This is a book of conversations, which not only endorses the life and thoughts of Ashok Vajpeyi, but also talks about poetry in general Ashok Vajpeyi is a poet who is at home with the word. He speaks to the mortals and the divinities. He makes the mystery of the world visible to us by speaking with/of poetry. Throughout these conversations we encounter a poet who sets his own pace through poetry, music, and painting. Ashok Vajpeyi's deep sense of expectation from arts is born out of his love of the world which renders moral dignity to creativity.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is a political philosopher He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University, Delhi, India.
An indefatigable interlocutor. (Vajpeyi) comes armed with enquiries that would unnerve a lesser soul, but meets them midway with unusual candour, wit and an innate wisdom obtained from his deep- rooted immersion in Indian culture. Rarely has life's spectrum been articulated so clearly and deeply through the practice of art as it is in this scintillating conversation.
All thought begins with a poem, said the French philosopher Alain. As such, the difference between a poet and ordinary beings is that a poet thinks closely to the world. A poet lives with poetry, since to live without poetry is not to live. This is a mysterium tremendum (as Nietzsche calls it) which is lost by our contemporary decivilizing society. Only poets can give us the possibility to transcend the basic inhumanity at the heart of our civilization. The last hundred years remind us of what Paul Valery said in his essay Crisis of Mind: 'We civilizations now know that we are mortal. However, poets come to our lives unexpectedly and 'create a new alphabet of hope' as affirms Ashok Vajpeyi.
Poetry is always a miracle necessary for the survival of language. Every poet opens a window onto a new world. Because as George Steiner says: "The death of language is the death of the universe of possibilities. We need poets to tell us what are these possibilities. As Ashok Vajpeyi says: "We don't go to poetry to search for or reach the truth, but to experience reality, to be part of it. Poetry does not proclaim the truth or research it: it sculpts its fiction from reality. Every poem is a narrative of an incomplete reality. This is the difference between poets and ideologues. Poets have the integrity of thought and a fundamental honesty not to declare reality complete. 'After the end, we won't be finished, writes Ashok Vajpeyi. There will always be the incomprehensible and the incompleteness.
Being a poet is a fragile condition in our world. In the Middle Ages, poets could seek refuge in monasteries to escape the barbarians and de- fend the language. Where can poets seek refuge today to keep the words safe? They need to wrestle with reality to write in its margins. These mar- gins are a living dialogue with what Paul Celan calls 'north of the future. What gives a poet his/her dignity is the force of silence. Perhaps a poet knows how to live silently. To be silent is to think closely to one- self. None ever succeeded better than poets. Let us consider the silence which inspires Ashok Vajpeyi in few lines of his poem entitled 'Ancestral homes': 'Calling the saddened gods in vain-in an infinite cosmic journey-we will go to our ancestral homes: This athomeness is what Heidegger calls 'dwelling' after the German poet Holderlin. Heidegger and Holderlin see the essence of the 'poetic' by way of its relation to this dwelling. As Holderlin affirms: 'Humans dwell on this earth, Full of Merit, but also poetically: Dwelling in this world is equally dwelling in language. The more the poet dwells, the more he/she becomes the one who thinks. The poet speaks and thinks as he/she dwells. Now, the poet who speaks and thinks defends the word, because as Stefan George underlines: 'Where word breaks off no thing may be.
Ashok Vajpeyi is a poet who is at home with the word. He speaks to the mortals and the divinities. He makes the mystery of the world visible to us by speaking with/of poetry. 'Words dwell in silence and, are at peace there. As Heidegger says: 'Poetry is the act of founding by word... that which endures. That is why poetry is closer to us than any other form of writing. Poetry endures like the world does. Therefore, poets are in no hurry with words; readers are. When a poet writes poetry, he/she grows in it. Poetry needs a time for ploughing and a time for gathering the harvest. We often forget, just how much the poet is close to the grammar of the earth. It takes a poet like Ashok Vajpeyi to remind us: 'Being earth, nonbeing sky.
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