कविशिरोमणि लेखनाथ पौड्याल (सन् १८८४ वा १८८५–१९६६) शास्त्रीय छन्द परम्परामा आधुनिक नेपाली कविताका प्रमुख कवि हुन्। पिँजडाको सुगा, ऋतुविचार र तरुण तपसी उनका चर्चित कृति हुन्। यो लेख लेखनाथको परिचय, जीवनी र उनको छन्द अनुशासनबारे हो।
Every literature has a poet its rebels need. Someone so accomplished in the old way that breaking with it means something. In twentieth-century Nepali poetry, that poet is Lekhnath Paudyal.
That makes him easy to undervalue. It is also why he is worth reading closely.
The facts
He was born at Arghau-Archale in Kaski, now part of Pokhara, in 1884 or 1885 (Poush 1941 BS; sources convert it differently), and died at Devghat in Chitwan in 1966. His surname is also spelled Poudyal and Poudel.
In 1951 King Tribhuvan gave him the title Kavi Shiromani (कविशिरोमणि), roughly "crown jewel of poets". On his seventieth birthday, in 1955, he was honoured with a chariot procession. He became a member of the Royal Nepal Academy in 1957 and was awarded the Tribhuvan Puraskar after his death.
His best-known works:
- Pinjadako Suga (पिँजडाको सुगा, also written पिँजराको सुगा), "The Parrot in the Cage", an allegorical poem from around 1917
- Ritu Vichar (ऋतुविचार), "Reflections on the Seasons", a khandakavya of 1916
- Buddhi Vinod (बुद्धिविनोद), also 1916
- Tarun Tapasi (तरुण तपसी), "The Young Ascetic", 1953
- Lalitya (लालित्य), a collection in two volumes
His work is out of copyright.
Metre as a discipline, not a decoration
Lekhnath wrote in the classical, Sanskrit-derived metres. The usual modern verdict is that this made him a conservative, and that what came after him was the real modern poetry.
I think that misreads what metre does for a poet. A strict metre is a constraint that catches weak lines. If a line does not scan, it announces itself. You cannot hide a lazy word inside a pattern that counts every syllable. What reads as polish in Lekhnath is that discipline, applied for decades.
It also explains why his Nepali feels so settled. Working inside a classical frame, he made the language sound as though it had always belonged there, which, for a language still proving itself as a medium for serious verse, was its own kind of argument.
The parrot in the cage
Pinjadako Suga is the poem he is best known for. On the surface it is a caged parrot's complaint. It is an allegory, and the cage has been read in more than one way.
What interests me as a writer is how much an allegory lets a poet say without saying it. A bird can complain about a cage in a way a person in 1917 Nepal could not complain about much at all. The poem keeps its meaning one step back from the words, and the reader closes the gap. That is a technique, and it outlived the metre he wrote it in.
The poet the moderns argued with
Devkota chose a folk metre over a classical one for Muna Madan. Rimal and then Bhupi Sherchan dropped metre altogether. Each of those choices only means something against a standard, and Lekhnath was that standard: the proof of what the classical way could do at its best.
Rebellion needs a worthy opponent. He was the best one Nepali poetry had.
What a working poet takes from him
Constraint is a tool. I write free verse, but every free-verse poet should spend time inside a strict form. It teaches you what each syllable costs.
Finish the line. His poems feel complete in a way much modern verse does not try to. Not every poem should resolve, but you should know when you are choosing not to.
Say it sideways when you must. Allegory is not evasion. It is a way of being heard when plain speech would be stopped.
Where to go next
Devkota is the poet who answered him. Why modern Nepali poetry stopped rhyming follows the whole argument, and the Nepali poets page has the rest.