Yugkavi Siddicharan Shrestha, one of the four luminaries of Nepali literature, along with Lekhnath Paudyal, Laxmi Prasad Devkota, and Balakrishna Sama, created a niche for himself as a revolutionary poet who inaugurated a new era in creative writing and literature. His poetry was a source of inspiration for people from every section of the society, including political activists like late Ganeshman Singh who spent some years in prison with Siddhicharan. Nepali literature has witnessed several experiments in thought, language and style since the time Siddhicharan emerged as a poet and a writer. [break]
Siddhicharan was a poet with a multi-dimensional outlook on life and society. His poetic sensibility encompasses his attitude towards nature, contemporary social issues such as injustice, exploitation, discrimination, and above all, his advocacy of human values, overriding all considerations of caste, creed, religion, language and ethnicity. In his poetry, he is equally concerned about the wellbeing of Nepali people and mankind as a whole. Siddhicharan’s revolutionary fervor comes out forcefully in his poems like Mangalman. It was the poet’s strong convictions and moral courage that prompted him to rebel against centuries-old family oligarchy. Prof Maniklal Shrestha firmly believes that Siddhicharan is, first and foremost, a revolutionary poet. None of his contemporaries could match his dedication, commitment and courage in this aspect.
In the opinion of late Prof YN Khanal, Siddhicharan occupies a special place in the history of Nepali poetry because of his palpable sincerity, his impatience with rhetorical embellishments, and above all, his passion for reform. What is remarkable about this poet who devoted himself to creative pursuit throughout his literary career is that he wrote about common man and common things. There is no gap between the poet and the subjects he wrote about. Like Wordsworth, he believed that the language of poetry should be as simple and direct as possible.
Siddhicharan’s use of diction even in a poem of philosophic significance such as “Atma- Bilauna” (Self-Lamentation) is marked by simplicity, directness and lack of ambiguity. The central theme of the poem is detachment from worldly life or mundane pleasures, and whole-hearted concentration on the pursuit of spirituality, which liberates individuals from the cycle of birth and death. The poem’s depiction of trauma grabs the reader’s attention. The following lines from the opening stanza set the tone for the rest of the poem, “I’m broken, spoilt, I see chaos and discord all around/Filled is the atmosphere with black, pungent and poisonous smoke/who am I and what am I; I’ve lost all powers of judgment/Oh! I have plunged into misery that beggars description.”
“My Reflection” is another of his serious poems. Some critics interpret the poem as an exercise in post-modernism. The poem first published in 2006 BS depicts a person who is falling, sinking and degenerating. The stanza, “Ignorant of truth, embracing lies / sinking low but boasting about upward movement / polluting the environment / perceiving nothing while looking around\who is the figure marching on the road?” conjures an image of a ‘modern man’.
Siddhicharan is remembered even today when we are winding up his centenary celebrations for his epoch-making poetry. He fully understood the spirit of the times and recaptured with uncanny insight in his works the glory, the incongruities, and the absurdities of the age in which he lived. His poems dealt with a variety of issues, and gave epic dimensions to some of them. His positive and revolutionary attitude towards women is illustrated in his long poem Jyanmara Shaila. The character of Uma in this poem poignantly dramatizes the plight of women in Nepali society, particularly in romantic relationships in different social, cultural and economic backgrounds. Through his poems, Siddhicharan’s message to our patriarchal society was that status of self-respecting women could be secured forever. Siddhicharan, in brief, was ahead of his times in his poetry and other creative writings.
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