Shashikant
Nishant Sharma
Editor
International Journal of Research
New
Delhi, India
Abstract:
There are many facets of
the English literature and one of the popular among them is poetry. And if we
look at the diversity in the style and genre of the poetry, we will find poetry
more and more interesting.
The emergence of the
modern poetry has made it more easy to write poetry but very few poets can
express the deep meaning and feelings through the medium of poetry. One of such
poet from India is Vihang Naik who has been actively writing modern poetry and
participation in national and international conference where poetry is
discussed. One of the best thing is that poet Vihang Naik has adopted a new
tool of modern poetry and it is better known by social realism. Poetry of
Vihang Naik is really a true example of social realism in poetry. He has been able
to express the thoughts and feelings of the urban residents in his poetry.
Many of his poems and his
poetry book have been reviewed by many editors and I got this opportunity to
review his poems and I thought it is better to review his poetry on the yard
stick of a single theme rather than taking multiple themes and doing no justice
with the subject.
Keywords
Social Realism, Vihang
Naik, Modern Poetry, Indian Poetry, Contemporary Poets, City Times, Free Style
Poems
Introduction
After going through his
books like City Times and Other Poems, …………………………..
I thought it is fit to
consider social realism as yardstick for two reasons. One the theme of social
realism is used in modern poetry but very few talk about it. Many poets use
this them of poetry but they fail to recognize it. Hence, this review paper
will help them understand it better and use it in future. Other thing is that
taking a single yardstick for review of poems will give me many more
opportunities to go in depth of the poems of Vihang Naik and bring new meanings
to the old words penned by the poet.
About Poet Vihang Naik
Vihang A. Naik was born
in Surat, Gujarat on September 2, 1969. He is India s contemporary poet writing
in English. His poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies along
with some significant e-publications. Four collections of his poetry have been
published: Poetry Manifesto: New & Selected Poems, Making A Poem , City
Times and Other Poems . His Gujarati collection of poems include Jeevangeet
(Gujarati Language Poetry ) in 2001, dedicated to the cause of victims of
Gujarat Earthquake of January 26, 2001. He also translates poetry written in
the Gujarati language into English, including his own Gujarati language poems. He
is educated from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda with English
Literature, Indian Literature in English Translation and Philosophy. He had his
primary schooling from Navrachna School in Baroda, Gujarat. He took teaching as
a profession serving in colleges since 1996 in Gujarat. He lives and works in
Gujarat. India.
Introduction
This study is the outcome
of a feeling I have had for a long time, that the Indian student cannot profit
greatly by the study of English language & Literature unless he clearly
understand them, on account of the labor involved in collecting the necessary
material, which is not all available at one place and in a suitable form. I
have done best to my explanations as lucid as possible. I intend the volume to
serve as a stepping-stone to further study. The book cannot, of course, pretend
to be a complete record of all the forms and phases of English Language &
Literature, but it contains a selection of those which I regard myself as a
major interest and importance.
Vihang Naik is has
revealed that myths are one of the segments which serve to determine the Indian
ness in our literature”. The inexhaustible lore of myths, parables and legends
that pattern and define our culture offers immense scope for the dramatist. The
myth is neither tragic nor comic; it is only a perfect vehicle of embodying
reality. It is mode for expressing reality and it is logical and concrete.
Stylistics is the
description and analysis of the variability of linguistic forms in actual
language use. It is the study of style used in literary and verbal language,
and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer.
Literary stylistics is an approach which has affinities with literary criticism
and history. It is a kind practiced by Leo Spitzer and his followers in the
1940s. This approach is more subjective than objective, literary than
linguistic, and it advocates no rigid methodology. It is based on philosophical
idealism: a literary work is intuited as a whole and there is no scope of
applying external categories to the work of art. Spitzer claims that the critic
grasps the “spiritual etymon” of a literary work by an intuitive “click”, and
thus understands the “inner form”. So the importance of the concrete linguistic
form is diminished here and emphasis is laid on the ‘spirit’ or psychological
attitude. The inner form should be grasped first in order to determine the
‘outer form’, which relates the whole to the parts. Vihang
A. Naik has been able to use stylistics in his poems and leave a lasting
impression on the readers of the poems.
Analysis and Discussion
Vihang A.
Naik throws light on the life of a very large city in all its shades, glory and
misery in his City Times and Other Poems. It is an anthology of his intuitive
and philosophical poems. The Poems are divided in 6 segments e.g. ‘Love Song of
a Journey man’, ‘Mirrored man’, ‘The Path of wisdom’, Self Portrait’, At the
shore’, City times’.
The poet
describes the city as viewed from a person’s individual opinion emphasizing upon
the effect of modernized life on the minds of people in the society. He had
been a vocal advocate for nature and the most predominant feature of his poetry
is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling. He found the source
of poetry as a particular unique experience and reflected upon the fact to view
nature as a source of beauty and aesthetic experience. Shashikant Nishant Sharma
states that: “The poems of the book provide readers a mirror to look into life
of a city in all its shades and it is common to find some expression of glory
and misery that people feel in his City” (Sharma, 781). He explicitly links
nature with art by finding powerful natural metaphors and imagery to articulate
his ideas about men’s understanding of nature in this universe. H
Making A
Poem is a powerful affecting collection of poetry that sheds a fascinating
light upon the writing process and poet's personal aesthetics. These are
eloquent pieces where the poet displays a confident command of the poetic form
to bring his ideas and observations to life. The pieces that ponder the reality
of poetic expression are perhaps most fascinating.
Vihang A.
Naik throws light on the life of a city in all its shades, glory and misery in
his City Times and Other Poems. It is an anthology of his intuitive and
philosophical poems. The Poems are divided in 6 segmentsi.e. 'Love Song of a
Journey Man' is more or less an inner travelogue, The segments, for
instance, 'Mirrored Man' is about the other chimeras
in the city .
Brevity of
expressions with glittering pearls of beautiful thoughts is the true beauty of
his writings. Chunks of thoughts and patches of expressions give a full meaning
of perfection in their imperfection. Unlike other poets, he takes recourse to a
very unique style of putting himself across in the cris-crosses of myriads of
poetic output, put in by rest of the poets. His greatness as a poet lies in his
technique of telling a very little and leaving rest to the readers to understand
and realize. His poetry is like a tip of a vast iceberg that arrests our
attention to delve deep into his oceanic psyche and heart to explore much more.
Sonnet modal has rightly pointed out:
Jeevangeet
by Vihang A Naik - ( poetry written in gujarati ) is a collection of Gujarati
poems written by Vihang Naik after his English collection of poems in City
Times and Other Poems , only published in 2001 in AiD for Gujarat Earthquake
victims of 26th January , 2001 and dedicated to thousands of men , women and
children who lost their lives and homes in Earthquake.
Poetry
Manifesto is a collection of poems by Vihang A. Naik which are intuitive,
thoughtful, philosophical and creative pieces where the poet displays a mature,
confident command, with a fine balance of emotional intensity, irony, ranging
across themes and places with experimentation.
Vihang Naik
Poems like ‘The Banyan City’, ‘Making A Poem’, ‘New Web Sight’, ‘Being
Contemporary’, A Disturbed Sleep’ and others are real reflection of the true
nature of the society and thus they present social realism through the medium
of poetry.
City Times
and Other Poems was the winner in the Poetry category of the 2016 IndieReader
Discovery Awards, which is the recognition of the social realism presented
in his poems. Before the conferment of this award, he was truly where
undiscovered talent who was brought to light so that readers can meets the poet
who has the power to make a difference.
He is a
conscious poet of ecological awareness. It goes without saying that pollution
has defiled the beautiful landscape of the country. The hectic life styles of
the people have turned from bad to worse. People are quite indifferent to the
glorious past of the city they are living in. There is lack of ecological
consciousness in them. Such people, lost in the tangled ways and means of life,
“grapple for meaning /in the traffic of noses.” (The Banyan City) The smoke
pollutions seem to have blurred their vision as “There is humming of vehicles.
The city mumbles”. However, the poet is confident and optimistic enough to
regain the healthy environment because “The roots won’t die.” Many of such
poems are reflective of his ecological concerns. ‘Indian Summer’ is great
example of eco-poetry, which lays strong emphasis on the ecological balance.
His apprehension can be realized here-
You search/
the city, lost/ in a mirage. The sun fumes.
There is
only heat and dust.
The major
work of the poet Vihang A. Naik is ‘City Times and Other Poems’ which is an anthology of his intuitive and
philosophical poems. The Poems are divided in 6 segments i.e. “Love Song of a
Journey Man” is more or less an inner travelogue, The segments, for instance,
“Mirrored Man” is about the other chimeras in the city .The people in the city
are capricious like the walk of a crab or the colours of a chameleon. While,
“The Path of Wisdom” is about the beginning of meditation and knowledge. “At
the Shore” records the poet’s sense of futility, memory, pain, exile and
alienation at the shore of life. The title of this collection is also the
heading for the last of its six sections, in which the city is unfolded as a
market place, as a heaven for underdogs, and as a seed bed of change and is
observed at evening, at mid-night, by moon light and through fog and haze.
The plight
of the people faced with the scorching heat of life pains him to a considerable
extent. Rain of peace and thunders of hope still elude us. The poem is
expressive of his environmental concerns. The ecological imbalance is the sole
reason for all this sordid saga of vitiation of flora and fauna due to constant
outbreak of pollution. Following the rapid industrialization we need to
maintain aesthetics of Nature or environment, for “There is an urgent need to
preserve nature mainly for two purposes; first for ecological balance and
second for aesthetic value”(Chandra and Das 16).As a conscious poet, he seems
to be able to draw the attention of the people concerned towards this serious
problem, appealing for creating an eco-friendly atmosphere for peaceful life.
The linguistic and the semantic effects are significant and so is the sense of
the poet who conveys something very subtle. In addition, pros and cons of a
city life is a recurring theme of most of his poems and this is what
establishes his position as a poet of city.
The poem
titled “Self Portrait” starts with the diagrammatic sketch with seven blank
pages where the reader finds only three words at the tail-end of the page…Here
“the poet envisions in an epiphanic moment, the true nature of ones self when
he wakes up, ‘to see my / Self ‘ ‘discovered beyond thought’ . Between “my
self” and “discovered beyond thought” are five blank pages.
The poet
has personified the cities that made me move. He presents the social realism
through the character of city which comes out from fog and haze. It is an
eventful city within a city. City comes out as distinctive character though at
times, unreal. Yet you are made to see beyond the physical through the
diversified poems of the book which tries to present different dimension of the
city life in different and suitable manner so as the readers can grasp the
essence of the heartthrob of the city.
Conclusions
To conclude
it can be said that the poems of the book provides readers a mirror to look
into life of a city in all its shades, and it is common to find some expression
of glory and misery that people feel in his City. The poems are clear
expression of the imagination and feelings of the poet in the form of free
style of poetry which appears to be simple but has a very deep inherent poetic
meaning. The poet has tried to show his
innermost feelings and experience on many issues related to our existence and
survival on this universe and has dealt successfully with some religious,
social, cultural, and emotional themes in the book. The poems in the collection
are creative pieces reflecting writer’s imagination, emotional intensity,
intellect and philosophical attitude. There is fine balance of themes which
have been placed with experimentation.
Ambiguity is an important aspect of his poetry
that deepens the meaning of his poems with greater profundity, subtlety and
varied richness. Many of his poems are impregnated with ambiguous ideas that
finally take us to realize the unexplored aspects of human life. Hence, he
explores nature in its entirety in a philosophical reflection on nature’s
creative power that lead to an ultimate consideration of the state of society
and man’s relationship with the universe.
His poems
also portray the poet’s struggle to understand nature and man’s creative and
distinctive parallel forces which still exist today, where man’s insatiable
need to meet the demands of an ever-growing population, has been widely viewed
to be destroying the earth’s ecosystem, be it through pollution or the
exploitation of natural resources. In this way, the poet sharply draws a
retrospective view of the nature in his poetry with the back to nature statement.
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