Monday, October 24, 2005

evening meditation (1)


If you alone exist
        you're present everywhere   already
if you alone exist
        we can cease worrying   at once
if you alone exist
        hard though it be   to find you
if you alone exist
        it would be harder still   to lose you


[The phrase "you alone exist" has an immediate literary antecedent in the eponymous ghazal written in 1959-1962 by Bhau Kalchuri in collaboration with Meher Baba (a poem composed in Hindi, though popularised in English). The same phrase also has a deeper historical antecedent in a classic song (in the Gujarati language) by 15th-century poet-saint Narsinh Mehta: "In this entire universe, you alone exist, Shri Hari / Yet, in infinite forms you seem to be!" Vaguely, this seems (in recollection) to be a poem possibly sung/quoted by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, -- although I'm not aware he spoke Gujarati. Perhaps there was some similar/kindred poem he would sing. Suffice to say, the line is in no wise original with the present poetry-dabbler! At this point, the bon-mot about "geniuses steal outright" might be invoked, but to what effect? Clearly, so do novices.
      Questions of the repeating phrase aside, I was pleased with the rhetorical play in the final two lines of this (essentially) quatrain. Classically, in the 3rd line of a quatrain one wants to venture away on a limb, then return to the trunk in the 4th line. It was practiced this way in olden Chinese (in Tang dynasty shi for instance), and (many centuries later) the same principle's noted in Farsi rubai of Khayyam & others.
      Turning from poetry to music, in my view, this same movement in the four lines of a classic shi was taken up by Indian classical music in the four phrases of tintal (the most popular of myriad rythmic cycles in this tradition in modern times -- but popularity of tintal dates from e.g. the 18th century?; it marks the transition from dhrupad to khayal, no doubt). Just look at how tintal is counted with hand gestures! In the 3rd section, the hand turns away, in the 4th section, it ruturns. This dance of the hand in counting the beats of tintal [or for that matter, a kindred 4-phase hand-dance in counting the 8 beats of adital in Karnatic music] illustrates (in my view) the basic structural principle found in rubai verse -- and in shi before it, as one ventures back into antiquity.]

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