The Lunatic
-Laxmi Prasad Devkota
Summary
and Critical Analysis
In this autobiographical poem "The
Lunatic", Devkota wears the persona of a lunatic as if it were a mask.
Each stanza brings out a different aspect of the speaker’s character,
confidence, abnormality, imagination, sensitivity, rebellion, aggression, anger, and awful majesty.
Above all, this poem is at once a very
modern expression of the deepest personal feelings of the poet and a surgical
exposure to the hollowness of the so-called intellectual aspirants of the time.
The persona in the second stanza shows abnormal behavior. He does what a normal
person can’t do. For example, he can see sound, hear sight, and taste the
sweet smell. He can touch those things, the existence of which the people in
the world deny. He is so imaginative that he can see a flower on the stone and
the enchantress of heaven smiling at him. He understands the language of
the birds and talks to them.
The third stanza shows how sensitive and
tender-hearted he is. He contrasts his situation with the addresses. The
addressee is the one who uses his brains and senses to find out the harsh
reality. But the speaker uses his sixth sense and finds out what the heart
thinks to be correct. Dreams and imagination are meaningful to him.
The fourth stanza tells how the speaker’s
hypersensitivity led people to have a wrong impression of him. When he watched
the mystery of heaven on a cold winter night, when he was sad at the death of
people and the old age of a fair lady, people called him mad. When he would be
happy hearing the cuckoo’s song and uncomfortable by the dead silence, they
would think that he had gone mad. They would punish him saying that he should
be admitted to a mental hospital. Even his friends would not regard him as a normal
person.
In the fifth stanza, the persona has
upset the accepted values. He does not appreciate those things which the world
praises highly. What the aristocrats drink is the blood of the poor people. Due
to a lack of affection, prostitutes are no better than dead bodies. Because of
high ambition, the king and the emperor are no better than the poor. The common
men are far better than the highly learned me. The best place in the world is
the worst place for the speaker. So the world calls him mentally deranged. In
the sixth stanza, the speaker revolts against the society which is being led by
blind leaders. He thinks that penance has run away from society and they
hate humanity. He rather sympathizes with the weak people.
Finally, the speaker behaves like a
rebel. He criticizes the flatterers because they have deprived people of their
rights and they have underlined the false actions. The poor people accept their
falsity as good action, and then the speaker gets angry because he thinks
these man-haters must be punished. The persona in this poem attacks all the
ugliness and wants to bring a complete change in society.
The poet has used the contrast between
the world of the sane man and that of the lunatic. The lunatic perceives what
the sane man can’t. For example, the mad man visualizes sound, hears the
visible, and tastes fragrance, but the normal man hears sound, visualizes the
visible, smells the fragrance, and tastes the delicious food. The lunatic can touch
the thing which an ordinary person can’t likewise; he can see a flower in the
stone and can talk with the bird. He feels that a heavenly beauty is smiling at
him. Similarly, the madman uses his sixth sense whereas the normal person uses
only five senses. The worldly people use brains, but he uses heart. By using
the contrast the poet brings out the irony of the poem. The poet wants to say
that the worldly people are cold and cruel and they look at the world from
their own convention. Although insane, the speaker is sympathetic and his
hearing melts when he sees pathetic sights.
The phrase “the iconoclast of ugliness”
in the poem refers to the world led by blind people. The shameless leaders
are breaking the backbones of human rights. They are persuading people to
accept what is unacceptable. They don’t treat human beings as man. They are
cruel and inhuman. The speaker in the poem can’t tolerate this kind of
ugliness. So he wants to break it. He wants to upset the conventional values
that have helped the dictators exploit the common people. In this sense, the
speaker is the iconoclast of ugliness.
A persona is an invented person in this
poem. He or she may not be the author himself or herself. To express the inner
feelings or emotions of that persona, the poet has taken the persona of a
lunatic in this poem. This poem has an autobiographical element. Observing the
unusual behavior of the poet many people in the society called him a madman.
This poem is a response to the people’s comments.
The lunatic persona thinks that people
cram their brains with worldly facts and figures and claim themselves to be
knowledgeable people. They value materialistic things such as wine, prostitutes, and power, but they never appreciate the humanity shining brightly in every
insignificant heart. They value the transitory things and disregard the really
valuable things. That is why they are bigger fools. The stupidity makes the
speaker arrogant.
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