Modernity in Hindi Poetry
Poetry written in Modern Standard Hindi is a relatively new phenomenon. Until the 20th century two Medieval Hindi dialects, Braj Bhasha and Avadhi, were the recognized mediums of poetry. Its main topics were religious devotion and courtly love. However, the advancement of modernity in India - the germination of national identity, the emergence of a public sphere, the exposure to Western ideas, forms, and genres through English education - cast Hindi literature and, in particular, Hindi poetry in a very different mould.
By LUCY ROSENSTEIN
At the beginning of the twentieth century the ideal worlds of the divine couple, Radha and Krishna, and of courtly heroes and heroines, were replaced by the imperfect world of human concerns. The poetry written in Modern Standard Hindi in the first two decades of the twentieth century was dedicated to public nationalism and social reform, and resembled eighteenth-century pre-Romantic English poetry in its matter-of-factness and descriptiveness. It was quickly replaced by the aesthetic, highly refined, and profoundly subjective poetry of Chayavad, the Hindi incarnation of Romanticism (1918-1938), which in its turn gave way to the political, often Marxist, verse of Pragativad, Progressivism (1930s). The publication of Tar saptak, an anthology of the work of seven poets, in 1943 planted the first seedlings of Nayi Kavita, New poetry, a movement nourished by Western modernism, particularly by the influence of T.S. Eliot.Whereas Chayavad has been reasonably well covered by Western Indology, very little research of substance has been done on the post-Independence period of Hindi poetry. In order to fill this gap I have been working on a number of related projects. My main undertaking is an anthology of contemporary Hindi poetry which will focus on Nayi Kavita. It will include selections from the works of 10 poets associated with Tar Saptak, and its successors Dusra saptak and Tisra saptak (The Second and Third Heptads). The poets will be introduced at some length -- biographical notes will be supplemented with general observations on their oeuvre. The Hindi texts will be followed by annotated English translations and accompanied by a selected glossary. The introduction will not only locate Nayi Kavita on the general map of Hindi poetry, but will also chart the characteristics of modern Hindi poetry against the background of modern Hindi fiction and Western poetry, in an attempt to examine the extent to which the all-pervasive concerns of the time have transgressed the boundaries of genre and even nation.
Under the umbrella of 'Modern Hindi poetry' I have been working also on less ambitious, more specific projects. My paper ''New Poetry' in Hindi: a quest for modernity' which is due to be published in the spring issue of South Asia Research, 2000, analyses Nayi Kavita's formula for modernity as its distinctive signature and its prerequisite for success. I have just completed ''Shakespeare's sister' in India: in search of Hindi women poets', an essay which looks at modern Hindi poetry through the lens of gender studies, and examines the reasons for the scarcity of women poets in Hindi literature. Following this avenue of enquiry I also intend to focus on the work of specific female poets, like Amrita Bharati.
Because of the importance of orality in the Indian context, verse has been the dominant form; thus poetry can present a more complex model of modernity than prose -- a model based on intricate dialectics with tradition rather than one inscribed on a tabula rasa. It is therefore imperative to put an end to the neglect with which modern Hindi poetry has been treated by Western Indology. *
A poem by Dushyant Kumar
Morning was about to break.
Birds, awake,
Fluttered wings in their nests,
One by one flew off.
Foreboding spread, creeping, creeping,
Pain started throbbing;
A tender hand began to grind
Gram in the early morning.
Dr Lucy Rosenstein teaches Hindi at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom,
E-mail: lr1@soas.ac.uk