Kedar Man "Vyathit" (b. 1914)

Kedar Man "Vyathit"^[1] is one of Nepali literature's grand old men. A close contemporary of Devkota, Sama, Rimal, and many other influential Nepali poets, Vyathit has made the greatest contribution of all his peers to the development of Nepal's literary institutions during a long career of more than a half century.

Vyathit was born in 1914 to a Newar family of Bansbari in the Sindhupalchok district to the east of the Kathmandu Valley. He found his first gainful employment as an accounts clerk in the household of the Rana prime minister Juddha Shamsher in 1930. By 1940, however, Vyathit had become fiercely opposed to the regime, and from 1948 onward he was active in the banned Nepali Gongress Party. For this reason, he suffered years of imprisonment in Nepal (from 1940 to 1945) and in India and a long period in exile. After the revolution of 1950-1951, he was rehabilitated and his political career reached its climax in 1962 when he was made minister for transport and communications. Vyathit's literary activities had commenced much earlier, however: inspired by Siddhicharan Shreshta and Chittadhar Hridaya, both fellow Newars, Vyathit began writing poems in jail. In 1945 he convened Nepal's first ever literary conference, and in 1962 he founded the kingdom's first literary institution, the Nepali Sahitya Sansthan (Nepali Literature Institute). Seven years later he became chancellor of the Royal Nepal Academy, the country's most prestigious cultural institution. Vyathit now lives in retirement in central Kathmandu, in a house he calls kavi kutir , "poet's cottage."

Vyathit is a prolific writer. Twenty-three volumes of his poems have

[1] Vyathit , meaning "distressed," is a pseudonym resembling those adopted by many Hindi poets of the mid-twentieth century, such as Nirala , "strange," or Dinkar , "sun."

been published in all: sixteen in Nepali, four in Newari, and three in Hindi. No two Nepali critics seem able to agree on a categorization of his poetry: he has been called a romantic, a didacticist, a mystic, a socialist, and even an anarchist. A number of specific themes do recur frequently in his poetry, however, and it is fair to say that his style is generally consistent and readily identifiable. As a poet, Vyathit has attracted both praise and criticism, but as Khanal has written, "The significance of his poetry is unmistakeable" (1977, 243).

Almost all of Vyathit's poems are written in metrical verse (Abhi Subedi [1978, 61] describes rhythm as their main characteristic), and most are very brief, rarely exceeding one page in length. The earliest were written in jail during the 1940s and are melancholy, pessimistic, or revolutionary by turns. The revolutionary poems are exemplified here by "Fragment from the Year '09" (09 Salko Kavita 1 ) and "The Storm" (Andhi ). In the latter poem, Vyathit looks back with relish to the political upheavals of 1950. A recurrent theme in his work is the description of human love and natural beauty. "A Glimpse" (Ek Jhalko ) presents a charming cameo from rural life, and other poems invest the beauty of the natural world with a mystical significance. Vyathit does not shrink from eroticism in his frequent descriptions of women, as in the long poem, published in book form, Woman: Flavor, Sweetness, Brightness (Nari: Rasa, Madhurya, Aloka ) :

You, wholly revealed,
how lovely,
moonlight is poured out
to fill your naked body

Vyathit's concern for the modern human condition is expressed in many poems, such as "War" (Rana ), translated here, and he can often be extremely pessimistic. Two of his most famous poems, "Ants" (Kamila ) and "The Practice of Sculpture" (Shilpa-Sadhana ), describe the futility of human activity and the basic hypocrisy of the world using original allegorical devices. In "The Practice of Sculpture" the artist is aware of the events taking place outside but ignores them, engrossed in work. The human world may speak of peace, but it continues its conflicts unabated; it is only in the arts that words and deeds coincide.

One of the most common criticisms leveled at Vyathit's poetry is that it is influenced excessively by the mystical chayavadi (shadowist or reflectionist) poets of Hindi literature with whom Vyathit became acquainted during the 1940s and 1950s.^[2] Indeed, his revolutionary poems

[2] T. Sharma (1982, 111) particularly critical of Vyathit because of this feature of his poetry.

have been compared to those of the Hindi poet Dinkar (Rakesh 1987, 53), and many critics complain that Vyathit's style is imitative of this tradition and that his language is too full of Sanskrit vocabulary. It is true that Vyathit has made little effort to distance the language and symbolism of his poetry from the clichés of mid-twentieth century Hindi verse because it is from this literature that he has drawn much of his inspiration. Although this fact dismays many Nepali critics, who heap their highest praise upon literature from which all traces of "foreign" influence are absent, it need not detract from an objective assessment of Vyathit's work. The careful tapping of the sculptor's chisel described in "The Practice of Sculpture" resembles Vyathit's art: he has produced a constant stream of small, polished poems for more than forty years, and although these have not been greeted by universal acclaim, their value and merit are considerable.

Vyathit's Nepali poems are collected in Sangam (Confluence, 1952), Pranava (Obeisance, 1957), Ek Din (One Day, 1958), Sanchayita (The Hoarder, 1958), Triveni (Three Rivers, 1958), Juneli (Moonlight, 1962), Nari: Rasa, Madhurya, Aloka (Woman: Flavor, Sweetness, Brightness, 1968), Sapta Parna (Seven Feathers, 1967), Avaj (The Voice, 1974), Badalirahne Badalka Akriti (The Ever-changing Shapes of Clouds, 1976), Mero Sapnama Hamro Desh ra Hami (Us and Our Country in My Dreams, 1977), Ras Triphala (Three Fruits of Flavor , 1981), and Agni-Shringar (Fire-Decoration, 1982).

Fragment From The Year 09^[3] (09 Salko Kavita 1)

The waywardness of snow,
havoc's cruelest dance,
the naked helplessness of trees,
and darkness circling over them.
But my heart still tells me:
have faith, the day will come.

And then the people's roads grow wide,
from whistling rivers, singing spreads,
sudden music in the desert:
a fruitful dream springs up.

And suddenly they draw nearer:
joyous Spring and sunshine warm.
(1952; from Vyathit [1952] 1962)

[3] The political upheavals that removed the Rana regime began in 1950, the year 2007 in the Vikram calendar commonly observed in Nepal. Thus, the year '09 equates with 1952, two years after this revolution.

Ants (Kamila)

Coming from a dark hole,
a comet in the night sky,
singing, anxious for drops of water,
in a straw-filled yard of thirst:
a line of ants, confused, confused,
running through the garden.

Like men, they think they travel
the path which leads to virtue,
weak, they descend to a pit of sin,
bearing their sick, and a traveler's needs:
a line of ants, confused, confused,
running through the garden.

Time and again they hide beneath straw,
fearing the threats of Death,
who stages a show of lightning
on the path which leads back home:
a line of ants, confused, confused,
running through the garden.

Bodies tiny, thirst enormous,
eyes filled with darkness on an endless road,
they run with the restlessness of the clouds,
taking their limited means with them:
a line of ants, confused, confused,
running through the garden.

As they ascend a bent old tree,
it's as if the world's defined
in the scribbled language of their line,
the poetry of termites:
a line of ants, confused, confused,
running through the garden.
(1954; from Vyathit [1958] 1968; also included in Sajha Kavita 1967 and Adhunik Nepali Kavita 1971)

A Glimpse (Ek Jhalko)

Fickle as a mountain stream,
affectionate as the earth,
lovely like ripened crops,
shy like bending straw,
a girl with a basket
climbs up the hill.

A young man snakes down the mountain trail,
regarding her with the handsome eyes
of a young bull,
watching her and smiling,
as cheerful as a bouquet.

Suddenly two pairs of eyes
meet by chance on the path,
they look clown at the ground
as if perplexed or ashamed,
and after a moment they part,
like the ways of a crossroad.

The stream which tumbles merrily down
says to the youth, "I shall join with the river,
and wander the deserts, singing
the song of your sweet encounter."
But the youth ploughs his love
into the fields of his heart,
and his eyes are a channel
to water love's harvest.

He heaves a long sigh and counts
the furrows made by the plough.
(1954; from Sajha Kavita 1967)

The Storm (Andhi)

The black cloud sang,
spreading the voice of thunder
to the horizon's end,
and the crazy storm danced
like a destructive god.

Earth and sky were dust,
blow, counterblow, struggle and thunder,
cracking and crackling, terrible rain,
all around fearsome lightning flashed.

But next morning I heard,
great trees had fallen,
the streets were washed clean,
the crops were flourishing!

And I was eager to see
a revolution in this land.
(1956; from Vyathit [ 1958] 1971; also included in Adhunik Nepali Kavita 1971)

The End (Anta)

The new-moon sky was rich
with the glory of the pyre;
the night was nonplussed
by its exaltation of darkness,
a nightmare mocked me, a dream
of days burned up by care,
weary eyes blinked,
and slept for an instant.

As soon as I woke I saw
golden sunlight from my window,
kissing, enriching my head:
I remembered the meaning
of dawn; beloved, they say
that our end will not be dark.
(1957; from Vyathit [1958] 1971)

War (Rana)

I saw a bomber attacking,
like an eagle swooping down on a chick,
I saw Creation tremble with fear,
wounded, bloodied, disrupted.
Flames of cosmic dissolution
blazed all over the earth,
the culture preserved for aeons past
reduced to ash in a second.

Love lies down and weeps,
a load set down by the wayside,
containing humanity's smouldering corpse.
And yet they say
this war is fought for justice,
it is waged for peace and progress.
(1958; from Vyathit [1958] 1971)

The Practice of Sculpture (Shilpa-Sadhana)

Slowly striking the chisel,
tap, tap, tap,
the sculptor steps back from time to time
to regard the image he carves,
pleased, grave, discontented by turn.

On this the fifteenth of Chaitra
a great procession passes by,^[4] at Pashupati the Gita sings
the glory of action's way,
in every quarter the Pandava roars,^[5] clamoring for his rights.

At half-past one the radio gives out
the program for Buddha Jayanti,
at Anandakuti the sermons run on,^[6] but still it does not cease:
the sculptor's tap, tap, tap.

Though the Pope may send from Rome
a message of Christmas greeting,
some Asian lands still bathe in blood:
it is only on paper pages
that the Bible goes abroad.

But Buddha, Jesus, Krishna give
their blessings to the tapping sound,
and a statue of Gandhi, smiling down,
pronounces his "Amen."
(no date; from Vyathit [1958] 1968; also included in Adhunik Nepali Kavita 1971)

[4] This is a reference to a public protest that occurred in Kathmandu when the Rana government banned the populace from greeting political detainees as they emerged from the courts after trial. Chaitra corresponds to late March and early April in the Western calendar.

[5] The Pandavas were one of the two great families who fought one another in the Mahabharata wars. Vyathit perhaps intends to convey the beginning of a titanic struggle.

[6] Buddha Jayanti is an annual festival to celebrate the birthday of the Buddha Shakyamuni; Anandakuti is a Buddhist sanctuary near Kathmandu.