Describing disciplines like poetry, music and the arts as “primeval, innate and true”, celebrated socio-cultural analyst Ashis Nandy said here that the ‘un-socialisable’ nature of the poetic act meant it was an exercise in conscience.
“A poet's conscience is not a prescribed societal conscience. Poetry is among those disciplines over which our cognitive, civilised selves exert little control. Nobody can become a good poet without surrendering to its form. The best poetry involves self-confrontation. It is not only an expression of the self, but a method to deal with the anti-self within,” said Dr Nandy, over an engrossing evening discussion in the city on Sunday.
The power of poetry is therefore derived from what it says about society and is at least partly the result of the poet being taken over by his or her art, he added. “In writing poetry, the poet’s morality does not matter very much. The great poet will automatically inject primitive ethical considerations into his or her poetry. A subversive element in itself, poetry can’t be socialised or silenced. Its values are acquired biologically,” he said.
Dr Nandy was a panelist in a scholarly conversation titled ‘Poetry as Conscience’ at Triveni Kala Sangam that closed out the first edition of Vak: The Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry. The three-day celebration of verse held over the weekend was organised by the Raza Foundation – set up by the late master artist Sayed Haider Raza in 2001 and helmed by eminent Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, the Managing Trustee.
Vajpeyi moderated the hour-long forum, which also featured prominent Iranian philosopher Dr Ramin Jahanbegloo, eminent Urdu critic, poet and playwright Shamim Hanfi and respected Hindi poet Udayan Vajpeyi. Hanfi and Udayan Vajpeyi were also among the 45 poets, working across 15 Indian languages, who participated in the reading session in the Biennale.
Referencing the poet laureate Muktibodh’s contention made some 60 years ago that the volume of conscience was shrinking, Ashok Vajpeyi set the agenda for the discussion by suggesting that it seemed to have disappeared in the present day.
“Poetry is a form of civilised resistance and obstinacy. In the late Indian Modern artist S.H. Raza's mind, the act of writing poetry is a humanising act that deserved attention and respect. This exploration into the contemporary condition of conscience -- whether it is active, operative or frozen and shrunken – is borne out of a belief that we have, that literature and the arts remains the last ramparts of conscience, still standing,” said Vajpeyi, who also delivered a vote of thanks following a lively discussion that saw the participants trade forceful arguments.
Contending that poets were not so much conscience-keepers but rather “prisoners of conscience”, Prof. Hanfi said, “Poetry is an act of resistance. Though it might not be able to change the world, it can certainly lead the world to change.”
In this, he took on Nandy’s argument that “unless a poet can host his or her anti-self and not disown it, then his or her creativity is truncated”. “It was experiences and sensibilities, not biological impulses that informed poetic idiom, vision and expression,” he said.
Interspersing anecdotes from his personal experience as a political prisoner after the revolution in Iran with Socratic theory, Prof. Jahanbegloo said, “Conscience is where ethics and art merge together as in poetry. Poetry is an act of self-acknowledgement and self-assessment wherein the poet’s inner voice lends awareness and reinforces the poetic mind. Therefore, a poet's conscience is where life and destiny join together.”
Noting that poets aspire to something higher than the voice of their times, he said the poet is “fated to lead his or her time”. “Poetry is a way of comprehending and accessing the world beyond boundaries and mental ghettoes. To accomplish this, the poet must listen to the way his or her voice establishes contact with the language of the world. The poet must write in the secret language of the soul to bring out its hidden forms,” he said.
Udayan Vajpeyi proposed that there existed a rather unique relationship between morality and aesthetic that poetry drew from and added to. “Poetry activates and makes vital the conscience, and unlike politics, does not allow one to surrender morality to a generalised sense of ethics, beauty and consciousness. Poetry by its being, proposes and evokes morality in the reader. Being conscious of the individually subjective nature of dispositions, inclinations and aesthetic conceptions is what sets all artists, including poets, apart.”
Like the two preceding panel discussions ‘Poetry as Memory’ and ‘Poetry as Freedom’, last evening’s conversation drew a capacity crowd at the venue. Much the same was witnessed at the 11 poetry reading sessions held that saw the invited poets deliver renderings of their works in the original language as well as translations in English and Hindi.
Looking ahead to the next edition of the Biennale – a festival of Asian Poetry in 2019, Ashok Vajpeyi said, “We have seen poets, young and old, from across linguistic, idiomatic and geographic divides gather here in a reflection and celebration of the plurality of an India on the move. Their participation has been a step toward inventing new imagination for the country, which is accommodative and inclusive, timeless and enduring.”