Poetry or pornography: a critique of Mr. ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน‘s poem

บทกวี หรือ ข้อเขียนลามก: วิจารณ์งานของ คุณขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน

                                                                                                แดง ใบเล่

I am determined, bro, to do the critique with a hint of smile, anyway, anyhow, and whatever. And I use my real name in doing it since the person whose work I criticize also uses his real name in his work.

But, how real or fake are we?

Once I learned from the article: “La censure tisse sa toile”, Le Nouvel Observateur, le 24 janvier 2013, that “L’ Origine du monde” my preferred painting of Gustave Courbet was censured on Facebook, I understood then that the globalized world I live in had become “petit” , figuratively.

We shall leave the world at that size for the moment, and let’s move on with our business. I’m glad doing business with you, readers!

What Is?

It is the feature poem published in the “prestigious” Art and Culture magazine, November 2009 (B.E. 2552). The poem was composed by Mr. ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน, the magazine’s Chairman of the Board.

How Is?

It is like the President of the Board of the Atlantic  writes a feature poem for that very magazine.

Where Is?

This kind of true-to-human nature manner could happen in Thailand where before the birth of blogging and facebook the liberty of expression and freedom of speech was a sure thing once you owned a magazine, a newspaper, a publishing house, etc. as did Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน.

Pas comme ça chez vous?  But, isn’t it like that where you live?

Why Is?

I could not resist the temptation to read the feature poem in the “prestigious” Art and Culture magazine because it was written in the Polite Swaying-Four (โคลงสี่สุภาพ), my favorite Thai poetic form.

Khao Sarn Road style orientation: the Polite Swaying-Four poem

Anybody in sync with the basics of Thai language would understand that standard Thai has five tonal sounds, but only four tone markers. In amazement, when the first Khao Sarn Road backpacker jerk learns about the Polite Swaying-Four poetry (โคลงสี่สุภาพ) he or she must have been told that tone marks required in this type of poetry were limited to only TWO tone marks: ไม้เอก and ไม้โท, the signs ก่  and  ก้  as shown in the plan below,

Schema for a stanza of

Polite Swaying-Four poem

showing its TONE rule:

The earliest evident for this kind of poetic form first appeared in the early Ayudhya period, when written language had only TWO tone markers, ไม้เอก and ไม้โท. In later Ayudhya when trade flourished with China, other tone markers were added, probably to accomodate Chinese sounds (ไม้ตรี กับ ไม้จัตวา).

ก represents a syllable without tone marks, while ก่ is a syllable with low tone mark (ไม้เอก) and ก้ is a syllable with falling tone mark(ไม้โท). A stanza of Polite Swaying-Four poem consists of four lines, each line has two waks, or parts. Each wak is characterized by the use of low tone marks and falling tone marks at certain fixed syllable positions.

Scheme of Polite Swaying-Four poem showing its RHYME rule:

An example,

Transcriptions:

Translation:

What tales, what rumours, you ask?
Of whom is this praise being spread throughout the world?
Have you two been asleep, having forgotten to wake up?
You both can think of it yourselves; do not ask me.

The feature poem of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน

        อก    ซบอกสั่นสะท้าน   สยิวสะทก

        ผาย  แผ่ผืนแผ่นอก               รับอ้อน

        ไหล่  แบกโลกเข็นครก           เอวคราก
        ผึ่ง    แดดผึ่งลมร้อน              เพิ่งรู้ธุลีเดียว

                                                                                              โดย ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน

                                                                Featureed in Art and Culture magazine,

                                                                                      November 2552/ 2009

English translation, as best I can:

Breast pressing against breast, quivering with excitement; Titilatingly aroused,

Stretching the breast to indulge the pleading for love.

Carrying on shoulders the Globe, while pushing the boulder till back cracked,

Bathed in the sun and the hot wind; what’d been known, just a peck of dust.

My French translation attempt (่ีjust in case):

Nos poitrines se pressaient l’un contre l’autre; ça donnait le frisson de désire.

La poitrine s’étandais pour accueillir la suppliante de faire l’amour.

Le Globe sur les épaules, en poussant un rocher à remonter la colline, j’avais mal aux reins.

Le corps baigné du soleil et du vente si chaud; ce que je savais n’était qu’une poussière.

Poetic device: Symbolism, metaphors and similes

Thai poetry relies heavily on the use of symbolism, metaphor and simile. When the emotion, senses and sensibility, become so intense and electrified everything will be codified. The text turns suddenly into a kind of secret code.

When we were young readers, to our amazement, the hero and heroine who were deeply in love disappeared as if by magic from the love scene and disolved into thin air without reasons. We then found ourselves in a zoo or in some kind of flower gardens. The story continued seamlessly while the hero, the heroine, and all the scene metamorphosed into fish, a pond, and lotus flowers etc. The magic situation continued for awhile, finally the world would crumble down. Mount Meru, abode of Indra the highest god in Buddhist belief, was shaken violently to its core.

Experienced readers understand that those stanza lines are the passage dedicated to climax of a love scene or “บทอัศจรรย์”, which is a must for Thai romantic literature. In a literary work, even if it’s a monk who wrote the story, he is pardoned to include the love scene – a requirement of romantic writing genre – in his work. As young readers, bit by bit we came to understand that in the world of Thai poetry, religious belief must succumb to the magic rule of Arts.

An example:

          แสนสนุกในสระน้อง ปลาชื่นชมเต้นต้อง
                   ดอกไม้บัวบาน ฯ

Much fun in the pond of love, fishes happily dance;

                             Touching blossom lotus.

The majority, not all, of backpackers on Khao Sarn road and most journalists of the international press in Bangkok would find it hard to understand my argument. Where in the world that religious beliefs were subjugated to the rule of Arts and not vice versa? Even the “prestigious” Art and Culture magazine of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน had a hard time recognizing this categorical argument, if ever. But once the retarded lot, who hadn’t visited Khajuraho, seem to get the clue, because of their clumsiness and underpreparedness, not to say inculte,  they use the key of the understanding to open a whorehouse, not a romantic chamber.

อก     ซบอกสั่นสะท้าน       สยิวสะทก

ผาย   แผ่ผืนแผ่นอก                    รับอ้อน

Breast pressing against breast, quivering with excitement; Titilatingly aroused,

Stretching the breast to indulge the pleading for love.

“Breast” , in Thai, is repeated three times in the first two stanza lines. It is a substantial portion for the total of forteen syllables. Poetry means compression. But when twenty one percent, or three over forteen, of words used is the ONE word in repetition; then that word commands the whole text. Verbs and their qualifying adverbs serve as predicates only to “breast”. The whole text becomes a sensual, explicit physical creature: almost a sex organ in its own right.

“Stretching the breast to indulge the pleading for love”, ผาย แผ่ผืนแผ่นอก รับอ้อน, no text can compare to this stanza line in its simplification. C’est vraiement sans façon. If Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน were Mr.Jourdain in Le Bourgeois gentihomme, he would gleefully have changed his line From,

“Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.”

To,

“Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking verse without knowing that it was all prose.”

The poem of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน is void of symbolism, metaphor and simile, la pierre angulaire of Thai poetry. For him a breast is a breast, and we can consequently extrapolate that for him a vulve is a clinical vagina, unmistakably. How could it be a blossom lotus?

Poetic devices?— But, I argue against.

Let’s move on to the last two stanza lines. Abruptly, the content breaks from hardcore erotica to simple mechanical porn — sort of heavy metal or BDSM. At first glance it seems that the third line contains poetic devices important to Thai poetry: symbolism, metaphor and simile. The forth and final line that follows just cops out of the heavy metal environment. Suddenly Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน pops himself up in the middle of nowhere; he has intelligently crafted something that seems to be extremely out of context and irrelevant that the whole universe would be in a better shape had he kept it for his private use: what’d been known, just a peck of dust!

I ask myself: What the f_ck is that?

Bon, ben, je continue. Translated into French, tant bien que mal, by me:

Le Globe sur les épaules, en poussant un rocher à remonter la colline, j’avais mal aux reins.

Le corps baigné du soleil et du vente si chaud; ce que je savais n’était qu’une

poussière.

And my English translation version:

Carrying on shoulders the Globe, while pushing the boulder till back cracked,

Bathed in the sun and the hot wind; what’d been known, just a peck of dust.

Since I did observe from the first two stanza lines that the nicest thing about Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน is that his poetry says what it has said, no more, no less. Therefore, I need a good argument against him, because his last two stanza lines seem to say more than they have said.

Was Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน crafting metaphoric symbols here? A deep read and wild research is required in arguing against this part of his writing.

After the third meditative mindful breaths, I realized that his third stanza line:

Carrying on shoulders the Globe, while pushing the boulder till back cracked,

is in line with the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who, in the underworld, rolls a boulder uphill for eternity. The myth has been popularized among some Thai readers, a rare species of living things, by the famous philosophical essay of Albert Camus, whose several works were translated into Thai.

Was Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน, who used first person voice in writing the poem, Sisyphus of Albert Camus? Was the boulder carried on the shoulders of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน similar in analogy to the one rolls by Sisyphus?  More fundamentally, was the ACT of carrying a big rock uphill of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน similar to that of Sisyphus whom Albert Camus wrote about?

The one and same answer to those questions is No!  And it’s my duty to illustrate the negation (with, hopefully, a good argument).

First of all, Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน is not Sisyphus of Albert Camus because Sisyphus was condemned to be a proletariat of gods, working in the underworld for eternity, while Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน is not, and does not pretend himself to be an eternal being. Furthermore, nobody but his own “karma” has made him carry that big rock. Finally, his burden is not endless as that of Sisyphus. It’s temporary from the outset, and will last untill he could arrange his finance with some big money, for example. Sisyphus has no privilege to reconcile his destiny financially.

Sisyphus walks downhill, Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน No!

Once Sisyphus brings the rock up to the summit, automatically the heavy boulder rolls back downhill. From this moment on, Sisyphus who now has no physical burden become conscious of the whole business of his unending rock rolling. During this moment of truth, the story turns into a tragedy. It’s tragic since the hero is now conscious of his fate. And the real suffering comes from within, from being conscious, rather than from the physical labour. He is an immortal anyway, no back pain sir.

On the contrary, Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน entertains us with his personal sex scene. Opening his poem with a celebration of the relief of burden by having sex. Standing proudly ready to enjoy himself, he is expanding his broad chest to the full waiting for her bosom to press upon it while at the same time she pleads for his love making (รับอ้อน).

Puzzled by the opening of a distinctively pornographic scene without preamble or antecedent, readers will only learn later, when they have finished reading the last two stanza lines, what is the why, the because, the since, the for-the-fact-that of such a sensual celebration of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน. For us, readers of the poem, it is only then that we experienced the “Aha moment”.

Problem is ….. an integral re-read of the whole poem after the Aha moment  has resulted in an enigma: How could one do love making while busting one’s proverbial behinds off carrying a big boulder?

A challenging sex action indeed. And what’s the point of such a cumbersome act?  Had Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน tried not only making a parody of the Myth of Sisyphus but also challenging some acrobatic positions of the sculptures at Khajuraho temples? Quelle audage monsieur, quelle audage!

Perhaps my argument is weak.

After begining the so-called “poetry” with a pornographic scene in the first two lines, Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน has turned himself into jerk philosophe by evoking Sisyphus of Albert Camus in the third stanza line.

There is some similarity of the experience between the two heros, that is when Sisyphus is walking downhill following the boulder, a moment of truth appears on his mind that he is happy, as experienced also by the persona of Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน in the poetry. But Sisyphus hasn’t been doing sex, his bliss is mental, not physical and sexual.

Or, for Mr.ขรรค์ชัย blissful sex is all labour and sweat? Mr.ขรรค์ชัย misses the whole philosophical point of Albert Camus as well as the love that conditions Lilit Phra Lo (ลิลิตพระลอ) which he parodies.

My remark: a piece of badly written porn wouldn’t make literature; badly written porn is porn, period. Mr.ขรรค์ชัย บุนปาน couldn’t take the slothful, opportunistic short-cut to literature.

Literature is a different kind of writing. Tu piges?

The killer final stanza line: ผึ่ง แดดผึ่งลมร้อน เพิ่งรู้ธุลีเดียว

Engligh translation:                    Bathed in the sun and hot wind; what’d been known, just a peck of dust.

French translation:                    Le corps baigné du soleil et du vente si chaud; ce que je savais n’était qu’ une poussière.

What the f_ck is that, may I ask?

Putain de bordel de bon Dieu. Quel écriture!  My translation may have diminished the real sense somewhat, which means it has ameliorated the original up a bit. However, whatever, his final stanza line which he has done a Control C from quel-bordel-Dieu-sait , and has done a Control V right here, is really, really, fucking brilliant. Vraiement incritiquable!  It does remind all jaw-dropping poetry appreciation students, of the famous “Ozymandias”. Oh yes, we have all become diminutive creatures before the phenomenal Thai language poet of the century.

Ozymandias says:

                             Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

ปรีชา ทิวะหุต

บ้านนาพญา หลังสวน ชุมพร

มิถุนายน 2558

Thailand – USA relations: holy cow, the unconventional capacity to talk back

(Liberty of expression and freedom of speech are here, but I ain’t Charlie.)

Democratic eavesdropping on a private conversation between Mr. Daniel R. Russel(dumb ass),Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific  and Mr. Jonathan Head(lick-dick), BBC South East Asia Correspondent.

Daniel R. Russel : “Apa kabar?”

Jonathan Head : “Sabai-dee”

Daniel R. Russel : “WTF, we don’t do that in Texas.” (Commenting on the opening of the video while the dance girl is on the drawn cart, video time:00:45)

Jonathan Head : “Oh dear, very undemoKLAtic, must be a sex slave trade, they’re TLying to sell the girl to Pataya City’s walking-street bars for sure.”

Daniel R. Russel : “Sure thing, bro. The poor boys drawing the cart must also be slaves. The dance depicts the most undemoKLAtic of human society, a society of slaves and slave-owners.”

Jonathan Head : “I read in some children books, dear, your declaration of freedom and fake, gimmick, Hollywoodian and cliché demoKLAcy said all white men, except African slaves, are created equal.”

Daniel R. Russel : “You’re blaspheming against our holy mantra text, bro. Our Father in heaven will get the shit out of your kinky Head, Jonathan or not.”

Jonathan Head : “You have father in heaven? How superstitious. What a big f_cking deal, backward and undemoKLAtic! I’m not Charlie Hebdo though; I’m the demoKLAtic BBC, dear. If God exists, man is not free. If man is free, according to your mantra of Liberty and FLeedom, then God doesn’t exist.”

Daniel R. Russel : “What kind of shit you are broadcasting-lah. Terima kasih-lah bro, khobkun krub-lah, I don’t buy it-lah. Is this your coming-out of the Tu-lou(土楼 ) day, or what?”

Jonathan Head : “Oh dear, you sound so unmistakably perfectly Asia-Pacific this time; that’s from Jean-Paul Sartre.”

Daniel R. Russel : “A new brand of body odor repellant? Looky here bro, at video time 02:19 there is thunderstorm without a drop of rain. Bro, you are BBC South East Asia Correspondent, how could you possibly report thunderstorm without a drop of rain from South East Asia?”

Jonathan Head : “Mind you, don’t challenge me with an undemoKLAtic trap question. As Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific how come you didn’t know that my reporting standard was more creative than that; I am renown for reportig farting without air.”

Daniel R. Russel : “Awesome, we can’t do that in Chicago, bro. Hey, at video time 03:35 why didn’t she dress in white like Marilyn Monroe, or at least like Lady Gaga? It’s more sexy that way. American women don’t dress like that; that sucks. How f_cking weird she looks, with two long threads of dry leaves dangling from b

ehind her ears.”

Jonathan Head : “God f_cks Jesus Christ! The standing dance guy must be a kind of Viking chief who undemoKLAtically invaded Scotland some years back.”

Daniel R. Russel: “Madre de Dios, no! He is some kind of Inca blood thristy despot generalissimo chieftain from South America.”

Jonathan Head: “Should we demoKLAtically continue with this undemoKLAtic conversation of ours, dude?”

Daniel R. Russel: “Are you copping out? Hell yes, we should! To day is the coming-out of the Tu-lou(ถู่โหลว — 土楼 ) day.”

Jonathan Head: “Sampai bertemu lagi dengan anda, bye-bye. Selamat tinggal, dear.”

By Dan Bailé

A Thai writer

Posted on his real name blog

At www.pricha123.blogspot.com

And at www.pricha123.wordpress.com
ชอบ/ไม่ชอบ โปรดแชร์ลิงก์ให้เพื่อนด้วยครับ

elated link : critique of EU sanction on Thailand
 critique of BBC on Hakka PM of Thailand
critique of M.David Lipman, former EU Ambassador to Thailand
 critique of a “poem” of M.Somyot
how to read French Revolution in Thailand
critique of radio France Culture, FM 89.6, Monte Carlo 

critique of EU sanction on Thailand

July 4, 2557/2014

H.E. Ambassador, from all EU countries, and
Señor Don Jesus Miguel Sanz Escorihuela,
Head of EU Delegation to Thailand

Estimados Señores:

Following the change of governance in my country, you issued sanctions. I wonder: What harm had we done to you, friends from far-away lands?

Taking a deep breath, three times; we have known you for some five hundred years. The Persians had taught us to call you farang.

In the early sixteenth century, you first came here to the court of Ayudhya. Some of you told a king of Siam about your Sacred Tale of World Creation, while your monks were tagging along with you. The King thought out loud that your story was stupid, but your behavior was good, so let you stay among us. Since that time, you have preached your stupidity all along — the ACTIVITY that you cannot do even nowadays in Saudi Arabia, or not as freely in Malaysia; they have good reasons for not allowing you to waste their time and yours.

Then came the enchanted eighteenth century when you changed your mind. You also changed your story. You came here, no monks tagging along with you this time, in the nineteenth and twentieth century preaching a pagan belief called “Democracy”, a no-priest religion. The new currency did not fare much better than the one you told us three hundred years before. However, it bore some signs as an enlightened estupidez.

To our sense, there were some entertaining elements in it. It had an egalitarian consideration which resonated with our tradition of renouncing worldly possession to become one among the equal members in the Sangha community. Freedom and liberty were also most welcomed. To us they have been, and always are, things for to live by, and not things for to shout for.

Your new currency, therefore, enjoyed a better rate of conversion, the downtown rate not the airport rate.

Now, I challenge that during the past five centuries up to the present twenty first century, you have been unaware of three fundamental differences between you and me, which you should have known as an Ambassador to here.

First, we don’t sin the same way. Your Excellency, when Your Excellency touches Your Excellency’s genitalia you sin, but that is not my case. I sin most when I end a life, killing a fly, for example, not to say chicken. On the contrary, fondling my private parts gives me pure pleasure.

Second, your system of logics, the foundation of your l’esprit critique, is too complicated and confusing. In the deepest of thought, it respects forms rather than contents, as clearly illustrated by the enlightened estupidez (of yours).

Third, we believe in taking संन्यास that in your life you should take a vow of poverty in pursuit of spirituality. But you are alien to संन्यास because you always desire more.

For example, our fundamental differences, mysteriously enough, might have caused the BBC Regional Office to stay in dictatorial Bangkok, and not to flee to democratic Singapore or democratic Kuala Lumpur or, even better, to Rangoon since Burma is now a democratic state. Those cities have people who speak English better than us. Be careful, mind you, I didn’t say they speak betterEnglish; you know we don’t lie about our neighbors. By sticking to here, could it probably be a way of expressing gratitude toward us by Señor Jonathan Head, chief BBC agent? Vous n’êtes pas tous des ingrats, non? Ah, Oui?

Read this mini-story, please:
“You French fight for money, while we British fight for honor,”
“A man fight for what he lacks the most”. – French Corsair Robert Surcouf to the British Officer.

Heureusement, in Thailand, we don’t have to fight for democracy. We have lived it from time immemorial. However, your hysterical, banal, ordinary, unimaginative, childish, synthetic, unabashfully nosy, and sloth response to the way we have gone about our governance, how we fart, is appalling. You brittled and you ranted. You have demonstrated to us how vulnerable your brand of democracy is. Democratic republics like Laos and Vietnam, which have their own brand of democracy, would have made a hearty joke out of your psychological disorder reaction: “C’est du guignol,” — no translation is needed because they speak French better than I do.

Calme-toi, amigo, calme-toi. I don’t respond to guignol or comic strip, but this time it’s an exception. Your insecurity does reveal to us that your brand of democracy needs us more than we need it.

This letter is an appeal to you, as an individual human person capable of thinking for yourself, to reason independently from your government’s politics. I have no intention to convince you to frustrate your job in any way because treason of any kind is not to my liking.

I would like to ask you, amigo, a question: as l’Ambassadeur de la mauvaise conscience, t’as pas honte?

For a clear and good conscience, you might have rightly guessed that if we were ever allowed to make an amendment to the renown derecho humanoof yours, we would add an article on the art of meditation. We would also propose its forgotten flip side – la declaraciòn universal de respecto al derecho ajeno. Derecho ajeno, tu connais pas ça? Quelle honte!

Meditez-ça: please graduate from your eighteenth century enlightenment, and wake up from it’s spell. C’est tout-à-fait démodé. How had it been possible that during the past ten some years you could not use your head to distinguish, or judge, a pathological, filthy rich, ex-police despot, national assets grabber, alienated, ungrateful, disloyal, treacherous Hakka guy and closet gay from a natural democracy loving people like us?

Biensûr que je vous emmerde, amigo, mais je vous emmerde amicalement. Même si, au fait, vous n’êtes pas tous mes amis, je vous emmerde cordialement quand même. Et c’est pour votre bien-être spirituel car vous,amigos, vivez en ce moment parmi nous.

Veuillez agréer, Messieurs, l’expression de mes sentiments les plus respectueux.

Un fuerte abrazo de tu amigo,

Dan Bailé,
(ปรีชา ทิวะหุค)
a thai writer,
Chumphon Province,
July 4, 2557.

N.B. I refrained from responding to the US Ambassador because she is such a nice girl; L’amour de loin oblige – obliged by the long distance love. This is not a sexist, but romantic remark.

Posted at http://www.pricha123.blogspot.com
ไม่สงวนสิทธิในการเผยแพร่

the Greatest Haiku of All time บทกวี ไฮกุ หิดบี๋

The greatest Haiku of all time,
Untranslatable to Japanese,
Sending Haiku Masters worldwide
Scurrying up Mount Fuji,
For deepest meditation.

— Maybe broadcast next  on the BBC
by Mr. Jonathan Head who finds
more and more difficulties in his
reporting CONSISTENCY on the political
event in Thailand, while his bank account
is CONSISTENTLY “swollen”

 

Bee-Hit Haiku, untranslatable into Japanese

                                                                                            จัญไรและกาลีบ้านกาล

เดิน  บี๋หิด  ไป

เดิน  บี๋หิด  มา

หิดบี๋  ไปทางซ้ายที

หิดบี๋  มาทางขวาที

ลางที  ผายลมทางปาก(farting) – อุ้ยตาย จิ๋มหล่น

ใส่ไมโครโฟน  คนอุดจมูกกันจ้าละหวั่น

ม่ายช่าย  ยางง้านนน  ม้างงง  ฅนระดับประเทศ

เอ๊ะหรือว่า  นี่แหละใช่เลย

–ว๊าย ห่นหลี!

นักกลอน ไฮกุ นิรนาม

Thai poetry: critique of a “poem” by คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข

Thai poetry: critique of a “poem” by คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข

— A perfect BRAGGADOCIO ?

                                                                         แดง ใบเล่ — the critic

Attention intro: amis de la poésie, bonsoir.

How could father-son love be possibly sweetened beyond this point?

A poem of Thailand’s high profile professional Hakkaactivist with a Thai language name — Somyos P. or Somyot Pruksakasemsuk–is worth studying for those around the globe who really care for liberty of expression, freedom of speech, as well as human right watching, and of course, Thai poetry. Unfortunately, the globe suddenly became a miniscule pebble once the last word had been pronounced.  

As a person whoappreciates Thai language and literature, I feel honoured that a professionalHakka political activist like Mr.Somyos pays any attention at all to Thai poetry.

This critical essay had been prepared with gratitude and thanks, to Mr.Somyos. But, my critique of his above poem was written for a small number of people around the cyberworld who knows both English and Thai, with little notion of French. Nevertheless, it is by no means a piece of translation.

To make the critique as comprehensive but concise as possible, the use of languages had to be in double mode. Therefore, with some reserve, it could serve as a language exercise for readers as well as myself. This is particularly true for those who are studying Thai language and literature beyond the superficial sex tourist level, which usually concentrates on the anatomy, not culture. By and large writing this article did give me an awesome enjoyment. ขอขอบคุณ คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข อย่างจริงใจที่ได้สร้างสรรค์งานขึ้นไว้ — my thanks, in Thai, to Mr.Somyos.

Très poussé. The poem shows howcourageous the authorwas in his attempt at its composition. The three stanzas deal with three aspects of life: love, bravery and social progressivism. It ends in transcending dreams into dream-like reality—the dream of dreams.

“Les prétendues définitions de la poésie ne sont, et ne peuvent être, que des documents sur la manière de voir et de s’exprimer de leurs auteurs.” (Paul Valéry)

A quote from Paul Valéry did the trick in lucidating my mind. Being mindful I took three deep breaths, giving needed energy to my sub-consciousness. Voilà, I couldn’t have found a better guideline to focus on the task. Centering it around the author’s “la manière de voir et de s’exprimer” , or roughly “the outlook and self-expression of the author”, seems just and fair.

Fairness is important in the world of Anglophones, I presume. While justice is important to everybody, including Mr.Somyos P. and myself, especially when one dutifully practices the liberty of expression and freedom of speech as you will progressively learn in reading this article.

The two opening lines of his composition, the first stanza, display father-love-son-very-much sentiment by words arrangement in the form of Bolt-8  type of Thai poetry, or Glon-Paed.

Categorical assurance in analyzing the poem will then be, “la poésie doit répondre à la question de son pourquoi ”; approximately — “the poem must answer the question of its Why” . 

Et oui, pourquoi? 

The famous Bolt-8 type of Thai poem: a tourist guide

Among many forms of Thai poetry, Bolt-8 variety stands out as one of the most well-known. Sunthorn Phu, a great poet, used it his chef-d’œuvre. Naowarat P. and Angkarn K., the famous contemporary poets, just breathe in and breathe out with stanzas of Bolt-8 poetry. Angkarn K. also skillfully used it in his social and political protest, almost daily recently until his death in 2012. No foreigners know Angkarn and his greatness because he has no interest in speaking ‘Tinglish’. And no fake or non-fake “intellectuals of Siam”(mostly ethnic Chinese) mentioned him in their ‘Tinglish’ to the international press because they envy him. It is as simple as that. Most school students can recite few words of Bolt-8 poem. Many songs are written in verses of this kind of poetry. Contemporary fan clubs of this type of poems are abound in Thai poetry website.

Et pourquoi?  Perhaps it’s due to Bolt-8 ‘s popular base that Mr.Somyos P., as a professional activist, which means he is fed by being an activist — as simple as that, has chosen this type of poetry to express himself. Not to say he is envious of Angkarn P., and that he know not all other types of Thai poem. And mind you, I, as the critic, haven’t yet proven that he knows this one.

The following schema shows structure of Bolt-8  in two stanzas (four lines). Letters in parentheses represent optional rhyming syllables;

OOO OO OOA		OOA O(A) OOB
OOO OO OOB		OOB O(B) OOC
OOO OO OOD		OOD O(D) OOC
OOO OO OOC		OOC O(C) OOO

Of which the Thai style full structural representation appears as follows,

To make sense of the why and the how— pourquoi et comment, gurus of Thai poetry analysis and critique have articulated for us that a good Bolt-8  poetry comprises: “คำประพันธ์ที่ดี 1. ข้อความดี 2. สัมผัสดี 3. แต่งถูกต้องตามลักษณะบังคับ” which roughly mean: good content, good rhyming, and following the poetic form. 

“Good content”: pourquoi  couldn’t it be less good?

The title of the poem: “To younger brother Tai, my beloved son”, has given to  the readers a good reason of why it is written. But how come that a beloved son is also a younger brother?

The why: by calling one’s son or daughter “nong” — literally means younger brother or younger sister, the speaker is displaying a gentle, even sweet, way of addressing his younger sons. However, since in the case of Mr.Somyos the son is about twenty years old — the the use of the intimate pronoun “nong” had resulted in creating some titilation effect. 

The how: Mr.Somyos could have used “nong” to evoke, by its sense of intimacy, an emotive and sympathetic feeling in the readers’ mind, since his writing was not meant to be a private sentimental letter. It had been funnelled into the media, both traditional and digital. Intimacy, therefore, might have been inserted as a rhetoric device to instantly engage the public who are used to fast reading. Moreover, by calling his son “nong”, he did rejuvenate the young man, his twenty something years old son, to be a cute little boy once more. But the process is risky, even in poetry.

The first stanza–first two lines of Bolt-8 writing, shows the love he has towards his son: how charming and adorable the young man is. Mr.Somyos describes his fondness for “younger brother Tai”  in a more and more sugarly manner as his words arrangement progresses from the beginning of the stanza to the end of it. For example, เธอคือดอกไม้งาม… เธอคือมณีแก้ว… เธอคือพลัง… strong, flattery, sensual mataphors were brought into play and into display, including a progressivist-turned-commonplace: เธอคือพลัง.

เธอคือดอกไม้งาม…Another sweet personal pronoun “thoe”(เธอ) to address his son, other than “nong”, is also a problematic word choice of Mr.Somyos.

In everyday Thai language, if the speaker is a FEMALE, which is the sex that prefers using this pronoun, “thoe”  can address both a female and a male second person. But if the speaker is a mature male, who rarely uses the pronoun“thoe” , then it is meant to address the person who is an intimate female, for example, his wife or lover. The nuance is well learned at tender age among school friends, and from female school teachers who are probably the people most employing the pronoun “thoe”.

As a male speaker at his age, the manner in which Mr.Somyos talks to his son, taking into account his son’s age, even in poetry, is so sweet and queer indeed — I mean strange. Ça donne le frisson. It makes a quiver. While reading it, one could shudder like being gripped by the Saturday late night fever. (ใข้ขึ้นตอนดึกวันเสาร์ฺ).    

Putting more sugar in his speech, Mr.Somyos compares his son to a beautiful flower. Although this metaphor is easily understood across cultures as refering to a beautiful female person. But other than being relevant to people, it could also represent a deep romantic sentiment as appears, for example, in the poem “One Perfect Rose”  by Dorothy Parker; here is her first stanza,

                   A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.

                   All tenderly his messenger he chose;

                   Deep – hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet –

                             One perfect rose.

After being one perfect flower, then — a gallant Don Quixote

The second stanza begins each of its four sentences, or each วรรค(wak), with the lead phrase“Brave to …” : 1) Brave to resist, 2) Brave to rebel, 3) Brave to harden himself, 4) Brave to fight with intrusive love fighting bravery.

          กล้าต้านเผด็จการอันเคี้ยวคด           กล้าขบถต่อกฏเกณฑ์อันเลวร้าย

          กล้าแกร่งด้วยศรัทธาที่ท้าทาย        กล้าสู้ด้วยหมายรัีกหักหาญกล้า

               

                                                                        กล้า  =brave to … (underlined by the critic)

Mr.Somyos proudly shows the world his admiration for his son in four kinds of bravery. First, his son is brave to resist the “tricky dictator”. Second, he is brave to rebel against the “wicked law”. Third, he is brave to harden his character with“challenging faith (or strengthening himself with faith and then challenge)”, and finally he is brave to “fight with intrusive love fighting bravery”. My translation is literal.

Reading the first line of this stanza could have given me fright of my life if I had not been mindful: taking three deep breaths. It tried to convince me of the existence of a hellish and ruthless country on earth: ruled by the tricky dictator and the wicked law. What a relief, the Knight-errant comes galloping in the second line: challenging faith/strengthened with faith and then challenge, fighting with intrusive love fighting bravery — descriptive words confusingly characterizing the bravery of his beloved son.

Mr.Somyos beginned by being political, then turned revolutionary, follows by being spiritual, and finally became romantic in the fourth “brave to …”. Heroic actions were economically performed in one stanza of his Bolt-8  “poem”, by those four “brave-to” phrases.

However, my understanding of his third brave to,

          “brave to get strengthened with challenging faith”

          or “brave to hardened with faith, and then challenge”,

is unclear.

Whether he meant inwardly to be brave to strengthen oneself with the help of a certain kind of faith that is challenging; or outwardly to be brave to aggressively CHALLENGE the tricky dictator and wicked law. A ponderous “brave-to” challenge, or an action oriented “brave-to” challenge?

Probably, Mr.Somyos’ repetitive uses of Relative Pronouns, “อัน” and then follows by another “อัน” and then the Relative Pronoun “ที่”, have confused me. The frequent use of Relative Pronouns is uncommon in Thai language.

The short, emphatetic, quicky long march from Gandhi to Mao and beyond

          ก้าวเกิดขบวนการอหิงสา                ก้าวนำพามวลชนพ้นทางตัน

          ก้าวไปให้ถึงฝั่งแห่งความฝัน            ก้าวไปให้ถึงวันฝันเป็นจริง

                                                                        ก้าว =to march … (underlined by the critic).

In this third and final stanza, Mr.Somyos praises his son caricaturistically for 1) marching to give birth to the non-violent movement, 2) marching the mass out of the impasse, 3) marching to the bank(not a financial institution) of dream, and finally 4) marching to arrive at the day when dreams come true. Those are almost direct translations, if you could not make any sense out of it — too bad. But there is one thing we can be sure of — that is: the father have a magnifying-turned-desperate dream for himself and his son. The dream that seems so enormous that “I have a dream,” of Martin Luther King would be dwarfed, reduced to an infinitesimal peck of dust. Énorme!

Critique of “good content”

1^st stanza: “my son is a perfect rose”.

To compare the beauty of a person, male or female, with a flower whichever, does not exist in the canon of Thai poetry — and it’s a huge canon. It prefers to compare a beautiful person, usually female, with the Moon, หะหายกระต่ายเต้น ชมจันทร์, while a popular metaphor will refer a beautiful person to heavenly beings, เทพ or เทวดา. 

Basically, in poetry as well as in life, Thai language expresses parental love in moderation. Here is a classic example of a young son and his mother, also in Bolt-8 poetic form,

          แม่รักลูก ลูกก็รู้ อยู่ว่ารัก                 คนอื่นสัก หมื่นแสน ไม่แม้นเหมือน

          จะกินนอน วอนว่า เมตตาเตือน        จะจากเรือน เหมือนหนึ่งนก ที่จากรัง

Apart from being a perfect rose, Mr.Somyos’ son is also a jewel, “มณีแก้ว”. A point to ponder: if it uses “แก้ว”(glass), as metaphor, Thai language will not flatter the “glass” as a stand alone precious object, all shining and brilliant, as “เธอคือมณีแก้วแพรวสดใส”. Thai language will say “แก้ว + ตา, แก้ว + ใจ”, a jewel in the eye, or in the heart of parents. Moreover, reaffirming that the “glass”(แก้ว) is all shining, brilliant, lustrous, sparkling, fresh jewel, “มณี+แก้ว+แพรว+สดใส” is superfluous. While word mis-placement of มณี + แก้ว made the reading bizarre. Just like we say bag + hand instead of handbag, or through + see instead of see-through.

If it deems necessary, Thai language will say แก้ว + มณี (not มณี + แก้ว) since the word มณี comes to modify แก้ว(glass) by differentiating it from an ordinary banal แก้ว(glass) in order that แก้ว(glass) will mean “jewel”. A quote from อังคาร กัลยาณพงศ์, the contemporary Thai language great poet:

“ความทุกข์มันเจียระไนเราให้เป็นมนุษย์ที่มีเหลี่ยมแพรวพราวขึ้น เป็นแก้วมณีหรือเพชรก็ได้….”

อังคาร who is a giant in the practical use of Thai language correctly say: แก้ว + มณี.  I also have a friend — her beautiful name is “แ้ก้วมณี”. However, the word จินดามณี from Ayuthaya period which was reversed in a poem of โคลงโลกนิติ,

                             ภูเขาเหลือแหล่ล้วน    ศิลา
หามณีจินดา                         ยากได้

The term มณีจินดา has a lengthy story, way out to the Sombrero Galaxy, I prefer not to mention it here. It is categorized in the same group of เพื่อนแก้ว, ช้างแก้ว, ม้าแก้ว etc. because จินดา means แก้วสารพัดนึก.

Back to our case, we say รถเก๋ง, and never say เก๋ง + รถ. We say สากกะเบือหิน, never say หิน + สากกะเบือ;  and we say สากกะเบือไม้, never say ไม้ + สากกะเบือ. Finally we say แก้ว-มณี, not มณี-แก้ว.

In the second stanza we find that “เคี้ยวคด” is a word mis-shuffled of คดเคี้ยว. However, there is a world apart between เลี้่ยวลด in “เหมือนเถาวัลย์ พันเกี่ยว ที่เลี้ยวลด” of Sunthorn Phu, the great, and “เผด็จการอันเีคี้ยวคด” of Mr.Somyos, the miniscule.

It’s nonsensical to draw an acoustic analogy between เลี้ยวลด and เคี้ยวคด. By reason of their parallel sounding melodies, Mr.Somyos cannot do parallel processing to make a parody of clumsy words mis-placement out of it. Fausse note!  Sorry, a Hakka person doesn’t have the liberty of yanking anything anywhere at will in Thai language.

Sunshine of her smile is understandable in English, but you cannot yank the smile out of her sunshine.

2^nd stanza: “tricky dictator, wicked law”. 

By my own experience in Thailand, dictators in Thailand belonged to the straight forward, no-nonsense, stupid lot. They didn’t waste their time making a case, arguing against you. They just gave you hell in your face. They were not tricky.

    

Yet, I must confess of having a brief spell of icy shower from a clever tricky cunning idiot street thug dictator who did try to dispense with the law. He is still unaccounted, for the killing of more than 2,500 people in the name of a fictitious “War on drug”. (What personal past did he try to hide?). A sudden death had moved close to almost anybody, able or disable, a child or an elderly. A ten years old boy was gunned down in the street of Bangkok by his death squad, and an elderly woman was gunned down in Ayuthaya, not counting his political killings in Pattaya, Chiengmai, and southern provinces. At that time the European Union – Thailand just ferme la gueule. No dead bodies has “human right”. Quite understandable.

Appallingly, a repressive thug state is the only political entity HE knows of. Now living on the other side of the border, under the names of Adolf Hakka, or Jay Edgar Hakka, or Sumdej Fucsin Shit-swine, please choose one according to your political preference. I could not  spell his real name à la lettre because he is protected from my wicked, bad, satanic action by section 326 and 393 of Thai Criminal Code, and section 423 of Civil Code, the three laws I advocate that they be abolished for freedom of speech and liberty of expression in Thailand. –ขอ เรียกร้อง สนับสนุน ยืนยัน ให้ยกเลิกกฎหมายอาญามาตรา 326 และ 393, กับประมวลแพ่งฯมาตรา 423 เพื่อสิทธิเสรีภาพในการพูดและการแสดงออกอย่างสมบูรณ์ในประเทศไทย.  And mind you, I distributed this article as well as posted on the Internet using my real name.

I understand that Adolf Hakka is a closet, bottom gay, pathologically fearful of his gayness being exposed. Apart from living a few months under the threat of icy shower of hot bullets from Adolf Hakka, most of the time that I’d lived in Thai culture and society I never realized that I spent my life under any tricky dictator with wicked law. As an alumni of French education, I am well aware that the legal system in Thailand is based on the French system. The country’s civil code is based on Napoleonic code that carries on the liberal ideas of the French revolution.

Comparative experiences of living in three foreign countries had also taught me something. Speaking three European languages and reading some Hindi, backpacking to India and I feel at home. Feeling at home also while eating a bagette sandwich in Quartier Latin, Paris, or having a good American breakfast in Hyde Park, Chicago. I am also an alumni of the University of Chicago. I don’t feel alienated in Mexico City, or Salamanca, Spain. Not only their music and literature, I also appreciate their foods: buritos and enchilada and tortilla and paella.   

Let’s forget my BRAGGADOCIO, hmm…first time in my life that I have the opportunity to use this fantastic term. Most important of all, I went to the same school in Bangkok as did Mr.Somyos; there where his education stopped dead…but mine flourished.

I have to add “… but phrase” at the end of the above paragraph to do justice to the school which has a prestigious list of alumni: a king of Thailand, a couple of Prime Ministers, business leaders, a few famous writers and political protesters, military commanders, a lot of jerks, weirdos, and now geeks, nerds and no life, plus a fair amount of plain unclassified crazy people.

Now, I live in my home village, southern Thailand, within reach of 3G wifi where we can democratically watch pornography seamlessly. Here, everybody knows everybody else for generations. We enjoy different kinds of shrimp pastes. We eat all kinds of leaves and fishes; some edible insects are our delights. My folks cook fish intestines curry. It’s our specialty.

Then the first line of his second stanza, inevitably, overhelmed me with fright and awe. But it’s fasinating when I learned that I could be saved from living in hell I ignored all along by superhero who is Mr.Somyos’ beautiful son. God fxxck Jesus Christ — I learned this exclamation from a fellow student who came from New York when he shouted it out loud in the cafeteria of the I-House, University of Chicago; and God forbid, I never forget it malgré moi. God fxxck Jesus Christ, don’t save me please, I fear your heaven!

His fourth and final “brave to”  strikes me with a hard blow: brave to fight with intrusive love fighting bravery. With this complicated stylishly cheesy messy phrase, my incomprehension had deepened into the heart of darkness, a complete blackout. I cannot even translate it into Thai. I don’t know who loves whom, who loves what and what is that love and that bravery. It reminds me of reading an erotic ménage-à-trois and getting confused about whose hand is doing what with whose leg. 

3^rd stanza: “marching the mass out of impasse”

Glorious. Mao must kowtow Mr.Somyos’ beautiful son. Gandhi will be sleepless in his new reincarnated body form. Thoreau and Martin Luther King will agitate in their tombs. All those motions are caused by Mr.Somyos’ beautiful son-and-flower who extraodinarily originated the peaceful civil disobedient movement, the long march leading the mass out of a big muddy bog, and who entertained a big cheesy dream. This is the most self-magnifying stanza of all poems the world has ever known — vulgar and trivial. A perfect BRAGGADOCIO — I feel extremely happy that I got the chance to use this word for a second time. Thanks to Mr.Somyos.

Finally, I would like to comment on the linguistic vitality of the term“nong”,  an informal personal pronoun. The usage belongs to southern dialect where, 1) young ones can use it as first person pronoun to speak of themselves, 2) a mother can use it to kindly address her children, 3) any older people can use it as a second-person personal pronoun to speak to younger persons.

Not long ago, the term made its entry in Bangkok, but it didn’t enter the capital’s households. In Bangkok, “nong”  remains solely as a second-person personal pronoun. No kids in Bangkok called themselves “nong” , with the sense and sound that is practiced in the southern dialect.   

The usage is a gentle way of speaking among Southerners, a geographical sub-culture which Mr. Somyos doesn’t belong. As for standard Thai, “nong” had become part of a polite greeting, with tint of paternalism, to speak to younger persons in popular milieu, usually waiters and waitresses, masseurs and masseuses, for example. Therefore, in standard Thai language one should be careful in using “nong”, otherwise one risks being rude. This is a common paradox of a polite expression in certain region that turn out to be improper in other places.

The fact that Mr.Somyos, coming from a Hakka family in Thonburi, who overeagered to identify himself with the mass, had adopted this intimate regional expression, culturally foreign to him, had resulted in a wrong key. It doesn’t ring true. It even sounds odd and queer, having a mixed sensation of coming sickness with sweet and sour rotten pork. As a person whose mother tongue is southern dialect, I immediately sensed there is something out of tune. And I had an impression that the author was insultingly pretentious.

Tunes of Bolt-8

เสาวรจนี, นารีปราโมทย์, พิโรธวาทัง, สิลลาปังคพิสัย, these are styles of Bolt-8 composition which roughly mean writing in praise of beauty, writing for courtship, writing in angry mode, and writing for melancholic mood.

The first stanza, “my son is a perfect flower”, can be classified into both เสาวรจนี — in praise of beauty, and นารีปราโมทย์ — writing for courtship. How in the world Mr.Somyos is courting his cute son is his problem. The second stanza stands obviously for พิโรธวาทัง, expressing anger, while the last stanza tunes into the style of สิลลาปังคพิสัย, melancholic mood. As far as composition styles are concerned, Mr.Somyos had used all the four tunes of Bolt-8 poetry in his “poem”.

But, like in music, tunes and lyrics should go hand in hand. In this respect Mr.Somyos has to re-learn the music of words in Thai language, and practice listening to Thai musical melody and poetic tones. Thereafter he would be able to know how to better put words into tunes. My critique of tunes is short but, considering the difficulty of using the silence of writing to talk about acoustics quality, I hope it could serveas a clue for your further research.  

Critique of “good rhyming”

For Thai poetry, rhyming is king. Rhyming of Bolt-8 poetry also comes with a dose of alliteration and in-line rhymes. You are not obliged to do in-line rhyming, or สัมผัสใน, but if you don’t do it you are not writing Bolt-8 poetry. Everybody knows this, I think.

Since Thai poetry is meant to be chantable. Rhymes and alliteration make a pleasing chanting sound. Because Thai poems chant, rhythm somehow beats subconsciously into the lines of Thai poetry. There is no explicit rule for it, but you have to do it. Rhythm of Bolt-8 poem is usually 3-2-3, unstressed-unstressed-stressed, unstressed-stressed, unstressed-unstressed-stressed, for all of its Waks in each stanza.

The above poem differs in kind from Bolt-8, but it is a good example of how a poem can chant hypnotically. It has a melody that defies its own tune: simple, but heavenly.It is romantic without the word “love”. It does not egoistically chant for itself, but it makes your heart sing along.To my senses, there is no poem of the same genre on earth comparable to this one. Of course, when it is chanted correctly. Not even, ”puedo escribir los versos màs tristes esta noche”,  of Pablo Neruda.

Analysis of the “poem” shows that Mr.Somyos is quasi-ignorant of the rhythm of Bolt-8 poetry. He has made a mess of the usual rhythm. But he does understand in-line rhyming and alliteration. It seems to me that he even takes in-line rhyming as the straitjacket of poetry itself.

But Thai prose also has rhymes (including: alliteration, assonance, consonance). My point, which might be shared by those who dig Thai language and poetry, is that Mr.Somyos did not realize the difference between Thai prose rhyming and rhymes of Thai poetry. Tu piges pas ça?  

For example, สร้างสรรค์สังคม,ขบถต่อกฏเกณฑ์, รักหักหาญ, เกิดขบวนการ, ฝั่งแห่งความฝัน, วันฝันเป็นจริง as appeared in his “poem”, each phrase sounds the sound of prose rhyming and prose alliteration. But they are not poetic in-line rhymes.   

A parrot in Thailand can also speak Thai with rhyming. But the poor thing does not consciously presume that it is doing poetry. Rhyming alone doesn’t make any word arrangement a Thai poem. But it can make a repetitious annoying shouts of fishmongers.

“แต่งถูกต้องตามลักษณะบังคับ”: How Mr.Somyos fares in poetic pattern.

Returning back to the plan of Bolt-8 poetry at the beginning of the critique, the schema depicts that to bolt each stanza together the last syllable of the first stanza must be in rhyme with the last syllable of the first line of the second stanza. The inter-locking between stanzas of the whole piece of Bolt-8 poem, i.e. a whole book of พระอภัยมณี by Sunthorn Phu, was done this way.

Composing in accordance with Chanthalak(ฉันทลักษณ์), or poetic forms, means the poet follows this pattern of stanzas locking. And this is one of few end-line-rhyming(สัมผัสนอก)obliged by Bolt-8 poetry.

Mr.Somyos ignored this fundamental rule. His “poem” has no end-line-rhyming between stanzas. He could have done it out of blind ignorance. Or, he did it intentionally since to follow the poetic form means additional difficulty in its composition. Hence, he pretended ignorance, a cop-out. Thirdly, he might be having fun misleading the audience and had taken a calculated risk that he could ever get caught.

Whatever the case, Mr.Somyos had tricked the readers to have the impression that he was composing a poem while in fact what he wrote is not poetry.

Its chantability

The inter-stanzas un-rhyming leads to another unpardonable insult to the fundamental nature of Thai poetry: its chantability.

If we force to space words in each Wak to suit the chanting rhythm, 3 – 2 – 3, of Bolt-8 poem, his “poem” will appear as follows,

One stanza of Bolt-8 poetry composes of two lines. Each line has two sentences, or Waks. There are, then, four Waks or sentences in each stanza.

Every Wak has its own tone particularity that the composer must observe. The specific tones are the result of governing nature of chantability. In the case of a highly developed tonal language like Thai language, one has to be aware of the music already inherited in a syllable. The music(tonal sound) of Mr.Somyos’ composition is analized in the paragraphs that follows.

A syllable withRising tone(เสียงจัตวา).

The convention(หลักนิยม) of Bolt-8 poem states that in any stanza, its 2^ndWak, or second sentence, which is also called กลอนรับ, the last syllable of กลอนรับ must be a syllable withRising tone (เสียงจัตวา).

In the first stanza of Mr.Somyos’, while the word “ ใหม่”looks as if it fits the convention because “ ใหม่ ”begins with the alphabet “ห”that belongs to the High tone consonant class. Consonants of this class are likely to take on Rising tone(เสียงจัตวา), with some exceptions.

Where there is no tone mark(เครื่องหมายวรรณยุกต์) and the syllable is an open one(คำเป็น) i.e. “ ใหม ”, note that this time it is written without a tone marker, then it takes up a Rising tone(เสียงจัตวา). However, when “ใหม” becomes “ใหม่”-with a tone mark ไม้เอก, then it has a different story to tell.

The syllable “ ใหม่ ” -with ไม้เอก tone mark, which is the word used by Mr.Somyos,takes up the opposite tone from “ ใหม ” –without tone mark — and is pronounced with Low tone sound.  

Thai writing is a system of symbolic rendition of sound par excellent. The following illustration in Thai language could shed more light on my argument. ม ม้า เป็นอักษรเดี่ยว ส่วน “หม” เป็นอักษรนำ ที่ไม่เหมือนอักษรนำอื่น ๆ เพราะสามารถออกเสียงผสมกันสนิทเหมือนอักษรควบแท้  การผันให้ครบเสียงวรรณยุกต์ จึงต้องใช้ทั้ง ม ม้า และ “หม” มาประกอบกัน จึงจะไ้ด้ครบห้าเสียง  ดังนี้

เพราะฉะนั้น เราจะเห็นได้ว่า คำว่า “ไหม่” (หรือ “ใหม่” – ไม้ม้วน) เป็นคำ-หรือพยางค์-เสียงเอก  ไม่ใช่คำ-หรือพยางค์-เสียงจัตวา   

Placing a Low tone syllable in the position where a Rising tone is needed has a negative effect to the chantability of a piece of Bolt-8 poem.  

The last syllable of กลอนรับ, in all stanzas of his composition, Mr.Somyos used the incorrect tone syllables: “ใหม่”in the first stanza, “ร้าย”in the second stanza, and “ตัน”in the final stanza. All of them are not syllables with Rising tone(เสียงจัตวา).

Categorically fausse notes all the way.

Sound of music: the last syllable of กลอนรอง

The convention, which basically is the convention of chantability, specifies that the last syllable of กลอนรอง, the 3^rd Wak of each stanza, no Rising tone(เสียงจัตวา) and no syllable with any tone marker are allowed. The sound of this syllable must be “เสียงสามัญ”, or Mid tone. Mr.Somyos’ “poem” misused the syllable two times out of three.

The กลอนรอง of the first stanza ended with “ใส”–a Rising tone syllable, therefore he did it incorrectly here. The กลอนรอง of the third stanza ended with “ฝัน”, also a wrong syllable. However, he used the right tone syllable in the กลอนรอง of his second stanza.

On death row of กลอนส่ง

No Dead syllables(คำตาย) and no syllables with a tone mark are allowed as the end syllable of กลอนส่ง — the 4^th Wak of each stanza.

Dead and Live syllables are two fundamentals among the elements of tone conjugation, the attempt at sound rendition by symbolic coding in Thai alphabet system, which comprises: 1) Dead and Live syllables, 2) tone markers, 3) short and long vowels, 4) the finals of a syllable or mātrā (มาตรา), and 5) consonant classes.

In this case,Mr.Somyos was on the death row two times out of three.

He used a Dead syllable as the end syllable of the 4^th Wak, or กลอนส่ง, of the first stanza. That is the syllable “กฎ”in the word “ปรากฎ”. And, he wrongly used a syllable with tone mark in the second stanza — the word “กล้า”. But he correctly placed “จริง”as end syllable of กลอนส่ง in his final stanza.

How did Mr.Somyos fare in the music of words?

In fact, the above few paragraphs that analyzed, argued and illustrated to prove the point could be a futile exercise,a pedantic rant at most. Sounds of the music of words are first and foremost experienced by one’s ears. It’s the acoustics that counts; it cannot be seen by the eyes, via  any written critical analysis whatsoever.

Effectively, the simplest of all proof is to CHANT it.

But, when one tries to chant Mr.Somyos’ “poem”, the awkwardness, ความเฉิ่มและเสล่อ, will reveal itself. His “poem” will come out of the closet as fake, something queer and unlikely to be a poem known to any human ears that are familiar with this kind of Thai poetry.

The analogy that follows is as mad as I can get, to illustrate the rendition of Mr.Somyos’ “poem” in chant. Ever try to sing “Amazing Grace” , an iambic pentameter verse, with spondaic rhythm? Well, when you do it, Jupiter or Indra, according to my multi-gods belief, will send a flash of thunderbolt, not Bolt-8, striking right through the roof of your church.

As serious as that, voyons!

Conclusion: N’importe quoi.

Mr.Somyos did generously givethe readers a treat of lined-up junk clichés. To successfully read the whole thing I had to transcend a dense neuron network of gabage being lightened up on my mind. And that the critique ever reached its end I consider myself lucky. But strangely enough, once my writing had started I gradually became positive and optimistic — about the critique not about the “poem”.

Getting caught on the Cambodian border, Mr.Somyos was unluckily bolted in jail for eleven years for loosing a court case. My elder brother used to work as a Bangkok jail supervisor, therefore I know something about jail life. My brother often had his eyes alert for dead trunks and uprooted trees while we were on our way back home down South for holidays. He was looking for raw materials of the jail’s carpenter shop. There is a carpenter training workshop in Bangkok jail.

May I suggest to the Correction Department that Mr.Somyos attend carpenter training course, specializing in making and installing doors’ and windows’ bolts. Nevertheless, I hope that he use his spare time in the next eleven years practicing Bolt-8 poetry. By the end of his jail term, he should be able to recognize the difference between “a door bolt” and “a piece of Bolt-8 poem”. Though they both are bolts.

Finally, I don’t think the way I describe him he sounds a real idiot — which is better than he actually is. Optimistically, I wish Mr.Somyos would be able to write poetry after having served his prison term, and that he end his poetic voyage with a normally functional anus.

สรุปการวิจารณ์ – พากษ์ำภาษาไทย

สับสนแยกไม่ออกกันเยอะนะ  ระหว่าง “กลอน” ที่เป็นคำประพันธ์ กับกลอนประตู อันเป็นอุปกรณ์ก่อสร้างชิ้นเล็ก ๆ ชนิดหนึ่ง  สองสิ่งนี้ต่างกัน  แต่ ก็ถือว่าเวลานี้สำหรับ คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข ก็ได้มีโอกาสอันประเสริฐที่จะฝึกเขียนกลอน ระหว่างที่ชีวิตอยู่ในความอุปถัมภ์ของทางราชการ 

สถาบันราชทัณฑ์มีการฝึกอาชีพอยู่ภายในระบบ  ขออนุญาตสู่รู้—แบบประชาธิปไตย–เรียนเสนอท่านอธิบดีกรมราชทัณฑ์ ว่าคุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข น่าจะเข้ารับการฝึกอบรมด้านช่างก่อสร้าง  โดยเน้นความชำนาญพิเศษเรื่องการติดตั้ง กลอนประัตู 

การฝึกอาชีพดังกล่าว ซึ่งมีกำหนดเวลาถึง 11 ปี น่าจะช่วยให้คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข พัฒนาตนเองจนมีขีัดความสามารถแยกแยะออก ระหว่างกลอนที่เป็นคำประพันธ์ชนิดหนึ่ง กับกลอนประตูุ  ซึ่งก็กลอนเหมือนกัน  แต่ต่างชนิดกัน 

หากเวลาผ่านไปแล้ว 11 ปี  การณ์กลับปรากฏว่า คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข ก็ยังไม่เห็นความแตกต่างระหว่างของสองสิ่งนี้ได้อยู่อีก  ผู้ วิจารณ์ก็จะขอยืนยันกระต่ายขาเดียว ใครจะเอาไปติดคุกติดตะรางที่ไหนก็ยอม ว่าคุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข ไม่มีความผิดอะำไรที่ไม่เห็นความแตกต่างระหว่างบทกลอนกับกลอนประตู  แต่ผู้ดูแลหลักสูตรการฝึกอบรมดังกล่าว สมควรจะต้องพิจารณาตนเอง ซึ่งก็คือ ท่านอธิบดีกรมราชทัณฑ์

My final judgment of Mr.Somyos will be in analogous to the following stanza of a well-known English poem,

                   “Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter,
Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered.
By law she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.”

Hanging people is ugly. In line with the above poem, and in the spirit of Section 4 of Thai Civil Code, Mr.Somyos should be condemned with an additional eleven years prison term, bringing total serving term to twenty two years. And I would like to send him a Hallmark card on which written this Bolt-8 poem,

และจะขอฝากบทกวีกลอน แปด-โดยผู้ประพันธ์นิรนาม ไว้ให้อ่านเล่นในตะราง คุณสมยศ พฤกษาเกษมสุข จะได้รู้จักระวังตูดระวังตัว — ตามความจริงของชีวิตคุก  ระหว่างยี่สิบสองปี หรือสิบเอ็ดปี หรือกี่ปีก็แล้วแต่  ดังนี้

Thank you for your kind read.

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Email: pricha123@yahoo.com(*นามปากกาของ นายปรีชา ทิวะหุต)

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บทความชิ้นนี้-รับคำท้า…ที่ว่า จะวิจารณ์บทกวีภาษาไทย เป็นภาษาอังกฤษได้อย่างไร

ให้ชาวประเทศ EUสามารถที่จะเข้าใจได้ ไม่มากก็น้อย

David Lipman H.E., EU Delegate in Thailand

David Lipman H.E.,

David Lipman H.E., Professor Timothy Garton Ash, H.E. Tjaco Van Den Hout, Dr. David Streckfuss, Mr. Augustiํn Hidalgo, Mr. Peter Mark Thomsen, Mrs. Véronique Arnault, Ms. Matilda Bogner,

                                                                              June 26, 2013

Sirs,

          Isn’t it exactly 127 days after you, H.E. David Lipman, on the 31^st of January, 2013, as Head of EU delegation in Thailand had organized a conference on Freedom of speech and Liberty of expression at Dusit Thani hotel in central Bangkok, that Mr. Ekayuth Anchanbutr a forerunner of Thailand’s free speech practitioners was abducted, coerced to write a check of five million bahts, and strangled to the agony of death?

          Yes it is. But I am not accusing you of anything. Besides, the way Mr.Ekayuth Anchanbutr advanced his agenda did not please me. His style of writing is not to my liking. Some of the facts in support of his arguments, as I understand them, are dead wrong.

          However, Mr.Ekayuth Anchanbutr, when he was still en vie at the beginning of this very month, is a natural believer in freedom of speech. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Evidence can be found on Thai language Internet as well as in traditional media where he practiced this noble belief all along. You may not be aware that speaking a simple truth is noble in our culture: a sign of nobility of spirit. The truth, small letter, is sacred. A renown motto, known to about one billion souls, endears us. It is written in devnagri, mother of all Southeast Asian scripts — सत्यमेव जयते .

          I invite you, Votre  Excellent Delegate David Lipman, and your friends that Vos Excellents should pay tribute to the late but not less excellent Mr.Ekayuth Anchanbutr for the few murderous tormented tortured moments he endured while still actively  practicing what you preach. Mr.Ekayuth Anchanbutr’s living aspiration is worthy of due democratic justice from the EU — in regard to his sincere showing, not the insultingly pretentious telling, of his faith in the Liberty of expression and Freedom of speech.

          Or, Votre Excellent, for you and your friends a dead body has no human right?

Yours faithfully,

Dev Napya

(ปรีชา ทิวะหุต)

also posted at http://www.pricha123.blogspot.com

Email: pricha123@yahoo.com

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-thank.