AUTHOR:
Azsacra Zarathustra
TRANSLATOR:
AidarIsmagilov
FIRST EDITION: 2008
PRICE: Rs.160/-
ISBN: 978-81-8253-092-8
PUBLISHERS: Cyberwit.net
PAPERBACK.
124 pages
About The Book:
It is not accidental that the title of the
book reminds one of Baudelaire’s “Les
Fleurs du Mal”. The author has allegedly
supplemented the nihilistic “Les Fleurs du Mal”.
The
jerkiness of the poetic rhythms may be due to the rather laboured efforts of the
translator. Literary offerings often lose their impact through translation. The
introduction to the author at the beginning of the book strikes one as
incoherent and over-enthusiastic. The dramatic comments should have been less,
leaving the reader to judge for himself the intrinsic worth of the 124 pages.
Some biographical detail about the author
might have helped the reader to make some sense of the eccentricity exhibited
in the writings. We learn only that the
poet lives in Russia and has founded a
help centre for injured predatory
animals and birds called MAYASTRA. We
are told that Azsacra is seriously into the subject of secret and esoteric
religious cultures. This firmly establishes the poet as a romantic and,
perhaps, a mystic.
Azsacra has also written ‘MYSTERIUM: Twenty
Four Rings’ and ‘ DENIALS: Joining of the Western Wolf of the Nihilism and the
Eastern Dragon of the Absence’. He writes poetry in a new style called
‘SacralWordcinema’. Obviously he deals with the sacral themes of Good and Evil,
the addition of the word ‘cinema’ is difficult to appreciate—it may refer to
kinesis or movement.
The poet has a penchant for the Japanese
form of poetry called ‘haiku’. Such poetry with its compressed imagery presents
a challenge to all who have poetic aspirations. While Azsacra may have adopted
and adapted the haiku to suit his themes, he appears to have omitted the beauty
of haiku images. He has a vein of dark romanticism running through his poems.
Phrases are obscure: ‘the tiger sneaks/ on
its own/ hair’, ‘ howling of / the wolf guards/ the swallow’, ‘the wind
through/ the roses…quailed the eagle:/ the execution by the petals’. It could be that the incoherence is
intentional. The poems lack sequence and logic, but the numbered stanzas do
make sense. His poems seem to shift in a
surreal world. There are several images taken from the world of Nature. We find
references to the bumble bee, the tiger, the wolf, the rose, the eagle, the
grasshopper, the snail, the praying mantis, and several other creatures – not
all predatory. There is a thread of melancholy that runs through the words and
the images are mostly destructive.
In Azsacra we find the confluence of East
and West mysticism, as for instance in ‘Terror of the Rose ‘and ’Satori of
Shooting of Samadhi’.
Reading Azsacra is not an easy exercise and
interpreting his poetry has been rendered difficult because the volume is a
translation. What does come across is the deep sadness that seems to pervade
almost all Great Russian writers.
About the author:
Azsacra Zarathustra is a well known Indo-Aryan philosopher and
poet-mystic. He is Editorial Advisor for the international journal of
poetry and art "Harvests of New Millennium" (India). He is published in
India, Tibet, Japan, Germany, Norway, England, USA.
Where to buy:
REVIEW BY KEYA ROY GHOSH
No comments:
Post a Comment