Laxmiprasad Devkota

Laxmiprasad Devkota, the poet of solitude and materialistic thoughts. 

                                                                    Birke B Thapa

                              

      Devkota, the poet absolutely of solitude and quite desperation, started his writing in the language of Nepali and ended it with English. It was only due to his keen affectionate to English literature. He was, by profession, a lecturer of literature in Trichndri College. Since his early childhood, he had gone through a large dimension of Sanskrit classics as well as English literature which made him acquainted with the works of Mahakavi Valmiki, Kalidasa, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron and so many other famous poets of different ages. He was deeply impressed by these poets and started writing  both in Nepali and English language to express his feelings and ideas.

      Laxmi Prasad Devkota was born in 1909 in Nepal. He completed his matriculation in first class when he was sixteen. After passing the ISC, he came to Patna for higher education. In the meantime, the Independence Movement of India broke out and spread all over the country.Devkota also joined the movement and involved himself in politics. Amidst those struggling days, he took his graduation in Arts. He wished to study M.A. in English, but his hope was not fulfilled. He got admitted in Law and of course, successfully completed the course. He was probably the one of the first Law degree holders among the Nepali community.

      Devkota was a poet of genius. In his early twelve, he had an opportunity to read many of Sanskrit literature and could recite fluently the verses of 'Kaumudi', 'Amarkosh' and 'Raghu Bansh'. It was his begining and he wrote many poems, short stories, essays etc. in his mother- language and later, he adopted English. Dr. Siva Mangal Suman, one of the most famous critics so once remarked that Nepali literature had been able to focus itself in the world only for the  precious writings of Devkota.

     Devkota's first publication was 'Muna Madan'. It was published in 1939 and afterwards,he had written stoplessly three epics (Mahakavya), twelve Khand Kavyas', three lyrics, one drama (Natika), one novel and one essay. 'Muna Madan' is in size a small one but it was the first Nepali Mahakavya through which Devkota intended to reflect not only a love story, but the socio-economic problems of Nepal also. He was the first to write Kalidasa's Sakuntala in Nepali language which was entitled 'Sakuntal'. Many of his verses were written spontenously only in a short span of time. One of such work is his best composition 'Sakuntal'. Devkota completed this verse only in three months. It is quite unbelievable that just after completing the 'Sankuntal' he started again to Write another epic due to the invulnerable forces and demands of his friends and finished it only in ten days. This epic was entitled 'Sulachana' and it also occured its own position of popularity in Nepali literature.

    Devkota's knowledge of language was not limited only to Nepali or English, but was extended to several other languages. He knew Hindi, Urdu, Italy, German, French etc. Also he travelled over many countries like Romanea, Hungeri, China, Russia etc. He joined as one of the delegates of Nepal to attend the Fourth World Youth Association held in Romanea in 1953. Several times he had represented Nepal and joined international conferences. These world wide travellings must have had profound effect on his thinkings and writings. He was greatly honoured where ever he had visited. He could write poems so quick and suddenly that people called him the 'Electronic Poet'.He was so madly fond of poetry that once he was even sent to the prison of Ranchi also. But, how could he be put into the prison without medically proved that he was actually mad ! he was set free. He came back and wrote a poem 'Pagal'. He had warm affection to the people of his own country. Both India and Nepal were his motherland. But,when his countrymen mentioned him a mad, he had stricken to the heart. In the poem 'Pagal', he mentioned himself a mad and wrote his feelings like this-

I am mad, Really I am mad

friend

Because I see the words and

listen to the scenes

I taste the scent by tongue.

       He lived in the thought of Reality, the world of his own.Some critics remarked that Devkota was pessimist.His pessimistic ideas have been revealed in many of  his poems. We have no such enough scope to analyse here all his poems. Because, most of his writings had been lost due to lack of care and not yet been discovered. Also he did not commit the crime of having them searched and published. But those which we find in printing show his thought of pessimism. He describes the Earth as a desert. In the poem entitled 'Life is the richest feast', the poet writes as if he was dying up in the scorching heat of the sun in desert and  feels that his birth was worthless.Like the ideas of 'Upanishad', he also believes that man is made entirely respensible for his own deeds. He did never write even a single poem about god .One of his famous poems is 'The donkey's critism against human civilisation .In this poem, he has depicted the men as jackdaws and the ass as the better man. He says that the ass is the wiser, because he knows nothing about law. In the same poem, the poet criticises the marriage as the slave's delight and that laws have made the robbers safe, culture make subline the knave, science has made men blind to the soul, luxuries have made them foul and politics them ghoul. He was indeed a philosopher  to think deeply and obstinately about the facts of life. As time passed, Devakota had blossomed forth as a poet of genius. 

      The last stage of his life was very tragic and tremendous. Though he was criticised as atheist ,but the poems he had written in his final days, show how deeply he was influenced by the belief in god. Being attacked by stomach cancer, he had to spend his final days in intolerable sufferings. Even in those days of sufferings, the poet absorbed himself feverishly in thinking of poetry and went on writing many of his famous poems. He described his cancer pain as poem more  than pain . In one of such poems written in 1968, Devkota wrote-

"Promethean pain I bear

With tears on tears

Yet a song of joy must I raise.

     In the same poem he also wrote that god has given him all this pain so that he may turn to god agin: Just two days before his death, Devkota wrote in a poem that life is the richest feast for man here born.Though he mentioned the Earth, in his earlier poems, as the 'ocean of sorrow', he declares the earth as is the 'ocean of joy' in his later poems. Once he wrote in a note "To me, these mountains appeal my breathen beauty in ourselves and communicates it to the dearest. I want to breath in harmony with them. There is something which you can not find every where.'In this way he expresses the significance of the nature's enternal beauty.

      Day by day  the poets health had broken down. He could hardly bear the pain of intolerable stomach cancer. It became so inbearable that he, in desperation, begged potassium cyanide from those who came to visit him. He had already been bankrupt. The government of India took all risk to pay his debt of rupees twenty thousand.The Nepal government also sent him to Russia for better treatment.He had lost all his hopes to survive. But still he did not want to stop writing.The doctors prevented him from smoking which he had formed a lifelong habit. One day he asked his wife to privide him some white papers and cigaretes. His wife, Despaired by his condition, did as he said. The poet lit a cigarette and started writting on papers endlessly. Smokes distressed his health severely.The doctors and nurses tried hard till the last moment but in vain. He, the poet of inner torment left his breath forever on 14th of September, 1958.