with a few quick reactions to a few point in that well-done article.
Padma Devkota writes, "The editors have blundered in a way that is very harmful for the cultural image of Nepal."
How could that be? Neither Devkota's image, nor Nepal's cultural image, could be in any way dependent on his skill at original writing in English.
"The early generation of Indian writers in English suffered from a lack of confidence whenever they wrote in English because they could not get rid of their colonial experience. This did not happen to Devkota."
That's hard to believe. Regardless of whether or not he was in India, he certainly would have learned English in a colonial context.
"To make a detrimental remark on a national figure like Devkota without paying attention to the time when he was writing ... is a gross mistake."
To make a detrimental remark on ANYONE without paying attention to the time is a mistake. Absolutely. But his being a national figure shouldn't enter into it.
I do think that the Devkota quote above is clunky, overwrought, and derivative. That's not necessarily the writer's shortcoming. The fact that he managed to do it at all is, in fact, a mark of brilliance, and many of his son's points on that are well-taken. But its anachronisms and archaic language--references to Cupid? from a mid-century Nepali?!?--do separate it from its time in mid-20th century history, unlike Chaucer, Browning, and Byron, who are hard to understand, I.F., because they're NOT from our time.
Of course, those archaisms are an accident of historical and geographic circumstances, and the derivative nature is not surprising given the colonial context of the region at the time. It's hardly a blemish. But to imitate a 19th century Romantic European in the 20th century in Nepal IS awkward, and it's not wrong to point that out, just because the particular imitator was a great and respected poet.
My suspicion is that a close reading would show that these English pieces can be respected for what they are--historical oddities, representative of a time in Nepal's history--and that their inevitable awkwardness and anachronism in no way undermines anything about Devkota or Nepal.
I would like to see more, though, so I can talk about this without feeling like I'm talking through my hat :-)
|
| sally |
Posted
on 20-Nov-02 10:43 PM
Hi NK,
I was busy blabbing and didn't see your posting, sorry ... long time no talk! How's life???
|
| anepalikt |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 12:01 AM
"To make a detrimental remark .... without paying attention to the time when he was writing and without seriously studying his original literary productions in English is a gross mistake." Yes, absolutely. As Sally said though regardless of the person in question's status.
Sally, the lines you quoted do seem rather akward and the language does seem awfully stilted and the images derivative.
"But to imitate a 19th century Romantic European in the 20th century in Nepal IS awkward." However, I am not sure I agree with this statement. It is not akward considering the works of Elliot and other writers of the early 20th century were probably not available to Devkota. To us TODAY Devkota's English works might seem anachronistic and derivative, but there are also plenty of his contemporary native English writers whose works have the same anachronistic images and emply the same stilted victorian language. "Modern" writers like Elliot and cummings and whoever else was writing in the new mode were considered avant garde and their work considered a break from the established norms of literary aesthetics of the time. Even Devkota's contemporary native English speaking writers writing at the time aspired to write like the Vicorians and DID write like them. Would we judge them the same?
To me this whole thing brings up the issue of who can "rightly" claim the aesthetics of the Romantics and Vicotrians... without being labelled derivative, clumsy, and copy cat. Would we judge a native English speaker who wrote in the same style as Devkota and around the same time as him with the same words? Probably not quite. This has been the bane for most "non-native" speakers and even native speakers who happen not to be from the particular anglo or American traditions culturally, but for whome English is the the main language of creation and daily exchange... for example for contemporary writers like Walcott and Soyinka even.
Anyhow... Devkota was brilliant no doubt. I started reading Shakuntala at one point. But it was just not my cup of tea... and thus abandoned it midway. I did find it clumsy... but I think personally it had less to do with Devkota's Victorian English, as much as the difficulty I had in dgesting traditional sanskrit subjects in English... I thing the challenge to rendering the aesthetics and culturally specific images and metaphors of Nepali/sanskrit into English remains. Can't say I have seem any contemporary writers been able to do justice either. Anyhow, were I to come across a peice of contemporary writing that resembled Devkota's verse in English today... I think my reaction would be lot harsher... but knowing when the work was written and the difficulty the writer faced, I just passed off reading it:)
La bye.
|
| sally |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 12:26 AM
Oh dear, somehow this came to my personal email first and I thought, OK, did you mean for it to go on sajha or not? But there I was on my email, so I replied personally without checking sajha, and now I see it's here too and I'm tired and I don't think I can be coherent ... not that I necessarily was before ...
Anyway, you're more than welcome to pull it off the personal email and slash my counterargument to threads and all in public :-) Or suffice it to say, good thoughts, not that I agree with them all, but hey, I'm in the wrong time zone for intelligent thought at the moment, so I'll respond later. Have a fun Kathmandu day ...
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 02:46 AM
dear sally,
thank you so much for explaining the creation deal to me (and my sincere thanks to NK too). although, i am not that easily persuaded most of the time, i guess two brilliant ladies' explanation has somehow changed my thinking regarding criticizing/commenting/judging art and poetry. so, coffee is on me (my guru daxina) when you guys are in Nepal next. :=)
also, anepalikt, if you are in town, why not meet? its always fun to meet fellow sajhaite in Nepal over coffee, beer or khukuri rum (depending on your preference).
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 05:16 AM
Goodness you guys!
I never even went beyond the content of the poetry!!! :) I hesitate to critique anyone's style...as I don't consider myself trained to do so.
Isolated Freak, great analysis!
Nk, Sally, Anepalikt..... have been enjoying reading your comments!
Sally, I love Klimt and Van Gogh..... stirrs the "somethings" in me.... :)
I literally feel "how, how"! "Kuch, kuch, hota hai"!
Also, I enjoy Edgar Allen Poe's poems and when combined with Alan Parson's music.......the whole package gives me the shivers! Haunting, thrilling....really spooky!
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 06:07 AM
Sitara wrote: Isolated Freak, great analysis!
????? I haven't done any analyzing. The piece on cultuyral misrepresentation was by Padma devkota.. i wish i could write like him...
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 06:16 AM
dedicated to sitara:
A Dream by.... Poe [ I don't undrstand even P of Poe's poetry:-)]
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed--
But a waking dream of life and light
hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream--that holy dream,
While all the world were childing,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What enough that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar--
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 06:42 AM
here's a really clumsy poem by me...
title: aaja k bhayo? [what happened today?]
Aaja k bhayo?
Kehi bhayena
Euta manche maryo
Kina maryo?
Thaha chaina
Kasari maryo?
Goli lagyo, maryo.
Aaja k bhayo
Kehi bhayena
Euta bomb padkyo
Eh! Kina ni?
Thaha chaina.
Padkyo..
Euta school bhatkyo
Aaja k bhayo?
Kehi bhayena
Rame ko ba harayo
Ye kasari harayo?
Thaha chaina..
Bihana bahirra gathyo
Ahile radio le apaharan bho bhanyo..
Ye..
Aani aaru k bhayo?
Khasai kehi bhayena
Euta mandir aani
Duita pool bhatkyo
Kunni kata euta master maryo
Kunni kata ho dohoro bhidanta bho
Kunni kasko logne maryo re
Kunni kasko choro harayo re..
Tara khasai kehi bhayena
Kina bhane..
Ahile samma malai kehi bha chaina
|
| isolated freak |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 06:50 AM
la ja ta arko pani:
[this is purely fictiona. nothing to do with my real life]
Take life as it comes bhanera bhanyau
Tyaspachi feri I love you pani bhanyau
J’tiem beaucoup mon amour bhanna pani sikau
Tara last ma.. ce’st la vie bhanera chadera gayau..
I am still alive..Chillin’ and kickin’
Smoking and drinking
But you know something..
There’s something I am missing.
You probably don’t realize this..
your presence is being missed
And your absence felt..
Ah! Well enough said
(ends abruptly becasue i couldn't write more.. aaudai aayena)
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 07:17 AM
Sally,
Last year, Padma P. Devkota and others in his cricle of writers in Kathmandu were very critical -- quite nastily and unfairly, I thought-- of Samrat Upadhyay.
Devkota et al charged that Samrat MIS-represented Nepal. They went on to announce, quite simply, that Samrat's stories do NOT represent Nepal.
Samrat then wrote this tongue-in-cheek article for the Kathmandu Post, basically saying: who on earth is/was this Nepal Literary Society (staffed by Mr. Devkota and others)
to tell others what they can write and not write to represent/not represent and misrepresent Nepal?
Needless to say, Samrat's point, delivered through humor, was not received well by the English writers based out of TU, and I hear that they have since BANNED any discussion of Samrat's stories and future works for any purpose for their English literature students.
This is the kind of thing we live with in Nepal.
No wonder Mr. Junior Devkota is livid that Martin Chautari dared use the word "clumsy" to describe some of LPD's works in English.
Think about it: What of foreigners know about this, and then start disrespecting LPD? What then happens to our national unity, our sense of nationality, our yada, yada, yada. Yes, we have to gird our loins and tie our "patuka" and stop this Martin Chautari
from spreading such nasty things about our critically untouchable, so-up-there poet. :-)
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
|
| NirajBS |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 07:23 AM
anepalikt says: "To me this whole thing brings up the issue of who can "rightly" claim the aesthetics of the Romantics and Vicotrians... without being labelled derivative, clumsy, and copy cat. Would we judge a native English speaker who wrote in the same style as Devkota and around the same time as him with the same words? Probably not quite. This has been the bane for most "non-native" speakers and even native speakers who happen not to be from the particular anglo or American traditions culturally, but for whome English is the the main language of creation and daily exchange... for example for contemporary writers like Walcott and Soyinka even."
An interesting obeservation. Part of the reason why 'non-native' English writers have a 'Victorian' sensibility might be because, often times, that is the literary world they have grown up in. This is especially true in ex-colonial societies (Like India, and by extension Nepal) where schoolchildren still routinely memorize Tennyson and Wordsworth, most of the (21st century) people live in a society(esp. in urban areas) not different from nineteenth century Dickensonian London. So, for most of the contemporary 'non-native' writers, the mere transcription of the world around them falls into a nineteenth century form.
That said, I don't think Soyinka and Walcott are usually labelled as 'Victorians' or coming from the Romantics tradition. Walcott is usually compared to the Greek masters and many of Soyinka's works are avant garde. Both are taken to be 'difficult' writers and especially Soyinka to be wilfully so.
Devkota was probably brilliant (I haven't read him nearly enough to come to that judgement myself) but to arrive at that conclusion, the reader will have to read him in Nepali. It's hard enough to translate, but is even harder, as you have so rightly pointed out, when "one has to render the aesthetics and culturally specific images and metaphors of Nepali/sanskrit into English ". On a side note, I was fairly impressed with the quality of some of the translations (esp. those by Manjushree Thapa) in Manoa's Nepal issue 'Secret Places'. And so were some of my 'native' American friends.
|
| SimpleGal |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 09:14 AM
IF-ji,
I really liked your Aaja ke bhayo poem. The satire is just right and the simplicity with which you've conveyed the poignancy of the state of "reality" today is both biting and jolting. Morever, the human tendency to be mired in egocentricity, depicted in your last line, is yet another instance of the state of "reality."
Just to comment on the general sentiment of this thread, and also on your "prologue" of sorts before you posted the poem---your Aaja ke bhayo is anything but clumsy!
Gandhi-ji once said, "In a gentle way, you can shake the world." You poem has the power to do just that! :)
Thanks for posting it!
In peace.
|
| sally |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 10:01 AM
IF, I like your Nepali poem. I can't pretend to "critique" it, I just liked it :-)
Sitara, I like Van Gogh too; maybe that undercuts my argument that we can't "see" paintings that have become part of popular culture.
Ashu, thanks for the background. Interesting ... Samrat Upadhyay banned by TU indeed!!! I actually think his stories are quite open to criticism, and I have a few myself, but isn't that why they SHOULD be assigned? So students in the classes could discuss them? It's pretty unarguable that they're good, the question is how good and why or why not and whether they "represent Nepal" (whatever that means, and it DOES potentially mean something interesting). Oh well, back to "The Rocking Horse Winner." Sigh.
Anepalikt, Hi again. I think my main point was that writing in English is either going to be viewed as English writing, in which case it can be judged by those standards; or it'll be viewed as something else, such as a historical or anthropological curiosity, in which case it's somewhat immune from criticism.
But if someone is going to "play with the big boys"--if their writing is to be viewed as English writing and not as a curiosity--then they've gotta take the hits. The fact that they came to the game somewhat unprepared doesn't really shield them from that.
Of course, the rules of the game do change. Particularly as more people, such as non-Westerners, join it. But I think Niraj BS is right, and Soyinka (I'm not familiar with Walcott) would never have been accused of awkwardness ... anything that's derivative in his writing (or Chinua Achebe, another Nigerian) is on a much more subtle, and I think more intellectually defensible, level than the quote above.
I think there's a qualitative difference between a mid-century Nepali responding to what he's read by attempting to duplicate it, and say, a British academic in 1950 writing in a consciously referential style and tossing in Cupids and so on (if they did that, which I don't know, I'm no scholar). My suspicion is that Devkota wasn't being entirely conscious, because he just didn't have enough information for that. Not his fault, but once we argue that, we're in the immune-from-criticism realm of historical curiosity.
Also, part of the indigestability you talked about is, I think, a reaction to the fact that it IS awkward to use Greek metaphors to talk about Nepal, and to write in a kind of forced Victorian diction that is grammatically questionable. It would be equally awkward if I wrote, "As the morning sun rose over the village like a Pink Floyd light show, the sound of the buffaloes lowing to be milked reached Shakuntala's ear like the sound of garbage trucks on a suburban morning." Maybe I'd have no access to other metaphors because of my life experiences, but that STILL wouldn't keep it from being called awkward. Even if it was, otherwise, brilliantly written.
Niraj BS, Yes, I do think a lot of the archaism is the educational context. That leads to an interesting sensibility, at least when it's well-digested. Think Rohinton Mistry. That may be part of the nature of South Asian literature; I don't know, I haven't read enough. I like your comments on the way that urban life in Nepal (and possibly elsewhere in South Asia) tends to give a sense of connection with Victorian novels. I've noticed that myself, and I think it's fascinating.
|
| NK |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 03:54 PM
Hey you are welcome IF. sometimes chatting can teach us something, no? i am going to remember your offer next time when I am in Ktm.
|
| SITARA |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 04:22 PM
Isolated Freak ji,
ok...let me rephrase the statement. Thank you for posting the analysis.... :) That was what I meant originally!
Also, thank you for Poe's poetry ( I know you did not write it...:)! As for interpreting poetry...it is like a dream analysis for me! A state of mind and a frame of mood! I could dwell on the dark and the somber, if not the iradiating.
Your other poems....are expressive...just that! Simple yet expressive....not meant to prove, justify nor impress!
Thank you hajur! :)
|
| gorkheni |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 09:49 PM
sundainan kohi malai , maile matra suneki chu
chata diyera arulai, pani ma bhijheki chu.
dedkhdainan kohi malai , maile matra dedkheki chu,
akha diyera arulai, andho bhai hideki chu.
|
| NK |
Posted
on 21-Nov-02 09:58 PM
Hiyaaa Sally! Will write to you.
Have a good night.
|
