Download - Narratological analysis of the poem AṂDHERE MEṆ of Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh

Giovanna Milanesi 'Narratological analysis of the poem Aṃdhere meṇ of Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh'

Universität Hamburg

Narratological analysis of the poem AṂDHERE MEṆ of

Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh

Giovanna Milanesi

1


ABSTRACT:

This study is about 'Aṃdhere meṇ' of Gajānan Mādhav Muktibodh. My essay is based on

narratological analysis: I will consider the long poem, with its language based on powerful

oneiric images and symbols and its continuously shifting from echoes of reality and

nightmares, as a story narrated by the poet to a reader.

By the use of a kind of analysis usually employed in film studies, (mainly based on the

analysis of the characters as first described by Yakovlevich Propp and then developed by

Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler) I will try to give evidence to the fact that the

structural cohesion of the poem is based on its solid narrative structure that orients the reader

through the various stanzas in spite of the difficulties of the symbolic language.

Using then the actantial model of A. J. Greimas I will trace the relation between the various

characters that appear, pointing out as one of the main theme on which the poem is

constructed is the quest of the eternal, never reached, supreme possibility of expression.

2


INTRODUCTION

When reading Muktibodh's poems, I always felt that his complexity and the depth of his

poetry should place him far beyond the Hindi literature of that period. Undoubtely Muktibodh

is one of the most significant representatives of world literature and at almost fifty years after

his death remains unaltered his ability of speaking to the modern, contemporary man. His

'contemporaneity' makes us feel as his poems were written in the universal language of

mankind: perhaps it is his ability to go to the deepest of the unconscious to face and describe

its nightmares and dreams, or the clarity by which he reveals his hopes and failures.

In this study on Muktibodh, I was deeply influenced by the essay of Mariola Offredi in

'Three tendencies of contemporary Hindi poetry', in which she offers a structural analysis of

the poem. I appreciate her rigourous methodology that leads the reader far beyond the most

evident, apparent meaning and that goes into the construction of the poem itself and into the

personal use of the language by Muktibodh. After having read Mariola Offredi's study I had

the desire to use a kind of methodology that would have allowed me to see in a clear way the

structure beneath the test; instead of using structural analysis, though, I felt that a kind of

analysis based on narratology would have better described the complexity of the poem.

An extremely interesting characteristic of Muktibodh's poetry is that every immage is

rendered in a 'visual' language: his poems appear mostly as a series of visions witnessed by

the poet and communicated to the reader. Moreover, Aṃdhere meṇ, his longest poem, is

structured as a story with a beginning, an end and a series of actions performed by a main

character. The story on which the poem is constructed is so well structured that orients the

reader in spite of the difficulties of the language: we can also say that part of the 'beauty' of

the poem lays in this contrast between the difficulties of the language and the extreme

'legibility' of the story.

All this moved me to attempt a 'narratological' analysis of the poem: in this essay I consider

the poem mainly as a text constructed on a narration, from this basic consideration I will try to

disclose in the poem its multiple levels of significance.

3


1) THE POEM

Aṃdhere meṇ is the longest poem of Muktibodh. It was composed in a span of ten years time:

its composition began in Nāgpur in 1953 and was completed in Rājnāndgānv in 1963. The

poem was first published in Muktibodh's first volume of poems 'Cānd kā muṇh ṭheṛhā hai'

that was edited in 1964 by Śrīkānt Varmā with an introduction of Śamśer Bahādur Siṇh. Some

times before his premature death, occurred in September 1964, Muktibodh asked the editor to

include in the volume the long poem 'Āśaṅkā ke dvīp: aṃdhere meṇ' changing its title in

'Aṃdhere meṇ'. Since then many edition of Muktibodh's poems have been published. I used

for my work the poem in the volume 'Pratinidhi Kavitāeṇ' edited by Aśok Vājpeyī in 1984.

The poems is written in 8 chapters, each chapter is divided in various stanzas of different

length, separated by a space or a dotted line. Here is a brief summary of the events described

in every chapter:

1. In a dark room somebody is walking, the poet can hear this person but can not see him

because he is 'on the other side of the wall'. The plaster of the wall falls down and forms the

image of a face.

Outside of the city, the image of a face appears on the surface of a pond. A magic cave opens

and inside the cave there is a man. The poet recognizes the man as the supreme possibility of

the self-expression.The poet asks him some questions but the winds blows off his torch and he

is thrown into the dark.

2. The poet awakes in the dark as somebody is knocking at the door. He knows that the person

knocking is the same man that was in the cave but he does not want to open the door. Then,

when he resolves to open, he sees nobody outside. A 'bird of the night' tells him that the man

is gone away, he says also that that man is the 'supreme expression' of the poet and that he is

his teacher.

3. The poet does not understand if he is awake or still dreaming. He hears a music and goes to

the veranda: there he sees a band of phantom-like persons. He recognizes among them the

same people that in daytime are governing the city: journalists, poets, ministers...

Seeing him staring at them they try to kill him. The poets runs away through the alleys.

4


4. The poet awakes, revealing us that all what happened before was a dream. He realizes that a

curfew has been imposed in the city. He runs through the alleys, then he comes to a bargad

tree. There he sees a very poor man that lives under the tree. The man seems mad, but in the

nights he regains his mind and sings a song in which he reproaches his mind for being

material and egoist and for having in this way killed his ideals. Hearing these words, he poet

gets very angry and confused and begins to fight with him.

5. A bargad leaf falling his shoulder scares the poet. He runs again away through the alleys

while gun-shots are heard. Then he comes to a barred house that has stone stairs that lead

underground. He goes underground and ends up in a cave. On the wall of the cave some gems

are shining and a waterfall flows. He realizes that the gems are his experiences, his sorrows

and thoughts, all these lived in solitude.

6. The poets escapes from a soldier and a squad of tanks. Then he feels as if something is

attracting him: he follows this attraction and comes to a statue of Tilak that begins to bleed.

Then he sees something moving, wrapped in a sack: the moving figure stands up: he is

Gandhi. Gandhi holds a child in the arm and hands him to the poet. In the poet's arms, the

child begins to cry louder and louder while the poet feels a growing happiness. Then the child

disappears and the poet finds himself holding bunches of sunflowers. Then the flowers turn in

a gun.

The poet enters the house: somebody is lying on the floor, shot to death: it is an artist, a

solitary poet. The poet runs away but it is caught by some soldiers that torture him.

7. He is released. He feels the need to search for 'new companions'. He tries to collect some

brightening stones to compose flowers of light, but trying to do this he feels the 'non

expressivity of words'. He runs again away in the alleys. In these alleys he sees some people

walking. He tries to pass through them but he always finds himself at the bottom of the line.

Then somebody puts a flier in his hands: he reads what is written in the flier and feels as all

his own thoughts were expressed in it. He finds in itself a new reason of life and feels himself

as transformed.

8. In various images is described a revolution in the city: the fire, the intellectuals and thinkers

that try to hide somewhere.There are some powerful images, as 'dark colored' men forging a

burning wheel. Then the dream breaks and the poet awakes. He realize that he is in his room

5


but he feels as he has been visited by a lover. He goes to the veranda and sees the man that he

was searching at the beginning of the poem, but just at the moment the poet sees him, the man

disappears in the crowd.

2) MARIOLA OFFREDI'S STRUCTURAL ANALYSYS OF THE POEM

In 'Three tendencies of contemporary Hindi poetry'1 the Italian scholar Mariola Offredi gives

an interesting analysis of the poem. I will brief summarize the main points of her study in

which she uses structural analysis to individuate a line of interpretation of the poem.

Interpretation is important in Muktibodh's poetry because he uses such a lot of symbols and

oneiristic images that he is not often immediately comprehensible for the reader.

M. Offredi indicates as a central axis in Muktibodh's poem the 'conflict'. The conflict

expressed here is the one experienced by the generation of Muktibodh: a generation of

educated people that, due to the growing unemployement, had to live far beneath the welfare

of the upper-middle class and sometimes in condition of poverty. Sharing the ideals and the

culture of the upper middle class but excluded from the benefits of a higher social condition,

these intellectuals tried to partecipate to the social conflicts.

She examines then in detail three main symbols in the poem: the bargad, the cave and the

alleys. She states that these symbolic images are constructed by a multiple sovrapposition of

many images with the same metaphoric meaning, building up what she calls 'polysemantic'

symbols, made by a sort of 'condensation of images'.

The first symbol taken in the study is the bargad tree. The bargad was one of the main

symbols in 'Cānd kā muṇh ṭheṛhā hai' ('The Face of the Moon is Crooked', another famous

poems of Muktibodh), but in 'Aṃdhere meṇ' is used less often and with the meaning of a

stable, reassuring place.

The symbol of the cave is much more structured and it represents the 'inner life'. She states

that this symbol is gradually build up by using a set of images with the same symbolic

meaning: the room, the brain, the heart, the cave. This four images can be divided into two

groups each composed of two related words that have a sort of opposition, following the

scheme:

1 M.Offredi, C.Cossio, S.Vannucchi, Tre tendenze della poesia hindī contemporanea, Cesviet, Milan 19806


cave-room heart-brain

In this four-words scheme we can observe a double parallelisms: the first between the 1° and

the 3° term (cave, heart) that can be opposed to the second, made of the 2° and the 4° (room,

brain). The cave has the meaning of natural shelter and the heart represents the source of the

feelings, in opposition we have the room as a man-built shelter and the mind as the source of

thoughts. M. Offredi described the first two terms as belonging to the instinct and desire and

linked to the world of unconscious, while the seconds is belonging to the human mind and to

the conscious: this parallelism establishes as the central axes of the poem the conflict also in

the terms of conflict between the conscious and the unconscious.

The third symbol is the alley. Here M. Offredi traces two different phases in the formation of

the symbol: first a negative phase, in which the image is described with a feeling of

suffocation and fear, and the second positive when the alleys become the place of the political

fight and a relative solution of the social conflict. She considered the alleys as having the

same symbolic value of the 'labyrinth': an expression of the mental 'periplus' of the poet that

finds a way to get out only when he is ready to recognize the alleys as the place where the

fight for liberation of the oppressed poor people takes place. Accepting to participate in this

battle would definitely carry the poet out of his 'inner-self' leading so to a resolution of the

conflict.

Other symbols that appear in the poem: Tilak that represents the death of the ideals of the

upper middle that is somehow silent towards the civil repression that took place after the

independence. Ghandi represents the middle class that has been the leading force of the

independence movement. As far as the figure of the 'mad' is concerned, M. Offredi considers

the 'mad' as the poet himself that awakes his consciousness and wants to take part to

revolution, in agree with the interpretation of Bhagvān Siṃh 2 and Aśok Cakrdhar3.

The great contribution of M. Offredi's study is the use of structural analysis to disclose the

meaning of the long poem that remain, otherwise, quite obscure. Muktibodh poetry indeed is

not so easily understandable for the reader due to the use of symbolic and metaphoric images:

it is a poetry that describes and 'paints' the objects always beyond the level of reality.

Offredi offres an interpretation of the poem as the story of an evolution: the progressive

change of the poet that from an life based on individualism comes to social and political2 In Sarvnām, February 1973.3 Aśok Cakrdhar, Muktibodh kī Kāviprakriyā, MacMillan, Delhi 1975.7


involvement. At the time in which the study of M. Offredi was published Indian literary

criticism too was very focused on the social involvement of the literates.

There are of course other possible interpretations. In my point of view the mean theme of the

poem is the sense of the writing itself and the possibility of expression for the poet. It is just

this sense that makes the poem still so meaninful for contemporary man. In order to see how

this theme is present and elaborated in the poem I thought as necessary to study at first the

narrative structure on which the poem is based, a narration that make us consider the poem as

a story.

3) THE POET AS 'HERO'

In Aṃdhere meṇ, as in other poems of Muktibodh, the reader is continuously shifted from the

world and images of reality to those of pure onirism. The things are often animated, the

location and the space change in very unexpected ways; the language, moreover, is often

difficult to follow with its alternative use of common terms and difficult sanscritized

compound words. Within this complexity, what has the function of orienting the reader is the

story that the poem tells, its plot: the poems is in fact a long description of an action

performed of a main character (the poet) with an aim (the meeting of a person) through

various phases structured with a beginning, a climax and a final phase. For all this factors we

can define Aṃdhere meṇ not only a poem but also a 'story' and defining the poem as a 'story'

presupposes that we can trace in it the structural characteristics common to all the stories.

These 'common characteristics' of all the stories were identified, as it is known, by the

formalist Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp in his 'Morphology of the folktale'.4 Propp analyzed the

plot of the Russian folk tales and identified their irreducible narrative elements: he

demonstrated that all the folktales are structured in 31 set of actions perfomed that he calls

'functions' (for example the function of 'absentation', when the hero of the story leaves his

country or family, or the function of 'interdiction', when an interdiction is addressed to the

hero, and so on).

Based on the work of Propp, Joseph Campbell in 'The hero with a Thousand Faces'5

demonstrated the recurrence of universal mythological 'patterns' in many narrative forms all4 Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,1928.5 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Pantheon Press, New York, 1949.8


around the world. Every story is based on a pattern that is basically universal but that is

everytime adapted to the social structure of the culture in which it is told. This universal

pattern, or 'universal story', is developed on the various adventures of a 'universal hero' that

has to reach to his task passing through various stages. For Campbell, the characteristics of

the 'hero' are timeless and universal and so are the stages of his 'performance': the 'call to

adventure', the 'receiving help', the the 'meeting the Goddess' or the 'atonment with the father',

the 'return'. So every story narrates all the same actions of an hero that leaves his place or

family for gaining some kind of knowledge and after having achieved his task takes this

knowledge back to his country or place.

Inspired by the works of Campbell, Christopher Vogler6 has developed the scheme of the

basic plot units. The actions of the hero have for him two aspects: the external journey that the

hero perform to gain his goal and the internal journey where he gains a kind of knowledge.

The beginning of the plot is always based on the 'call to adventure'. After this starting point,

all the major events are 'turning points' for the sucession of the different acts of the story ( the

plot is almost always divided into three acts): important turning points are the 'crossing the

threshold (the hero is at this point far from his land/his home/his entourage) and the 'coming

into a special world' (being far from his ordinary world, the hero experiments the unknown),

then the 'road back to ordinary world' (the hero returns with something that he has gained in

his adventure). The 'climax' (or the 'crisis point') coincides with the 'resurrection', the 'final

attempt' of the hero against his enemies before the victory and the 'return with the elixir' or

'mastery'.

Vogler traces a scheme of the main points of the plot in which, based on the division on three

acts, is traced the correspondance between the actions that the hero performs (external

journey) and his degree of awareness (internal journey):

Parts External Journey Internal Journey

Act I Ordinary World Limited Awareness

Call to Adventure Increased Awareness

Refusal (or Reluctance) Reluctance to Change

Meeting the Mentor Overcoming

Crossing the Threshold Committing

Act II Tests, Allies, Enemies Experimenting

Approach to the In-most Cave Preparing6 Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythical Structures for Storytellers and Screeenwriters, M. Wiese

Production, Ca. 1992.9


(or Second Threshold)

Ordeal Big Change

Reward Consequences

The Way Back Dedication

Act III Resurrection Final Attempt

Return with the Elixir (tobenefit the Ordinary World)

Mastery

In order to see if this structure can be applied to the plot of the poem, we should divide

Aṃdhere meṇ into basic sequences: as we have two main characters, I will indicate the poet as

A and the unknown person (that 'master' that is the 'object' of the poet's quest) as B. Here is a

summary of the main sequences:

1. In a dark room A hears somebody walking. On the wall a face appears.

2. In a pond a face appears on the surface of the water.

3. In the wood a cave opens. A enters the cave with a torch and sees B. He recognizes B and

asks some questions.

4. Asking the questions he has violated something: the wind punishes him by blowing out the

light of the torch and throwing him in the dark.

5. He wakes up hearing somebody at the door. He knows that it is B. He is afraid of meeting

him. Then he resolves to open the door.

6.There is nobody outside. A bird of the night tells him that B is his 'teacher' and suggest him

to search for him.

7. A awakes but is not sure if he is really awake or still dreaming. He hears the notes of a

musical band that is approaching. He goes to the balcony and sees a band composed of

phantoms. He recognize among them some important persons of the city.

8. The phantoms realize that A has recognized them and try to kill him.

9. A awakes from what reveals to be a dream. In the city a curfew has been imposed. He runs

away.

10. A meets a mad man under the bargad tree A fight with the mad because he does not want

to hear what the mad is singing.

11. A leaf of the bargad tree fall on A shoulder. A is frightened and runs away.

12. A comes to a barred house. Under the house there is a natural cave. A descends into the

10


cave and finds some jewels and precious stones covered with water. He takes some stones into

the hand.

13. The road is patrolled by a soldier, A sees also some tanks. A runs away.

14. A feels something that is attracting him, he follows this attraction and comes in front of a

statue of Tilak.

15. The statue begins to bleed. There is a shot. A runs away

16. A sees a sack that is moving: the figure of Gandhi emerges from the sack. Gandhi hands

him a baby

17. A goes away with the baby that cries louder and louder. The baby turns into a bunch of

sunflowers and then in a rifle.

18. A sees an open door and enters. In the room there is an artist that has been shot dead.

19. A walks down the stair but is caught and tortured.

20. A is released. He takes some stones from the soil and tries to make flowers of light, but he

cannot finish them.

21. A runs away. He sees lines of people walking while he find himself alone.

22. Somebody gives him a leaflet and he is surprised as he reads in the leaflet his own

thoughts being expressed. He feels as transformed.

23. A hears some shots, the city is put on fire. The wicked ones hide themselves. Miraculous

weapons defeat the enemies.

24. A awakes and finds himself being alone in his room. In his heart and brain, though, there

are some holes that reflect the light. He feels transformed.

25. A goes on the balcony and sees B going away.

After this division of the plot, we can compare these basic sequences to those described in

Vogel's scheme and we will find that the scheme enumerates exactly the sequential order of

our plot.

The first stage, the 'ordinary world' is not described in the poem but it is only assumed: this

ordinary world is the space in which both the narrator and the reader are situated before the

beginning of the narration. It is this 'starting space', this ordinary world that will give a sense

to all the further sequences of narration because it represents the normality that can make us

be aware of the dreams.

The sequences 1, 2 and 3 are three different renderings of the 'call to adventure' that provokes

an 'increased awareness' in A that is reflected in the 'increasing interest' of the reader that is

caught by the images.

11


The sequences 4 and 5 express the 'refusal' and 'reluctance' toward the 'call to adventure',

also the 'prohibition' appears because of the 'reluctance to change' of A.

The sequence 6 expresses the 'meeting of the mentor' (the bird of the night) and the

overcoming of the reluctance.

The sequences 7 and 8 are the first 'crossing of the threshold' that precedes 'the entering in the

special world'. They define the definitive 'committing' of A to the adventure: having being

discovered by the phantoms, he has no other choice than a further action.

The sequences 9, 10 and 11 represents the 'test, allies and enemies'. The enemies are

represented by the soldier of the curfew from which A runs away, the 'test' is the song of the

madman that provokes in A an emotional reaction, the allies are represented by the bargad

leaf. A in this phases is 'experimenting', it is also described for the first time in the poem a

physical contact (with the mad during the fight and then with the leaf that falls on his

shoulder)

The sequence 12 is the 'approach to the in-most cave' that is also the 'crossing of the second

threshold'. The apparently absence of action of this sequence is 'preparing' for the climax that

will follow.

The sequences from 13 to 20 represent actually the 'ordeal' and constitute the climax of the

narration. It is through what happens in these sequences that A will change so much that in the

following part of the poem will be completely different, we can say it has moved from the

intimism to commitment.

The sequences 21 and 22 represent the 'reward' (A find his place among the other people) that

is the result of his inner change.

The sequence 23 is the phase of 'the road back' to home: here A can witness the changes that

are happening and can increase his 'dedication'.

The sequence 24 indicates the 'resurrection': A is as pervaded by a new life.

The sequence 25 represents the 'return with the elixir', here A sees B for the last time. He will

never meet him though: he has now the complete awareness of his own 'quest' and is so ready

to assume it and go alone. Apparently the poem finishes at the same point of its beginning

because A will never meet B (he sees B going away) but a quest that has begun in the dark

finishes here in the light of the day.

If at the beginning of the poem we can assume that he object of the 'quest' of A can be the

meeting with B, in this final point we are prone to believe that the 'object' of A's quest is the

quest itself: our hero assumes and accepts his own 'recherche', knowing that probably this

search will never come to an end.

12


To sum up, using a narratological analysis we reveal the solid, 'classic' narrative structure of

the poem, it is this narrative structure that directs the reader through the difficult language and

images of the poem.

This analysis, though, does not disclose the fundamental question that the reader can have in

his mind at the end of the poem. The poem finishes with A that sees B for the second time

and they will never meet, this raises in us a further questions: who is B, and who is

consequently A and, above all, what is the quest really about? And so at the end of the poem,

when the poet has found the object of his quest, is left no choice to the reader than begin his

own recherche.

4) THE POET AS 'ACTANT'

In the previous chapter I explained how narratological analysis can reveal the structure of the

plot, I also placed the poem in the typical scheme of narration defined as the 'journey' of a

'hero' that leaves the known world and faces a series of adventures in order to gain a kind of

knowledge by which he will be transformed. However, if this kind of analysis can make us

better understand the narrative structure of the poem, on the other side it does not give an

answer to the questions about what do the characters represent. In order to answer to this

question we will now consider the various characters of the poem not as 'persons' but as a

representation of the various 'class of actions' that 'generates' the various actions performed

by them.

The analysis presented in this chapter is based on the 'actantial model' elaborated by A. J.

Greimas7. For him the structure of a story is based on a binary opposition (for exemple, hero

end villain, etc.), for this reason is possible in every culture and time to trace in the stories a

common 'grammar' defined as 'enunciation-spectacle': 'the content of the actions changes all

the time, the actors vary, but the enunciation-spectacle remains always the same, for its

permanence is guaranteed by the fixed distribution of the roles' 8 So the actions, the

characters, the place of an action can change, but the 'enuciation-spectacle' remains

unchanged. The permanence of this enunciation-spectacle is made constant by a fixed7 A. J. Greimas, Sémantique Structurale, Larousse, Paris, 1966.8 op. cit. p. 17313


distribution of roles and is manifested through various 'actors' that embody it, in this point of

view the characters of a narration are not to be considered as 'persons' but as 'actants', factors

that move the action of the narration. As at the basis of the human conceptual world there is a

'basic opposition', in the narration, this kind of opposition becomes a narrative sequence

composed by two actants whose relationship is of opposition and this opposition generates the

plot.

The 'actantial categories' proposed by Greimas are so based on a 'binary oppositions' that

generate all the actions in a story. This opposition can be present in various way, here a brief

scheme:

1) Subject versus Object (for example: the prince wants the princess and faces various

adventures to fulfill his desire): this is the common scheme for the stories of 'Quest' and is

based on the 'Axis of desire' since the desire of an object is the cause of the actions of the

plot.

2) Sender (Destinateur) versus Receiver (Destinataire) (for example: the transmission of a

knowledge): it is the scheme used in the story of 'Comunication' and based on the 'Axis of

transmission' . The sender is willing to establish a junction between the subject and the object:

the receiver is the element that benefits from achieving a junction between the subject and the

object.

3) Helper (Adjuvant) versus Opponent (Opposant): in the quest or in the search of

knowledge, the main character comes in contact with other characters that can have a

'positive' or a 'negative' role toward the task that he has to perform. This constitutes the 'Axis

of the stories of power', the opposition between 'helpers' or 'opponents' will make the plot

develop into the various 'adventures' that the characters of the story will have to pass through.

Other axis of actions in which ways a oppositional relation is expressed are the oppositions

'command/acceptance' and 'prohibition/violation'.

I have made a scheme based on the actantial analysis of Andhere meṇ. In the scheme I refere

to the main character as 'the poet' and person that wants to meet him as 'the mysterious

man'.

The mysterious man Sender The mysterious manperforms various actions in

14


order to meet the poet.

The poet Receiver He is always passive andperforms an action only whenis compelled to. Toward themysterious man he hasactions of 'disjunction' (hedoes not want to meet him orfail to meet him).

Wall of the room, door of thecave, water of the pond

Helper They give information to thepoet.

Wind Opponent The wind throws the poet inthe dark, we are on the axis'prohibition/violation' ofwhich punishment is aconsequence.

Bird of the Night Helper He gives an information about the mysterious man, as a consequencet the poet will look outside the room forthe first time.

Tolstoj Object of desire We can define it 'object of desire' , the 'non-written novel mentioned is what the poet want to give to the world.

Band of Phantoms Opponent On the axis of punishment/violation (they want to kill the poet because he has seen who they really are)

Mad man Other personification of theSender

He represents another voice of the sender: he increases the'self-knowledge' of the poet showing him the contradictions of his mind.

Bargad leaf Helper It gives an information andprovokes an action: the poet,frightened from the leaf thatfalls on his shoulder, will runaway and will come to the oldhouse.

Precious stones Objects of desire. They are the poet's 'inner thoughts and sorrows' that he wants to leave to the world. The poet takes them into the hands ( action of

15


conjunction). At the end of the poem he will try to use them to make 'flowers of light'.

Soldiers and curfew Opponent The axes is punishment for aviolation

Tilak Object of desire The sight of the statue provokes intense emotion in the poet. He performs an action of conjunction (he embraces the statue and is transformed by this embrace)

Gandhi Helper He will give an object (a baby) to the poet. Then the baby will transform itself intoother symbolic objects.

Child, Sunflowers, Gun Helper The objects have a symbolic value, they represent the interior evolution of the poet.

Death artist Other personification of theSender

As the mad, he represents the 'sender' or a further stage for the poet to reach the sender: it is the end of a solitary way of conceiving poetry that is detached from the real world.

Soldiers that torture the poet Opponent The axis is punishment/violation

People in the roads Helper They will give to the poet a leaflet.

Leaflet Object of desire Reading the leaflet will provoke wonder in the poet as he recognizes in it his 'same thoughts' as expressed .This will lead to the final action.

Fire, Sticks, Embers Helper (Allies) They are actors of transformation of the externalworld.

Through this scheme we can observe three axis:

1. The axis of 'transmission': the main characters of the narration are the poet and the

mysterious man. As we have already pointed out, the poet's position toward the action

displayed in the poem is rather passive: he seems to perform an action only when is

compelled to by the circumstances.

16


Following the 'actantial categories' proposed by Greimas, we can define the

mysterious man as 'the sender' of a message and the poet as the receiver of that

message. We can think to the main axis of the narration as an axis of 'transmission'.

The relation between the mysterious man and the poet is a relation of 'disjunction': at

the beginning of the poem the poet in not 'ready' to meet the mysterious man; in the

middle the sender is represented by the mad man and there is a conflict between the

two. The poem ends with a further disjunction as the misterious man disappears into

the crowd just when the poet wants to meet him, but this relation of disjunction is here

accepted by the poet: after his long adventure he has finally met the possibility of

expression (symbolized by 'the sense of having met a lover'). The possibility of

expression, though, is also the 'object of desire' of the poet, as I will illustrate in the

point 3. Since the desire can never be completely fulfilled it constitutes the everlasting

motivation for the artist's tension toward the expression.

2. The axis of power: in the axis of power we find helpers and opponents toward the

task that the poet has to accomplish.

The helpers can be divided in two categories: the first category is represented by

human beings or humanized animals or also things (as they are capable of provoking

events) that have the function of 'givers': they give to the poet information or tools that

will enable him to perform further actions.

The second category is represented by objects that are used by the poet. These objects

often transform themselves into other objects and seem even capable of acting

autonomously as sentient beings. In the universe of the poem the objects and the living

beings are extrapolated from the reality and seem to live an independent live tracing a

net of mutual correspondences; the effect that this 'independence' of the objects has on

the reader can be defined as what Shklovsky called 'ostranie'9: the objects loose their

real function and create a sense of defamiliarization from the reality. As a consequence

the reader loses his sense of reality and is dragged into the personal universe of the

poet.

The opponents are actors of a 'punishment' that follows a 'violation'. They inevitably

cause a 'turning' in the action of the main character, stressed by the repeated verses:

'bhāgtā maiṇ dam choḍ, ghūm gayā kaī moḍ' ('breathlessly I run, many corners I have

turned') and a change in the scenario.

3. The axis of desire. We can define as 'objects' of desire in the poem those persons or

9 Victor Schlovsky The Knight's move, 192317


objects toward which the poet performs an action of 'conjunction'. If we consider all

the 'objects of desire' present in the poem, we easily see that they are all symbolically

connected with what we can define as the 'self-expression trough the written word',

that is the main aim of the poet. This 'possibility of self-expression toward writing is

only reached in the last stanza of the poem and is represented, as we have already

seen, as 'the promise of a lover that will come to meet him'.

Different sense has the statue of Tilak which is not connected with the 'possibility of

expression'. Despite this I have classified Tilak's statue as 'object of desire' due to the

action of conjunction that the poet has with it through which he will be transformed.

There is also another meaning in this Tilak's statue, I will explain better this latter

meaning in the last chapter.

To sum up: in the third chapter I have shown that the poem is based on a 'classic' narrative

structure; in this fourth chapter I have used the actantial model to define the axis on which the

actions of the narration are structured, I also pointed out how in addition to the huge use of

symbols the 'defamiliarization' of the objects adds a sense of 'ostranie'. I could state now that

the 'classic' narrative structure on which the poem is based acts as a sorte of factor of

'orientation' for the reader that leads him in a poetical universe pervaded by a deep sense of

'ostranie'.

5) THE POEM AS A REPRESENTATION

In the previous chapters I analyzed the poem as a set of 'actions' that are performed and then I

tried to find out which are the 'axis of action' that move the various characters of the poem.

Now I would like to focus on the 'characters' and to examine their traits and characteristics

that define them. In order to do this I have identified the phrases though which they are

described, searching all the expressions that shape their attributes and 'qualifies' them.

We look at first the espressions that define the mysterious man, he is described as:

'koī ek' ('somebody'); 'tilismī khoh giraftār koī ek' ('somebody imprisoned in the magical

cave'); 'gahan rahasyamay aṃdhakār dhvani-sā' ('like a deep mysterious dark sound'); 'koī

anjānī an-pahcānī ākriti' ( 'a non known not-recognized form'); sāmne ('standing in front');

18


'rahasya sākṣāt' ('visible mystery'); 'rahasya vyakti' ('mysterious person'); 'merī abhivyakti'

('my expression'); 'pūrṇ avasthā vah' ('the completed state he'); 'nij-saṃbhāvnāoṇ, nihit

prabhāoṇ, pratibhāoṇ kī mere paripūrṇ kā āvirbhāv' ('self-possibility, internal light, complete

manifestation of my radiance'); 'ātmā kī pratimā' ('image of the soul').

When the narrator meets the Bird of the Night, this will refer to the mysterious man as 'terī

pūrṇatan abhivyakti' ('your complete, supreme expression') and will say: 'terī guru hai' ('is

your teacher').

In the final stanza when the poet sees the mysterious man for the last time he defines him

again as 'param abhivyakti' ('supreme expression'); 'an-khojī samriddh kā vah param utkarṣ'

('supreme expression of an unesplored richness'); 'maiṇ uskā śiṣy hūṇ' ('I am his disciple');

'vah merī guru hai' ('he is my teacher').

All these expressions used to describe the mysterious man seem to suggest that we can see

him as the representation of the unexpressed possibility of expression personified in the figure

of a teacher that renders manifested what is still unknown to the poet. We can also notice that

the attitude of the poet toward the mysterious man is at the first stage of fear and refusal.

This attitude after the serie of events will change and in the last stanza he will accept him as

the everlasting search of possibility of expression that can never be reached because when the

awareness comes it is already 'lost' ('khoī huī').

As we have already noticed before, the poet is always passive and his characteristics are

never defined: we can say, on the contrary, that what defines him is just this 'lack of

definitions'. This undefined passivity renders possible for the author to set the poem as a first-

person narration so that every event narrated to the reader is filtered by the poet's perceptions.

In this way the reader is dragged into the hallucinatory universe of the poet's thoughts and

nightmares: the minute, obsessive description of the hallucinations is like a well-set stage that

makes him feel the action as suspended in a sense of void, as also undefined is the time in

which the poem take place, introduced as the everlasting present of the beginning 'Ziṃdagī

ke...' ('….of the life').

Other representation of the attainment of the self-awareness of the poet are the madman and

the artist, both expression of his consciousness and of the different stages of a process of

elaboration of a personal way of expression. In this latter sense they can be considred also a

representation of the 'sender' because they are that voice of self awareness that the poet is not

yet ready to hear.

19


The madman is a man caught by madness during the day but that regains his mind at night.

In a night-song he deplores his own mind as he considers himself somehow guilty for the bad

situation of the country: 'O mere ādarśavādī man, aur mere siddhāṃtavādī man' ('O my

idealist mind, o my doctrinaire mind'); 'udaraṃbhari ban anātma ban gae' ('voracious, you

have become without soul'); 'bahut bahut zyādā liyā, diyā bahut bahut kam; mar gayā deś,

are, jīvit rah gae tum' ('you have taken much, very little you have given; the country is dead,

oh, you are alive').

What this 'sense of being guilty' towards the nation means is well explained by the

comparison between him and Ajīgart, father of Śunaḥśep. The paragon with Ajīgart that

committed the crime of selling his own son for feeding his stomach10 reinforces the sense of

the awareness to have done too less for the others, having betrayed the country for a personal

advantage. The madman is described as poor and 'miserable' and he lives under the bargad

tree, used also in other poems of Muktibodh as symbol of the unprivileged classes, that poor

people toward which the betrayal has been consumed.

The dead artist, is another representation of the inner consciousness of the poet about having

been isolated and detached from the people. 'Ekāṃt-priy yah merā paricit vyakti hai' ('Lover

of solitude, this is a person that I know'); 'sacāī thī sirf ek ahsās vah kalākāt thā' ('truth was

only a feeling, he was an artist'); 'kāry-kśamatā se vaṃcit vyaktitv calātā thā apnā asaṃg

astitv' ('deprived of the possibility of action, he was conducting his solitary life'). The

following verses: 'svapn va jňān va jīvanānubhav jo halcal kartā thā rah-rah dil meṇ kisī ko

bhī de nahīṇ pāyā thā vah to. Śūny ke jal meṇ ḍūb gayā nīrav ho nahīṇ pāyā upayog uskā'

(dream and knowledge and perception of life that flashing uproared in his heart, he could give

to anybody. Sank in the water of the void, motionless, he could not use them') express the

identification with the poet which is still unable to use his art for the benefit of others.

The death of the artist represents a new stage in the artistic consciousness of the poet 'mar

gayā ek yug, mar gayā ek jīvanādarś' (death is an era, death is an ideal of life'); after having

met the dead artist the poet will be less passive and will movs to the action that will lead to a

complete change.

I have defined various object and even persons are 'object of desire', they represent

something toward which the poet expresses a kind of desire.

The figure of Tolstoj appears in the sky and looks down to the earth, symbol that is explained10 The legend tells thet Śunaḥśep was given by his father Ajīgart for the sacrifice instead the king's son Rohit.

Ajīgart, poor and starving to death, had accepted the king's offer of a hundred cows for his son's life.20


in the verses that follow: śāyad, tālstāy numā koī vah ādmī aur hai, mere kisī bhītar dhāge kā

ākhirī chor vah, analikhe mere upanyās kā keṃdrīy saṃvedan dabī hāy hāy numā, śāyad

tālstāy numā ('perhaps that man resembling Tolstoj is something else, is the extreme end of

my internal thread, central feeling of my unwritten novel in the form of a repressed hay hay,

perhaps, in the form of Tolstoj'). Tolstoj represents thus the 'unwritten novel' of the poet, the

possibility of expression through the written words that has not been reached.

If we compare the description of the others 'objects of desire' we will see that they are all

connected with the possibility of expression through writing. The precious stones that he

finds in the second cave under the inhabited house 'dīpti meṇ valayat ratn ve nahīṇ hai/

anubhav, vednā, vivek-niṣkarṣ, mere hī apne yahāṃ paḍe hue haiṇ vicāroṇ kī raktim agni ke

maṇi ve prāṇ-jal-prapāt meṇ ghulte haiṇ pratipal' ('surrounded by light they are not jewels;

experience, grief, inference of the reason are lying here by me. Those gems of the red fire of

the thoughts that in the waterfall of the life are dissolved at every moment'). The poet is

pained for not having used them, for not having used his in a way that could help the people:

'maiṇne unheṇ guhā-vās de diyā lok-hit kṣetr se kar diyā vaṃcit janopayog se varjit kiyā, aur

niṣiddh kar diyā koh meṇ ḍāl diyā ('I made them inhabitants of the cave, I deprived the field

of the world-welfare: I prohibited them to be useful for the people, I put them in a cave').

In a further point of the poem, though, when the poet wants to use his means of expression, he

will discover that in order to reach the power of expression of the words the will is not

enough: 'acānak vicitr sphūrti se maiṇ bhī zamīn par paṛe hue camakīle patthar lagātār

cunkar bijlī ke phūl banāne kī kośiś/ kartā hūṇ. ... kiṃtu, asaṃtoṣ mujhko hai gahrā,

śabdābhivyakti- abhāv kā saṃket. kāvy-camatkār utnā hī raṃgīn paraṃtu, ṭhaṃḍā. ('suddenly

I also with agility the dazzling stones in the soil continuously collecting, I try to make flowers

of light...but I feel a deep dissatisfaction, sign of a lack of expression of the word'). The poet

understands that the precious gems can not be used by him because of the lasting inner

contraddition 'are, in raṃgīn patthar- phūloṇ se merā kām nahīṇ calegā! Kyā kahūṇ, mastak-

kuṃḍ meṇ jaltī sat-cit-vednā_sacāī va galtī_ mastak-śirāoṇ meṇ tanāv din-rāt' ('oh, these

colored stone-flower will not do the work, What shall I say, in the well of the brain the pain of

being-awareness _ truth or error_in the veins of the brain the tension of day-night')

To fulfill his desire, to reach the supreme expression, he will have to follow the path

indicated him by the mysterious person at the beginning of the poem: 'ab abhivyakti ke sāre

khatre uṭhāne hī hoṇge.(...) pahuṃcnā hogā durgam pahāṛoṇ ke us par tab kahīṇ dekhne

mileṇgī hamko nīlī jhīl kī laharīlī thāheṇ jismeṇ ki pratipal kāṃptā rahtā aruṇ kamal ek'

21


('now I will have to face all the danger of expression, I will have to reach the other side of

difficult mountains and so we will see somewhere the waving deepness of the blue lake in

which at every moment continuously tremble a reddish lotus').

Apart for being symbolized as 'object of desire', we find as well other referents to 'written

words' and the process of writing. When the bargad leaf falls on the poet's shoulder, for

instance, he says: 'kya vah saṃket, kya vah iśārā? Kya vah ciṭtḥī hai kisī kī? Bargad-ātmā kā

patr hai vah kya? ('Is it a signal, is an indication? Is it somebody's letter? Is it a letter from the

bargad-soul?'), giving an interesting parallelism between letter/leaf. Later, when he is caught

and tortured the torturers are trying to find 'bhītar kahīṇ par gaṛe hue gahre talghar aṃdar

chupe hue chāpākhāne ko kojo. Jahāṃki cupcāp khyāloṇ ke parce chapte rahte haiṇ' ('find the

print shop hidden in the underground, deeply hidden somewhere inside, where the leaflets of

the thoughts are continuously printed'); his thoughts are represented here as a leaflet and his

mind as a print shop. While suffering the pains of the torture he is feeling as 'bahut dūr mīloṇ

ke pār vahāṃ girtā hūṇ cupcāp patr ke rūp meṇ kisī ek jeb meṇ vah jeb... kisī ek pheṭ hue man

kī' ('very far away thousands miles I fall silently in the form of a letter in a pocket that

pocket... of a torn mind').

At the end of the poem he is walking among the people and somebody gives him a leaflet

'itne meṇ cupcāp koī ek de jātā parcā, koī gupt śakti hriday meṇ cupcāp kartī hai carcā!!

Maiṇ bahut dhyān se parḥtā hūṇ usko. Āścary! Usmeṇ to mere hī gupt vicār va dabī huī

saṃvedanāeṇ va anubhav pīṛaeṇ jagmagā rahī hai!!' ('in the meantime somebody secretly

gives me a leaflet, a secret force begins silently to talk in the heart!! I read it with much

attention. What a surprise! My own secret thoughts and my hidden sentiments and emotions

are brightening in it!!'). This seals an important point in the evolution of the poem because ut

will be this 'recognition' of his own thoughts in a leaflet given by others that will made him

discover the possibility of the word to become, from personal, universal: 'āsmān jhāṃktā hai

un syāh lakīroṇ ke bīc-bīc/ vākyoṇ kī pāṃtoṇ meṇ ākāś-gaṃgā-sī phailī/ śabdoṇ ke vyūhoṇ

meṇ jhilamil nakśatraṇ/ aur un tārak daloṇ meṇ to khiltā hai āṃgan' ('the sky is spying

through the black lines/ in the lines of the phrases spread the Milky-way/ in the arrangements

of words the star brightened/ and in that way in the constellations flowers a courtyard'). This

reference to the sky is a recalling of the image of Tolstoj (as we have seen the representation

of the unwritten novel of the poet) appearing from the sky. Now it is the poet that reaches the

sky 'Parcā parḥte hue uṛtā hūṇ havā meṇ,/cakravāt-gatiyoṇ meṇ ghūmtā hūṇ nabh-bhar,/

zamīn par ek sāth/ sarvatr sacet upasthit' ('read the leaflet I fly in the sky/ I turn in the sky in

22


moving whirlwind/ on the earth together everywhere aware, present'). Having reached this

important point, a transformation will happen: transformation of the poet that finds his way of

expression and the transformation of the society in a sort of final justice, described as a

fantasmagoric dream rendered by powerful images.

The imagines of revolution end as the poet awakes the poet in his room, feeling the contact he

had with his 'object of desire' as the meeting with a lover came to him 'mano ki us kśaṇ/ atiśay

mridu kinhīṇ bāṃhoṇ ne ākar/ kas liyā thā mujhko/ us suapn-sparś kī, cuṃban-ghaṭnā kī yād

ā rahī hai, yād ā rahī hai!! Ajňāt praṇayinī kaun thī, kaun thī?' ('as in that moment/ very

sweet arms coming/ would have holding me/ so that touch of the dream, that kiss I am

remembering, I am remembering!! Who was the unknown lover, who was?').

After this, the conclusion: he will see for the last time the 'mysterious man': he will recognize

him but their meeting will never take place because the 'supreme expression' is always

followed but can never be reached: 'Param abhivyakti/ avirat ghūmtī hai jag meṇ/ patā nahīṇ

jāne kahaṃ, jāne kahaṃ/ vah hai.' ('The supreme expression/ restless goes in the world/ I do

not know where, I do not know where/ it is going').

Based on the contraddiction between the wish to use poetry to liberate the society from the

oppression and the inner captivation for an excaping from the nightmeres of the world, the

poems has the structure of a drama because it appears as based on conflict and duality. It

originates in the dark of the night and ends in the light of the day, it describes the refusal and

at the same time the aim to a contact with the 'teacher', it develops in a long run between

helpers and enemies, in an ascend from the dark of a cave to the heights of the sky, it is the

inner fight of an intellectual between the fascination of the glory and the awareness of the

possibility of being the help for the disvantaged classes, always between sense of guilty and

decisions, unconscious and conscious.

In the mentioned study of Mariola Offredi, she suggested that for Muktibodh, as for the

surrealists, the only possibility for a solution of the conflict is situated in the unconscious. I

think that in Muktibodh the possibility of resolution of the conflict is never given and if at

the end of the poem the light is reached, it is also implied the everlasting possibility to fall

again deep in the dark.

23


6) THE RELATION BETWEEN 'REAL' AND 'POETRY': A CONCLUSION

The poem 'Aṃdhere meṇ' appears as an oneiric adventure that takes place in the interior world

in which reality leaves the place to an universe of symbols. In this fantasmatic world where

everything seems unstable and where the things can change in other things, emotions have an

important role: the fear, the grief, the breathless runs, the sense of persecution are as a frame

in which the poet's adventure are depicted. Among the emotions, fear seems to be the

prevalent one, 'horrible, terrible' are among the most used adjective.

In the period in which the poem was at first composed, fear seemed to be part of the author's

life. Emblematic for that period in Muktibodh's life is the description of his contact with

Tilaks statue in the sixth stanza of the poem: seeing the statue he 'maiṇ us pāṣāṇ-mūrti ke

tḥaṃḍe pairoṇ ko chātī se barbas cipkā ruāṃsā-sā hotā' ('I crying hold the cold foot of that

statue of stone'); the statue is bleeding: 'bhavy lalaṭ kī nāsikā meṇ se lāl lāl garmīlā rakt

ṭapktā' ('from the nose of the beautiful forehead blood is dropping').

This 'bleeding' of the statue can be a reference to a real fact: Muktibodh was living in Nagpur

in 1953, when he began to write the poem, near to his house there was a statue of Tilak that he

used to see everyday. That statue had surely been the silent witness of one of the darkest

pages of India history after the independence: the terrible repression in Nagpur that followed

the worker's strike of the Emperess Mill in 1953, when many strikers were shot dead by the

police.

This real experience of life was filtered through the poetic language and rendered in images

that go far beyond the real experience and become the universal. This use of poetic language

to expand reality was a characteristic of Muktibodh's poetry.

Muktibodh expressed his ideas about the use of language in poetry in three collections of

essays: 'Nayī Kavitā kā ātmasaṃgharṣ tathā any nibandh' ('The interior conflict of New

Poetry and other essays', published in 1964), 'Ek sāhityik kī ḍāyrī' ('Diary of a man of letters',

published in 1964) and 'Naye sāhity kā saundary-śāstr' ('The esthetic of new literature ',

published in 1971).

In his essays he indicates the creative process of the poet as constituted of three different

stages: at the first stage there is the real as is experienced by the poet; at the second stage this

experience of the real is filtered trough the fantasy of the poet in order to become possible

object of poetry; in the third stage this real experience filtered through the fantasy is

communicated through the words. In this latter stage there is a conflict between the emotions

24


of the poet and the language: the phantasy awakes the meaning contained in the words, but the

words as they are used carry a pre-established meaning created by its social use. In order to

awake new possible significance of the words the poet has to 'recreate the language' through

the association of images and symbols. In Aṃdhere meṇ there is a frequent use of similitude

and metaphors that creates a superimposition of images. The same effect is given with the use

of compound (for example when he describes the physical characteristics of the 'mysterious

person') that have the same effect of expanding the word beyond its common significance.

It is this sort of 'recreation' of the language, this extrapolating the word from its 'common use'

that makes Muktibodh again so relevant in his research of the means of expression.

Conclusion: I started this essay trying to demonstrate that the poem Aṃdhere meṇ can be

considered a poem based on a solid, 'classic' narratological structure. I used narratological

analysis as a mean to deeper investigate the various significances of the poem, showing that

exists more than one level of significance. The ultimate significance is left to the reader, that

is free to catch it because the word in the poem bears a high level of ambiguity that takes him

far away from the everyday use of the common word.

The surprising modernity in this conception of poetry suggests that Muktibodh has still much

to reveal to contemporary man, showing what he really was and continues to be: a giant in

literature.

25


REFERENCES

• Bharati, Swadesh, ed. Indian poetry today. Vol. 1. Rupambara Prakashan, 1969.

• Bhatnagar, Mahesh, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh: jivan aur kavya, 1976.

• Cakrdhar Aśok , Muktibodh kī Kāviprakriyā, MacMillan, Delhi 1975.

• Campbell Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Pantheon Press, New York, 1949.

• Czekalska, Renata, Between Myth and Mystique: Thematic Spheres Shared by Modern

Hindi Poetry and Polish Avant-garde Poetry, Essays in Indian Philosophy, Religion

and Literature 1, 2004.

• Chauhan, Chanchal, and Chanchal Chouhan, Ideological Content of Muktibodh's

Poetry, Indian Literature, 2000.

• Damsteegt, Th. Heroes and Heritage: The Protagonist in Indian Literature and Film.

Vol. 126. Leiden University Press, 2003.

• Greimas A. J., Sémantique Structurale, Larousse, Paris, 1966.

• Jussawalla, Adil J., ed. New writing in India. Penguin, 1974.

• Machwe, Prabhakar, A note on comparative studies in Hindi and Marathi, Journal of

the School of Languages 2 (1974): 69.

• Muktibodh, Gajanan Madhav, and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. "THE ZERO." Journal

of South Asian Literature (1974): 41-41.

• Nandy, Pritish, Modern Indian Poetry, Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1974.

• Offredi M., Cossio C., Vannucchi S., Tre tendenze della poesia hindī contemporanea,

Cesviet, Milan 1980

• Offredi, Mariola, The banyan tree: essays on early literature in new Indo-Aryan

languages: proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Early Literature

in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Venice, 1997. Manohar Publishers, 2000.

• Offredi, Mariola, "Man and Society in Contemporary Hindi Poetry." ARCHIV

ORIENTALNI 65 (1997): 84-120.

• Propp Vladimir Yakovlevich, Morphology of the Folktale,1928.

• Radhekant, Dave, Recent Trends in Hindi Poetry, Indian Literature,1979.

• Satchidanandan, K., Towards a Theory of Indian Modernism, 1996.

• Schlovsky Victor, The Knight's move, 1923.

• Srivastava, Parmanand, Vishnu Khare, and Adil Jussawalla, Age of Nehru and Post-

26


Independence Hindi Literary Scene, Indian Literature,1990.

• Vājpeyī Aśok , Pratinidhi Kavitāeṇ' , 1984.

• Vogler, Christopher, The Writer's Journey: Mythical Structures for Storytellers and

Screeenwriters, M. Wiese Production, Ca. 1992.

.

27