ANIMALS OF DAWN by MURAT NEMET-NEJAT

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.

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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).

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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."