Sahitya Akademi

Review
Author(s): Prabhakar Machwe
Review by: Prabhakar Machwe
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April-June 1967), pp. 101-105
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23329549
Accessed: 05-01-2016 14:46 UTC

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 BOOK REVIEW

Plateau: Sixty poems by Prabhjot Kaur; Asia Publishing

House, Bombay; pages 100; Rs. 12.

Nayi Kavita: Seemayen aur Sambhavanayen, (New Poetry:

Limitations and possibilities): Eight long critical essays by
Girijakumar Mathur; published by Akshar Prakashan
Private Ltd., Delhi; pages 137; Rs. 6.

Nayi Kahani Ki Bhumika (Introduction to New Short Story)

by Kamaleshwar; published by Akshar Prakashan, Delhi;
pages 212; Rs. 8.

Alochana: Prakriti aur Parivesh, (Criticism: Nature and

Environment) by Dr. Taraknath Bali; published by Akshar
Prakashan, Delhi; pages 287; price Rs. 12.

This volume (Plateau) of poems contains translations

from original Punjabi poems, half from the collection Pabbi
(the plateau) which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in
1964. Twenty-nine poems are translated by Umanath
Bhattacharya, twenty by the author herself, six by her
husband, Narenderpal Singh and four by Sant Singh

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

Sekhon. About the author, the blurb says: 'Mrs. Prabhjot

Kaur, a leading Punjabi writer, was honoured as Rajya Kavi
(Poet Laureate) by the Punjab Government in 1964 and she
was nominated a member of the Panjab Vidhan Parishad
(Upper House of the State Legislature) to represent cultural
interests . . . She is a prolific poet and has published twenty
volumes of which seven are for children.' The blurb further
informs the reader that her poems are translated in six Indian
and six foreign languages. She attended the second Afro
Asian Writers' Conference in 1958 and visited fifteen
countries in Europe and Asia on a lecture-cum-study tour in
1960. There are also recommendations of two former
Ministers of Punjab on the jacket. She has also translated
two books of Dr. Radhakrishnan into Punjabi.
In an introductory benediction the President Dr. S.
Radhakrishnan says: 'Poetry is controlled spontaneity. The
passions and experiences which we have require to be
disciplined by thought. There is always a tension between
thought and passion, between logic and lyricism. Only those
who are disciplined in mind and intense in their experience
can produce good poetry. It is my earnest hope that Srimati

Prabhjot Kaur, who has the power to feel and the patience
to reflect, will give us in years to come valuable work.'
With all this impressive introduction, when one turns to
the poems proper, one feels that either the translation lacks
something, or that the standards of modern Punjabi poetry
and English poetry are probably so different that the 'rustic,
rugged, virile, robust and overhearty' Punjabiness is not to
be felt. 'The Plateau' is a good poem, there are many others
which have new and unfamiliar themes, some are rooted in
folk-lore.

Probably the poet himself or herself is not the best

translator of the original—it is said of great poets that they
have done injustice to themselves by doing so. In general,
the effect of these poems is not better than Victorian or later
Romantic poetry. And in saying so there is no disparage
ment meant, much of our poetry in Indian languages, which
is popular and pleasing, is of this kind. It has taken

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 BOOK REVIEW

modernity only in its technique—in the use of blank verse or

oblique expressions, but the content is not contemporary.
After reading the volume, the feeling one has is of a sensitive
person still groping to face the elemental confrontation.
In 1956, when Amrita Pritam received the Sahitya
Akademi Award, a slender volume of translation in English
of her select poems, entitled Voice of Punjab, was published,
to which the writer of these lines had the privilege to write
the]Preface. Therein I had pointed out that poetesses tend
to be sentimental—from Sappho to Mahadevi Varma—and
the fact that the Punjabi poetesses are not so. is in itself
commendable.

Girijakumar Mathur is one of the pioneers of the New

Poetry movement in Hindi and has published five volumes of
poetry during the last twenty-five years. This is his first
collection of critical articles on and about many controversial
subjects like the Beatnik influences, the re-assessment of
experimental poetry, the new lyric and the technical study of
pauses and stresses, vowel-values and sound-patterns in

free verse, mostly illustrated by his own verses and a bold

attempt to break from the romantic-idyllic past. Apart
from the fact that the criticism has become poetic and
sententious at many places, Mathur is thinking on the right
lines in welcoming the latest non-conformism. He has also
warned in his last essay that self-pity, over-statement of a
credo and repetitiveness would kill the new movements. The

most rewarding and original study is the second essay on

the meaning of sound-patterns, particularly the use of
vowels, which he illustrates geometrically. The article on
new human contexts is also interesting and shows his wide
reading of history and sociology, not very relevant though in
discussing pure poetry. The number of English terms in
brackets show that the poet's thinking is considerably
influenced by western critical terminology. Though at
places he becomes emotional about himself—which is
understandable as the New Poetry movement was not taken

kindly by Hindi conservative critics—the book should be

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

read by everyone who is averse to New Poetry. This is one

major self-analysis presented after Agyeya's Atmanepad and
i
Muktibodh's Nay Kavita Ka Atma-Sangharsh.

(Nayi Kahani Ki Bhumika) of twenty-one

This collection
articles,mostly published as a monthly column in Nayi
Kahaniyan, a magazine edited by the author, is not very
profound. It is written in a racy, readable style but repeats
many arguments. At places, as in the well-written article
'Pret Bolate Hain' (Ghosts speak), it rises to an emotional
pitch and attacks'progressive' critics like Shivadansingh
Chauhan. But mostly it is a brief for the new short story in
Hindi—of which genre the author himself is a successful
practitioner—and a attack on old guards like
vehement
Jainendra Kumar and
'Agyeya'. But in their enthusiasm
for social commitment and partisan realism, critics like
Kamaleshwar conveniently connive at the limitations of the
writings of even Prem Chand, Yashpal, Ashk or Nagarjun.
At places we get merely lists of names of many good, bad
and indifferent younger writers, in a journalese fashion.
Maybe it is good policy for an editor to pat or encourage

young talent, but such certificate distribution is certainly not

scientific or objective criticism. One good purpose of this
work is that students and common readers who do not have

a clear picture of the line of divide between the old and the
new Hindi short story would know this difference clearly.
The analysis of some of the old writers is very interesting,
though there is more nihilistic enthusiasm than balanced
reasoning. After all, the old gives place to the new, and it
is no use crying over the decadent and already defunct. It
is not by such briefs that the coming generations would
decide whether the several names of young writers
enumerated by this leader of the new short story, really
surpass the old masters. It is only their performance that
would stand out. No pedestal has ever made a piece of
sculpture great. The last essay on the changing language of
the short story is very good; one can fully agree with its
thesis. Books like these only show that Hindi writing is in

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 BOOK REVIEW

the grip of such conservatism that many things are yet to be

told in 1967, which were told long ago in other Indian
languages.

The book Alochana: Prakriti aur Parivesh is primarily

meant for young students who want to know what criticism
is, or what its purpose and various approaches are. As the
critic has also to evaluate, the problem of a sound philosophi
cal background is very essential. Dr. Bali is not merely a
student of Hindi language and literature, but also a good
student of philosophy. That has helped him in putting for
ward in a clear and lucid manner not only the traditional
Sanskrit aesthetician's viewpoint, but also the Marxist and
Freudian angles and their limitations. The
book is mostly
interpretative of different traditional thoughts and does not
claim any original or new approach to the fundamentals of
criticism. There is no reference to new criticism or linguistic
positivism or existentialism, and in that sense this book
could have been as well written before twenty years and
would not have made any difference. One good thing is that
it avoids the Hindi critic's temptation to list names. It is all
the more creditable for the author that he has taken a fresh
look at the old theories and shown their onesidedness. The
author's mother-tongue is Punjabi and he has done his
doctorate in Hindi on the philosophical and ethical aspects
of Rasa theory.
—Prabhakar Machwe

Bengali Literature, Special Number, December 1965, edited

by Ashis Sanyal, Calcutta; single copy: Rs. 2/

Marche-pada Pereker Gan (song of the rusted nail), collection

of Bengali poems by Buddhadeva Bose; Bharavi, Calcutta,
1966; Rs. 3.50.

A commendable venture, this English quarterly (Bengali

Literature) intends to serve a well-defined, though a neces

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