Book Review: Orpheus in Kolkata by Joe Winter

By Lakshmi Menon

Orpheus in Kolkata opens with its titular poem, and there can be no better introduction to the poetry of Joe Winter, or to this collection.

Kolkata is presented as every note from the seven strings of a divine veena, carried by the musician best known for the tragic beauty of his playing, Orpheus himself. Each string is a section of the city; the para and its nest of roads, the Esplanade and the heart of the city, and the quiet of Jorasanko Thakur-bari, where Tagore the master musician lived and wrote. Orpheus hears the music of the city, plays the music of the city; and in Kolkata, Winter sees the heart of an “India of old”. The myth of Orpheus can be seen as what links this collection of poetry together. Like the myth of the man who could not gaze back on his love to keep her, there is the ceaseless movement of time, the change that time brings, and the constant reminder that one cannot return to the past. As a translator of some of the stalwarts of Bengali poetry, Jibanananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore, Winter is no stranger to the city or its people. In his poetry, Winter takes us on journeys into Kolkata and its psyche, and to the world beyond.

The other poems in the collection flicker from the intimate to the quotidian, all bound by different strings, like Orpheus and his veena. This collection of poetry is more of a collection of remembrances, a constant journey linking past and present. A 125-year-old bookshop in Kolkata bridges that gap, while the death of a dear friend represents the time that has passed. Winter draws his inspiration from art, from literature, from the daily news. His scholarship is clear when he likens the world as it has become today, to Beowulf’s monsters, of a mankind changed from the heroic to the terrible in the space of “World News Headlines”.