A Vietnamese Poem The Universe and I explicated by Ramesh Mukhopadhyaya

 A Vietnamese Poem  The Universe and I  written by Poet Ngo Tu Lap and translated into English by Martha Collins and Tu Lap himself explicated by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

The  Poem

THE UNIVERSE AND I

Translated from the Vietnamese by Martha Collins and Ngo Tu Lap

The universe and I

Two illusory lands-

Were both born in 1962?

Perhaps the past and future have joined together

Perhaps I’m not even a speck of dust

But sometimes I believe the lies

Of a scar left by the war

Of noble and base desires

Of my hair falling like trees in a rotten forest

Every instant brings proof of sand and dust-

In silent dreams, I start to fly

With the universe, through that forest

The title of the poem- The Universe and I- sets forth a dichotomy. Apparently, the readers might infer from the surface of the poem that the poem should dwell on the battle between the poets self and the world. But the first three lines of the poem seem to say no to our speculation. Commonly we are made to believe that the universe has been there since time immemorial and it will continue to exist through all futurity, let men come and go. But the first stanza of the poem puts forward a different cosmology and creation myth. The poet says that he and the universe were born at the same time. They were born together in 1962. This is indeed true. If men were not there, how could there be the world?  The universe is born only when an individual is born. And surely, there are as many universes as there are human beings. Apparently this is extreme subjectivism. May be it might allude to Berkley, the English philosopher and yet this is an undeniable truth which puts forward the theory of reception aesthetics. Where is the text? Where is the poem- The Universe and I? In fact there are as many interpretations of the poem as there are readers. And one wonders if there could be myriads of interpretations of a text . Is the decoding of the text at all possible? And that which does not make sense to human perception does not exist. Does the text at all exist? Does the universe at all exist? But if the text were not there how could there be the reader. So ours is an existence which baffles interpretation. And hence the poem states – the universe and I two illusory lands. Of course, the I stands for the mind or the self and the universe stands for the matter or the non self. In fact one wonders whether the mind and the matter exist at all. Because it is the mind that testifies matter and it is matter or body that stands witness to mind. But is there any third person who stands witness to either mind or matter or both? None. So, you never know whether the mind or matter exist at all; hence the note of interrogation at the end of the first stanza. The mention of the particular time when the speaker and the universe were born together has added a  pointedness to the philosophical reflection. This reminds us of the pointedness of description in Pre-Raphaelite art. The relation between the universe and the I is dubious.Are they two discrete units? Or else are they two and yet one? This reminds an Indian reader of Dvaitaadvaitavaad . While a painting manifests itself in space, any verbal composition progresses through time. That is why every word, every sentence could suggest a meaning which might be cancelled or modified by the words that follow the word or the sentence. This is why there is always suspense and a drama inherent in any piece of poetry made with words.

The second stanza of the poem seems to support our speculation. Just as the universe and the I meet when a child is born, similarly time past and time future are joined together when a child is born. The readers are as it were face to face with a confluence. It is said that the place where two rivers meet generates immense energy and the readers are impelled here to encounter the generation of immense energy. The poet’s perspective shifts suddenly. He looks upon the multiverse as given and deems himself to be a part of the boundless multiverse.  And in this context, he is  infinitesimally small and the multi verse is infinitesimally big and the poet exclaims that he is not even a speck of dust and even smaller than dust in comparison with the vastness of the universe. The poet juxtaposes the vision of the infinitude with the contingent. True that in the context of the vastness of the universe no event however significant to man is of any importance . Even the birth of a star and the death of a star are of no consequence in the context of the vastness of the multiverse. But we are humans . We live in the contingent. We are made to believe in the lies . We cannot deny or forget the aftermath of wars. The poet cannot deny the scar left by the war. And when such cataclysms take place in the world of man, man cannot but develop a sense of morality whereby the base could be distinguished from the noble. On another level, man has to be reconciled with his fate . He becomes a stoic. The poet believes that his hair falls like trees in a rotten forest. Just as the hair  falls and the body of man changes every minute every second , similarly nothing is permanent in the world . The world that we experience also changes every second .The flower that blooms in the morning is doomed to wither away in the evening. When it gets rotten, it falls into the place where dead things gather subject to putrefaction. Thus this is a rotten world where we fly along with the universe that was born with us. The poem is charged with a cynicism which is time and again.