The Lunatic by Laxmi Prasad Devkota [Summary and Analysis of the Poem]

Summary & Analysis of The Lunatic

The Lunatic by Laxmi Prasad Devkota [Summary and Analysis of the Poem]

- Mahakavi Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Literal Comprehension

In this poem, Devkota declares himself to be a lunatic. He goes on to explain his conditions in the poem. He says that he visualizes sound and hears the visible. He can taste fragrance and touch those things the existence of which the people deny. He goes on to show the difference between him and the people in society. He can do such things which a normal person can't do. He finds a flower in the stone. He speaks such language which can't be written printed nor can be spoken.

In his calculation one minus, one is always one. He has six senses and has a heart instead of a brain. So, he gets Helen and Padmini in the rose. He is poetry whereas other people are prose. He tried to catch a dream which is impossible for a normal one. Then he claims that he speaks with a mountain and basks the heat of stars in cold January months.

One day when he sang with tempos the so-called wise people took him to Ranchi for treatment. He directly says that he does not praise those things which the world highly appreciates. For him, the king is a pauper and he abuses Alexander the great. But he praises the common people and highly learned men are big fools for him.

About the Writer & Poem Lunatic

Lunatic by Laxmi Prasad Devkota is one of the greatest poetry of Nepali Literature. He is known for the many titles in this field. He is one of the pioneers of modernity in Nepali Literature. Certainly, he was an initiator of Romanticism in Nepali Literature. He was the one to raise the voice of the age-long dominated marginal. people.

Devkota was born to Til Madhav Devkota and Amar Rajya Laxmi in 1909. His father was a Sanskrit scholar. He was one of the most conscious citizens of his time. Though he was not an active politician but was a freedom fighter and lover of democracy. It was because of the nature of Devkota, the totalitarian Rana rulers were always against him. He was blamed even to be mad. Similarly, he was forced to go to Banaras. This poem is a response to those people who could understand the sentiment of the poet. But, we must not miss the point that the poet has presented lunacy as a kind of creativity, a capacity to see reality on its deeper level.

Analysis Of The Poem Lunatic

Devkota begins his poem 'Lunatic' by expressing some unique characteristics. He asserts that he can see the sound, hear the visible. Similarly, he can taste the smell. He has the potential to understand the language of chirping birds, murmuring streams. He could even communicate with the fairies that were looking at him. Similarly, he claims that he is a man of heart against those common people who are the man of mind. For them, profit and loss matter but the poet says that the love sympathy counts to him. He satirizes the people who always think of earning gold by using some kinds of unfair means. He claims that such gold for him is mere iron.

Besides these aforementioned bitter satire on social evils, Devkota throws a bitter satire on the political system where so-called great rulers rule on the basis of power rather than the consent of the people. Hence, he denounces Alexander the Great and claims that all the kings are pauper for him. Similarly, he writes all those so-called rational courtiers who spent their whole life flattering the corrupt kings are dead corpses for him. He hates those leaders who break the bones of people's right to fulfil their petty desires.

Conclusion

The poet would like to sting and burn the system of government where a man does not treat a man as man, where a big fish eats to the small one. Here, the poet is certainly indicating the ill governance of the totalitarian Rana regime where so many innocent people were made victims. Hence, the poem is successful to reveal the brutality and madness of the then time poet, Devkota. The poem is remarkable as it drags the attention to the power of a creative writer's knowledge about which we are not so much conscious most of the time.