Poetry
गौरी
Not translated into English
Madhav Prasad Ghimire · 1959
Synopsis
The poem is an elegy in memory of Gauri Pokharel, the poet's first wife, who died young after more than ten years of marriage and was the mother of his children. The Poetry Foundation sees in it an epic ode to the departed wife, the most famous by its author. Mourning and the memory of the wife are expressed in the fixed metre, the chhanda, which the poet never abandoned, when other poets of his generation were turning to free verse.
Context
The poet wrote it in 1947, after the death of his wife, and Bhanubhakta Pokharel holds the text to have been essentially complete the following year; it appeared only in 1959, from Sajha Prakashan. The poet and his wife had been married as children, at fourteen and ten. Music Nepal made a sung album from it, in which the poet lends his own voice alongside well-known singers, and a Korean translation was reported in 2018.
Who it is for
In Nepali, in fixed metres, with no French or English translation. A text of mourning, to be read for its music as much as for its story.
Prizes and reception
It is ranked among his most successful and best-loved works, and the Poetry Foundation makes it his most famous poem.