The Hungryalists [Penguin Books 2018] written by Maitreyee B. Chowdhury
Review by Yannis Livadas
Within poetry, we are not all one but probably less than one. The inclusiveness characterizing the breadth of modern literary writing on this relevant planet of known and unknown aspects, quite demonstrates that.
Incessant updates that intertwine with every possible or even unthinkable process to approach some meaning in reality, which as much it helps others to stabilize their creativity so does destabilize their course. Poetry, all over the world, represents the influences and forces that derive from the unapproachable definition of this nature.
Let us therefore know how to study the spiritual energies that life offers to poetry and vice versa, since the temporality of our perception is something more accurate and more definite than the mindfulness of man.
Some strangers in India, like ourselves, everywhere, were moving towards their fulfillment, writing poems under the burden of a tangible broadness: the Hungryalists.
What happened in Indian poetry since the time of Rabindranath Tagor is known, Indian poetry was recovered, revived and stabilized its presence. In the meantime, it has undergone the necessary modernization, it communicated with the rest of the world, developed in parallel, and left a certain stigma in the twentieth century, not particularly important, apart from a few distinguished neo-existentailist poets (e.g. Jibanananda Das, Arun Kolatkar) and the Hungryalist movement.
Modern Indian poetry presents a number of efforts and attempts, while it continues to twist and contrast trying to locate its orientation, its exactness. The modern propositions presented by Indian poetry, often have a very distinctive classification of values and concepts, which is not always as close as that of the western or, it is identical.
It is also important to discern the performance of the westernized spirit and at the same time the heaviness, or otherwise the lightness, of the impact of this westernization. Indian poetry since the days of the Hungryalists continues to proclaim a break out of its strictly controlled aesthetic environment, to act as it is appropriate, but its result is not always worthy of the need for poetic invention. From this we have something to learn, discerning and reviewing this process in relation to the way in which exactly the same thing is happening in the later poetry of the western world, which today lacks heterogeneity of content, and it is also restrained by a distinct tendency to seek comfort in the warmth of theoretical detracting from the intellectual experience.
Therefore, before we refer to the magnitude and the severity of any possible achievement, in general, let us ponder first with the condition of naturalness, when it exists, when it does not and when it is sought. This is the fundamental criterion.
The Hungryalists were a company of unpredictable poets who emerged from the tradition, being ready to create turning points in order to re-initiate Indian poetry, and at the same time to prove its resilience. Their rejection of poetic traditionalism was an act of restitution since their counterblast was valued by a strong demand of return to the originality of poetry, which was displaced by sociopolitical and aesthetical decadence. Some facts seem to be unchanged into the row of time; every now and then the poet is duty-bound to stand against the same abjections.
The poetry of Hungryalists remains new, if one considers the essential facts of modern and contemporary poetry of India. It is still fresh, open; since its distinctions pertained evenly to the renovation of poetic form and scope.
The history of the Hungryalist movement is presented into a well-documented volume which is unique. The author and editor of the book, Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, has done an excellent job. The book offers an extensive yet indirect analysis of the Hungryalist poetry, it is arranged chronologically and geographically, almost like a historiography of the movement ; it re-establishes the Hungryalists into the course of contemporary literature and, what’s more, it gives an opportunity to the younger readers to get a more connective and more solid idea of it, by studying it as one among the not so many phenomena which have left their marks during the last sixty or so years.
The writers of the Hungryalist core were Binoy Mazumdar, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Samir
Roychoudhury, Debi Roy and of course the most prominent Malay Roy Choudhury; whom once I was quite lucky to meet and to attend one of his readings in a downtown terrace in Calcutta. Besides the most important and catalytic mentioned, one can refer to Utpal Kumar Basu, Binoy Majumdar, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Basudeb Dasgupta, Falguni Roy, Subhash Ghosh, Tridib Mitra, Alo Mitra, Ramananda Chattopadhyay, Anil Karanjai, Saileswar Ghosh, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay, and Subo Acharya.
Today it would be at least unfair to study Hungryalism unilaterally in association with the
Beat Generation. The connection between them is rather unsubstantial, some of the Beats supported keenly and justifiably the young Indian poets; yet the Hungryalists were
autonomous, were an analogue movement and although the similarities between the two are obvious, the Hungryalists had their own methods, their own perspective; their own sequence of literary accomplishments.
Sometimes the emergence of a literary movement demonstrates the backwardness that must be overcome so that literature can be able to reacquire its venturous and creative orientation.
After the publication of this book, an anthology of Hungryalist poetry in English seems more imperative than ever.
Paris 2019The Hungryalists [Penguin Books 2018]
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