Sumitranandan Pant
Kala aur Burha Chand
(Rajkamal Prakashan, New Delhi; 1950)
(Sahitya Academy Awardee-Hindi-1960)
"Sri Sumitranandan Pant (born 1900) is an eminent Hindi poet and one of the leaders of the Chhayavad school of Hindi poetry. Kala aur Burha Chand, which literally means 'The Art and the Old Moon', is a collections of Pant's latest poems in which the poet has boldly experimented with new modes of expression and has given voice to a new spirit of hope and transformation. Mainly concerned with man's spiritual quest and his moral and aesthetic aspirations, these poems seek to convey glimpses of a beyond which is always there and yet not here. The suggestive profundity of the poems as well as their richness of imagery make it a remarkable work." (Citation)
Kala aur Burha Chand consists of all the poems composed by him in 1958. Pant has adopted an entirely new form and diction, hitherto unknown to his poetry. He has named it 'Rashmipadi Kavya' or 'Poetry of Beaming Words'. Going through this collection, the reader gets a distinct picture of the uncommon ground of social life, surcharged with some kind of mysticism and Upanishadic spirit. Pant has opted here to adopt the language of intuitive expression and he is frank enough to confess, "I lay down the jingling girdle of metre." He aims at the height of serenity reflected in the ‘Superman’ of Aurobindo.
Although, Pant in this collection appears like a thinker, possessed by a philosophic mood, he has hardly been able to remain untouched by the tide of darkness. He finds, “Hopelessness, mistrust; The mist of misery; Have begun to deepen all round.” And still his feelings are not at all tied to any agitational side of external realities. He does visualize some mystic field of consciousness, in a way almost formless and unaccountable. It is therefore that he boldly asserts, “Although I fashioned and remained a singer of that which was limitless and eternal, I am very much a creator of the momentary and the instant.” And finally Pant, asserts “with the seeds of ego, it is a crop of anguish, breeding sharp suspicious As a solution of inquisitiveness, I shall raise a crop of humane qualities.”
Kala Aur Burha Chand will be long remembered for its distinctive individuality. It has certainly added a new dimension to the Pant style of Hindi poetry.
P.K. Mishra
(Source: Sahitya Academy Awards – Books and Writers – 1955-1978
Published by Sahitya Academy. ISBN 81 7201 014 1)
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