Toru Dutt
Page 18
Noted Critic Radha Kamal Mukherjee remarks that for Toru’s perfect poems, readers will have to come to Ancient Ballads where deficiency in scholarship was greatly overcome; and the Muse now freed from the trammels of translation, came out in a gorgeous form.65
K.R.Srinivas Iyengar is of the view that by the time Toru wrote Ancient Ballads, she was already “a good craftsman in verse, her feeling for words was impeccable, and eye and ear were alike trained for poetic description or dialogue”.66 Padmini Sen Gupta maintains that Toru’s ballads “run much more smoothly and do not limp as much as her French translations and are at the same time almost inspired”.67
These critical opinions of various scholars convince that all are one and the same in the praise of Tour’s poetic power and her master of balladry.
The ballad, the blank verse, and the octosyllabic stanza pattern, these particular verse forms are used by Toru Dutt in Ancient Ballads. Of course, she varies the length of a stanza from a quatrain to twelve lines according to the nature of the theme. Toru used the ballad form in Savitri, Jogadhya Uma and Sindhu. Other poems of the volume Lakshman, Buttoo and Prahlad are written in Octosyllabic stanza pattern. She, however, is at her best in handling the ballad form. Only one example is being given below to strengthen the statement:
Virtue should be the aim and end
Of every life, all else is vain,
Duty should be its dearest friend
If higher life it would attain.68
As far as miscellaneous poems are concerned, poem The Lotus shows the poetess’s fine command of the sonnet form. The next sonnet Our Casuarina Tree is remarkable for its structural beauty.
Narration and Description
Toru Dutt is romantic not only in her thematic choice of India’s past but even in the narrative technique.69 The chief characteristic of Romantic poetry is emotion and imagination, and the romantic poets introduces several new metres. Their poems are marked by delightfulness, melody and cadence.
Ancient Ballads shows Toru at her best in displaying her narrative and descriptive powers. She is endowed with a rare gift of story telling, of arousing interest and curiosity, of creating suspense and of drawing character. Dr. A.N. Jha has rightly remarked: “indeed, it may be reasonably said that had she lived longer she would have attained distinction in narrative and descriptive verse … but perhaps in descriptive poetry she is even superior”.70 Her narrative skill can be seen in the style she adopts to tell the stories of the past; her descriptive power is evident in the depiction of natural scenes and sights, in the portraying of characters and their hopes and fears, their sorrow and distress. Here is Toru’s description of Uma the Goddess as she presents her arm to the pedlar of shellbracelets:
She stretched her hand,
Oh what a nice and lovely fit
No fairer hand in all the land,
And lo! The bracelet matches it.
Not week she seemed, nor delicate,
Strong was each limb of flexile grace,
And full the bust; the mien elate,
Like hers, the goddess of the chase
On Latmos hill, and oh, the face
Framed in its cloud of floating hair,
No painter’s hand might hope to trace
The beauty and the glory there!71
And here, from Buttoo is the description of a forest scene:
What glorious trees! The sombre soul
On which the eye delights to rest,
The betel – nut, - a pillar tall,
With feathery branches for a crest,
The light – leaved tamarind – spreading wide,
The pale faint – scented bitter neem,
The seemul, gorgeous as a bride,
The flowers that have the ruby’s gleam.72
In describing Savitri’s faint hopes and vivid fears, she says:
Incessant in her prayers from morn,
The noon is safely tided,--then
A gleam of faint, faint hope is born,
But the heart fluttered like a wren
That sees the shadow of the hawk
Sail on,-and trembles in affright,
Lest a down rushing swoop should mock
Its fortune, and o’erwhelm it quite.73
Savitri’s marriage procession and Satyavan’s sudden death and his later regaining consciousness are also depicted in an immaculate skill.
Toru’s narrative power startles us when we read the old Ballads and legends of Hindustan. These ballads or legends were neither unusual nor alien for her, and they gave her woman’s fancy-free play. Once, when her imagination was stimulated, it did not rest until the story was finished. She did not always follow the recorded or popular events; in telling her tales, she rather handles them with her free will. We take for example Savitri in this context. The story is originally derived from Mahabharata but there are digressions from the original at some points. Toru uses this technique not only to show her originality but also her creativity. Toru narrated the ancient stories in such a charming manner that they never lose their interest for us. From the very beginning to the end the legend of Savitri keeps us spell bound. In the midst of a thick forest Satyavan dies and Yamraj appears on the scene to take away his soul and Savitri stands there perplex and helpless. This scene is undoubtedly full of tension.Toru presented Savitri’s faint hopes and vivid fears and afterward her bold encounter with Yama after the death of Satyavan with perfect dexterity.
Lakshman, the second poem, is cast in dialogue form. Harihar Das finds fault with it in that “It is not narrative but conversational, with a touch of the epic spirit.74 The tone is dignified, rising something to the heroic, as in the following stanza, with its hint of impending tragedy:
He said and straight his weapon took’
His bow and his arrow pointed keen,
Kind,nay indulgent, was his look,
No trace of anger there was seen,
Only a sorrow dark, that seemed
To deepen his resolve to dare
All dangers. Hoarse the vulture screamed,
As out he strode with dauntless air.75
The gradual working out of Sita’s passion forms the most interesting feature of the poem. In the opening verses, she has conveyed to us a vivid impression of Sita’s anxiety on Rama’s behalf, and excited appeals to Lakshman. The latter’s fine vindication of his brother’s courage, and his absolute faith in his unconquerableness, serve merely to set Sita at bay. The implied reproach for her lack of faith, containing, as it does, a germ of truth, causes her to turn and rend one who meant only to comfort. We can see her drawing herself up to her full height, with flashing eyes, using the truly feminine weapon of bitter sarcasm, the weapon of one proved to be wrong, but not willing to own it. She flings at him the conjucture:
One brother takes
His kingdom, ---one would take his wife
A fair proportion.76
This ballad shows a phase of Toru’s genius with which we might otherwise have been unacquainted.
Jogadhya Uma is a beautiful narrative having a tender charm for the ingenuous and the unlettered. The last lines of this ballad are really remarkable for their argumentative quality embedded in a language of simplicity.
Mystic and dreamy, indeed, the poem is akin to that of Tennyson’s story of the brand Excaliber, ‘clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful’. It resembles the illuminations of exquisite workmanship found in certain rare old Eastern manuscripts, wherein every detail stands out clearly, as well as the purity of every colour. The poem is like a succession of miniature and the narrative is vigorous and appealing.
The Royal Ascetic and the Hind is more of a personal reflection than of a narrative. The legend of Dhruva also fails to create in the reader the right kind of impression about the young boy, as the narrative hardly suggests the agitation in his heart and mind. The poem Buttoo has some delightful passages describing the beauty of nature. The narrative successfully brings out the answering determination of Buttoo to atta
in mastery in archery.
The ballad Sindhu recounts Shravan kumar’s unshakable devotion to his parents, who are blind and weak and helpless.
The legend of Dhruva is expressed in a language full of heroism and courage. Prahlad comes out as a brave and resolute child facing the challenges of his tyrannical father, Heeran Kashyapu. The narrative does not falter anywhere; it does not indulge in unnecessary details and false statements. In Prahlad, Toru has admirably succeeded in recapturing the spirit of an old legend.
Obviously, Toru’s narratives are charged with lyric effusions of joy and pathos, anger and sorrow, hope and fear. But these effusions do not disturb the easy flow of the narratives. The reader’s interest is not allowed to suffer and the art of narration keeps on moving. The narrator’s eyes are set on the outlines of the stories; and not on decorative descriptions or lyrical effusions. The situations of suspense heighten the dramatic effects of the poems and render them all the more relishing.77
In her stories of the past Toru usually remains detached and impersonal, K.R.S. lyengar rightly says, “There are occasional unpleasant inversions (“Her heart rose opened had at last”) and wrenched accents, no doubt, but as a body of narrative poetry, the first eight ‘ballads and legends’ are unquestionably and movingly articulate, and disgrace neither the originals, nor the language in which they are now rendered.78 Obviously, Toru was concerned to be true to their original in Sanskrit largely objective in treatment of her themes, she has got imparted to them an imaginative touch, which does not obstruct the easy flow of her narrative. Taking into account her young age; it may be said that she has discharged her functions of a narrator very well.
Imagery and Symbol
Toru has sometimes made a fine use of images and symbols in her poetry. It is to be seen in Ancient Ballads. Her imagery is often drawn with a masculine vigour and fearlessness. Though a fragile woman herself, she displayed a wonderful power in grappling with the sublime and the terrible.
In her Savitri we have:
Pale pale the stars above them burned,
More weird the scene had grown and wild.79
and
My daughter, night with ebon wing
Hovers above; the hour is late. 80
Here the darkness of the night is compared to the black skin of ebony. Another beautiful image is to be found in the following lines:
And then the inner man was tied,
No bigger than the human thumb. 81
In it an abstract thing has been measured in terms of a concrete thing. This is yet another impressive image in Savitri:
I had a pain, as if an asp
Gnawed in my brain.82
The image of a gnawing ‘asp’ has been evoked herein to express the intensity of pain.
The following passage of The Royal Ascetic and the Hind is also very effective in covering a vivid imagery:
The shaven stalks of grass,
Kusha and kasha, by its new teeth clipped,
Remind me of it, as they stand in lines,
Like pious boys who chant the Samga Veds
Shorn by their vows of all their wealth of hair. 83
The ‘shaven stalks of grass’ look like some hairless brahmacharis, and this is really a masterly stork of Toru’s fertile imagination.
In Lakshman we find a beautiful image:
The lion and the grisly bear
Cower when they see his royal look,
Sun staring eagles of the air
His glance of anger cannot brook,
Pythons and cobras at his tread
To their most secret coverts glide,
Bowed to the dust each serpent head
Erect before in hooded pride. 84
In Prahlad:
A terror both of gods and men
Was Heeran Kasyapu, the king:
No bear more sullen in its den,
No tiger quicker at the spring. 85
And again:
He spurned the piller with his foot,
Down, down it tumbled, like a tree
Severed by axes from the root,
And from within, with horrid clang,
That froze the blood in every vein,
A stately sable warrior sprang,
Like some phantasma of the brain. 86
Though a woman she could describe a gallant party with the passion and enthusiasm of Sir Walter Scott:
On gallant was the long array!
Pennons and plumes were seen,
And swords that mirrored back the day,
And spars and axes keen.
Rang tramp, and conch, and piercing life
Woke Echo from her bed!
The solemn woods with sounds were rife,
As on the pagent sped”. 87
This is the hunting party of great king of Oudh, Dasaratha. Toru’s images are usually bold and startling yet pertinent and revealing and she “reveals a more complex poetic sensibility and poetic art, comparable at least at places to Hopkins.” In sonnet Baugmaree:
And o’er the quiet pools the seemuls lean
Red, red and startling like a trumpet’s sound. 88
One recalls Hopkins, description of the singing thrush:
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and writing.
The ear, it strikes like lightning’s to near him sing.
In Toru a visual impression is conveyed by an aural image: in Hopkins an aural impression is conveyed by a visual image.89
We don’t find a systematic network of symbolism in Toru’s poetry. Only vary rarely has she used symbols. Thus in Savitri the night and its shades are associated with death and distress; in The tree of Life the ‘tree becomes a symbol of life and ‘Angel’ of Jesus christ:
A tree with spreading branches and with leaves,
Of divers kind – dead silver and gold live,
…………………………………………………..
Oh the delicious touch of those strange leaves! 90
And Our Casuarina Tree is more than the poetic evocation of a tree; it is rather recapturing the past and immortalizing the moments of time so recaptured. In the words of Dr. K.R.S. lyengar “The tree is both tree and symbol, and in it is implicated both time and eternity”. 91
Figures of Speech
Figures of speech are commonly used to embellish the language and to convey ideas more effectively than in the normal course. Now, in Ancient Ballads Toru has employed them for both purposes.
Simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, personification, alliteration and hyperbole are frequently used by Toru in her poetry. Instances of Simile in Ancient Ballads are :
When glided like music – strain
Savitri’s presence through the room.
Fair as a lotus when the moon
Kisses its opening petals red.
Nor melt his lineage like the frost.
Her presence was as sunshine glad.
Tall tree like pillars.
It came as chainless as the wind.
He staggers like a sleepy child.
The dreadful sword / like lightening glanced one moment dire.
Thy lacerate my inmost heart,
And torture me, like poisoned swards.”
The lion’s roar _ _ _ _ like a thunder- clap
Burst in that solitude from a thicket high.
Unseen the magic arrow came _ _ _ _
Like lightening flame / sudden and sharp.
The water lilies spring, like snow enmassed.
And like a rose her beauty bared,
From all observance quite secure.
Descends prosperity, even as water flows.
Down to low ground.
For life is as a shadow vain …..
The pale faint – scented bitter neem’
The seemul , gorgeous as a bride.
And palms arise, like pillars.
And like a huge python.
Like the sea breaking on a shingle – beach.
Instances of Metaphor in it are :
The pair look statues, magic bound.
Savitri looked like the goddess of the land with her ‘ravan hair’ (hair as black as a crow).
One beautiful instance of Onomatopoeia in Ancient ballads is !
But the good
God’s purity there loved to trace,
Mirrored in dawning womanhood.
The frequency of ‘d’ sound in it gives a sense of holy fear in god-fearing view. Another instance is, “whizzing the deadly arrow flow, / Ear-guidedon the game;
In Ancient Ballads a fine example of Personification is:
Rang trump and conch, and piercing life
Wake echo from her bed!
The solemn woods with sounds were rife
As on the pageant sped.
Another example is:
As to the hermitage she went
Through smiling fields of waving corn.
Here fields are personified.Instances of Alliteration in Ancient Ballads are:
Stern warriors, when they saw her smiled,
As mountains smile to see the spring.
And
A stately sable warrior sprang.
In the same poetic volume examples of Hyperbole are:
All these, and thousands, thousands more…rose before,
The youth in evening is shadow brown.
Hundreds,Nay thousands on the went! etc.
The sheaf is also not without these figures of speech but for Toru’s original contribution to these areas of literary grace, one will have to go to Ancient Ballads.
Part-2
Autobiographical note in her poetry:
Toru was by nature a reserved woman, and hardly ever she resorted to airing out personal feelings in her verse. But it does not mean that her verse is totally devoid of personal touches. Both of her poetical volumes contain beautiful autobiography flashes. Thus, in the Sheaf, we have My Vacation and The Death of a Young Girl among others. This is how Toru writes in the former:
All men have a task,
And to sing is my lot-
No need from men I ask
But one kindly thought,
My vocation is high-
’Mid the glasses that sing.
Still-still comes that reply,
Chant poor little thing.92