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“My Unwritten Novel”: The Long Poems of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh between Genre and Form

“My Unwritten Novel”: The Long Poems of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh between Genre and Form The long poems of the Hindi poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917–64) present a series of fantastic narratives, in which a nameless speaker journeys through a fantastic landscape. These works, often analyzed solely in terms of a supposed mythic, romantic structure, should be considered as a response to formal problems of the novel and the lyric in midcentury Hindi literature. Despite acknowledging these long poems as his most important contribution, literary critics display a marked discomfort with what they see as their excesses. Muktibodh’s writings, however, reflect his substantive consideration of the problems of narrative poetry. In Muktibodh’s most famous work, “Aṁdhere meṁ” (“In the Dark”), the long poem’s distinct formal structure is deployed to produce the disjointed paratactic narratives that typify Muktibodh’s work. Furthermore, this poetic structure is crucially influenced by free verse poetics in Marathi, making clear that any consideration of modern Hindi literature must take into account the complex interrelationships of literary cultures in South Asia. Thus, Muktibodh’s long poem prompts a reconsideration of the role of genre and form in our understanding of South Asian literary cultures and their engagements with the world. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

“My Unwritten Novel”: The Long Poems of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh between Genre and Form

Goulding, Gregory
Comparative Literature , Volume 73 (3) – Sep 1, 2021
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Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-8993964
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The long poems of the Hindi poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917–64) present a series of fantastic narratives, in which a nameless speaker journeys through a fantastic landscape. These works, often analyzed solely in terms of a supposed mythic, romantic structure, should be considered as a response to formal problems of the novel and the lyric in midcentury Hindi literature. Despite acknowledging these long poems as his most important contribution, literary critics display a marked discomfort with what they see as their excesses. Muktibodh’s writings, however, reflect his substantive consideration of the problems of narrative poetry. In Muktibodh’s most famous work, “Aṁdhere meṁ” (“In the Dark”), the long poem’s distinct formal structure is deployed to produce the disjointed paratactic narratives that typify Muktibodh’s work. Furthermore, this poetic structure is crucially influenced by free verse poetics in Marathi, making clear that any consideration of modern Hindi literature must take into account the complex interrelationships of literary cultures in South Asia. Thus, Muktibodh’s long poem prompts a reconsideration of the role of genre and form in our understanding of South Asian literary cultures and their engagements with the world.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2021

References

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    Lye, Colleen
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    Mani, Preetha
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    Mufti, Aamir R.
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    Pauwels, Heidi
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    Prins, Yopie
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    Rajagopal, Arvind
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    Ram, Harsha
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    Śāh, Rameścandra
  • Kālbaddh aur padārthmay
    Singh, Kedārnāth
  • Ek vilakṣaṇ pratibhā
    Singh, Śamśer Bahādur Muktibodh, Gajanan Madhav
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    Smith, Neil Sheppard, Eric McMaster, Robert B.
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  • The Progress of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation
    Trivedi, Harish Pollock, Sheldon
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    Vājpeyī, Aśok
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    Varma, Nirmal
  • The Realist Impulse and the Future of Postcoloniality
    Anjaria, Ulka
  • The Worker of Poetry
  • World Literature without a Hyphen
    Beecroft, Alexander
  • Violence and Nonviolence in Shelley’s ‘Mask of Anarchy.’
    Borushko, Matthew
  • Realism after Modernism and the Literary World-System
    Cleary, Joe
  • Anil
    Deśpāṇḍe, Ātmarām Rāvjī
  • Realism Wars
    Esty, Jed
  • Peripheral Realisms Now
    Esty, Jed Lye, Colleen
  • Modernism and the Birth of Divided Subjectivity in Postcolonial India: A Study of Muktibodh (1917–1964)
    Gautam, Sanjay K.
  • Introduction: Worlding Realisms Now
    Goodlad, Lauren M. E.
  • Antinomies of the Realism-Modernism Debate
    Jameson, Fredric
  • Neil Smith’s Scale
    Jones, John Paul Leitner, Helga Marston, Sallie A. Sheppard, Eric
  • Legislators of the Post-Everything World: Shelley’s ‘Defence of Adorno.’
    Kaufman, Robert
  • Lyric Commodity Critique, Benjamin Adorno Marx, Baudelaire Baudelaire Baudelaire
    Kaufman, Robert
  • The Poet’s Corpse in the Capitalist’s Fish Tank
    Kumar, Amitava
  • Long Poem or Unending Poem? On the Emergence of Muktibodh’s ‘Andhere Mein.’
    Lotz, Barbara
  • Rāhoṁ Ke Anveṣī: The Editor of the Saptak-Anthologies and His Poets
    Lotz, Barbara Dalmia, Vasudha
  • Romantic Allegory and Progressive Criticism
    Lotz, Barbara Dalmia, Vasudha Dansteegt, Theo
  • Afterword: Realism’s Futures
    Lye, Colleen
  • What Was So New about the New Story? Modernist Realism in the Hindi Nayī Kahānī
    Mani, Preetha
  • Towards a Lyric History of India
    Mufti, Aamir R.
  • The Multilingual Local in World Literature
    Orsini, Francesca
  • Diptych in Verse: Gender Hybridity, Language Consciousness, and National Identity in Nirālā’s ‘Jāgo Phir Ek Bār.’
    Pauwels, Heidi
  • ‘What Is Historical Poetics?’
    Prins, Yopie
  • The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class
    Rajagopal, Arvind
  • The Scale of Global Modernisms: Imperial, National, Regional, Local
    Ram, Harsha
  • Upanyās aur muktibodh
    Śāh, Rameścandra
  • Kālbaddh aur padārthmay
    Singh, Kedārnāth
  • Ek vilakṣaṇ pratibhā
    Singh, Śamśer Bahādur Muktibodh, Gajanan Madhav
  • Scale Bending and the Fate of the National
    Smith, Neil Sheppard, Eric McMaster, Robert B.
  • The Scale of World Literature
    Tanoukhi, Nirvana
  • The Progress of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation
    Trivedi, Harish Pollock, Sheldon
  • Muktibodh ke sāth sāṭh sāl” (“Sixty Years with Muktibodh”)
    Vājpeyī, Aśok
  • Muktibodh kī gadya-kathā” (“Muktibodh’s Prose Fiction”)
    Varma, Nirmal