S S Noor

Professor, Department of Punjabi, University of Delhi, Delhi

Harbhajan Singh is a poet who died in harness. Seven days before his death, on 21^st October 2002, Harbhajan Singh wrote his last poem, which is yet to be published.

Harbhajan Singh, a distinguished figure in Punjabi literature for the last five decades was born on 18^th August, 1920 in Lumding (Assam). Persistently, that forest away from home constituted the unconscious of his images, metaphors and symbols and the memories of the forest continued to lyrically haunt his poetic language.

Harbhajan Singh published his first collection of poems Lassan (The Marks of Violence on the Body) in 1956 and with this very first poetic work brought him recognition as one of the major Punjabi poets after the Progressive movement, which had been dominated by Mohan Singh for a long time. Harbhajan Singh in This collection of poems was marked by two different modes of poetry: the lyrical mode and the free verse. His lyrics departed majorly both in style and structure from the traditional romantic and the folk lyrics. Even the lyric on Partition was tinged with an ironic voice:

Sleep my angel the night is lost

Sleep my angel darkness rules

The star-awaited dawn is drowned in gloom

The miasma of death hangs over the world

The mehfils dispersed

Desolate shadows taken over

Life is still, have gone deaf

And the universe’s passed out in distress.

The poems in the latter half of the volume also created a new poetic diction. The romantic idealism and the heroic view of man, which had marked the Progressive Punjabi poetry had receded. A line of break was created between the Modernist and Progressive modes. The Naxal and the Progressive Punjabi poets and critics opposed this new kind of poetic structure. An atmosphere of tension created Harbhajan Singh’s independent existence and it was not long before that in his critical works he began to expound his poetics which was inspired by the formalist-structuralist semiotics and the developments in aesthetics.

Harbhajan Singh published his long dramatic poem Tar-Tupka (The Drop on the Wire) in 1957. It was described as a poetic-drama by some critics. Even the progressive critics accepted this work because this long dramatic poem criticised the dangerous race of nuclear armament and lamented how the tension is killing all that is beautiful in life, and the inner compassion of man, and how man is being led into malice and a mechanical and cynical view of life where only the hatred prevails and how the futuistic visions are being smothered to death asa result. Imperialism and the hegemonic designs of the big powers are held responsible for the creation of this dehumanised and morbid atmosphere. The poetic genius of Harbhajan Singh made this long, dramatic poem into a uniquely powerful creation.

Harbhajan Singh established his lyrical excellence in Adhraini (The High Night) in 1962. For some time, under the influence of Modernism he had opposed lyricism but he continued to return to the lure of the lyrical. He wrote Alph Dopehar (The High Noon) (1972), poems on the Bangladesh pogrom, war and its liberation. He wrote these poems in an ironic mode of tragic despair but with an underlying lyrical consciousness. He returned yet again to the lyrical mode in Tukian Jeebhan Wale (Men with Cleft-tongues - 1977), poems on the Emergency, that enlivened the epoch of despair with the poetic mode of cutting irony. In 1989 he published two poetry collections, Mawan Dheean (Mothers and Daughters) and Niksuk (Knick-knack) and in 1984, Alvidha Ton Pehlan (Before the Final Parting), lyrical works all.

His poetry with a distinct modernist idiom dominated the Punjabi literary scene after his Sahitya Akademi Award winning Na Dhuppe Na Chhaven (Neither in the Sun Nor in the Shade) made its mark in 1967. He rejected all manners of idealism that the Progressive movement professed and advocated. Even the idea of realism was transformed. Anti-heroic, existential persona, with a self-reflexive language, became the epicentre of his poetic expression. A new mode of poetic vitality thus emerged. This was in a way similar to something that had happened within the Anglo-American poetry with the appearance of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland and the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It was in continuity with the same poetic sensibility that his Sarak De Safe Ute (On the Page of the Street) made its mark in 1970. But now he also began to incorporate a reininterpretation of the mythological Sikh Janamsakhis (Tales of Birth) within the contemporary context.

We can see Harbhajan Singh’s poetic genius at work in his long poems. In 1982, he published Maththa Deeve Wala (The Forehead with the Lamp) which was a distinctive experiment. Several voices appear side by side within this interior monologue. Several question emerge simultaneously in progression. A line of thin narration and characters are indeed felt as a presence but we cannot distinguish between this design and the cognitive structure of the long poem. The significance of this poems in terms of the creation of a new poetic value is distinct not only in the development of the Punjabi poetry but also that of the Indian poetry as well.

In 1992, Harbhajan Singh published his famous long poem Rukh Te Rishi (The Tree and the Sage) which was honoured with the Sarawati Samman. Rukh Te Rishi is a long narrative poem – mainly philosophical and based on his experience. The structure of the poem is different from that of the other long poems in Punjabi. The narrative treatment is neither traditional nor linear. Though autobiographical details abound, they do not exist in a concrete way. The style is abstract with some signifiers and symbols constructing a paradigm. We discover layers of the unconscious. We cannot fully grasp the depths of this poem without a philosophical perspective and consciousness. This poem creates a post-modern text and in this way transcends his own previous modern texts.

In this meditative poem, the poet creates three signs: the rukh (the tree), man and the rishi (the sage, hermit or mendicant). The tree (rukh) becomes the signifier of eternal nature. The sage (rishi) becomes the signifier of Truth. Man is passing through his existential agonies in search of this truth – a transcendental existence. Between the rukh and the rishi, man recovers a sense of his destiny and the relation between Nature and Culture.

The poet imagines himself to be a tree in his own home. He is receptive to its fragrance and fruit, even if he does not know any of its fruit by name. When he steps out of his own self, he moves like a tree and people sit without inhibition under its shade. Children throw stones, lovers engrave their names with knives on its bark – the tree has seen many seasons.

The poet is equally aware of not being a Kalp Birkh (the desire-fulfilling tree), though he has helped fulfil some desires. The tree and the sun rise together. The birds bring with them the voices of the rishis ( the sages). The tree speaks in the voice of flowers and fruit…

Harbhajan Singh long journey continues in his next long poem Registan Vich Lakarhara (The Woodcutter in the Desert, 2000). Once again, this is a symbolic poem. The desert is Harbhajan Singh’s symbolic wasteland of which he himself is the woodcutter who wants to preserve the trees, nature and the essential hope of humankind. Like Kabir and other saint-poets, the experience here is essentially mystic.

Harbhajan Singh’s critical abilities came into evidence when he translated Aristotle’s Poetics (Arastu Da Kavv Shastar, 1961) into Punjabi. In 1970, he translated Longinus’s On the Sublime (Longinus Da Udatt Siddhaant). He was already equipped with the Indian poetics which he now combined with the knowledge of the Greco-Roman classical traditions. This cognitive consciousness helped him to initiate a debate on literary aesthetics in a different way. Later, he was also influence by Croce’s concept of aesthetics.

When he published his first major critical work Adhyan Te Adhyapan (1970), it was a significant break in the history of Punjabi criticism, because till that time Marxian critical theory was dominating the scene of Punjabi literary studies. Harbhan Singh’s combination of Indian and western poetics created a new kind of critical idiom and methodology of literary analysis. In the same vein, he came out with his second book of critical essays Mul Te Mulankan (1970).

In the process, he was deeply influenced by the critical thought of the American theorist Rene Wellek. Under this influence, he published Sahit Te Sidhant(1973). Later, another of his works Pargami (1976) showed a transformation, a turn towards new developments in modern critical theory, especially visible was the influence of the formalist structuralist thinkers. In 1976, he came out with Roopki, and analysed the structures of significant modern Punjabi poetic texts. But in Rachna Sanrachana(1976), he wrote on the existential ans structural literary theory, and now when he wrote about the science of literature in Sahit Vigyan (1978), he became more systemaic, more aware of the structural criticism of Roland Barthes and other critical thinkers who were being discussed in France.

The peak of the influence of Harbhajan Singh’s criticism was upto 1990. The Delhi School of Criticism was associated with his critical paradigm. Post-structuralism, Semiotics, Neo-Marxian thought and Post-Modernism exposed the limitations of the Formalist-Structural literary theory. But we cannot deny the fact that Harbhajan Singh’s contribution towards Punjabi criticism is very significant. He changed the critical path. Textual studies gained momentum. The next generation took inspiration from his critical idiom and contemporary Punjabi criticism has become more aware of the developments in literary theory and consciousness.

(A re-edited version of the tribute carried in Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal Indian Literature, Nov-Dec 2002)