RUNA BANDYOPADHYAY Reviews
Animals of Dawn by Murat Nemet-Nejat
(Talisman House, 2016)
[Editor's Note: Runa Bandyopadhyay's review for Galatea Resurrects of
Murat Nemet-Nejat’s Animals of Dawn is a first in English for this
Bengali scientist-poet-critic.]
1.
It was a cold night
of December 17th,
2016. The occasion was Kaurab International Reading Series at Kolkata, India.
Poet Murat Nemet-Nejat was reading his new book length poem “Animals of Dawn”.
Breaking the cover of oyster the pearl was engraving the architecture of
animals, plants, speck of dust, dew, of dawn with colour and without colour. A
purple grief from the surface of his realization was flying towards me from
dark to light, from real to unreal. A sinless tear was laughing on his
sensitive lips as he was reading through the book. A terrible disaster flashed
on my earlier realization of Hamlet. A new feeling started swinging at the
confluence of appearance and disappearance myth.
Yes, this was the
scene when I met poet Murat Nemet-Nejat with his “Animals of Dawn”. After the
reading series I came back with the book and a resonating trace of emotion for
Hamlet, a metaphor of the creation, desire of the poet. Then I started my
reading. At the very beginning Murat‟s desire zoomed in his voice,
“I want to make Hamlet, to dis appear.
The lightning that didn‟t strike made me
disappear completely.” (P-2)
When we start
searching the concurrence between exterior
and interior, when we understand
that reasoning is so
useless, scientific truths are not permanent, all
relations are
relative, every moment is changing with respect to me then
we
start jumping from our first life to second life (poet life).
Here we see a
journey of a poet to search the metaphor
between void and non-void, real and
unreal, living and un-living, sanity and insanity. Murat‟s “Animals of Dawn” is
not a comparison with Hamlet, but a metaphor.
2.
During my journey
through “Animals of Dawn”, the first question triggers to my mind; Why Hamlet
is the subject of “Animals of Dawn”? Why not the other plays of Shakespeare?
The answer lies in the poet’s hunt for a definition of time. Hamlet is an act
where time and consciousness play the major role throughout the act.
Compression of time is a general characteristic of any play. But in Hamlet to
achieve this compression time is not represented by concurrence of events.
Rather a time gap is inserted as a significant duration. During this duration
Hamlet’s attitude towards time has changed. Apparently the movement of Hamlet
may be in same pace with Claudius but his consciousness of duration makes him
aware about his slowness. This duration is brilliantly implanted in “Animals of
Dawn”. Its essence is reflected in the poet’s idea of horizontality of time.
According to him time is defined by attention, not by memory, because memory is
deceptive, therefore vertical. But attention has only intensity and duration,
so horizontal, as Murat said vibrantly,
“All
experience exists on a field possessing colorations collapsed onto a flat
field. They – star like- flash at different times, captured by a solipsism of
the mind’s attention, That discontinuous capture by mind of a point in a
continuum - that is chaos – is what consciousness, a,k,a, time, is.” (P-39)
Hamlet is a story of
moment. No past, no future. Hamlet’s hesitation increases the duration of the
act, which is the subjective face of time and hence mind’s attention. As poet
says brilliantly,
“In
Hamlet the distinctions in the structure of time isn’t between past, present
and future, but in it’s passing; fast moving slow moving time” (P-47)
Let time be illusory. Wonder will see all boundaries are
breaking around. If you tie up space- time, all laws of science will breakdown,
like breaking of first love at fencing. For the duality let’s go down to
relativity through classical water-stair. Wonder will see infinite has held
your finger.
The next
characteristic is consciousness. How can we define it? Is it the soul as the
poet defines it? According to Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) theory
of consciousness given by mathematician and physicist, Roger Penrose, “consciousness is derived from microtubules
within brain cells (neurons) which are sites of quantum processing”. Again,
as per spiritual belief the soul is immortal, death can’t destroy it. Then what
about this consciousness? Does it exist even after our death?
Being a scientist I
was searching the answer obviously through science. Not fully satisfied. Then
“Animals of Dawn” pointed out to the bridge between science and Sufism.
According to quantum theory there is a concept of quantum coherence. As Roger
Penrose said,
“The
brain’s material structure enfolds a quantum state at its most unimaginably
sub-microscopic level. When not impinged upon by neurochemical activity in the
surrounding tissue, the least excited state is preserved.”
If we can decelerate
our neurons to this minimum excited state, we can create a state of quantum
coherence between our consciousness and Brahma, the Absolute. This process is
called spiritual meditation in Indian ancient philosophy. If we believe
consciousness was there in the universe since the start of time, the Big Bang,
and our soul is part of the Absolute, then difference between soul and
consciousness dissolves. In Sufism, mirror is the site where God, the human
mind and nature can see themselves in each other’s reflection. Poet has
implanted beautifully,
“Mayflies”,
“Infinite
possibility doesn't mean freedom, but that it may happen infinitely but of
maybes
Infinite
possibility, within finality
that
is the pharosrhythm perception of freedom
as
gestures of maybes
prr
object
ivities in a mirror existing
in
continuum.” (P-35)
In fact everything
depends on our perception. The sole question of living and un-living (whether
consciousness exists after death) gets dissolved by poet’s spiritual belief,
“to
be it, does it have to exist?
god
is it, whose essence, is non-existing.” (P-34)
Existence - we are
always in a whirlpool of this word. In stream of life we are always in the
search of our existence. Life is a continuous journey but our existence doesn‟t
exist in this continuum. Rather lies through duration of an instant. If we see
time as duration, all walls of existence will be washed away with invisible
waterfalls. Make time illusory by remembering after-glow on the bed, where you
spread a picnic blanket on the night of first love. Wonder will perceive the
dismissal of your real time...
“In
the music of time there’re no bars.
The
time, that is within time, is chaos.
In
the heart of chaos, in the chaos within chaos, motion disappears” (P-39)
3.
Murat said,
“Hamlet’s
is a language of the soul progressing towards dying.....dissolution of the body
towards the un-human and un-living...The dichotomy in the play is distilled in
its concept of time as speed and slowness, their duality.” (P-69)
Hamlet‟s movement is
towards a zero point with speed but his desire in consciousness slowed down
this speed for a progress of real to unreal, living to un-living. The zero
point appears to be “a drop of dew that
the soul may convert into tears”. As the poet magnificently writes
“Two Bubbles of Time Collapsing”
“The
implosion jumping from one time space to another, two bubbles, accelerating
speed clashing and its healing through slowing
towards a vigil, of tears
or lack thereof alas!
towards zero point of stasis
which is dying
Or its lack thereof alas!” (P-45)
The zero point is
like the false vacuum for infinitesimally small instant of time before
Big-Bang. Its existence is like a drop of dew. But the potentiality lies in the
conversion to tears, where our consciousness comes into play. The zero point
rings the bell of attraction of Brahma, the Absolute. That was the point of
germination of the soul, i.e. our consciousness which makes our journey from
real to unreal, from living to un-living. Our existence is still searching the
value of unit of soul through science. If we think it as constant, the horizon
problem will fasten on our finger. Will be the philosophy of life become too
flat? Answer lies in poet’s Sufism reflection about speed and slowness in
Hamlet,
“The
two are irreconcilable. Though they point to the same facts, like convex and
concave mirrors reflecting each other, the wall in between is unbreachable.
That unbreachableness (the way the consciousness of the living, the real, the
rational cannot breach into the consciousness of the un-living, unreal) is at
the heart of Hamlet’s mysterious power” (P-70)
4.
“Time
is forgetfulness in Hamlet. Everyone forgets though protesting otherwise”
(P-33)
Polonius forgets in
between conversation with his son Laertes, Hamlet forgets Ophelia, even the
ghost. Also creator of the characters, Shakespeare seems to forget what
happened from one scene to the next in Hamlet. It triggers the question to me,
are we losing anything by this oblivion characteristic? The poet saw the
oblivion as-
“Dream's
steps towards erosion...
No,
dream's half steps towards illusion...
No,
no!... death's half steps, towards oblivion... oblivion... “ (P-52)
Most of the time,
Hamlet forgets the goal, the revenge. He is preoccupied with other things, like
his calm exercise of judgment, his hesitation, which are the essence of Hamlet.
A rhythm of forgetfulness, exploring metaphysics on suicide instead of revenge,
is its irresistible entropy. The forgetfulness reflects as loss if we see our
life on a continuous frame of reference. But actually life is a story of
moment. Hence there is a link of the concept of different time zone. To recover
the loss we have to cross a reverse threshold. An instant on the threshold of
not remembering is the change of time zone like the humming bird approaches the
moment of jump,
“Hummingbird”
“Before
we part did
A
moment we share together
You
having placed a small nutrient vial of translucent liquid on your porch
And
I, watching birds dipping into them
You
away,
In instantaneous darts
Do
you remember?” (P-55)
5.
When I enter into the
last phase of the book, I encounter a quantum jump of poetic form. Most part of
the poem has created a space, a lot of space for reader. But the last few pages
are just like a script of a film, even covering the full page. Why this
transition, I asked the poet during Kaurab International reading season. The
poet‟s answer was, „a relief for reader‟. Means with a lot of space also the
reader gets bored and want to have something continuous script like structure,
where the reader can flow away with the panorama made by the poet, just like
cinema.
Poet has assimilated
carefully script writing form of cinema. A three dimensional picture has been
drawn nicely with the help of two dimensional words, giving the illusion of
depth in perspective. The degree of a realization, the source of a feeling has
been placed in a spectacular series of pictures with words. He presented the
scene frame by frame up to the tolerance mark of our perception. The correct
combination of position and juxtaposition makes the picture so attractive that
it draws full attention (which is again the poet‟s definition of time!) of the
reader. I will like to quote from an essay “Cinema and the subjective factor”
written by Mr. Ritwik Ghotok (a famous Indian Bengali film director) :
“All
art in the last analysis is poetry. Poetry is the archetype of all creativity.
Cinema all its best turns into poetry”
In a reverse way I
can say Murat’s last part of the poetry has turned into a successful script of
a cinema. This transition, from the frame of poetry with space to the frame of
film-script, is an irregular jump; I can say a quantum jump from void to the
matrix motion. I will slightly differ from poet’s view of reason for this
transition. Truly speaking the space in the poem is a vital issue for me,
personally. I am in the middle of my new experiment where I construct my own
poem sitting in the space created by a poet in his poem. I am going to publish
a new book regarding this subject from Kaurab publisher in the International
Kolkata Bookfair in January, 2017. When I read a poetry book, if the poems
trigger me, if I can assimilate the original poems in my way of realization,
then I can construct my own poem from the original one. In this process
deconstruction comes into play first. Then I spread the assimilated feelings in
a continuum of my way of life and construct my own poem with an internalized
language. This process demands a lot of space in the original poem. Therefore I
will say this change of poetry form in Murat’s “Animals of Dawn” is a phase
transition.
The poet wanted to
capture the view of Hamlet, where Hamlet‟s main objection was against the
second marriage of his mother. The detailing of each snapshot with illusive
creation of continuous motion is a perfect reflection of this view. Instead of
relief, reader gets a pleasant journey through the scenes. I will say this is a
fast moving cinema where flow, dimension, movement has been captured with
correct words. A proper speed, oblique hesitation of vision, gap between scene
and the zooming technique has been properly installed to make it a visual
poetry, where each frame has been stitched aesthetically.
Script is not the
poetry, a form of poetry. I like to see the whole book as a single poetry.
During the journey through this poetry different feelings were zooming in,
fading out, some conflict, were getting mingled with my consciousness. But the
homogeneity of Murat’s poem is capable of transcending all feelings of
conflict. For me journey through Murat’s “Animals of Dawn” has become an
excursion of searching the relation of my present position in the background of
infinite periphery, where “the interior marries the exterior in the womb”. On
the surface of cold evening of December, I spread all void, tied on my finger,
on jingling water wave as Murat was reading his poem. The shallow layer of
emptiness washed away with tune without tune with the sound of his poetry. A
face of eternal evening woke up at the navel root of expanded night.
---------------------------------------
Poet, Essayist and
Translator Murat Nemet-Nejat was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and lived in the
United States since 1959. He studied literature at Amherst College and Columbia
University in the United States. Murat Nemet-Nejat is the author of several
books of poetry like The Bridge, The
Spiritual Life of Replicants, Structure of Escape, a 7 part long poem and
most recently Animals of Dawn. He is
the editor of Eda: An Anthology of
Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Jersey City: Talisman House, 2004). His books
of translations also include Ece Ayhan's Blind
Cat Black and Orthodoxies (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997) and Orhan Veli's I, Orhan Veli (New York:
Hanging Loose Press, 1989).
*****
Ms. Runa Bandyopadhyay, from West Bengal, India, is a poet, writer and reviewer in Bengali language. She is the Scientific Officer in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India. As she herself says: "Philosophy, history and science are the subjective face of my poetry, but not the subject itself. I roll down from subject to wonder, to confusion of object in a centripetal travel. Weaving the truth of moments with silent tears, I start writing the alternative history of life-river. I like to review those books which trigger me to write my own poem in my own way." Her books include: poetry, “Aseemer Khelaghor” (Playroom of Infinite), “Tamas Journal” (Journal of Darkness), “Poroborti Songbad” (The Next News ); reviews, “Antarbarti Pangkti” (Between the lines), “Tamoser Alokbhromon” (Light-travel of Darkness); and stories, “Parankotha” (Word of bosom), etc."
Wonderfully written !!
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