Nepalese literature
The 1970s passed through here and Kathmandu is now one of those cities that spark our imagination, not to mention that until the 1950s, the French knew almost nothing about a country that was just beginning to open up to the outside world. If we add to the political reason the difficulty of geographical access, if we take into consideration the linguistic question - and there are many languages in Nepal! -There are many languages in Nepal, and this explains the lack of knowledge of a literature that is nevertheless dynamic, although too rarely translated.
The identity of a territory is intimately linked to its words. The first inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley, the Newars, speak nepālbhāsha, also known as Newari, a language that began to be written as early as the 12th century, as evidenced by a palm leaf, a traditional medium in Asia, handwritten and discovered at the Uku Bahal Buddhist monastery in Patan, it is said to date from 1114. Two centuries later, the works are interested in medicine, history or astrology, but it is usual to give birth to Nepalese literature with Mahindra Malla, poet and king of the 16th century, belonging to a very long dynasty that ruled the valley for six centuries. The performing arts, dance, theatre, being highly prized, there is no doubt that many plays, hymns or epics were born during this golden age, and if the West is unaware of their existence, it is not so much because of cultural distance as the consequence of the arrival in power of another family, the Ra'an, in the mid-nineteenth century. The use of nawari in writing was then purely and simply forbidden, writers thrown in prison, books confiscated.
As censorship continued, the spoken language evolved, and soon the old texts seemed abstruse or indigestible, until one man, Nisthananda Bajracharya (1858-1935), modernised and simplified the style, offering the nawari the chance to be reborn in writing, although this required a certain amount of secrecy. Thus, it was in India that he composed in 1909 Ek Bishanti Prajnaparamita, the first work in Nawari to come out of the press. Although restrictions were gradually lifted, a new alphabet was adopted and a grammar was created, few speakers today use this idiom. The official language, chosen as a unifying language, is Nepali, of which everyone has mastered at least the basic greeting (namaste
!), and which also owes much to a writer, Bhanubhakta Acharya (1814-1868).The future "Aadikavi", "First Poet", according to the title with which he was honoured, was born in Chundi Ramgha. It was his grandfather who educated him and taught him the sacred texts written in Sanskrit, an ancient and erudite language, certainly mastered by the elite, but totally inaccessible to the majority of the lowest castes. After a stay in Benares, Bhanubhakta Acharya embarked on a crazy undertaking, the translation into Nepali of a seminal work, the Râmâyana
, which nevertheless contains several thousand verses, which, in addition to the respect of the metrics he imposes on himself, obliges him to enrich the vocabulary of his mother tongue because some terms have no equivalent. A considerable amount of work that ends up earning him recognition, as much as his poetic writings or his social commitment.As has been said, until the middle of the 20th century, the country was under the yoke of a well-established power, but as a notable sign of openness, a first literary review was launched in 1934, Sharada, and a second, Bharati, appeared in 1949, benefiting from an influence beyond the limits of the capital and encouraging the emergence of new writers. Let us quote in particular the "Maha Kavi", "Great poet", Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909-1959) who, with Muna Madan
, quickly acquired his letters of nobility. This reinterpretation of a popular Nawari ballad depicts a merchant leaving his young wife to do business in Tibet. On his return he learns of her death, a great romantic drama of universal significance. Guru Prasad Mainali (1900-1971) became famous for his short stories, inspired by country life, which are still popular among students today. Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, who was also a politician, was the first to approach literature from a psychological point of view. His writings were scattered and extensively censored. Finally, on the theatre side, it is impossible not to think of Bala Krishna Sama (1903-1981), the Shakespeare of Nepal. If poetry was in vogue in the 1930s, since the 1960s the novel has occupied an important place. This was partly due to the publication in 1965 of The Blue Flower of the Jacaranda which, although it caused a scandal, was awarded the prestigious Madan Puraskar Prize. In this impossible love story between a former soldier and a sick young woman, Parijat, who died in 1993 in Kathmandu, explores the delicate issue of patriarchy. Thus, twentieth-century Nepalese literature did not hesitate to be critical, even revolutionary, which led some writers to spend a few years in prison, as was the case with Gopal Prasad Rimal (1918-1973) and Siddhi Charan Shrestha (1912-1992). In any case, she is very much alive, as evidenced by the prolix Bhim Nidhi Tiwari, or the young Prajwal Parajuly, born to a Nepalese mother and an Indian father in 1984 in the state of Sikkim, whose Fuir et revenir, an epic tale of a family reunion, was translated by Emmanuelle Collas in 2020.The Bhutanese literature
It is the Indian state of Sikkim that lies between Nepal and Bhutan, a tiny confetti no bigger than Switzerland, which does not even have a million inhabitants. To understand the literature written there, one has to look at the history of a landlocked country wedged between the immense China and the boiling India, and realize that since its creation, Bhutan has never ceased to free itself from assimilation into Tibet and to forge an identity of its own.
It all began at the beginning of the 17th century, when Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, fleeing religious persecution, took refuge in these mountainous and almost inaccessible areas. He unified the warring tribes that dominated the landscape by establishing a single legislative code. Its action is administrative and takes the form of the construction of a network of fortresses, but it is also spiritual, in this territory where several branches of Buddhism coexisted until then, and this since the 7th century.
Sacred texts were the first Bhutanese literature, and these are now to be found, for example, in the National Library of Bhutan, which was built in 1967 in the capital, Thimphu, and exhibits remarkable xylographic incunabula, traditional wooden blocks that predate the invention of printing.
Bhutan will struggle to maintain its independence, experience periods of retrenchment, civil wars and British protectorate. On 17 December 1907, the day commemorating the national holiday, a monarchy was decreed, gradually recognized by neighbouring countries and the forces involved, although the balance was still fragile. In 1953, the new king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, wanted to change his country, abolished serfdom and carried out an agrarian reform. Bhutan became a member of the United Nations in 1971. His successor, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, crowned in 1974 at the age of 19, continued the movement but decided to strengthen cultural unity by imposing a common language, Dzongkha, to the detriment of minorities prevented from keeping their customs and habits, sometimes even deprived of their citizenship. The issue was complex and eminently political, although in practice English, which was also taught at school, was in strong competition with the national language.
Bhutan, a secret country, is protecting itself, television and the use of the Internet have only been allowed since 1999, and it is in this context, to which we must add literacy, which is still in progress, that contemporary literature is written. Although still discreet, it does exist, as demonstrated by the international Mountain Echoes festival launched in 2009, the timid attempts to create a Facebook page of the Writers Association of Bhutan (WAB) or the children's books offered by the Kuensel
newspaper.The capital is seeing an increase in the number of its bookstores, although they are mainly importing, publishing houses are few and far between but are mainly dedicated to publishing school textbooks. To discover Bhutanese literature, in fact, one has to dig into the virtual world, with authors turning to self-publishing facilitated by the dissemination of digital files or the emergence of print-on-demand.
Monu Tamang thus proposed Chronicle of a Love Foretold in 2015, Chador Wangmo has been regularly putting new texts online on Goodreads since 2012... In the world of theatre, a name meets a few rare occurrences, Ravi Chaturvedi, and in poetry that of Gopilal Acharya, born in 1978 in Gelephu, is beginning to emerge. It is said that he studied in Bhutan and Sweden, that his novel With a Stone in my Heart was listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009, that some of his poems have been published in reviews, and that he is mainly the author of Bhutanese Folk Tales
. This collection of traditional tales is part of a broader movement, usually the first stage in the development of literature, that of collecting folklore material. In a country that today must learn to reconcile its traditions and openness to the outside world, to preserve its language while using English as a means of facilitating contacts, fiction for the moment gives way to the desire to keep traces of what has existed, so nostalgia permeates the pages of young authors, and some biographies have met their public. For all that, the next stage, that of an always realistic but a little sharper, critical look, is beginning to assert itself. This is how the French reader, curious to travel through books, will be able to obtain Le Cercle du karma (The Circle of Karma ) published by Actes Sud. In this novel, Kunzang Choden, born in 1952 in Bumthang, the first author to be translated into our language, tells the initiatory journey of Tsomo, a little girl who, frustrated that school is reserved for boys, decides to flee to India and more precisely Bodh Gaya, one of the four holy places of Buddhism.
