Thy parents taught thee, and these tears are lies,
I heard thee sing, this woe is stratagem!’
The girl said simply, lifting up her eyes,
‘I sing for myself, my tears are for them. 15
Instances like this can be multiplied. This time we are taking up On The death of His Daughter by Victor Hugo. Here the father of the child pours out his sad feelings; there was no ray of hope for him. Just like a madman after the death of his daughter he wept out bitterly for three days as he has been bereft of all hopes and happiness. At that time he felt an intense grief without being shared by anyone. His utter despair turns into anger and frustration and inspires him to show his insurgency against God’s will. He questions, ‘does God permit such misfortune, nor care that our souls be filled with utter despair’? Even if he feels the presence of his daughter:
It seemed as the whole were a frightful dream,
She could not have left me thus like a gleam;
Ha! That is her laughter in the next room!
Oh no, she cannot be dead in the tomb.
There shall she enter –come here by this door,
And her step shall be music to me as before.
Oh how oft have I said, —silence, —she speaks,
Hold, —`tis her hand on the key, and it creaks:
Wait –she comes! I must hear—leave me—gout
For she is in this mansion, somewhere, without doubt.16
It is a touching poem; the father is unable to sustain the loss of his daughter. Have we not here the same cry that thrilled the hearts of hearers three thousand years ago! 17
To some extent it also resembles to the condition of Toru Dutt’s father and mother after her death. Imagine the mental state of her parents, who were left alone in their old age, in a house empty and desolate, where once, heard the voices of their three children. Her father wrote after her death, “why should these three young lives, so full of hope and work, be cut short, while I, old and almost infirm, linger on?” still he hopes that “there is a fitness, a preparation required for the life beyond, which they had and I have not.”18
Valmore’s poem The solitary Nest is again on the thought of death where the poet wishes for her soul’s full freedom and ease. Death is welcome as a reliever of the pangs of life. The poet longs for ‘Isolation and rest—a rest from all strife’. Only death can make it possible:
The age flows like a river-on, on, and alas!
It bears on its course, like dead sea weeds a mass
Of names soiled with blood, broken vows, wishes vain,
And garlands all torn, that shall bloom not again.
Go my soul soar above the world and the crowd,
Bathe in blue ether, like a bird free and proud;
Go, nor return till face to face thou hast known
The dream—my bright dream—unto me sent alone.19
The collection of the poems in the Sheaf suggests that Toru was much influenced by the French Romantics. In romantic literature, for example, love is often treated as a solution to the enigma of death. It is regarded as a force providing a new hope of life against death. Life is agony and death is soothing lies at the core of the poem The Foundling by Alexandre Saumet:
I have shaken off the painful, painful sleep
Unvisited by happy dreams;
As on the earth no help or stay.
And longed to rest upon thy breast my head.
Return, oh mother, thou hast so long fled,
I wait here by the stone; return, by pity led,
Where once in agony wild
Thou hadst forsaken thy poor child.20
Her romantic temper gets reflected when, out of disgust, agony, misery of life, the poet wistfully seeks an escape. Thorns of life make him bleed, like Shelley; and therefore such willing acceptance of death as the saviour, justifies his escape. Toru willingly accepts her doom:
As an exotic fragile bud,
In some sad foreign coast,
Bends mourning on its feeble stalk
Beneath a heavy frost,
Thus in my youth, -alas! I bow,
As feeble as the flower;
But knowing in the grave is peace.
I welcome yet the hour.
A good number of poems that Toru selected for her translation from the original French are actually of the same nature, having intensity of emotion and tenderness of feeling:
I am tired my mother, and the day is ending;
Let me lie softly on thy dear, dear breast,
But hide thy tears while thus above me bending:
Sad are thy sighs; they do not let me rest.
`Tis cold; and round us all the objects darken;
But while I sleep an angel form I see,
With brow resplendent, shedding rays, --and hearken!
Is that not music? And it comes for me.”21
The reality of death’s coldness is transformed into the myth of death’s solacing warmth. Sometime the protagonist accepts this myth and enters into death’s dream kingdom:
What songs! What songs! Dost thou not hear them ringing?
Such songs in heaven we all must hear one day!
Nor see the angel, garlands for us bringing?
He beckons us. Oh, what has he to say?
He smiles, he speaks to me, and to none other;
What glorious hues! These are the flowers he throws;
Look at his wings. Shall I have wings, my mother,
And here on earth, as beautiful as those?
Adieu! Oh, mourn me never;
The angel clasps me. I but fall asleep. 22
The last journey of an infant child, the sighs of a mother, the somber atmosphere all these things made the poem very pathetic and touching. Here the reader identifies himself with the mother of the infant and feel the same pain and anguish as the mother of the infant felt at the time of his death.
Some poems of the Sheaf also deal with the feelings of separation, lost hopes and suppressed desires. A La Grace De Dieu, is a farewell song of a mother to her child. The helpless, poor mother bade adieu to her daughter with these moving lines:
Life’s voyage here begins for thee,
Ah! If thou ne’er shouldst come again!
And thy poor mother—how can she
Bless thee, oh darling, in her pain?
Even after a long time the mother could not get any information about her daughter who went away ‘to gain her bread `neath other skies.’ She stayed patiently with eager eyes:
But when her bitter grief no more
Her child might witness—then there came
A shower of tears, that showed how sore
The heart was tried—and still her name
Came from afar—adieu!
Oh mother—and adieu!
Adieu under the grace of God!” 23
Whatever expressed here by a mother is not confined to only one mother, but it has a universal appeal, the mother presented in the poem can be of any country of the world whose only child went abroad to earn his or her living. The advice given here are profoundly emotive and overwhelming.
Xavier De Maistre’s The Butterfly expresses the poignant feelings of a prisoner, who has no hope to be freed again. According to the poet Butterfly is not only a small insect with beautiful wings but it is much more than that, it is sharer of the feelings of pain and sorrow of the prisoner. The prisoner addresses the butterfly as “dweller of the ethereal plain” and asks “hast thou from Nature, wise and great / received a heart to friendship prone? / By pity hither art thou drawn / to share the sorrow of my fate? He further acknowledges her enchanting presence:
Thy very presence charms my pain,
No longer bleeds the wound that bled:
The hope extinct, or all but dead,
Is brought by thee to life again.”
He appreciates the freedom enjoyed by the butterfly and compares his slavery or imprisonment to her freedom. Addressing her as ‘Gay darling of the meadows’, he sad
ly expresses his deep sentiments:
My prison is no place for thee!
Short lived but freest of the free.
Enjoy the blessings as they flow;
Out of this place of endless sights!
Where life is one long torment still!
And then, no chains may bind thy will,
No walls enclose thee but the skies.”
In the next stanza, the prisoner desire in a very poignant manner that Perchance some day, while fluttering glad she must have got the opportunity to meet his wife and two children. He requested her to console them ‘and tell her all, yes, all I feel.’
At once the prisoner became sad as how she should be able to reveal his sentiments to his family members. Then he finds a solution and advices her to ‘display her richly- glided wings/ At least before the children’s eyes’. And he hopes that:
Soon shall they follow thee in chase,
With shouts- ‘Tis here –‘tis here-‘tis gone!
From flower to flower allure them on,
Until thou lead’s them to this a place.24
The prisoner is confident that the butterfly would surely attract his family members and they would come to meet him but at once the clanking chain dispels his dream as the butterfly was but a gleam and it flutters far! Away before he behold it.
In a very vivid and pictorial manner the poem expressed the deep despair of a prisoner. His utter hopelessness reflects through his words, which are pregnant with gloomy thoughts and painful feelings.
Another poem, Romance of Nina is of shorter length and wrought with such exquisite beauty that it deserves full attention.
When back the well-loved shall return
To her who pines though once so dear,
The spring from its abundant urn
Shall scatter blossoms far and near.
I watch, I wait,—in vain, in vain,
The loved and lost comes not again.25
There is a piercing cry of the beloved in it; she is totally broken and dejected at the disappearance of some one ‘loved and lost.’ Her stung heart springs its sorrows in every line and in every phrase.
The note of disappointment and longing has been reflected in many other poems of the volume. De Musset’s Chanson De Fortunio presents the sad condition of a lover:
“The pain that springs from silent love,
A love unknown,
Tears—tears this heart that seems above
As cold as stone.
But much, too much I love, to say
Who lights my flame;
I’d rather die and pass away,
Than breathe her name.” 26
To the swallow presents the yearning of the poet for ‘free life and love unchangeable’:
Like thee, my soul triumphant soars
On dream-wings borne by worlds of light;
Like thee it stoops and skims the shores;
Alike our tastes, alike our flight!27
In sonnet Hope, the hope is personified as a witch and the poet is completely disillusioned of it. Again an ironical presentation of a feeling that is so depressing:
Ah me! what pain,
What suffering it has cost my heart to learn
That thou, o lovely Hope, art false and vain!
And so rest here, and from thy witchery turn.28
To A Bereaved Mother is a fine piece written by Jeane ReBoul, remarkable for its melancholy and pathos. It is rather a philosophical poem on the nothingness of all object of the universe. Here the death is personified as an angel, who came on this earth to take away the life of a child and gives us a message, ‘Only death is everlasting’ and further remarks about the unpredictability of human life:
Here never is an unmixed joy,
Distinct from suffering and from pain,
Nothing, alas, without alloy;
No smile but has its sigh again.
Ah! Not one pleasure here is sure!
The calmest day, —the brightest sun,
A murky tempest will obscure
Perhaps before its course be run.29
Another aspect of death is presented in the sonnet of De GRAMONT where he remarks that death made no discrimination between the rich and the poor, death is indifferent to all things of the world:
Death’s hideous face no splendours can conceal,
Nor gold, nor flowers; we see the shade, and start. 30
In Sheaf we can have also a glimpse of philosophical thoughts. In the poem The Hope in God we have a lengthy description of many philosophies about God, soul and human being. Here for example a short note:
There exist, it is said, a philosophy
That needs no revelation, but unlocks
The gates with ease, those guard life’s mystery
And softly steers between the dangerous rocks,
Indifference and Religion. Be it so.
Where are these system-makers that can find
Truth without faith? It would be worth to know. 31
Pantheistic note is also evident in some of the poems of the Sheaf. It is positive and indicates towards the inner potential of a human being. Even though the man is all powerful, he has free will and his course is open but he can not interfere in the general plan of Nature. Man is advised not to use natural objects for impious purposes as :
A God dwells in all unseen and unheard,
Like an embryo eye, a blossom unblown,
A spirit exists unperceived in the stone. 32
In young and old, a very apt comparison, is made between the two stages of a man’s life. The old age presents a contrast in a very philosophical manner to the young age:
Thou mountest joyous up in life,
And I descend with forehead bent;
Thou wheelest eager for the strife,
And I retire with banner rent:
Thy future has an ample scope—
How fair the distance seems to thee!
Not opulent am I in hope,
But rich, most rich in memory.33
Earlier there was a comparison and now here is a point of resemblance between Man and the Sea
MAN, in thy freedom, thou shalt love always the ocean
As the mirror in which is reflected thy soul,
For its infinite depths—its waves in commotion,
Of thy spirit the phases, lay bare like a scroll.
The same temperaments! And yet through the ages
Fierce, pitiless, remorseless, between you is strife!
Carnage, death, havoc, seem the work and the wages!
Eternal gladiators! —Brothers grappling for life!34
Toru was much interested in the mysterious working of God, Soul, Universe and its creatures. In fact her own life, made her acquainted with the mystical relationship of all these things. She finds the presence of an invisible power in the whole world that is reflected through the objects of nature. To find a final conclusion to the question of this power, that is God itself, seems just impossible for a human being. Same idea gets reflection in the sonnet The Foot-Print On the Sand:
A PRETTY foot, a virgin’s foot, no doubt,
Disdainful, arched and furitive, printed clear!
To find this Cinderella, far and near,
The prince would have with many a wary scout
Searched for a century. I followed out
The marks in hope the vision would appear,
Either in pensive loveliness austere,
Or wreathed with smiles, but vainly looked about.35
Another piece the History of a Soul is thoughtful and mind bending and reveals Toru’s interest in the mysterious working of God and contact between the finite and the infinite worlds:
In secret from among the throng
God sometimes takes a soul,
And leads her slow, through grief and wrong,
Unswerving to her goal.
And when He sees her ever true,
Like needle to the pole,
Upon His work He smiles anew, —
/> Thus forges God a soul.36
In Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, the narratives are charged with joy and pathos, anger and sorrow, dejection and hope.37 As in her translations from the French poets, Toru has shown her inclination towards some pathetic and sorry incidents of life in the majority of her longer poems.
Savitri brings to light the untimely death of Satyavan and the bold encounter of Savitri with the God of Death. Toru Dutt begins her terms with death forging a means to man’s immortality on earth, in Savitri. Savitri, the daughter of Madra’s king gave her heart to the prince Satyavan, the son of Dyomatsen. Savitri was aware of the impending doom; she knew that Satyavan would die within a year. But she took it as a challenge and the marriage took place with much pomp and show. Within a year, as destined, Satyavan breathed his last of a snake-bite in the woods. Savitri sat there illumining the heart of the forest:
His head upon her breast; his frame
Part on her lap, part on the ground,
Thus lies he. Hours pass. Still the same,
The pair look statues, magic-bound. 38
The messenger of death, could not touch Satyavan, they clarify :
…… for there sits,
A woman fair, whose brow permits,
In its austerity of grace
And purity, —no creatures foul.
…… Thoughtful; no tear drop had she shed
But looked the goddess of the land.39
So Death, himself, decided to come down to take the soul of Satyavan. In spite of being aware of Satyavan’s merits, death was helpless as it was predestined that Satyavan would die in such an early age.
Death took the soul of Satyavan but Savitri followed Him in the darkness, arguing that she must follow her lord. Death, the king was pleased with Savitri’s penance, prayer and single-hearted devotion. He agreed to bestow boons on her, except of course the soul of Satyavan. Savitri begged first the lost eyesight of her father in law; then, sons to her father for the perpetuity of the dynasty; and finally children to herself and Satyavan. And Death said Amen, thus Savitri gets back her husband from the clutches of Death and exemplifies the possibility of the mortal’s claim to be immortal.
Toru Dutt Page 14
