Editorial»
Recitation and power
NOV 08 - A person, who can recite the verses from the books of his/her mother tongue, is supposed to possess some aura of performative power. Recitation is a marker of the degree of his or her proficiency both at the linguistic and cultural levels. In a country like Nepal, there are myriads of oral art forms and cultures and the recitational proficiency demands to be taken into serious consideration.
Many kinds of societal and artistic forms of knowledge about the Nepali culture and society are passed from one generation to the next in oral forms, and the recitation appears to be one of its major mediums. The educationists and the educational policy-makers of this country need to address this special inherent feature of our culture. The methodology of imparting any kind of knowledge should be carried on in the mediums that the target groups or the addressees feel familiar or comfortable with. Paulo Freire, one of the most powerful educationists of the Latin America in the twentieth century, in his magnum opus The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, raises the need of such methodology.
In my opinion, a large number of children of this country still belong to the families where many things related to the Nepalese society and its cultural values are handed or taught through the oral tales and verses generally taken from the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata among others. When “I was so high and much nicer” as said by poet Dylan Thomas, I too used to listen to my parents reciting many verses from the Ramayana. Their voices still reverberate into my mind. I think I greatly miss recitation. Now I realise that the recitation is a power. Had I only listened to my parents more carefully, I would have acquired the legacy. I would have become something of an artist. Now I realise that the recitational art needs a lot of training and passion as it is different from the mere memorising of the lines from the text books. It is a matter of performance that has to be circulated among the community members. Those people who master over this art are marked in their community.
I would like to discuss this lack of mine with reference to the New Educational Act or Policy 2028 (1972 AD), which is regarded as a landmark in the education system of this country. It was the year when new curricula started replacing the older ones throughout the schools and the colleges of this nation. It was welcomed everywhere as an important beginning of the modernisation in Nepal. I belong to the post-2028 educational era in Nepal. Personally speaking, I think I am benefited by this educational policy because I find myself in the mainstream education and knowledge. But one thing that holds my mind, and sometimes it leads me to the state of humiliation as well is that I lack the recitational power. I do not mean to say that the pre-2028 educational era was a better system. What I mean is that something could have been done as part of the justice done to the culture of this country. If the concerned authority had addressed this putative skills and art, it would have mobilised a great wealth of creativity. People would have got even richer culturally.
I would like to mention my personal experience. After studying Nepali as a compulsory subject for over one and a half-decades, and besides my regular reading of Nepali poems and books, I still find it difficult to recite the Nepali poems, especially those written in the chhanda or the metrical patterns. I share this feeling with my colleagues of my generation. Many of them feel shy to mention that they too can not recite even some of the few lines of the great pieces of poetry written in the Nepali language in a proper manner. I feel that inside deep down their heart, they hold a strong desire to acquire the power of recitation. They should know the causes that hinder them.
I feel this lack miserably, especially when my professor, a poet recites poems and tells me to do the same and I can not. I am involved in the Nepali theatre. The lack seems much deeper when the rehearsal of a Nepali play, particularly the poetic play, starts to take place. The first thing I encounter is the challenge of recitation. I teach performing arts. My students too find the art of recitation very difficult to deal with. With the modern plays written in prose, they feel at home. However, the real ethos of theatre makes us go beyond our present potentiality. We recite the Nepali verses as part of the regular classroom activities. The classroom becomes lively. Sometime we are horrified with our own voices, and at other times we find it beautiful. I think we enter into the world of music of the sound.
We are making a journey, and are trying to arrest some intangible force so that it can stay with us permanently. We feel the same need, and are guided by a common impulse of mastering one of the most essential performing arts- the recitation. I think we are improving and we are learning to recite. This kind of performance art, according to the Indian scholar Kapila Vatsyayan, is a dateless ephemeral phenomenon and is a subject of its temporality. My generation belongs to a complex mode of the cultural transition. I think many of us are optimistic. We possess tremendous cultural and performative power. Let us start reciting now.Posted on: 2003-11-08 12:26
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