LB Chhetri
Even after sixty years of his death, Laxmi Prasad Devkota continues to be the most celebrated Nepali author to date, equally popular among readers of all ages and genres. He also continues to be the most exponential Nepali literary figure for foreign readers. He is perhaps the most discussed author, and the number of reviews, researches, and criticism on him supersede those on other Nepali writers.Â
There are numerous reasons to explain this overwhelming popularity of Laxmi Prasad Devkota. The genius of his writing, no doubt, is the first reason. In about 25 years of his creative writing, he wrote some more than eighty works, many of which still lie unpublished, while some have gone out of circulation for want of care. Whatever survives the vagaries of time is enough to make Devkota a timeless writer.
Besides his creative genius, Devkota has become timeless for the extraordinary range and expanse of his thematic domain. He simultaneously picks up issues from three civilizational crucibles: Eastern Sanskritic tradition, the original Nepali fork tradition and the Western, especially Greco-Roman tradition. By doing so, he has foregrounded essential nuances of three different worldviews. As quite sensitive he was, Devkota caught influences from various quarters, and his writing reflects a myriad of influences, which are at times mutually contradicting as well. Any reader can easily see how he was influenced by the ninth century British romantics including Wordsworth. He went to Russia and caught influence from the political structure there. He travelled to Rumania and was impressed with revolutionary developments taking place there. He lived for some time in Banaras, and edited Yugvani, which required him to adopt a revolutionary nationalistic approach. He was impressed by the changes taking place in China, and some of his poems—at least one for sure—eulogizes Mao for his political feats. In imbibing impressions from outsides, Devkota invited inevitable changes in himself, swinging from passive romanticism to active romanticism, then to socialist radicalism, and finally towards spiritualism. This fluctuation in philosophy has made Devkota an extremely complicated poet to class him in this group or that, but one benefit of being unconfined is that, every group claims Devkota as being a member of its own coterie. This must be the reason why democrats, communists and neutrals all claim Devkota as someone belonging to their camp. The benefit, however, is still Devkota’s. This simultaneous membership in more than one camp, thematically, keeps Devkota relevant across ages.
Another important thing is that, Devkota tried his hand and excelled in multiple genres. For this reason, readers and critics of all genres finally end up encountering Devkota in one front or another. Devkota’s popularity in fiction—stories and a novel—is rather weak, but in other genres, he prevailed. In epics, short epics, metrical poems, essays, songs, prose poems and children’s literature, he is still a matchless model.
What Devkota did in the choice of his readership is that, he wrote for all types of readers, both children and adult. He has works for merely literate readers to highly qualified ones. Works like Muna Madan can be read out to anyone with emotions. The works for the intellectuals have a higher philosophical relevance. He perhaps had at least three layers of readers in his mind: the laity, the average, and the intellectuals. This once again made him a common author. For themes, his domains move from rustic spaces to the metropolis, from the rural undeveloped landscapes to the urbanised locations, from mythical and supernatural settings to domestic, household settings. This range of locale, encompassing almost every step of human settlement, has given Devkota his cosmic stature.
Devkota was a visionary and a social iconoclast. Though he wrote in an age immediately following the conservative Rana regime, he dared to confer chieftainship to characters coming from non-dominant ethnic communities. Inter-racial relations, revolt against untouchability and inter-caste marriages are subject of many of his popular writings written more than 60 years earlier from today, and as each one of us can feel, these are issues in fashion in the modern day democratic federal republic of Nepal. This visionary personality of him is another reason why Devkota is commemorated even today.
His poetic personality apart, Devkota’s role as a social worker has had far-reaching consequences. His role in the establishment of Nepal Academy has proved epochal, while his vision gave the country its first university: Tribuvan University, which is today the intellectual lifeline of the country. He played equally role in internalising the literature of his day. His international feats in Asian Writers’ Conference in Delhi and Afro-Asian Writers’ in Tashkent are still remembers. His translation of his own works, and those of Siddhi Charan Shrestha, Lekhanath Paudyal and Shyam Das Baishnav are first-generation of Nepali translations, which paid way to succeeding translators.
[Chhetri is a noted storywriter and a poet. His published works include three anthologies of short stories: Trishankuko Deshma, Indramayako Deshma and Bratbhanga, while Bhidma Harayeko Manchhe is his maiden collection of poems. He chairs Kavidanda Sahitya Samaj, a national literary organization with its head office in Chitawan.]