Originally published in New York by the Greenfield Review Press in 1980, Relationship is a visionary poem of 673 lines divided into 12 sections, incorporating Mahapatra’s ambitious attempt to inscribe his Oriya roots and ancestry in a song that weaves dreamlike moments of doubt, despair, and illumination into a complex whole.

For its “awareness of Indian heritage, evocative description, significant reflection, and linking of personal reminiscence with race memory” (unpublished citation), it won Mahapatra the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981.

Central to the poem are the historical ruins of the temple at Konarka, dedicated to the Sun God and shaped like a monumental chariot, a witness to the maritime and architectural glories of the Indian state Orissa. The setting allows the poet to immortalize facets of Orissa’s troubled history by staging a personal quest “at the altar of [his] origins” (section four).

The evocation of origins is mythic and primeval, partaking in the eternal mysteries of a shared past. Mahapatra’s marshaling of images for this purpose is strikingly disturbing and original, inviting the reader to take a leap into the unknown. Elemental images of earth and sky, sun and wind, stone and ash are combined with evocative feelings of apprehension and amnesia, alternating with climactic moments of self-fulfillment, affirming love, and renewal.

The poem is in the form of prayer that redoubles as sleep and song, enclosing snatches of the cultural past and ending in a release from fear and uncertainty. The poet-speaker says candidly in the opening lines of section eight: “It is my own life / that has cornered me beneath the stones / of this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun.”

The “solitary traveler” of the opening section—with his intended “initiation into the mystery of peace”—discovers his moment of recognition: love irradiating “other people’s lives.” In the end, the poet lays claim to his “mysterious inheritance”: “… I put my hand toward a dream the sun / has kept awake through the years” (section eleven). In effect, the poem enacts a process of poetic affiliation with a reclaimed destiny.

Bibliography

Mishra, S. K. “The Largest Circle: A Reading of Jayanta Mahapatra’s Relationship.” Journal of Literary Studies 8, nos. 1 and 2 (June–Dec. 1985): 37–56.
Rayan, Krishna. “The Tendril and the Root: A Study of Jayanta Mahapatra’s Relationship.” Literary Criterion 26, no. 1 (1991): 61–70.

Categories: Literature, World Literature

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