SANSKRIT-ROMANCE ONTOPOETICS
L’IMAGINATION DE BAUDELAIRE Sanskrit Correspondence
IDOEMINESCOLOGY
SANSKRIT-ROMANCE ONTOPOETICS
Through an ontologic poetics – and not compulsory Heidegger’s Dasein — we see beyond satyasya satyam (the reality of the real) or superintellectual reality of the mystery, the poet as such, as poet to poet, as Tagore’s personalized upanishadic advaitam (the mystery of one) which is anantam (infinite) and which is anandam (love).
Tagore’ s „O fire, my brother” sounds as Franciscan „il mio fratello sole”. Trans- cribing in Latin the Buddha’s fourth noble truths – suffering, origin of suffering, cessa-tion of suffering, the eightfold way leading to the cessation of suffering as – dolor, doloris ortus, doloris interims, octopartita via ad doloris sedationem Dhamapada -, Artur Schopenhauer has identified morally the bikkhus and mandicant order of St. Francisc. Sometime, the philosopher’s disciple, Mihai Eminescu, took again the way from Latin to Sanskrit, looking to change, for instance, the name of one his Romantic character called Mors (Death) into Nirwana. Significant enough, Jawaharlal Nehru confessed he didn’t know more Sanskrit than Latin. May be what meant Sanskrit creative unity to Tagore was for & as the Latin one for Ezra Pound in whom „Cantos” flows as if same Ganges of Petrarch, while, on the other hand, last century Mirza Ghalib didn’t spend time any more for reading Sikandar’s life. Now, from poetics to poetry as an orderWelt-literature could be observed as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. Ontologically the mechanism looks freer, the theme of love for example trying to be one either as ecstatic knowledge or as disorder of human rational equilibrium.
Indo-Latin Kavya Purusha. A Latin ecce India still keeping in the beginnings ‘Java’ of „Mahabharata’ resounds from Catullus „India’s arid land’ and Horace’s peace of mind ‘with no gold nor tasks that India yelds’ to Cavalcanti’s chiostra/ Chel’s sente in India ciascun Unicorno’. Camōes’ ‘o illustre Ganges que na terra celesta tenho o berco verdadeiro’ or Góngora, from Baudelaire and Eminescu to Dario, Pessōa, Montale. On a modern Sanskrit ground we can attend – as Pound said about Brancusi – that ‘exploration toward getting all the forms into one form’ – Latin satires, epodes, odes, epistles, sermons continued into Italian sonetto. French chanson, Spanish romancero, Romanian doina, Portuguese redondilha. For, said Michael Madhu Sudan, ‘ cultivated by men of genius, our sonnet would in the time rival the Italian’. With such thought to a Sanskrit-Latin sonnet I published in my book of poems -Ardhanariswara” (International Academy ‘Mihai Eminescu’, Delhi, 1982). Lope de Vega’s Cuando el mejor planeta en el diluvio’. Baudelaire’s Correspondances’ and Eminescu’s ‘Venetia’, in Sanskrit version done together with U. R. Trikha, from Spanish, French, Romanian respectively,
‘Ganga Dnnuvyava saha samgachhati’
Lope de Vega
‘niseva vidyutiva rasarupani
dhvanayah prativadanti parasparam
Baudelaire
‘sthiram jivanam vishla venitsyayah’
Eminescu
One verse by Eugenio Montale,
‘cio che non siamo, cio che non vogliamo’
is transounded as follows into Sanskrit by Satyavrat Shastri,
‘na vayam smo na ca tatha yadvayam kameyawaho’.
- M. Masson confesses also a Sanskriturn-Latin smriti parallelling a Sanskrit sloka with one of Dante’s,
kavinam manasam naumi taranti pratibhambhasi
yatra hamsavayamsiva bhuvanani caturdasa
Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
With only a (half) sloka opening the Hymn of Origin from Rig Veda we face onto-poetry’s source.
Rig Veda („Hymn of Creation” starts):
nasad asin, no sad asit tadanim
Mihai Eminescu:
La-nceput, pe cind fiinta nu era, nici nefiinta
Sanskrit (re-)version by Rasik Vihari Joshi:
adau sampurnasunye na hi kimapi yada
sattvamasinna casi
Hindi, by Usha Choudhuri :
Pranihina. sattarahita. ajiva
Gujarati, by Mahendra Dave:
Tyare natun ko Sat, na asat
Punjabi, by Gurbhagat Singh:
Jadon thakian akhan nal main mombati
bujhaunda han
Malayalam, by O.M. Anujan (Dravidian languages, as Pali, taken with Sanskrit):
Adiyilekku nissunyata nannile
4.8.Tamil,byP.Balasubramanian:
MudhanMudhalil.thodakkathil,
Onrumatra verumaiyil
The Indian poets answer today, rather than old Latin continent, some Latin American creators, themselves looking forward personal Sanskrit poetic myths. Otherwise, the Sumitranand Pant’s inner sorrow keeps the journey in universal Sanskrit.
In the context of the Indian literature, looking upon some trends, spheres of influence amongst groups and generations – beyond the perception of common essences and inspirations summarizing a complex originality—there are new concomitantly universal and Indian personalities; so it’s to be contemplated that creative process, given impulse by the Sanskrit root growing up under the sun of the whole world. The incommunicable inner drama of the poet lets itself be shared through the directness of language, the ideal of beauty and human participation.
All are transfigured within the art, a if divine, and of the Prajapati (creator).
Anthropology of New Recognition. There is no need to say that making literature as anthropology and anthropology as literature one loses one’s chance to be recognized within either of them. But the theme of recognition itself can be a joint topic, on top of it may be Kalidasa’s “Recognition of Sakuntala” (Abhijnan Sakuntalam). Even after some two thousands or two thousands and a half years it seems that Dushyanta recognizes his deserted wife almost for the sake of their child, successor to the throne.
A XIX century’s replica is Cãlin poem by Mihai Eminescu, in which the recognition of the deserted wife, after years, starts by meeting the child.
Philosophy of recognition in modern times includes patterns drawn by Hegel, Pascal or Lacan. An anthropology of recognition would record also discrimination between cultures and their representatives to the extend of cultural cannibalism, colonialism-globalism, localism, etc. To be recognized during or after demise is very little related to one’s will. It seems rather an outer concept. It is quite hard to enjoy the non-recognition, but after all, then it is time to find God. Does God recognize a person unrecognised even by self? Is it possible to get God’s message when all expectations are transformed in lost obsession of Divinity?
Two poems of different ages and others reveal the devotion-recognition to Goddess or simply Woman. Shankaracharya’s Saundaryalahari and Dylan Thomas The Ballad of Long Legged Bite are almost at the antipodes one from the other, yet they may meet either in Shakta cult or in surrealistic mysticism of woman. Sanskrit worshipper makes a cosmic prayer to the Divine Mother on the whole and part by part, while the Welsh balladist thinks of woman in pieces thorn apart by sharks and lovers. While the religion – recognition of Uma, Daughter of Himalaya attracts hotly tantric and advaitin followers, the woman-bite is recognizable only through song recreation of the victim in tune with legions of raped and kidnapped heroines.
The woman is recognized as Goddess and as a bite almost in the spiritual inspiration, once an enthusiastic devotion, twice even still more literary as empathically ballad. The joy and sorrow come together as the characters are concerned, but both works convey either advaita-nondual, or Don’s love recognition in the same move as prayer and chatarsis causes-effects.
From thousand to thousand years, from Sakuntala to Saundaryalahari and ballad Goddess-bite other characters and feelings are transformed or forgotten also as recognition of the fact that recognition is not possible.
Feminine Theoanthropoetics. The anthro-poetry (I have proposed the term in 1970, at the 10th ICAES, New Delhi) may deal with a transcendental deputation of man as creator and of the creator as god but also with the human share of the supreme creation through the poetical cosmogonies. Some Indo-European creative myths are quite separated from the current theories of the universe but not so within poetry. For instance, the cosmic symbolism of woman’s hair grows independently fromKalidasas’s Usha/Dawn (Sanskrit-Romanian trans-soundation: ava yoseva suna/urusa yati prabhunjati/ave ei eva juna aurusa-n pridvor de zi” – George Anca. Ardkanariswara, International Academy Eminescu, Delhi, 1982) in the Veda or the Milk Ocean to Eminescu’s blonde Indian princess or Brancusi’s La negresse blonde.
The ambiguity between divinity and hair-fairness is obvious in the appellations of Krishna as Krishna (derived from ka – Brahma, ica – Siva, vo – one that goes before Brahma and Shiva; or from kesa-hair, and va – who possesses, fair-haired) or as Vasudeva meaning dark-blue or brown (M.N. Dut). And everybody enjoying, reading, commenting, dancing, translating (what be in that case a sort of trans-translation) Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, remembering or not the ten opening avatars of Vishnu will witness differently the climax-reproach of Radha speculating on Krishna’s name (as -‘dark”). While the avatars of Hyperion in Eminescu’s poem are marked in the eyes of moon-like girl, Catalina, just by changing color of his hair. „Thus Rāma banished will be no-Rāma”‘ („not charming”) says Manthara to Kaikeyi” (Rumayana by Valmiki). Sanskrit nymphs, poetesses, characters can be paralleled with blonde avatars in modern poetry, from Kalidasa’s Urvasi to Giraudoux’ Ondine.
- K. Warder, Indian Kavya Literature, vol. 2, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi, 1974: „The travelers look with unblinking eyes peasant’s daughter made pale with flour. ‘ With desire, as if at Fortune coming forth from the Ocean of Milk” (Maharastri verse from 2 A. D.) „The allusion here is to the myth of the churning of the Ocean by the gods, which produced among other precious things the Goddess Fortune (Laksmi), moreover Fortune is symbolized by the color white. It is a commonplace that the gods’ eyes do not blink, thus the travelers’ stares would suggest that they were gods’ (p. 192). Vol. 3, 1977: From Kalidasa’s Urvashi: – „At the rite of her creation was the Moon the Creator, giving his charm? ‘ Was it Pleasure himself with the sensitive as the one aesthetic experience? Was it the Moon who is the source of flowers?’ – For how could an ancient sage, dull through studying the Veda, his interest averted from sense objects, create this delightful form?” (p. 139).
An almost feminine theoanthropoetics of the vision is retained by Abhinavagupta from a yoga tradition in which the eye is populated by many goddesses differently colored. Kami Chandra Pandey, Abhinavagupta. Chowkhamba. 1963, p. 533; „each eye has four orbits (Mandala) (i) white (ii) red (iii) white-black (iv) black. The first is the abode of the group of sixteen goddesses, the second of twelve, the third of eight and the fourth of four. In each of these four orbits one of the four powers, of creation, maintenance, annihilation and of manifesting itself in indefinable form, respectively predominates and so does one of the four, object (Prameya), means (Pramaaa), subject (Pramata), and knowledge (Pramiti)”.
Scrisoare deschisă
Mai de mult, prin noiembrie 2012, Editura Minerva din Bucureşti a publicat lucrarea mea „Testament – Anthology of Modern Romanian Verse” (ediţie bilingvă), realizată cu ajutorul profesorilor Eva Foster şi Daniel Reynaud din Australia. Volumul oferă pentru prima dată în mod coerent, pentru cititorul de limbă engleză, o prezentare a poeziei româneşti în ansamblu – 55 de poeţi români clasici şi contemporani din ultimii 160 de anii de literatura română, reprezentaţi prin 80 de poezii „fanion”. Edițiile următoare au crescut la 100 de poeți și 125 de poezii („Testament – Anthology of Romanian Verse – American Edition” produsă de Editura Academiei Australiano-Române pentru Cultură), iar ediția finală, „Testament – 350 de Ani de Poezie Română/ Testament – 350 Years of Romanian Poetry” (Editura Minerva), va cuprinte toată poezia reprezentativă românească, de la baladele anonime, la Dosoftei, Văcărescu și Budai-Deleanu, și până la Ana Blandiana, Mircea Cărtărescu și Lucian Vasilescu – ca să numim câțiva din contemporanii în viață. Spre bucuria mea, am constatat că lucrarea a fost (în mare, cu mici excepții de așteptat…) bine primită, după cum au comentat recenziile din reviste de specialitate tipărite sau în format electronic, sau interviurile la televiziune şi radio (în România şi Australia) şi lansările de carte de la ambii antipozi ca și cele din Statele Unite ale Americii. Dar despre asta mai târziu…
Din cele 47 de volume – proză, poezie, publicistică, eseuri, jurnal, cugetări – pe care scriitoarea Vavila Popovici le-a publicat până la sfârşitul anului 2018, unele sunt bilingve. Trăind de câţiva ani în America, generozitatea-i deja bine ştiută în ţara de baştină s-a amplificat, cititorul de limbă engleză având astfel şansa de a constata că scriitori demni de apreciat nasc pretutindeni. Chiar şi în limbile care nu se bucură de avantajul circulaţiei internaţionale fără restricţii. Deşi, nu doar în glumă vorbind, cele câteva bune milioane de români răspândiţi pe toate meridianele globului ar putea să impună şi o astfel de deschidere.
” Cînd un om reuşeşte să facă ceva ce i-a solicitat mult efort, în el începe să lucreze trufia. Cel ce slăbeşte, se uită cu dispreţ la graşi, iar cel ce s-a lăsat de fumat răsuceşte nasul dispreţuitor cînd altul se bălăceşte, încă, în viciul său.
Mesajele nu au nici un efect asupra mea.