Jayanta Mahapatra
from
BIJAY KANT DUBEY
Ph.D.(D.H.Lawrence), M.A. (English, History & Political Science)
Poems published in Debonair
Critical excerpts on new Indian English poets from my works in H.S.Bhatia's NET/SLET Guide
(From Ramesh Publishing House)
from
BIJAY KANT DUBEY
Ph.D.(D.H.Lawrence), M.A. (English, History & Political Science)
Poems published in Debonair
Critical excerpts on new Indian English poets from my works in H.S.Bhatia's NET/SLET Guide
(From Ramesh Publishing House)
Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet is
first of all a myth-maker; an imagist of a high order taking the visionary
glides.Sitting by the door, he dreams to dwell far. Depicted against the
backdrop of the mythico-historical background, he continues to evade us with his
escapades and flights of imagination, bringing poetry closer to physics,
sociology, museumlogy, art and architecture. Apart from being closer to what it
brings him nearer to, feminism, bare realism and other ground realities twitch
him for an expression and he really views them with an aggrieved heart.
Jayanta Mahapatra when he started
writing verses in English just wrote down the imagistic lines which took the
shapes of smaller poems no doubt, but the meaning was not in them nor could it
be found and it is also a fact that this also remains a specialty of his his
poems that these cannot be annotated even now and it may be his so-called
obscurity.Whatever be that he has not written for meaning's sake, but for
photography sake. A teacher of physics one has read and taught physics in
classrooms, how can we expect it that he will turn to literature barely? To see
it otherwise, to him, physics is poetry and poetry physics, an exchange of
both.
Jayanta as a poet is first of all
an Odia writing in English rather than anything else in his allegiance and
loyalties and even if an Indian that too later on; an Odia poet writing about
the Odia things and the demography and cartography of Odisha. A poet of Odisha,
its hills, rivers, sea coasts, beaches, forest reserves, bird sanctuaries,
rocks, stones and temples, his mind cannot dwell anywhere rather than Orissa
and Orissan landscapes. Cuttack, Puri, Bhubaneswar, this is the periphery of
his poetry and he moves around these. The rock-built temples of Orissa, the
Lingaraj temple, the Khandagiri caves, the Dhaulagiri stupa, the Jagannath
temple and the Konark sun-temple take the canvas away from him and he seems to
photograph them in his full myth-making.
Today we call him a modernist, a
post-modernist or a post-colonialist, but the there is no truth in these
statements as because when he started to write, nothing was in his mind, just
to be a writer was the prospect. There was none to write and stake a claim and
it was also true there was none to judge and those who attempted were too sure
of they were going to end up as smaller poets and poetesses.
Light and darkness basically form
the basis of his imagery and he draws from and discusses in and with which the
origin of the universe is connected with, where does light break forth, where
does it retreat to?
There is not one single aspect of
his poetry. There are so many things and aspects of his poetry and he is so
many at one go. A poet, visionary, thinker, dreamer, he is existential,
nihilistic, realistic, symbolical, mythical, imagistic, feministic at the same
time when we take up. His poetry is a poetry of absurdism. He writes the poetry
of the absurd. A poet of rains, rites and waiting, he is very confusing as he
confuses the readers with his very idea of the shadow space and random descent.
Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet is a
dreamer, a visionary, a philosopher and a thinker apart from being
mythico-historical, existential, nihilistic and absurd. The physics
departmental stuffs are the things of his deliberation. If physics be his
subject, how to expect for something different from, how to negate the
influence of astrophysics together with that, which one can come to feel it
indirectly? When he talks of the space and an uncertain tomorrow ever-coming,
ever-changing or the same dawn-break breaking forth and bundling out,
retreating with the glow of the twilight and vanishing in the dusk, he seems to
be drawing close to that basics of study. Jayanta Mahaptara’s poetry is
inclusive of many a thing, as for example, dream, vision, image, myth, mystery,
symbol, history, art, tradition, belief, motif, trend and tradition; society,
art, culture, religion, philosophy and spirituality. A poet of the Oriyas, he
cannot help without thinking about them. The defeat and bloodshed of the
innocent Oriyas into the hands of King Ashoka he has not forgotten them and the
fall of the Kalinga. He dreams of, when will Kalinga rise again? This is the
historical and regional background against the backdrop of which he reminisces
and visualizes. To see it in this context, he is like Thomas Hardy and
D.H.Lawrence depicting Wessex and Nottinghamshire and this the locale of his
poetry, call it regional, national or international. D.H.Lawrence too has
written a book named Etruscan Places as has Khushwant Singh on the history of
the Punjab. Similar is the case with Jayanta Mahapatra, the Odia poet in an
English garb. Wherever goes he, the dreams’ and the images of Odisha leave him
not behind. An Oriya Christian, he has lots to talk about the great famine
during which his grandfather converted to Christianity. He can tell about the
ten-armed clay idol of Bhagavati with the light in the eyes and the sad
immersion of it; the lingam-yoni motif and the yoga-yoginis. People may
question with regard to Nissim Ezekiel and his identity, but can never him as
he is first of all an Odia then an Indian, but fame came to him internationally
first then nationally. Before getting awards here, he had made a way into the
West as for his first introduction with the audience.
He is difficult as for that he plays
with word, meaning and image. Basically, his verses are frolicking into the
hands of imagery and photography. Everything is but based on supposition and
conjecture as these leave no room unturned for anything else to delineate upon.
Had it been so, what would it have happened? Had it been not, what would it
have? The places where there are houses upon would have been one day with the
hills over that particular space.
Nothing is what it seems to be
and what it seems to be is nothing in respect of Jayanta Mahapatra and his
poetry. Just the pencilled images, silhouetted, sketched and drawn are the
things of his portrayal. To pick up Shakespearean and Hardyian terms to state
it, men as walking shadows and puppets into the hands of destiny are some of
the points; purviews of his depiction. His poems are just for to see, glimpse
through, the pages to turn over and flit by, not to make out for a meaning as
they mean it not. In a single poem he crams so many fleeting images, gliding
and slipping past. Why are we,/ who can say it? What is this existence, who can
but answer it? Though the poet does not raise these questions, but it appears
to be after a study of his poetry that he seems to be making us think about
that. He is terse and obscure as for the flimsy existence of light and
darkness, the words picked up from an uncommon stock, imagery doing the rounds
to owe to. His imagery and language make him obscure and this is the ground for
which the critics call him modern, post-modern and post-colonial. As it is difficult
to define light and darkness, to tell about the composition of them, the main
ingredients and constituents of them so is the case with this poet delving
into, a poet of the morning serene and sedate, full of tranquil silence, still
arising from, awaking with the lotuses blooming and the sun flashing upon with
the glimmering of its own impress him otherwise to be called a poet of silence
and this is the Wordsworthian quality which enriches him. But he is differently
aware of. Sometimes he contrast and compares the dawn-time, drawing from the
scavenger women going to throw off excreta.
As a poet, he is mythical,
imagistic, symbolical, mystical, artistic and bodily too when he talks of the
twitches of the intriguing body and man-woman relationship envisaged on the
walls of the Konark sun-temple and the carvings on it, the erotic sculptures in
sex, love, romance and relationship, rounding about the Indian philosophy of
dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Something of the man and his mind seen in the
makers and workers too is evident on these. The good wife’s siesta by his side
dreaming the noonday dreams, oblivious of the chants of the burning ghats far
away, the summer noon hot, perspiring and wet with, he clutches them along the
varied imagery and description in the same poem. He is a visionary who goes
dreaming against the backdrop of the rock-built temples. All the time he keeps
thinking about the glorious past of it, the times of the making of the
rock-built temples and the architects and makers at work, we mean the
construction site. The overtones and undertones of the Vedic hermitage full of
Vedism, Upanishadism and Puranism continue to hold their sway over Mahapatra
and we overhear them in the incantatory voice, the chorus coming down from the
temples and this contributes to the mythic base of his poetry. The beauty of
ancient India we can feel it in its splendor and magnificence.
The poet is a naturalist and a
conservator when he talks of the Olive Ridley turtles, the Chilika
bird-sanctuary and the moving of crocodiles into the waters at midday during
the summertime and this draws him close to eco-criticism and eco-appreciation
of poetry. Can poetry be written at the cost of existence, when our survival
will be itself in danger? The sun burnt earth and the dark hamlet with the
nameless woman waiting for the coming of her husband with an oil lamp into her
hands has many a tale to tell about the Indian countryside. The pains of life
and living namelessly are untold. Life is very slow, dull and dreary in the countryside.
The peepul tree, the banyan tree and the mango orchards save the villagers from
heat and dust during the long summers and the unknown mother and daughter
seeing into the hair and waiting for the drop of a mango adds to the story.
Which astrologer can predict the poor lot of the poor girl-child of India? The
pains of his heart none has come to understand it. What has this freedom given
to us? Has poverty been eliminated, eradicated? Still the tales of hunger have
been doing the rounds. Poverty keeps quarrelling in the shanty; Poverty as Poor
Daughter keeps sucking the breast of Mother Malnutrition. What more do we want
to hear? Dowry deaths, female feticide, gender bias, atrocities against women,
domestic violence, rape, murder and torture maraud the humble self of the poet
and he seems to be helpless to dispense with them.
What is poetry to Mahapatra, if
somebody asks it, how to answer? Poetry is photo-negatives; Orissan landscapes,
a peep into Oriya life, culture, thought, philosophy and society. Poetry is a
dip in nothingness, existentialism, agnosticism, faith and doubt. Why is this
waiting? What do we wait for and what does it turn up finally? Is life a
waiting and man keeps waiting for it life-long? To see it otherwise, Jayanta’s
poetry is a study in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. Who is this Godot?
Even Samuel Beckett cannot say it. What to say of Jayanta Mahapatra who keeps
turning poetry into physics, even going to the extent of deriving and drawing
from light and darkness and the origin of the universe?
A catalogue of his books may
furnish with more details:
Close the Sky, Ten by Ten,
Dialogue Publication, Calcutta,1971, Svayamvara and Other Poems, Writers
Workshop, Calcutta, 1971, A Father’s Hours, United Writers, Calcutta, 1976, A
Rain of Rites, University of Georgia Press, Athens (USA), 1976, Waiting,
Samkaleen Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979, The False Start, Clearing House, Bombay,
1980 , Relationship, Greenfield Review Press, Greenfield, New York 1980, Life
Signs, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1983, Dispossessed Nests, Nirala
Publications, Jaipur,1986, Selected Poems, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
1987, Burden of Waves and Fruit, Three Continents Press, Washington, 1988,
Temple, Dangaroo Press, Sydney, 1989, A Whiteness of Bone, Viking Penguin, New
Delhi, 1992,The Best of Jayanta Mahapatra, Bodhi Publications,Calicut, 1995,
Shadow Space, D.C.Books, Kottayam, 1997, Bare Face, D.C.Books, Kottayam,
2000Random Descent, Third Eye Communications, Bhubaneswar,2005,The Lie of Dawns:
Poems 1974-2008, Authorspress, New Delhi, 2009
The books of Jayanta Mahaptra
have appeared from both, big and small presses. If we talk about the first book
of poems, it is a slim volume which follows the course of its own. There is
nothing to delve deep, but instead of it, morning shows the day is the thing to
be marked in here. Mainly the shorter and simpler, but meaningless poems figure
in it and they can make sense if related to with references.
If Night of the Scorpion by
Nissim Ezekiel is a poem of Hindu-view karma, dharma and bhoga, Jayanta
Mahapatra’s Dawn at Puri is a poem of some asthi-kalsha and pinda-dana combined
with will and testament of Jawarharlal Nehru. This is as because the poet’s
mother wishes to be cremated on the sea beach near the temple complex as Puri
is the swarga-dwara, the gateway to heaven and it might have made her move
along the Hindu line. We do not know what it has happened to her as she is
perhaps a Christian. The pyres burning on the sea beach adjacent to the Great
Temple, the Jagannath Puri temple, a little away from, scenic and landscapic
tell many a tale against the backdrop of the temples, the sea and the
lacklustre widows past their centre of hectic activity and the formless lepers
beyond recognition. Nissim and Daruwalla also refer to them in their poems.
Service to man is service to God corrodes the base of faith and belief. The
things seen through the dawn scenery against the backdrop of life and death,
faith and doubt belittle it all and we turn into a skeptic. Faith like light
too is frail as this human body of the helpless widow is in reality.
‘Svayamvara and Other Poems’ as a
collection of poems made a way after Close the Sky, Ten by Ten from Writers
Workshop, Calcutta in 1971 when Jayanta Mahapatra had been a teacher of physics
traching at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. Though the book is no variation from
his as usual style, it is essential to record as for his growth and development
as a poet. We do not know if the editors pick up from Close the Sky, Ten by Ten
or Svayamvara and Other Poems. Peace, For a Displaced Season, Blind This World,
A Kind of Love, Sonnet,
Sometimes, Morning, Awareness, A Point of View, Betrayal, The Marriage
Portrait, Apartment, At The Zoo, Love’s Caress, Where Does Night Begin?, Bells,
The Bride, Traditions, Svayamvara, Between, Bones, Sun Worshipper, Child and
Teacher, Traffic Constable, Intimacy, Faith, Poem, The Poster, My Boy, Blind
Singer in a Train, Henry the Robot/ A Theme of Love, A Name,
Poem (For R.M.) ,etc. are the
poems included in it. Whatever be the theme of the poem, but he has not left
his love of imagery and imagism, lyric and lyricism, so private and personal,
so delving into the realms of nothingness, the space and the vacuum, the things
of his perusal.
As Jayanta Mahapatra has evolved
today so the people are after Close the Sky, Ten by Ten and Svayamvara and
Other Poems. Generally, the readers do not attach any importance to the first
entries. But it is easier for the Indian English poets even after their first
publications. Those who are going to write first poems also pressure for to be
called poets and poetesses. The first anthology which P.Lal edited will show
the things in a very poor light. Even Nissim too had not been established in
the sixties. Jayanta’s name does not figure in the anthology of poems edited by
V.K.Gokak.
Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet is not one who comes from the field of literature, whose business will be emotion and feeling as the cheap sentiment of his, but is a physicist, a professor of physics writing in English.To see it from his discipline of study, physics is his poetry and he has found his theme in physics, the branch of it called astrophysics, light and darkness chapters. The history of the origin of universe is the thing of his deliberation. What it is today will not be tomorrow. Where does light break forth and where does it retreat back to? Who can answer all these questions, the things of the fickle and unconscious mind? Everything is but in a flux; ever-changing state. If this be the state of the things, what to say it more? Imagery is the chief tool of his and he keeps working.
Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet is not one who comes from the field of literature, whose business will be emotion and feeling as the cheap sentiment of his, but is a physicist, a professor of physics writing in English.To see it from his discipline of study, physics is his poetry and he has found his theme in physics, the branch of it called astrophysics, light and darkness chapters. The history of the origin of universe is the thing of his deliberation. What it is today will not be tomorrow. Where does light break forth and where does it retreat back to? Who can answer all these questions, the things of the fickle and unconscious mind? Everything is but in a flux; ever-changing state. If this be the state of the things, what to say it more? Imagery is the chief tool of his and he keeps working.
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