|
|
The process of individuation,
however, continues for the poet as well the poems: Many a
time we have worn each other/In this licking and this kicking
business/Many a time(Wall that closes sky). Shades of
Neruda creep in(Spring it would be Sonya/When love odour and
bloom would mix together). The abandon with which the poet
goes about throwing nuggets doesn't require too much of panning:
Soul once severed/Cares not/Whether you live laugh or cry/All
same.
Some of the
writing that emerges, in fact, has a voice of its own, requires
no references in parenthesis and the characters have veritably
cut the umbilical cord and arrived.
Steppe tramping...
may also be profitably read as a companion to Gorky's works even
though the poems do not move in a linear progression as do the
stories. In fact, sometimes the circular back and forth movement
of the poems lends credence to the theory that the poems are
(female?) consorts of the original stories.
But having said
that, there is a world of difference in the ambience of the two
writers' works. Early on in Gorky's works, we admire the
towering patriarchal strength and wisdom of the narrator, his
natural and keen ability to size up people, his dry wit, his
refusal to become cynical and disillusioned with his own hard
lot in life and his tenderness for his sometimes pitiful
characters. However, Gaur's characters are rather watered-down
versions of the originals, owing perhaps to the demands of a
different genre. They play a game of musical chairs all along
and are shown to us in a hall of mirrors leaving us to fathom
who is who. The poems, acting at times, like the missing beads,
string themselves into the narration. While at others, failing
to grasp the essence of the tale, are left hanging high in the
air. In addition to this, his sometimes cloying use of
onomatopoeic words and phrases(And sometimes drops came/Flip
flop flip flop flip flop) as well as surprising absence of
articles(He judged world/And dragged me in him)and
sometimes perpendicular use of prepositions:To jump on
cliffs, when time came(instead of jump 'off' cliffs) or She
has come to stand in door(instead of 'at the door'), make
these poems a sub-editor's nightmare, salvaged only by the
umbrella term poetic license. Also some phrases arouse a sense
of deja vu:This knowing and not knowing(Eliot?) or
I'm old/Go and find some pearl/Straight out of oyster's mouth(Donne?)
Ideally,
real-life incidents happening either to self or relevant others,
poignantly striking a chord somewhere within us, are transmuted
into a poem. However, picking up a motley set of characters
shaped by the mind of another author, adopting them and
resuscitating them with your own idiom is a difficult
proposition, something that Gaur seems to have achieved, albeit
with some effort. Which was not the case in his earlier
anthology, Woodcutters, where the poems were like street
children dancing in the rain shorn of such esteemed genealogical
baggage.
Syntactical errors apart, the
poet has adopted the characters, from a time and place which
have ceased to exist, as his own and breathed life into them.
Another thing that he succeeds in persuading the reader to do is
read the great master all over again. So Gorky's magic in a
world of avant-garde literature, after all, is not passe. Thank
Gaur for that!
|
