The Assassin and the Dahlia -30-

Essay:

Pradip Choudhuri:
Life And Death Of Literary Movements

With special reference to Bengali literature today

… all my experimentations whatsoever within the act of writing are normally completed during my hour-long stay in the toilet. When I put pen to paper I don't have to break my head over a ??? theme or proper words. All my readable (legible!) texts are simple, as weightless as an enigma.

Literary MOVEMENT - well, to understand that this banal pop-phrase - kind of erotic, almost - signifies no movement at all, everyone engaged in/with literature needs, at least for a while, to go into silent exile. When I look back at the events that have happened in the name of literary movements for the last 25 years or so, I can easily see the vain human efforts, the counter-productiveness, I can smell the rotten smell, and I can finally comprehend the meaningless "alack-a-day" remorse - the endless abyss that engulfs the soul! I have not come to this "oversimplified" view form Bengali literature alone, I have done so from my decades-long observation of the major movements the world over - from Surrealism to Beat Generation, from "Kall-Wool"* and "Kirti-bansh"* down to my own Hungry Generation. Looking carefully, one cannot but be amazed to see how the festoon-in-hand servants, the huge bands of impotents who were in the forefront of each movement once, are either having a "flag march" around the pimpish periphery, Sahityapalli, or have already sold their souls to an even greater "movement-baba," conducted and operated by the establishment and death-machine respectively (irrespectively!). As far as my knowledge goes, the situation abroad is not as sinister as it is here, due mainly to the fact that a large section of the reading (poetry-reading) community can afford to buy books and buy they do. But here at least, in this "City of Joy" Calcutta of mine, I see the one-time movement - peddlers fast becoming "employee-authors" of Anandam, vitiating the atmosphere and corrupting burgeoning poets. Ah, c'est le visage de tes mouvements! Assez!

Sure enough: my 30 years' experience. With the exception of a few poet-friends, the only force that motivated these so-called "rebels" and anti-establishment phonies was simply this: "I must become an ‘employee-writer'." No need to mention the 80% fame-hunters outside.

Calcutta, for it's them, the employees of Anandam, the internationally acclaimed whorehouse, who are on duty to promote the erotic fever. Quote: " … look, boys! a matte of only three months and a half, maybe six months - at best a year - can't you somehow carry on eating our multi-collared shit for this short period? After that, Sallah! what son of a bitch on earth will dare to ignore you? This is me who am speaking et sais-tu, who am I? I am, in Bengali literature, what Bradman is in cricket - So' ham! I am being honoured by both the Right and the Left !..." True enough ! Everybody who reads Bengali literature knows who this brave son of a monkey is a megalomaniac bastard!

In sum, this is the actual picture of the heroes of the successful literary movements here, supported by both the hypocritical middle-class readers and the highly paid intellectuals who are nothing but dim-witted jerks ! Alas, SUCCESS !

But under no circumstance can this be the true nature of a literary movement. Those who have already understood this conspiracy - the greenhorns boiling from head to toe in their inner creative furnace are they going to accept a heritage like this, here, there and everywhere in the world? I ‘m certain the answer is NO ! Hence, they'll let out a loud fart on the excremental media-owners and Anandams and start their own movement afresh. They must not assume the role of pussycat like the "employee-writers." The turbulent inevitability of their movement, the tyros, like that of the Hungry Generation in the 60's and 70's, will activate them as well as the neo-readers to ultimately cross the threshold of anarchy and imagination and find repose in the unique vision of individuality. Reading just the first line of a poem born out of the city forest fire, the community will start shivering; in vain will its honeymoon écrivains try to compose a line or two. And, will, at that point where are you, brother "conch cutter"? Soon after, some will become ashramites and finally set out for Bhopal to uncork the poisonous gas pipe.

In the long run, THE LIFE & DEATH OF A GENUINE LITERARY MOVEMENT will influence the level of consciousness of the writer and the reader both - either "this way" or "that way." Mysterious seeds and germs of true creativity have ever at first been hidden in the movement which ultimately goes beyond the movement.

I am fully aware that innumerable establishments are extended and lined up, to my "right" and to my ‘left," from "this end' to "that end." Somewhere the cold, ever-ready rocket, somewhere the steep undersea rock around the metro-ocean. Our life on the ground goes on flowing normally, caring for nothing. Colourful music and angry waves of sea-kissed poetry rush forward and break against these awesome rocks - naked PAN & APOLLO, raving poets the world over, new turbulent waves in the moonbeams are breaking upon this steel-built civilization ignoring all establishments, advancing towards the zone of myriad collared silence where, orgasm over, the speechless, inviting sea IS!

Establishments are as true as our swollen and dishevelled lives. The sped and undulation of literary movement is always in proportion to the retardation of the establishment which, in a sense, is positive. This apparent paradox is true not only about a few poet-friends of mine in India and, with the "Post-Beat Independents," worldwide, but, in fact, is true about every creative individual connected with Life who is, in the final analysis, anti-establishment my nature. All such true poets ceaselessly unfold the fullness of Life. The first anti-established (literary!) movement began with Promethean rebellion and the adventure is endless even in our limited life in the movement towards death. That is why no wrestling and no dynamite can "finish" this establishment called "Life." It is only poetry, the movement of our vivacious life that is capable of wiping out this establishment wiping it out only to revitalize it.

I have yet to discover or myself which level of classlessness I'll have to reach in order to uproot the contradiction between the mode of life my one-time buddies are living and their cliché cum catch-phrases-"idealist," "anti-poetry," "protest," "conceptual" and ainsi de suite. I no longer break my head - do I have one anyway? - over what has been going on for the last three decades. What a comforting paradise it should have been. In fact it's me who could not come out of life; I couldn't stand like steel in the battlefield - or the battle itself had stopped at that crucial moment when I genuinely felt, "Well, I'm ready…."

As to my special kind of living, I have been married and moulded to myself and that is what is most important, that is what I had to wait three decades for. As a result, the graph of my movement is gradually being contracted. In my writing, another new movement is growing poignantly, a movement towards a redefined (by myself) new life. This time it is not confined to the city and the sea or semen. Now, look how the bizarre peaks of the sky have come down to the arena of my movement.

It is the extremely dark darkness of RATRI (Night) that alone can keep the waves of my intensely anarchic imagination hidden.

Having uprooted all the mountains of obstruction by myself, I have created this Black Hole. There is no place for any establishment in this Black Hole of creativity. No place even for the establishment they call "anti-establishment." I simply don't have the time for raving against "Bradmans." And I don't have the slightest intention of altering the language I have created for myself. Within my limitations, I am very much at the centre of Life. The reverberant chants of "poetry-religion" - that movement - directly hit my bare breast from the farthest corners of the earth, from Quebec to Calcutta !

The rest of the untold history of how a literary movement passes from one life to the other, one generation to the next, remains in the animalistic consciousness of a poet ...

Editor's notes

"Kirti-bansh" parodies the name of "Krittibas", a literary movement that came into existence immediately before the "Hungry Generation". In Bengali 'bansh' = bamboo (with in allusion to English 'bunch') and 'kirti' = fame, which denounces the members of 'Kirti-bansh' (aka 'Krittibas') as a bunch of fast-growing fame-seekers, since, as Pradip points out, most of the writers of the said kirti-bansh in the passage of time established themselves as sycophants
of the establishment and came in direct confrontation with the "Hungry Generation".

Krittibas is a venerable name, since he was an ancient Bengali poet. He created the Bengali version of The Ramayana (ancient Sanskrit epic about the life of God Rama), and this has become a literary and religious classic. More ...

"Kall-wool" is a parody of the name of "Kalool", a literary movement that was influential in Bengal from the 1920s to the 1940s, until the arrival of Krittibash.