Lecture 2005-05-16
"Asian Poetry"
Dr. Aftab Seth

Dr. Aftab Seth, the former Indian Ambassador to Japan, began his dramatic reading of "Asian Poetry" with his own poem of dedication to our late honorary patron H.I.H. Prince Takamado. It was an adaptation of a poem by a poet with an Asian outlook, Pablo Neruda, and was titled "So many different lengths of time". The theme was "How long does a man live?", and "How long does death last?", with the answer that he lives as long as we carry him inside us, as long as we hold memories of him. He followed this up with another poem with imperial connections; this was "An Ant", from a "Book of Animal Poems" by Mado Michio, which had been translated by Her Majesty, The Empress. The poet feels like apologizing to the ant, as they are both similar creatures, the only difference being in the size of their "container" – his is so big!

His next item was what he called poetry in prose, an excerpt from the last will and testament of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. The passage describes the attachment Nehru, who was born in Allahabad, feels towards the Ganges (the "Ganga", the lifeblood of India), which was not religious but emotional. The river was tied to the history of India, and was a symbol of India, representing its hopes and fears and victories. Rising in the Himalayas, its moods varied with the season; in the monsoon period it was a roaring torrent. Nehru was proud of his old heritage, which he treasured, and felt himself to be a link in the chain stretching back to the past.

Dr. Seth's next selection was also from India, two sonnets from "The Golden Gate" by Vikram Seth (no relation), which are autobiographical in nature, going back to his days in San Francisco. The subject is babies and their everlasting demand for attention, with no volume control on their voices. It begins "How ugly babies are!" and describes them as "mutant elves", but the final punch line is "You used to be one too."

The scene then changed when we were presented with a poem by an American Indian, who, though not an Asian, was a person whose ancestors had once crossed the Bering Strait (overland) from Asia; the American Indians were not only Asian physically but also spiritually, in their attitude of living in harmony with nature rather than trying to conquer it. The writer was Chief Seattle of the Squamish Indians in Washington State, who, in 1851, had been persuaded to sell two million acres of land to the US government for 150,000 dollars. The poem tells of the impossibility of selling land which one does not own; we are all part of this earth, and it is part of us, it is sacred to us. The white man's appetite will devour the earth. There will be no quiet place to hear the animals and the wind, which gave us our first breath and will receive our last sigh. The air is precious to all forms of life, the trees, the animals, man. The white man must tell his children the earth is sacred, it is our mother; the earth does not belong to man, but man to the earth. Our God is the God of the red man and of the white man. The loss of the natural flora and fauna will mean the end of living and the beginning of survival.

Back to Asia, and a poem by a Vietnamese, Duong Tuong, who is a linguist who has translated Tolstoy and Shakespeare (and also Dr. Seth's poems). This poem is an original work in English, entitled "America", and is based on the theme of "diagonal" inspired by the poet's sight of Broadway, running diagonally through the grid of New York streets. He speaks of the diagonal in various contexts, some of them risqué, and his conclusion is that the diagonal is America.

Dr. Seth then included two short poems of his own. The first was "Some day, my friend"; some day you will be my age and you will think back on the kindnesses shown you and on your reckless youth. The other was "My Pledge", a poem of loneliness and longing, which finishes "on this day I am waiting for you to come home to me".

The next poem was by Ira Reuben, who had been at school with Dr. Seth. She belonged to a Jewish family from Palestine, had been married to a black American novelist, William Gardner Smith, and now lived in France with her daughter. Most of her works express her nostalgia for India. This poem was "A Complaining Poem", about the nepotism and corruption that had made her cynical; the dunces had become successful and the bright students were pen-pushers.

We then heard two comical short poems from a collection made by Andrew Horvat, who studied at Keio. These were kotoba asobi poems by Tanikawa Shuntarō, based on the repetition of doubled consonants, the first being "Kappa", in which a bugle (rappa) was stolen, and the kappa bought some vegetable leaves (happa wo katta); the other was "Ittatte" – "They say he left, and stole away silently (sotto dechatta)".

The last poem was a long one, in which Dr. Seth amply demonstrated his dramatic powers (he clearly is of the same stamp as his actor brother, who played the part of Nehru in the film Gandhi). It was "Swan Song" by the Indonesian poet Rendra, who was born a Roman Catholic in Jogjakarta and converted to Islam; he became a revolutionary, opposed to the dictatorship both of the military and of the church, and his incendiary poems were not to Suharto's liking, so public readings of them were banned. The poem is about a prostitute Maria who is thrown out by the brothel owner because she is racked with VD and owes him money. She walks away under the blazing midday sun, and can see the angel at the gates of Paradise pointing at her with a malicious glare and brandishing a burning sword. She goes to a doctor (the other patients hold their noses when she comes in), and he only injects her with vitamin C as she is nearly dead. Then she walks to a church to confess her sins before she dies, but she is told to wait. When the priest finally comes and adopts an accusatory tone, she pleads "I'm afraid. I need God to befriend me." He merely damns her as "You tigress!" She goes on her way again, and slips on some dog muck and falls, and her ulcers start bleeding. She gathers some food from a dustbin, and walks out of town, praying "Oh God, hear me!" Out of the town, she walks between the paddy fields, and comes to a river in the evening. She washes and drinks the water. The angel tries to drive her away, but she is no longer afraid and thinks back to her childhood. Then she sees a man and he calls to her, and she has the feeling she's known him in the past. He bends and kisses her lips, and his kiss tastes like coconut milk. She thinks, I never dared hope such a handsome man, who appeals to me so much, would ever pass through my life. She kisses him all over, and then sees the scar in his side and the scars on his hands and feet; "I know who you are," she says. The angel freezes. She says "I am no longer afraid. I will enter Paradise; I am whore and bride both."

The meeting closed with a vote of thanks proposed by Council member Dr. Ciaran Murray. Dr. Murray referred to Sir William Jones, justice of the Supreme Court at Calcutta in the 1780s, and the linguist noted for establishing the affinity between Sanskrit and the languages of Europe, who, transcending ethnic and sectarian considerations, like the speaker found much to admire in Asian poetry.