KUNWAR NARAIN

Kunwar Narain (1927–2017) is considered one of India’s foremost poets, thinkers and literary figures of modern times. He read across literatures and disciplines, and blended an international sensibility with a grounding in Indian history and thought. His diverse oeuvre of seven decades embodies, above all, a unique interplay of the simple and the complex; and includes poetry, epics, short stories, literary criticism, essays, diaries, translations, and writings on world cinema and the arts. His honours include the Sahitya Akademi Award and Senior Fellowship, the Kabir Samman, Italy’s Premio Feronia for distinguished world author, the Padma Bhushan, and the Jnanpith. Some of his works remain unpublished.

Note on Poetics

Kunwar Narain, translated from the Hindi:

“When I sit down to write, someone else also comes and sits near me…at the distance of a dialogue. A conversation goes on with that person, who is difficult to identify. She or he could be anyone intimately known to me; a reader, critic or scholar; or just my alter ego. A reminiscence of that talk remains…”

– Bhāṣā Ke Dhruvāntoṁ Tak: Vājaśravā Ke Bahāne (To the Polar Ends of Language: On Vajashrava’s Pretext), an essay in Śabd Aur Deśkāl, Rajkamal, 2013

Courtesy Westland Publications Private Limited

“ …I’ve deployed several stories in a particular way, by making a dent in some familiar shape or species of the story. While making this dent, I’ve asked for a new point of view from the reader, in which they are not mesmerized by the magic of the story, but remain fully alert, hand-in-hand with the storyteller, and continue to reason and counter-reason with themselves. In this effort, the stories have sometimes come fairly close to the modes of poetry and essay, but perhaps not in a way that their fundamental identity should be lost. Now and then, to salvage some literary genre from the inelasticity of its hardened pedigree, it is necessary to set off an explosion inside it—by abetting the infiltration of outlying elements.”

“…language has also been deliberately set in several registers, so that shades of meaning can be felt across manifold intellectual and emotional planes.”

– Author’s preface to the original book, Ākāron Ke Āspās, which was titled ‘To The Reader’. (The Play of Dolls: Stories, trans. John Vater and Apurva Narain, Penguin Modern Classics, Penguin Books, India, 2020)

Courtesy Penguin Random House India