Yadunath Khanal
Mr. Siddhicharan Shrestha is one of the most outstanding of our poets. Ever since Mr. Surya Vikram Gewali drew our pointed attention to his remarkable poetic qualities sometime in the thirties, he remained at the forefront of our literary stage. For this reason, I have reflected a great deal on him during the last seven years with a view to understanding him and, if possible, assessing him as a poet. I have read and re-read his poems, particularly the anthology entitled Mero Pratibimba (My Image) and the long poem called Urvasi. I have read critical studies about him, notable by Mr. Ratna Dhoj Joshi and Mr. Vijaya Bahadur Malla. But I am afraid he has eluded me; he has remained always a litter remote and distant.
Is it because he is rather a lonely person socially and poetically? Away from the town, he says, somewhere in the distance he hears somebody calling him; he wishes to walk alone. He seems to feel lonely even in the midst of poets and scholars. We miss the spark of personal and social communication. Perhaps this is what makes him a little distant. But he is remote, not because he says little about himself. Indeed he says a great deal even in a direct manner with sincerity that is at once deep and transparent. He tells us much new about the world and our society, too. And seen through the medium of his powerful glasses which seem to reinforce his native faculty of observation, the world and society appear in their elemental character even if it is much tinged with his own personal outlook. With a powerful poetic stroke, he mercilessly exposes the current evils and injustices of our society. His desire to see and to learn is insatiable; his will to improve the society is unshakable. He does not complain that Nepalese society is too narrow a canvas to work on; he does not escape from the realities of our life to an ivory tower to brood barrenly and distantly over world agony. His involvement in the life around him is complete. And this involvement, it must be noted, is more than intellectual. It is physical and spiritual also. He carries about him a sense of intense private suffering made all the more acute by the fact that his family shares some of the sufferings. His Vishwa Vyatha, which is an account of both of his private suffering and suffering of his family, is a universalized and sublime account of world agony.
I have several times met him in literary gatherings. I have never felt that there is any social or intellectual gap between Siddhicharan and society. In such groups, Balakrishan Sama may suggest an intellectual remoteness and perhaps a social gap; Lekhanath may suggest a gap of generations. Devkota, we know, had no difficulty in establishing his rapport completely with any group, whether literary or non-literary. Despite the climate of communion, which has been referred to above, Mr. Shrestha gives the impression that he is in the gathering and yet outside it. He seems to participate only poetically. Socially and physically, he seems rather remote.
This is a little strange because Shrestha, like Sama, is one of the most humanistic of our poets. In a sonnet named ‘Achhut’ (The Untouchable), he imagines God rejecting the so-called holy water brought to him for worship without letting the poor untouchable touch it. Some of his lines can be paraphrased as under:
Touch his feet first and then come to my temple. Only then will you be blessed and be like man; you will then cease to be the thorn to the country’s progress and be straight.
Another small poem called Mero Pratibimba (My Reflection) explores the same subject from a different angle. By picturing himself as a thing completely devoid of humanity, with a great deal of bitter sarcasm, he focuses our attention on the general loss of human values from our midst. He pictures himself rather comically as a pumpkin resting on a piece of stone, which is itself supported by two sticks and dragged in jest by children as man. The metaphor suggests a total lack of intellect; that of stone a lack of feeling; that of sticks a lack of nutrition. He is indeed not a man but a manikin. He winds up his observation as follows: ‘This is a form but without beauty; this is a language without emotion; this is man but without soul; thoughts are shut out from all sides. Is this my reflection that is walking?’
Shresth’s poetry regards man as the ultimate end. While for Sama humanism is a philosophic experience first, and a system later, for Shrestha, the system that governs human life is the first concern, and philosophical musing secondary. In a word, Mr. Sama ‘interprets’ man as the centre of the universe; Mr. Shrestha ‘experiences’ man as the centre of it.
I do not mean to suggest that Shrestha’s poetry has no element of intellectuality, though I do contend that it has less of it than Sama’s. All modern poetry represents a high degree of intellectual involvement in the problems of our society and of the age, and Shrestha’s is no exception. Progressive poetry is in fact intellectual poetry. In Nepalese literature as in that of the world, Mr. Sama interprets man as the centre of the universe; Shrestha experiences man as the centre of it.
In Nepalese literature, as in that of the world, progress has meant progress towards intellectualism. As one of the pioneers of the progressive movement in Nepalese poetry in the thirties in revolt against the then current tradition dominated by the influence of classical Sanskrit, Shrestha has applied his mind to a considerable extent to the study of the subject matter as well as the form of poetry. The sift was inevitable towards intellectualism, one suffused with new consciousness and nurtured by the freedom of expression and arts, motivated by desire to wash away the old, shattering, lawless order in the ever-enlarging freedom of expression. He wants to awaken his people from a swoon-like slumber. He exhorts Devkota to sing with a power to awaken people from death: ‘Sing me a song, poet, which can stir our numberless children out of their graves and which can end the swoon of the ages.’
It is perhaps his deep personal involvement in the life of the common people and their hopes and fears that made him the most subjective of our poets and writers. His approach is direct. He has resisted the temptation of expressing himself through symbols and suggestions. In so far as it is possible in poetry, he calls a spade a spade. While this characteristic of his poetry has sometimes landed him in goal, it has also lent his poetry a reality of vigour and freshness. His poetry is consistent in this respect. His anthology, Mero Pratibimba, amply illustrates the point because poem after poem in it is characterized by directness and subjectivism. Mention has already been made of the little poem ‘My Reflection’. He says elsewhere, ‘Man must rise and must experience suffering. It is only by listening to the call of the age that man can make himself complete. In a sonnet, possible inspired by Milton, he contemplates how he has reached the age of thirty-six and exhorts himself to accept and face reality. In some other poems, he addresses himself by name in order to ensure that there is nobody standing between him and what he has to say: ‘Look, O Siddhicharan, how things have gone wrong with the world; man who has strong will to live is living a dying life.’
When we come to Urvasi, we find that the directness of the earlier poems is rather obscured. The poet has taken a particular little episode from the Mahabharata. This episode is an encounter between Urvasi and Arjun followed by the latter’s refusal to respond to the former’s solicitations. The poet has made it clear that he had grafted himself in one of the characters. Is it Arjun or Urvasi? As he has confessed in the preface, he started writing the poem by identifying himself with Arjun, who had conquered his mind. He had wanted to say something in a pretty way. But as the poem progressed and changes came in the political scene of Nepal, Urvasi seems to have acquired a larger dimension than was realized at the beginning. In the manner of the ‘Kamayani’ of Jayashankar Prasad but in a much simpler from, Urvasi and Arjun are represented to symbolize two aspects of human personality, the man and his aspiration. The result is that each of the characters represents the poet both as man and as his aspiration. It is not necessary to take the poet too seriously on this point, especially when he does not speak through his poetry. Obviously, what is expressed in poetry is much more important than what is expressed in the preface. Let us take the following description of Urvasi:
How beautiful and fresh was Urvasi with her exquisite from! Urvasi, with her exquisite from, glitters like a beautiful flower blooming gloriously in the garden of youth!
It would be easier to interpret these lines as a representation of the poet’s aspiration. The poet has a vision of a certain ineffable beauty, a fact which can hardly be explained by identifying Urvasi with the poet.
But this does not detract from the high quality which characterizes the poetry of Urvasi. It is a mature poem both in thought and in style.
From what has been said above, it should be clear that Siddhicharan Shrestha occupies a special place in the history of Nepalese poetry. His lifelong dedication to the Muse, his transparent sincerity, his impatience with symbols and circumlocution, his passion for reform are qualities that are bound to impress the lovers of Nepalese poetry for a long times to come.
His subject is himself; his experience is unique enough and valuable enough to have a special appeal for us and indeed to have a universal appeal.
Trans: Mahesh Paudyal
[Also a writer, late Professor Khanal was the former Ambassador of Nepal to the United States of America and a noted diplomat.]