Himalayan Literature Festival to remember Rimal

Himalayan Literature Festival to have its subtitle as "Remembering Rimal' to pay tribute to Gopal Prasad Rimal.

Nepal's greatest poet, Gopal Prasad Rimal, was born in Kathmandu in 1918.

During his adolescence he came under the influence of revolutionaries who were aspiring to overthrow the then despotic Rana regime. In 1941, the brutal execution of the Nepali patriot Dashrath Chand and his friends fired Rimal's imagination and thus revolution became the bedrock of his creative ventures. Rimal founded a creative organization called "Praja Panchayat" to raise voice against the suppression of Nepalese masses by the autocratic Rana rulers and was imprisoned on several occasions for his involvement in the Movement. He played a pivotal role in making the 1950-51 Democratic Movement successful but soon after grew disillusioned. His dreams of a democratic Nepal were shattered as "harlots of anarchy" in the garb of democracy started dancing in "castles of filth.” Rimal lost his mental balance and was sent to an asylum in Ranchi. Later he was brought back to Nepal to spend the rest of his life, roaming insane in the streets of Kathmandu with the dream of a true democracy seething in him. Rimal died in 1973. 

Unlike his contemporaries who came under the influence of English Romantics and employed Sanskrit meter, Rimal, even before the 1950 Revolution shed Sanskrit usage and meter and wrote fiery poems dealing with the struggle of the Nepalese people. He introduced prose poems to Nepali literature and wrote famous poems like "Mother's Dream," "To" and "The Story of my Love." He also published plays like Masan (The Graveyard) and Yo Prem (This Love).

"Rimal's contemporaries could hardly digest English Romantics and Shakespeare," discerns distinguished Nepali poet, Krishna Bhakta Shrestha, "whereas Rimal succeeded in writing first Nepali prose poems using native symbols and folklore to capture the agony of his people."

In the works of highly acclaimed Nepali critic Tara Nath Sharma: It was Rimal whose boldness encouraged writers like Devkota and Sama to write prose poems. Devkota and Sama began to walk in the footsteps of Rimal just a few years before the 1951 Revolution. A few social realistic plays Sama wrote came out only after Rimal's epoch-making ventures in the field. (Pratik, 1993).

Rimal gave Nepali poets a true role of being the conscious of their age, "an unacknowledged legislator of the world."

Today he stands as a father figure for the younger generation of Nepalese poets and deserves worldwide recognition.