KATHMANDU: On the luminous night of Laxmi Puja in November 1909, when Kathmandu’s homes glittered with oil lamps and prayers to the goddess of wealth filled the air, a child was born who would illuminate Nepal’s soul in far greater ways. That child—Laxmi Prasad Devkota—would grow to become not just the greatest poet in Nepali history, but a bridge between East and West, tradition and modernity, language and liberation.

Devkota (1909–1959) was not merely a writer; he was the conscience of a young nation struggling to find its identity. His verses awakened generations, his essays shaped the nation’s intellectual discourse, and his life, full of brilliance and turmoil, mirrored the contradictions of 20th-century Nepal. On his 117th birth anniversary, celebrated on Laxmi Puja—the same day he was born—the legacy of Mahakavi (Great Poet) Devkota burns brighter than ever.

A life born from light

Laxmi Prasad Devkota was born to Teel Madhav Devkota and Amar Rajya Laxmi Devi in Dhobidhara, Kathmandu, during the early 20th century, a time when Nepal was locked in isolation under the Rana regime. The world beyond its borders was awakening to revolutions in thought, science, and art, but Nepal’s people were kept in the darkness of autocracy.

From this atmosphere of restriction, Devkota’s mind sought light. A precocious child, he devoured Sanskrit epics and English romantic poetry alike. By his teenage years, he was already fluent in multiple languages—Nepali, Sanskrit, Hindi, and English—and later developed working knowledge of Bengali, Urdu, Newari, French, and German. His intellectual appetite was insatiable; his imagination, boundless.

At a time when literature was confined to elites, Devkota democratized it. He wrote in the language of the common people and for them. His landmark poem Muna Madan (1935) told the story of a simple man and woman, their love, separation, and the painful realities of migration. It was a radical shift in Nepali literature: empathy became epic, and everyday life became art.

“Muna Madan has lived longer than I will,” Devkota once remarked. He was right. Nearly nine decades later, it remains Nepal’s most widely read poem.

The golden pen of the himalayas

The breadth of Devkota’s writing is astonishing. He penned half a dozen epics, two books of essays, dozens of narrative poems, plays, stories, and translations. Among his most celebrated works are Sulochana, Shakuntala, Kunjini, Pahadi Pukar, and Bhikhari. Each combined deep emotion with intellectual rigor, seamlessly fusing Eastern spirituality with Western romanticism.

In just three months, he completed the epic Shakuntala, an English-language retelling of Kalidasa’s classical tale, and finished Sulochana in ten days. Legend has it he wrote Kunjini—a long narrative poem—in a single day. The speed and passion with which he wrote bordered on the superhuman.

Devkota himself said, “A poet is not born by will but by flame.” That flame burned intensely in him, sometimes consuming him, often illuminating everyone around him.

The lunatic and the visionary

Perhaps no poem captures the paradox of Devkota’s genius better than Pagal (The Lunatic). Written at a time when society dismissed his radical ideas as madness, it remains a searing critique of hypocrisy and a declaration of creative freedom:

“When the world calls me mad,
I see a divine light beyond their darkness.”

Devkota translated the poem himself into English, publishing it as The Lunatic—a masterpiece that entered university syllabi and international anthologies. The poem turned madness into metaphor, defiance into philosophy. To be “mad,” in Devkota’s sense, was to see truth too clearly, to feel too deeply, to love humanity too much.

Yet that sensitivity came at a cost. In his late twenties, Devkota suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to a mental asylum in Ranchi, India, for six months. The English psychiatrist Dr. Owen Berkeley-Hill, who treated him, later wrote that it was “a sin for such a genius to be born in a land that cannot understand him.” Devkota returned to Nepal more introspective—but no less fiery.

The humanist rebel

Devkota’s life was not confined to poetry. He was an educator, reformer, and politician who sought to bring enlightenment to his people. In 1951, after the fall of the Rana regime, King Tribhuvan appointed him Minister for Education and Autonomous Governance. In his brief 10-month tenure, he made Nepali language compulsory in the national curriculum and worked toward establishing the Nepal Academy.

But politics, for Devkota, was only another form of poetry—a means of giving voice to the voiceless. His writings thundered against injustice and colonialism. At the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference in Tashkent, he declared:

“Writers must work more fruitfully to lead people toward higher values and broader horizons… They must live among the people, learn from them, and search their souls for understanding of life.”

The speech was so powerful that the conference adopted it as its official declaration. Soviet and Asian writers hailed Devkota as one of the strongest moral voices of his time.

Modnath Prasrit, a celebrated writer and political thinker, later said:
“Devkota’s fearless participation in the 1950 democratic movement, his criticism of corrupt politics, and his thunderous voice against imperialism made him a hero of the people.”

East, west, and the world within

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Devkota refused to see East and West as opposites. To him, Shakespeare and Kalidasa were companions in creativity; Wordsworth’s nature worship and the Upanishads’ spirituality flowed from the same spring. He translated Shakespeare’s Hamlet into Nepali, wrote Shakuntala in English, and borrowed from both Sanskrit poetics and Western romantic imagery.

His intellectual cosmopolitanism earned him admiration from both the capitalist West and socialist East—an extraordinary feat during the height of the Cold War.

In December 1959, The New Yorker published a feature calling him “The Sagarmatha of Nepal’s poetry.” The article described two visiting writers, Ved Mehta and Dom Moraes, meeting Devkota in his final days at Aryaghat in Kathmandu. Struck by the reverence people had for him, they wrote that Devkota was “the jewel of Nepal” and compared him to Mount Everest itself—the highest peak of the nation’s literature.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the editor of Asia–Africa Today, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ journal, wrote in 1963:

“A poet may die, but poetry never dies. Devkota’s poems are proof of that.”

Russian scholar Dr. Lyudmila Aganina later compared him to Rabindranath Tagore, noting, “He may be compared to Tagore or the Western Romantics, yet he was never an imitation. He had a unique style—a rhythm born from Nepali folk songs and the music of the mountains.”

The man behind the myth

Behind the grandeur, Devkota was a deeply human figure—flawed, restless, and passionate. He was known to be a chain smoker, often writing poetry between drags of cigarettes. “I write my smoke into words,” he once joked. That habit would eventually claim his life: he died of lung cancer in 1959, at the age of 49.

Financially, his life was modest. Coming from a middle-class family, he sustained himself by tutoring students. Despite his fame, he was denied Nepal’s most prestigious literary prize, the Madan Puraskar, reportedly due to jealousy and palace intrigue. Yet no award could contain his influence; his verses were already etched in the national soul.

His relationship with his wife, Rajyalakshmi Devi, was complex and often stormy. Audio recordings reveal moments of frustration and philosophical despair. In one infamous instance, he told her, half in jest and half in pain:
“Tonight, let us abandon the children to the care of society and renounce this world with morphine or potassium cyanide.”
It was not nihilism—it was poetic exaggeration from a man who felt too deeply for his own peace.

A Poet of all languages

Devkota’s command of languages remains legendary. Beyond his native Nepali and Sanskrit, he wrote fluent English prose and verse, and had mastery over Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu. He was also conversant in French and German and curious about Chinese, Russian, and Tamil.

This linguistic breadth allowed him to bring global sensibilities into Nepali literature. He translated 15 essays by famous foreign authors into Nepali in his Prasiddha Prabandha Sangraha (1940s), introducing Nepal’s readers to world thought for the first time.

It was this universalism that led Soviet writers to call him “Nepal’s ambassador of humanity” and the New Yorker to describe him as “a poet who belonged to all nations.”

The humanist flame

At the core of Devkota’s work lies humanism—the belief that literature must serve humanity. His poems celebrate compassion, freedom, and equality; they denounce oppression, poverty, and hypocrisy.

In one of his speeches, he said:

“A Nepali is one who smiles and rises again from danger, who shoulders the burden of the world with courage and cheer.”

He lived by those words. Even when terminally ill, he continued writing, often dictating poems from his hospital bed. To him, poetry was not luxury—it was duty.

His literary evolution mirrors Nepal’s awakening. From the romanticism of his early years, he transitioned into realism and reformism, and finally, into revolutionary humanism. He bridged the gap between idealism and activism, between the spiritual and the social.

The noted Hindi scholar Rahul Sankrityayan famously said in 1953:
“To say that Devkota is Nepal’s equivalent of Pant, Prasad, and Nirala is no exaggeration.”
Kamala Sankrityayan added poignantly:
“Had he been properly valued during his lifetime, both he and his country would stand among the world’s most distinguished literary cultures.”

Legacy beyond borders

Devkota’s influence transcended geography. During the Cold War, both American and Soviet publications praised him—an extraordinary rarity. In Moscow, streets echoed his name after his electrifying speech at Tashkent; in New York, literary critics placed him alongside the great poets of Asia.

Even decades later, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Malyshev, twice honored as “Hero of the Soviet Union,” visited Nepal as president of the Nepal–Soviet Friendship Society and wrote:

“He was both a patriot and a global citizen. His works belong to the entire world. Though many years have passed since his death, his creations still radiate warmth and human love.”

Today, Devkota’s museum in Kathmandu stands as a bridge between worlds. Its library shelves hold The Peking Review, The American Review, and Russian and Indian journals side by side—a silent testament to a man who belonged everywhere and to everyone.

A living presence

More than six decades after his death, Devkota remains omnipresent in Nepal’s classrooms, literature festivals, and collective consciousness. His birthday, celebrated each year on Laxmi Puja, is not just a literary event—it is a national tribute to the power of words. His verses are quoted by schoolchildren, politicians, and poets alike.

Every generation rediscovers him anew—sometimes as the romantic of Muna Madan, sometimes as the rebel of Pagal, sometimes as the humanist of Shakuntala.

Devkota’s home at Maitidevi, where he spent his final years, still hums with visitors who whisper lines from his poems. They come not to mourn him, but to feel the undying pulse of Nepali literature.

The flame that never dies

Mahakavi Laxmi Prasad Devkota was more than a poet—he was a revolution in verse. His pen bridged the Himalayas and the world, faith and reason, emotion and intellect. He believed that poetry could heal humanity, that words could build nations, and that beauty was the path to truth.

In a world still divided by language, ideology, and power, Devkota’s universalism feels prophetic. He stands as Nepal’s eternal symbol of enlightenment—a man who proved that the mightiest force in the universe is not the sword, but the soul of a poet.

As Devkota himself once wrote:

“Though I die, let my poetry live,
In every heart that dares to dream.”