The Assassin and the Dahlia -31-
An interview with Pradip Choudhuri
by Denis Emorine
http://denis.emorine.free.fr/ul/english/accueil.htm
http://ecrits-vains.com/revues_litt/pphoo.htm
1) In your poems, you usually use the "I" pronoun. Is your poetry a parallel way to write your autobiography?
Yes, indeed. I always do it consciously. Maybe no representatives of human nature can hide from this word, this capricious self that has always driven man (until he dies) to follow a flesh mirage, a rainbow at the end of their own horizon which is called life. I am a man par excellence, so it is highly probable that there are many autobiographic elements in my writing, in my poetry. But what is this autobiography which I am the only character, an autobiography made by myself? I have asked this question myself for a long time. Consequence: the birth of Poetry-Religion which begins by a wonderful definition of the "I": "I am of no generations or, even, I am an extremely small or large image reflecting the modern world and all its generations. So, nearly the whole, enigmatic as the sphinx, veins and vein lets of the consciousness and the unconsciousness of the obsessed spirit, the debased, debauched, shy, indigents, lunatics, dumb, thieves, blind, Sannyasians(N1) 1 , comrades, copyists, corrupted bodies, impaired, heartless, tuberculosis, private corpses, furniture and buildings and of the whole living world." In my opinion, it is also the definition of a total man. Yes, in my poetry, I write my only autobiography which contains the whole life of the men on this planet. Here I am!
2) Reading you always makes one feel that life and poetry are one even if the first is a source of disappointment or misfortunes at all levels. What is it about exactly?
It is true. At this point, everything that takes place around me is but a masquerade of men and women with their disgusting triviality, rascals and rogues from the bourgeoisie with its one and thousand desires inspired by the devilish requests of consumption. Within this tide – this dumb tide of human desires – the corner stones of life's virtues are getting lost; most of the time friendship is wolfed by power cupidity and greed; inevitably love is sacrificed on the sex altar… even before it is blossoming. For a sacred soul, isn't this weird order of the world a great disappointment? Most of our human misfortunes happen because of this disappointment, this incredible "civilised" man madness. On the other hand, the natural world where we all live remains still in a big dream because men can only dream in a way. My poetry is the link between the world of consumption and the world of dream. It is just natural that poetry which the in between world is life shall be a bit gloomy. The poet with all their sacred passions cannot avoid this doom. As a poet, I could not abuse life. In my poetry, there is a total fusion between life and dreams, passion and spirit /black humour. It is the only secret of this audacious wholeness of my poetry which is most of the time fed with sadness as in a mouth to mouth.
3) In the sixties, you were then a student, and you were part of a protest movement: the Hungry Generation. I know that you consider this time gone and don't like to still be associated with this time. Can you explain why?
Sure. If I remember well, the birth of the Hungry Generation in the 60s – like the other famous literary movements in America and Europe – was something purely spontaneous. At this time, disorder was total in politics in India and the mediocrity in literature in Bengali poetry created a huge void in the youth sensibility, in universities. The political frustration had actively developed dumbness in literature. In Bengal, and for young Bengali poets, this time was crucial. It was a time of "lost dreams" for the youth of this country, as I've just said as much in literature as in politics. Everywhere was a feeling of unbearable and sinister void. The eastern dream society was at all levels torn out by middle-class hypocrisy; that was weird. In such a situation, Hungry Generation creation was urgency for my friends and me. We used the weapons of creation, that is to say these of a harsh writing. We were demanding a total revolution, a total anarchy, if necessary!
I actively participated to the Hungry Generation until 1970 before I published Poésie-Religion when I began to use my private horizon charged with several dimensions.
After some time, any movement gives birth to any kind of dragooning (see Surrealism) or serves the interest of the state agents. I knew it only well. I also knew it was not my thing anymore. After 35 years given to Hungry Generation, being one the fathers of the movement, I am just a human program, a solar spectre large enough and I read my poems (love poems, not hate poems 2 ) in the four corners of the world. Since the beginning and for that long time of "judgements and tribulations", I was happy not to lose the strength of my heart and be right. My investment into the Hungry Generation movement gave me strength to face the essence of the living life and creation of my art for ever. The victory of the Hungry Generation movement gave birth to an alternative literature at least. After that, there's nothing to do but go forward… go forward as Arthur Rimbaud said.
4) Besides Bengali which is your native tongue, you also speak English and French. Literary critics often say your works (re)unite the East and the West. Do you also have the feeling to be at the cross-roads of two cultures, of several sources of inspiration which live together within yourself?
Yes, that is a possibility or, as for me, there is only one "half-truth" with a criticism/ interpretation like this one. Thanks to a unique behaviour in literature, I have never set this field apart from the muse. After I read most of Bengali literature which I was fond of before sixteen, I started reading the works of the most popular writers in the world, no distinction made. Circa 1962, as soon as I entered college, the first book I read was Une saison en enfer by Arthur Rimbaud, the first great western work. I was absolutely astounded by Rimbaud's themes and style. The same year I read Illuminations with the same impulse, then Rimbaud's biography by Enid Starkie and Wallace Fowlie. I was not wondering if "Une saison en enfer" was a western or an eastern production. The freshness of the language, the richness of his experiences were enough for me at the time, though with the passing of time, I discover many things orientalised by Rimbaud. In 1996, in Bergerac, in an interview broadcast on Radio Bergerac, I even compared his genius to Ramakrishna's! "The geographical bound is ever limited by any latitude or longitude anymore…" I wrote in a poem, Fall, from Ratri. Arthur Rimbaud spent most of his life tormented out of his own country. A true poet belongs to the world because a poet belongs to no one in particular. Between seventeen and 21, besides Bengali, I read Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Baudelaire, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Whitman, Artaud, Cendrars, Giono, Céline, Genet, along with other fellow writers from the east and west who are very famous nowadays. As a student in the English department I had to read a thousand and one British and American writers… good or not. I never asked myself whether they were from the East or West. The only book which helped me answer the question about the East-West shift is an essay by André Gide about Dostoevsky For me, apart from the Karamazov Brothers, Gide's book is the book of my life. It is the one which helped me understand the French psyche, gave me the strength to go over to Europe, especially in France, as a world poet. Now, I have over 500 fellow poets in France, Spain, Britain, the Americas, Ireland, Japan, Canada, and Africa. I publish my poems with them in their own countries. Have I only orientalised my western friends? Yes, maybe. So I am standing at the cross-roads of the whole world. That is why we get on so well. This is poetry's total victory. Yes!
5) In your opinion, is writing poetry a subversive act?
It depends on several conditions: for example on "good" or "bad" state of society in which the poet lives. It depends on their workplace to maintain and sustain them, physically and spiritually, and enable them to write. My heart poet is neither a "versificator" nor a "searcher" for poetic words. On the contrary, a true poet passionately follows the indisputable truths of their own life, the truths of the society in which they live and write… The poetic truth must free itself from hypocrisy… like love which holds the values of life. Dear Denis, you do know that, nowadays, man's society – and its behaviour towards things – has changed a lot. It let itself went to consumption with its own Mephistopheles: the mass media. Nearly everywhere in Europe as well as in India, especially in the underground, politicians, their agents gave birth to sycophancy. Most people are sycophant and make the most of poetry readers. My poems are surely subversive for such a society and readers. I don't write for such or such mission. My poetry could be use for the new men freedom, to create new poetical tastes. And you know that, to me, dear Denis, novelty is a kind of subversion. So, in this world, my poems are absolutely subversive, that is to say humane.
6) In Europe or in the USA, your inspiration sources were often discussed: the Beat Generation, Rimbaud or Lautréamont… What do you think about this?
Rimbaud… sure, like the Jibanananda Das indigenous people and Manik Bondopadhaya. In Lautréamont, it is his long wail, a passionate marine one I hold. Besides, since always, I wonder why Lautréamont was brutally assassinated. Since the beginning, I would like to have information on this murder. And maybe you could help me find out?
Except a few personal friends: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, John Montgomery, Harold Norse, Kaviraj George Dowden and Claude Pélieu, I didn't like much rootless writings from the Beat Generation. The only author who inspired me within this movement was Jack Kerouac. He was himself inspired by Rimbaud, Céline and by his nostalgia of France and Québec. It is often said that Jack was the "king of the Beat". In my opinion, all his life, Jack was obsessed by the search of his own identity philosophically as much as religiously. In spite of some similarities between the Beat Generation and the Hungry Generation, no one from the Hungry was totally influenced by the Beat. Unfortunately! Nowadays, because of the American media which have always presented the Beat Generation as a real apocalypse, the spiritual heritage from this movement is about to disappear.
7) In our time, when image seems to reign, when many books are often published for reasons which exclude literature, I ask it bluntly "what is poetry worth?"
Poetry is the informal engine of uncountable entities; they develop outside schemes useful to power. Poetry helps subversion more than we think even if it seems to be involved in some institutional registers. It helps to take shape inside chaos et make this chaos believable, even if some people deny it fearing to appear in bright lights, to see the light, that which should enlighten our lives. There would be a great deal of work to do in collaboration with the scientist would they let their megalomania go and have the slightest idea of their poetical dimension, especially astrophysicists who have devoted themselves to the stars and so have joined poets on a similar level with probably other certainties. But poetry only helps reinforce our certainty, that of the impossible nothingness which, if it does exist, is full of a lot of different possibilities.
8) The Black Hole. Why give such a title to your book? I think it is an allusion to a tormented period of India's history but is it a metaphor of life too?
Good poet's intuition! To tell the truth, I used this title, The Black Hole, an astronomic expression, as a metaphor of life, you're right! Symbolically, when at each moment million of black holes are born from our uncountable flesh desires: blind, irresistible, deep and threatening which the gravitation field is such that no ray (of creative imagination and bright creativity) can get out, the human desire - which is the spring of all our activities – ironically is the black hole itself. In this civilisation driven by money, sex and power, we always feel like shut inside a big black hole without an exit. Only physical love heals us sometimes, then bitterness again, disgust. The Indian historical allusion – added by my friend Paul Georgelin – has a real link with this title. Then, I still totally agree with Paul. Dear Denis, it is my friend Paul Georgelin who introduced me to the French readers with a phenomenal vigour. I thank and kiss him.
9) In your essay, Poésie-Religion, you write: "Poetry is the only way to avoid all questions and the dialectic of the primitive man as well as modern man, as mush as all conflicts between consciousness and unconsciousness of the educated people and the ignorant." Could you develop this idea which regards the poetical act as sacred?
To me, the poetical act regards humanity as sacred in a swirl of goodness which stirs and takes away everything on its way. There are no more boundaries, the enclosure is open and the huge wild horses herd is freed; only they are no more called herd, that's the difference. Each entity develops itself alone but as a whole. It is the big paradox which drives our inner and outer lives: the universality of poetry could not alone govern our lives, we have become the masters of our destinies, alone and together. You mention the sense of the sacred in poetry. Yes, absolutely yes and we could associate God to it or anyone else, why not? Now everything is allowed. Whether they're in the East or in the West, the sources of the poet are cosmic. Civilisation has expanded rapidly and this doesn't imply itself directly even if it is the main actor.
10) Have you already tried other writing forms than poetry?
Yes, of course. In my way, I have already exploited all the forms of writing. For instance, tales (symbolical), short-stories, essay ((literature), criticism and defence of poetry, drama too, anything but crime which I quite not like. I have also been seduced by poetry and its meaning. It is a great obsession for me. I may be paranoid, I wonder. I only feel well when I am back in the wealthy and euphoric land of my obsessions. I dream of writing, in a natural tongue, a large pornographic portrait dedicated to the funeral rites of the Muse or my loved-one. It is in France, my spiritual country that I would like to do it.
11) In 1997/98 you created Pphoo, a magazine in three languages English (American, French and Bengali. Could you introduce it to us briefly?
At that time, I created this magazine in collaboration with my friends Claude Pélieu, Carl Weissner, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kaviraj George Dowden, Gérard Belart and dear J.J. Herman. For the Bengali literary scene, Pphoo explores all that is avant-garde, underground. In these pages, I published all the poets – famous or cursed – from the four corners of the world… Bengalis, French, Americans. I translated Rimbaud, Artaud, Cendrars, Nord by Céline along with his last interview. It was a great time of my life when I also translated Fernando Arrabal and The Brooklyn Bridge by Henry Miller. Since the 1990s, thanks to my different relationships in France and my knowledge of French, I published about sixty French and French speaking poets: Canadians, Algerians… In 1996, Pphoo won a prestigious award for the best French speaking magazine in Bergerac during the poetry festival. In all, I am delighted with it. Pphoo put me at the centre of the world literary activities. In my opinion, this magazine is the source of new creations at the end of the century, it is a lot already!
12) Now, what are your projects?
Outside my own country, I take part in several projects related to France. I would like to write a memoir about my two staying in France analysing the different trends of French contemporary poetry. I would like to write a short history of French bridges and an essay on Guyancourt, a town which my friend Roland Nadaus – a surrealist poet – is the mayor of. And eventually, I'll go have a white night (the Arabian nights) with my friends and I'll write homage to each one of them. Such a wonderful project, isn't it?
