A Concocted Emotion Is not Poetry: Padma Devkota

[Padma Devkota, who once taught English as Professor at Tribhuvan University, is an acclaimed poet, academic and translator. His fame as a writer rests in his works Dawn Cycle and Other Poems, Harischandra, A Pond of Swans and Other Essays, Madness of a Sort and Frosty Breath in the Wilderness. His significant translations include Contemporary Nepali Poetry, Madhav Ghimire’s Ashwatthama: A Lyrical Play, Loraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s Muna-Madan, among others. Uday Adhikari of The Gorkha Times recently had a lively talk with Prof. Devkota. Its edited except is presented herewith.]  

Some years back, you translated some of Nepali poets’ poems into English and the anthology was published by Royal Nepal Academy. You also translated a famous drama A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry into Nepali. It seems translation has always been a part of your creative life. Would you like to share your experience of translation with our readers?

Before the turn of the century, I agreed to translate some ninety-five Nepali poems into English because Mohan Koirala, the then Vice-Chancellor of Royal Nepal Academy, insisted I do so. These were newly published in a Nepali anthology of poems titled Nepali Adhunik Kabita. I personally had no other motive than to grab the opportunity to study some good Nepali poems and see what the contemporary Nepali poets were saying. I was surprised that a large sector of the Nepali literary world did not appreciate this anthology on two grounds: first, it started with Mohan Koirala’s poems and thus pretended that he was the forerunner of modern Nepali poetry; second, it was not inclusive of several contemporary poets and was, therefore, a false and biased representation of the contemporary literary scenario. For me, that was literary politics. After a few months, I was told to submit my unfinished translations, which I did. I was told that I would be given the time to review the translation before it was published. It never happened.

Later on, Toya Gurung, Member of Royal Nepal Academy, wanted to add a few more poets and their poems to this collection, but I refused to translate any more poets. I saw the book when it had already been published by the Royal Nepal Academy in 2000 under the title Contemporary Nepali Poems. I did not get a chance to improve the translation.

A similar story runs behind A Raisin in the Sun. The Royal Nepal Academy asked me to translate the work. I agreed to do so. As I was in the process of translating it, Gita Keshary, Member-Secretary of Royal Nepal Academy, called me one day and told me there was going to be some problem with regards to the promised remuneration for the translation. I was advised to stop the translation work for some time until the fog cleared. I did so. Then, one day, suddenly I get an alarm call! Time is running out. Have I finished the translation? I said no. They wanted me to hurry. So, hurry, I did. And the result is what everyone has seen. I could have worked on that translation to improve it, but I could not do so because of the way that Nepal Academy functions.
I have other experiences translating for the Nepal Academy. However, I have translated literary works for my own pleasure, if that is what you mean by this being a part of my creative life. I enjoyed translating Poet Laureate Madhav Prasad Ghimire’s Ashwatthama, which has come out pretty well. Muna-Madan was more difficult to translate than I previously thought it would be. I have also translated individual poems by Laxmi Prasad Devkota: “Song of the Nightingale,” “To the Morning Sky,” “Autumnal Moon,” “Wilderness,” and many more.

A few days back, you posted a kind of lyrical piece on your Facebook wall and asked your friends whether it is poetry or not. Later you confessed you were not sure about the poetic expression of this piece written in Nepali language as you were not trained in Nepali writing having been educated in English education since your childhood. How did it happen when the exponent of Nepal literature, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, was always around when you were a child?  

My father was so busy writing poems, he forgot to teach me Nepali! I picked it up from my mother and have called it my mother-tongue.

Now, FaceBook is not a very serious place to be in. One can ramble or sprint in the posts, but these posts usually have a half-hearted seriousness. And the responses, too, cannot be taken too seriously. It is true I posted an instant versification and asked if people thought it was poetry. Many people thought it was. They did not want to hurt me. So I hurt them by retorting what I thought. Versification is not poetry. Metrical skill is not poetry. A concocted emotion is not poetry. In Nepali, if you write in chhanda (Sanskrit metrics), it is immediately accepted as poetry. No, it is not. Using metrics is like driving a cab. Anyone can do so given a sufficiently long period of training. But to come up with genuine pity and compassion, to delve into the sincere depths of one’s human heart, to express not in order to achieve immortality of some sort but to deplore the human condition, to rejoice in life, this requires honesty.

And, no! I did not say I was “not sure about the poetic expression of this piece written in Nepali language.” I simply said I did not think it was poetry.

Recently, you posted how many people, even after passing their fifth decade, still answer without understanding the questions properly. You mean many people waste decades without learning at all. This post indicates why we are refusing to grow in many fields and the result is a lethargic society where a kind of stupidity is at work. Do the Westerners fare better in this aspect? Hasn’t our thinking process progressed in spite of modern education and seven decades as a democratic nation?  

I did post such a thing. I believe there are people who do not learn from experience. I have wondered why some people are bad learners. One of the reasons may just be that their priorities are elsewhere. When we are more interested in accumulating physical stuff, why should we bother with abstractions at the cognitive level? Does hoarded wealth lead to a “lethargic society”? I think so, yes. And perhaps that inclination towards inaction as Laxmi Prasad Devkota explains in “The Philosophy of Silence and Inaction” is strongly related to our faith in karma. Yet, above all, we have not been sufficiently trained to ask questions by our educational system and literally discouraged to do so by our religious, social and political systems. People are people everywhere. Nevertheless, there is a greater tendency in western cultures to examine anything new that comes up in the academic field. Any new idea or proposition is immediately examined and questioned by a whole lot of intelligent people and, if it stands the test, it will be promoted. Ours is more a tendency to stand agape at the new, to swallow it like medicine or to raise it on a pedestal. We will not think better if we are allowed to be more democratic. We will think better if we are allowed to be more critical of everything.

You mentioned a very funny memory of cheese from the eighties when you were studying in the US. How different was their education system from ours then? Was there any difficulty for Nepalese students to cope with the courses and life style?   

I remember telling my students at Tribhuvan University: Take a Nepali student out of the English MA program at the Central Department of English, Kirtipur, and place him or her in a classroom in Chicago University, s/he will immediately begin to study more seriously and shine more brilliantly; but, take an American student from Chicago University and place him or her in a classroom at Tribhuvan University, s/he will fare like any of our brilliant students. There, students read and study and take their assignments seriously. Here, students expect spoon-feeding and hope to get through the exam with flying colors on the basis of their class notes.

You write poems in Nepali and English and I have read many on your walls but seem not to be interested in compiling? Why are you so indifferent to bring them into anthologies? You have taught literature for long. You have practiced it well and as your student a question comes to my mind that how Padma sir has perceived literature. What is literature to you?  

I like to express myself in poetry too. Whenever I feel an inspiration of some sort, I do write a poem or try to. I do not always succeed. I do not wait to compose a second poem but let it come whenever it will. In a lifetime, a person will have written quite a bit. But what of that! I guess I still have enough poems for a collection or two. I have no desire to fly the literary skies so that people point at me and say, “Behold! There goes another songster soaring towards the moon!” 
Literature is a passion for which I live. Like many people, I like to read good literature. Like many people, I like to express myself creatively whenever I can. I have not lost the taste for good creation. As far as collections of poetry goes, should someone be interested in bringing out my collection, I have no objection.

When I was your student at TU, I heard you also taught French language, the language of Sartre, Kafka, Camus, etc. Your father knew many languages and the legacy has continued. I wonder what led you towards French language.  Answer: When I was a student of English Literature at Tribhuvan University, I used to study French at the French Cultural Centre, Bagbazar. For five days a week I was there from 7-9 a.m. learning French because people like Rousseau and Voltaire and Montaigne had caught my youthful imagination. After my graduation, I was lucky to get a scholarship to study French Language, Literature and Civilization at the University of Bordeaux III. (I believe its name has changed today.) After I came back, I started teaching French at the Campus of International Languages.

You were born into a family of creators and your father and all of ours revered poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota, carried this reputation in higher level. To be born in Devkota’s family is everyone’s fantasy. How was your childhood? Do you think your childhood changed the course of your life forever? Would you like to share some of your childhood memory with your father?  My childhood seemed to last forever like the Garden of Eden until the day my father passed away. Then I was made to taste the fruit of English education.

One day, on the way to Dhobidhara, he asked me if I wasn’t seven or eight years old. When I nodded in agreement, he asked me if I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t know what school was, but I again nodded in agreement. So, the following day, he got one of our cousins to get me admitted into Padmodaya High School, with my permission, of course.

Had my father not passed away that early, I would have continued studying in Padmodaya High School, and have picked up so much good Nepali and a bit of bad English and would have passed my SLC in third division and, perhaps, have picked up an early job. And then I might have picked up the art of poetry from some living master of the art. And I would have become a poet almost like him! But that did not happen because my life took a turn when my father died.

A few years back in the preface of an anthology something nasty was written about Devkota’s English language skill and the comment triggered a controversy. It started a discussion and many articles were written in favor or against his skill. Later the controversy subsided as propagators felt it reached farther than they intended it to be.  Now Devkota is regarded to be a true founder of Nepali English writing. Sakuntal, Bapu and Other Sonnets, one volume of essay and another volume in progress says enough about that. You edited his books in English that were written about seven decades ago. Would you like to tell what are the strength and weaknesses of Devkota as an English writer?

Deepak Thapa and Kesang Tseten edited An Other Voice: English Literature from Nepal. In the Preface to this book, they mentioned something about Laxmi Prasad Devkota trying his hand at writing poetry in English and I didn’t like their depreciation of the poet whose poetry they had not even read. Devkota writes nineteenth century English, but that says nothing about the quality of his literary work. In every century, excellent literature is produced in a language that is prevalent at that time. It would be wrong for anyone to judge Shakespeare’s or Milton’s English as not being “modern” in the sense that Deepak Thapa and Kesang Tseten wanted the language to be. Devkota learned the nineteenth century English language, but he writes so well in English. He has an excellent command over the medium and, as a writer, we all know him quite well. Whether he writes in English or in Nepali, his strengths and weaknesses as a writer are pretty much the same. In the two volumes of essays written originally in English, his language flows and sparkles. He is perfectly capable of playing with the medium. He uses many words from the vernacular, but words which have been included into English dictionaries. Sometimes, there’s a word that may not have found entry into an English dictionary and may need to be foot-noted, but overall readers are not lost. He has a very large reservoir of vocabulary from which words seem to spring out at his command.

Bapu and Other Sonnets was written in Calcutta after the assassination of Gandhi. Devkota was a great fan of Gandhi whose picture he had hung from the wall of his room. Shakuntala, the epic in English, is another masterpiece; but I have always resented the fact that its language was edited by others before publication. The Lunatic and Other Poems is a collection of his poems translated into English by the poet himself. The Witch Doctor and Other Essays is the first of the two volumes of essays written originally in English. We are working on a second edition of this collection. The second volume is titled Coronation Day in Kathmandu and Other Essays. Both will soon appear in the market. Others await their turn. Poetry, epic poetry, poetry in translation, or essays, Devkota writes excellently well. To get an idea of his command of English, one has only to read, for instance, “The Brook,” an onomatopoeic poem in English whose melody surpasses that of “The Brook” by Tennyson.  
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You write, translate and teach literature. How did you come to it? 

I had an English education. I majored in Science and did quite well; but I decided not to become a medical doctor like my mother and sisters and some cousins wanted me to. I decided to switch over to the Humanities and continued with the subject of my choice. I had offers in the Foreign Ministry too, but I knew that was not what I was made for! I loved teaching. I thought I would do great as a teacher. I enjoyed teaching for as long as I taught.

We have been in touch through Facebook for quite some time now. I am happy for your trust upon junior like me. You have spent most of your life editing Devkota’s works in English and translation and opened a school for Devkota study. Every great father loves to have such devoted son and Our Devkota seems luckier in this aspect. You are now enjoying your retirement in and out of country. Are you happy with the life you have been given?

I’m perfectly happy with the life I’ve lived. I hold no illusions about immortality. I’ve no regrets over the past. People ask me why I don’t write. I do. My own knick-knacks, which delight me. So, I post these on my Facebook wall. What more can I want?

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Some Poems by Padma Devkota from Dawn Cycle and Other Poems

Dawn

Opening the eyes I succumb to the rosy flush of her seductive intent
My heart awakens to a beauty it dares not lose.
Desire awakes and stirs like a young eagle whose unexercised wings and unwhetted claws
Keep it far from the would-be victim now safe in the distance where she parades her killing charms

Opening the heart I invite her to imprint its dark corridors with pencils of light.
She treads gently up and down its chambers planting a million points of brilliant light that merge and multiply into a revelation that is me; a revelation in which I find my self;
for it is nothing but an awakening: being conscious that I am conscious, which is thought.

Opening thought to primordial Dawn I would like to snuggle into her bosom to forget myself, but this is a desire that is forever wrangled and torn to shreds by teeth of stones and bones

in ways that render complete surrender an imbecile’s dream.
Longing for the second awakening, I fan the portals of the east with eaglet’s feathers that do not lift the air but invite
seductive Dawn to step softly inside the hosting mind that would cleanse itself with fresh beauty each morning at the death of night.
(June 8, 2000)

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Transformation

The curse of night over
like a rock that breathes again
and feels the surge of sensation old as life
stretching her cramped limbs and cowered curves
to fill the void that is not the consciousness
with rich splendor of softest form
dawn springs to life over the animated peaks
now crowned with glory all their own
in bluish distance deep and rich
replete with passion and with bubbling life
forcing a recognition of her charms
as she parades through cup-like valleys
that receive her like red, sparkling wine.

(June 9, 2000)
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Dr. Faustus

When I was idealistic and young,
I was Dr. Faustus:
ready to love any beauty for while,
willing to risk heaven for the mysteries of the world,
determined to rule it rough,
saying, “All this is mine!”

No bespectacled gaze could fathom my heart
that welled up with truth and certainty;
no power ruled that could ever curb
my natural spontaneity.
I walked like a lord who could change the world
with a snap of the finger of my will.

Although truth has eluded my grasp ever since,
certainty is a legend I still love;
Dr. Faustus too is alive and well
with no pit below nor a heaven above.
Only the magic of his days is gone.
as he pours over himself stubbornly alone.

(January 21, 2002)

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When I am Dying

Death is dark and scary;
do love me as I die.
Sit beside me patiently
to watch my life ooze by.

And when my eyelids flicker
to bid my last goodbye,
do hold my hands so gently
and look into my eye.

When death itself is nearer
than loving gaze can see,
your presence will be dearer
than life itself to me.

Though future days shall slacken
most loving memory,
don’t let my passage darken
by staying far from me.

(February 13, 2004)
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