Christopher Hitchens lost his voice when he was in the terminal stages of cancer. He didn’t lose his intellect. He wrote about the power of the spoken word in an essay titled, ‘Unspoken truths’ in the Vanity Fair (2011). He wrote;
When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen. So I have recently learned a song, entitled “If It Be Your Will.” It’s a tiny bit saccharine, but it’s beautifully rendered and it opens like this:
*If it be your will,
That I speak no more:
And my voice be still,
As it was before ...*
I find it’s best not to listen to this late at night. Leonard Cohen is unimaginable without, and indissoluble from, his voice. (I now doubt that I could be bothered, or bear, to hear that song done by anybody else.) In some ways, I tell myself, I could hobble along by communicating only in writing. But this is really only because of my age. If I had been robbed of my voice earlier, I doubt that I could ever have achieved much on the page. I owe a vast debt to Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write “more like the way that you talk.” At the time, I was near speechless at the charge of being boring and never thanked him properly, but in time I appreciated that my fear of self-indulgence and the personal pronoun was its own form of indulgence.
Stories are better told than read.
Therefore, I thought of sharing some videos of great voices reading poetry that has moved me to exultations of joy or to tears.
‘Ithaca’ by C. P. Cavafy, read by Sean Connery, music by Vangelis.
Alan Rickman reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.
Those melancholic eyes of Sir. Anthony Hopkins reading ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas.
Tilda Swinton reading Rumi’s ‘Like this’.
India has a long tradition of philosophical poetry and very few mastered the genre’ like Maithili Sharan Gupt. While Siddhara Gautama, the prince who abandoned his royal lineage to become the Buddha is adored worldwide, few notice that his wife Yashodhara was abandoned by him. Maithili Sharan Gupt wrote, “Sakhi ve mujhse kah kar jaate’ (Dear friend, he should have told me before leaving). A brilliant feminist take composed at the turn of the previous century. Rendered here superbly by Smt. Seema Sehgal. My (late) mother studied this poem and Gupt’s साकेत during her B.A. in Bangalore during the late 1950s. You’d be a hard nosed person not to shed a tear when you hear this poem.
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते (यशोधरा)
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते,
कह, तो क्या मुझको वे अपनी पथ-बाधा ही पाते?
मुझको बहुत उन्होंने माना
फिर भी क्या पूरा पहचाना?
मैंने मुख्य उसी को जाना
जो वे मन में लाते।
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।
स्वयं सुसज्जित करके क्षण में,
प्रियतम को, प्राणों के पण में,
हमीं भेज देती हैं रण में -
क्षात्र-धर्म के नाते।
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।
हुआ न यह भी भाग्य अभागा,
किसपर विफल गर्व अब जागा?
जिसने अपनाया था, त्यागा;
रहे स्मरण ही आते!
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।
नयन उन्हें हैं निष्ठुर कहते,
पर इनसे जो आँसू बहते,
सदय हृदय वे कैसे सहते?
गये तरस ही खाते!
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।
जायें, सिद्धि पावें वे सुख से,
दुखी न हों इस जन के दुख से,
उपालम्भ दूँ मैं किस मुख से?
आज अधिक वे भाते!
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।
गये, लौट भी वे आवेंगे,
कुछ अपूर्व-अनुपम लावेंगे,
रोते प्राण उन्हें पावेंगे,
पर क्या गाते-गाते?
सखि, वे मुझसे कहकर जाते।1
There’s also this brilliant version of Rashmirathi, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s poem by Ashuthosh Rana. There’s another version by Manoj Bajpai that pales in comparison with this one. When I first heard this, I teared up. Rana is so good!
Back in the day, Def Jam featured minority poets who wrote with a lot of emotion. This was written after 9/11 by a New Jersey woman which I first heard on HBO way back in 2009-10. Note that I do not agree with it in its entirety, but we need to hear divergent voices.
The subcontinent has a tradition of poems being sung by famous artistes and that deserves a post on its own. Therefore, I will limit this post to the spoken word.
My favorite poet in that genre’ is Jaun Elia, a genius whom we lost too early. He has become a posthumous titanic force in the subcontinent, improbably famous after his death than before.
This is from 1995.
Poets know no borders.
Sahir reciting his original composition.
One of the greatest poems written in the subcontinent. Faiz’s recitation of his own;
and my favorite version by the recently departed Nayyara Noor, one of my most beloved singers.
Let me know which recitations you’ve admired in the comments. I’d love to hear them!
From https://kaavyaalaya.org/sakhi_ve_mujshe_kahkar_jaate
I'm a poetry noob, and haven't really followed it much. But this rendition of Kipling's "If" by Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal always gets me, given their history, how they approach the game and the link of the poem to Wimbledon.
https://youtu.be/is-JCJCUy18