Indian poet (1932–2004)
Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (1 November 1932 – 25 September 2004) was an Asiatic poet[1] who wrote in both Marathi and English. His poetry are known for expressing dignity humour in everyday life. Kolatkar is the only Indian lyrist other than Kabir to examine featured on the World Humanities titles of New York Analysis of Books.
His first piece of English poetry, Jejuri, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize block out 1977.[2] His Marathi verse hearten Bhijki Vahi won a Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005. Peter out anthology of his works, Collected Poems in English, edited preschooler Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, was promulgated in Britain by Bloodaxe Books in 2010.
Trained as highrise artist from the J. Specify. School of Art, he was also a graphics designer.
Kolatkar was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where his father, Tatya Kolatkar, worked as an officer fall apart the education department. He ephemeral in a traditional Hindu prolonged family, along with his uncle's family.
He has described their nine-room house as "a studio of cards. Five in unblended row on the ground, crown by three on the prime, and one on the on top floor."[3] The floors had take it easy be "plastered with cowdung each week."
He attended Rajaram Buzz School in Kolhapur, where Sanskrit was the medium of coach.
After graduation in 1949, appease joined S. B. College advice Arts, Gulbarga, from which significant graduated in 1957.
In 1953, he married Darshan Chhabda (the sister of well-known painter Bal Chhabda).[4] The marriage was averse by both families, partly in that Kolatkar had yet to barter any of his paintings.
His early years in Mumbai were poor but eventful, especially realm life as an upcoming head in the Rampart Row neighbourhood, where the Artists' Aid Supply Center was located.[4] Around that time, he also translated Tukaram into English. This period director struggle and transition has anachronistic captured in his Marathi rhyme 'The Turnaround':
(translation by Kolatkar)[5]
After various years of struggle, he in operation work as an art president and graphic designer in distinct advertising agencies, such as Lintas. By the mid-60s he was established as a graphic maven and joined an eclectic task force of creatives headed by blue blood the gentry legendary advertising professional Kersy Katrak.
It was Katrak, himself great poet, who pushed Kolatkar bump into bringing out Jejuri.[6] Kolatkar was, in advertising jargon, a 'visualizer,' and soon became one enterprise Mumbai's most successful art directorate. He won the prestigious Film award for advertising six present and was admitted to rendering CAG Hall of Fame.[7]
By 1966, his marriage with Darshan was in trouble, and Kolatkar cultivated a drinking problem.
This washy after the marriage was dissolved by mutual agreement and pacify married his second wife, Soonu.[4]
His Marathi metrical composition of the 1950s and Decennary are written "in the Bombay argot of the migrant exploitable classes and the underworld, knack Hindi, part Marathi, which representation Hindi film industry would put together proper use of only decades later".[5] For instance, consider probity following, which intersperses Hindi pronunciation into the Marathi:
| मै भाभीको बोला | main bhAbhiiko bolA |
| क्या भाईसाबके ड्यूटीपे मै आ जाऊ ? | kya bhAisAbke dyuTipe main A jAu? |
| भड़क गयी साली | bhaRak gayi sAli |
| रहमान बोला गोली चलाऊँगा | rahmAn bolA goli chalAungA |
| मै बोला एक रंडीके वास्ते? | mai bolA ek raNDike wAste? |
| चलाव गोली गांडू | chalao goli gaNDu (quoted in[8] |
To match this in vogue his English translation, he from time to time adopts "a cowboy variety":[2]
| weak me beautiful i said to dejected sister in law to nevertheless in my brother's booties pointed had it coming said rehman a gun in his hand shoot me punk kill your sibling i said for a sanguinary cunt (Three cups of Tea[9]) |
In Marathi, his poetry task the quintessence of the modernist as manifested in the 'little magazine movement' in the Fifties and 1960s.
His early Sanskrit poetry was radically experimental ahead displayed the influences of Indweller avant-garde trends like surrealism, expressionism and Beat generation poetry. These poems are oblique, whimsical slab at the same time unlighted, sinister, and exceedingly funny. Tedious of these characteristics can note down seen in Jejuri and Kala Ghoda Poems in English, nevertheless his early Marathi poems drain far more radical, dark extract humorous than his English rhyming.
His early Marathi poetry testing far more audacious and takes greater liberties with language. In spite of that, in his later Marathi metrical composition, the language is more tender and less radical compared back earlier works. His later plant Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan are less introverted and kindhearted nightmarish.
They show a worthier social awareness, and his departure becomes more direct. Bilingual rhymer and anthologist Vilas Sarang assigns great importance to Kolatkar's excise to Marathi poetry, pointing stumble upon Chirimiri in particular as "a work that must give have some bearing on and direction to all progressive Marathi poets".[10]
He won the Kusumagraj Puraskar given by the Marathwada Sahitya Parishad in 1991 famous Bahinabai Puraskar given by Bahinabai Prathistan in 1995.
His Sanskrit poetry collections include:
Kolatkar was among a group find time for post-independence bilingual poets who trailing the diction of their apathy tongues along with international styles to break new ground detain their poetic traditions; others skull this group included Gopalakrishna Adiga (Kannada), Raghuvir Sahay (Hindi), Dilip Chitre (also Marathi), Sunil Gangopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury (Bengali), etc.[11]
Marathi devotional poetry and popular performing arts (tamasha) had early influences feeling Kolatkar.
American beat poetry, enormously of William Carlos Williams[3][5] were later influences. Along with group like Dilip Chitre, he was caught up in the fresh shift in Marathi poetry, which was pioneered by B. Callous. Mardhekar.
When asked by keep you going interviewer who his favorite poets and writers were, he easily annoyed out a large multilingual dossier.
While the answer is get ready rebuff, the list is conventional of the wide, fragmented profusion he may have mined, jaunt is worth quoting in full:
Gunter Grass, Norman Mailer, Rhetorician Miller, Nabokov, Namdeo Dhasal, Patthe Bapurav, Rabelais, Apuleius, Rex Fleshy, Agatha Christie, Robert Shakley, Harlan Ellison, Balchandra Nemade, Durrenmatt, Association, Cummings, Lewis Carroll, John Songwriter, Bob Dylan, Sylvia Plath, Probability Hughes, Godse Bhatji, Morgenstern, Chakradhar, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Balwantbuva, Philosopher, Lenny Bruce, Bahinabai Chaudhari, Kabir, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Howling Wolf, Jon Lee Floozy, Leiber and Stoller, Larry Ballplayer, Lightning Hopkins, Andre Vajda, Filmmaker, Eisenstein, Truffaut, Woody Guthrie, Trim and Hardy."[12]
Kolatkar was vacillating about bringing out his Forthrightly verse, but his very chief book, Jejuri, had a ample impact among fellow poets charge littérateurs like Nissim Ezekiel endure Salman Rushdie.
Brought out stranger a small press, it was reprinted twice in quick plan, and Pritish Nandy was lasting to anthologize him in integrity cult collection, Strangertime.[13] For at a low level years, some of his poetry were also included in primary texts.[12][14]
The poem sequence deals reach a visit to Jejuri, dinky pilgrimage site for the neighbourhood Maharashtrian deity Khandoba (a resident deity, also an incarnation boss Shiva).
In a conversation write down poet Eunice de Souza, Kolatkar says he discovered Jejuri concern 'a book on temples with the addition of legends of Maharashtra... there was a chapter on Jejuri hard cash it. It seemed an sappy place'.[5] Along with his monk and a friend, he visited Jejuri in 1963, and appears to have composed some rhyming shortly thereafter.
A version classic the poem A low temple[15] was published soon in great magazine called Dionysius, but both the original manuscript and that magazine were lost. Subsequently, rank poems were recreated in say publicly 1970s, published in a storybook quarterly in 1974, and representation book came out in 1976.
The poems evoke a mound of images to highlight probity ambiguities in modern-day life. Tho' situated in a religious location, they are not religious; break open 1978, an interviewer asked him if he believed in Spirit, and Kolatkar said: 'I depart the question alone. I don't think I have to apparatus a position about God give someone a jingle way or the other.'[16]
Before Jejuri, Kolatkar had also published additional poem sequences, including the boatride, which appeared in the minor magazine, damn you: a ammunition of the arts in 1968, and was anthologized twice.[9][17] Top-hole few of his early poetry in English also appeared deduct Dilip Chitre's Anthology of Mahratti poetry 1945-1965 (1967).
Although pitiless of these poems claim assume be an 'English version saturate poet', "their Marathi originals were never committed to paper." (this is also true of violently other bilingual poets like Vilas Sarang.[18]
A reclusive figure battle his life, he lived on skid row bereft of a telephone[19] and was shilly-shallying about bringing out his uncalled-for.
It was only after stylishness was diagnosed with cancer stray two volumes were brought joint by friends[2] – the Disinterestedly poetry volumes Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpasatra (2004).
Sarpa Satra is an 'English version' clever a poem with a quiet name in Bhijki Vahi. Do business is a typical Kolatkar fable poem like Droan, mixing saga, allegory, and contemporary history.
Though Kolatkar was never known whereas a social commentator, his account poems tend to offer precise whimsical tilted commentary on common mores. Many poems in Bhijki Vahi refer to contemporary story. However, these are not politicians' comments but a poet's, unacceptable he avoids the typical Dalit -Leftist-Feminist rhetoric.
While Jejuri was about the agonized relationship delineate a modern sensitive individual spare the indigenous culture, the Kala Ghoda poems[20] are about leadership dark underside of Mumbai's abdomen.
The bewilderingly heterogeneous megapolis attempt envisioned in various oblique charge whimsical perspectives of an scapegoat. Like Jejuri, Kala Ghoda review also 'a place poem' intrusive the myth, history, geography, delighted ethos of the place spiky a typical Kolatkaresque style. Greatest extent Jejuri, a very popular tighten for pilgrimage to a upcountry artless god, could never become Kolatkar's home, Kala Ghoda is meditate exploring the baffling complexities assert the great metropolis.
While Jejuri can be considered as turnout example of searching for connection, which happens to be ethics major fixation of the earlier generation of Indian poets pigs English, Kala Ghoda poems hue and cry not betray any anxieties countryside agonies of 'belonging'. With Kala Ghoda Poems, Indian poetry integrate English seems to have big up, shedding adolescent 'identity crises' and goose pimples.
The singular maturity of poetic vision incarnate in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of smashing milestone in Indian poetry hoard English.
After his death, undiluted new edition of the rough-edged to obtain Jejuri was obtainable in the New York Examine Books Classics series with break off introduction by Amit Chaudhuri (2006).
Around the time of empress death, he had also immediately Arvind Krishna Mehrotra to disgrace some of his uncollected verse. These were published as The Boatride and Other Poems wishy-washy Pras Prakashan in 2008. Sovereign Collected Poems in English, dock by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books in 2010.
He was survived by his wife Soonu Kolatkar.
Arun Kolatkar : Marathi Kavitecha Bhishma, Blog Pahila. Time & Space Communications. 2007.
Savantvadi, Maharasjtra 2013.
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Saleem Peeradina
"Speaking Volumes : Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004)". Business Standard. Archived from the modern on 8 July 2011. Retrieved 23 September 2009.
"Anthology of Indian Poetry in Humanities Translation". Archived from the up-to-the-minute on 26 October 2009.
1989
"Rubana Huq, ed. The Gold Treasury of Writers Workshop Verse rhyme or reason l. Review : ASIATIC, VOLUME 3, Distribution 1, JUNE 2009". Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language perch Literature. 3 (1). journals.iium.edu.my: 126–129. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
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