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Published : 18 Sep 2017, 17:44

Non-linear time and intertextuality in Art Informel

Avik Gangopadhyay reads the lonely lyricism in the prose-poem narratives of Ahmed Tahsin Shams

 

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In the fleeting forms and teasing diction, THEO 101 suggests a variety of readings, but it gives vivid, singular life to its subject. The conscious artistry of the thirty-four poems of the collection champions the displeasure of atavism, they do not abide by normality as a paved road which is comfortable to walk with no flowers sprouting on it. In his lyrical abstraction, the poet doesn’t seem to struggle with his own definition of self or any alienation from society. With directness there is an entrance and exit, into and from the creative consciousness, which is, in the words of Van Gogh, “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
Structurally, THEO 101, published by Antivirus Publication, Liverpool, England, has an unconscious resemblance, might be prompted by both empathy and cognitive antipathy, with the Judeo-Christian theological narrative. The “Inside” of the dark chasm can be segregated even in the twilight : the first eleven verses (101.1 – 101.11) encapsulate a range of themes and impressions “In the Name of Life and Living”, which comprise the first portion, the first group of verses like the “Torah”, the Hebrew word that means “to shoot (an arrow),” and has the sense of pointing one in the right direction, giving the history of human perception, where “screams” of slaughter, poverty, injustice, ignorance, beastial flesh, sin and religion are allowed to interact with “Truth”. These set of verses not only capture the dynamic image of Godot, the redeemer, moving into a “cracked terrain”, but also to be “evaporated”, after reaching “There”, where the “Two roads depart”. The “unseen anguish” acts as an underlying creative thread, before which glory of the “Great” appears too frail to survive, as if awaits deportation into a small, insignificant nation surrounded by “Nothing but long sigh...” The 11 verses record the conquest of make-belief, a transition from faith to doubt, the formation of the “Crumbled and fallen” and the “Speechless and sliced off” kingdom, and the division of that kingdom into a “still breathing” and “rubbed out” kingdoms, and finally the destruction of “All dusty but intact” kingdoms. Such existential cage is framed and humanized by the image of “weeping still..All perceived but quiet”.
There is a coda poem that initiates the next set of twelve verses with pronounced scriptural and literary intertextual allusiveness, flavoured by a poignant alliteration, “Vacuum vista/ Veins of vacuity/ Void visual”, points more to a phenomenological nothingness devoid of absurdity. Now comes a different set of twelve verses (101.13 – 101.24) with vibrant impressions “Unseen Beacon Against Antonyms”; they don't relate assertions based on experiences. Rather they relate the experiences of the human heart. They do not advance the story of the “Crumbled and fallen”. Instead, through the use of “muteness murmured”, “The room roars/Nothing but silence”, “Buzzing tearing the holy pages”, “Ideology’s shackle/ In Achilles’ heel”, “Sleeping with death” they delve into the questions of suffering, wisdom, life, love, and most importantly, the character and nature of belief in God. In the process the poetic consciousness undertakes a sojourn into literary history--from the classical world of Greek epics, through the irony of Jonathan Swift, to the inexplicable dread and absurdity of Franz Kafka and Albert Camus, again back to Marlowesque and Goethean mirrors of Faustus and Mephistopheles, to complete the rondeau. And finally, these poems have another important function, bringing home a gamut of identities who never breathed an air of complacent comfort, be they Lucifer or Mephistopheles or serpent, or Zeus, Milton, Bacon, Pope, Blake, Grey, Dickens, Darwin, Marx, Russel, Beckett, Dali or even Cameron or Spielberg—they serve as a hinge linking the historical psyche of the past with the prophetic apprehensions of the future, skidding forcefully through the fragmentation and juxtaposition of time present in the expressions “Dazzled”, “daylight”, “dimness”, “Disgusted”, “Delivered”, “Destiny”, “Doom”, predominantly cerebral in its appeal.
The two coda poems Two Supremoes and He Did the Tree of Life (101.25 and 101.26) stretch the implication of the title THEO 101 from “Dear God” encountering “My Boatman”, where tyranny of growing whispers stylistically melts into the stream of consciousness fading out in the image of Forbidden Tree of Life singing “Ka Ka” checkmating Time.
The last eight poetic impressions (101.27 -101.34) make up the final prophetic set “Letter de Heaven, Misreading Metaphors.” The verses stand along id, ego and superego amidst the blanket of dark as they "speak for" eternal illusion or God Himself, conveyed with a palpable conflict between “optimistic fools” and a “rebel” painted in tear drops. Thematically and stylistically, here, the book of verses reaches an artistic crescendo. Three epistolary prose-poems surface as an audible voice with a more-than-irony syntagmatic harmony, a voice rendered through a variety of means, including dreams, visions, angels and nature. Strikingly, Heaven is not sublimated to an austere stratum, it is transcended to reality, a reality in the purest sense of the term. The poetic self –in- contradiction appears prophetic in exposing banality as both sacred and sinful, in dialing the emergency number to report the death of “hundred myths”, in feeling the tug between the voluptuousness and the ocean of nectar but concludes without warning the people of any coming judgment.
Reading THEO 101 involves intense questioning of cultural sources, intones reaction against formal limits of religious make-belief and optimism cut across with passionate crystals of realism. When Van Gogh was penning his heart out to Theo he got the gusto of an unhesitant eloquence in stating ,“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.” The deceptive scriptural content offers a scope for the poet to "Make it new," as Ezra Pound famously advised to fellow modernist poet T.S. Eliot in 1934. Such a succinct expression "Make it new" will not be an overstatement to sum up the spirit of this entire artistic endeavour that unifies with adroit ingression the moments of reality, fragmented through skepticism, alert use of elliptism, refashioned mythic forms and interior perception.

Avik Gangopadhyay, a contributor to the Bangladesh Post, is an author of repute with 20 published books in English and Bengali on aesthetics, theories of literature, language and criticism, dead languages, not-so-discussed historical issues, philosophical and religious ‘ISMS’ and Indological studies. Awarded the “Editor’s Choice Award” for his “Achievement in Poetry” from the Library of Poetry, USA, in April 2002, he devotes time to answer queries across the globe as an “Expert” on the first half of 20th century on the esteemed webzine on Classical Literature.

 

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