CULTURE

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Many Burmese were shocked by this apparent criticism of their revered father of independence, but Dagon Taya, and Aung San himself, merely smiled in response to the storm of controversy that this essay generated when it first appeared in Taya magazine. Even more daring was Dagon Taya’s rejection of an honor bestowed upon veterans of the independence movement by Gen Ne Win’s socialist regime. The State Honorary Award, which carried a grant and a monthly stipend, was generally regarded as a bribe to win the loyalty of famous patriots. After his refusal to accept the award, Dagon Taya went into self-imposed exile from the capital and composed one of his best-known poems, "Sending myself to the Mae Za." "He then came to be seen as the Boris Pasternak of Burma in the eyes of the authorities," recounts a young poet and close associate of Dagon Taya now living in exile. "Mae Za, in the Burmese political context, means the place where opponents of the king used to be sent as exiles, something like the gulags of Soviet Russia." Despite his strong leftist sympathies, Dagon Taya felt no need to conform to pre-conceived notions of socialist orthodoxy, either intellectually or in his lifestyle. He eschewed any sycophancy towards self-declared "liberators" of the masses, and throughout his life, kept his distance from political parties. A lifelong bachelor with long, wavy hair and a custom of wearing iridescent silk longyis and colorful Indonesian batik shirts, this "friend of the common man" also loved to express his free-spirited nature through painting and by playing the piano in a completely improvised, unrestrained manner. In the 1970s, a new generation of poets, strongly influenced by their reading of contemporary Western literature and by their fervid, anti-imperialist response to the Vietnam War, broke with tradition and began composing poems in free verse. Although not explicitly anti-government in nature, the artistic liberties taken in these poems, as well as the themes of social injustice that frequently ran through them, provoked harsh criticism from conservatives close to Ne Win’s regime. Accused of trying to destroy classical literature or of being communist agents, these young poets found their greatest defender in Dagon Taya, who reiterated his position that, while it was good to have knowledge of the classics, it wasn’t strictly necessary as long as the poet’s work served the interests of the people. In 1988, when demands for political reform in Burma came to a head, many writers both young and old became actively involved in the pro-democracy movement. Since then, to avoid censorship, many have used a variety of highly abstract styles and techniques, including surrealism, magic realism and stream-of-consciousness, to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo and their hopes for a more democratic society. Meanwhile, Dagon Taya, who continues to write prolifically even as his eyesight fades in his old age, addressed the changes in the global political climate in a poem titled "The Thaw," written after the fall of Berlin Wall, and in an article on the collapse of both individuals and entire nations as a result of political dogmatism and artistic rigidity. While the retreat from realism in Burmese literature has been understandable considering the circumstances, an unfortunate side effect of this development has been a growing tendency for young writers to divorce themselves from reality altogether. Modernist and postmodernist literary theories have found many adherents in Burma since the early 1990s, resulting in a number of original works that are both aesthetically and politically significant. But, for the most part, they seem to have created an almost totally detached attitude towards the issues of society at large. "To an extent, [the introduction of new theories] needs to be welcomed. But when it becomes excessive, the young writers seem to be distracted from reflecting on the current situation," commented one well-known writer based in Mandalay. In reaction to the military regime’s propagandistic works of art, which promote an ideal of selfless service to the nation, and blindly following imported Western concepts, some young writers have even gone to the extreme of declaring themselves followers of the school of "art for no sake." According to a well-known literary critic who writes for a famous magazine inside Burma, Dagon Taya briefly came under attack from one such group in the mid 1990s. This group—consisting of ex-communists, former members of Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Program Party and a few younger writers—accused Dagon Taya of being out-dated and an obstacle to a new generation of writers. "These attacks seemed to have had a hidden agenda," observed one historian who closely followed the renewed controversy surrounding Burma’s most famous living author. "They tried to denounce Dagon Taya by labeling him an old communist.