'Flowers Of Evil' to blossom in Nepal
Jan 23, 2007 - 7:38:55 AM
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While Nepali literature is little known to the outside world, Nepalis are among the most widely travelled people who speak multiple languages and readily embrace masterpieces of literature in other languages.
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By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
[RxPG] Kathmandu, Jan 23 - Fresh 'flowers of evil' are going to bloom in Nepal where peace has just got a chance. And that's one happening the country's men of letters and Francophiles are going to hail.
The year 2007 marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Charles Baudelaire's collection of poems 'Les Fleurs du Mal', or 'The Flowers of Evil', and a group of Nepalis has formed a society to honour him and revive his memory.
The work of fiction has had a lasting impact on modern literature not only in France but also in many other countries including Britain and India.
In 1857, Baudelaire, son of an ex-priest and a woman young enough to be his granddaughter, published 'Les Fleurs du Mal', which was to have a deep influence on poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
The maverick poet, who became addicted to opium, was heavily in debt and died of syphilis. He became a cult figure and was hailed as one of the greatest poets of the 19th century and the mother of modern criticism.
In the new year, when conservative Nepal has been passing through a series of progressive and radical changes, some Nepalis have formed the Association Internationale des Amis de Charles Baudelaire.
Besides planning a celebration in Sorbonne in Paris, the association is gearing up for interactive poetry sessions in Kathmandu that will bring Nepali and French authors, poets and readers together.
The most ambitious plan of the group is to open a Charles Baudelaire library in Kathmandu that will be one of the largest centres of his poetry in Asia.
While Nepali literature is little known to the outside world, Nepalis are among the most widely travelled people who speak multiple languages and readily embrace masterpieces of literature in other languages.
On the streets of Kathmandu, booksellers offer Jawaharlal Nehru's 'Letters From A Father To His Daughter', the famed letters written to Indira Gandhi when she was a child and he was in prison, and Mahatma Gandhi's 'My Experiments With Truth'.
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