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CLOUDED SKY: THE POETRY OF MIKLOS RADNOTI

March 02, 2012 By: PGR NAIR Category: Literature








      
                                   CLOUDED SKY
                   THE POETRY OF MIKLOS RADNOTI

 Miklos Radnoti (1909-1944), the Hungarian Jewish poet and a fierce anti-fascist, is considered as the greatest of the Holocaust poets. His  poetry collection, “Clouded Sky” , wonderfully translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J. Marks, alone is enough to rank him as a truly great poet , one in whom the lyrical image-maker and the critical human intelligence find a perfect fusion.

Before discussing his poems, I will condense his biography in a few words. Born in 1909, Radnoti emerged as a promising lyricist in the artist circles of Budapest in the early 1930s.  In 1935, Radnoti married his childhood sweetheart, Fanni Gyarmati, hoping to secure a teaching position in the Hungarian high school system. When this did not work out, he took temporary jobs, chiefly private tutoring, and accepted partial support from his wife’s family.

As Hungary’s political climate turned increasingly fascist, Radnoti shared the fate of those who had been persecuted for their Jewish origins. With the exception of brief periods of respite, he spent the years from 1940 until his death in various forced-labor camps. In May 1944, two months after the German occupation of Hungary by the Nazis , Radnoti was forced into a Jewish labor battalion to build roads in Yougoslavia. During the fall of that year, the Germans evacuated the Balkans and ordered the exhausted, emaciated servicemen to march back to Hungary and then through to Austria. When Radnoti could walk no longer, he was shot in the neck by his Hungarian Guards and buried, together with twenty-one of his comrades, in a mass grave near the village of Abda in western Hungary.

When the grave was discovered and his body was exhumed on June 23, 1946, nearly two years after his death, his wife found a small, black notebook of ten poems in the pocket of his raincoat which he had written during his years in the work camps. Rising from the grave, these poems have come to occupy an extraordinary place in twentieth-century literature; they not only manifest great beauty, exceptional range and masterful designs, but also record one of the most brutal mass murders in history. This poetry collection contains all  the famous poems from that notebook including  ‘Forced March” and “Postcard”.

Let us now move into some his celebrated poems.

 I Don’t Know

I don’t know what this land means to others, this little country

Fenced  in by fire, place of my birth,

world of my childhood, swaying in the distance.

I grew out of her like the young branch of tree,

and I hope my body will sink down in her.

Here, I‘m at home. When one by one, bushes kneel at my feet,

I know their names and names of their flowers.

I know people who walk the roads and where they’re going

and on a summer evening, I know the meaning of the pain

that turns red and trickles down the walls of the houses.

This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over.

He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.

For him factories and angry barracks can’t be seen on this map.

For me there are grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.

Through binoculars, he sees factories and plowed fields:

I see worker, shaking, afraid for his work.

I see forests, orchards vibrant with song, vineyards, graveyards,

and wizened old woman who quietly weeps and weeps among

      the graves.

The Industrial plant and the railway must be destroyed.

But it’s only a watchman’s box and the man stands outside

sending messages with a red flag. There are children around him,

In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.

And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.

Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.

I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school

I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk.

Here is the stone, but from up there it can’t be seen.

There’s no instrument to show any of it.

 Among Radnoti’s images, a few run throughout his works as recurring metaphors and symbols. He uses the figure of the pilot, for example in the above poem, as an embodiment of the insensibility chillingly evident in war. The pilot becomes in this one a symbol of all willing instruments in the service of inhumanity; his actions derive from a worldview in which separation leads to indifference. When sufficient distance is created between malefactor and victim, the wrongdoer ceases to feel any guilt concerning his crime. In this poem “I don’t Know”, Radnoti pits the humanist’s values against those of the pilot. It is a poem about Hungary as seen, on one hand, by a native son, the poet, and, on the other hand, by the pilot of a bomber plane from another country. The poet sees his “tiny land” on a human scale:


“In the factory yard a sheep dog plays, rolling on the ground.

And there’s the park and the footprints of lovers from the past.

Sometimes kisses tasted like honey, sometimes like blackberries.

I didn’t want to take a test one day, so on my way to school

I tripped on a stone at the edge of the sidewalk”

 To the man in the plane, however, “This land is only a map for the pilot who flies over./He doesn’t know where the poet Vorosmarty lived.” The pilot sees only military targets such as army barracks, factories etc—while the poet sees “grasshoppers, oxen, church steeples, gentle farms.”

This poem wonderfully proclaims the true feelings of a universal poet whose heart  beats with the flora and fauna around him.

The last poems of Radnoti, written under the pressure of the most degrading and desperate circumstances imaginable, unfurl visions of delicate pastoral beauty next to images of extreme degradation and wild, filthy despair. They give voice to the last vestiges of hope, as Radnóti fantasizes being home once more with his beloved Fanny, as well as to the grim premonition of his own fate. This impossibly stark contrast blossoms into paradox: Radnóti’s poetry embraces humanity and inhumanity with an urgent desire to bear witness to both.

Yet even at the moment when he is most certain of his imminent death, he never abandons the condensed and intricate language of his poetry. And pushed to the limits of human endurance and sanity, he never loses his capacity for empathy. This is what is evident in the poems, “ Forced March” and “Postcard”.

 

Forced March

You’re  crazy. You fall down,    stand up and walk again,

your ankles and your knees move

but you start again      as if you had wings.

The ditch calls you, but it’s no use      you’re afraid to stay,

And if someone asks why, maybe you turn around and say

that a woman and a sane death     a better death wait for you.

But you’re crazy.   For a long time

only the burned wind spins   above the houses at home,

Walls lie on their backs,    plum trees are broken

and the angry night     is thick with fear.

Oh, if I could believe    that everything valuable

is only inside me now   that there’s still home to go back to.

If only there were! And just as before    bees drone peacefully

on the cool veranda,    plum preserves turn cold

and over sleepy gardens    quietly, the end of summer bathes in

       the sun

Among the leaves the fruit    swing naked

And in front of the rust-brown hedge   blond Fanny waits for me,

The morning writes    slow shadows—

All this could happen     The moon is so round today!

Don’t walk past me, friend.     Yell, and I’ll stand again!

(Breaks in each line  as given in the text)

The poem begins with a judgmental view of the poet, observed in the third person. Radnoti admits in the first line that he is “crazy”, which is understandable given the barbarous conditions of the forced March. This “craziness”, sense of a man losing his mind, comes across in the surreal lines, “Only the burned wind spins….above houses at home,/Walls lie on their backs,…plum trees are broken”.

When Radnoti falls down on the March, he is somehow able to ‘stand and walk again’. as if he had ‘wings’. He refuses to die in the roadside ditch , because “a woman and a sane death…a better death “ await. He feels that he is crazy, and that “the angry night …is thick with fear”, yet the thought that “there’s still home to go back to”, that blond Fanny awaits” urges him forward. “All this could happen”, he tells us , “don’t walk past me, friend…Yell, I will stand again!”, reminding them to be alert on him.

 Halfway through the poem, a sudden transformation occurs, a shift from the third person to the first. Judgment turns into a confession of hope, the war-torn landscape is transmuted into an idyll of bygone days, dogged resistance into a cosmic, optimistic message. In a world from which reason has disappeared, anything, including superstition and magic, can serve as crutches.

In this unique poem , Radnoti employed long breaks between words in order to create the visual image of half-starved soldiers marching on. With the exception of the second line of the poem, each line is broken by a caesura ( meaning a blank space as a pause or interruption ) , which seems to relay the stop-and –go, zombie –like shuffle of someone on a forced march, as if the poet is imparting not only the weariness of his mind and soul, but his actual physical status with the rhythm of his words and lines. This is quite extraordinary whether the poet intended it or not.

Although he had long been prepared for death, Radnóti paradoxically regained a hope for survival during the last bitter weeks of his life. The wish to live, to return to Fanni, his wife, to tell about the horrors, and to wait for a “sane.. better death” permeates several of his poems .  Well aware that this hope was flimsy at best, based on desire more than on truth, Radnóti expressed its elusiveness at his best in “Forced March.”

Literature offers number of poems written by Holocaust survivors or others who faced the atrocities of modern warfare. But this one has a ring of truth — of memory unvarnished by the passage of time. I am particularly moved by how the poet conveys the way a person’s mind wanders to happier times and almost loses touch with the horrors of the present in the second half of the poem, and then is yanked back into the on-going atrocity by the fear of falling behind.

“Forced March” impresses and moves the reader with its spontaneity, its simple vocabulary and familiar imagery and  its emotional directness.  It is the last cry for survival.  This poem has a special place in Radnoti’s oeuvre: It represents hope’s triumph over despair. Above all, it shows the artist’s triumph over his own fate. It proves that even during the last weeks of his tormented life, Radnoti was able to compose with precise poetic principles in mind, that he was in control of his material, playing secretly with literary and existential relationships and creating out of all this an enduring testament.

It is appropriate to post here an unabashedly sentimental, and yet beautiful,  love poem he had written  prior to ‘Forced March’. It  intensely expresses his unfulfilled desire to be in the arms of Fanni.


In Your Arms

I sleep in your arms,
it’s quiet.
You sleep in my arms,
it’s quiet.
I’m a child in your arms
who is silent.
You are a child in my arms
I listen.
You hold me in your arms when I’m afraid.
I hold you in my arms.
I’m not afraid.
In your arms even the great silence
of death can’t
scare me
In your arms I’ll
survive death.
It’s a dream.


Let us now examine the poem, “Postcard”. This poem is breathtaking, luminous and pared down to exquisite precision even though he was writing it under barbaric and inhumane conditions.  

 

(Recovered notebook of radnoti)

Postcard

I fell next to him. His body rolled over.

It was tight as a violin string before it snaps.

Shot in the back of the head—”This is how

You’ll end”. “Just lie quietly”, I said to myself.

Patience flowers into death now.

“Der springt noch auf”, I heard above me.

Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear.

 

Life is snuffed out in this poem. Radnoti speaks to the unspeakable in these seven lines, to the horrific death he knew was coming. The poem inscribes a suffering unimaginably intense, a consciousness of death unbearably palpable. The poem was written on October 31 1944  and on Nov 6th the poet was shot and tossed into a collective grave.

It seems as if the poem itself rose from the mass grave as a final testament to the fate of all those who perished. By titling the poem as ‘Postcard’, probably the poet wanted to condense his life into that of a postcard, which is often characterized as much by what is left out as by what is put in, and its brevity speaks volumes to what must be left unsaid. There is a terrifying stoicism to the line “Patience flowers into death now”. A blossoming into oblivion. Then he hears an unattributed voice floating over him in German, the language of death.

In his essay,  American poet Edward Hirsch mentions that the German phrase “Der springt noch auf” means something like “Wait till you see this guy break open”. The verb ‘aufspringen’ , which means to “to break or pop open” , is usually used to describe a bud or flower. It’s an image of germination , and so perhaps there’s a hidden tenderness here, as if the poet ventriloquized the German to say, “Wait till you see him blossom.” He is breaking free of his fetters; and death has become a liberation. The last sentence “Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear” has an eerie calmness. The poet is thinking associatively here and the line stuns as the one who listens and observes is still alive, speaking from earth.

This is the greatest holocaust poem I have ever read. It has the moonglow of a poem made halfway to Hades.

Radnoti is one unique poet whose work has irreversibly become one with his life and tragic death . There is no divide between his life and work, they continue to exist in an interplay, mutually interpreting one another. It is my firm belief that the story of Radnoti’s life, his love, his courage, the crystal-clear tone of his poems written in the great lyrical tradition documenting the tears of a deplorable phase in human history will last another millennia as they are of supreme significance in the saga of our civilization.

Ref:

 (1) In The Footsteps Of The Orpheus: Life And Times Of Miklos Radnoti by Zsuzsanna Ozsvath

 (2) Clouded Sky: Poems by Miklos Radnoti translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S.J.Marks

  (3) How to read a poem: Edward Hirsch

 

 

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TOMAS TRANSTROMER TASTES TRIUMPH WITH NOBEL PRIZE

October 07, 2011 By: PGR NAIR Category: Uncategorized

TOMAS TRANSTROMER TASTES TRIUMPH WITH NOBEL PRIZE

 

 

The poet Tomas Transtromer has finally tasted triumph by winning the Nobel Prize for literature for 2011. The Swedish Academy praised Mr. Tranströmer, saying that “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” This is absolutely true of his serene poetry.

 

The 80-year-old Transtromer Transtromer is one of the greatest Scandinavian poets and has had a profound influence in the literary world as  Sweden’s most important poet since World War II, an influence that has steadily grown and has now attained a prominence comparable to that of Pablo Neruda’s during his lifetime. But if Neruda is blazing fire, Transtromer is expanding ice. I was lucky to grab his new collected poems,  “The Great Enigma”  early this year and they are  wonderfully translated by Robin Fulton and endorse his brilliant oeuvre.

 

His poetry thoughtfully explores the unconscious and challenges the reader’s conception of the world. He  is also known for his subtle, multi-faceted poetry that typically explores man’s relationship with nature, and reveals mystical insights into the human mind, a result of his training in psychology.

 

Of his spare and incisive work produced over nearly 30 years, Transtromer has confessed, ”My poems are meeting places.” The metaphor is singularly apt for his divided career, his dominant concerns, his wide-ranging subject matter and, not least, for his claim on a growing audience. Transtromer displays enormous economy of words and expressions in his poems that gives his poetry a rare density. Equally notable is his marvellous ability to coin metaphors, not in a mechanical sense, but because they open up a world by itself. His metaphors give new meanings to things, situations, emotions or people.  Just consider the very first poem that appears in the book mentioned above. The title of the poem is “Prelude”. It describes the process of just getting up from bed in the morning as a parachute jump.

 

 “Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams.

Free of the suffocating turbulence the traveler

sinks toward the green zone of morning. “

 (Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

Tomas Tranströmer comes from a long line of ship pilots who worked in and around the Stockholm Archipelago. He was born in Stockholm on April 15, 1931. His father and mother divorced when he was three; he and his mother lived after that in an apartment in the working-class district of Stockholm. He describes that  apartment  and the shifting of a bookcase into his room and filling of books that he had inherited in his poem titled “The Bookcase.”

 

” It was fetched from the dead woman’s apartment. It stood empty for a few days , empty until I filled it with books, all the bound ones. In doing so , I let in the netherworld. Something rose from the underneath, slowly and inexorably like a massive column of mercury. Your head couldn’t turn away.”

  

One of the most beautiful qualities in his poems is the space we feel in them. One reason for that is that the four or five main images that appear in each of his poems come from widely separated sources in the psyche. His poems are a sort of railway station where trains that have come enormous distances stand briefly in the same building. One train may have some Russian snow still lying on the undercarriage, and another may have Mediterranean flowers still fresh in the compartments.  

 

”A man feels the world through his work like a glove,” Mr. Transtromer has written. The child of a broken home, the poet became a psychologist, first doing therapy and rehabilitation for six years at the Roxtuna Prison for Boys. Later he and his family moved to Vasteras where he worked with a state labor organization, counselling juvenile delinquents, treating the physically handicapped, drug addicts and parole offenders. rehabilitation.

 (Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

Tomas Tranströmer’s poems are so luminous that it elevates you into a sombre mood of meditation about life. He has a strange genius for the image—images come up almost effortlessly. These images have a  resonance with the outer and inner depths of nature and shows the psyche of  a poet vulnerable to the shocks of our world. In a poem called ”Night Duty” he conceives himself in the figure of a ballast stone in the deepest hold of a ship. The poem begins as below:

 

”Tonight I am down among the ballast

I am one of those silent weights

that  prevent the ship from overturning!’

Obscure faces in the darkness like ’stones.

They can hiss: “Don’t touch me.” ”

 (Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

His powerful  imageries are often concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. Forest is a recurring image in many of his poems.  Being in the forest seems to connote a sort of existential abandonment — perhaps a necessary precondition to authentic discovery or salvation. The poem “The Clearing” begins:

 

“Deep in the forest there’s an unexpected clearing that can be

reached only by someone who has lost his way.

 The clearing is enclosed in a forest that is choking itself. Black

 trunks with the ashy beard stubble of lichen. The trees

 are tangled tightly together and are dead right up to the tops,

 where a few solitary green twigs touch the light. Beneath them:

 shadow brooding on shadow, and the swamp growing.”

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

 

 

The exotic provenance of images in his poems is balanced by the stones, forests, villages and cities of his native Sweden, the chief metaphors of his meditations on existence. One obsessively recurring image complex : the car, the driver, the mass migration of traffic. The motif of driving somewhere, anywhere, becomes an effective symbol for contemporary man, encased in his technology, separated from the earth, prone to sudden accident, moving in the blind flow of traffic like ”a sluggish dragon” over asphalt where ‘’seeds try to grow.” His marvelous poem “Alone” is an example of it. May be his life as a psychologist explains his fascination with things that might have arisen only from dreams, from the archetypal forms that lie deep, deep within us all. Consider the following passage

“It’s spring and the air is very strong. I have graduated from the university of oblivion and am as empty-handed as the shirt on the clothesline.”

Swedish poetry tends to be very rational, and therefore open to fads. Tranströmer, simply by publishing his books, led a movement of poetry in the opposite direction, toward a poetry of silence and depths. Read the poem ” April and Silence”  and note the striking third stanza.

 

 
 

April and Silence

 (Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

Spring lies desolate.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.


The only things that shines
is yellow flower.


I am carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black box.


The only thing I want to say
glitters out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnbroker’s.

 

 

Tranströmer was able to tackle the ‘big’ subjects without seeming in the least bit pretentious or foolish. I was bit shocked to read his description of how grief displaces our everyday sense of reality in ‘After Someone’s Death’. It  is a poem of three stanzas of four lines each. As in many of Tomas Tranströmer’s poems, this one begins with the appearance of a story, but by the end, the series of disconnected images do not seem to add up to a coherent narrative. It is the speaker’s visual (rather than organic) ordering of things that holds the poem’s various images together. The title suggests the discontinuity between life and death; it is the time after someone’s death that the poem considers.

 

After Someone’s Death  
 

 (Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

Once there was a shock  
that left behind a long pale glimmering comet’s tail.  
It contains us. It blurs TV images.  
It deposits itself as cold drops on the aerials.  
  
You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun  
among groves where last year’s leaves still hang.  
They are like pages torn from old telephone directories–  
the names are eaten up by the cold.  
  
It is still beautiful to hear your heart throbbing.  
But often the shadow feels more real than the body.  
The samurai looks insignificant  
beside his armor of black dragon scales.  
 

 

 

Transtromer has traveled extensively, and much of the pleasure of his art is in the wit and accuracy of his imagination as it expands our awareness and renews the familiar. In a smoky hut in Madeira, two fish are frying with ”tiny garlic explosions.” New York City seen at night from a distant prospect is like ”a spiral galaxy seen from the side,” the dozing bodies in its subway cars becoming ”catacombs in motion.” (Ref to the  poem `Schubertina given at the end`). Sometimes these deft formulations go beyond pungent perception to express an aesthetic credo, a moral stance, as in a prose-poem titled ”Upright,” which captures the condition of living ”free but wary” in the memory of a visit to the Sara tribe in Africa. In ”From an African Diary”, he describes climbing on a canoe hallowed from a log:

 

 ”The canoe is incredibly wobbly , even when you sit on your heels. A balancing act. If the heart lies on the left side you must incline your head a little to the right, nothing in the pockets, no large gestures, all rhetoric must be left behind. Just this: rhetoric is impossible here. The canoe glides out over the water.”

 

 

Penetrating insights about the mystery of existence are abundant in his poems and it has  led to Tranströmer being described as a visionary poet, and certainly a sense of the numinous, of moments of spiritual epiphany, embalms his poetry. They are full of   stolen moments when he seems to have caught himself off-guard: “I pause with my hand on the door handle, take the pulse of the house”, or “I stand under the starry sky / and feel the world creep / in and out of my coat / as in an ant-hill”.

 Finally,  I present below one of the great poems of Transtromer. It is titled, ` Schubertiana’`. His brilliant artistry in combining visuals to create a  sense of cosmic wonder, of communion across time and space is magnificent in this poem.

 

Here’s how he describes what happens as he listens to the Schubert String Quintet: ‘I curl up  like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future/suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts’. The importance of music, in this view, is not just that it transcends our daily lives, but that it connects different aspects of existence. Moreover music wakens us to ways of being human that elude the grasp of our worse instincts. The great composer Franz Schubert’s String Quintet may indeed be ‘heroic’ but

…those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly

despise themselves for not being murderers,

don’t recognise themselves here,

and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can

be bought, don’t recognise themselves here.

 

Read the poem in its entirety as below

 

Schubertiana

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

 

 


1

In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, a viewpoint point where

             one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million

             people.
The giant city over there is a long shimmering drift, a spiral galaxy seen

            from the side.
Within the galaxy coffee-cups are pushed across the counter, the shop

           windows beg from passers-by, a flurry of shoes leave no prints.
The climbing fire escapes, the lift doors glide shut, behind  police - 
locked doors  a perpetual seethe of voices.
Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the hurtling catacombs.
I know too – without statistics – that right now Schubert is being played
in some room over there and that for someone the notes are
more real than anything else.

2

The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist.
In April the swallow returns to last year’s nest under the guttering of this

             very barn in this very parish.
She flies from Transvaal, passes the equator, flies for six weeks over two

continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the land-

             mass.
And the man who catches the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary
            chords for five strings,
who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle,
is a stout young gentleman from Vienna known to his friends as `The
Mushroom,” who slept with his glasses on
and stood at his writing desk punctually of a morning.
And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in motion.

3

The string quintet is playing. I walk home through warm forests with the

             ground springy under me,
curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly

            feel that the plants have thoughts.

4

So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day without
           Sinking through the earth!
Trust the piled snow clinging to the mountain slope above the village.
Trust the promises of silence and the smile of understanding, trust that

           the accident telegram isn’t for us and that the sudden axe-blow

           from within won’t come.
Trust the axles that carry us on the highway in the middle of the three
           hundred times life-size bee swarm of steel.
But none of that is really worth our confidence.
The five strings say we can trust something else. And they keep us  com-
           pany part of the way .
As when the time-switch clicks off in the stairwell and the fingers –
          trustingly – follow the blind handrail that finds its way in the
          darkness.

5

We squeeze together at the piano and play with four hands in F minor,
          two coachmen on the same coach, it looks a little ridiculous.
The hands seem to be moving resonant weights to and fro, as if we were

          tampering with the counterweights
in an effort to disturb the great scale arm’s terrible balance: joy and
         suffering weighing exactly the same.
Annie said, `This music is so heroic,’ and she’s right.
But those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly
          despise themselves for not being murderers,
don’t recognize themselves here,
and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be

            bought, don’t recognize themselves here.
Not their music. The long melody that remains itself in all its transfor-

             mations, sometimes glittering and pliant, sometimes rugged

             and strong, snail-track and steel wire.
The perpetual humming that follows us — now –
up
the depths.

 By bestowing Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy has finally recognized the world’s most translated poet, a poet who truly grapples with the agony of modern man and daringly defines our inner world.The turbulent silence of Transtromer has triumphed finally.

 

 

Ref: The Great Enigma: new and collected poems translated by Robin  Fulton

 

    The Winged Energy of Delight-poems from Europe, Asia and the   Americas translated by Robert Bly

 

 

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It’s the Dream

July 18, 2011 By: PGR NAIR Category: Uncategorized



 
 


Some poets conquer you at the very first reading itself and you know that they are going to be part of you forever. For me, the great Norwegian poet Olav H Hauge was one of a kind, a rarity in modern literature. I encountered his poetry first in an anthology edited by Robert Bly titled, “The winged Energy of Delight”. Since then I had been waiting to get hold of his poetry collection and I must confess that  my emotions on reading them were ineffable. As Robert Bly says -” Olav Hauge’s flavour is persistent, like the taste of persimmons that we can never forget.” I agree that the tang that even his tiny and taut poems give last for long. 



Norway has produced three great poets in the last century  and they are Rolf Jacobsen, Olav H Hauge and Tarjei Vesaas. Their contributions were significant in bringing Scandinavian poetry to the forefront of modern world literature. I had written a blog earlier on the poetry of Rolf Jacobsen titled Room 301 . This blog is the second in the trilogy series that I have planned. Like Robert Frost, Olav Hauge led a solitary life and wrote poetry in a country side in western part of Norway. He was born in 1908 and lived all his life on what he could produce from three acres of ground. 


 He lived in the old pre-commercial gift-giving society and visitors say the richness in his house lay in the handmade spoons and bowls, the wooden reading chair, and book cases to which best poetry from many continents had found its way. Olav was an avid reader and he modestly confesses in an interview that half his life was spent in the world of literature. Thus, working as a gardener and fruit farmer in Ulvik where he grew up, he lived a grand life in the books that he collected and the poems that he wrote.


 



Olav Haugue’s poems are written in his native western Norwegian dialect, conveying by their very word forms both an earthiness and a down-to-earth acceptance of the cycle of life which Standard English cannot transmit in the same way. Yet the translation by Robert Fulton, with its simple, concrete vocabulary, repetition, and straightforward syntax, is as close one can hope to get to the deceptive simplicity of the original. Let us start with a very well known poem.



Don’t give me the whole truth


Don’t give me the whole truth,
don’t give me the sea for my thirst,
don’t give me the sky when I ask for light,
but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote
as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing
and the wind a grain of salt.


The above poem is simply sublime as it is about sensitivity and delicateness. The beauty of it is that the poet does it marvelously with concrete images. And it has an amusing and appealing quality too. The poet announces right away what he wants:”Don’t come to me with the whole truth”. The poet then asks us to bring only a “hint” when he asks for truth, and as a model for such discretion, mentions that bird carry away only a few drops of water and the wind takes from the ocean only a grain of salt.   This short, straightforward and tough style is remindful Chinese  poetry, of putting as few words to a phenomenon as possible. 


The following is another famous poem in Norway, and in its simplicity it points to something central to each of our particular expressions of existence. A comforting as well as uplifting poem in the sense that each has to tread one’s path in a unique way knowing that even the trail of one’s journey will  be cleaned irrevocably


 






 


Your Way



Translated by Robin Fulton



No-one has marked out the road
you are to take
out in the unknown
out in the blue.


This is your road.
Only you
will take it. And there’s no
turning back.


And you haven’t marked your road
either.
And the wind smoothes out your tracks
on desolate hills.



Olav’s  poetry varies in form, from sonnets to short haiku-like poems, and the quality varies as well, but he has written a great deal of poems of simple beauty and usually with a meditative approach to all things small and universal. He is  also a significant voice in the Norwegian geographical landscape too, as he in many ways expresses its grandeur and simplicity, its wildness and purity, and the human feeling of separateness from each other and from nature, while at the same time he transmits a sense of unity with everything and everyone.



 


December Moon 1969


 Translated by: Robert Bly


It hides its steel
In a silver sheath.
On the edge there is blood



His spare imagery and unpretentious tone ranges from bleak to unabashedly joyous- an intricate interplay between head and heart and hand. Look at this poem in which he lauds the thorns of a rose. I loved this deft poem where the poet finds something truly positive in the apparently negative. 





Briar Rose
 


Translated by : Robert Hedin

The rose has been sung about.
I want to sing of the thorns,
and the root–how it grips
the rock hard, hard
as a thin girl’s hand.



Sorrow and suffering are essential elements in Hauge’s poetry. It is present at all times, weighing down as well as lifting up, hopelessness combined with an anticipated redemption. Negative experiences are greatly represented in Hauge’s poetry, but they are not the final destination for the poetic self. The sorrow is heavy, and sometimes even paralysing, but the author brings a movement to the poems where these depressing emotions appear. For example in the poem titled “Ophelia” , he asks



“Where would we go
If we didn’t have sorrow and death?”


 


Let us consider another striking poem titled “Black Crosses”


 


 


Black Crosses



Translated by Robin Fulton

Black crosses
in white snow
stooped in rain, awry.

Here came the dead
over the thorny moor
with their crosses over their shoulders
and laid them by
and went to rest
under each icy tussock.



The combination of the pure, simple image and the symbolic treatment of the liberation from suffering are almost gothic in its emphasized and clear darkness, where rain, snow and crosses appear together in the above poem.

The dead come walking, they move – come walking with their sorrow, and as such they are used as a personification. Life and death mirror each other. The dead come walking and lay their suffering down, before they go to rest. Hauge animates the inanimate, what is already dead and buried. In this way, even the unmoving sheds a cold light on our lives. Death in this poem is suddenly our own death, as if death is already here. Hauge creates a moving image of how the dead have walked there, perhaps together, like a long file of doomed on their way to the final rest. The poet is absent, like the absence resting over empty space where no one is looking.

Think of Zen poetry of immediate experience, place it in a northern climate and austere living conditions and you have the poems of Olav Hauge. Despite sorrows, many of his poems are radiant with its bright positive outlook to life and future. Consider the following poem.


 




New Tablecloth


 
A newtablecloth,yellow!
And fresh white paper!
Words will have to arrive,
Because the cloth is so fine
and the paper so delicate!
When ice forms on the fjord, we know
Birds do come and land on it
(fjord: a long narrow inlet of the sea between steep cliffs; common in Norway)



His carefree and come-what-may attitude is again beautifully reflected in the poem below.


 
You Are The Wind



Translated by: Robert Bly



I am a boat
without wind.
You were the wind.
Was that the direction I wanted to go?
Who cares about directions
with a wind like that!



For the word to be a vehicle of signification seems to be its most important aspect to Hauge. The following  lines from “Prayer” emphasize it



 “Open my eyes, Oh Lord,
that I better can gaze
upon the wonder, not only
its outer glaze.”



I wish to end my blog with my favourite poem that I think casts a very positive outlook on life and  with the craving for freedom it expresses,  translates well into any human language. I wish someone had painted a picture with these lines embedded in it so that I could hang it up my drawing room. It is made up of a chain of repetition of the subordinate clause ‘that’ as its key structural component and point of departure. It is interesting to note that this acts as a dominant rhythmical unit in this poem that works through continually adding new elements to it.


 


 


 


It’s the Dream



Translated by Robin Fulton



It’s the dream we carry in secret
that something miraculous will happen,
that it must happen –
that time will open
that the heart will open
that doors will open
that the mountains will open
that springs will gush –
that the dream will open,
that one morning we will glide into
some little harbour we didn’t know was there.



At sixty-five, Olav married the Norwegian artist Bodil Cappelen, whom he met at one of his rare poetry readings. He died at 86 in 1994 in the old way; no real evidence of disease was present. He simply did not eat for ten days, and so he died. A horse-drawn wagon carried his body back up the mountain after the service. Everyone noticed a small colt that ran happily alongside its mother and the coffin all the way.


 


 


    



 Ref: The Dream We Carry: Selected and last poems of Olav H. Hauge translated by Robert Bly and  Robert   Hedin


 Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses  by Olav H. Hauge translated by Robin Fulton


 

        

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SLAVONIC DANCES

February 15, 2011 By: PGR NAIR Category: Music



SLAVONIC DANCES


Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) is regarded as the greatest music composer of Czechoslovakia. This Romantic-era composer is perhaps best-known for his 9th Symphony, also known as the “New World Symphony”, one of the greatest symphonies in Classical music. I first listened to Slavonic dances when it came as a bonus along with a CD containing his 9th Symphony.

The Slavonic Dances are a series of 16 orchestral pieces composed by Antonín Dvorak in 1878 and 1886 and published in two sets as Opus 46 and Opus 72 respectively (1-8 in OP46 and 9-16 in OP 72). Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, demonstrates not only the musical legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the formation of Czechoslovakia but also of the Slavic people. These are vibrant, stirring performances inspired primarily by Czech folk music. But, Unlike Brahm’s “Hungarian Dances”, which were based on actual folk melodies, Dvorak didn’t use a single bar of folk music in his works. It can be said that he immersed himself in the rhythm of folk music and styles of Slavic dances for his own invention.

He has thus made each “Slavonic Dance” a compact rhapsody able to stand on its own, in varied moods. Slavonic dances exuberantly expresses many of the distinctive qualities of Dvorak’s genius, among them his wealth of pure , fresh musical ideas; his ardent love for his land and people; and his inspired mastery of instrumentation. Vibrant with characteristic melody and rhythm, the Slavonic dances celebrate Czech dance forms, Czech humor and folk merriment as well as the supreme individuality of Dvorak’s music temperament. The Prestos and Allegros in these musical pieces are full of life without being bombastic. And the slower music has a lyrical sweetness while adding a meditational dimension to the music.

If you haven’t heard this before, this mirthful melodic music may remind you of the merriment of listening to a Mozartian rhapsody.  There is a whole world within each small segment of these short musical pieces, a world that comes alive with every listening. One can simply put this on as background music (for it is beautiful and well-played), bounce along to it, or even just sit down and absorb every sound. They are played with sovereignty, energy, wildness and noblesse.


The first number , OP 46 No.1, is  from one of Dvorak’s favourite dance forms. This is titled Furiant Presto has the fast and fiery  rhythm change characteristics of a Bohemian dance (Furiant). After a crashing chord, the fullorchestra launches into a vigorous presto theme which is repeated. This is followed by a quieter theme stated by the woodwinds. This piece is directed by the famous Japanese conductor Seiji Ozaka. His unique conducting style and easy personality inspire the thousands of musicians under his direction as well as his audiences. He is said to have phenomenal photographic memory of the scores of all great composers. Seiji is electrifyingly alive on the stage.




 

 

The OP 46 No.7 titled Skocná- Allegro assai is a rapid Slavic folk-dance or hopping dance. The song is a little over three minutes and is very catchy with a blend of dash and lyricism. It begins with a delicious oboe figure that soon grows into brazen, monumental chords for the entire orchestra.









 

 

 

The No.9 of Op 72 titled Odzemek- Molto vivace is a brilliantly scored dance in the rhythm of the Slovakian Odzemek or Shepherd’s dance. The exuberant zest for life and tremendous vitality that ensues in the first bars of this piece is packed with hot-blooded ardour. It is an incredibly infectious piece.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVmSVYqIjs&feature=related

 


The No.10 of OP 72 titled- Starodávný- Allegretto grazioso -  has been identified as an example of the Lachian starodavny , a processional dance. This one is one of my favourites. Here the strings come to the force in Dvorak’s reduced orchestration. It somehow brings a mood of melancholy that grows increasingly sombre. It is again conducted by Seiji.The Cellist is none other than Yo-Yo Ma , one of the greatest cellists alive  and the violinist is equally reputed Itzhak Perlman. It is fun to watch them compete like kids.

 


 


 


 
 (Embedded file not working. So do open the above link and listen to this as it is the best slavic Dance  of Dvorak)

 


(The No.10 of OP 72 is followed by the lively number No.7 in C Minor. It is pleasure to watch Seiji in this one too )



I am also posting here a 1955 recording conducted by Vaclav Talich, one of the greatest Czech conductors and an authority on Slavonic dances. Dvorak’s popular Slavonic Dances are traditionally approached rustically, and the definitive vaclav Talich recording from decades past immerses you immediately into a Czech landscape of peasant festivities. The sound of the orchestra may not be very gorgeous but I love them for its neutrality and they are shorn of embellishment.




 

I must acknowledge that I lack in-depth knowledge in explaining more on these compositions as I have not learned any music in a systematic manner though my mother was a music teacher. But then, the language of music is universal and I hope the above musical pieces are good to drive away the winter blues


 


                                                                                                    Dvorak




 

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THIRUVATHIRA THOUGHTS

December 22, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: Uncategorized


THIRUVATHIRA THOUGHTS



INTRODUCTION
 

Milan Kundera, the great Czech novelist, mentions in one of his works that a nation or society that has no folk tales, folk dances or folk festivals is a spiritually dead nation. In that sense, our nation, India is spiritually vibrant as it is a paradise of folk festivals and dances. Among these, there are a few that still retain a pastoral flavour and evoke an intense wistfulness that inexorably connects one to the village one grew up in. For me, one such festival is ‘Thiruvathira’. 

 

Thiruvathira is celebrated on the star ‘Thiruvathira’ and it falls on a full moon day in the month of ‘Dhanu’-the fifth month in the Malayalam Calendar (December/January). Thiruvathira is perhaps the only festival, other than Karva Chauth, that I know is exclusively meant for the women-folk in India. From ancient times, the Malayalee women enjoyed an enviable position in the society, and to a considerable extent influenced the social structure, customs and religious practices. The culmination of this phenomenon is clearly visible in this great festival which was earlier confined to the upper classes such as Brahmins, Nairs and Ambalavasis (temple professionals). The first Thiruvathira coming after the marriage of a girl is known as Puthen Thiruvathira or Poothiruvathira and it is celebrated with grand gaiety. 

 

As per the ancient Sangham Krithi, ‘Paripadal‘ by Nallezhuniyaar, Thiruvathira has its origin around 9th century AD.  ‘Paripadal’ has a description of women moving as a group to the Vaigai river for taking a bath. In that sense this festival has an antiquity of about 1200 years. Thiruvathira is celebrated predominantly in Kerala and to a good extent in Tamil Nadu.

 

THE LEGEND

 

Legend stresses this festival’s association with Shiva-Parvathi union. Shiva is considered as the perfect male and Paravathi the perfect devoted wife and their matrimonial solidity is an aspect that gives oomph to this festival.

 

Sati, the consort of Shiva was the daughter of Daksha Prajaapati. She had married Shiva against the wishes of her father. When Daksha performed a great yagna “Brihaspathisavanam” she attended it against her husband’s wishes and was insulted. Unable to bear it, she immolated herself. Enraged at this, Shiva danced the dance of destruction throughout the Universe. The other gods intervened to stop it.

 

Later, engulfed by sorrow, Shiva went to the Himalayas to perform a fierce ‘Tapas’. Around this time Tharaka also performed a Tapasya and Brahma granted him two boons that he could be killed only by a son of Lord Siva who was seven years old, and that he would be invisible to others. Taraka started ruling the demons as a good king but later attacked Deva loka and soon conquered the three worlds. The Devas fled heaven and went to Brahma to appeal for help.

 

Brahma said to the gods, “O Devas, I cannot destroy Taraka. But let me give you a suggestion. A girl named Sati Paravati will born to the King Himalaya and his wife Queen Mena and she will be a great devotee of Lord Shiva and will dedicate herself to  Shiva undergoing Thapas to get him as her husband.  Get the help of Kama Deva , the God of Love. Induce him to tempt Lord Shiva, who remains absorbed in His Yoga Samadhi. Let Lord Siva unite with Parvati. A powerful son, Lord Subramanya, will be born to them. This son will destroy the demon that harasses you.”

 

Indra, the chief of the gods, thereupon requested Cupid (Kama Deva) to go with his wife, Rati, and his companion Vasanta (the season of spring), to Mount Kailas, the abode of Shiva. Standing behind a tree, Kama Deva shot his arrow of passion at Shiva, whilst Parvati was placing some flowers in His hands. The moment their hands met, Siva experienced a distracting feeling and fell in love with Parvati . He wondered what it was that disturbed His Yoga. He looked around and saw Kama Deva crouching behind the tree. The Lord opened His “third eye”, and Kama Deva was burnt to ashes. However, after burning Cupid, by His Yogic vision, the Lord realized that the birth of Lord Subramanya was absolutely necessary to destroy the powerful Taraka. Siva’s seed was thrown into the fire which, unable to retain it, threw it into the Ganges, which in turn threw it into a reed forest. This is where Lord Subramanya was born; hence, He is called Saravanabhava–”born in a reed-forest”. He became the leader of the celestial hosts and the destroyer of Taraka as Brahma had ordained.

 

Paravati performed an intense Tapas for her union with Shiva. Meanwhile, Devas lamented the death of Kama Deva as without him, there wouldn’t be any matrimony. All the women including Kama’s wife Rati started praying for Siva-Parvati union.  After a lot of tests to ensure her genuine devotion to him, Shiva married Parvati on the Thiruvathira day. At the wish of Paravati, Shiva revived Kama to life to delight Rati Devi on the same day.

 

So Thiruvathira celebrates the intense devotion of women to their husbands. Observing Thiruvathira Vrithamm (Austerities) by women is said to bestow blessed conjugal bliss on them and also prosperity, longevity and blessings to their husbands . Nubile girls are believed to be blessed with befitting and devoted husbands if they undergo Thirvathira Vrithum.

 

As with most time-honoured traditions, men are not required to reciprocate for the women in their lives in any way, shape or form.

 

THE THUDI RITUAL

 

This season is noted by mild cold breezes, pleasant weather, all embracing moonlight, and starry skies. It is considered to give the women folk a lot of inner peace and fill them with a rare sweetness and sensuality. The Thiruvathira Vrithum also known as Ardra Vrithum starts seven days before Thiruvathira on the star of Revathi . From  that day onwards, the pubescent girls and married women wake up very early in the morning, march as a group with lit bronze lamps and “Ashtamangalyam’  to the nearby ponds. After placing the lamps on the bank, they plunge into the pond, form a circle and begin the ritual of ‘Thudikottu’ . One of them takes the lead, singing a song pertaining to Kamadeva. ‘Thudi’ songs also invoke images of the bathing scenes of Paravti and her consorts. These songs are simultaneously accompanied by a interesting sound produced on water. The palm of the left hand is closed, and kept immediately underneath the surface of the water. Then the palm of the right hand is forcibly brought down in a slanting direction, and struck against its surface so that the water is completely ruffled, and is splashed in all directions producing a deep reverberating sound. This water dance is known as “Thudi”. Since Thiruvathira also commemorates the death of Kamadeva, this hitting the surface of water with an orientation towards the breast is symbolic of breast beating, lamenting the death of Kamadeva.

 

On every Thiruvathira, one could hear this resonant and rhythmic beat of Thudi all over the village. As a boy I too used to jump into our pond along with my grandmother and mother splashing water. After the bath, the women dress in the neatest and grandest possible attire and visit the nearby Shiva temple to offer prayers and to commence their Vrithum.

 

THIRUVATHIRA PUZHUKKU

 

As Thiruvathira is an auspicious day of penance, women do not take any food containing rice. Instead they have plantain, tender coconuts, tubers etc.

 

 This has consequently led to the ritualistic preparation of the famous dish , “Thiruvathira Puzhukku” which is prepared with eight different tubers,  also known as ‘Ettangadi’. Traditionally, it is prepared with roots such as koorka (Chinese potatoes), Taro (chembu), Kaachil, elephant yam (Telinga potatoes), Tapioca, Red beans, Potatoes,  and garnished with coconut shreds, cumin powder and curry leaves. I think this dish has a fertility myth associated with it as a majority of the vegetables used are tubers that grow beneath the ground or the womb of the earth.Another belief is that through this ritual of preparation, Kamadeva’s body represented by the tubers is regained.

  

 

THE SWING SESSION

 

After a leisurely lunch, women  chew betel. Among Namboodiris, Ambalavasis, and high class Nairs, there is a convention that each woman should chew 108 betel leaves. Then they move as a group for the Oonjalattom (swinging on an oonjal or swing). Though this swinging is an important item of amusement, it is said that it typifies the attempt these women make in order to hang themselves commemorating the demise of Kama (Cupid).

 

 

 

During this season, huge swings would come up in the backyards of most of the houses, on trees like the mango tree, jack fruit tree etc. Often, the strongest vines were tied on to two huge coconut trees, and from that vine was suspended the swing. In my childhood, the swings were made of coir ropes. The seat would be rough hewn: the wide end of a coconut palm leaf stem, cut to the required size. Often, with a strong push, the swing would go so high that the seat and the person on it would veer in another direction. And then, the vines would get intertwined. One would have to go round and round till the swing stopped moving. It was adventure sport of a different kind. Often, it was not confined to sitting but standing on it. Shouting out a rhythmic ‘Aarpo, iyyo, aarpo iyyo..’ while on the swing added to the festive feeling.

 


 

The swing is one Thiruvathira motif that’s missed by people nowadays, particularly the city dwellers.

 

THIRUVATHIRA DANCE

 

Once the dusk sets in, the ladies in the neighborhood assembled in the central courtyard and placed a tall bronze lamp (Nilavelakku) and an image of Shiva with some flowers, plantains and jaggery on a banana leaf as offering to the deity, in the centre. Then begins the dance called Thiruvathirakkali or Kaikottikali. They would be neatly attired in a gold bordered traditional two piece dress called Mundu and Neriyathu. A Mundu is a one piece cloth draped on the lower part of the body while Neriyathu is worn over a blouse. The hair may be tied in a bun with a fragrant jasmine garland around it to enhance the charm.

 

 

 

                  Photo Courtesy : Association of Malayalee Professionals in Saudi Arabia( AMPS)

 

They would stand in a circle around the lighted lamp and dance as per the rhythm of the songs, often pirouetting and moving in a clockwise and sometimes in an anti-clockwise direction, gracefully bending sideways,  as they sing. Dancers also beautifully co-ordinate their hand movements as they go clapping their hands upwards and downwards in rhythm with the beat.

 

 

 

The dance is celebration of marital fidelity and the female energy, for that is what brought Kama Deva back to life from ashes,  and is performed to gain everlasting marital bliss. The sinuous movement executed by a group of dancers around the ‘Nilavilakku’ embody lasya or amorous charm and grace.

 

Today Thiruvathira dance has become a popular item for all occasions and is an integral part of School and University Art Festivals in Kerala.

 

END OF THIRVATHIRA VRITHAM

 

The Thiruvathira dance would continue past midnight as women were not supposed to sleep during Thiruvathira night to obtain full ‘Vrithum’ benefits. The dance would be interrupted by “Pathirappochoodal” or the picking and wearing of ‘Dashapushpam’(Ten sacred flowers)  at midnight. They are worn with an intense remembrance of their husbands. The dance is then continued till early morning when it is stopped for ‘Ardhanareeshwara’ pooja. After this, the women go for bath and prayer in temple. The Thiruvathira Vrithamm comes to a finale upon drinking the “Theertham” (holy ablution water).

 

My eyes well up when I think of the innumerable folk festivals of ineffable charm and allure that are losing their rustic charm and  fading from our collective memory. I believe that no human being can impart true grace and meaning to his existence if he delinks himself from his cultural myths, symbols and heritage.

 

Will Thiruvathira mean anything to our women folk fifty years hence? I wonder.

 

PS: Thirvathira falls on 22 Dec this year

 

Here is a Thiruvathira dance scene in its pastoral setting from the Malayalam movie ‘Parinayam’


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zGuG-gjeeqk

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BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

October 25, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: Poetry


BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

 




It was a leisurely dinner evening in a Greek restaurant in Toronto. There were only three of us- my friend, Dr. Roger Greenwald, poet and distinguished translator of Norwegian poetry, and my wife Raji. We reached the restaurant after visiting the Toronto public library near our residence to pick up a book I had reserved- ‘The Selected poems of Nazim Hikmet’ translated by Randy Blasing and his Turkish wife Mutlu Konuk. I had read  poems of Hikmet in the late eighties and the only poetry book of Hikmet I had owned is now the permanent property of my friend after loaning it to him. He still says he will return:). So, it was a pleasure to read a new translation of him after  many years.

As we settled down in the restaurant, I showed Roger the book I had picked up. He instantly recognized it and asked me whether I had read the poem, ‘Bach’s Concerto No. 1 in C Minor’. As I am a huge fan of the baroque music of Bach, it was the first poem I picked up to read while I went through the book sitting in the subway. With rapturous joy I yelled-Repetition!!!. Roger laughed hearing my euphoric exclamation and endorsed it as one of the most beautiful poems of Nazim Hikmet.

I have posted below this poem to add to my perennial joy of sharing beautiful poems with my friends here.


Nazim Hikmet was one the greatest poets of modern Turkey. Hikmet revolutionized Turkish poetry by introducing free verse and modern poetic techniques, and combining these with traditional and folk styles. He was also jailed and eventually exiled for his leftist political beliefs and his work for social justice. I love Hikmet’s fresh imagery and spirited tone. He is comparable to Pablo Neruda in his style and humanistic vision which can be summarized in the following two lines that appear in one of his poems.

“To live like tree, unique and free

Like a forest in harmony”

Incidentally, both were friends and shared the same ideology and no wonder they became endearing poets of humanity.

Nazim Hikmet is a poet of great compassion and courage, and a believer in the human race in spite of having been in jail for many years. His poems are intimate, honest, uncompromising, gently humorous, filled with longing and hope and refusing to let despair triumph in spite of outward circumstances.

This poem is a simple one and he speaks, probably to his lover Rose, about the innumerable repetitions that one sees in nature. They are verily joy dancing in nature and without those voiceless, clueless and  endless repetitions, our life is monochrome. As the poet affirms at the end, the key is, ‘to repeat without repeating’.

 

BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

Fall morning in the vineyard:
      in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
                      of clusters on the vines,
                      of grapes in the clusters,
                      of light on the grapes.

At night, in the big white house,
                       the repetition of windows,
                       each lit up separately.

The repetition of all the rain that rains
                      on earth, trees, and the sea,
                      on my hands, face, and eyes,
                      and of the drops crushed on the glass.

The repetition of my days
                      that are alike,
                      my days that are not alike.

The repetition of the thread in the weave,
                      the repetition in the starry sky,
                      and the repetition of “I love” in all languages,
                      and the repetition of the tree in the leaves,
                      and of the pain of living, which ends in an instant
                                                          on every deathbed.

The repetition in the snow -
                       the light snow,
                       the heavy wet snow,
                       the dry snow,
the repetition in the snow that whirls
in the blizzard that drives me off the road.

The children are running in the courtyard;
in the courtyard the children are running.
An old woman is passing by on the street;
on the street an old woman is passing by;
passing by on the street is an old woman.

At night, in the big white house,
                     the repetition of windows,
                     each lit up separately.

In the clusters, of grapes,
on the grapes, of light.

To walk toward the good, the just, the true,
to fight for the good, the just, the true,
to seize the good, the just, the true.

Your silent tears and smile, my rose,
your sobs and bursts of laughter, my rose,
the repetition of your shining white teeth when you laugh.

Fall morning in the vineyard:
       in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
                     of clusters on the vines,
                     of grapes in the clusters,
                     of light on the grapes,
                     of my heart in the light.

My rose, this is the miracle of repetition -
to repeat without repeating.

 

 (PS: I have strived to maintain the syntax as given in the book.)

 

Ref: Poems of Nazim Hikmet, Revised and Expanded Edition [Paperback] Nazim Hikmet (Author), Randy Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk (Foreword)

 

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Shift Foreman Speaking

October 19, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: News


“Shift Foreman Speaking”

 


                                  Luis Urzua (in green) with President of Chile standing on his left

The extraordinary feat of rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,000 feet underground for 70 days will be ranked one of the most inspiring events in modern memory. The rescue began at midnight on Tuesday, 12th October, when the metal capsule Phoenix 2 pod was lowered to where 700,000 tons of rock had collapsed on Aug 5 entombing the miners. The mission was certainly an unqualified success, both from technology and leadership angles. I am more enchanted by the leadership and command-and-control strategies one could witness during the unfolding of this human drama. I did considerable reading of various newspapers and articles on this incident and what I have given below is a summary of the leadership episodes that emerged from the beginning of the tragedy to its miraculous finale.

It was Napoleon who said, “A leader is a dealer in hope’. Right from the beginning, the Chilean President Sebastian Pinera shared this hope in no uncertain terms. The president was not a mere spectator.He was in the thick of everything and his visibility was simply amazing (Compare it with the importance our Indian counterparts  give to such tragedies). If perpetual enthusiasm is a force multiplier, this was evident in the missionary zeal with which the technical and leadership teams worked together to ensure synergy at every step.

Instilling courage


When audio contact was first made with foreman Luis Urzua after 17 days of search , the first words he uttered was, “Shift foreman speaking,” a true professional voice even in times of extreme crisis. The 54-year-old took charge of the situation, distributing food and allocating jobs to keep the men busy. That voice, “Shift foreman speaking” will be remembered as one of the greatest leadership quotes in recent times. The most miraculous part of the story is not the rescue. The real miracle — and most inspiring part of this story — is how shift boss Luis Urzua managed to overcome darkness, despair and the prospect of starvation to mobilize a team, who worked together to ensure that every man survived and thrived in the worst of conditions. He had a reputation among employees and one said- “He is very protective of his people and obviously loves them.” This reputation had to be pivotal when he needed to convince 32 other hungry miners, many of whom thought they’d be rescued within days, to ration two-day worth of supplies to last the 17 full days before they were discovered. The miners, at Urzua’s urging, reportedly ate one teaspoon of tuna and a half-glass of milk each 48 hours. True leaders like Luis Urzua follow heart and soul, even in circumstances that seem impossible and hopeless.
 

Teamwork

Everyone wants to survive. In crisis, it’s tough to keep people focused on the team rather than themselves. One of the techniques Urzua used to remind the miners that they were in this together was to have everyone eat their paltry rations in the same spot at the same time. Knowing that there could be no cheating, that no one had more than another, had to help obviate the natural tendency to break away from the team into a every-man-for-himself mentality that would have sunk them all. By the end, the miners were so bonded that they asked rescuers if they could all remain on the site until the last man was brought to the surface. Not surprisingly, Urzua was that last man.

Discipline

 Every miner had a job. One became the religious leader; others helped map their tunnel to see the potential ways out. Urzua organized work shifts, giving each miner responsibilities that kept them busy, improved their living conditions and emphasized that individual’s importance to the the team. They maintained a schedule, shining lights to simulate day and night. They also maintained a strict diet even after they were delivered food. They were focused on a goal — getting out. They needed to be disciplined to keep their living conditions acceptable and keep their waistlines in check to be lifted to safety.

 

Strategy and goal-oriented focus

The power of plying with a purpose was the most visible leadership lesson in the whole episode. The Chilean rescue was truly a multinational and multidisciplinary affair, with contributions from a variety of companies and institutions around the world. The rescue capsule was designed by an Austrian firm. Experts from NASA and other American agencies helped to sustain the 33 miners underground, and an American company from Pennsylvania supplied the drills that bored through half-a-mile of rock. Geologists, psychologists, and other experts from several different countries offered advice while the Chilean government, under mining minister Laurence Golborne, remained firmly in control.

This might sound a facile task. One should but it’s extraordinarily difficult to assemble resources from dozens of providers while preventing turf battles from bogging down the whole effort. Not-invented-here syndrome is a universal danger to any multilateral effort, since people in charge always prefer their own solutions to those offered by somebody else, especially when national pride is at stake. Military and law-enforcement officials routinely face this problem when operations cross jurisdictions or involve units under different commands. Corporations often struggle to get agreement between department heads, even on the smallest matters. In the pursuit of a singular goal—rescuing the miners—the Chileans have shown focus and discipline that ought to humble so-called leaders the world over.

Under-promise and over-deliver

“Under-promise and over-deliver” is a popular quote by business guru Tom Peters. Yet, this is what Chilean authorities did. This may be an old cliché, yet leaders at every level routinely ignore it by creating unrealistic expectations that leave people disappointed. The Chileans did the opposite. In early August, when the mine first collapsed and the fate of the miners was unknown, Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said there was a slim chance they’d be found alive. That brought criticism, but it also set the stage for a tragic outcome while still leaving room for hope. Then, when the miners were found alive, Chilean officials cautioned that it could take as long as four months to reach them. That might have come from naiveté or lack of familiarity with state-of-the-art drilling equipment, but now that the miners have been rescued ahead of schedule, everybody awaiting the rescue feels relief rather than anger. And the Chilean government looks competent instead of ham-handed, which would have been the case if they had to backpedal from an overoptimistic timeline.

Compare that to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and low-ball estimates of the amount of oil spilled, which were continually revised upward by huge amounts, trashing BP’s credibility.

Have backup Plans

Yet another leadership trait is the virtue of laying backup plans. The shaft that ultimately reached the miners was the second of the three being drilled, and the only one using innovative air-powered drills that turned out to be ideal for the type of rock in the area. Since miners had never been rescued before through such a long shaft, the rescue operation was basically an intense experiment. Trying several different things at once obviously raised the odds of success. That can be hard to do in more mundane situations where nobody’s life is at stake and funding is tight, but it’s always worth keeping in mind that there might be more than one way to succeed—and that your first idea about how to do it could be wrong.


Shared credit

When it came time to speak to people at the surface, Urzua stepped aside, preferring to have another miner narrate a video requested by health officials. While miners in and out of the shaft talked about Urzua’s leadership, Urzua talked about the skills and welfare of his men.


Marching with a single heartbeat

Finally what everyone witnessed was the joy of team pride. It was gratifying to see the Chileans come together and win one for the home team. In an era of corporate bloodletting, political warfare, and generally low morale, the Chilean rescue is a reminder that people really can work together to accomplish something.

 


Celebrate Humanity

 Rare are the incidents that attract international media attention for their power to instill wonder and joy, rather than horror and trepidation. This was one occasion where all citizens of the world could forget their many differences (cultural, religious, and historical), at least temporarily, and unite in a collective outpouring of human empathy. Ultimately, the miners’ rescue is a study in the capacity for peoples from diverse backgrounds and cultures to recognize that what ties them together is often just as significant as what makes them unique.

There is no rocket science to leadership. Leadership is a collection of seemingly minor things that, taken as a whole, create a climate in which people feel honoured and valued. The Chilean Miners rescue will be remembered for long time as a glorious leadership exercise in the history of human endeavour where every team member felt valued and honoured.
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Reference: Articles on Leadership experiences from Chilean Mine Rescue by Rick Newman and   Kathy Kristof

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NOBEL PRIZE FOR MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

October 08, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: Uncategorized



NOBEL PRIZE FOR MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

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The great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (pronounced as MAH’-ree-oh VAHR’-gahs YOH’-suh) has finally won the 2010 Nobel prize for Literature. The Swedish Academy which manages the Nobel Prize stated that the award goes to him for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” For many years, he had been sidelined by the academy for political reasons. He is a worthy successor to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Columbian author and the last novelist to win a Nobel Prize from Latin America (famous for masterpiece, “One Hundred of Solitude”. He won Nobel Prize in 1981). My joy doubles as I am a huge fan of Latin American Literature . The academy’s perennial neglect of great Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolano and Juan Rulfo-all who died without winning the Nobel- is notorious. I pray that one day the living Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes too wins this prize.

Non-literary readers may still recall Mario Vargas as the Peruvian presidential candidate who contested against Albert Fujimoro in 1990 and lost it. His Cuban friend and writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante had at that time characterized his defeat as a gain for literature. As Infante said, “Literature is eternity, politics mere history.” Throughout his storied career, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been regarded as one of the most influential writers in South America. Mario Vargas Llosa is very popular among literary readers for his astonishingly great works like “Green Hose”, “Aunt Julia and the script writer” and “War of the end of the World.

 “Aunt Julia and the script writer” is a novel that walks on the thin line of fact and fiction. It is a novel that I discuss every time I encounter a fan of his works. “Aunt Julia”   is perfection in craft and thematic integrity. Mario, a 19-year old Law-student working in a radio station, falls in love with his aunt-in-law, Julia Urquidi. She thinks Mario is a child and calls him ‘Varguitas’ but soon he proves to her he’s a young man already, with great ambitions of becoming a novelist in Paris. They end up in love, and issues arise when relatives become aware of this. They flee to an unknown town intending to be married. Meanwhile, Mario finds a friend in Pedro Camacho, a soap opera radio writer who, after achieving great success, has begun to lose control over his characters (they die in one episode to reappear the next) and runs of the risk of being fired since the audience is getting confused. The boiling imagination of Camacho’s scripts and the riotous life of Varguitas is interwoven in the novel. This is the most fascinating aspect of this novel. Varguitas confronts his family claiming that he will provide a good life to Julia. She encourages him to pursue his dream of going to Paris and the script writer Camacho loses his mind and is sent to a mental hospital.

The starting passage his chaotic epic novel “War of the end of the World” is one of the great literary passages in Latin American literature. The emergence of the hero at the beginning of this novel is an example of riveting characterization. The novel presents a detailed representation of Latin American history and epic storytelling. It is a fictionalized history of Canudos, a community in the dry interior of Brazil that was utterly wiped out by the Brazilian army in 1897. Llosa has a singular tenderness for this novel, asserting it  in many interviews as his best book, and I cannot agree more on this.


“In praise of stepmother” is another very short novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, especially for the intellectually and erotically stimulating content. I would say it tastes exactly like ‘Bloody Mary”. Wickedly witty and fun, this is a strange and beautiful little gem and a truly masterful and original piece of erotic storytelling. The book is primarily around 3 characters - Don Rigoberto, his son Alfonso and second wife Lucrecia.   I would recommend this to a casual reader who wants to taste his works. Another novel that hugely explores his arsenal of humor is “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service”

Most of his novels combine scathing political commentary with complex literary style that engrosses the reader. His first novel, “The Time of the Hero” is a thinly veiled account of the corruption Vargas Llosa himself experienced at a military Academy. “Clubs” explores the brutal rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood by telling the story of a boy emasculated by a dog. Another noted work,   “Storyteller”,   weaves together the lives of a Peruvian man who goes to live with an ancient tribe in the Amazon and a college friend who is haunted by the thought of the tribes. It alternates between sections of the writer`s life and the stories told deep in the rainforest. “The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta” is about a failed revolution of the 1960’s that was perpetrated by a high school classmate of a writer in contemporary Peru. “Death in the Andes” is structurally a mystery story in which two soldiers assigned to a barren outpost,  investigate the disappearance of three men in the remote mining communities of the Andes.

Lastly, I would cite one non-fiction book, “Letters to a Young Novelist”   (modeled on Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”) which has been hailed as the cheapest resource on how to write a novel. He has condensed his lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers. I would gladly recommend this to all budding writers. It is written in a lucid style with a plethora of illustrations drawn from many literary works of high repute.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a highly committed litterateur. In his Paris Review Interview (that appears in the book “Latin American Writers at Work”) he says, “You could say that to write is necessary and to live is unnecessary. Literature has been important to me ever since I was a child. Literature is more than a modus vivendi : I believe the choice a writer makes to give himself entirely to his work , to put everything at the service of literature instead of subsuming it to other considerations is absolutely critical. Some people think of it as a kind of complementary or decorative activity in a life devoted to other things or even as a way of acquiring prestige and power. In those cases, there is a block, it’s literature avenging itself, not allowing you to write with any freedom, audacity or originality. That’s why I think it’s important to make an absolutely total commitment to literature”.

At another place he says, “My greatest quality is my perseverance. I am capable of working extremely hard and getting more out of myself than I thought was possible. My greatest fault, I think, is my lack of confidence, which torments me enormously. It takes me three or four years to write a novel – and I spend a good part of that time doubting myself. I write because I am unhappy. I write because it is a way of fighting unhappiness”. While this can be rated as the mere modesty of this great writer, the Nobel Prize should surely skyrocket his self-confidence.

Reading Vargas Llosa is a treasured experience in life that no fiction fans should ever miss. If any of you think that it is not worth it, I can cite a passage from “Human Province” by Elias Canetti: ‘While the hemlock was being prepared, Socrates was learning a melody on the flute. “What use wlll that do to you?”, he was asked. “At least I will learn that melody before I die”, replied Socrates ’

By bestowing the Nobel Prize on Vargas Llosa, the academy has truly recognized the grandeur and legacy of legitimate literature as the finest expression of humanity.

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THE DINOSAUR

June 01, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: Literature


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THE DINOSAUR


In Latin American literature, there is a story  titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words:
‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’


 A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses.


In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below.

The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past.

What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (”Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible.

The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’.No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.


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Continuity of Parks

April 28, 2010 By: PGR NAIR Category: Literature

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CONTINUITY OF PARKS



He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door–even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it–he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover’s body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over reexamination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark.

Not looking at each other now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees, which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, and they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman’s words reached him over a thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.

By Julio Cortazar

Source: Blow-Up and Other Stories

 

( Note to the reader: Julio Cortazar (Argentinean writer) is one of my favorite Latin American writers. He was a great sensation in the literary circles of Kerala in the vibrant eighties when yours truly also got exposed to some unadulterated Latin American stuff.

Pablo Neruda once said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair’. I cannot agree more and anyone who has tasted Cortazar and Borges will assert that much of the fiction that one encounters these days is sadly insipid. This metafiction is an excellent example of Cortazar’s genius.

To read a gripping story is to be transported into its fictional world. Certain stories creates the illusion that I am no longer reading the story but I am actually in the story. ‘In continuity of Parks’, Cortazar memorably evokes this experience of total immersion in a fictional text. This story seamlessly shifts from two realistic narratives, finally provoking a metaphysical uncertainty about which is the text and which is reality.

A business man reads a novel sitting in his high backed green velvet armchair in his study. The novel he is reading tells of a desperate but resolute murderer who follows an avenue of trees that leads to a house; he climbs the stairs and locates the study,… ‘and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel’. When the crime is about to be performed, the victim is revealed as the businessman sitting in the armchair at the opening. So at the climatic end, the real man reading a novel suddenly becomes a character in the novel just as the characters suddenly become ‘real’ to end the man’s life.

Cortazar involves the reader, first by constructing the business man as the narrative point of view and then, without warning, abruptly shifting to the lovers. The rapid conclusion is a bit jolting, not only because the text ends just before the murder occurs, but because the reader was earlier positioned in the victim’s point of view, assuming it to be reality.

Thus the text that the hero reads becomes the text in which he is read. The reader immersed in the thriller becomes the victim of the narrated murder, thus paying with his life the disappearance of the boundary between fiction and reality. Note the economy of words in this story. The ending line is superb, perfectly balanced, without any superfluous or gory words to describe a cool murder…In essence, the sign of great fiction!….PGR)


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