Manprasad Subba’s The Primitive
Village and Other Poems: A Critical Review
- Binod Pradhan
A text is a device conceived in order to produce its model reader. I repeat
that this reader is not the one who makes the “only right” conjecture. A text
can foresee a model reader entitled to try infinite conjectures. The empirical
reader is only an actor who makes conjectures about the kind of model reader
postulated by the text. Since the intention of the text is basically to produce
a model reader able to make conjectures about it, the initiative of the model
reader consists in figuring out a model author that is not the empirical one
and that, in the end, coincides with the intention of the text.
Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation:
World, History, Texts [1990]
I. The Poet and Poetry
Poetry is preeminently the art of language where
the poet continuously reorganizes the vast complex web of communication and
Manprasad Subba is unarguably one such poet in the contemporary Indian Nepali
literature who is occupied not only with the intensification and enlargement of
the techniques of experience but with the evaluation of its forms and
structures as well. The book ‘The Primitive Village and Other Poems’
published by Sahitya Akademi in the year
2013 is a self-translation of Manprasad Subba’s collection of Nepali poems ‘Aadim
Basti ra Anya Kavitaharu’ which was first published in October 1995; this
collection had bagged him the Sahitya Akademi award in the year 1998. A close
reading of these poems indicates that the poet is not only concerned with the
immediate relations of the individual experience or with judgment but he has
been well aware of the extensive implications of his world. There is an
aesthetic underpinning in the form that he uses to array the experiences and
thoughts which is strongly sensed in his translations as well.
The original poems in this
collection can be traced to be written from the 1980s onwards and it seems to
be a phase when the poet’s creative sensibilities were greatly influenced by
the modernistic aesthetics. The existential crisis surfeiting the zeal of
iconic modularity designs the theme of the poetry in this collection. The core
ambience each of these poems reflects is that of decentralized, disintegrated
fragmented human world and human life with multilayered complexities that turns
oblique and impassionate that camouflages the myopic reality. In ‘On the Bank of the Ganga’ there are
chains of signs interlinking to cultural demographic systems, for example the
poet tries to represent ‘Ganga’ as an image of sanctity or purity but he
rejects himself to be purified with the water of Ganga. The poem demythifies
the cult image of the holy water frolicking a kind of irony. The irony is
released to its ultimate vehemence when he says; “Having already taken bath in the bathroom/ O Ganga,/ I have come to
bathe in your riverness”. The sole tone of ‘riverness’ embodies the
cultural, ritual and co-historical significance with which the poet wants to
involve himself but not with a preordained notion rather subverting and debunking
the culturally constructed mythological stratifications. So ‘bathroom’ becomes
something extravagantly opposed to ‘riverness’ of the Ganga as bathroom is a
place for physical cleansing whereas the Ganga is a place for spiritual
cleansing. Thus, the bipolarity of images are contused and fused which
determines the poetic mechanism that Manprasad Subba is trying to build; but a
doubt or query may arise that whether the poetic usage of words- ‘bathroom’ and
‘Ganga’ is limited to its literal sense of meaning or does it carry a wider
scope of meanings- are they paralleled to some metaphor, allusions, allegory,
double sense that bears a sign for multiple signified; as I.A. Richards
mentions, “. . . The wild interpretations
of others must not be regarded as the antics of incompetents, but as dangers
that we ourselves only narrowly escape, if, indeed, we do. We must see in the
misreadings of others the actualisation of possibilities threatened in the
early stages of our own readings. The only proper attitude is to look upon a
successful interpretation, a correct understanding, as a triumph against odds.
We must cease to regard a misunderstanding as a mere unlucky accident. We must
treat it as the normal and probable event.” But notions regarding the
texture, tones and criticisms of poetry should not be limited to Richard’s
argument of “their effects upon feelings” because these associations employed
by the poet also construct the forms of the poetry. To make this sound more appropriate there is
a certain statement that will clarify it:
“A semiotic programme,
studying the operation of individual signs in literary texts as opposed to
broader elements of textual or discourse structure, emphasises the way in which
meanings are produced and organised into various areas of experience through
binary oppositions. Oppositions between words are deliberately exploited by
literary texts to extend and multiply meanings. For example, the opposition
between 'sun' and 'moon' is such a powerful one that it can signify almost
anything. It has been used to signal the following distinctions: male/female,
strength/weakness, reason/ emotion, constancy/ fickleness. In D.H.Lawrence's
England, My England Egbert's fair hair and blue eyes contrast with Winifred's
nut-brown hair and nut-brown eyes to signify an opposition between idealism and
earthiness, for example. I take it that this example illustrates one of Eco's
main points (e.g. in Eco 1979) that literary texts typically 'overcode'. In
Eco's terms, in 'open' literary texts the process of semiosis is given free
rein. Key words, or signifiers, in such texts come to generate a wide range of
further meanings or signified.”
-Poetic Thoughts and Poetic:A
Relevence Theory Account of the Literary use of Rhetorical Tropes and Schemes. Adrian Pilkington, University College London, May 1994
The poem ‘Wine’ tries to amplify poet’s sublime
accelerated prowess which reveals the substratum engulfed in some lines that
continuously transmits the poet’s inner and outer forms of harmony. The wine
entwines as exclaimer of life force which is embodied in a more trans-cultural
sphere with the Dionysian myth- “Please, Dionysus! Pour some more”. The poetic
craft in this poem is the parallelism that the poet has drawn between the wine
and his inner desires-
“Descending down and
down in this glass
I’ve remained mere a
gulp
Replenish this glass
once again”
Here ‘glass’ can mean one’s life that is eventually
coming to an end, ‘remained mere a gulp’ could be a reference to the last
breath that one is left with but this end could be surpassed through the life
force i.e. the wine, hence there comes a remark-“Replenish this glass once
again”. All he seeks for is the revilement of life force that could only be
perched by wine. If his need for replenishment is not fulfilled then his self
might never grow or explore further; he believes in renewing old facets with
new charisma. ‘Wine’ can be a symbolical asset of impetus or stimulator. He
longs for a reformation upon himself discarding death; rather he wants to defy
death with the exhilarating essence that will be vested upon him with the
sensational attribute of wine which could also have a spiritual connotation:
“Do not make me meet
with
an end of an earthen
cup
thrown by a
traveler’s unfeeling hand
out of the running
train”
A mere assumption can be drawn that “an end of an earthen cup” denotes the role of death upon the earthly life or an ultimate end of
something that once had an existence/ significance/ essence of its own. It
seizes to hold its essence and throws a reflection upon the impact of time upon
all animate and inanimate objects of the world, hence time becomes as an agent
who determines the durability of each essence. The role of time can be depicted
in the lines, “out of the running train”. Time is a component that travels
continuously taking everyone inside it. In general the poet’s intra- time
spectrum of time and its influence upon him can be broken only by the eternal elation
that can be salubrious and different than the normal vision of life. The poet’s
quest and desire is much longer and acrogenic; he is not going to settle or
agree ‘just for this much inebriation’. This poem has an invoking tone musing
to Dionysus who is the God of wine and celebration in the Greek mythology.
Thus, the undertextual meaning of wine can be the vigor for life not bound by
indoctrination through which his sole self can be metamorphosed into oleander
existence.
The content of the poem should not be
the sole concern in modern theoretical discourse-"Form is content-as-arranged; content is form-as-deployed",
Helen Vender. For instance Susan Sontag
mentions:
“Though the actual developments in many
arts may seem to be leading us away from the idea that a work of art is
primarily its content, the idea still exerts an extraordinary hegemony. I want
to suggest that this is because the idea is now perpetuated in the guise of a
certain way of encountering works of art thoroughly ingrained among most people
who take any of the arts seriously. What the overemphasis on the idea of
content entails is the perennial, never consummated project of interpretation.
And, conversely, it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to
interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the
content of a work of art.”
-Susan Sontag, Against
Interpretation, Picador Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1961, (page 5)
A diabolical
interpretation theory appears again and again with the cultural and academic
standardization which can be summed as follows:
1. At every step of the process—whether conceiving, designing, making,
maintaining, or repairing— we must always be concerned with the whole within
which we are making anything. We look at this wholeness, absorb it, try to feel
its deep structure.
2. We ask which kind of thing we can do next that will do the most to
give this wholeness the most positive increase of life.
3. As we ask this question, we necessarily direct ourselves to centers,
the units of energy within the whole, and ask which one center could be created
(or extended or intensified or even pruned) that will most increase the life of
the whole.
4. As we work to enhance this new living center, we do it in such a way
as also to create or intensify (by the same action) the life of some larger
center.
5. Simultaneously we also make at least one center of the same size
(next to the one we are concentrating on), and one or more smaller
centers—increasing their life too.
6. We check to see if what we have done has truly increased the life and
feeling of the whole. If the feeling of the whole has not been deepened by the
step we have just taken, we wipe it out. Otherwise we go on.
7. We then repeat the entire process, starting at step again, with the
newly modified whole.
8. We stop altogether when there is no further step we can take that
intensifies the feeling of the whole.
— (Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Poetic Order
and its application to the problem of Locating Failures in Poems, Richard P.
Gabriel, Stanford University)
Considering certain notions
of these standards Manprasad Subba’s ‘The Primitive Village and Other Poems has
been analysed from both the content capacity and the form inbuilt in the poem.
His poems come up with certain monologue tones and there are certain imagists’
techniques that he applies in his poems, for instance:
“Thus a tree I stand always
unfolding myself
ever on a journey while standing…
No matter if someone with the eyes of electric bulb
looks at, but sees not, this openness of the tree.
I may not be seen as I am”
[page 7]
The
entire tree is not looked up as a concrete object but the object has been
dissapidated, fragmented - each fragment designating a different meaning to the
object. A 'poetic thought' is a special kind of thought (involving a special
kind of thinking) that is difficult to express and communicate accurately. At
least, this is the view of many poets. Seamus Heaney has made the point (in
discussion during a poetry reading at the Kent Arts Festival in 1986) that
poets have to balance the conflicting claims of 'accuracy' and 'decency'. By
this he meant that poets are primarily concerned with the accurate expression
of 'poetic thoughts' and only secondarily with making such expression
accessible to an audience.
2. The Primitive Village: In context to the long poetry:
The long poetry ‘Primitive
Village’ is divided into three sections - section one, two and the epilogue.
The first section deals with the primitive and savage human nature. It is also
a depiction about an apocalyptic vicissitudes that entrenches and human beings
from dimensional velocity. The village is very much like Eliot’s Wasteland but
the difference that lies between ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Primitive village’ is that-
Eliot tries to depict futility of human beings in the context of modern
European society whereas Subba has tried to depict the primal passion,
animality and rawness with human being in a universal context. Therefore
Subba’s ‘Primitive Village’ is a place where ‘faith’ is tied to a nail which
never functions with the mutuality amongst the residents of his village. The
drastic strokes of words paint a very picture of the existence within his
village which is actually like an ‘endless tunnel.’ Even the man’s own belief
is lost and dimmed into his endless tunnel. The factor in this village is the ‘presentness’ where man is choked in
insomnia like state. There are numerous illusions nailed into the time which seems
constant and fixed; there is no going forward from this place, and this
existence is like “shipping down on the
hard surface of meaninglessness”. Life becomes very much absurd, there is
no absolute reality, and every image shows the decentralized survival of every
being. This decentred existence has been exemplified very well by Martin
Heidegger in his philosophical work ‘Being
and Time.’ ‘Being’ is always in the process of becoming but his ‘becoming’
in Subba’s ‘being’ seems to be constant or fixed:
“With this endlessness
has remained the same
every frenzied song and dance
composed over the corpses of
innumerable ecstasies in hypocrite theatres
And gatherings’ - page 53.
Heidegger in his philosophy explains
that ‘Being’ is free from all worldly essences and in imperfections; this is
similar to the Nietzschean concept of ‘Unbernansch’ and Kierkegaard’s notion of
the ‘Holy Knight’. But Subba’s ‘being’ are caught in the imperfections of world
hence they will never be able to transform into ‘Being’ (with capital B). They lack the Nietzschean notion of
‘Transvaluation of values’ because Subba has made it clear in his After word –
‘with an inner urge to write a whole
poem’ started the long poem Aadim Basti (The Primitive village). And for this,
man with his fundamental attributes has been taken up as the theme. This poem
is an observation of man’s eternal imperfection spread over the undivided
stretch of time.’’ Subba has called such existence of people as “Man’s fertile imperfection’ which
discards all the barricades of time division:
“This endless passing has remained unbroken
despite division of tense in grammar
yesterdays are always today and now
Today and now have ever been
a cold scarcity of each awakening.”
Time becomes just an assumed
determinant that has no past, nor any future. It has been knotted into present
and it is this present that has been elongated since moment immemorial. Even Henry Bergson’s theory of ‘prima duree’ suggests that time is
always internal and external. The internal time is the one that is within the mind of the people and
the external time is the ‘clock’s
time’. Subba might be more concerned about the ‘external time’ while he was writing this poem or he was closely
thinking in terms of Einstein’s concept of ‘relativity’
where time becomes a relative component in association to the mass and speed of
different objects.
“No need to talk of tomorrow
Has it ever come in our life ?
Only a mirage,
a doodle on sand,
an easy pretext to hold on to life.”
But still time has an
unravelling influence upon the mankind. It makes or sets a routine in the life
of every one of us. And he expresses this passing phase and appearing of
routined version of time in a metaphorical way:
“The days and the nights
are only a tortoise’s head
frequently getting into and out of its shell
Or the face of a barren woman
covered and uncovered with burqa”
This fixity of time has
never allowed life to be free. The radical individual freedom that is ones’ own
recognition of one’s mortality has been lost somewhere. Jean Paul Sartre is the
most commonly discussed existentialist who was writing after the World War II.
Sartre has asserted that the key concept of existentialism is that the
existence of a person predetermines his or her essence. The term ‘existence precedes essence’ subsequently
became a maxim of the existentialist movement. According to Sartre, “Man first of all exists, encounters
himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards.’ Thus
Sartre rejects what he calls ‘deterministic
excuses’. Some sections of these poems try to come up with the deterministic
excuses that have pushed back people to move towards the longer space of
existence:
“ How man,
on the pretext of searching himself,
gets lost entering into the snail shell !
And bearing the heavy shell on the back
man moves around silently
squelching in thick mud
finding his self nowhere!”
A strong voice creeps in
speaking about the importance of the individual – just like Beckett’s ‘Godot’, Eugene O Neill’s ‘Emperor Jones’, Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe,
Parijat’s ‘Sakambari’. The leading
question about each of these characters is ‘what
does it mean to be existing as a human being?” there is also a pressing
question concerning what is right and wrong in a world of mortal chaos. There is
the daunting issue of what constitutes a meaningful way of life in a world in
which all talk of purposes has become obscure. There is a realization that the
human concerns and human experience count in a world that has proven to be
mostly knowable. A question can be posed: What does ‘the heavy shell on the
back’ of man indicate? Is it despair? Is it alienation? Is it isolation? Or is
it hollowness? These are multiple indignations but these are also the
significant elements which people strive to overcome but will never be able to
do so. To break this shell means to
overcome all the rules and regulations that operate on social, political,
social, ethical, religious and moral grounds. It would be important to note
that Nietzsche has raised something in context to the overcoming of boundaries
and terms it as “Ubermansch” which in German means “to overcome” (some critics
even call it ‘Superman) - the one who has gone beyond the moral, ethical,
social religious and political restrictions. This is how one throws away the
heavy shell on one’s back.
The poet also remarks about
the ‘lack of communication’ amongst the individuals which has disabled a proper
contact between them. Here each of these individuals is not able to understand
one another or oneself because they never make an attempt to reach one another:
“we may speak for speaking sake
a heap of words
One can fill one’s own hollowness
with straw-like strings of sentences”
[page 60]
Words spoken here mean
nothing because it is hollow as people never speak to establish a real contact
rather just to fill up the vacuum:
“Why are these words that danced in corn-ear
now just a breakfast for the swarm of locusts?
Why can’t they turn in new leaves on the trees?”
[page 60]
There is no sympathy and
compassion amongst the people- one needs to understand the pains and pleasures
of others in order to establish a perfect bond but this mutuality is decrepit
and full of malady. The distancing of one from the other are suggested in
certain lines like:
“Sentences are but falling hairs from the heads!”
[page 60]
The falling is not a an
instant phenomena; rather it is like a falling of hairs which depicts that it
happens time and again and it cannot be recovered (as hair once fallen can
never be gained). Same is the scenario for the spoken words and their impact
upon the speaker and the receiver. The unfulfilled contact attempted through
conversation and communication can be seen in lines like:
“Just go and listen
to irritating croaking of frogs
in the village gatherings.”
[page 60]
“Ears are often stormed
by the noise of scared ducks
and the brawls and barks of stray dogs”
[page 60]
Section two of the longer
poem ‘The Primitive Village’ deviates
from the pre-inscribed sensibility towards the subtle deprived scenario, here
there is no evidence of primordial animal instinct of section one. Subba
entails a fresh thought in section two. He uses the same stylistic affinity and
imagistic prevalence only to show that the village is not only a place of
hopelessness and negative vibes but it has the other side as well; the other
side of this village is presented in section two-- the colour of the village
changes, new aroma seems to enter just like the coin has flipped to the other
side. The poet has artistically produced these dual standards in this long poem
harnessing phases of this village. Manprasad Subba has claimed in his Afterword that:
“Even in the dense fog of mysteries he feels tickle of his soles
urging him to move ahead. But those very feet, being tied with shackles of
worldliness, are walking back and forth across the swamp of common human nature
since the time he dwelt in cave.”
Hence, there is a certain
tinge of hope and looking ahead anoxia that still lingers along inside this
village and the villagers despite all the vicissitudes:
“man always strives to break
the formidable fencing of his own flaws
Refusing to be suppressed he struggles
to push away the suppression of his own weakness”
[page 67]
Concepts can never be
neutralised, neither can they be denied but they can always be argued and
modified - the striving energy that Subba presents is the Heidegger’s discourse
‘being is always in the process of
becoming’ which came out from the philosophical notion of phenomenology
admixed with existentialism. The most balanced word that the poet uses here is
“suppression of his own weakness”. He does not say ‘discarding his own weaknesses’ because weakness is a necessity for
striving, it is a measuring rod for struggle, weakness determines the strength.
So one cannot completely cut off or do away with weakness. That is the reason ‘suppression’ is an apt act of overcoming
of weakness that brings the continuity of human struggle. If there would be no
weakness there would be no desire to win over that weakness and move forward.
Hence enacting the momentum of weaknesses men transform themselves into
something more than what he frames into. In-framing and out-framing of self and
ideological counteractions coalesces with a proportionate and relative action.
The ‘formidable fencing of his own flaws’
has a strong aesthetic compatibility with the universal human entity.
The endless striving that
has been manifested in the poem is not only a physical striving, it is not just
the physical entity of the man but the discourse traces the spiritual realm as
well. The poet makes it clear that people are striving for spiritual recognition
as well. The larger spiritual self is essential for the formation of
existential identity:
“Man wants to slough off his meek self
Tirelessly he battles with the confines of his body.”
Composite ideas
automatically stretches over these lines and it can be pondered that if man
wants to head towards the perfection then he has to escape away from the
physical pleasures and pains. Tillich’s formulation expresses this point
beautifully- he speaks of our anxiety due to the threat of non-being. The forms
of non-being are many and various and each prefigures the ultimate loss of
being that is death and contingency of being that is birth. Both of the chance
exerts and extreme situations of life make evident that the threat of non-being
can cause us anxiety. Being human is finding oneself thrown into the world with
no clear logical, ontological or moral structure.
Discussing about the meaning
and absurdity Sartre spoke of an unfulfillable desire for complete fulfilment
and thereby expressed the meaning of absurdity. Meaning must therefore be
constructed through courageous choice in the face of this absurd situation.
This kind of choice cannot be understood as achieving moral certainty; rather
it is moral heroism within an essentially morally vague and chaotic world. So,
the importance of choice becomes very important and through this choice man can
transcend to any sphere:
Octaves of surrender and submission
Do re mi fa so la ti do
Do ti la so fa mi re do
He keeps composing endless variety of tunes
Attempting to transcend the extreme scale,
aspires to reach no one knows where.
[Page 68]
Each desire and aspiration
is like a notation of music and man is free to make a choice how would he wish
to be played. Each tune contributes towards composition of complete
music/harmony. The poet might also be indicating towards the construction of
harmony out of chaos.
To gain perfection,
completeness and harmony is not an instant task but it is a gradual process and
this gradual process is expressed in a metaphorical technique:
Man exerts to be the full moon
though he knows the moon cannot save
its stark nudity even beyond one night!
1st 2nd 3rd …Full moon night
Man’s journey towards
perfection is like moon’s different phases until the night of a full moon
appears. It is an increate thought that Subba is acquainted with. He even builds
up nihilistic philosophical linkage:
“If wholeness is contained in void
man struggles to expand all over it
but does not want to be void himself
and dares to go even beyond void”
[page 69]
The self awareness sometimes
stretches unto self exhalation in this primitive village, the villagers are
sometimes overfilled with self vanity and sometimes they are turned up into non
entity:
“Sometimes he’s Narcissus in water charmed by himself!
Sometimes a salt-grain in water invisible to himself!!”
[page 71]
There is also a conflict
between two opposing forces, two contradictory elements in the village. This is
the very essence of this village and the villagers. The last stanza of section
two will explain this notion more properly:
“where man is absorbed in giving forms to formless,
where man gets soaked
with words dripping from the eyes of speechless,
where man rises Phoenix from his own ash heap,
where Robert Bruce gathers himself
after witnessing spider’s journey…”
[page 75]
But finally in the epilogue
the poet has claimed that this primitive village is a confluence or a composite
of both evil and goodness, it is an adjoining site of both the animalistic and
the aspiring beings. The best lines that express this is dual core tendency of
the village is:
The village
dimmed by the haze of noises
where conflicts pull man until the shirt is torn
… …
and sometimes with the torn shirt on
smiles like a cloudless day.
[page77]
3. Poet and the Translator in Conclusion:
In
conclusion the commendable issue to be discussed is Manprasad Subba’s art of
translation. He has translated his own poems from Nepali to English; these are
languages that belong to different linguistic family. It is perhaps axiomatic to say that translation is as old
as
language, for the different language communities render translation mandatory
for their interaction. With translation as an indispensable activity there
emerged diverse theories and theoretical reflections to guide it. This
diversity stems from the diverse perspectives and approaches to translation
with corollary of a plethora of definitions.
There has
been a plethora of definitions which E. Nida (1964: 161-164) has elaborately
surveyed . He rightly elucidates:
“Definitions of proper translating are almost as
numerous and varied as the persons who
have undertaken to discuss the subject. This diversity
is in a sense quite
understandable; for there are vast differences in the
materials translated, in
the purpose of the publication, and in the needs of
the prospective audience.”
Manprasad
Subba has deliberately focused on the various trends in his translation
capability with the oldest ‘literal’ vs
(versus) ‘free’. Others subsume ‘literary’ vs ‘non-literary’, semantic vs
communicative, static vs dynamic, among others. He shows and imparts pairs,
concerns the closeness, sometimes referred to as fidelity or faithfulness to
the ST (source text). This type tends to emphasize the inseparability of form from
content. Secondly, it can also be seen that the source message has been made
conveyable in a different form.
Ro man
Jakobson (1959 in Schulte and Biguenet, 1992:145) distinguishes three ways of
interpreting a verbal sign: it may be translated into other signs of the same
language, into another language, or into another code that is nonverbal system
of symbols. These three types are succinctly put as follows:
1. Intralingual translation or rewording
: It is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of
the same language.
2. Interlingual translation or translation
proper : It is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other
language.
3. Intersemiotic translation or transmutation
: It is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of non-verbal signs.
Subba has
made a great balance between this interlingual and intersemiotic translation
and this shows his capability and command over both the source language and the
target language which has proved his translated edition of his Nepali poems
into English a success.
