Henry Louis Vivian Derozio:
The Harp of India & My Country! In Thy Day of Glory Past
Both are Sonnets and nationalist poem.
Harp is a musical instrument, the enterprise of the entire Indian civilization is being compared, if symbolically, with the Harp. It is about the sorry condition of the Harp. The Harp and it’s melodies music, which was once played by the past musicians, in this case of the countrymen of the past, is now remains in silence.
The poet ends it with a question that if the notes of the past i.e the lost glory of the past i.e the debilitating decline of the culture India can be revived ?
If so , then he very much would like to be one of those who have the honour in the revival of the glory.
He uses the idea of past glory only to stress the present decay.
Both poems has forward looking, inspirational aspect. Brave attempt to face the future with hope
Themes:-
Decline glory of the country
Possible revival
The poet’s own role in it
Tory Dutt :
The Lotus:-
The poem is a great cultural statement in a way that it suggests that the answer which western civilization failed to achieve i.e in between reason and passion, intellect and emotion, ecstatic and rational which one has the supremacy both symbolised in the flowers rose and Lily.
India seems to found the answer of the age old strife in the flower lotus. The most venerated flower which represents the unfolding of the higher consciousness where both the contradictions are resolved.
Sita:-
The poem is about three children listening to the story of sita. Those children may have the allusive Toru and her two siblings Abju and Aru.
The mother’s story is so powerful that the whole scene of forest comes alive and is projected in the mind’s eye.
In the middle of the jungle is a quiet secluded spot where sita seems to found her hermitage.
The poet anchorite is Valmiki
The fair lady sita seems to weep in solitude and with her weeps three pairs of eyes.
The poem is about sorrow overcome by the power of imagination.
Toru conjures up the poem to mourn for her own loss of a happy childhood and the loss of her own two siblings and mother.
Our Casuarina Tree :-
The poem is a long lyrical poem , meditative and lofty in style.
It is the Casuarina tree in the poet’s Baughmaree house.
The tree expands both in time and space, thus, represents life itself.
It also symbolises some of the very special memories of the poet’s life which she wishes to preserve.
The fleeting memory is strengthened through the association of the more substantial and long lasting, Casuarina tree.
The poet’s wishes the tree to be eternal so that her own memories be saved from the ravages of time.
Sri Aurobindo :
A Tree :-
The human soul is just like a tree. Our body and brain are so grounde they don’t let us to reach the heaven.
The tree and the human are being compared here.
While the tree is seen in a positive light such as aspirations, the human on the other hand , is shown negatively with its corpus detaining it’s upward rise.
The human being are blamed for its urge to remain bound and limited.
It contains the key of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy i.e the human soul is divided with one satisfied with its attainments while the other thirsting for higher things.
Life and Death:-
An attempt to reconcile two opposite concepts, life and death.
The poet says , “life only is” meaning there is no death at all. Everything is life. What seems to be death is life disguised as death. He changes our attitude to life. If there is no death , then all of us are immortal.
Again he says , death is life disguised. By this he suggests that life that we know is kind of death, rather a short one, to the point when we die and get into another kind of life that one might say the after-life.
What nestles in the bossom of the poem is eternity.
Bride of Fire:-
The poet ask the bride of fire to clasp him close. The poet ask the bride of fire to surround his life to thrill and enlace.
The poet ask the bride of fire, he disire only of the bride for which he aalso seems to have slain his desire to be qualify of the bride’s embrace.
Probably what the poet is suggestive of is for the attainment of higher ecstasies the lower one have to be sacrificed. It is in this context that the bride of fire could be an allusion of death.
The poet wants to be embraced by the death. But it the kind of dying which will release him into higher life.
It is only when the remains of the desire and lower instincts gets purified through the furnace of self-discipline does the higher self awaken.
The Golden Light :-
In this Poem, the golden light descends from the top. First it touches the mind, the throat, the heart and finally the feet.
These symbolises the four planes of consciousness i e the mental, the physic, the vital and the physical which are important in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga.
According to him , all these four planes of consciousness have to be divinized for the entire earth to become the divine’s play field.
Sarojini Naidu :
Indian Dancers:-
A classic example of Sarojini’s aesthetic of excess. Created a hazy and entranced mood.
The images suggest lack of sharpness, clarity and visibility of the dancers.
Idea of sensuality is hedonistic glut.
There is a strong impression but no clear vision. Everything is hazy and languorous.
A deliberate attempt of excess.
Decadent and escapist in a sense that it overlooks the toil, the labour, the decadent and the sweat of the dancers, in turns, prettifes them to give these dancers some sort of dignity and charm.
There subjectivity is lost and objectivity is heightened for the same purpose.
Love and Death :-
Petrarchan sonnet in which the poet depicts the ideal of love like that of savitri which has freed her beloved from death.
In the sestet, however, the poet accepts the hard reality that her love hasn’t been able to mitigate her pain let alone bringing her beloved back from death.
The poem is a brutally realistic poem. In this the poet dreams that her love has ransomed the lifer of her beloved like Savitri had saved Satyavan. On the ninth line , however, the dream is over and she wakes up to the harsh reality of truth.
Modern in spirit refuses the ideal represented by Savitri.
The Old Woman :-
The poems evokes the Karuna or Compassion.
The Muslim refrain indicates the woman’s fortitude born out of her faith.
The history of the old woman is given as to how she came to a wife, a mother but now is being reduced to begging in the street.
The second stanza is more realistic with very little ornamentation to it.
The reality is being confronted by the poet and the old woman herself.
Nissim Ezekiel :
Enterprise :-
The poem is about inevitable disillusionment that awaits at the culminating point of any enterprise.
The word enterprise means journey but here in the poem, symbolically represents a vast number of ideas.
There is a gradual progression of mood from hope to almost despair at the end which gives the poem its strength and coherence.
The poet also detach himself and takes the role of a observer , narrator and never letting himself to slip into the rage or self-oity.
Also they posit a question on the values of such a venture so as to begin an enterprise.
The poet says, “Home is where we earn our grace”, this concluding line has a great narrative weight in it.
By the line the poet encourages to stay at home. In other words to remain where we are and all things will come to us. No need to embark upon any ambitious enterprises.
In a way he criticises those who seek their fortunes in distant shores.
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher :-
About poetic credo. The best poets waits for the words but this waiting isn’t easy. He cannot while away his time but to remain ever alert and eternally vigil. That is the price for the gift of poetry.
Staying poised in tension is recommended by Ezekiel to the poets.
This meaning is enhanced and elaborated with its comparison to the lover and Birdwatcher.
The suggestion is to remain passively alert. The more agitation the less will be the gain.
The reward of such worshipful wait is impressive with the deaf being able to hear and the blind recovering sight.
Background, Casually:-
The Jewish poet stays casual about his background.
It portrays poets uneasy relationship with India, his home.
Referred to as a “poet-rascal-clown”, it goes back to his childhood where he entered into a Catholic school and despised by other catholic peers because of his Jewish background. He doesn’t get along with Hindus or Muslims either.
The spiritual quest of the poet also surfaced but more prevalent was the enduring skepticism.
Then goes to his days in Abroad where the three “P”s (Philosophy, Poetry and Poverty) became his companions.
Not much success as in his academic career the poet returns to India but the question still remains , “How to feel it home”. The sense of otherness still persists.
Gradually his purpose unfolds and he begins to feel his place in the scheme of things. Realising where he comes from and where is is heading.
He finds meaning in the world of poetry. He accepts his responsibilities and his limitations even with a difficult environment.
By the end of the poem his attitude towards India remains unchanged. He still considers it as a backward place but the fact of his belongingness to the country is accepted and he give himself to it.
Kamala Das :
An Introduction:
The distance between the poem and the poet is collapsed. This is how the concessional element in the poetry operates at the technical level.
The poet disclaims any special knowledge of politics so as to provide an artistic and Autobiographical rationale for the language of her creative expression, English.
She defends herself for writing in English because it easily gets politicised . Therefore, das claim an apolitical approach.
She demands to be left alone, to have freedom of artistic expression.
The poem is an elaborate justification of the kind of poetry she writes and the kind of language she writes with it in.
English, the half-caste language, becomes subaltern when you begin to write in it in India.
The sub text of the poem is about the oppression of women. Women are always oppressed, never given a chance to speak to express themselves. Only the elites speaks on behalf of the less privileged. Das wants to break free from this stranglehold.
Let me speak, don’t try to shut me.
The she starts with her story as a lonesome child, growing up on her own.
Funeral pyre indicates the loss of loved ones.
Then she goes on saying asking for love ended up in a premature marriage and subsequent marital rape. Marriage gives legal sanction to a man to impose his will. It creates a wound in her psyche that never heals. Led to immense self-loathing and escaping from her own self.
Denies her femininity by dressing like a man, cutting her hair short.
The poet is a misfit, the inevitable reaching out to a man , the rejection that follows and the final indictment of he is every man who wants a woman.
The poem ends on an uncertain not of the poet seeking a right to simply be known as I.
My Grandmother’s House :-
The poem is a scrutiny to the childhood memories of the poets grandmother’s house where the poet attains some sort of integrity.
It refers to the time before the rupture.
The main feature of the poem is that the poet was loved there.
The house was in Malabar, symbolising security and integrity also imagination and youth.
The poet is free to imagine, connected to a more interesting world.
The last part of the poem addresses someone who might be the poets husband
Last two lines are terribly poignant where the speaker is reduced to begging for love in small exchanges at stranger’s doors.
The Sunshine Cat :-
It’s about decline and disintegration of a woman wherein the protagonist suffers from a nervous breakdown.
The poem is about an attractive sensitive, creative but rebellious and misunderstood woman, trapped in a loveless marriage.
Used only sexually by her husband, she seeks love from other men. The husband retaliates by locking her up each day.
It’s an indictment of men and patriarchy.
Her first love betrays her who she was hoping to Mary.
Then the description of her husband as a ruthless watcher suggests neglected marriage and jealousy.
She seeks solace in other men by burrowing her face into their smells and their young lusts. A pattern of compulsive behaviour suggests addiction.
But each of these men are unable to love her but can only offer kindness. She then resort to alcohol.
The poem ends with the poet’s confinement with only a sunshine of silver line , a yellow cat to keep her company.
Her longing for a sympathetic contact is stressed in the image of the sunshine as cat but even this cat disappears by the sundown leaving her half naked and cold
Ends with the speaker being no use to the men at all.
A.K. Ramanujan :
Looking for a Cousin on a Swing :-
One of Ramanujan’s memory poem in which he describes a scene in which a boy of 6 or 7 and a girl of 4 or 5 are Ona village swing, sitting against or facing each other.
There is an adult imposing sexuality on this pre-pubescent scene. The children feel each other but the feel is innocent.
The impact of the poem comes when the cousin as a grown woman is shown looking for the same experience but with all its innocence gone.
There is a tone of disapproval of the poet when he ironically renders innocence to the forays of the girl in the cities.
In the end the focus is shift from the cousin to the tree which symbolises fertility.
This is one typical of Ramanujan’s poem.
Self-portrait :-
Ramanujan uses the theme of self portrait to question on the notion of self rather than describing the self.
The strangeness of the self is realised when one is encountered by his own reflection. He become a stranger to himself. Self-estrangement is a recurrent theme of Ramanujan.
The poet says he does not recognise himself but one would have to know what he looks like for that to claim. It means that there is some sort of self recognition even in the self denial.
Again the poet credits the self to his father which could suggest that the portrait is a stranger because the portrait is made by his father and the real self is not as his father intended.
Throughout the poem self is never stated but through denial and evasions the self is effected.
The River :-
The poem is not so much about the river but poetry itself.
In a city of temples and poets cleary suggests Madurai.
The poet sings only of flood suggest the lack of creativity and adherence to the convention of the poets who only sees the river a trickle during te summer and flood during the rainy season.
The poets follow the convention , the ornamentation rather blindly than to write the reality of the river. They only write about the floods but even when they do so they do not talk about the pregnent women drowning or the cows being carried away by the river.
Love Poem for a Wife :-
This is an exploitation of the marital relationship which is described as uneasy if not difficult.
What keeps us apart is unshared childhood.
The poet suggest the only way out for a happy married life if the brothers and sisters are married to one another.
This is the central argument of the poem.
The poem is autobiographical and for the poets wife.
However, as he poem proceeds and the introduction of James , the poet’s wife’s brother is being made we are illustrated the fact that even with a shared childhood isn’t conducive to a good relationship. In fact, this negates the central argument suggesting brothers and sisters would make pretty bad spouses.
Jayanta Mohapatra :
Dawn at Puri :-
The skull suggests the hunger of an entire country.
Images are critical and negative.
Widows in white , past their prime , waiting to enter the great temple. They are trapped by faith.
The shells on the sand are ruined , leprous again are suggestive of decay and disease.
The poem evokes images of anonymity, facelessness, death and loss of identity.
Ends on an uncertain note like the corpse of his dead mother twisting uncertainly like light on the shifting sand.
There is a disapproval which is the undercurrent of the poem. A social critique as the title suggests.
Dawn at Puri , the title suggests not "A Dawn at Puri" but the generality of it suggests that all the dawns at Puri unpleasant with dead mothers being burnt on the sands, widows in white being herded into the temple, empty skulls tilting their empty eyes towards the sky, signifying the hunger of a whole continent.
The poem offers deep compassion for those who suffers which gives the poem its strength.
Indian Summer Poem :-
It is another poem of Jayanta Mohapatra which is given the general title.
The picture of India depicted here is again of grim and graphic.
There is mentioning of Funeral pyres but who is dead is unclear.
India is seen as a giant monster who opens her mouth to swallow up the dead.
There is mention of the poets wife who is sleeping in the afternoon unaffected by the burning of the funeral pyres.
She dreams in her sleep, unaware of the sense of death her husband is haunted with. She has the advantage of her dreams while the poet must face the burnt of this horrible reality.
The wife is suggestive of the fact that it is perfectly normal to be unaware of all the cremation that happens in our own town because the dead are those whom we don’t know.
Hunger :-
The poem is based on a real life incident in the poets life.
In the poem the speaker succumbs to the temptation of physical hunger. As a result he has sex with a girl fifteen years old who is the daughter of a fisherman.
The pleasurable sexual intercourse with the young girl, however, turns out to be an act of degradation.
The young girls is described as long and lean cold as rubber despite her years of age. This is a sheer indication of the impoverishment of the girl due to her poverty.
The act of having sex with the girl filled the speaker with disgust and self-loathing.
The poem contrast two types of hunger , physical hunger and the actual hunger. Also how these hunger feed on each other
The poem is a direct social criticism on the system which allows the careless prostitution to happen. Here destination is the cause of prostitution.
Poet focuses on the extreme poverty and deprivation.
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