2 verses · ~1 min
दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है। सखि, पतंग भी जलता है हा! दीपक भी जलता है!
सीस हिलाकर दीपक कहता-- ’बन्धु वृथा ही तू क्यों दहता?’ पर पतंग पड़ कर ही रहता कितनी विह्वलता है! दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है। बचकर हाय! पतंग मरे क्या? प्रणय छोड़ कर प्राण धरे क्या? जले नही तो मरा करे क्या? क्या यह असफलता है! दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है। कहता है पतंग मन मारे-- ’तुम महान, मैं लघु, पर प्यारे, क्या न मरण भी हाथ हमारे? शरण किसे छलता है?’ दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है। दीपक के जलने में आली, फिर भी है जीवन की लाली। किन्तु पतंग-भाग्य-लिपि काली, किसका वश चलता है? दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है। जगती वणिग्वृत्ति है रखती, उसे चाहती जिससे चखती; काम नहीं, परिणाम निरखती। मुझको ही खलता है। दोनों ओर प्रेम पलता है।
इति
The Poet
मैथिलीशरण गुप्त
Maithili Sharan Gupt
1886 · 1964
The title Rashtriya Kavi National Poet was conferred upon Maithili Sharan Gupt by Mahatma Gandhi, and it was the most accurate literary judgment the Mahatma ever made. At a moment in history when Hindi literature stood at a crossroads between a dying classical tradition and an uncertain modern one, Gupt performed a double act of rescue: he saved the dignity of Khari Boli as a medium worthy of serious literary ambition, and he recovered from the mythology of India the voices that centuries of male centered narrative had buried the Urmilas, the Yashodharas, the women who loved and suffered and persisted at the margins of the great epics while their husbands received all of history's attention. His Bharat Bharati, released in 1912, became the literary proclamation of national self consciousness at a moment when such proclamation was both desperately needed and politically dangerous. He did not write merely about India's past glory he used that past to locate a moral standard against which the present could be measured and found responsible. Gupt was a man of deep humility who built works of imperial scale. He stands at the very origin point of modern Hindi literature, the patriarch in whose shadow all subsequent poets grew.
Paired Painting
Dipak Raga: Folio from a Ragamala Series (Garland of Musical Modes)
This exquisite folio embodies the sublime intersection of visual art and classical Indian music, capturing the inner essence of Dipak Raga. In the traditional system of Indian musical modes, or ragas, Dipak is associated with fire, passion, and the blazing radiance of the sun, traditionally performed during the evening hours to evoke warmth and devotional fervor. The painter translates these auditory and spiritual sensations into a nocturnal palace setting where a noble lord and his beloved are surrounded by numerous lamps and flames, symbolizing the blazing light of the raga. Attendants gracefully tend to the scene, holding vessels of light and fans, while the velvety dark night sky above is punctuated by delicate blossoms and stars. The lyrical inscription across the top preserves the poetic invocation of the musical mode, inviting the viewer into a deeply meditative state of aesthetic and spiritual rapture.
Open the viewer →