Art is a comment on life, and its justification lies not only in giving pleasure, but also in correcting the taste of mankind. If we agreeto this description, it is paramount that what the poet or the artists says should be helpful to the viewers or the readers in understanding life and its complexities better. But, if the artist believes in confusing the viewer and the poet believes in not saying anything, but going round and round with words, how can it serve its purpose? The critics can now come up with another question: Does art have any purpose? A poem with a purpose is accused of indoctrination. These are confusing strains which make the job of the poet a tad difficult. To mean, or not to mean anything, or to stay on the edge and let the readers decide what he has said. I think this is the stance which a wise poet these days will assume.
Jaydeep Sarangi’s ‘The Half-Confession’ is a work of postmodern poetry, characterized by a broken narrative. It invites a lot of patient contemplation to put two and two together. Postmodern poetry is more like an abstract painting, in which, the expertise of an artist lies not in explicit presentation, but in making the piece, tempting and seductive, not by stripping it, but by strip-tease. In the same way, a poet also engages in strip-tease. He knowsbeauty lies in not revealing the truth, but in defying it.
Modern poets avoid saying anything in plain words. To add artistic value and beauty to their writing, they make it a hide and seek affair, and in this exercise, whether a reader actually hits upon the meaning or not, is not certain. Moreover, modern theorists believe in the reader’s response theory as a result of which, there is actually no need to peep into the caves of a poet’s consciousness. The deconstructionist picks up words from the text, believing that he is to explore, not what the poet says, but what the poem says. So, he is after the text, and text is a talisman, which descends into the dark interiors of the poet’s consciousness. The critic then goes on to discover from which factory a word has come. It is in fact an effort to enter the kitchen of a sweetmeat seller. A deconstructionist is more interested in the kitchen rather than the finished product.
Applying all this to the work by Jaydeep Sarangi, it can be said that like an artist, who is adept in abstract painting, Sarangi paints his poems with touches of the brush, and leaves it to the viewer to come to his own conclusions. Perhaps this is the best way, if we believe in respecting the emotional and intellectual accomplishments of our readers.
If the poet presents a poem, in its bare essentials, without guiding the reader in any way, and if the reader picks up what he is saying, it means there is perfect correspondence between the intellectual caliber of the two. But, if the reader comes up with his own version which is absolutely different from the poet’s, then the reader cannot be blamed, because the poet might have left gaps which the reader finds an opportunity to fill with his own imagination.
I am glad that true to the post-modern sensibility, Dr. Sarangi does not try to question the sensibility of his readers, makes no deliberate attempt to guide their responses, and leaves his workhalf-confessed, so that much is left to the imaginative complexity of the reader to supply from his own understanding of whatever has been presented.
This is true of the modern life too. Whatever we see of reality is twisted and unreliable. In such a scenario, how can a poet present a piece of writing which can be relied upon? It would be an oddity, an anachronism, something entirely out of place, to write a story with a moral, as we did fifty years back, nor can we think of a story which runs chronologically, because, the poet is faced not only with the necessity of telling a story, but also with the need to tempt the reader into it, attract his attention, and then, keep him glued too till the ‘the end’. How can we engage the reader in a work unless the work has a lot of suspense, and the poet must surprise and shock with twists and turns, as it happens in the celluloid media.
Now, we can look at the work of Dr. Sarangi. ‘The Half Confession’. It becomes clear why the confession is half. A confession has two connotations. One religious and the other about love. We cannot expect it to be a religious text, so by deduction, it is possible to connect it with love and varied experiences of life.
The most dominant feeling that we encounter in the work is a sense of loss, a breathing sensation of pain, and how the poet time and again returns his lost love. The work appears to be a painful re-living of a relationship which could not fructify. In between, we come across the poet’s vast range of intellectual exposure to the world of beauty, his sympathies, and his connect with nature, which faces and follows him in the form of stones, rivers, moon, sun, and birds. The landscape of the book is punctuated with a variety of life forms but, from everythingooz pain, despair, passion and a spirit pining for something and for someone who was left on the way.
II
It can be rewarding to make a round of the poetry of this work, keeping mindful of the fact that these are abstract images of a journey which have been presented with complete objectivity giving due respect to a reader’s intellectual accomplishments.
‘I hold all my pains in my palm’ begins the quest into the arteries of timeless existence which includes “the stones of the ancient land/begin to speak stories of all evening chats …. Walls grow thicker as I travel through years…’ The poet considers this engagement as an intimate conversation: “you will speak with me reading this poem, for my poems written with soft hands of truth with all nothing can to nothing fall.” Such candour is missing in poetry of modern times. It is not a reading, it is engaging in a conversation. ‘Patterns on Stones’ inject into the poet’s heart a wish to return to the stones, and back to shadows, to the geoglyphs written on the earth, carrying in his heart “hope with dyed feathers”. The comparison of time with slow Kolkata traffic is pleasant:“Time moves slowly, slow as traffic in a busy Kokata street” [Knocker-Uppers]. He feels a “giant tongue” of hope that she will speak to him. Poet’s pain at the parting makes him feel an affinity with universal pain of deprivation: “Words within are no cold faces” .. for he knows, “groans for more have no mouth, only tears”. [A Whiff of Love].
‘Thesaurus of My Wine Moments’ is an excellent piece of writing in which the image and the emotion are superbly blended:
“… I hear her silence rising,
on my sinful eyes, without any synonym
memories unfold page after page like menu at a banquet.”
‘My Father’s House’, cryptically, suggests that the poet is his father’s house, and he says: “among human ruins, I rediscover my father’s house’ suggesting that he himself is the debris of his dad’s life. ‘One drop of Red Wine’ underlines a lilting desire for love,
I borrow from your lips
breath of my name you murmur
I wait for your clammy touch sometimes, somewhere.
Truly powerful words to express extreme love for a lost friend.‘The Half Confession’ is the major poem of the collection,in which he visits the memories of partition, pain revisits him as he traverses the orbit of his life, and at fifty one, he finds himself rocked by lost desire:
Now at fifty one, invisible signals remind me
Of matters related to the heart –
Of all the small wishes, frail faiths, and links….
I long for time’s wandering eye
mocking at me from a distance
‘River within cannot hold its gushing water for long./Lived moments are memories of promises,/On her arrivals in words and pyramids/there is someone always smiles.” The greatest pain that he confesses is that “I go to see the shadow she has become”.
I think I should leave something for the readers to directly encounter in the work. It is a journey into a consciousness which surprises at every step. There is so much of exotica, and so much which can soothe and shock simultaneously. This work is a welcome addition to post-modern literature, a milestone in itself for which I congratulate Dr. Sarangi.
Jaydeep Sarangi