Laxmi Prasad Devkota
Literal Comprehension
“The Lunatic” is the poet’s own translation into English from his Nepali poem “Pagal.” Wearing the mask of lunatic, the poet gives a memorable expression if his own deepest personal feelings and events of his life along with a clinically accurate indictment of the hollowness of the so-called intellectual aspirants and leaders of the time, and may be of any time.
The lunatic persona of the poet is addressing his friend and expressing his vision of the world and reality in contrast to that of the rest of society. Some of the contrasts stressed by the lunatic speaker are: he visualizes sound, hears the visible, tastes fragrance, touches things thinner than air and believes in things the existence of which the world of the ordinary people denies. These contrasts help bring out the irony because the world does not follow what it formulates and instead blames someone as lunatic if that sensitive soul like the poet tries to follow the original formulation. This complexity makes one wonder if the whole world is not crazy after all.
The speaker in the poem is a sensitive soul who has the courage to question the evils, superstitions, and the inhuman treatment of the weak and the unfortunate. He finds religion, morals, social order, politics, and the pretension of humanity by modern humankind all fake. The society at large is not just indifferent to good causes but hostile to anyone who seeks to change the existing order. The price such a person has to pay for thinking and feeling differently is that he is declared insane and locked up in a mental ward of a hospital. Thus the poem represents a very modern expression of the deepest personal feelings of the poet and bitter comment on the hollowness and stupidity of the so-called modern era.
Interpretation
Laxmi Prasad Devkota's "The Lunatic" has elicited different modes of interpretation among which two predominant ones are social and biographical. Interpreting the poem from a social perspective, "The Lunatic" is a portrayal of the society "full of unqualified intellectual aspirants". Likewise, reading from the biographical perspective, the poem hints at a turbulent and enraged voice in the poem and opines that "a rebellious Devkota can be overtly perceived in the 'The Lunatic". Showing the predominance of feeling in this poem, “the supremacy of emotion over intellect is asserted with reference to events from the poet's own life, culminating in a cry of outrage at the inhumanity of humankind". Apart from such readings, however, this poem can be interpreted for its use of persona as a strategy to examine the society. The poet uses the persona of insanity--a strategic tool and rhetorical device-- to incisively examine the overall contemporary social scenario of Devkota's time. In "The Lunatic" the persona serves three main functions. First, it exposes faulty observation, the limitation of human knowledge and the lack of aesthetic sense of the normal people. The lunatic differentiates between two modes of perception: the literal and the penetrative and aesthetically profound. The people belonging to the first mode are normal people who stick to superficial observations of natural beauty. As opposed to such normal people, the persona belongs to the second mode because he transcends superficiality and sees "a flower in the stone". For the normal people, a rose is a commonplace object; but, for the lunatic, the same flower gives off the fragrance of "Padmini and Helen". In terms of the knowledge system, the lunatic points out the rigidity of "formulas” within which normal people must function, whereas the lunatic's mathematics enjoys unparalleled freedom in which "one minus one is always one". In other words, the poet's mathematics does not function within the confines of rigid and mediocre formulas that demand strict compliance and inflexible accuracy. His fluid mathematics topples down the mathematics of which the rational society is boastful. Thus, the lunatic, gifted with the sixth sense, rises above the physical world and "visualize[s] the sound" and "hear[s] the visible". Likewise, owing to limited or partial knowledge, for the normal people the mountains are "mute", but the lunatic's extraordinary perception attributes them with the quality of matchless eloquence and "oratory". As against the rigid and constricting human knowledge, the poet's insane self is empowered with the vibrancy of insanity, and transcends this mundane empirical world and rises upward to commune with the invisible and the ungraspable.
The second function examines injustice, exploitation and spiritual poverty existing in the society. The poet creates a topsy-turvy (disorder) situation by dismantling the value-system in the society. The persona visualizes exploitation in "Nawab's wine", poverty in "the king", and imperialism and expansionism in "Alexander the Great". With incision and insight, he observes the dearly held value systems of the society and overturns them creating a set of distinct binary oppositions such as those of "learned men" and "fools," "heaven and hell, "gold and iron," and "progression and retrogression". Mocking at the austerity and spiritualism of the "Cave-Penance", the lunatic calls him "the deserter of humanity". Focusing on such a situation, the poem remarks that from the lunatic's perspective "the normal man's world is upside down”. The contemplative self of the insane poet takes him beyond the mundane experiences to the spiritual realm where he muses on the question of life and death. If, on the one hand, the poet is dismayed by "the first streak of frost on a lady's tresses," on the other hand, he joyfully and merrily drinks the elixir of the "notes of the harbinger of the spring". For the lunatic, the world's sufferings and sorrows afflict his soul of which the rational people are extremely insensitive and indifferent. Normal people in the society denominate him as "possessed," "crazy" and "distraught", and, since he is a potential danger to social norms and propriety, he is "dispatched" to Ranchi. However, the poet's insane persona clearly visualizes the moral bankruptcy of the society that is standing on the precipice of spiritual disintegration and mental fogginess. If social oppressions and spiritual poverty dismay the lunatic, political dishonesty and journalistic corruption puncture his conscience with equal intensity. Furthermore, the images of the tiger attacking "the innocent deer" and "the big fish after the small ones" reinforce the idea of social injustice and oppression. Hence, the persona wishes to revive in him the strength of "Dadhichi" to wipe out the entire social perversions and anomalies from the society.
After examining the social problems and lack of spiritual uprightness, the persona finally wishes to rescue the people from irrationality and ignorance. In short and sharp sentences that let out the gush of his inner restlessness and ferocity, the poet directs his scathing criticism at "this inhuman human world" and wishes to "devour the world immensely". To uproot all the social injustices and disparities, the lunatic desires to possess the strength of Dadhichi and the impact of "thunderbolt". The full-fledged wrath of the persona erupts in the form of "volcano" and blazes "like a forest fire" that let out the gush of the lunatic's inner restlessness and ferocity to cleanse the society of all kinds of impurities. Quick jerky words and short and unpredictable turns and twists of sentences show the rage and restlessness that intertwine in the persona's consciousness. This appears to be an attempt on the part of the persona to purge and rescue the society from its long-standing malpractice and unscrupulous behavior. Although Chuda Mani Bandhu points out the poet's belligerent spirit, the destructive self of the poet's persona serves as a device to awaken normal men out of their self-deception and irrationality and to fight ignorance. The use of the phrase "my friend” with which the poem is bracketed shows his bountiful and compassionate nature to his fellow human beings who have unfortunately fallen prey to irrationality and barbarity. Making an attempting to warn the innocent people against the rampant chicanery and the canker of lies that have inundated the society, the poet exuberates with humane madness, which he celebrates in this poem.
Hence, the poet puts on the persona of insanity to scrutinize intellectual emptiness, social corruption, and spiritual decadence. With the aid of his insanity, the poet makes a groundbreaking, realistic observation of the exploitation gnawing at the society. By adopting the persona of lunacy, he subjects the time-revered knowledge and value system of the society to his severe examination. Insanity is the vantage-point from which the poet looks at the society pointedly, and makes a close, valid and realistic observation.
Discuss “The Lunatic” as a political protest poem.
The Lunatic was written in 1950s. It was the time of unrest and transition of power. People were tortured by the cruelty of the Ranas and the people near them. There was shameless leadership who tried and broke the human rights. If people went against such leadership, they were not only ill-treated but also insulted very badly and sometimes they were even killed brutally. To talk against the cruel rulers was like showing madness for it. Devkota was one of the active members of the team against the injustice and cruelty of the time. To him, the wine of aristocrats is the blood of the people, the prostitute a corpse and the King a pauper. He compares the politicians with tigers which pounce upon innocent deer. They are big fishes which swallow smaller ones. To see a man behaving as the nonman, he becomes so furious that he grinds his 32 teeth. All parts of his body are disordered and disturbed. His breath becomes a storm As he makes a strong protest against the politicians, we can say that the lunatic is a political protest poem.
The poet’s method in “The Lunatic” capitalizes on the contrasts between the world of lunatic and sane people. What are some of these contracts and how do they bring out the irony of the poem?
Ans.: The poet has used a contrast between the world of the sane people and that of the lunatic. Lunatic feels do and see everything quite opposite. Forex: the insane person visualizes sound, hears the visible, tastes the fragrance but the sane person hears the sound, visualizes the sight, smells the fragrance and tastes the food. The lunatic can touch the things which ordinary person can’t. Likewise, he can see a flower in the stone. He can speak in such a language which is neither written nor ever printed and nor ever spoken. There is irony evoked in the contrast. A lunatic is more sensible to the things. He has the sixth sense for work. He uses heart while a sane person uses brain. He is more emotional, liquid in the form of poetry. Even mountains can speak for a lunatic. Sane people are quite indifferent to nature but lunatic dances in the song of spring. A sane person regards a man as nonman but a lunatic sees the sane man’s world as the inhuman world. From this way, he has made fun of sane people.
Literal Comprehension
“The Lunatic” is the poet’s own translation into English from his Nepali poem “Pagal.” Wearing the mask of lunatic, the poet gives a memorable expression if his own deepest personal feelings and events of his life along with a clinically accurate indictment of the hollowness of the so-called intellectual aspirants and leaders of the time, and may be of any time.
The lunatic persona of the poet is addressing his friend and expressing his vision of the world and reality in contrast to that of the rest of society. Some of the contrasts stressed by the lunatic speaker are: he visualizes sound, hears the visible, tastes fragrance, touches things thinner than air and believes in things the existence of which the world of the ordinary people denies. These contrasts help bring out the irony because the world does not follow what it formulates and instead blames someone as lunatic if that sensitive soul like the poet tries to follow the original formulation. This complexity makes one wonder if the whole world is not crazy after all.
The speaker in the poem is a sensitive soul who has the courage to question the evils, superstitions, and the inhuman treatment of the weak and the unfortunate. He finds religion, morals, social order, politics, and the pretension of humanity by modern humankind all fake. The society at large is not just indifferent to good causes but hostile to anyone who seeks to change the existing order. The price such a person has to pay for thinking and feeling differently is that he is declared insane and locked up in a mental ward of a hospital. Thus the poem represents a very modern expression of the deepest personal feelings of the poet and bitter comment on the hollowness and stupidity of the so-called modern era.
Interpretation
Laxmi Prasad Devkota's "The Lunatic" has elicited different modes of interpretation among which two predominant ones are social and biographical. Interpreting the poem from a social perspective, "The Lunatic" is a portrayal of the society "full of unqualified intellectual aspirants". Likewise, reading from the biographical perspective, the poem hints at a turbulent and enraged voice in the poem and opines that "a rebellious Devkota can be overtly perceived in the 'The Lunatic". Showing the predominance of feeling in this poem, “the supremacy of emotion over intellect is asserted with reference to events from the poet's own life, culminating in a cry of outrage at the inhumanity of humankind". Apart from such readings, however, this poem can be interpreted for its use of persona as a strategy to examine the society. The poet uses the persona of insanity--a strategic tool and rhetorical device-- to incisively examine the overall contemporary social scenario of Devkota's time. In "The Lunatic" the persona serves three main functions. First, it exposes faulty observation, the limitation of human knowledge and the lack of aesthetic sense of the normal people. The lunatic differentiates between two modes of perception: the literal and the penetrative and aesthetically profound. The people belonging to the first mode are normal people who stick to superficial observations of natural beauty. As opposed to such normal people, the persona belongs to the second mode because he transcends superficiality and sees "a flower in the stone". For the normal people, a rose is a commonplace object; but, for the lunatic, the same flower gives off the fragrance of "Padmini and Helen". In terms of the knowledge system, the lunatic points out the rigidity of "formulas” within which normal people must function, whereas the lunatic's mathematics enjoys unparalleled freedom in which "one minus one is always one". In other words, the poet's mathematics does not function within the confines of rigid and mediocre formulas that demand strict compliance and inflexible accuracy. His fluid mathematics topples down the mathematics of which the rational society is boastful. Thus, the lunatic, gifted with the sixth sense, rises above the physical world and "visualize[s] the sound" and "hear[s] the visible". Likewise, owing to limited or partial knowledge, for the normal people the mountains are "mute", but the lunatic's extraordinary perception attributes them with the quality of matchless eloquence and "oratory". As against the rigid and constricting human knowledge, the poet's insane self is empowered with the vibrancy of insanity, and transcends this mundane empirical world and rises upward to commune with the invisible and the ungraspable.
The second function examines injustice, exploitation and spiritual poverty existing in the society. The poet creates a topsy-turvy (disorder) situation by dismantling the value-system in the society. The persona visualizes exploitation in "Nawab's wine", poverty in "the king", and imperialism and expansionism in "Alexander the Great". With incision and insight, he observes the dearly held value systems of the society and overturns them creating a set of distinct binary oppositions such as those of "learned men" and "fools," "heaven and hell, "gold and iron," and "progression and retrogression". Mocking at the austerity and spiritualism of the "Cave-Penance", the lunatic calls him "the deserter of humanity". Focusing on such a situation, the poem remarks that from the lunatic's perspective "the normal man's world is upside down”. The contemplative self of the insane poet takes him beyond the mundane experiences to the spiritual realm where he muses on the question of life and death. If, on the one hand, the poet is dismayed by "the first streak of frost on a lady's tresses," on the other hand, he joyfully and merrily drinks the elixir of the "notes of the harbinger of the spring". For the lunatic, the world's sufferings and sorrows afflict his soul of which the rational people are extremely insensitive and indifferent. Normal people in the society denominate him as "possessed," "crazy" and "distraught", and, since he is a potential danger to social norms and propriety, he is "dispatched" to Ranchi. However, the poet's insane persona clearly visualizes the moral bankruptcy of the society that is standing on the precipice of spiritual disintegration and mental fogginess. If social oppressions and spiritual poverty dismay the lunatic, political dishonesty and journalistic corruption puncture his conscience with equal intensity. Furthermore, the images of the tiger attacking "the innocent deer" and "the big fish after the small ones" reinforce the idea of social injustice and oppression. Hence, the persona wishes to revive in him the strength of "Dadhichi" to wipe out the entire social perversions and anomalies from the society.
After examining the social problems and lack of spiritual uprightness, the persona finally wishes to rescue the people from irrationality and ignorance. In short and sharp sentences that let out the gush of his inner restlessness and ferocity, the poet directs his scathing criticism at "this inhuman human world" and wishes to "devour the world immensely". To uproot all the social injustices and disparities, the lunatic desires to possess the strength of Dadhichi and the impact of "thunderbolt". The full-fledged wrath of the persona erupts in the form of "volcano" and blazes "like a forest fire" that let out the gush of the lunatic's inner restlessness and ferocity to cleanse the society of all kinds of impurities. Quick jerky words and short and unpredictable turns and twists of sentences show the rage and restlessness that intertwine in the persona's consciousness. This appears to be an attempt on the part of the persona to purge and rescue the society from its long-standing malpractice and unscrupulous behavior. Although Chuda Mani Bandhu points out the poet's belligerent spirit, the destructive self of the poet's persona serves as a device to awaken normal men out of their self-deception and irrationality and to fight ignorance. The use of the phrase "my friend” with which the poem is bracketed shows his bountiful and compassionate nature to his fellow human beings who have unfortunately fallen prey to irrationality and barbarity. Making an attempting to warn the innocent people against the rampant chicanery and the canker of lies that have inundated the society, the poet exuberates with humane madness, which he celebrates in this poem.
Hence, the poet puts on the persona of insanity to scrutinize intellectual emptiness, social corruption, and spiritual decadence. With the aid of his insanity, the poet makes a groundbreaking, realistic observation of the exploitation gnawing at the society. By adopting the persona of lunacy, he subjects the time-revered knowledge and value system of the society to his severe examination. Insanity is the vantage-point from which the poet looks at the society pointedly, and makes a close, valid and realistic observation.
Discuss “The Lunatic” as a political protest poem.
The Lunatic was written in 1950s. It was the time of unrest and transition of power. People were tortured by the cruelty of the Ranas and the people near them. There was shameless leadership who tried and broke the human rights. If people went against such leadership, they were not only ill-treated but also insulted very badly and sometimes they were even killed brutally. To talk against the cruel rulers was like showing madness for it. Devkota was one of the active members of the team against the injustice and cruelty of the time. To him, the wine of aristocrats is the blood of the people, the prostitute a corpse and the King a pauper. He compares the politicians with tigers which pounce upon innocent deer. They are big fishes which swallow smaller ones. To see a man behaving as the nonman, he becomes so furious that he grinds his 32 teeth. All parts of his body are disordered and disturbed. His breath becomes a storm As he makes a strong protest against the politicians, we can say that the lunatic is a political protest poem.
The poet’s method in “The Lunatic” capitalizes on the contrasts between the world of lunatic and sane people. What are some of these contracts and how do they bring out the irony of the poem?
Ans.: The poet has used a contrast between the world of the sane people and that of the lunatic. Lunatic feels do and see everything quite opposite. Forex: the insane person visualizes sound, hears the visible, tastes the fragrance but the sane person hears the sound, visualizes the sight, smells the fragrance and tastes the food. The lunatic can touch the things which ordinary person can’t. Likewise, he can see a flower in the stone. He can speak in such a language which is neither written nor ever printed and nor ever spoken. There is irony evoked in the contrast. A lunatic is more sensible to the things. He has the sixth sense for work. He uses heart while a sane person uses brain. He is more emotional, liquid in the form of poetry. Even mountains can speak for a lunatic. Sane people are quite indifferent to nature but lunatic dances in the song of spring. A sane person regards a man as nonman but a lunatic sees the sane man’s world as the inhuman world. From this way, he has made fun of sane people.
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