From Bad to Verse

Poetry is something, which is intimidating for me, for usually it comes with the silent suggestion that I transport myself through years/places/mindsets to reach that line of thought which would qualify me to say good or bad. So in that sense, more than poetry itself, the appreciation of poetry that is something that has always seemed an abstract and somewhat whimsical exercise. Hence when I laid my hand on the e-version of ‘Kourob’, a collection of conversations at countryside excursions to discuss and dabble in contemporary Bengali poetry, I was expecting it would be impressive on the whole but tangential to my cerebral sphere. Fortunately I was only correct about the former.
The first of this line of the conversation was a result of the foray of three eminent persons in Bengali literary spheres into the wilderness of the Chandipur beach hign on rum, pomfret and the symphony of lonely Nature. They called it the ‘Kobita Camp’. The discussions were obviously coincidental but threw up so many questions, and every one quite fundamental, that my apprehensions about comprehension were soon dispelled. And the feeling persisted with the subsequent tête-à-têtes that were recorded for the sake of similar intrinsic value. Though the answers to the questions were something that came up in fits and spurts of opinion punctuated with a lot of contemporary poetry sessions, they were myriad enough to demand unique answers from the reader. And that is where I stand procrastinating.
The contention of promiscuity and high art going hand in hand is something that has baffled me for a long time. The statistics student in me seeks a correlation which unfortunately doesn’t have enough muscles numerically since both art and promiscuity are attributes and precious very little has been done to cardinalize the kick of Maupassant or the compositions of Wagner to give them the nature of variables. But theoretically speaking such a synonymy might be tenable if causality can be argued out. As ‘Kourob’ enlightened me, Wagner needed intermittent sessions with women in the room adjoining his music room to fuel his composing streaks. The fact about syphilis ending Maupassant’s brilliant but short life is commonly known. Gaugin’s similar end after escapades in Tahiti and Picasso’s life are now stuff Hollywood dollar-churners are made of. Amidst this empirical body of evidence the question of reasoning comes in. And probably, the answers are two folds. As one of my close friends pointed out once it might be due to the fact that they as general artists dispositionally have scant respect for the social roster of dos and don’ts. And maybe it works from the other direction also, where the eyebrows and tongues will crucify middle-class mediocrity or wannabe for seeking newer harbors while justifying or maybe making allowances for the achievers as if they have earned profligacy of hormones through profligacy of genius. Skewed judgements, really.
Extending this to a larger context, the separation of the artist and individual also forms the backbone of many a tempestuous arguments. While there is a lobby that would like to go with the condemnation of the artiste’s calibre on the basis of his personal life, there is another, which believes in the complete separation of the two. (There is always the third; the mediating jury and the fourth; the vacillating metronomes.) Yours truly likes to stay with the first lobby though cannot help but appreciate a few points made by the other one. For example if we take up the case of Kabir Suman who has been accused of being a wife-beater, the condemnation camp always argue that how can the same hand which does such a dastardly act (with no reference to the context of the incidents for that is never reported) write a love song which inspires an entire generation (and I am being literal here). Since Kabir Suman is the best thing that has happened to Bengali lyrics after Rabindranath Tagore, the contradiction, the ‘hypocrisy’ of his creation becomes more naked. But when contradiction is the only reality, which never contradicts its self-existence, would that be reason enough to pillory the bard? Don’t we whistle from the front rows when William Blake comes up with a ‘Did he who made the lamb, make thee?’ Yes, we do. We do that when we love our city whose dirty underbelly swallows thousands of Vestel Virgins in the Temple of Instincts.We do that when we pick our nose in the sly after sniggering at somebody who gets caught. We celebrate contradictions with pomp, why this parsimony when it comes to Mr.Suman? And the argument breaks down even more with other celebrated wife-beaters where their creation and their conduct is not at direct loggerheads. Imagine searching for Tatum O’ Neal’s scars in McEnroe’s backhand down the line!

However the interesting teaser that emerged from the three authors’ evaluation of the state of contemporary Bengali poetry, was the classic case of how the mainstream works like a city, slowly engulfing the suburbs and the mofussils that once mocked its hegemony. The vibrant little magazine movement had by then degenerated into something similar to what the leading Bengali daily then had institutionalized – an arena for ‘you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours’ outlook with rare quality checks as far as poetry was concerned. Hence these little magazines slowly started becoming the part of the very mainstream it once sought purge by blood and ink. I call this a teaser because it has almost become fashionable to belittle any mainstream injudiciously and when the three cynics go back to the mainstream for publications (which they have to for their ego and digestive tract), they are part of the same cycle albeit consciously. And yet what they contend cannot be wished away; monopoly power is not a myth even in an abstract medium like poetry. In fact it being a language contingent to tastes and preferences, and the factor X and the fact that poetry appreciation often reminds me of the fairy tale- ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, I would suspect the incidence would be more. Then what does one do? Maybe raise more questions till the clouds bursts, Bastille falls and general equilibrium arrives like a placebo to minds, down with confusion….