AN IMAGINARY DIA­ Blood dripped dropped like LOGUE: A COMPARA­ prized gems Smooth flesh breached TIVE LOOK AT CON­ By powered thrust of iron TEMPORARY THAI AND blades WESTERN POETRY1 Screams reverberated through the land but valued no more than fruit- 2 Chetana Nagavajara flies' buzz Back and forth, back and forth I do not wish to sound pessimistic, but it Tears flooded the clouds is time that the image of Thailand as a Little rabbit's up to its neck in land of smiles should be questioned. In despair this respect, contemporary Thai poetry Grabbed heaven-spire, pulled can substantiate my point that hope crashing down contemporary Thai society is extremely Rainbow ghost lunged his complex and defies any simplification. lightening rod As we are meeting at Sanam Chandra Ripping through the startled Palace in Nakom Pathom, it is only chest appropriate that I begin with a poem by Rainbow ghost sucked dry the Saksiri Meesomsueb (born 1956) blood "Retracing Footprints on the Path", The sky moans mixed with which was the very first poem read at a fierce gun-fires poetry reading session on 14 March Was it this tamarind tree or some 1997, at Tabkhwan House, only a few other? steps away from our meeting place Sobbing Pigtail, Topknot and today. The poem is quoted here in full in Glae queried a translation by Chamnongsri Was it on this branch or another, Hanchanelak. pretty tree, That they hung the beloved "Paper birds panicked into flight maid? Reeling in vast tear-filled skies Breezes blew, branch bent, Boom, Boom ..... scattered in body swung fright Beaten, battered, kicked as it Bang Bang .. .ee-poh guns hung broke the air No words, no cries, no Shot out chamaliang bullets recrimination Bright-eyed ones dropped Was the rope so tight that drooped you're silent? Eye-balls burst- broke and bled Your eyes bulged, tongue hung out Is it rage that clenched your fist 1 1 Paper presented at the 17 h World so? Congress of Poets, Nakorn Pathom, Let anger dissolve with the Thailand, 24-28 July 2002. dissolving breath 2 Emeritus Professor ofGerman, Silapakorn For your corpse they've University, Nakorn Pathom, Thailand. cremated with burning tires 1 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:43:58PM via free access MANUSYA :-Journal ofHumaniti es 6.1, 2003 They cupped hands to make of depth megaphones Set tactics for strategic of peace For trumpeting news they'd Sixth October 2519 concocted Retracing footprints on the path That we were a fungal and Subtracting a finger or a toe for leprous lot . each year With spotted hinds and scarlet None's left on my hands and heads feet, dear friends Then they threw olive grenades Counting fingers and toes that Ten thousand ee-poh guns · day to this responded It's been twenty years, dear Spattering Chamaliang bullets friends Smashing lives, scattering Counting fingers and toes that bodies day to this None died but revived by magic It's been twenty years, dear wah friends"3 The dead were quickened with life As you may have experienced from the Not killed, not dead, we're alive video presentation, the response to the the wounded cured, the dead reading by the poet was overwhelming. revived Saksiri Meesomsueb and 15 other poets Not killed, we're still here to responded to an invitation by a research stand fast group engaged in a comparative Hope and dreams are beacon­ research project entitled "Poetry as an bright Intellectual and Spiritual Force in We select, analyze and put Contemporary Society: Experiences away from Thai, British-Irish, American, Keep this, discard that to find French and German Literatures". The the win-way poets interacted with the researchers on You on your side, we on ours a number ofissues related to the cultural Differing yet steadfast. .. with environment that had induced them to Truth become poets. After the morning and Lets' cross the peaks of afternoon seminar sessions, the poets ignorance gathered again at Tabkhwan House for To reach vktory through a reading session, each presenting one wisdom of mankind poem of his or her own which was Like fire is the vengeful heart expecte.d to lend strength to the Let die the hatred of days past researchers' idealistic propositi?n that "Foes to by fought is the abasing poetry is an intellectual and spiritual Delusion force in contemporary Thai society. It That inhabits the human mind" was no coincidence that "Retracing Come ... keep banana guns Footprints on the Path" should have against the wall And hone our wits for the vital 3 A video recording of the reading session war is available from the German Department, Make it sharp of edge and great Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University, Nakom Pathom. 2 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:43:58PM via free access An Imaginary Dialogue served as an overture to an altogether friends from other countries would be spiritually and intellectually enriching in a position to react likewise? I have evening. had experience of presenting Saksiri 's poem to foreign audiences, and the The poem might appear to be a responses were to be encouraging. 4 It departure from the traditional notion of seems the poem contains a message Thailand as a pleasure-loving country. which is supranational and in keeping The old myth about its pristine innocence with the times. In other words, it can can no longer be sustained. The political enter into a dialogue with foreign eventsofl973, 1976and 1992morethan counterparts. In order to establish a demonstrated that a brotherly conflict basis for such an exchange, it might be in this Far Eastern land could at any time a good idea to explore contemporary degenerate into a fratricide. If the Western aesthetic thinking which might Establishment, including our own help to show certain affinities with educational authorities, continues to contemporary Thai poetry. I shall quote endorse the traditional image of the land a few lines from "Discourse on the of smiles (our history textbooks Poem" by the German poet, Christoph deliberately turning a blind eye to the Meckel: atrocious events), our literature, and especially our contemporary poetry, The poem is not the place, refuses to enter into a complicity against where beauty is nurtured ... the Thai people and valiantly accepts the The poem is not the place, res pon s i~ility of being the guiding light where truth is adorned ... in search of truth. (The Ministry of The poem is not the place, Education recently, under pressure, where pain is healed ... decided to take up accounts of the The poem is not the place, bloody events into the new official where dying is appeased, history book, soon to be published. One where hunger is satisfied, of the chief authors is none other than where hope is exalted. our poet Naowarat Phongphaiboon, who The poem is the place for has written heart-rending poems on the mortally wounded truth. 5 events, but invited for the [wrong] reason that he was there on the scene!) 5 Das Gedicht ist nicht der Ort, wo die Schonheit gepflegt wird. [ ... ] It goes without saying that the poem by Das Gedicht ist nicht der Ort, wo die Saksiri Meesomsueb should be able to Wahrheit verziert wird. [ ... ] Das Gedicht ist nicht der Ort, wo der touch a responsive chord in the Thai Schmerz verheilt wird. [ ... ] public, but could it be expected that our Das Gedicht ist nicht der Ort, wo das Sterben begtitigt, wo der Hunger gestillt, 4 I wish to refer to lectures given at the wo die Hoffuung verklart wird. following institutions: 13 August 1998 at Das Gedicht ist der Ort der zu Tode the Siam Society, Bangkok (in English), I 7 verwundeten Wahrheit. May 1999 at Leeds University (in English), Christoph Meckel : Hundert Gedichte. 18 May 1999 at Manchester University (in Ausgewahlt von Harald Weinrich, Miinchen English), 7 June 1999 at the Zentrum fur : Hanser 1988, S.67, V.1,5,9,14-l6. (My Literaturforschoung, Berlin (in German) and translation) 17 December 200 1 at Hongkong Baptist University. 3 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:43:58PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities 6.1, 2003 We could almost reach the conclusion the spirit of Heaney's characterization that Saksiri's "Retracing Footprints on of his friend. An imaginary dialogue the Path" has been written with has thus taken place between a Thai poet Meckel's poetological programme in and his British col~eague. We Thai mind! The crux of the matter is what should consider ourselves fortunate in Meckel calls that "mortally wounded that our contemporary poetry has truth" which the poet does not hesitate attained what Thai society at large has to hurl into the face of his compatriots. not achieved,' or rather lacked the will The description of the event in stark to achieve, namely, to come up with a naturalistic details probably goes beyond "healer's vision' and thereby forge a Meckel's poetological demand, but new beginning (as embodied in the finale somehow does not lapse into an of the poem) or a regeneration. emotional paroxysm, for the poet knows how to steer the middle course and to On the concept of "regeneration" in contain the physical cruelty with an contemporary literature, literary scholars interplay between the real bloodbath and cannot but admire the moral courage children's war games. The physical and the spiritual force shown by cruelty in the end is transformed into a contemporary literature, however dark philosophical crueltY' which also can or dismal the image presented may be. be explained in terms of Buddhism.