LETTERS TO MALAY ROYCHOUDHURY
Introduced by Gargi Ghosh Dastidar
(These
letters are of immense importance to readers and researchers of The
Hungry Generation Movement which took place in Bengali literature during
the sixties. Tridib Mitra, one of the eminent members of the movement
had edited and published these letters when the movement became famous
throughout the world. Only 200 copies were published, as the legend
goes, and it has become impossible to trace out a
copy, except for in Subimal Basak’s Archive at 22/6 Verner Lane, Kolkata
700 056, and Sandip Dutta’s Hungryalist Archive at 18M Tamer Lane,
Kolkata 700 009.
In view of growing interest evinced by M. Phil. and Ph.D. students of
various Universities, I have decided to place it on the Web. The cover
of the collection was designed by Argentinian artist Carlos Coffen,
which was facilitated by Margaret Randall, the then editor of El Corno
Emplumado. As we all know, Malay Roychoudhury has declared that nobody
holds the copyright of his collections and works.
The Hungryalist Movement was launched in November 1961 from Patna
town by Samir Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roychoudhury
and Debi Roy [also known as Haradhon Dhara]. They got the word ‘Hungry’
from Geoffrey Chaucer’s line “In the Sowre Hungry Tyme”. They felt at
that time that the post-colonial dream of a new, ecstatic, resurgent
India had turned sour, and we were hurtling towards a nightmare; the
Indian ‘time’ had been engulfed in gradual putrefaction leaving a sour
taste in Bengali discourse. This idea was given a premise based on what
Oswald Spengler had explained in ‘The Decline of the West’. Spengler had
seen history not as a linear progression, but as the flowering of a
number of self-contained cultures, each with a characteristic spiritual
tone, or conception of the space within which they are to act. Spengler
had also argued that cultures go through a self-contained process of
growing, going through their seasons, and perishing. The Hungryalist
quartet thought that Bengali culture had reached its zenith during 19th Century Renaissance, and it was on its way to metamorphosis through insatiable hunger for outside inputs.
The
movement took on, and about 35 poets, writers and artists joined the
counter-cultural happening. The movement got world-wide publicity and
the participants came in contact with writers and
editors of various languages. Their letters etc. may be found archived
in the personal collections of foreign poets and editors at
Universities. Here are the ‘Hungryalist Letters’from:
Robert
Kelly, Allen Ginsberg, Howard McCord, Margaret Randall, Carol Berge,
Daisy Aldan, Lawrence Ferlingheti, Octavio Paz, Ameeq Hanfee, Gordon
Lasslett, Dan Georgakas, Carl Weissner, Rajkamal Choudhury, George
Dowden, and Ida Spaulding). Link: http:/thewastepaper.blogspot.com
A Few Words
Dear
Reader, here are 23 letters to you from 15 militant voices of the world
.Read them, for they are addressed to Malay Roychoudhury, the most
uncomfortable and dangerous poet of Bengal and of this equally dangerous planet.
I
decided to sew a bunch when I last visited Malay, and found thousands
of letters dumped in a trunk lying in a corner of his room. Most of
those letters are in Bengali. I had little time and could not go through
all of them. I would like to edit a Bengali bunch later as I have found
them to be of the most burning breathings I have ever encountered.
In
this collection you will find letters from those persons only whom I
have heard of, and am Damn fascinated for. Maybe it is idiosyncratic.
But take it easy: in that trunk there might be more interesting letters
from these 15 voices themselves. These beautiful letters, stepped up
chronologically, are going to expose to you not only the personality of
the writer but the gradual development of Malay’s personality as well.
Calcutta
26th January, 1968 Tridib Mitra
Robert Kelly, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
April 1964
Dear Malay,
Your
letter gave me much pleasure, the touch of the exciting things that are
happening, you happening them, where you are. (& of course how
could your letter not excite me, even if in the wrongest way, coming as
it does from a country I am forever visiting obliquely, tangentially,
like the moth around the big white glass ball in my kitchen that holds
an electric light; a light he can never get to, but move always, in
crazy tangents, around the globe that both reveals & cancels the
light itself. I mean the phantasm that India
is in my spirit, in my balls wd say, Konarak, the weight of the body
swayed, endangered, balanced! Made me move, forwards & backwards,
for its own highest purposes. It seems to me India
knows the body & makes and makes a great pretence of non-cherishing
it, only to stimulate truly our investigations of it. But I understand
that it must be hateful to you to be praised for India,
yet how can I get that music out of my head, if I wanted to, to write
to you clearly? I cant, & that’s all there is to it. We are where we
are, in all ways, with all that means.
I hear
you, via Margaret & obliquely via Ginsberg, & from your
manifestoes & from your own good letter. A letter I am slow in
answering, forgive me, the rush of busy-ness, all things asswise and
sublime at once, the push of all that’s on.
I’m
not a professor; I’m low ranking teacher at a small college in the
Hudson Valley, a beautiful place, trees & river & skies, for me
who have lived all my life in NY, the city, The City. Teaching is job,
you understand, often a joyful one, that sustains me while I write.
Often an anguish of short time. I’m 28, a poet. OK.
I’m
sending you a copy of the first issue of MATTER, a newsletter of
poetry, I edit here, & will send you copies of TROBAR, of which I am
the co-editor---that is published in New York.
Do you write poetry in English at all? Please let me see some, if so.
Thank
you again for your letter, & don’t let my delay in answering put
you off. Keep well. Our spring has come, wet& warm, just now not a
breath of wind, a great stillness.
Love
Robert
(Gargi’s note: Margaret refers to Margaret Randall). Link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kelly_(poet)
************************************************************************
Allen Ginsberg, 704 East, 5th Street, New York
28 September, 1964
Dear Malay,
I
saw clippings from BLITZ, Sept 19, 1964 p6 and also I think Calcutta
STATESMAN 17 September 1964 that you were arrested as well as Samir and
two boys named Ghosh whom I don’t know, for your HUNGRY GENERATION
manifestoes. Are these the same as were printed in the issue of
KULCHUR#15? As soon as I read about it, I racked my brain what I could
do to help, and so today wrote a whole bunch of letters to the
following:-
A.S.Raman, Editor, Illustrated Weekly, Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji Road, Bombay.
Sharad Deora, Editor,Gyanodaya, 18 Brabourne Road, Calcutta.
Abu Sayeed Ayub, Editor, Quest ( sent message to him indirectly), and member of Indian Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Shyam Lall, Editor, Times of India, New Delhi.
Khushwant Singh, novelist and member of Congress for Cultural Freedom, 49 East Sujan Singh Road, New Delhi.
I
also wrote to Jyoti Dutta and phoned Lita Hornick of KULCHUR. I asked
them, the Indians above all, what they could do to help you, suggested
they activate the congress for Cultural Freedom as this sort of thing is
the proper activity of the Congress and Quest magazine, and told them
that the manifestoes were printed here in CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL and
KULCHUR, and were not obscene. So the whole mess was scandalous
bureaucratic illiteracy. Please if you need literary help or advice do
try to contact these people for support. And in addition perhaps ask for
advice/help from Mrs. Pupul Jayakar, 130 Sundar Nagar, New Delhi---she was our protectress in India, we stayed with her, she’s a friend of Indira Gandhi and others. I also notified Bonnie Crown here in New York,
the Asia Society, 112E 64 Street, NYC---she commissioned poetry to be
translated by Sunil and others and that pack of poems plus your rhythms
etc. will be printed together by CITY LIGHTS. She can send you a letter
on her official stationary saying your manifestoes are known, published
and respected in US and not considered obscene. I will also enquire of
Mr. S.K.Roy, the Indian Consul General here in New York who I do not know what he can do at this distance.
If
there is anything you want me to do let me know. Write me and let me
know what the situation is and what is the cause of the trouble. In
judging from BLITZ I suspected jealous ideological Marxists or
something. Are you ruined at the bank?? I hope not. Regard to your
family. Get the Congress for Cultural Freedom to supply you with a good
lawyer who’ll take no fee. If the Indian Congress doesn’t cooperate, let
me know, we’ll explain to the European office. Who are the Ghosh
brothers? The manifestoes on prose and politics are pretty funny. I
thought they were a little literary-flowery, but they MUST HAVE HIT SOME
MENTAL NAIL ON THE HEAD. Good Luck.
Jai Ram
Allen Ginsberg
(Gargi’s
note: None of the Indians excepting for Mrs Pupul Jayakar helped.
Jealousy was from non-Marxist quarters. Ghosh brothers were Subhash and
Saileshwar who became prosecution witnesses).
************************************************************************Allen Ginsberg, 704 East 5th Street, NYC
January 11, 1965
Dear Malay,
Enclosed
copies of letters from KULCHUR, from Abu Sayeed ayub ( 3 letters in
answer to mine---each letter 2 pages) and one from A.B.Shah---Congress
in Bombay. You should follow their letter up. Congress office in Paris has been contacted & they will probably send some note, notice to the Indian Committee.
I answered some of your letters via Utpal---I sent copies of these letters, also, to show Sunil, Jyoti, etc.
CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL#2 is on its way to you.
That
Jyoti, Sunil, Sandipan & your self are all working at slight
cross-purposes is making things difficult. I suppose they are
embarrassed by your ‘brashness’ (as TIME magazine might term it) or your
slight edge of naievette as I would term it. However, if it is possible
to reconcile with them & put up a united front it would be best for
everybody’s safety. Best thing is to stop all cutty gossip, for it is
only mainly gossip that Abu Sayeed is using as an excuse. Obviously they
also were questioned by the Police, and so, feel a common threat with
you. Don’t get angry at them---just work out a basis where you can all
defend each other---and try you now---the only present basis (since
there seems to be some literary disagreement) being freedom of literary
expression.
They all don’t want to be grouped
as Hungry exclusively apparently, and they may resent or be scared or
not want you to lump them all under your Hungry banner. And this is
natural. Once a MOVEMENT gets name and publicity it is also a drawback
as I’ve found. Also, the name is irrelevant & a drag sometimes to
one’s individuality. See the first sentence of my letter to Shakti,
Feb10,1963 that was published in a Hungry type magazine in Bengali.
Best
not to get angry at anyone---Jyoti, Abu Sayeed---even the police. Think
carefully & coolly & get all working together if it is
possible. I leave for Cuba in a week and will be back in 2 months.
Love & Happy New Year
Allen
(Gargi’s
note:Shakti Chattopadhyay, Utpalkumar Basu and Sandipan Chattopadhyay
were members of the Hungryalist movement. Jyoti Dutta and Sunil
Gangopadhyay were Establishment writers who attacked the Hungryalists in
news-weeklies and funky magazines in an unbecoming fashion).
Links: Utpal:www.parabas.com/bookstore/title.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandipan_Chattopadhyay
Shakti:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti_Chattopadhyay
***********************************************************************
Howard McCord, 304 Oak Street, Pullman, Washington.
22 May 1965
Dear Malay Roychoudhury:
I
have enjoyed very much reading your letter and coming in contact with
your thoughts. Artaud, Genet, Burroughs:yes.They are the dialecticians
of chaos presiding at the dissolution of the west. They describe, with
joy and exactitude, the destruction in which they are themselves
involved. Burroughs, to me, is a man performing an autopsy on himself.
They are all quite mad, and therefore speak the truth. We can only trust
the mad anymore. The West began to die around 1750, and it has been the
function of poets to recite, in series, the long funeral oration.
William Blake began it. Goethe, Baudelaire, Lautremont, Rimbaud,
Huysmans(unknowingly), Pound, Eliot, Crane, and all the other familiar
names have continued the chant. We are their heirs, and perhaps the
culmination, for our anguish and despair, the aesthetic suicide of which
we are capable, may mark the end. Perhaps it will go on. Sometimes it
seems as though it is the plan for it to go on.
The inadequacy of my coming, touristic encounter with India
is deeply felt. I am not an Indian, I will not become one in two months
of hurrying through the landscape. I will be richer only by the
validity of my meetings, the openness I can maintain. Here in my own
country I am alien enough, separated from the culture by an aversion to
much of it, by a self-imposed identification with the Mexican part of my
life (perhaps it is as if you felt yourself
drawn to Tibet), by a long-standing estrangement from its more common
goals. I identify most closely with the folk of the southwestern
deserts---the American Indians---Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi, Zuni, Yaqui, Tarhumara, Comancha---and the ranchers. (My family has for a century run cattle ranches in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona---all
poor people in a poor land). My wife is Mexican, my second language is
Spanish: my children, blond & blue-eyed though they be, are
technically mestizos---the mixed-blood that is the strength and heart of
Mexico. And here I sit, perfumed with education, owning not an acre of ground, lost from the desert, 2000 miles from Mexico, a poet in my decadence and reality. My children are apt to be technicians, I pray they will be artists.
I
have plans, most vague and tenuous, for a book of Contemporary Indian
Poetry. University published. Likely no money would come of it, but some
passing fame. I ask now for some of your poems for this nebulous
enterprise, and your aid in contacting other Indian poets.
From the foregoing you can see some of the difficulty in raising money from letters in the USA. Raising money per se is not to hard. It is raising it in a way that feels decent that is difficult.
Such fantastics we are!
I
look forward to seeing the poem that has been the cause of all your
trouble. I envy you for your courage, for the more I understand about
contemporary Indian society, the greater your courage and daring
seem.There are no longer any words we can not use in literature, nor any
scenes we can not describe. Our only constraint lies in the definition
of hard-core pornography where the obvious intention lies in the
excitation of base impulses without any redeeming social features. The
change in the last ten years has been tremendous. I remember first
reading Miller’s TROPICs in their prohibited Paris
editions and actually worrying about official interference were the
fact of my reading known. Now the TROPICs are available everywhere and
professors use them in discussion groups (though not in class here,
perhaps elsewhere). It would be stupid of me to laugh or denigrate
Indian society in which movies, for example, may not show kissing or the
like, and in which mention of the sexual organs is prohibited. I do not
like censors or censorship, but I do not expect Indian censorship to
cease with my dislike. You have a hard, long battle before you, for a
society of great and unyielding complexity must be moved before you are
free. If free you must be. And I suppose you must. But may I say, from
the point of view of one who can say in print fuck, shit, cunt, prick,
whatever, describe scenes of fellatio, cunnelingus, hetero (Praise God)
sexual intercourse or homosexual intercourse, and all (Please pardon my
spelling, for I have been drinking very much). My bloody prose style
suffers!
That
saying these things is not very important. I have one poem in which the
cunts of women are sweet and moist as peaches, and one other in which
‘the fuck of voices’ appears as an image. Henry has more, and we ought
to be able to say these words, because the mind is like the penis,
coming out of the spinal column, sewn to the belly, hard as sugarcane,
it talks.
But
I will say that there is more. That the societal context is more, that
the identity of speaker and spoken to is more. (As I could not honestly,
without compunction, use Fuck in conversation with my parents). For
they do not so much respond to it as they are defended by it, and do not
hear. (So for me Kandel’s POEMS FOR PERVERTS misses, collapses;
fatigues itself). What must we use to drive the mule? WE SHALL SAY ANY
WORD.
WHEN ANY WORD NEEDS SAYING.
This
is an oblique way of saying that I do not trust EVERGREEN REVIEW. There
is the stink of money about that magazine. Money that comes from the
hard-on, the erection (it is the intellectual’s PLAYBOY, complete with
airbrushed nudes. Something coy, cute, cloying---and dead). Hard words
for a magazine that has published great writers like Eastlake………
Send me a translation of your poem: for obviously, I have worked myself into a blew-eyed stupor about the problem.
I see you as trying to survive an artist in a society 70 years detained. India
is strangely Victorian in its public morals. (How did this come about?
Considering Khajuraho, etc.?) Were the English that potent? Or is it
Muslim? Hindu? Who digs the mithuna couples now save us degenerate
foreigners? All right. The pattern: woman’s position in
marriage/household: the corporate family (security at the cost of
independence?), the precarious economy (do not rock boats, ever), the
tension with the West. The civil service.
Now I must go to bed.
Next day:
The
questions still seem to be here.And tomorrow I must lecture three hours
on Epictetus, the Enchiridon, and stoic philosophy. Later in the week a
special lecture on Blake’s THE MAARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL (which I
contend is the first modern poem, the very beginning of all of us). It
is so fine. I am translating it into Spanish for the Goosetree Press,
which will publish it next year, with fragments from Blake’s drawings.
So, I best get busy and to work.
Best wishes. And I hope that we can meet. Write again soon, please.
Howard McCord
(Gargi’s note: Prof McCord had come down to India
and had met Malay, Subimal Basak, Debi Roy and Tridib Mitra. To meet
Malay’s trial expenses during 1965-66 he arranged publication and sale
of Malay’s poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ in three ditto editions with
verifax cover showing the Sorcerer of the Trois Freres). Link:www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/mccordh.htm
.***********************************************************************
Margaret Randall, Mexico City
June 17, 1965
Dear Malay,
Please,
please excuse so much time without writing, and now that I finally am
able to sit down to write, this jumpy typewriter is driving me out of my
mind. The man promised to come this week to fix it but this is Mexico
(land of ‘manana’) etc!. How are things going for you---the trial; your
case, the things taken from you and your friends, etc.??? All over the
world, through EL CORNO, people write asking about you and wish you
well, it has caused an international scandal among people in the arts,
at least. I hope for good news, please write!!!
And the book with Carlos Coffeen’s drawing on the cover---did it come out???
Under
separate cover and by regular surface mail I have sent you two copies
of our 13 in which I printed your letters. Hope they arrive one of these
days and in good shape. Naturally: when the issue was printed I sent
you a copy, but it must have gone astray. I don’t know why Samir Ray
received his and you didn’t.
Here we are in
deep problems with the magazine. No money, for one thing, and tremendous
work. Just when EL CORNO seems to have become a world wide interest
spiritually and literally, it faces a quick death financially. The
change of government here in Mexico
in December has thrown us into utter gloom. All our base patronage was
cut out from under us, and we were faced with stopping publication
altogether, and so we had turn to a thousand improvised plans to get us
through. At the moment we are having a giant art show (more than 50
painters and other artists have donated works to sell for the benefit of
the magazine). The show opened at a local gallery a week and a half
ago. So far we have sold 18 works, keeping the linotype purring at least
through the first part of 15. 15 is now at press and we hope to get
through all of it, fingers crossed. I’ll try to use your poem first part
of next year, but it isn’t at all sure. We have so much work at hand
and so little space and money. In reality, space and money are the same
thing!
Otherwise we are fine. Working like
hell! Translating; writing, praying, trying to keep the mag going.
Learning daily from our children (now there are three), the youngest is a
year old today!
Be well. Write. Good luck with the court case!
Love
Margaret Randall
(Gargi’s
note: A drawing of Carlos Coffeen was used for Malay’s first Bengali
poetry collection ‘Shoytaner Mukh’(1963). Samir Ray was editor of
Bengali literary quarterly ‘Mahenjodaro’.) Link:
www.hrc.utexas.edu/reaserch/fa/klacto.html
************************************************************************
Allen Ginsberg, c/o City lights, 261 Columbus, SF, Calif
July 11, 1965
I have been wandering around from Moscow to Havana to Warsaw to Prague & thus didn’t get your letter of Jan 29th, much of which is obsolete by now?
I have gotten so many conflicting letters & gossip from every body, I actually have no idea who’s doing what to who in India. Is your trial over or not, & what’s what? I’ve done all I can from here.
I went to Cuba,
as judge of a poetry contest ( and later got kicked out for talking too
much). It was a Latin American contest, the judges (as myself) all had
to be able to read Spanish. Also they’d published poetry of mine & I
had friends there and I had spent years in South America. So I got invited. I’ve been back a week & leave again for San Francisco
in 2 days. Then settle down to solitary poesy again. Write me news. I
haven’t much time to correspond, tho, except in big emergency.
As ever
Allen
(Gargi’s
note: Malay’s trial continued till 1967. It is obvious that wrong
signals were being sent to Ginsberg from vested interests).
***********************************************************************
Carol Berge
15 January 1966
Dear Malay,
Now
I have the third letter from you. Now I have news for you. First of
all, I have sent you books, or rather magazines, and in a separate
package my own copy of ‘Lady Chatterly’---but if you don’t get my book
that’s okay, since we can get them here. The magazines are for the most
part just literary types, and they are a ‘test’ to see if you will
indeed receive things I send you. They have no risky stuff in them. If
they arrive, let me know at once.
News: our Ed
Sanders has just been arrested for pornography and is out on $500 bail.
We’ve all been waiting for this move for years. This will probably not
hurt him, since he is by now a national figure, and many of this
country’s finest literary figures are published in his magazine, over
the five years it’s been going. But it should be an interesting
trial---if it gets to that stage. He is just ready to publish another
issue, in which I believe your poem would be included. I’ll tell you
more later.
It is so beautiful of you to speak
of love to me. Let me put my hand on your cheek and tell you something
about me and about my child. Although many men have been in love with me
in my small time, it is not a good idea.
I
am the kind of woman who has the innate temperament of all writers. It
is not so easy for me to remain calm and easy, as the women of your
country. We Americans are troubled and difficult. My ideal is to become
gentle and fine and quiet, but I am not like that. I love to be active
and alive and making things happen. Of course this applies to things
literary, such as the group of poets
Who need guidance and action here in New York.
Now we have arranged for a new and more comfortable place for the group
to read poetry (we used to be at a place called Le metro but the owners
were such racists and I felt as did many others that we could and
should move out). There is more news. About twenty of us made a
recording which will be issued on Folkways Records soon. It is called
Jazz Poets’, a category which does not always apply but was used to
attract buyers. You shall have a copy if I have any way to get it to you
for sure.
I am so very glad to hear that
you’re free and safe. I had worried about you. There is a good pride in
your being the first to go through this ordeal. Of course, if your
friend does the essay on your writings, send it along to me at once; I
will go over it and give it in to AMERICAN DIALOG or another good mag,
and hope they print it.
You don’t say how old
you are but I will tell you I am now in my thirties and my son is 9. He
and I are both dark of hair and eyes. I am a small woman and very
intense, somewhat pretty, and the boy is very beautiful, with shining
eyes and tremendously strong ways. It is getting very difficult to raise
him alone. What he needs is to go out into the woods the way we did
this summer, and run wild a bit. But it isn’t so easy for me to make
this happen. Yes, I love the countryside as much as he does. But I don’t
feel safe without a man. So we go very very timidly. But this is a good
city to live in. I wish you were here, so that we could share some of
it with you. We too believe in love, any and all love, which is all that
is worth living for. I love the writing too, as it gives us our
friends. Here we have friends and in many cities of this world. Japan, London, Helsinki, Cologne, Mexico,
you know. I wish we could come there to visit you. But I too don’t see
how it is possible. I have saved some money but it will have to go
toward our next long summer---the boy is out of school over three
months---I must find a place outside the city for us.
But
Malay---somehow I am with you---we all feel alone most of the
time---‘the sanctity of the scull’---it is not easy to be a writer and a
human---I think of philosophical ideas much of the time these
days---how it is to live on earth in this time---how each man is the
center of his world---how we move toward and away from each other---I
would give you the warmth of your wishes if I could---with this New
Year. O yes there is a great difference between being alone and being
lonely, which you know. I have so much respect for the struggle of many
of my friends, whose work is strong and true. I just wrote a book review
on the book LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, by friend Hubert Selby Jr., which is
a major book because it tells in true language about a group of
so-called depraved and perverted types---and in the review I defended
them and him, because those people have had no choice about how to spend
their lives. They (and we) have become what they are, because of the
circumstances of their birth and their experience. Of course, Selby has
run into a lot of unfavorable comments on his book. And you have heard
o0f the trial and subsequent suppression of magazine EROS, whose
contents are obvious from the title. Well, Selby had to go through a
court trial for one section of his book, called ‘Tralala’ as published
in the magazine PROVINCETOWN REVIEW. I think they seized and suppressed
all copies of that issue. But eventually, all such cases win out. You
know, they have to. Because we writers are dealing with the medieval
morality of the masses---who, after all, can use the kind of FREEDOM and
LOVING , which we are able to teach them. To me, this is a prime reason
for being a writer: to use this gift for a good purpose. It strikes me
this is as strong a cause to work for as the Peace Foundation. How do
you feel about it? Though I feel I already know your answer; of course. I
would like you to send me one of these things: most important, a
picture of you. Or, and, a small woodcut or print of any kind which
speaks to me about ‘your’ India,
and which I can put on my wall and know you are there. Tell me in your
next letter about the room in which you live, or the house. Where are
your parents? Who are your friends and how do they live? Let me share
your in any way you can. I am absolutely your loving friend. The skin on
my back says so to you. My boy Peter is your boy and your friend as
well. You would find us always loving and sharing. In future I will try
to be more faithful about answering your mail. I will send you some more
books if you get the magazines I sent. And I will send you a photo and
also a print or such, for those moments when the world seems too dry and
too difficult or alone. You have our love, Malay---
I kiss you.
Carol Berge
(Gargi’s
note: A photograph of Carol Berge was traced out from Malay’s papers in
2003 and published in Disha Sahitya magazine). Link: www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00012.xml and www.lib.uconn.edu/DoddCenter/ASC/findaids/sanders/MSS1978000.html
************************************************************************
Daisy Aldan, 325 East 57 Street, New York
February 1, 1966
My dear Malay Roychoudhury
A
friend of yours, Howard McCord, has sent me your address. I am
distressed to hear about your plight, and hope that the situation will
be ameliorated as soon as possible, even though, I do not at present,
agree with the kind of poetry you and your friend are writing. I think
YOU ARE EXTREMELY TALENTED. I am a poet myself and Editor, and a great
associate of the Avant Garde. I consider myself in the forefront of the
true Avant Garde. I published a magazine called FOLDER which presented
poets whose work could not be published elsewhere because of its
contemporaneity. But I think what you are doing now is first of all,
passé, and second of all, a debasement of the spirit and language. I
also think it is all wrong for India,
and that there is room for excellence and contemporaneity without
debasement. However, this is just my opinion, and I am sure you have
good reasons for yours. You certainly should not be persecuted for your
poems.
The
major reason for this letter is to let you know that I am editing a book
for Thomas Crowell called POEMS OF INDIA and I would be happy to
consider some of your poems, and those of your friends. I wish to
include poems of every region of India.
Since the book is directed to young people, I can not publish any of
the poems of the nature of the one Howard McCord published (a copy of
which I have). If you wish to choose poems that do not deal with sex in
this way, then I shall be more than happy to consider including them. I
am eager to publish much contemporary work. Also any suggestions you may
have about poems of the past which should definitely be included would
be deeply appreciated. If any of your friend wishes to send me poems,
then they should include a brief biography and permission for me to use.
I
will send you under separate cover, my own poems: THE DESTRUCTION OF
CATHEDRALS, SEVEN:SEVEN, and A NEW FOLDER:AMERICANS:POEMS AND DRAWING,
an anthology. Since it takes months for mail to get to India, I hope your answer will arrive before you receive them. All submitted poems, by the way, must be in English or translations.
I spent four months in India last year---mostly in Bombay
and gave a lot of readings of my work. I met many poets whose work I
admire, among them, Padgaonkar, Karandikar, Ezekiel, Bapat, Katrak.
I love India, and happy to be involved in this project. My best wishes to you, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Fraternally,
Daisy Aldan
(Gargi’s
note: Ms Aldan is referring to ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ published by
Tribal Press with an Afterword written by Prof McCord. Nissim Ezekiel is
the pioneer of Indian Poetry in English, and the rest are Marathi
language poets.).
Link: www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/0004.xml and
research.hrc.utexas.edu8080/hrcxtf/view?docld=ead/00004
************************************************************************
Daisy Aldan, 325 East 57 Street, New York 10022, NY
February 25, 1966
Dear Malay Roychoudhury,
Thank
you so much for answering my letter so promptly. I shall certainly do
all I can to see that your booklet is publicized. I have a copy of it
myself. It has some great beauties in it, but contains what I was
referring to in my last letter. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps I am
conditioned by the fact that we here in the West are so bored by now
with sexual references, and no longer shocked by them. We feel that the
purpose of this shock is now over, and it is the mission of the poet to
give humanity hope and not to bore him with these petty sexual
references, for example to the pubic hairs of one’s love. There was
certainly a time for this when Apollinaire introduced this type of a
technique in 1917 and our ‘Beats’, inspired by Miller, drained such
words as s -t and f-k to the limit.
I
feel, as you, that the poet must be “free”, yes, but “freedom” that we
mean is a consciousness. It does not abnegate inner morality based on
intuition. (I am not speaking about outer moral laws). Then when one
becomes truly FREE, one is also released from pettiness---of concept.
This is so hard to write in a letter. Also I feel that modern man (as Krishna
himself indicated), cannot be absolutely free of the earth and of men.
If he becomes TOTALLY free , as you indicate, even of himself, he no
longer has the need to write poetry either. This totality will only come
to be in a future that is far distant---and if we poets, develop true
consciousness. True consciousness also assumes a certain responsibility.
Am I contradicting myself? Ask yourself deeply and truly. Malay (please
forgive the first name, but I hope it is all right), what was your
intention in writing about masturbation and pubic hairs? Was it because
you were truly deeply expressing a Free Divine---earthly concept? Or was
it to shock? Be honest with yourself. Was it to destroy Indian
rigidities? Or was it a false Luciferic temptation, disgusting itself in
Light?
I do
not demean your nobility, and am willing to be convinced. Once again, I
am not speaking from the point of view of prudishness, heaven knows. I
was one of the leaders of the American “avant garde”. But we have moved
past the destructive ness into a direction of wholeness and spirit.
“Spirit”,
yes, but in a contemporary idiom. I am sending you my books. They will
arrive in about four months, no doubt. Please send me your poems SOON,
as time is limited as far as the publisher is concerned. The poets will
receive a compensation or book for works used..
My deepest wishes for your vindication in that disgraceful trial. What can I do for you? I am ashamed of India for this.
With reverence,
Daisy Aldan
(Gargi’s
note: Malay has only one publication in English: ‘Selected Poems’,
published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata. The booklet being referred to by
Ms Aldan may be some sort of extempore anthology churned out during the
movement).Link:
isbndb.com/d/person/aldan_daisy.html
*********************************************************************
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
26 March, 1966
Dear
Malay: I have read the legal decision on your case, and thank you very
much for sending it. I find it laughable. I want to publish it together
with your poem STARK ELECTRIC JESUS in the next ‘City Lights Journal’
which will be out this coming summer, and I enclose a small payment
immediately, since I know you must need it desperately. I am sending a
Copy of this letter to Howard McCord. Perhaps he knows the answers to
the following questions and will send them to me right away, since time
is of essence, and it may take some time to get a reply from you. I
think it is a wonderful poem, and I will certainly credit McCord for
having first published it. Bravo.
Allen is in NY and his new address is: 408 East 10 Street, (Apt 4C), New York, NY.
I
need to know the answers to the following questions: (1). Was the poem
first written in Bengali and was it the Bengali or the English version
which was seized and prosecuted? (2). Is this your own translation, or
whose is it? (3) Do you wish me to use the typewritten copy of the poem
which you sent me last year, or the version printed by McCord? (I find
some differences.)
Let me hear as soon as you can. Holding the press.
And Good Luck. I hope you are still able to survive! With love.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(Gargi’s
note: The poem was first written in Bengali and translated by Malay
himself. The poem was published in City Lights Journal with an
introduction on the movement written by Prof McCord, and the same matter
was republished in the Hungryalist commemorative issue of ‘Salted
Feathers’ edited by Dick Bakken. “Salted Feathers” featured most of the
participants of the movement.). Links:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti
www,poetsencyclopedia.com/mrchoudhury.shtml
wings.buffalo.edu/ebc/presses/mill/2milltoc.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_generation
islandhills.tripod.com/biobakken.htm
************************************************************************
Robert Kelly
5 June 1966 (birthday of Garcia Lorca)
Dear Malay,
How
hungry we all are---and that is that Associative Energy brings prick to
its house, food to our bellies, friends to our table, my hand to this
paper to wish you “News and well”. I write by the light of two green
candles, the smaller one moulded from the melt-wax of the larger---its
wick burns faster---the wax is softer; only the hard endures, keeps
enough of its divine form to let itself petrify in form, become amorphic
fossil of itself ---alive in sorts if not in conditions. (Last month I
finished a very long poem, weeks, in 150 Sections---it represents a
non-linear structure which is nevertheless deeply committed to receiving
what happens around me, to me: what emerges. Work had been started just
a year before, right on the heels of that dancer Round Dances was: her
body. Now there is a much shorter long poem, “Map of Annandale”).
Obscenity we must finally begin to praise and pornography as such, as
genre, legitimate form: too long we have hedged about with art vs
pornography. Be well and strong, in the image of the body- --I look to
see your poems in English.---Courage, love.
Robert
(Gargi’s
note: The poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’ has been reprinted and
interpreted umpteenth times, and most of all influenced evangelical
thinking. The idea of Jesus being Electric as well as Stark had been
picked up from this poem since its translation in Western languages.
Incidentally, the original Bengali poem used the word ‘Carpenter’).
************************************************************************
Octavio Paz, New Delhi
The 16th of July, 1966
Dear Mr. Choudhury:
Last time I was in Calcutta, I met some of your friends who talked to me about you.
I hope I shall find an opportunity to meet you when I visit your city or whenever you get a chance to come to Delhi
Meanwhile please accept my best regard.
Cordially yours,
Octavio Paz
(Gargi’s
note: Octavio Paz came to know of the movement through the media,
especially TIME magazine, and came down to Kolkata (the then Calcutta),
to meet the participants who had created so much turmoil in Indian
literary world. A press baron directed him to another group. Paz later
met Malay when he visited Patna).
************************************************************************
Ameeq Hanfee, 104 Gandhi Park Colony, Indore
26 July 1966
My dear Malay,
I am extremely grateful to you for your permission to translate your poem ‘Zakhm’
into
Urdu. I assure that Urdu version of your poem will do full justice to
it and may even sound better than the Hindi one. The Hindi translator
has done his job very well, no doubt, but at places either he or the
press has not been vey careful in the use of ka! ki! ke!
etc.,
as well as certain Urdu words. On the whole the Hindi version seems to
be a fairly faithful reproduction of the mood, spirit and expression of
the original
I
had written to Basak to send me literature of and on the Hungryalist
writings and movement, and he had promised to enlighten me, but I did
not get anything except his own article, the Calcutta Presidency Court
judgement and the Hindi version of ‘Zakhm’. Whatever I know about your
movement is through what I read in BLITZ, TIME, DHARMAYUG, MARAL,
GYANODAYA, ANIMA, and LAHAR. I wish to go still deeper before venturing
to write about the Hungryalists in Urdu. I am a poet and find your
poetry---Hungryalist poetry---full of inspiration, freshness, fire and
oxygen.
I am looking forward to the day when we will meet and not only compare notes but also exchange heart and mind.
I
was all the more interested in ‘Zakhm’ because I found that you and I
share a lot of common ground. There are so many lines in ‘Zakhm’ which
express the same or similar experiences I have expressed in my long
poems ‘Sindbad’, ‘Sharzad’ and ‘Shabgasht’. I must give you the credit
of being more modern---rather up to date in your imagery, diction and
poetic statements than I could be. Still your wound is not very
different from mine.
Let
us all succeed in exploding the atom for real peace and freedom---the
atom of our individual experience. After all the subterranean source is
the same from which we all have our blood-lines connected.
With admiration, regards and love
Ameeq Hanfee
(Gargi’s
note: In fame and impact Malay’s long poem JAKHAM (Zakhm in Urdu and
Hindi) had surpassed Stark Electric Jesus by 1966, and was being
translated in other Indian languages. The Hindi version was translated
by Kanchan Kumar under the guidance of famous poet Nagarjuna. English
and German versions were printed by Carl Weissner in
‘Klactoveedsedsteen’. Margaret Randall had arranged its translation in
Spanish, when she was in Mexico).
***********************************************************************
Gordon Lasslett, 67 Acton Street, Hurlstone Park, NSW, Australia
August 20th, 1966
Dear Mr. Choudhury---
Having recently read your ‘In Defense of Obscenity’ I wish to say that I agree almost completely with you. Consider this one a fan letter!
Magazines & books (of poetry) from India
are not unknown here but they are all so very very stuffy. Could you
recommend some decent titles, perhaps your own, and tell me where I
could obtain them.
The maternal side of my family has associations with India in that they were officers in the very British ‘Indian Army’. Perhaps my great grandfather kicked your great grandfather!
How do Indians feel about migration to Australia.This is one of my ideals and I speak in favour of it whenever possible---but Australia
is too ‘white’. This country is so bloody empty and in need of
cultivation (pastoral as well as artwise) that one goes in to fits of
manic depression to see such waste. All because a few sit on their unwritten ‘white Australia’.
What
with that, in view of Americanization and the growth of authoritarian
nationalism, Asian migration is the only hope of keeping our freedom.
Kiss the Additional Chief Presidency Magistrate
for me
please,
Gordon Lasslett
(Gargi’s note: Hungryalist bulletins and manifestoes had reached Australia via Europe. Austalian magazines could not be traced).
************************************************************************
Dan Georgakas, Box 418, Stuyvesant Station, New York, New York 10009
August 23, 1966
Dear Malay,
Sorry
to be so long about writing but you can see I have been moving around.
Your ‘In Defense of Obscenity’ is a beauty. Allan Van Newkirk is going
to print it in GUERILLA. Allan and I are not connected with Artists
Workshop except for in the most casual way. Smyrnn Press is separate and
so too is the new GURILLA.
Karl
Heinz Weissner tells me he has contacted you (at my urging), and he is
tuned on by Stark Electric Jesus. I hope you will dig my own Manifesto
For The Grey Generation.
Allen
and I have founded a group called The League of Revolutionary Poets:
Torp. We combine politics with poetry-in-happening---action events.
Example: On August 6th we attended a peace parade and hung Johnson in effigy and flew the NLF flag. August 7th
we attended the Festival of People at Artists Workshop, and held a mock
trial (they had no warning) of love-dove poems, which angered many in
the audience. August 9th: Anti-war poems: reading at downtown rally. August 13th: letter to paper congratulating Detroiters on letting their Greek Theatre die since any nation supporting a Vietnam atrocity could not support Gk Theatre too. New activities: war crime tribunal in Detroit, melon poetry reading in Pittsburgh, trial of love in Chicago.
We seek creative vandalism. Today I read a foul story in Village Voice.
Wiped my ass with it and sent it in to the paper. I am getting a squirt
gun and will fill it with paint. Shoot when ready, the Grey Generation.
I want to go to the opening night of the Opera when all the shitheads
are there, and hurl anti-war poems from the galleries when the
war-criminals enter. DADA lives. SURREALISM returns. Lasslett in Australia, Weissner in Germany. Nutall in Britain. Partisan of the world unite. Towers, open fire.
Doubleday
& Co will anthologize a poem for me. Story in homosexual magazine.
Poem in communist magazine. Makes me a capitalist homosexual communist
dog or a chameleon. Clifton de Berry is our man. io! ee! This is the
world, begins with a BaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnngggggggGGGGGGGGG…..’’’’’
Wichita Vortex Sutra-----wonderful. Ginsberg reads in Washington Square on Sunday to test new law about pornography and such.
Allen says he has sent Miller’s Sexus.
Prices sky high in New York. Faces ugly. Squalor everywhere. But a vitality. The Blacks are beautiful. Anger. Revolution. You must stay in India
and smash them. This is the age of sabotage and subversion. Smash the
word. Destroy the logic. Warp the system until it snaps. Love, oxygen,
semen, tullipbuds, serendipity syringes----breakthrough in the grey
room---dan georgakas
Dan
(Gargi’s note: Over the years Mr. Georgakas became a reputed scholar of Anarchism.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Georgakis
***********************************************************************
Carl Weissner
24 September 1966
Dear loving brother guru
This
finds me in the process of recovery from illness & series of
bringdowns & now again working diligently on issue 4 of the
mag….before the sickness had led my metabolic blues astray. I had got me
a job & they had to pay me for the whole period of illness which is
the only pleasant thing abt a job,…I have been able to cut costs for
printing the mag down to something like 150 bucks, but still…
Tell
me: did you get yr copy of the manifesto? (I mailed two copies to
Subimal Basak) and did you get my last letter? what abt the proceedings
of appeal? already over? And what the outcome? favourable for you I
hope!....yes will write to Donatella…..she has just sent English
translation of her Ginsberg essay which appeared in ‘Studi Americani’ in
Italy last year…also good letters from Carol and Dan….
YES! BY ALL MEANS SEND THE TYPE SCRIPT OF LIFE , ARREST, TRIAL, GINSBERG, CALCUTTA!!!!!
Listen:!! Gerard Malanga just sent a large and fantastic collection of
poems, 4 of them dedicated to Allen! Also magnificent photos of Allen
and himself! He will probably also write for KLACT abt his friendship
with Allen! And Diana Di Prima sent a collection
of cute short poems, all from 1957….all this will be included in KLACT 5
(spring 67)…I have also written to Allen & asked him to conyribute
original work, hoping he be willing to do so…COULD YOU WRITE HIM AND
TELL HIM A FEW GOOD WORDS ABOUT ME AND KLACTO PLAN AND URGE HIM TO SEND
STUFF??!!!! He is at 408 East 10th Street, Apt. 4C, New York, NY 10009…
I
have not yet found time to contact the people you told me, but will do
so any day now….I will concentrate on Subimal’s and your work, tho… in
No 5….but may be I will also contact Howard McCord (please give me his
address!)….if it shd turn out that I have space left for more
Bengali/Indian in No 5…..
DID YOU RECEIVE THE ‘ICONOLATRE’ ISSUE I SENT YOU??!!!
Also
Larry Eigner sent me more poem: today, which will be in KLACT 5…yeah,
things are really swinging now!....I am also thinking of publishing
George Dowden’s new great visionary poem RENEW JERUSALEM in a limited
edition, sometime later this year, if I have the money….(!)…..
The
English original of yr article of course will be in KLACT, and I will
translate it into German, too, and look around for possible publication
in German mag…ok? O YEAH! Looking forward to translated passages from
‘JAKHAM’ plus one page in original BENGALI! GREAT! Please note: Bengali
page, if possible, should be written on white sheet of paper in black
ink, and should be sent whole, that is, not folded----so that it can be
used for repro….
Do you know MAHENJODARO (ed. Samir Roy, 55/4 Natabar Pal Road, Howrah)? What it is like?---and POETRY TODAY (ed. Nissim Ezekiel, The Retreat, Bellasis Road, Bombay 8)? Qk. So much for this time.
All best to you
Love
Carl
(Gargi’s note: Mr. Dowden had met Subimal Basak and Pradip Choudhuri at Kolkata; he later visited Patna
to meet Malay. He clothed himself in saffron robes and changed his name
to Kaviraj George Dowden. Kaviraj denoting king of poets as well as
herbal doctor).
Links: findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/fedora/get/inu-ead-spec0022/inu:EADbDef11/getlistOfContents
************************************************************************
Carl Weissner
5 December 1966
Dear malay
The
great sky is open----northern Italy washed away in vast mud & storm
chaos & deluge----desperate letters from Donatella
Manganotti----priceless artwork destroyed forever---and just a few
minutes ago I hear in the news that they are in for yet another
meterologic showdown---Bihar province like a vast dried-up cunt I
gather---hunger & revolts everywhere---German government collapsed,
neo-Nazi movement scoring for the gaps: Christian & Social Democrats
joining forces to make a last desperate attempt at saving the old ship
St. Nanana already half drowned---Hanoi set ablaze by efficient hordes
of technicians of death masterminded by sick pentagon eunuchs & a
corny Texan cowboy putting out fake charismatic vibrations that
materialize in tons of explosives & charred remnants of Asian bodies
enabling Wall Street to hang on for another fiscal year---you see how
they are caught in loops and spins of lethal genetic roulette---a
uniform grey generation scurrying among nuclear debris of heavily
infected areas of cancerous mind like rats in terminal stage of dream
withdrawl eating erogenous holes in huge chaotic setup of punch-cards
that represent lives marked for Total Disposal---one more turnstile
before the whole shithouse blows up---Nova Criminals wishing up dwarfed
marks everywhere on this sick planet---SECONDS TO GO---you can already
hear that heaving human blues heading for its irrevocable Dead Whistle
Stop---so? Burning heavens, mister---nova armies conspiring across the
wounded galaxies---icarus, nova-directed asteroid, due to blot out a
terrestrial spot of bother the size of new york or tokio or London, on
june 15, 1967---or September 13, 1968---what’s the difference---with the
impact of one thousand hydrogen bombs---you see how things have grown
to hitherto unimaginable bad proportions---a disarmament conference
would have to include representatives of Nova, Interzone & Minraud,
and there’s little chance that one could ever bomb this intergalactic
gook rot to parley---and god knows how many of their agents are already
operating among us disguised as word & image technicians seconds to
go---we’ve got to attune our paranoiac feelers to that vast danger
around us, spot them wherever they show a blind spot & stop them
dead in their tracks---
In
order to achieve this we have to provide ourselves with an insight into
their methods & operating schedules, and the work of Bill Burroughs
& a few other semantic cosmonauts shows precisely who they are
& how they operate---in supersonic patterns of sense-wave
control---or long, medium, short & ultra short waves of the
world---in cozy bed sitters, court-rooms, arenas, parliaments,
newspapers, or gone streets---in subcutaneous offices of annexed brains
around the paralyzed globe---right where you are sitting now there in
Bad News Department walking in on you cool & casual with a
perfunctory ‘hello there’---and metamorphosing you into an obedient Hate
Virus host in a matter of seconds---if you are not fully aware---each
second & if you do not know who they are & how to fight
them---now---in forthcoming issue of KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN you will find
more details & outlines of steps to be taken towards an immediate
universal survival training in a peiceby Mr. Burroughs & Mr.
Weissner; called LAGUERRE PARTOUT (war everywhere), precisely showing
some of the hideous techniques by which the nova criminals try to
mono-police & control & manipulate so-called ‘reality’ in order
to subvert & takeover mind & consciousness of every single of
us---
Carl
(Gargi’s
note: During this period Mr. Weissner was quite impressed with the prose
style of William Burroughs. He was, for some time, accompanying
interviewer of Burroughs).
unjobs.org/authors/dan-georgakas
************************************************************************
Howard McCord
10 January, 1967
Dear Malay,
A
joy to receive your last three letters, for I see in them your good
spirits and your kindness in telling me of the various Indian drugs. I
do hope things turn for the better with you from now on, and that your
appeal is successful. I have sent today the copy of CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL
you requested. I sent it direct to you by
airmail. Yesterday I sent you a copy of my new book. Just today I
received a copy of Gary Snyder’s reaction to the book, and it was
wonderful. I admire him greatly as a poet, and he found my own poetry
worthy and exciting, so I too am in good spirits.
Yes, I would like some things from India: either ganja, bhang, or charas. I like the hemp/hashish derivatives of cannabis sativa (here in America the plant is generally weaker than in India,
and the leaves and flowers are only smoked). But I do not care for any
of the opiates. They are physiologically addictive, and depressants,
additioanally, cannabis is a psychedelic. In working over your letters, I
have found INDIAN MATERIA MEDICA, by A.K.Nadkarni---and it is a great
store of information about Indian medicinal plants. It has an especially
good section on cannabis(marijuana).
I
have just been through many of the proofs of the new SALTED FEATHERS.
It has a fine production, and should be out in a month. Dick may well
already have sent one of the flyers, but I enclose one also. He has also
written to Ferlinghetti for permission to publish once more STARK
ELECTRIC JESUS, with more money coming to you, and I hope Ferlinghetti
grants his request.
My
anthology goes along---I think by Feb I shall have the manuscript
finished. Most of your things---like SEJ---will be included and as soon
as I have a good list of contents, I’ll send it along to you.
I really liked the paragraph about your mother & your youth. It would make a good poem.
Ether
is probably a good bash & drunk, but I wonder if it does what LSD
does. In the old days Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas---as anesthetic) also
provided researchers with interesting experiences---William James for
one. If, by the way, you should get into bad LSD trip, THORAZIME, a
tranquilizer, is supposed to be a good antidote.
A thick letter could probably also contain enough ganja, etc., for a cigarette or two and not be too noticeable, yes?
Much love to you, and I hope the poem in
FABLES AND TRANSFIGURATIONS talks.
Howard
(Gargi’s
note: Prof McCord collaborated with Indian poet Arvindkrishna Mehrotra
and edited a collection of Hungryalist writings. Their workpapers are
archived in Northwestern University Library, 1935 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois.
SALTED FEATHERS#8/9(1967), apart from INTREPID(1968) edited by Allen de
Loach, contain photographs of most of the participants of the movement)
************************************************************************
Rajkamal Choudhury, Mahisi PO., (Saharsa).
2 February, 1967
Dear Malay
How are you?
Life
in villageis very healthy to me. So I am here, silent, also, and happy.
But to let me be in contact with all of you, all of us, be sending me
magazines…..and…..
Raj Kamal.
(Gargi’s
note: Rajkamal Choudhury is a legendary Hindi poet, who, during his
Kolkata-days had come in contact with the Hungryalists, and carried the
spirit to Hindi literature. He died young due to over-indulgence and
experiments with psychedelics).
Link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajkamal_Choudhary
************************************************************************
Carol Berge
March 7, 1967
Dear Malay,
Now I have your photo. McCord sent me a copy, or was it Dick Bakken! .Anyway, one of the friends here. You seem a fine handsome man---and I am glad to see
Samir’s
daughter as well. Your face sits opposite me, it is over my kitchen
table, on the wall, so that each day when I break bread, I can share
with you.
Sometimes
I don’t like being a part of a big city, but I never feel alone. This
is trouble, in a way: there are always too many things to see and do:
too many people and friends. The hardest thing is to be alone and do the
work, too much temptation to go out and be busy. I tend therefore to be
a recluse in my own way, though quite active to other eyes, in writing
activities. I stay home almost all day everyday, to write or read or
answer letters etc. I go out three or four nights a week, reading poetry
or listening, going to dance programs, or to hear music etc.,---there
are many activities within just a four-block radius of where I live.
Yes,
of course, I received your resume, didn’t I acknowledge it yet? I gave
copies to McCord, to David Antin, to Joel Oppenheimer (I think), and to
Bob Creely up at Buffalo
(State Univ). I have no idea what might happen but all I can do is to
try for you, with those friends who are academically affiliated…..I wish
you so much good luck!
Sure, I would like to have a double-volume of poems out, your poems and mine. I shall make the suggestion to Nelson Ball, Apt 4, 22 Young St., Kitchenar, Ontario, Canada, who publishes VOLUME 63, at University of Waterloo, Canada. Nelson recently let me edit a section of New York
poets for his magazine. He is also editing a series of small poetry
books. Let me get him to write to you; in the meantime, you could write
to him if you wish, offering him 15-18 pages of poetry for him to select
from. What do you think? I had the idea of giving him two or three
‘long’ poems, each about three pages long. You might do the same. This
is one of the proposition that he would be interested in the idea of
double volume. I think it would be very interesting indeed & it is
possible it would give us a nice public interest, and a tiny bit of
money maybe. How are you doing for money these days? Are you working
still? Tell me.
What
you say about always having felt that in your life there is always
something pending, something big about to happen----no, my story is that
I did not go anywhere or do anything at all of any importance till I
was 30 years of age---so that at 30 I still looked around 22, and my
mind and emotions were that of an adolescent. I’ve done all of my
growing up in the last eight years. This keeps me naïve and still 10
years behind my peers in my work and my ideas. But I sure did live a
fast and hectic 8 years, trying to catch up. All the work of mine that
you’ve seen comes from this period. All of everything. I think it is a
question of working against fate to get the world accept you on your own
terms. You could call it ‘the Establishment’ too if you wanted to. Of
course here we don’t have
The desperate poverty and the simple physical argument you have in India---although
I was poor as a child. But each artist constructs its irritant against
which the struggle seems stronger. All of us seem ill---suited to fit
into the society in most ways. I think it has always been thus, as we
shall always have wars. Part of the human condition. And the artist
representing the human condition has to extend to cover all of human
experience somehow---the rich, the satisfied, the ugly, the lovely---all
of it---you know all of it no matter where you live or how you live.
And so do I, somehow….
A friend, Wendell Metzger, a strange fine man who is a playwright, is going to be in India
soon. I gave him your address so that he could contact you if he was
able. He is not a part of our ‘hip’ scene as with Allen G. & our
other friends, somewhat older too, but a good friend. See him if you
can.
Today I
think that life mean only resisting; there seem no easy steps or
solutions. I wish for too much and then I wish for the peace of
no-wishing. This has been a good year until now but begins to get
difficult and moody again. But my health is good and there are a few
people who understand, and a few others who love me, and always the
writing, so one continues. I havent any idea what sustains any of us, do
you? I call it ‘The Infernal Spirit’ in my own mind sometime.That
doomed flame. You will be a popular success in this country before you
are accepted in your own! And how often this has been the case. US writers succeeding in England
before US, and our musicians certainly find more success and response
in European Opera halls, concert halls and Jazz cellers than in the slow
sedentary stiff minds of their own countrymen. Stubborn!
Write
to me again soon, now I feel we’ve had some kind of long talk about the
condition of being creative----at least a beginning----
With love as always, yr friend
Carol
(Gargi’s
note: Ms. Berge’s proposal did not succeed as Malay was suddenly
suffering from writer’s block and did not write poems till 1985).
************************************************************************
Ameeq Hanfee, 140 Gandhi Park Colony, Indore 1
April 12, 1967
My dear Malay,
I
am sorry that my correspondence stood still for the last two months or
so. I found myself quite barren to create and produce anything. NO
communication was possible. A very turbulent emotional and neurotic
storm was raging within me. My intellect failed to play the Noah’s Ark.
Somehow I am emerging out of this and feel better and fertile. It was
quite an experience I never had before. Though incomplete, I find it has
filled a gap. When I look back, I feel that only a storm could wash my
inner self that had accumulated a lot of dirt and the wet dusters of
reason could not clear it off.
I feel it was a
process of catharsis. It was like a surgical operation of the heart of
my soul and the suffering and pain was because no anaesthesia was given.
Now, when the wounds are healing up, I have different vision. It is a
pleasure that fills me. The words break, the images crack and the
expressions burst when I try them to contain this new
experience---perhaps because still it is too hot. I very much doubt if
LSD and other drugs can bring forth the images and ecstatic patterns
that this semi-mystic experience is projecting before the inward eye.
Language is a very weak vehicle to convey this
Well I am anxiously awating the finale of your trial. It is not you but all of us on trial. It is freedom, in you, on trial.
I
am glad to hear that the Hungryalists have warmed up again and are
assailing the literary scene with more vigour and virulence.
‘Zakhm’
is waiting to appear in print. The mag in which two of my articles and
‘Zakhm’ have been accepted for publication has been delayed and I have
not been told when it will be published.
Your
suggestion that I must bring out a cyclostyled collection of my
translated poems strikes me immensely. I am inclined to take to it.
Sincerely
Ameeq Hanfee
(Gargi’s note: That was the only poem of Malay translated in Urdu).
***********************************************************************
George Dowden, London.
22 April 1967
Dear Malay,
Good
to hear from you; glad you have some kind of job now. I’ve gotten
together with Utpal Basu here, good bloke, but doesn’t seem to be doing
any writing here; just teaching. He introduced me to the shehnai
(recording: The Magical Shehnai of Bismillah Khan), which is a lovely
instrument. I dig the morning raga on that recording, but not the
evening one particularly. I also wrote to Dick Bakken about collecting
SALTED FEATHERS, just yesterday. I am about to write to the National
Library of India about Ginsberg, as you suggested. Meanwhile, if you
have spare copies of any Indian mags he was in, please send, like
UTTARSURI of Dec 1963, MOHENJODARO of 1963 etc. AS I said, I’ll pay---or
send you things in exchange. You mentioned wanting books on Cubism,
Surrealism and Dadaism---there is a good series here, which includes all
of these, a book on each; the publisher is Thomas Hudson; the Cubism
book is by Edward f. Fry, the Surrealism by Patric Waldberg, the Dadaism
by Hans Richter. Do you have these available there? If not, I’ll get
them for you and send. Let me know.
Did RENEW JERUSALEM arrive all right? Let me hear you about it. Seeing lawyers now, wanting to safely bring out an edition here.
America
is getting worse and worse; lies and destruction, threat to the whole
world. Fortunately the youth are not listening to their bullshit except
to jeer at it, and as long as that goes on, can not be stopped, there is
hope. If the totalitarian impetus in America gets its own way, and all the power, then all hope is gone. South America would become the next Vietnam, and so on. But think they will be stopped---though not until more blood flows.
Let me know how you are doing. Write soon.
Cheers,
George Dowden
***********************************************************************
Ida Spaulding
July 29 1967
Dear Malay,
We’ve been back for a few days touring around the Peloponnesos. No news yet about where Linn will be sent----Amman seems doubtful. So in a few more days we may go to Crete.
It is interesting traveling about and the children are staying well
which is very fortunate. I’ll enclose some pictures: this one is at Rian
at the campground there where we rented a tent----Daniel is standing,
Sarah is crouched in front, it is my back and then Jane in her bikini.
In the other picture you can see Castalian Spring at Delphi where purification rites were performed before visiting the Oracle.
There is a nice shop in Athens
(Monastraki) where a man who is a poet makes sandals. If you will send
me a tracing of your foot on paper I will send you a pair.
It is hot here. We are staying now in a low-cost hotel in Piraeus
(Athen’s seaport) where we are near the boats---also near everything.
We are right next to the public food market. It is a fascinating
area---noisy, very busy. Also we got lovely fresh fruit.
Best wishes and love
Ida Spaulding
Link:spaulding.blogspot.com
************************************************************************
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