Criticism:
Dr. Manibhadra Gautam
Dancing Soul of Mount Everest: A Study
Dancing Soul of the Mount Everest brings out 139 poems in front of the readers. We are grateful to the continuous effort of Nepali Kalasahitya dot. com and the great help of the project of Nepal Academy to bring out such a valuable anthology in front of us. Sprouting Nepali Literature tries to bloom up with globalization of modernism and postmodernism. This anthology attempts to brick up in the Nepali Literature to go with the joint venture of the World Literature.
Dancing Soul of the Mount Everest is an anthology collecting the poems about in depth theme of life, liberty, freedom and equality for the pursuit of happiness. The poems in this anthology in war the ideological conflict between haves and have not’s gaps to find out the truth of social landscape. Looking from the theoretical perspectives, poems published in this anthology undergo on humanism, existentialism, Marxism and socialism. Ritual perceptions are incorporated with fiery symbols to show the inhuman humanity. Spiritualism, love and rendering images are heart touching sprits of poems in this anthology i.e Gopal Prasad Rimal in “An Address” writes:
love thrives even in woods,
in countryside; in the town,
that love alone does not suffice;
here should come impregnation-pious and responsible. (Dancing Soul . . . 2)
The love image is spiritualized everywhere in life and death as well as house, field, countryside and town which goes with purity and holiness of waiting for love in Rimal’s “A Mother’s Dream” in this way:
My youthful dreams constantly hoped
That you shall be he.(4)
The mothers love is for her son who has been far away for a long. She is hopeful that her son will come as tempest and answers optimistically to the questioner.
Balkrishna Sama presents a serious view of life marked by humanistic experiences as he puts his views on love and life in this way:
My love, I am completely healed,
and the body cent-percent lightened
even more than a fallen flower.
Why do you still.
let the torrents of tears down? (A Posthumous Reveberation 6)
The speaker in these lines tries to pursue his beloved to not to weep and upset for a long. The life is like blowing wind. A lover or a beloved should control himself/herself. The speaker is soft and kindhearted who tries to wipe his beloved’s tears. He takes entire creation as melted snow and Sadhu’s dreams that cannot be controlled easily.
Maha Kavi, Laxmi Prasad Devkota shows multiple layers of life and love as in “The Lunatic” by touching the things from underworld who takes stones even as flowers. Devkota ironies the inhuman human world activities who sent him Ranchi blaming him as a mad man as he was highly emotional to the natural beauties
Love of parents is visualized in Siddhicharan Shrestha’s poem, “Daddy is Not Back Yet”. Daddy has been out in stormy and raining time and he has not been back to home up to late night, which makes his mummy shout after making the meal ready. Her eyes of experience are perceiving love.
Vijaya Malla’s multitallency reveals an artistic riddle with horror, struggle and tension in his poem “Teaching Maps to My Daughter”. He writes:
Blood marks the red borderline,
of paints that belong to every nation
like terraces in the field!
This is Indian, and this Pakistan
and this, the great line ‘tween
marked by the blood of the Hindus and the Muslims!(24)
The speaker is teaching about different geographical boundaries to his daughter. He teaches about people and places through the help of globe. He wants to make the world closer to finish the gaps of geographical distances.
Paritat perceives poetry as written manifestation of feelings that represent the social realities and the language of poetry. Poetic feelings incorporate both love and hatred. Poetic love is far flowery representation of the social activities and hatred is for the reflection of vulture’s eyes and black bees stung to the innocent people of the society. Parijat’s feeling of love in life in her love poem, “An Ailing Lover’s Letter to a Lahure” puts:
Sweetheart,
Lots of love!
Hung on the necks of these free-flying pigeons
I feel like sending a heart
a heart welded,
a love letter attached,
and revise once more,
the emotionality of a love
old, as a century is old. (84)
A beloved is feeling like a fish without water in absence of her loved one. She is seeking her heart to be like a bird that could convey the message to her sweetheart. Free-flying pigeon’s images on the one hand are to meet the lover and on the other hand it is for the existence of women’s identity. Lover and beloved are optimistic to stay together in the same chautari where they can find the truth in life and they like to make fusion of two bodies with love but the death is an obstacle.
Bairagi Kainla writes about the love of nature. In his poem “The Mountain” his speaker scales the mountain and heights of peaks even in his dreams, too. He welcomes the every life and every mountain. Likewise Kali Parsad Rijal in his poem “Looking into the Mirror” glimpses the picture of love in life both in dreams and reality.
Usha Sherchan writes about representation of life through poetic art, which is capable of touching the reader’s heart and mind. She suggests people to live in high esteem. She wants to brush all kinds of artificiality that we find in the society. In “Dreams and the Ruin” Sherchan writes:
we could neither hold in warm bosoms,
nor kiss with a tender touch!
Even as love dripped from the hearts,
we could not collect in our palms
even as countless pearl beads flowed down the eyes,
we could not gather with our fingers. (357)
Sherchan’s speaker flames out the social reality gathering the images of bleeding hearts. Her characters fight to establish their dignities by controlling the fragmented desires.
Indira prasai’s poems expose suffocated feelings of mind- heart combination within the garden of creation. She warns to the eagle-eye people and culprits who mis-judge the nation and nationhood. In her poem, “We in Pursuit of a Nation” she puts her vies in this way:
if someone intrigues the nation
and betrays it,
my heart aches.
Some kept ascending upward
making the nation a ladder of their selfish drives
and underneath the ladder
the crevice of distrust deepens,
and, as they descend
their foundation stands ruined. (404)
The speaker feels unhappy and she feels her heart betrayed by the faint imagination of painful condition of the nation. Prasai’s speaker hates to those who speak against the nation and works against nationhood. She challenges to those who make the nation as their ladder for their personal upliftment.
Momila glimpses poetry as the bunch of flowers that accompanies poetic elements as the components we find in the nature. Her poetic creation goes for the existential fight for identity. Her poem, “Unattainable Heights”exposes:
Divorced from the self,
I, I fragmented being,
cannot accomplish my poems.
As long as I breath,
I cannot demarcate the last frontiers
in the continuity of experiences.
At the moment
I am reading the special issue of pain
in the last page of comprehended life.
Moaning bells is ringing from the shrines.
But, I cannot as well
think of the ultimate height of an icy mountains. (532)
Momila’s poems represent the emotional activities of human being that jump to meet the peaks of mountains. Her speaker is in confusion of being a fragmented one who cannot capture the ultimate truth. She makes a commitment to reach the ultimate height in literature through her poetic creation. In her poem, “Morrow’s Sun did not Set” she is optimistic to get alive even challenging the frostbitten nights and days suffering with sickness. She struggles between the dreams and reality and makes the battles in between the love of self and the love of land beyond the horizon.
In the depth of this study, this reader finds this anthology to be a collection of an upper class creation of very wise creators. Dancing Soul of the Mount Everest makes the readers easy to dance in joy with their power of an imagination.
Bibliography
Edt. Momila. Dancing Soul of the Mount Everest. Kathmandu: Nepali Art and Literature Dot
Com Foundation, 2011 A. D.
Pandey, Bhawani Prasad. Parijatka Upanyasma Samajbadi Yatharthabad. Kathmandu:Ultimate, 2064 BS.
Parijat. Blue Mimosa. Trans. Tanka Vilas Varya. Kathmandu: Sondra Zeidenstein, 1972.
- - - . Under the Sleepless Mountain. Trans. Nara Pallav. India: Pilgrims, 2007.
Prasai, Narendra Raj. Parijatko Jeevankatha (Autobiography of Parijat). Kathmandu:
Ekta Prakashan, 2nd ed. 2063.
- - -. Narichuli. Kathmandu: Nai Prakashan, 2007.
- - - . Trans. Sangpo Lama. The Legend of Literature: A Biography of Parijat. Kathmandu: Ekta, 2003.
