September 12, 2004

THE Burmese poet Minthuwun (actual name U Wun) was one of the leading poets of Burma of the 20th century. Indeed this writer feels privileged to have read a photocopy of a poem, in Minthuwun’s own handwriting, which he composed when he was nearly 91 years old. The poem was written in January 2000. A poem of his first appeared in print in the year 1926. His literary output spanned 75 years: an achievement virtually without parallel in the Burmese context and also perhaps internationally.

Minthuwun was born on February 10, 1909 in the town of Kunchangoan in the Irrawaddy Division. He graduated from Yangon University with a BA (Honours) with distinction in Burmese literature in March 1933. Later he studied at Oxford and obtained a bachelor’s degree in literature (B Litt) from that university in 1939.

Starting from the early 1930s Minthuwun, together with two other writers, Zawgyi (real name U Thein Han, 1907-1990) and Theikpan Maung Wa (real name U Sein Tin, 1900-42), spearheaded the khitsan Burmese literary movement. The Burmese word khitsan means (literally) ‘testing the Age’. The khitsan movement was initiated under the tutelage of the principal of Yangon College, Professor U Pe Maung Tin (1889-1973) who had been the teacher of all three writers.

The khitsan literary movement made a shift from the florid style of writing which hitherto was the trend in Burmese literature. Also in terms of substance, the khitsan writers from the early 1930s onwards began to write about wider humanistic themes and concerns. Prior to the khitsan literary period the bulk of Burmese literature deals with sentimental, the romantic and — at the other end of the spectrum — religious themes. Alas, time have now swept away all the three initiators of the khitsan literary movement.

In one of his poems that was published in February 1982 (when he was already 73 years old) Minthuwun acknowledged that he has been named or perceived by the general public as a ‘romantic writer/poet’. In that poem the title of which can be translated as ‘So I am called a romantic poet’ Minthuwun draws the readers’ attention to the fact that the time when he was growing up was during the British colonial era. Many Burmese, especially the rural poor, were in debt. Diseases such as plague and malaria played havoc in his native village and other villages of Burma. “Besieged by these multiple troubles,” wrote Minthuwun, “I might have become eccentric and to allay my mental despair and tiredness I might have grasped whatever came my way and written romantic literary pieces.”

The gentle, self-effacing poet wrote that the readers can well-nigh consider his excuse as a lame one given by a less-than-mediocre person’ [sic]. As a human being, with foibles, wrote Minthuwun, his ‘explanations’ (for being a romantic poet) might amount to a ‘deception’ for which he “craved the readers’ forgiveness”. Minthuwun also exhorts his readers ‘to search for the truth for themselves’.

The truth is that Minthuwun was not only a romantic poet (in the complimentary sense of the word) but also a great one. He was also a marvellous human being for whose life and rich contributions to Burmese literature and indeed that of humanity we can only be grateful. One of his earlier romantic poems reads in translation: (translation by this writer and I readily admit that it is a poor imitation of the original)

Rose petals

on your return from the fields

fetch a budding star-flower* for me

so says my beloved one

and accordingly it was done

when, in the morn,

the fairest one I do behold

her tresses are adorned

with rose petals galore:

as if stationed on a pedestal

she really looks regal

(*Mimusops elengi)

Hsayargyi (‘Revered teacher’) Minthuwun wrote this poem in December 1932. This writer has had the privilege of meeting the late poet for the first and (as it turned out) the last time in December 2003 at his home in the Kamayut Township, Yangon.

In January 1999 I had published an article “Burmese poetry: three poems by Minthuwun” in the Unit News of the Deakin Law School in Melbourne, Australia. During the years since its publication I had tried to send the article to Minthuwun in Burma but was not sure whether it reached him. On that December day, nearly five years after my translation and commentary of three of his poems was published, I sat beside his bed and read my translation and comments to him.

One of the poems that I had translated with explanatory comments was composed by him in November 1961. When I mentioned the date of the composition of the poem, he humorously remarked that it was not ‘that long ago’. Then mischievously I said I could recite to him a poem that was even ‘less distant’ (in terms of time of composition). As soon as I began to recite the first few words of the “Rose petals” (in Burmese) he raised his hand gently and recited the poem himself twice. And then in yet another illustration of the poet’s humanity, charm and indeed lovability the 94 year old poet said he had written that poem nearly 71 years earlier not ‘because he was angry but because he was glad’ (that his love ‘with the roses in her tresses looked regal’).

Among the numerous literary accomplishments of Minthuwun one more deserves mention. In 1973 he embarked on a Burmese translation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Minthuwun worked on the translation intermittently for over 10 years before it was finally published in 1984. This Burmese translation of King Lear won Burma’s national literary prize (translated literature category) for the year 1984. In the preface to his very competent, if not masterful translation, of one of the Bard’s masterpieces Minthuwun recounted how he struggled, indeed agonized over the translation of the phrase ‘Nothing, my Lord’ said by Cordelia in Act I, Scene I of the play into an appropriate Burmese phrase.

Some of the academic posts the late venerated poet had held during his life time include a stint as professor of Burmese language and literature at Yangon University from March 1961 to May 1962. From 1975 to 1979, Minthuwun was also a visiting professor of Burmese at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Osaka, Japan.

In a poem Minthuwun composed in November 1961 titled (in translation) ‘The cyclical continuity of regrets’ hsayar gyi (Revered teacher) Minthuwun wrote that ‘while pining whether and when I will reach the peaceful bliss in which there will be no regrets, the majestic sun has gone down and I grope and falter in the dark’. Indeed one of the great ‘suns’ of Burmese literature is no more with us but Minthuwun’s rich, majestic and continuing legacy will endure and thrive.

When the late hsayar Zawgyi, one of the initiators of the khitsan literary movement, died in September 1990 Minthuwun, who was only two years younger than Zawgyi but who happened to be his student when Zawgyi was a tutor in Burmese at Yangon University in the late 1920s and early 1930s, wrote an affectionate poem about his hsayar whom he missed and who had a ‘good heart’.

When both Minthuwun’s and Zawgyi’s teacher U Pe Maung Tin who had translated works of Buddhist literature from Pali, a non-native language which is the lingua franca of Southeast Asian Buddhism, into English, died in March 1973 Minthuwun wrote in admiration and reverence for his late hsayargyi’s ‘perseverance, determination, skills and wisdom’.

But perhaps the best epitaph on Minthuwun’s legacy can be extrapolated from a poem he wrote in tribute to Shakespeare in 1937 after visiting Stratford-upon-Avon. As a result of giving obeisance, to ‘The Renown Sage’ (the title in translation of his short poem) Minthuwun wished or prayed that his ‘mind be as wide as the sky’. All Burmese literati recognized not only his wide vision and great literary gifts but also — and above all — his gentleness, humility, and humanity. Though all of us are indeed — and in one sense — impoverished by his death we can take solace in the fact that in another overarching way his life and vision have also enriched us ‘as wide as the sky’.