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T D C Part III Hons. Paper-6

Palgrave’s Golden Treasury

CRITICAL EVALUATIONS

1. Sailing to Byzentium

“Sailing to Byzantium,” first published in 1928 as part of Yeats's collection, The Tower, contains only four stanzas and yet is considered to be one of the most effective expressions of Yeats's arcane poetic “system,” exploring tensions between art and ordinary life and demonstrating how, through an imaginative alchemy, the raw materials of life can be transformed into something enduring. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” the artist/speaker transforms himself into a work of art, and, in so doing, obscures the distinction between form and content and the artist and his work. “Sailing to Byzantium” is widely admired for its inventive, evocative imagery and masterfully interwoven phrases. Literary critic Frank Kermode calls the poem “a marvelously contrived emblem of what Yeats took the work of art to be.”

“Sailing to Byzantium,” a lyric poem, has neither conventional characters nor plot. The poem consists of four open-form stanzas and features a speaker who may be thought of, as Richard Ellmann suggests, as “a symbol of Yeats and of the artist and of man.” The action of the poem concerns the problem of immersing oneself in life and at the same time striving for permanence. The opening stanza describes a state of youth, a sensuous, sometimes violent, life with emphasis on productivity and regeneration (“That is no country for old men”), and then contrasts this sensuality with the intellectual and the transitory with the permanent: “Caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect.”

Acknowledging both his mortality and desire for transcendence, the speaker prepares his soul for the body's death by “studying / Monuments of its own magnificence” and “sail[s] the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium.” In Byzantium, the speaker hopes to fuse the “sensual music” with the “monuments,” that is, the passing pleasures with transcendent art. In 1931, Yeats wrote that he chose to “symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city” because “Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy.” In Byzantium, the speaker encounters a world of timeless art and spirituality, represented by sages and “God's holy fire” with flames and smoke twisting like a “perne in a gyre,” an allusion to Yeats's cyclical theory of history and transcendence. The speaker wishes to lose his heart, “sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal,” and 2 have his soul gathered “into the artifice of eternity” so that “Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing.” In the last stanza, the speaker imagines himself transformed into a work of art that transcends the passing of time, a Byzantine work of art, a golden bird that is animate in that it sings to the Emperor, but inanimate as a work of art that will survive generations.

The tension between art and life is an essential dichotomy in Yeats's poetry. Yeats envisioned the artist as a kind of alchemist, whose transformative art obscures the distinction between “the dancer and the dance,” as he wrote in the poem, “Among School Children.” For Yeats, only through imagination could the raw materials of life be transformed into something enduring. Thus “Sailing to Byzantium” has at least two symbolic readings, both mutually interdependent upon the other. The poem is both about the journey taken by the speaker's soul around the time of death and the process by which, through his art, the artist transcends his own mortality.

An important symbol in “Sailing to Byzantium” is the ancient city of Byzantium, which in the fifth and sixth centuries was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and the center of art and architecture. Byzantine art did not attempt to represent human forms, and so, for Yeats, Byzantium symbolized a way of life in which art is celebrated as artifice. Furthermore, Byzantium represents what Yeats, in A Vision, calls “Unity of Being,” in which “religious, aesthetic and practical life were one” and art represented “the vision of a whole people.”

By 1928, the year he published “Sailing to Byzantium,” Yeats was, in his own words, “a smiling sixty-year-old public man” with a senate career and the Nobel Prize behind him. With the publication of that poem in the volume The Tower, Yeats's contemporaries noticed a change of style and maturity, as the poems in that volume not only reflected Yeats's satisfaction with a long, fulfilling life but also, according to A. Norman Jeffares, a “sharpened apprehension, brought by Ireland's civil war, of approaching conflagration in the world, and, by approaching age, of ruin and decay.”

Yeats's contemporaries generally agreed that his technique was stunning, but viewed his ideas on poetry and history to be eccentric. An early critic, T. Sturge Moore, told Yeats in 1930 that he found the first three stanzas “magnificent” but believed the fourth to “weaken to an ineffective and unnecessary repetition of ‘gold’ four times in as many lines, … implying that the contrast between artificial and natural forms is fundamental, which is obviously not the case.” In 1931, Harriet Monroe, the publisher of the 3 influential Poetry magazine, likened the emotional quality of the poem's language and imagery to that of Shakespeare's drama, especially the monologues of Lear.

(2) Among School Children

For Yeats's biographer, Richard Ellmann, “Sailing to Byzantium represents a poetic “climax” for Yeats The speaker paces around a classroom, looking at the schoolchildren. The nun says that what they learn in school is to read and to sing. They learn about history, sewing, and how to be neat “in a modern way.” The children stare at the speaker, an old politician.

He dreams of a Leda-like body bent over a fire in a domestic scene. She is telling a story of how a small interaction with a child turned its day to tragedy. Together, over the story, they share a great deal. Looking at the children, he wonders what she was like at their age. He sees her as a child and is mad with love. Her current, gaunt image comes to mind. She once was pretty, but she is now comfortable and old. Did the speaker’s mother, when carrying him, know that seeing this woman would be enough compensation for her child’s birth? Plato thought nature to be imperfect; Aristotle contemplated the nature of things, as did Pythagoras...but these are all merely subjects for students to study. Nuns and mothers adore images, but the mothers’ images are their children. The speaker questions life’s very location, wondering what part of a tree is the essence of the tree, what part of a dancer is a dancer, and which is the dance itself.

The subject matter of schoolchildren contrasts greatly with that of the earlier historical poems in this collection. Here is evidence of civil society, of progress, and of modernity - none of which were possible during the Anglo- Irish War or the Civil War. From this, and from the implication that the speaker is a senator (as Yeats was after 1924), one may deduce that this is a later poem, written from the standpoint of a more peaceful Ireland.

The children are poignant for the speaker because they are associated both with an obvious type of innocence and with the woman whom the speaker loves. By comparing her child self and her current incarnation, it is sharply evident to the speaker how she has aged. The imagined conversation between the two, in which she seems to be a schoolteacher rather than a revolutionary, is wishful thinking on his part. Yeats’ musings on whether it was destined that he 4 should fall in love with this woman is related to “Leda and the Swan” in that it presupposes a series of events that must come to pass. The final stanza is a philosophical riddle concerning whether man acts or is acted upon, and serves as a connection to Yeats' uncertainty as to whether he loves or was destined to love.

‘Among School Children’ by W.B Yeats was published in 1928 in the collection ‘The Tower’. Being among school children, Yeats confronts the problem of human frailty, by reflecting on the impact and the worth of his life. The poem is a first person narrative, with a conversational tone. Throughout he compares Maud Gonne’s current appearance to her physical appearance in her youth, this is where he realises how time effects the physical being. This poem has roman numerals which number each stanza – highlighting formality.

The poem begins by Yeats walking “through the long schoolroom”, which metaphorically could reflect the school of life. He then uses the verb “questioning;” to highlight that he is questioning are lessons really relevant to life? However, amongst youth itself, Yeats notices his age and therefore perceives himself as a “sixty-year-old smiling public man”. He desires to know whether his education is similar to the children, who now learn in the “best modern way”. While he questions whether lessons that are being taught are really relevant to life he learns that they “learn to cipher and to sing, to study reading-books and histories”. This is where Yeats understands that life’s true lessons are not from the classroom as learning to “be neat in everything” is ironic and unrealistic. Whilst observing the innocent children he begins to visualise imagines of the “Ledaean body”. He envisions this “trivial event that changed some childish day to tragedy” and also strategically uses line eleven for the first alteration in meter which is parallel to the change in Leda’s life from innocence to knowledge. Yeats realises through this example that these children, like Leda, will soon be stripped of their innocence and purity. From this event, Leda gives birth to Helen of Troy who is thought of as the most beautiful woman on earth. Yeats then makes a comparison between Helen of Troy and Maud Gonne. He pictures them both as being together just like the “yolk and white of the one shell.” Throughout the third stanza Yeats has finished envisioning the two women together and therefore searches through the children wondering whether he can see a likeness to Gonne where he states “Wonder is she stood so at that age.” He then moves on to describe Gonne’s beauty “even the daughters of the swan can share something of every paddler’s heritage.” He slips deeper and deeper into his imagination, so deep that “she stands before me as a living child.” The thought of Gonne’s purity and innocence hypnotizes Yeats. The 5 only way Yeats can express the beauty is to express it poetically hence the song- like rhyme scheme of the stanza. In the fourth stanza he understands that his portrayal of Gonne is not a reality and therefore “her present image floats into the mind.” He compares her cheeks to the wind. The image of wind has a double meaning, as the brevity of the wind symbolizes the brevity of life. Yeats comes to realise that he too, like Gonne, is ageing when he writes “had a pretty plumage once”. When he wants to hide his sudden realisation of morality he uses a metaphoric mask of an “old scarecrow” which allows Yeats to conceal his true feelings and thoughts. In the fifth stanza there is an odd number of feet in line thirty-three, Yeats makes the fundamental shift in the poem noticeable which therefore changes from personal to universal. Yeats envisions a “youthful mother” and questions whether a mother would believe that the pains of childbirth were worth the trouble when the child grows older. Here, Yeats is asking the most fundamental of questions – what is the value of life? By stating that the child has lived “sixty winters” and not years highlights a gloomy winter image which further suggests suffering. The final line of this stanza refers to the mother’s uncertainty about her child’s future. Throughout the sixth stanza, Yeats looks to the great men of the past for answers to his questions. Firstly, he looks into Plato’s Cave Allegory, with the “ghostly paradigm of things” which shows how Plato thought life was a shadow of reality. He then shows the idiocy of Aristotle’s work saying he has been playing “upon the bottom of a king of kings.” He does the same for Pythagoras’s work and then comes to realise that these men were nothing more than “old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.” As a result of his realisation, Yeats realises that although these men have produced lasting works, they themselves cannot be lasting. The seventh stanza analyses the issue of love and expectation. Yeats uses the example of a mother and a nun to highlight the different types of love – one a mothers and the other religious. Both types of love have their objects/figures to worship. However, like a nun eventually gets the feeling of disappointment with God the mother will feel the same with the child.

Penultimately, in the final verse Yeats realises it is better to view life as a whole instead of viewing life in parts, like “the leaf, the blossom, or the bole.” He uses the final rhetorical question “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” to highlight that it is impossible to separate the two like life and death – which could link to himself and Gonne, or even Gonne and her child self..

(3) THE SECOND COMING 6

Yeats is considered one of the finest poets in the English language. He was devoted to the cause of Irish nationalism and played a significant part in the Celtic Revival Movement, promoting the literary heritage of Ireland through his use of material from ancient Irish sagas. Magic and occult theory are also important elements in Yeats's work, as many of the images found in his poetry are derived from his occult researches. Such is the case in regard to Yeats's lyric poem, "The Second Coming." The work is generally viewed as a symbolic revelation of the end of the Christian era, and is one of Yeats's most widely commented-on works. Thought to exemplify Yeats's cyclical interpretation of history, "The Second Coming" is regarded as a masterpiece of Modernist poetry and is variously interpreted by scholars, whose principal concern has been to unravel its complex symbolism.

Yeats was born in Dublin to Irish-Protestant parents. His father was a painter who influenced his son's thoughts about art. Yeats's mother shared with her son her interest in folklore, fairies, and astrology as well as her love of Ireland, particularly the region surrounding Sligo in western Ireland where Yeats spent much of his childhood. Educated in England and Ireland,

Yeats was erratic in his studies, shy, and prone to daydreaming. In 1884 he enrolled in the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. There he met the poet George Russell, who shared Yeats's enthusiasm for dreams and visions. Together they founded the Dublin Hermetic Society to conduct magical experiments and "to promote the study of Oriental Religions and Theosophy." Yeats also joined the Rosicrucians, the Theosophical Society, and MacGregor Mather's Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1885 Yeats met the Irish nationalist John O'Leary, who was instrumental in arranging for the publication of Yeats's first poems in The Dublin University Review. Under the influence of O'Leary, Yeats took up the cause of Gaelic writers at a time when much native Irish literature was in danger of being lost as the result of England's attempts to anglicize Ireland through a ban on the Gaelic language. By the early years of the twentieth century Yeats had risen to international prominence as a proponent of the Gaelic Revival and had published numerous plays and collections of poetry. In 1917 Yeats married Georgiana Hyde-Lees. Through his young wife's experiments with automatic writing,

Yeats gathered the materials on which he based A Vision, his explanation of historical cycles and theory of human personality based upon the phases of the moon. Yeats began writing "The Second Coming" in January 1919, in the wake of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It was first published in November 1920 in The Dial and later appeared in his collectionMichael Robartes and the Dancer, one of several works of the period 7 that exemplify the rhetorical, occasionally haughty tone that readers today identify as characteristically Yeatsian. In 1922 Yeats became a senator for the newly formed Irish Free State. The following year he was honored with the Nobel Prize for literature. Ill health forced Yeats to leave the Irish senate in 1928. He devoted his remaining years to poetry and died in France in 1939.

"The Second Coming" is viewed as a prophetic poem that envisions the close of the Christian epoch and the violent birth of a new age. The poem's title makes reference to the Biblical reappearance of Christ, prophesied in Matthew 24 and the Revelations of St. John, which according to Christianity, will accompany the Apocalypse and divine Last Judgment. Other symbols in the poem are drawn from mythology, the occult, and Yeats's view of history as defined in his cryptic prose volume A Vision. The principal figure of the work is a sphinx-like creature with a lion's body and man's head, a "rough beast" awakened in the desert that makes its way to Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem. While critics acknowledge the work's internal symbolic power, most have studied its themes in relation to Yeats's A Vision.

According to the cosmological scheme of A Vision, the sweep of history can be represented by two intersecting cones, or gyres, each of which possesses one of two opposing "tinctures," primary and antithetical, that define the dominant modes of civilization. Yeats associated the primary or solar tincture with democracy, truth, abstraction, goodness, egalitarianism, scientific rationalism, and peace. The contrasting antithetical or lunar tincture he related to aristocracy, hierarchy, art, fiction, evil, particularity, and war. According to Yeats's view, as one gyre widens over a period of two thousand years the other narrows, producing a gradual change in the age. The process then reverses after another twenty centuries have passed, and so on, producing a cyclic pattern throughout time. In the early twentieth-century

Yeats envisioned the primary gyre, the age of Christianity, to be at its fullest expansion and approaching a turning point when the primary would begin to contract and the antithetical enlarge. Yeats wrote: "All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating, heterogeneous civilisation belongs to the outward gyre and prepares not the continuance of itself but the revelation as in a lightning flash .. . of the civilisation that must slowly take its place." Thus, in "The Second Coming" scholars view the uncontrolled flight of the falcon as representative of this primary expansion at its chaotic peak, while the coming of an antithetical disposition is symbolized in the appearance of the "rough beast" in the desert, a harbinger of the new epoch. 8

The general relationship of A Vision to "The Second Coming" has been accepted by most critics, yet the elusive nature of Yeats's imagery has prompted varying interpretations of the poem. Many scholars have focused on its political character and especially on the sphinx-like beast of the poem's second half, seeing it as representative of the general forces of violence and anarchy, or more specifically of the Russian Revolution, World War I, the Irish Civil War of 1916, Fascism, or communism. Such views typically emphasize the horrific and ominous nature of the beast, and associate its appearance with the decline of western civilization. Critics who have used A Vision extensively in their interpretations of the poem, however, have occasionally noted that the sphinx is not necessarily intended as a negative image—and that Yeats himself was not displeased to witness what he viewed as the close of the Christian era.

Commentators have also seen "The Second Coming" in the context of other poems by Yeats that elicit similar or parallel themes, such as "Leda and the Swan" and "A Prayer for My Daughter." Additional areas of critical interest concerning the work include study of the symbolic nature of the falcon, exploration of the lengthy process of revision undertaken by Yeats, and consideration of the poet's ironic use of religious allusion in the poem. Others critics have also observed significant influences on the work, which contains echoes of Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and have examined its philosophical underpinnings, particularly in relation to the conception of alternating cycles of human history proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche. Overall, "The Second Coming" has been well-received as one of the most evocative visionary lyric poems of the twentieth-century and widely praised for its technical excellence and extensive symbolic resonance.

(4) Gerontion

In a letter dated July 9, 1919, to John Rodker, who was preparing T. S. Eliot’s volume of poetry Ara Vos Prec for publication with his newly founded Ovid Press, Eliot mentions his newly completed poem “Gerontion” for possible inclusion. It became the lead, and perhaps the most significant, poem in the volume, published in February, 1920.

In critical consideration, “Gerontion” has been identified as one of the poems of the so-called Waste Land cycle of poems, the others including “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917), The Waste Land (1922), and “The Hollow Men” (1925). Like these other works, “Gerontion” explores the hollowness of the modern age, the failure of human history to provide firm direction, and the vacuity of a life without passion or belief. 9

The poem casts the title character, Gerontion, a name derived from the Greekgeron in its diminutive form, suggesting “a little old man,” as reflecting in his room while being read to by a young boy. The name is apt, for Gerontion is an old man who has shrunken in upon himself by virtue of his need to think through, to analyze and scrutinize, all options rather than act upon them. As the boy reads, Gerontion’s mind wanders.

(5) Marina

Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French Symbolists— Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Laforgue—whom he first encountered in college, in a book by Arthur Symons called The Symbolist Movement in Literature. It is easy to understand why a young aspiring poet would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is perhaps less profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse poetry with high intellectualism while maintaining a sensuousness of language, Eliot also developed a great deal that was new and original.

His early works, like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land, draw on a wide range of cultural reference to depict a modern world that is in ruins yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful. Eliot uses techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition to make his points without having to argue them explicitly. As Ezra Pound once famously said, Eliot truly did “modernize himself.” In addition to showcasing a variety of poetic innovations, Eliot’s early poetry also develops a series of characters who fit the type of the modern man as described by Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of Eliot’s contemporaries. The title character of “Prufrock” is a perfect example: solitary, neurasthenic, overly intellectual, and utterly incapable of expressing himself to the outside world.

As Eliot grew older, and particularly after he converted to Christianity, his poetry changed. The later poems emphasize depth of analysis over breadth of allusion; they simultaneously become more hopeful in tone: Thus, a work such as Four Quartets explores more philosophical territory and offers propositions instead of nihilism. The experiences of living in England during World War II inform theQuartets, which address issues of time, experience, mortality, and art. Rather than lamenting the ruin of modern culture and seeking redemption in the cultural past, as The Waste Land does, the quartets offer ways around human limits through art and spirituality. The pastiche of the earlier works is replaced by philosophy and logic, and the formal experiments of his 10

early years are put aside in favor of a new language consciousness, which emphasizes the sounds and other physical properties of words to create musical, dramatic, and other subtle effects.

However, while Eliot’s poetry underwent significance transformations over the course of his career, his poems also bear many unifying aspects: all of Eliot’s poetry is marked by a conscious desire to bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the emotional in a way that both honors the past and acknowledges the present. Eliot is always conscious of his own efforts, and he frequently comments on his poetic endeavors in the poems themselves. This humility, which often comes across as melancholy, makes Eliot’s some of the most personal, as well as the most intellectually satisfying, poetry in the English language.

Marina is the daughter of Pericles from both classical literature and one of Shakespeare's plays.The poem is about the moment a father sees his long lost daughter – hence the equivocation -'What images return' Memories, doesn't recognise Marina, sees some similarities

-'What is this face' Daughter or speaker has changed, grown up/old, Can't quite remember - has been so long the memories are no longer clear -'grace' Father's love - sees beauty in her/reminiscent of Christian ideas about God being a father and his grace, her presence is welcome -'new ships' young, life moving on -'Small laughter' like a child, present and past mingling -'I made this' Speaker's child, Pericles guilt as it is his fault -'half-conscious' he begins to realize -Repition of 'what' Pericles discovers who Marina is

•The poem is about confusion -Repetition eg 'Those who...' -'What is this' uncertainty, unable to see/feel clearly -'less clear and clearer' 'less strong and stronger' can't decide how to feel -'I have forgotten and remember' Uncertainty of memory, perhaps wanting to forget, memories become blurred and unclear -'Seas' can switch between calm and violence -Contrasting statements about death 'dog' and a 'hummingbird', 'contentment' and 'suffer' -Marina's voice bringing back old memories -Confusion about who Marina is 11

•The poem is about a state of ecstasy -'the hope' -'lips parted' pure feeling, no words needed -'woodthrush calling' hope, freedom, beauty, cutting through the confusion, Marina relating her tale -Calming imagery in first stanza 'seas' 'shores' 'grey rocks' 'water lapping' -All the senses - a moment of awakening -'O my daughter' Pericles finds Marina again -'stars' she is beautiful -'dissolved' everything falls into place/away, he can see clearly

•The poem is about a voyager returning home -'The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking' been away so long the boat is breaking -'what shores' lost on the sea, been away so long can no longer remember -'woodthrush calling through the fog' guiding home -'islands towards my timbers' ship is speaker's home/self now -'Scent of pine' nearing land

•The poem is about psychological issues -'rigging weak and the canvas rotten' problems on the inside, no longer works/falling apart -'half-conscious' -'granite islands' immovable problems -'the ecstasy of animals' unthinking/unfeeling, not burdened by soul/conscience -Memory mixes with present -Pericles's guilt and despair

•The poem is about the uselessness of everyday activities -'The garboard srake leaks, the seams need caulking' mundane, repairing what has already been made -'meaning death' futility, inescapable -All of it nothing compared to 'my daughter'

7. Strange Meeting

"Strange Meeting" is one of Wilfred Owen's most famous, and most enigmatic, poems. It was published posthumously in 1919 in Edith Sitwell's anthology Wheels: an Anthology of Verse and a year later in Siegfried Sassoon's 1920 collection of Owen's poems. T.S. Eliot referred to "Strange Meeting" as a "technical achievement of great originality" and "one of the most moving pieces of verse inspired by the war." That war, of course, is WWI – the central element 12 in all poems in Owen's relatively small oeuvre. The poet Ted Hughes noted in his writings on "Strange Meeting": "few poets can ever have written with such urgent, defined, practical purpose." The poem is renowned for its technical innovation, particularly the pararhyme, so named by Edmund Bluson in regard to Owen's use of assonant endings. A pararhyme is a slant or partial rhyme in which the words have similar consonants before and after unlike vowels – escaped and scooped, groaned and grained, hair and hour. Almost all of the end lines in this poem are pararhyme; the last line is a notable exception. Critics have noted how this rhyme scheme adds to the melancholy, subterranean, and bleak atmosphere of the poem.

The poem's description of a soldier's descent into Hell where he meets an enemy soldier he killed lends itself to a critique of war. The dead man talks about the horror of war and the inability for anyone but those involved to grasp the essential truth of the experience. There is more than meets the eye, however, and many critics believe that the man in hell is the soldier's "Other", or his double. A man's encounter with his double is a common trope in Romantic literature; the device was used by Shelley, Dickens, and Yeats, among others. The critic Dominic Hibbard notes the poem does not "[present] war as a merely internal, psychological conflict – but neither is it concerned with the immediate divisions suggested by 'German' and 'conscript' [initially what the dead man calls himself] or 'British' and 'volunteer'." The dead man is the Other, but he is more than a reflection of the speaker - he is a soldier whose death renders his status as an enemy void. Another critic reads the poem as a dream vision, with the soldier descending into his mind and encountering his poetic self, the poem becoming a mythological and psychological journey. Finally, Elliot B. Gose, Jr. writes that "the Other...represents the narrator's unconscious, his primal self from which he has been alienated by war."

The style of the poem was influenced by several sources. "Strange Meeting" echoes Dante's pitying recognition of the tortured faces in Hell, the underworld of Landor's Gebir, and, of course, Keats and Shelley. Owens was an ardent admirer of both Romantic poets, whose The Fall of Hyperion and The Revolt of Islam, respectively, were no doubt instructive to Owen as he composed his own work.The Fall of Hyperion features the goddess of memory revealing her dying but immortal face and her blank eyes, allowing the poet to grasp her monumental knowledge of wars and heroes past. The emphasis in Owen's work on truth and dreams also resonates of Keats'.

The title of the poem, however, may be taken directly from Shelley's work: "And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside, / With quivering lips and humid eyes; - and all / Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide / 13

Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall / In a strange land." In The Revolt of Islam, Laon tells his soldiers not to avenge themselves on the enemy who has massacred their camp but to ask them to throw down their arms and embrace their shared humanity. The two sides gather together in the "strange meeting". The speaker escapes from battle and proceeds down a long tunnel through ancient granite formations. Along his way he hears the groan of sleepers, either dead or too full of thoughts to get up. As he looks at them one leaps up; the soldier has recognized him and moves his hands as if to bless him. Because of the soldier's "dead smile" the speaker knows that he is in Hell.

On the face of the "vision" the speaker sees a thousand fears, but the blood, guns, or moans of above did not reach into their subterranean retreat. The speaker tells the soldier that there is no reason to mourn, and he replies that there is – it is the "undone years" and "hopelessness". The soldier says his hope is the same as the speaker's; he also tells him he once went hunting for beauty in the world, but that beauty made a mockery of time. He knows the truth of what he did, which is "the pity of war, the pity war distilled", but now he can never share it.

The soldier/vision continues, saying men will go on with what is left to them, or they will die as well. They will not break their ranks even though "nations trek from progress". He used to have courage and wisdom. He would wash the blood from the wheels of chariots. He wanted to pour his spirit out, but not in war.

Finally, he says to the speaker that "I am the enemy you killed, my friend," and that he knew him in the dark. It was yesterday that the speaker "jabbed and killed" him, and now it is time to sleep.

( 8) Look Stranger

W.H. Auden's Look, Stranger! (1936) is an extraordinarily transitional work. The second of Auden’s three 1930s poetry collections, it lacks both the precociously distinctive voice that launched Auden to the forefront of his generation withPoems (1930) and the embarrassment of canonized riches in Another Time (1939). Yet as a major poet’s record of growth in the midst of political crisis, and as a document from the endgame of modernism, it has few rivals. The poems were composed from 1931 to 1936 (Auden's 24th to 29th years), during which time Auden taught at boys' schools, collaborated with his friend Christopher Isherwood on two plays, worked in the new genre of documentary film with John Grierson at the General Post Office Film Unit, and finally committed to earning his living as a writer. He traveled to Switzerland, 14

Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, and Iceland; lived in Scotland, among the Malvern Hills of England, and in London. Though homosexual, he married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika (to whom Look, Stranger! is dedicated) to save her from Nazi persecution. Politically, he drifted through a flirtation with Communism towards a sort of transnational humanism. Still an agnostic, he experienced a religious epiphany in June of 1933. While distancing himself from the leader-worship associated with D.H. Lawrence and a peculiar Freudianism, he dismayed T.S. Eliot (his main editor at Faber) by failing or refusing to adopt clear “ethical and religious views and convictions.”[1] He cultivated many friendships and several lovers, adding to his social circle the popular scientist Gerald Heard and the young composer Benjamin Britten. Above all, to judge by the poems in this collection, he watched with growing dread the rise of Fascism abroad and the threats of social turmoil at home. It is no surprise, then, that Auden’s works in this period are low on formal, stylistic, and philosophical cohesion. In one of Look, Stranger!’s poems, Auden explicitly renounces the mindset that made Poems and his 1932 prose- verse bookThe Orators possible (indeed, he goes on to renounce a worldview that made much of Look, Stranger! itself possible—see Poem XXX, lns. 33-56). He abandoned an epic dream-poem and was, apparently, uncertain of a new direction. The rather haphazard, catch-all arrangement of Look, Stranger!—29 untitled poems in no very discernible order, bracketed by a “Prologue” and an “Epilogue”—bears witness as much to his disorientation as it does to his creative profusion. Auden and Eliot contemplated four different titles before Eliot, missing Auden’s letter from Iceland, picked a fifth (Look, Stranger!), which Auden loathed (“a bloody title….It sounds like the work of a vegetarian lady novelist”) and ordered changed to a sixth (On This Island) for the American edition. The poems themselves are each formally strict, but range between sonnet and sestina, lyric and ballad, song, vers de société, and verse- letter. Though the tone is fairly self-assured, the influences of Yeats and Eliot, among others, make themselves felt. Wilfred Owen, whose characteristic pararhyme appears a number of times in Look, Stranger!, is invoked by name. Through all this, Auden labors and plays at establishing a new voice, not simply through experimentation but a protracted engagement with the poetic self. The Orators had been, like The Waste Land, an exercise in ventriloquism and anonymity. In Look, Stranger!, the lyric “I” reemerges in a recognizably Romantic form: “Now from my window-sill I watch the night” (X 1); “Here on the cropped grass of the narrow ridge I stand” (XVII 42); “Out on the lawn I lie in bed” (II 1). As a more problematic counterpart, Auden also employs a “we/our” persona to voice the state of England and the tale of the human tribe: “Our hunting fathers told the story” (III 1), “The earth turns over, our side feels the cold” (IX 1). In either case, Auden articulates a locatable subject that is both 15 assertive and vulnerable. This allows for a centering of community and a reciprocal identification of threat. On one side, Auden depicts lovers and friends (though the poems do not have titles, several have dedicatees), national and international publics, the human race as a whole, and the links made possible by love. On the other, there are political dangers like “Hitler and Mussolini” (XXI 33) and the totalitarian population’s “wish to be one” (XV 67); but also a fear of proletarian revolution (“the gathering multitude outside” [II 56]) oddly coupled with hatred of the bourgeois. More broadly, every level of human society— self, lover, friendly coterie, nation, species— is endangered by the human will towards evil and corrupted love. Invoking the World War One dead, Auden remembers that “when hatred promised / An immediate dividend, all of us hated.” The major figuration of threatened self and community in Look, Stranger! is the island and the flood. At some points, such as a “A Summer Night,” Auden envisions the flood as a frightening but desirable apocalypse, as a class revolution that will sweep away much that is evil but also destroy himself and his friends. At others (e.g., “Paysage Moralisé” [VII]), he reflects on the sins and wretchedness of little communities, of “islands,” and wishes for a different sort of human association (what he here calls rebuilt “cities”). But more often, he is terribly aware that the looming tidal waves will bring no good whatever. Poem after poem ends with an open-eyed, stricken observation of “the dangerous flood / Of history” (XXX 94-95). A book title Auden proposed to Eliot was It’s a Way, the seemingly optimistic words that actually derive from the sobering last words of the last poem: through years of absolute cold

The planets rush towards Lyra in the lion’s charge. Can Hate so securely bind? Are They dead here? Yes. And the wish to wound has the power. And tomorrow Comes. It’s a world. It’s a way. (XXXI 32-36) These thoughts are never closer than when in the depth of personal happiness— while lying on the grass in the sun, when with a lover, while celebrating a birthday, in the “private joking in a panelled room” (XXX 53). This constant tension between private contentment and vast public danger makes Look, Stranger! a great compendium of paranoid phrases: The dogs are barking, the crops are growing, But nobody knows how the wind is blowing” (XVIII 7-8)

Are you aware what weapon you are loading, To what that teasing talk is quietly leading? Out pulses count but do not judge the hour. (XIX 10-12) 16

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear …. Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming. (VI 1, 3-4)

Auden explored two major counterforces to disaster. The first, Communism, was a movement Auden guardedly approved of during the early to mid-1930s, though he did not (like his friends Edward Upward, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis) join the Party. Well before publication, Auden had become disillusioned with or lost interest in Communism, and he removed references to it from two of the Look, Stranger! poems (“Brothers, who when the sirens roar” and “The chimneys are smoking, the crocus is out in the border”). The second force, love, was to prove more compelling and durable. On the evening he recorded in “A Summer Night,” Auden had a spiritual revelation he would later describe as a “Vision of Agape”: One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues….[Q]uite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened….For the first time in my life I knew exactly…what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The power and meaning of this experience and of love generally (erotic and agape) obsessed Auden through many subsequent years. Such thinking lead not only to the love poems of Look, Stranger!, but also toward an emphasis on developing human connections and communities. This involved erotic love, though Auden recognized its faults. It involved friendships, though Auden realized that this had to mean more than “Our kindness to ten persons” (II 60). The greater goal was the creation of a larger public. Auden’s lyrical self (first or third person) allowed the poet to speak for communities. The apostrophic poems (e.g., “Look, stranger, at this island now”) and his contemporaneous work in film and theater allowed the poet speak to communities. But there was also the matter of how the poet spoke, and this was to have major implications for the development, or decline, of modernism.

Auden’s early poems had been, like Eliot’s, evocatively mysterious. The Orators, with its many in-jokes and private references, was a seriously obscure work. And “obscurity,” Auden came more and more to believe, “is a bad fault” “‘obscurity,’” Auden came more and more to believe, “‘is a bad fault’” (qtd. in Carpenter 116). In his article “Psychology and Art To-Day” (1935), he wrote that art should “teach”; in his poem to Isherwood, he praises the novelist’s ability to “Make action urgent and its nature clear” (XXX 86). Look, Stranger! is frequently enigmatic and recognizably the production of a coterie poet, but its movements toward ready comprehensibility are unmistakable. With 17 resonant phrases, recognizable subjects, enunciated ideas, and light verse and popular forms, Auden took private poetry public. Light verse, in particular, seems a revelation for this volume. Though Auden had dabbled in popular forms since early in his career, the four songs, the doggerel, and the ballad of Look, Stranger!—not to mention the melodious rhymes of two long poems—marked a major expansion of terrain for him. As the volume went to the publishers, Auden discovered in Byron’s rollicking Don Juan “a form that’s large enough to swim in.” The next year he edited a groundbreaking Oxford Anthology of Light Verse, in which he celebrated verse productions that emerge from and for unified communities.Another Time would contain an entire section of “Lighter Poems,” not to mention serious works (“September 1, 1939,” “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” “As I Walked out One Evening”) whose clarity and poeticized plain speech have remained popular down to the present. Look, Stranger! enjoyed a warm critical reception (despite the dissentions of F.R. Leavis and Edmund Wilson), sold through its first British printing of 2,350 copies within six weeks, won Auden a call to Buckingham Palace to receive the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and consolidated his place as the poet of his generation. The book has not, however, fared particularly well since the 1930s. Auden himself plucked out only 21 of the 32 poems for preservation (as compared with 44 of 50 from Another Time), dropping most of the longer pieces. Only a few poems—“A Summer Night,” “Our Hunting Fathers,” “O What is that Sound,” “Who’s Who,” “Autumn Song,” “On this Island”—are anything like well-known. It is true that set beside Another Time’s litany of masterpieces, Look, Stranger! appears an awkward achievement. Such awkwardness was, perhaps, inevitable for a young poet determined to develop away from the style for which he was known, without the easier consolations of dogma or philosophy, and under the shadow of chaos and war. It was precisely the urgency of these disasters, and Auden’s willingness to engage the unprecedented dangers they posed to himself, his friends, his culture, and the idea of poetry, that pushed him away from Modernist exclusivity, hero-worship, and unwarranted difficulty. As the epigraph to Erika Mann reads: "Since the external disorder, and extravagant lies, The baroque frontiers, the surrealist police; What can truth treasure, or heart bless, But a narrow strictness?" (9) Missing My Daughter

Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger, My daughter, as we walk together now. All my life I’ll feel a ring invisibly 18

Circle this bone with shining: when she is grown Far from today as her eyes are far already.

Why does Spender like this one? Maybe it is just the image that he can almost feel physically—the memory of his own children holding a finger like a bright ring eternally binding me to them and all the while they are looking and moving far into the future and away. The strangeness of the word-order in that last line capture some of the disorientation of knowing the child who is so close now is rightfully bending all her will, his will on moving away.

Stephen Spender seems always to have struck his readers as halting. Even in the relatively confident writing of his youth, he was the most likely of the Auden Group to avoid the extreme pronouncements to which his seemingly more self-assured contemporaries—especially Auden himself—were prone. Taken as a whole, his poetry appears to reflect a perpetual debate, an unresolved tension over what can be known, over what is worth knowing, and over how he ought to respond as a poet and as a citizen of a modern society. Taken separately, his poems—particularly the best and most representative ones— exhibit an attraction or a movement sometimes toward one side of an issue, and sometimes toward the other. Almost always, however, such commitment at least implies its opposite.

This tension itself may account for the continuing appeal of so many Spender lyrics, decades after they were written and after their historical context has passed. Obviously they conform to the demand for irony and ambiguity begun in the late 1920’s by I. A. Richards and William Empson and prolonged until recently by their American counterparts, the New Critics. In this respect, if not in others, Spender established a link with the seventeenth century Metaphysical wits so admired by T. S. Eliot. The qualifying tendency of Spender’s poetry connects him also with the postwar movement among a younger generation of British poets—notably Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, and Kingsley Amis—who have taken issue with Eliot’s modernist ambitions and with Dylan Thomas’s romantic gesturing.

The tentativeness of Spender’s writing connects with so many diverse and often opposing tendencies in modern literature because it has its roots in the Romanticism underlying all modern literature. Like Romanticism, Spender’s verse embraces a variety of conflicting impulses. Whether to write about private subjects or to take on more public concerns, and whether to adopt a personal or an impersonal stance toward the selected subjects, become central problems for 19

Spender. He finds himself at some times, and in some poems, drawn to life’s simple, civilian joys; at other times he is moved toward the grand actions of politics. Stylistically, he can be seen vacillating between directness and obliqueness, literalness and figurativeness, and realism and imagism. The conflicting pulls of pragmatism and idealism so evident throughout his career suggest a sympathy with virtually all strains of Western philosophy, especially since René Descartes. Underlying this inability, or unwillingness, to project a set posture is the drive toward inwardness seen in nineteenth century literature, a drive at once hastened and opposed by the great Romantics. The legacy of this drive and its attendant struggle constitute much of the drama played out in Spender’s poems.

His writing in the 1930’s suggests the same sort of shift evident in the other Auden poets and in many prose writers, such as George Orwell. It suggests, too, a process more of accretion than of drastic change, since the seeds of Spender’s discontent with the posture of his earlier political poems lay in the poems themselves. Auden’s poetry probably encouraged the young Spender to move from the unfocused idealism of his teens and to write more about the real world. Spender’s poetry thus became noticeably contemporary in reference, with urban scenes and crowds, to the point that he could devote entire poems to a speedy train (“The Express”) or an airship (“The Landscape near an Aerodrome”).

Just as Auden found Spender too romantic, Spender found Auden too cool and detached from the often grim world that Auden had induced him to consider in his poems. Even at his most topical, even when most under Auden’s influence, Spender refused to indulge in Audenesque wit or satiric bite. The characteristic feeling of the Poems of 1933 is one of commitment and seriousness. Where Auden might concentrate on the ridiculousness of society, Spender concentrates on society’s victims and their suffering.

“Moving Through the Silent Crowd” illustrates well the understated poignancy of which Spender was capable at this time in his career. Nearly empty of metaphor, it gains its effect through Spender’s emphasis on emblematic detail and through the development of saddening irony. He frames the poem with his own vantage point, from which he observes the idle poor. The first stanza turns on his intimation of “falling light,” which represents for him the composite disillusionment and wasted potential of the men silent in the road. In the second, he notices the cynicism implicit in such gestures as shrugging shoulders and emptying pockets. Such a scene leads him, in the final two stanzas, to develop the irony of the situation and to hint at a radical political stance. He notes how the unemployed resemble the wealthy in doing no work 20 and sleeping late. Confessing jealousy of their leisure, he nevertheless feels “haunted” by the meaninglessness of their lives.

An equally strong element of social conscience colors many other Spender poems written before 1933. Generally they exhibit more eloquence and metaphorical sweep than the rather terse “Moving Through the Silent Crowd.” For example, in “Not palaces, an era’s crown,” he catalogs those purely intellectual or aesthetic considerations that he must dismiss in favor of social action. Such action he significantly compares to an energized battery and illustrates in a bold program of opposition to social and political tyranny. The short, forceful sentences of the poem’s second section, where this program is described, contrast with the longer, more ornate syntax of the beginning. The hunger that Spender hopes to eradicate is of a more pressing order than that addressed by aesthetics or vague idealism, which he characterizes as sheer indolence. Only in the poem’s final line, once his moral and political ambitions have been fully expressed, can he permit himself a Platonic image, as light is said to be brought to life.

Such insistence on social reform, shading into radical political action, probably peaked in the period of 1935 to 1938, when Vienna and Trial of a Judge were appearing. Perhaps more notable than Spender’s eventual repudiation of the unsuccessful Vienna is the fact that in so many of the shorter poems written during these years, especially those concerned with Spain, he turned increasingly from the public subjects, the outwardly directed statements, and the didactic organization marking the earlier poems. Where his critique of life in England might be construed as supportive of Communism, the picture he draws of Spain during the Civil War largely ignores the political dimension of the struggle and focuses instead on the suffering experienced by civilians in all regions and of all political persuasions. Although a strain of political idealism continues, the enemy is no longer simply capitalism or even Adolf Hitler; rather, for Spender it has become war and those persons responsible for inflicting a state of war on the helpless and innocent.

One of his most effective poems from Spain, “Ultima Ratio Regum,” exhibits a didactic form, even ending with a rhetorical question; but it carefully avoids condemnation or praise of either side. Read without consideration for Spender’s original reasons for going to Spain, his angry and moving account of a young Spaniard’s senseless death by machine-gun fire condemns the Republicans no less than the Insurgents and ultimately centers on the impersonality of modern war, which reduces to statistical insignificance a formerly alive and sensitive young man. Similarly, “Thoughts During an Air Raid” deals with Spender’s own feelings while taking cover and with the 21 temptation to regard oneself as somehow special and therefore immune from the fate threatening all other people in time of war. If Spender here argues for a more collective consciousness, it is but a vague and largely psychological brotherhood. As in “Ultima Ratio Regum,” the viewpoint here is wholly civilian and pacifist. Even “Fall of a City,” which clearly and sadly alludes to a Republican defeat, suggests more the spirit of freedom that Spender sees surviving the fall than any political particulars or doctrine attending that spirit. There Spender derives his residual hope not from a party or concerted action, but from the simple handing down of memories and values from an old man to a child. If anything, this poem reflects a distrust of large-scale political ideologies and action and of the dishonesty, impersonality, and brutality that they necessarily breed.

(10) Piano

“Piano” is a poem about the power of memory and about the often disillusioning disjunction between the remembered experience of childhood and the realities of adult life. The poem is nostalgic without being sentimental; that is, it captures the power of one’s experiences as a child without ignoring the facts that one’s adult memories are selective and one’s perceptions and perspective as a child are severely limited by lack of experience, ignorance, and innocence. Lawrence does, however, provide adequate reason for the intense feeling, and he supports it with concrete, physical detail about the piano and the child’s mother.

The theme in “Piano” is a common one in much of Lawrence’s writing, from short stories such as “The Rocking-Horse Winner” to novels such as Sons and Lovers (1913). How do adults make their peace with the memories they have of their childhoods, and how do they separate memories of actual experience from imagined and invented moments? The speaker in this poem knows that his memory casts a romanticized and sentimentalized glow over the actual events that occurred, yet the power of the past, and his deep need to recapture a similar sense of the peace and protection he felt as a child, overwhelm his rational mind. In Lawrence’s world, the power of emotion is almost always too potent for the power of thought; what one feels intrudes on one’s thinking, even at times one does not wish it to.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. 22

In opening line D.H Lawrence doesn’t name his mother. Says ‘a woman’. At th e start of the poem the memory seems distant and unclear The memory begins to transport him back (he seems powerless to prevent this). Here, the word ‘vista’ means 3rd line. Mentions ‘a child’ (referring to himself). Highlights a distance between himself and the memory he is viewing. ‘tingling’ is onomatopoeic, and adds to t he soft / gentle mood of the opening stanza, accentuated by the internal rhyme of ‘tingling strings’ The child ‘pressing’ the feet of the mother provides quite a close, tender image, Her ‘poised’ feet suggests a graceful, skilful player. The calm, gentle memory is emphasised by the ‘smiling’ mother

The phrase ‘in spite of myself’ suggests the poet is trying to prevent being taken drawn into his own memory. The song is now ‘insidious’, which provides a stark contrast to the gentle music explored in the first stanza. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. ‘betraying’ suggests a conflict between the poet and his memory – his memory now betraying him. The ‘heart weeping’ is a very melancholic and exaggerated. ‘ the old Sunday evenings’ creates a very nostalgic atmosphere. The warmth of his ‘home’ is contrasted with the coldness of ‘winter’ outside ‘hymns’ adds to a comfy atmosphere at home, full of music and may also hint at religious connotations. The adjective ‘cosy’ gives the memory a warm / comforting feel. The ‘tinkling’ piano (onomatopoeia) reinforces this, the piano guides them through the hymns, almost personifying the piano – it’s clearly important for his memory/ For it to be ‘vain’ for the singer (his mother) to burst into song, the poet must feel that these days are truly lost. He can no longer be brightened by the music of his childhood and his mother. Again, makes the poem seem very melancholic. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past. The ‘great’ piano could emphasise the size of the piano, and the large effect it has on his memory. Appassionato suggests a deeply passionate style of playing, or is this more about his deeply passionate memory? Now that he is reminded of the ‘glamour’ or childhood, the poet feels his ‘manhood’ is lost. Glamour is obviously a very positive word The poet’s manhood is cast down in a ‘flood of remembrance’. A ‘flood’ could indicate the sheer power of this 23 memory, which floods away his manhood. How sad. He then ‘weeps like a child’. Ironically, his longing for childhood memory causes him, in his own words to weep in a childlike manner for his past.

B. E. M. Forster’s novel- A Passage to India

Critical questions

1. Themes of A Passage to India ( Relationship

A Passage to India begins and ends by posing the question of whether it is possible for an Englishman and an Indian to ever be friends, at least within the context of British colonialism. Forster uses this question as a framework to explore the general issue of Britain’s political control of India on a more personal level, through the friendship between Aziz and Fielding. At the beginning of the novel, Aziz is scornful of the English, wishing only to consider them comically or ignore them completely. Yet the intuitive connection Aziz feels with Mrs. Moore in the mosque opens him to the possibility of friendship with Fielding. Through the first half of the novel, Fielding and Aziz represent a positive model of liberal humanism: Forster suggests that British rule in India could be successful and respectful if only English and Indians treated each other as Fielding and Aziz treat each other—as worthy individuals who connect through frankness, intelligence, and good will.

Yet in the aftermath of the novel’s climax—Adela’s accusation that Aziz attempted to assault her and her subsequent disavowal of this accusation at the trial—Aziz and Fielding’s friendship falls apart. The strains on their relationship are external in nature, as Aziz and Fielding both suffer from the tendencies of their cultures. Aziz tends to let his imagination run away with him and to let suspicion harden into a grudge. Fielding suffers from an English literalism and rationalism that blind him to Aziz’s true feelings and make Fielding too stilted to reach out to Aziz through conversations or letters. Furthermore, their respective Indian and English communities pull them apart through their mutual stereotyping. As we see at the end of the novel, even the landscape of India seems to oppress their friendship. Forster’s final vision of the possibility of English-Indian friendship is a pessimistic one, yet it is qualified by the possibility of friendship on English soil, or after the liberation of India. 24

As the landscape itself seems to imply at the end of the novel, such a friendship may be possible eventually, but “not yet.”

Though the main characters of A Passage to India are generally Christian or Muslim, Hinduism also plays a large thematic role in the novel. The aspect of Hinduism with which Forster is particularly concerned is the religion’s ideal of all living things, from the lowliest to the highest, united in love as one. This vision of the universe appears to offer redemption to India through mysticism, as individual differences disappear into a peaceful collectivity that does not recognize hierarchies. Individual blame and intrigue is forgone in favor of attention to higher, spiritual matters. Professor Godbole, the most visible Hindu in the novel, is Forster’s mouthpiece for this idea of the unity of all living things. Godbole alone remains aloof from the drama of the plot, refraining from taking sides by recognizing that all are implicated in the evil of Marabar. Mrs. Moore, also, shows openness to this aspect of Hinduism. Though she is a Christian, her experience of India has made her dissatisfied with what she perceives as the smallness of Christianity. Mrs. Moore appears to feel a great sense of connection with all living creatures, as evidenced by her respect for the wasp in her bedroom.

Yet, through Mrs. Moore, Forster also shows that the vision of the oneness of all living things can be terrifying. As we see in Mrs. Moore’s experience with the echo that negates everything into “boum” in Marabar, such oneness provides unity but also makes all elements of the universe one and the same—a realization that, it is implied, ultimately kills Mrs. Moore. Godbole is not troubled by the idea that negation is an inevitable result when all things come together as one. Mrs. Moore, however, loses interest in the world of relationships after envisioning this lack of distinctions as a horror. Moreover, though Forster generally endorses the Hindu idea of the oneness of all living things, he also suggests that there may be inherent problems with it. Even Godbole, for example, seems to recognize that something—if only a stone— must be left out of the vision of oneness if the vision is to cohere. This problem of exclusion is, in a sense, merely another manifestation of the individual difference and hierarchy that Hinduism promises to overcome.

Forster takes great care to strike a distinction between the ideas of “muddle” and “mystery” in A Passage to India. “Muddle” has connotations of dangerous and disorienting disorder, whereas “mystery” suggests a mystical, orderly plan by a spiritual force that is greater than man. Fielding, who acts as 25

Forster’s primary mouthpiece in the novel, admits that India is a “muddle,” while figures such as Mrs. Moore and Godbole view India as a mystery. The muddle that is India in the novel appears to work from the ground up: the very landscape and architecture of the countryside is formless, and the natural life of plants and animals defies identification. This muddled quality to the environment is mirrored in the makeup of India’s native population, which is mixed into a muddle of different religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups.

The muddle of India disorients Adela the most; indeed, the events at the Marabar Caves that trouble her so much can be seen as a manifestation of this muddle. By the end of the novel, we are still not sure what actually has happened in the caves. Forster suggests that Adela’s feelings about Ronny become externalized and muddled in the caves, and that she suddenly experiences these feelings as something outside of her. The muddle of India also affects Aziz and Fielding’s friendship, as their good intentions are derailed by the chaos of cross-cultural signals.

Though Forster is sympathetic to India and Indians in the novel, his overwhelming depiction of India as a muddle matches the manner in which many Western writers of his day treated the East in their works. As the noted critic Edward Said has pointed out, these authors’ “orientalizing” of the East made Western logic and capability appear self-evident, and, by extension, portrayed the West’s domination of the East as reasonable or even necessary.

(2) Images and Symbols used in E M Forster’s novel- A Passage to India

Though A Passage to India is in many ways a highly symbolic, or even mystical, text, it also aims to be a realistic documentation of the attitudes of British colonial officials in India. Forster spends large sections of the novel characterizing different typical attitudes the English hold toward the Indians whom they control. Forster’s satire is most harsh toward Englishwomen, whom the author depicts as overwhelmingly racist, self-righteous, and viciously condescending to the native population. Some of the Englishmen in the novel are as nasty as the women, but Forster more often identifies Englishmen as men who, though condescending and unable to relate to Indians on an individual level, are largely well-meaning and invested in their jobs. For all Forster’s criticism of the British manner of governing India, however, he does not appear to question the right of the British Empire to rule India. He suggests that the 26

British would be well served by becoming kinder and more sympathetic to the Indians with whom they live, but he does not suggest that the British should abandon India outright. Even this lesser critique is never overtly stated in the novel, but implied through biting satire.

The echo begins at the Marabar Caves: first Mrs. Moore and then Adela hear the echo and are haunted by it in the weeks to come. The echo’s sound is “boum”—a sound it returns regardless of what noise or utterance is originally made. This negation of difference embodies the frightening flip side of the seemingly positive Hindu vision of the oneness and unity of all living things. If all people and things become the same thing, then no distinction can be made between good and evil. No value system can exist. The echo plagues Mrs. Moore until her death, causing her to abandon her beliefs and cease to care about human relationships. Adela, however, ultimately escapes the echo by using its message of impersonality to help her realize Aziz’s innocence.

Forster spends time detailing both Eastern and Western architecture in A Passage to India. Three architectural structures—though one is naturally occurring—provide the outline for the book’s three sections, “Mosque,” “Caves,” and “Temple.” Forster presents the aesthetics of Eastern and Western structures as indicative of the differences of the respective cultures as a whole. In India, architecture is confused and formless: interiors blend into exterior gardens, earth and buildings compete with each other, and structures appear unfinished or drab. As such, Indian architecture mirrors the muddle of India itself and what Forster sees as the Indians’ characteristic inattention to form and logic. Occasionally, however, Forster takes a positive view of Indian architecture. The mosque in Part I and temple in Part III represent the promise of Indian openness, mysticism, and friendship. Western architecture, meanwhile, is described during Fielding’s stop in Venice on his way to England. Venice’s structures, which Fielding sees as representative of Western architecture in general, honor form and proportion and complement the earth on which they are built. Fielding reads in this architecture the self-evident correctness of Western reason—an order that, he laments, his Indian friends would not recognize or appreciate.

At the end of Fielding’s tea party, Godbole sings for the English visitors a Hindu song, in which a milkmaid pleads for God to come to her or to her people. The song’s refrain of “Come! come” recurs throughout A Passage to India, mirroring the appeal for the entire country of salvation from something 27 greater than itself. After the song, Godbole admits that God never comes to the milkmaid. The song greatly disheartens Mrs. Moore, setting the stage for her later spiritual apathy, her simultaneous awareness of a spiritual presence and lack of confidence in spiritualism as a redeeming force. Godbole seemingly intends his song as a message or lesson that recognition of the potential existence of a God figure can bring the world together and erode differences— after all, Godbole himself sings the part of a young milkmaid. Forster uses the refrain of Godbole’s song, “Come! come,” to suggest that India’s redemption is yet to come.

The Marabar Caves represent all that is alien about nature. The caves are older than anything else on the earth and embody nothingness and emptiness—a literal void in the earth. They defy both English and Indians to act as guides to them, and their strange beauty and menace unsettles visitors. The caves’ alien quality also has the power to make visitors such as Mrs. Moore and Adela confront parts of themselves or the universe that they have not previously recognized. The all-reducing echo of the caves causes Mrs. Moore to see the darker side of her spirituality—a waning commitment to the world of relationships and a growing ambivalence about God. Adela confronts the shame and embarrassment of her realization that she and Ronny are not actually attracted to each other, and that she might be attracted to no one. In this sense, the caves both destroy meaning, in reducing all utterances to the same sound, and expose or narrate the unspeakable, the aspects of the universe that the caves’ visitors have not yet considered.

Just after Adela and Ronny agree for the first time, in Chapter VII, to break off their engagement, they notice a green bird sitting in the tree above them. Neither of them can positively identify the bird. For Adela, the bird symbolizes the unidentifiable quality of all of India: just when she thinks she can understand any aspect of India, that aspect changes or disappears. In this sense, the green bird symbolizes the muddle of India. In another capacity, the bird points to a different tension between the English and Indians. The English are obsessed with knowledge, literalness, and naming, and they use these tools as a means of gaining and maintaining power. The Indians, in contrast, are more attentive to nuance, undertone, and the emotions behind words. While the English insist on labeling things, the Indians recognize that labels can blind one to important details and differences. The unidentifiable green bird suggests the incompatibility of the English obsession with classification and order with the 28 shifting quality of India itself—the land is, in fact, a “hundred Indias” that defy labeling and understanding.

The wasp appears several times in A Passage to India, usually in conjunction with the Hindu vision of the oneness of all living things. The wasp is usually depicted as the lowest creature the Hindus incorporate into their vision of universal unity. Mrs. Moore is closely associated with the wasp, as she finds one in her room and is gently appreciative of it. Her peaceful regard for the wasp signifies her own openness to the Hindu idea of collectivity, and to the mysticism and indefinable quality of India in general. However, as the wasp is the lowest creature that the Hindus visualize, it also represents the limits of the Hindu vision. The vision is not a panacea, but merely a possibility for unity and understanding in India.

CANDIDA- A comedy of George Bernard Shaw

(3) Candida is a Problem play or, as an anti romantic comedy

Candida, a comedy by playwright George Bernard Shaw, was written in 1894 and first published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The central characters are clergyman James Morell, his wife Candida and a youthful poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who tries to win Candida's affections. The play questions Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a woman really desires from her husband. The cleric is a Christian Socialist, allowing Shaw—himself a Fabian Socialist—to weave political issues, current at the time, into the story.

Shaw attempted but failed to have a production of the play put on in the 1890s. However, in late 1903 actor Arnold Daly had such a great success with the play that Shaw would write by 1904 that New York was seeing "an outbreak of Candidamania." The Royal Court Theatrein London performed the play in six matinees in 1904. The same theatre staged several other of Shaw's plays from 1904 to 1907, including further revivals of Candida.

A problem play is a play in the tradition of realism dealing with a problem--social, moral, political, philosophical and so on. The Norwegian 29 dramatist Henrik Ibsen pioneered this kind of drama in Europe, and Bernard Shaw in England followed suit.

'Candida' is a typical Shavian problem play that handles the problem of love and marriage, and of man-woman relationship. The arrival of the young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, at the house of the socialist clergyman, James Mavor Morell, and his long-married wife, Candida, catapults their happy married life, as the middle-aged Candida discovers herself strangely caught in between her dependent husband and her independent lover. Morell feels increasingly scared of being dispossessed of his wife's loving support without which he just cannot survive as a preacher and a social reformist. He gets apprehensive of a 'calf- love' between his wife and the young poet. Marchbanks, on the other hand, tells Candida of love-romance-imagination beyond the limits of domesticity and expediency. The triangular love-situation, an age-old motif in literature, however reaches its culmination in the 'auction scene' where Candida puts herself to auction, and chooses 'the weaker of the two', i.e. her husband Morell. Marchbanks leaves to dissolve into the darkness of the night, carrying the 'mystery' in his poet's heart.

Shaw chooses an apparently stereotypical love-triangle, in which a married woman falls in an extra-marital affair. But he charateristically turns the table as the woman is neither driven out by her husband, nor does she elope with her unlawful lover. Candida stays back with Morell because he is weaker than Marchbanks, and Morell desperately needs her. Morell is no longer the strong and self-important husband. It is rather Candida who is in full command of the emotional as well as social-economic situation.

The play is set in the north-east suburbs of London in the month of October. It tells the story of Candida, the wife of a first-rate clergyman, the Reverend James Mavor Morell. Morell is a Christian Socialist, popular in the Church of England, but Candida is responsible for much of his success. 30

Candida returns home briefly from a trip to London with Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who wants to rescue her from what he presumes to be her dull family life. Marchbanks is in love with Candida and believes she deserves something more than just complacency from her husband. He considers her divine, and his love eternal. In his view, it is quite improper and humiliating for Candida to have to attend to petty household chores. Morell believes Candida needs his care and protection, but the truth is quite the contrary. Ultimately, Candida must choose between the two gentlemen. She reasserts her preference for the "weaker of the two" who, after a momentary uncertainty, turns out to be her husband Morrell.

In Bernard Shaw and the Aesthetes, Elsie Bonita Adams has given this assessment of Marchbanks, comparing him to two real-life artists:

Though Marchbanks has many of the external characteristics and some of the attitudes of the aesthete-artist such as Sholto Douglas or Adrian Herbert, he does not pay mere lip-service to art, his sensitivity is no pose, and he tries to rid himself of illusions.

Shaw himself describes Eugene's story-arc as a realization that Candida is not at all what he wants from life, that the kind of domestic love she could provide "is essentially the creature of limitations which are far transcended in his own nature". When Eugene departs into the night, it is not "the night of despair and darkness but the free air and holy starlight which is so much more natural an atmosphere to him than this stuffy fireside warmth of mothers and sisters and wives and so on". Eugene, according to Shaw, "is really a god going back to his heaven, proud, unspeakably contemptuous of the 'happiness' he envied in the days of his blindness, clearly seeing that he has higher business on hand than Candida". For her part, Candida is "very immoral" and completely misreads Eugene's transformation over the course of the play. 31

(4) Art of characterization

One of the faults which has been found in the "method" approach to acting is that it permits the interpreter to give the characters traits and dimensions which the playwright did not intend the character to have. For example, it is easy to read depth into the characters of Shaw's Candida - sensitivity into Marchbanks, for instance - and thus not only defeat the playwright's intention, but his very specific (and lengthy), stage directions.

It is important to note, in any discussion of a Shaw play, that George Bernard Shaw was an Irish Protestant who had moved to England at the age of twenty and, at the time of the writing of Candida, had not set foot in Ireland since. Shaw was a quintessential iconoclast, with no great love for England, religion, most institutions and most people. With regard to Candida, this is essential, as all of the characters are very English, three are directly associated with organized religion, and one is the errant son of a nobleman.

There are four themes in Candida: ignorance, brutality, hubris and self- righteousness. Each character displays at least one of these traits, and Marchbanks is master of all. Marchbanks may be the most dynamic, but the pivotal character, in my opinion, is the Reverend James Mavor Morell.

"The Reverend James Mavor Morell, is a Christian Socialist clergyman of the Church of England, and an active member of the Guild of St. Matthew and the Christian Social Union." He is forty years old, good looking, well mannered, and has a "sound unaffected voice... with the clean athletic articulation of a practiced orator... ." His affect on his audiences, especially the women who make up the vast majority, is mesmerizing. The effect of his message, especially on these same women, is nil.

Morell lives for the praise and adoration his oratory produces, and for the perceived love, admiration and respect his calling invokes in his wife. He understands nothing of his real effect on people and, at least until the second act, would reject any suggestion that his path is not absolutely correct and totally righteous. He would never believe that his curate is simply a conceited sycophant, or that his secretary's entire interest is in his person, rather than his preaching. And he firmly believes that his position in the world and in his home is totally unshakeable. Even the three "minor" characters exist only to illuminate his character. James Mavor Morell, in his ignorance, is the quintessentially happy man.

Who are these "minor" characters? The Reverend Alexander Mill is "a young gentleman gathered by Morell from the nearest University settlement, whither he had come from Oxford to give the East End of London the benefit of 32 his university training." He is, at least to me, intellectually dishonest and thoroughly obnoxious.

He has won Morell over "by a doglike devotion." Burgess is a businessman - ignorant, shallow, greedy, bigoted, totally insensitive to the feelings of those around him. (I have difficulty believing that Candida could have been sired and raised by such a boor.) His role in the play is to underscore Morell's self- righteousness by giving him the opportunity to pontificate on his father-in-law's greed. And last, there's Proserpine Garnett, Morell's secretary, who suffers from what Candida calls "Prossy's complaint." Prossy is a lonely, 30 year-old, lower middle-class woman who loves Morell, but would never admit it, even to herself. She provides the definition of Morell's effect on others.

Candida has been called Shaw's representation of the "ideal woman." On the surface she is young (thirty three), intelligent, physically attractive, kind, efficient, sensitive, loving, supportive, a good wife and a loving mother. (It may be relevant that when I, at the age of eighteen, played the role of Marchbanks, I actually fell in love with the production's Candida. I saw only these wonderful qualities. It was only years later that I saw Candida as a whole "person.") Candida is not all of these things. Her kindness is shallow and her sensitivity is limited to those who are immediately important to her. She has made a successful (and probably happy), marriage by shielding her husband from reality. She has shown him respect, while having little respect for what he thought he was trying to accomplish.

Marchbanks is pathetic. In describing him, Shaw uses the word, "sensitiveness," as opposed to "sensitive." It is appropriate, for the only emotions Marchbanks feels are his own. Youth may excuse his hubris - his assumption that he could almost dictate Candida's feelings, but I see no way to excuse the viciousness he shows to Morell, or the disdain he shows the other characters, or the brutality of his demand that Candida choose between them. Marchbanks is a poet because Shaw says he is a poet. But poetry, indeed all art, is a giving, and Marchbanks is a taker.

Marchbanks is absolutely convinced of his own rectitude and righteousness. But he is a coward, and can only express himself brutally. Morell is absolutely convinced of his own rectitude and righteousness, and cannot hear unless beaten over the head. Candida makes Eugene's judgment - she chooses her husband - but not until making it clear to Morell that he is:

1. The weaker of the two 2. The recipient, not of respect, but of Prossy's complaint" 3. Master of the house because she has made him so.

Essays of Aldous Huxley 33

(1) Aldous Huxley as an essayist, critic and philosopher

Or, Beliefs and Actions

Aldous Huxley, one of the great modern thinkers, philosophers, and social commentators of the 20th century, is often hailed as an inspirational figure of the Human Potential Movement and the subsequent development of transpersonal psychology. His contributions to modern thought spanned many genres: novels, including the groundbreaking works Brave New World (1932) and Island (1962); essays, including the volumes The Art of Seeing (1942) and The Doors of Perception (1954); and philosophy, including The Perennial Philosophy (1945), a work often credited as one of the early pillars of transpersonal theory.

Born into a prominent family in England in 1894, Aldous Leonard Huxley was raised among intellectuals, including several great scientists, among them Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas Huxley, who supported and promoted the work of Charles Darwin. Huxley’s mother died when he was fourteen years-old and her death and the death of a sister in the same month were major sources of sorrow within the family. To cope with his grief, Huxley applied himself diligently to his studies.

The boy Huxley was known for his intellect from an early age and focused much of his attention and passion on literature and the written word. At seventeen, the budding scholar was stricken with keratitis punctata, a disease of the eye that left young Huxley nearly blind. Nonetheless, he enrolled at university at Balliol College, Oxford, having taught himself Braille to continue to read until his eyesight returned. Over the course of the next several years, Huxley regained enough of his eyesight to complete his studies and graduated in 1916 from Balliol with a degree in English literature. In his final year at Balliol, Huxley also published his first books of poems, The Burning Wheel (1916), which garnered the attention of literary circles and critics alike. Through these connections, Huxley established a relationship with Lady Ottoline Morrell. Her manor house, Garsington, was the site of many literary gatherings and the location where Huxley met many of his early influential friends including Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence, who would re-enter Huxley’s life in a profound way within a decade of the young writer’s entrance into this salon. 34

While pursuing the life of the mind, Huxley recognized that he would also have to tend to the realities of bodily needs. In order to pay off the debt incurred during his education, Huxley initially took a job as an administrator at the Air Ministry after graduation, but his heart was in the world of words and ideas rather than business and commerce.

Through his contacts at Garsington, Huxley finally joined the editorial staff at the Atheneum in London in 1919. There he wrote essays, travel journals, and critiques, which eventually propelled him into his career as a full-time novelist, travel-writer, and essayist-and later in life he also wrote plays and screenplays during his years in California. Through each literary style, Huxley developed his strong philosophical tendencies. His early work, including Chrome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923), were brilliant satiric social commentary, chronicling the excesses and intentional blindness of the upper social classes of contemporary London. His strong modernist voice established Huxley’s reputation as an important social thinker in post-World War I Europe.

During this period, from 1926 until D.H. Lawrence’s death in 1930, the two men were very close and shared much in common in the way of artistic motivation and philosophy. This early relationship clearly and profoundly influenced the later trajectories of Huxey’s work.

For a few years Lawrence’s influence drew him to a kind of vitalist limbo where, still declaring his faith in reason, he sketched out. . .a philosophy of balanced living that went as far in constructing a moral system as possible without religious foundation. It did not go far enough for Huxley, who reasoned himself eventually into two drastic conclusions. First, he abandoned a cherished tradition of the Huxley clan by recognizing that the process of abstraction implicit in the scientific method actually diverted men from perceiving the realities of existence. This he derived largely from Lawrence. He also reached, as independently as a man of omnivorous reading ever reaches a mental goal, the conclusion that man’s miseries were due to the lack of a spiritual dimension to his existence. (Woodcock, 1972, p. 16).

As noted above, in response to the overwhelming positivism of the Enlightenment era, Huxley, under the tutelage of Lawrence, embraced an “irrationalism,” or a stance grounded in personal experience and corporeal knowledge (Sawyer, 2002, pp. 57-58). This bold stance contradicted the lineage of respect for and pursuit of scientific truth 35 established by his family. However, it took many years and much more searching and experience before Huxley was able to synthesize and articulate his beliefs in The Perennial Philosophy (1945).

Brave New World, one of the titles most closely associated with Huxley’s career was published in 1932. This dystopian, futuristic novel explored the ramifications of a world shaped by technology and homogenization. The grim vision of the future underscored Huxley’s move away from his earlier satirical tone toward an increasing commitment to pacifism, right livelihood, and conscious living that had developed during his relationship with Lawrence (Sawyer, 2002). Within two years of the publication of this novel, Huxley and another close friend Gerald Heard were becoming so committed to the pacifist movement in Europe as to give public speeches. During the dark days of the rise of Hitler, Huxley’s social commentary seemed almost prophetic in its nature.

The relationship between Huxley and Heard brought profound change into each man’s life. Deeply intellectual, thoughtful, and committed to being of service in the world, the pair often exchanged ideas and served as rigorous sounding boards for the other’s work. Heard also introduced Huxley to meditation and yoga, initially as practices to improve Huxley’s chronic ill heath and insomnia. Through this inner work, Huxley’s spirituality began to blossom and much of his philosophical framework began to shift from commenting on the actions, foibles, and mistakes of institutions and the State, to explorations on the individual. “Both Huxley and Heard had increasingly come to believe that the most overlooked cure for social problems is actually the improvement of the individual citizen, and that cultures are only expressions of the collective consciousness of their people” (Sawyer, 2002, p. 95). This shift in Huxley’s philosophy further influenced the direction of both his spiritual path and his writing.

In 1937, at the dawn of World War II, Huxley, his wife, Maria, and Heard embarked on a trip to the United States which had profound impact upon the trajectory of the latter half of Huxley’s life. The two men toured the country in support of pacifism and the tour was primarily a success. Upon his return to Los Angeles, Huxley took work as a screenwriter which gave him entree into the inner circles of Hollywood society and income to support his other pursuits. 36

From his inquiry into meditative practices, Huxley had developed a keen interest in mysticism and yearned to understand the concepts of enlightenment and unity with the divine. Huxley aligned himself with the Vedanta Society of Southern California and began a meditation practice under the guidance of the guru Swami Prabhavananda. Even though Huxley maintained ambivalence with regard to the adoption of a guru, he nonetheless strove to master his practice (Sawyer, 2002, p. 114).

By 1942, Huxley was loosely associated with the Vedanta Society, but had become closely aligned with Jiddu Krishnamurti, a contemporary mystic who shared Huxley’s resistance to formalized, institutional religion, but embraced the concept of an individual spiritual path for each person. The relationship between the two men further influenced Huxley’s burgeoning philosophical stance, which ultimately led to the publication of The Perennial Philosophy (1945). This treatise captured Huxley’s perspectives on mysticism: that there are experiences and aspects of practice common among mystics from all of the world’s religions and spiritual practices which reinforce the validity and importance of spiritual practice. Huxley describes his philosophy as:

The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being — the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions (Huxley, 1945, p. vii).

In his own lifetime, Huxley held firm to his beliefs regarding the common path of the mystic and devoted the rest of his life to pursuing his own spiritual growth. In 1952, Huxley became aware of the pioneers in the scientific and experiential study of the use of psychedelic substances as catalysts for psychological transformation and healing. Among this group was Dr. Humphry Osmond, a researcher using mescaline in his studies. Huxley befriended the scientist and eventually became one of Osmond’s research subjects.

Most of the early psychedelic research had been conducted on people with severe mental disturbances, so Huxley’s participation gave 37 insight into the effects that psychoactive substances would have on those people engaged in spiritual practice and interested in mysticism. The results of this initial experiment were reported in Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception (1954), which later became popular among the youth culture of the 1960. However Huxley’s research was by no means taken up in a blithe manner. The seriousness and devotion to keenly observe his own processes as he ingested psychoactive substances marked Huxley’s belief that, as Sawyer (2002) quotes a letter of Huxley’s, “the experience is so transcendentally important that it is in no circumstances a thing to be entered upon light-heartedly or for enjoyment” .

As experimentation with psychedelics increased over the next decade, Huxley became peripherally involved with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner for several years, but ultimately distanced himself from Leary due to philosophical differences over the value and ultimate purpose of psychedelic use. Huxley explained his perspective and beliefs in his final novel entitled Island (1962). Within the novel, the inhabitants of the eponymous island seek personal spiritual growth which subsequently leads to a Utopian society. The novel, while at times criticized for diminished literary merit in light of his earlier work (May, 1972), is often viewed as a summation of the latter half of Huxley’s life, detailing a commitment to personal growth as the path to greater serving and improving the society.

As noted above, Huxley’s life and work has had a profound impact on modern thought, social criticism, and contemporary movements in psychology and philosophy. As the transpersonal field has grown and developed over the past thirty years, scholars have engaged with Huxley’s material; some embrace his perspectives and have built upon his work, including the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber (1977, 1980, 2000). Recently, transpersonal scholars have initiated a debate regarding the wholesale acceptance of Huxley’s perennial philosophy, noting, instead, the importance of “participatory spiritual pluralism” (Ferrer, 2002, p. 189). Nonetheless, the rich, complex work and ground-breaking contributions to modern thought continue to influence and inspire the study of Huxley’s life, works, and metaphysics. 38

Huxley on THE PLANNED SOCIOETY

Aldous Huxley, in full Aldous Leonard Huxley (born July 26, 1894, Godalming,Surrey, Eng.—died Nov. 22, 1963, Los Angeles), English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence. His works were notable for their elegance, wit, and pessimistic satire.

Aldous Huxley was a grandson of the prominent biologist T.H. Huxley and was the third child of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley. He was educated at Eton, during which time he became partially blind owing to keratitis. He retained enough eyesight to read with difficulty, and he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He published his first book in 1916 and worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. Thereafter he devoted himself largely to his own writing and spent much of his time in Italy until the late 1930s, when he settled in California.

Huxley established himself as a major author in his first two published novels,Crome Yellow (1921) and Antic Hay (1923); these are witty and malicious satires on the pretensions of the English literary and intellectual coteries of his day.Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) are works in a similar vein. Huxley’s deep distrust of 20th-century trends in both politics and technology found expression in Brave New World (1932), a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system. The novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) continues to shoot barbs at the emptiness and aimlessness experienced in contemporary society, but it also shows Huxley’s growing interest in Hinduphilosophy and mysticism as a viable alternative. Many of his subsequent works reflect this preoccupation, notably The Perennial Philosophy (1946).

Huxley’s most important later works are The Devils of Loudun (1952), a brilliantly detailed psychological study of a historical incident in which a group of 17th-century French nuns were allegedly the victims of demonic possession; and The Doors of Perception (1954), a book about Huxley’s experiences with the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. The author’s lifelong preoccupation with the negative and positive impacts of science and technology on 20th-century life make him one of the representative writers and intellectuals of that century. 39

Work and Leisure

While at Oxford from 1913 to 1916 Huxley started editing literary journals and began writing. In 1916, he published his first volume of poetry. He married a young Belgian refugee, Maria Nys, in 1919, and a year later his son, Matthew, was born. That year he also published his first volume of stories, Limbo to mild critical acclaim; two years later he produced another volume, Mortal Coils. Huxley gained wider recognition with his novel Crome Yellow; by 1923 his reputation was sufficiently secure that Chatto and Windus agreed to publish two of his works of fiction each year for the next three years. In 1923 Huxley and his wife moved to Italy, where they lived for four years. While abroad he wrote and published the novels Antic Hay and Those Barren Leaves and two volumes of short fiction, Little Mexican and Other Stories and Two or Three Graces and Other Stories. Huxley's volume of stories, Brief Candles, appeared in 1930, two years after the release of his highly acclaimed novel of ideas, Point Counter Point, which secured his reputation as one of the important literary figures of his day.

After 1930, Huxley's work began to reflect his increasing concern with humanistic ideas and ideals as well as politics. This is most vividly shown inBrave New World, his ironic satire of a utopia, which warns us against the dangers of political manipulation and technological development. In the late 1930s Huxley moved to California, where he became a screenwriter and developed his interest in mysticism, Eastern thought, and mind-altering drugs; he examines his experiences with one of these, mescaline, in The Doors of Perception. Huxley's later work clearly disavows some of the bleakness of his earlier outlook, and seeks a positive solution to the problem of an insane world. Perhaps as an antidote to his despairing sentiments in Brave New World, in his final novel, Island, he depicts a good utopia.

Huxley remained in California for most of the rest of his life. His wife, Maria, died in 1955, and Huxley married Laura Archera a year later. He died on November 22, 1963, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Huxley produced eight volumes of short stories in his career. The first, Limbo, is a collection of six satiric tales about English country-house characters. These youthful wartime stories are full of parallels with Huxley's own life: in “Death of Lully” a woman has breast cancer, as did 40

Huxley's own mother; a suicide like that of Huxley's brother occurs in “Eupompus gave Splendour to Art by Numbers.” Also, there are numerous allusions to distorted vision; the stories' narrators are often erudite and urbane as Huxley himself was; many of the characters are cerebral persons who neglect their emotional and social aspects. The tone of the stories, for all their witty satire, is one of decay and fragmentation, of hopes and values lost. The 1922 volume Mortal Coilscontinues many of these themes in a postwar setting. In this volume appears Huxley's best known story, “The Gioconda Smile,” about a man, Hutton, who fails in his attempt to live a life of reason and restrain his emotional appetites. Also in the volume is “Nuns and Luncheon,” a bitterly sad story of Sister Agatha who falls in love with a wounded soldier she has nursed and who leaves the convent only to be abandoned and humiliated by the man she considered her savior. Huxley's next collection, Little Mexican contains the long tale “Uncle Spenser” that captures the harsh realities of lives disrupted by war. While in prison camp, Uncle Spenser falls in love with a fellow prisoner, a girl half his age named Emmy Wendle, whom he believes he will marry, but after the war he cannot find her. Another notable story in the collection, “Young Archimedes,” about a child musical genius who commits suicide, is another statement of Huxley's common themes of expectations dashed and the difficulty in coming to terms with reality in a disorderly world.

Two or Three Graces contains a novella of that name and several shorter pieces. Kingham, the central character of the novella, has similarities with the novelist D. H. Lawrence, whom Huxley met in 1915 and became friends with in Italy. Kingham is a writer with perverse passions and whose unreason dominates his affair with Grace Peddley, whom he humiliates in order to stimulate his own emotions. The other stories in the volume are about lonely, ostracized persons whose romantic expectations of the world do not square with its harsh reality. Huxley's final collection of short fiction, Brief Candles, is filled with emotionally and spiritually impoverished characters, most notably in “The Claxtons,” about a family of egocentric personalities. The novella “After the Fireworks,” about an aging novelist who has affinities with Lawrence's view, is a satire of Lawrence's philosophy of harmony expressed through sexuality, as the protagonist becomes literally ill after taking a young lover. This was probably the last short piece Huxley wrote and shows his growing concern with the need for spiritually meaningful answers in a disordered and chaotic world. 41

Huxley's reputation was built on his novels and nonfiction, and today scholarly interest in his work is generally confined to his writing in those genres. During his lifetime, Huxley's short fiction drew mixed reviews. With the publication ofLimbo, Huxley was hailed by many as an important new voice that portrayed with delicacy and sophistication the postwar temperament. However, some critics complained about the self-consciously clever tone and lack of depth to the stories. Virginia Woolf, in an early review of Limbo, though, called the tales more than amusing, insisting that when Huxley “forgets himself” his stories can be interesting. The feeling of most critics, however, was that Huxley was not a natural short story writer. While admiring their artistic sophistication, fresh sense of irony, and insightful observation, most early reviewers felt that the tales suffered from saying too much and not staying true to the short story form. Contemporary critics also tend to dismiss Huxley's stories as being of little importance in his literary corpus. They contend Huxley needed the fuller range of the novel to fully develop his ideas, and most of his important concerns are reflected in his longer works. Huxley too felt his calling was not as a short story writer, and in a letter to his father explained that “the mere business of telling a story interests me less and less. … The only really and permanently absorbing things are attitudes towards life and the relation of man to the world.” Huxley's stories are interesting today primarily for the insight they provide into his development as a writer and for his depiction of the social despair of the post war period.

Work and Leisure

With increasing automation and earlier retirement, many are threatened with the loss of purpose in life. Indeed, we may all wonder what we would do if all the things we keep busy with were suddenly to be taken away. Would that not constitute a serious identity crisis for all of us? We must face this problem, because our spiritual journey reminds us that we are primarily called to be and not to do anything.

What we do is of course important to all of us. But there are times when we can’t do anything, when inactivity is forced upon us: when we’re caught in a traffic jam; or obliged to wait in a doctor’s office, at an airport, or in a railroad station; or when we are old and sick and simply waiting for death. When such inactivity is forced upon us, we are obliged to be receptive. That 42 is why we become frustrated, because we have never learned receptivity. Yet our lives ought to be composed of receptivity and activity. This is the root of the whole question of work and leisure.

There is a give and take at all levels of life. We start life by breathing in and we end it by breathing out. In between we follow the same rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. The heart follows a similar pattern, taking in blood and releasing it. A person who lives only at the active level is like someone who only breathes out, or like a heart that only releases blood. That would be a strange kind of life, if indeed it were even possible.

Nevertheless, we should not suppose that activity- passivity, productivity-receptivity, give-take, represent a dichotomy of work and leisure. Passivity is not leisure; neither is receptivity nor a mere taking in. Leisure is not the opposite of activity, productivity, or work. Rather, leisure is the right balance between give and take, between work and rest, and it can therefore be achieved in work as well as in rest. Unleisurely inactivity and of course unleisurely work are perhaps more familiar, but there is such a thing as leisurely work and leisurely recreation.

Still, the question persists: What is leisure? As the balance between work and rest, it is the opposite of idleness because it is the basis from which good work starts and grows. We might say that leisure is the beginning of all virtues in the sense that it is an inner attitude of openness and trust. Its characteristics are “taking it easy” rather than “keeping busy,” of “allowing things to happen,” not “keeping things under control.” Trust is necessary, because we can only let things happen if we believe that things will work out all right, that events and circumstances and things and situations come from a source that wants our good. We can open our hands and receive these things without the nagging fear that they are traps. The difference between this inner openness and a kind of nervous choosiness is the difference between an open hand and a clenched fist.

Thus, leisure is the basis for a full awareness, for as long as we pick and choose we limit our horizons. And, to the degree to 43

which our awareness is increased, our aliveness is increased. That is what leisure is – the amount of our aliveness.

Literature and Science

These are Aldous Huxley's silver tongued speculations on the dichotomy between ""two cultures"", that of the man of letters and that of the man of the laboratory. Though he attacks Snow's ""bland scientism"", he feels 20th century litterateurs are lling in an ivory tower, immune to the wonders of Heisenberg and Einstein. He otes the linguistic Iron Curtain: on one side, scientific conceptualism; on the other, literary crystallization. He offers examples of woolly-headed warfare. arwin hating Shakespeare, Blake hating Newton. Such paranoid purism must end. ow He prescribes a philosophy of emergence and organization, a meeting between technology and aesthetics, a mutual awareness of man's ""manifold amphibiousness"" and nature's ""multiple causation"", expressing simultaneously a truth both private and public. Like all having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too propositions, it's more suggestive than programmatic. And on some points he's quite silly, demanding that poets realize the nightingale's world is one of caterpillars, endocrine glands and territorial possessiveness, not eternal passion, eternal pain. (As the husband in Ibsen keeps saying, ""Fancy that, Hedda""). Anyway, it's all done with the customary brilliance, though without the customary bite; only the Freudian unconscious gets it, defined as ""an underground urinal scribbled over with four-letter graffiti"". All in all, middle drawer Huxley.

Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and of his absolute ideas; and it is impossible to deny that Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and impracticable, and especially when one views them in connection with the life of a great work-a- day world like the United States. The necessary staple of the life of such a world Plato regards with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working professions he regards with disdain; but what becomes of the life of an industrial modern community if you take handicraft and trade and the working professions out of it? The base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in him, but nurses them, and cannot understand fostering any other. Those who exercise such arts and trades, as they have their bodies, he says, marred by their vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And if one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self and philosophy, Plato 44 compares him to a bald little tinker, who has scraped together money, and has got his release from service, and has had a bath, and bought a new coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to marry the daughter of his master who has fallen into poor and helpless estate.

Nor do the working professions fare any better than trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an inimitable picture of the working lawyer, and of his life of bondage; he shows how this bondage from his youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him small and crooked of soul, encompassing him with difficulties which he is not man enough to rely on justice and truth as means to encounter, but has recourse, for help out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, says Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and grows up from boy to man without a particle of soundness in him, although exceedingly smart and clever in his own esteem.

One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone in honour, and the humble work of the world was done by slaves. We have now changed all that; the modern majesty consists in work, as Emerson declares; and in work, we may add, principally of such plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the ground,, handicraftsmen, men of trade and business, men of the working professions. Above all is this hue in a great industrious community such as that of the United States.

Now education, many people go on to say, is still mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or philosophical class were alone in honour, and the really useful part of the community were slaves. It is an education fitted for persons of leisure in such a community. This education passed from Greece and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in honour, and where the really useful and working part of the community, though not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were practically not much better off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is, people end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious modern community, where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be considered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own great good, and for the great good of the world at large, to plain labour and to industrial pursuits, and the education in question tends necessarily to make men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them!

That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, as to plead that his view of education and studies is in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever their pursuits may be. "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others." I cannot consider that a bad description of the aim of education, and of the motives which 45 should govern us in the choice of studies, whether we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat in the English House of Lords or for the pork trade in Chicago.

Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he had no conception of a great industrial community such as that of the United States, and that such a community must and will shape its education to suit its own needs. If the usual education handed down to it from the past does not suit it, it will certainly before long drop this and try another. The usual education in the past has been mainly literary. The question is whether the studies which were long supposed to be the best for all of us are practically the best now, whether others are not better. The tyranny of the past, many think, weighs on us injuriously in the predominance given to letters in education. The question is raised whether, to meet the needs of our modern life, the predominance ought not now to pass from letters to science; and naturally the question is nowhere raised with more energy than here in the United States. The design of abasing what is called "mere literary instruction and education," and of exalting what is called "sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge," is in this intensely modern world of the United States, even more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great and rapid progress.

I am going to ask whether the present movement for ousting letters from their old predominance in education, and for transferring the predominance in education to the natural sciences, whether this brisk and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and whether it is likely that in the end it really will prevail. An objection may be raised which I will anticipate. My own studies have been almost wholly in letters and my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight and inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be said, is not competent to discuss the comparative merits of letters and natural science as means of education. To this objection I reply, first of all that his incompetence, if he attempts the discussion but is really incompetent for it, will be abundantly visible; nobody will be taken in he will have plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind from that danger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon discover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it may be followed without failure even by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite incompetent.

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the object of a good deal of comment, an observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim being to know ourselves and the world, we have, as the means to this end, to know the best which has been thought and said in the world. A man of science, who is also an excellent writer and the very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Birmingham laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, which are these: "The civilised world is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a 46 common result, and whose members have for their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special local and temporary advantages being put out of account, that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries out this programme."

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxley remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the world, I assert literature to contain the materials which suffice for thus making us know ourselves and the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, that after having learnt all which ancient and modern literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life, that knowledge of ourselves and the world, which constitutes culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley declares that he finds himself "wholly unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical science. An army without weapons of precision, and with no particular base of operations, might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life."

This shows how needful it is for those who are to discuss any matter together, to have a common understanding as to the sense of the terms they employ,--how needful, and how difficult. What Professor Huxley says, implies just the reproach which is so often brought against the study of belles lettres, as they are called: that the study is an elegant one, but slight and ineffectual; a smattering of Greek and Latin. and other ornamental things, of little use for any one whose object is to get at truth, and to be a practical man. So, too, M. Renan talks of the "superficial humanism" of a school-course which treats us as if we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers, orators, and he opposes this humanism to positive science, or the critical search after truth. And there is always a tendency in those who are remonstrating against the predominance of letters in education, to understand by letters belles lettres, and by belles lettres a superficial humanism, the opposite of science or true knowledge.

But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people have called the humanities, I for my part mean a knowledge which is something more than a superficial humanism, mainly decorative. "I call all teaching scientific," says Wolf, the critic of Homer, "which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources. For example: a knowledge of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the original languages." There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; that all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific. 47

When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages. I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal; and when we talk of endeavouring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavouring so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall short of it.

The same also as to knowing our own and other modern nations with the like aim of getting to understand ourselves and the world. To know the best that has been thought and said by the modern nations, is to know, says Professor Huxley, "only what modern literatures have to tell us; it is the criticism of life contained in modern literature." And yet "the distinctive character of our times," he urges, "lies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore, can a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century enter hopefully upon a criticism of modern life?

Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which has been thought and uttered in the world; Professor Huxley says this means knowing literature. Literature is a large word; it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. But by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres. He means to make me say, that knowing the best which has been thought and said by the modern nations is knowing their belles lettres and no more. And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for a criticism of modern life. But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin belles lettres, and taking no account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and. administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology,—I understand knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing certain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches,—so as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their belles lettres, but knowing also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. "Our ancestors learned," says Professor Huxley, "that the earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more especially was it inculcated that the course of nature had no fixed order but that it could be, and constantly was, altered." But for us now continues Professor Huxley, "the notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the chief body in the material universe, and that the world is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more, certain that nature is the 48 expression of a definite order, with which nothing interferes." "And yet," he cries, "the purely classical education advocated by the representatives of the humanists in Our day gives no inkling of all this!"

In due place and time I will just touch upon that vexed question of classical education; but at present the question is as to what is meant by knowing the best which modern nations have thought and said. It is not knowing their belles lettres merely which is meant. To know Italian belles lettres is not to know Italy, and to know English belles lettres is not to know England. Into knowing Italy and England there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton, amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly enough to some other disciplines; but to the particular discipline recommended when I proposed knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world, it does not apply. In that best I certainly include what in modern times has been thought and said by the great observers and knowers of nature.

There is, therefore, really no question between Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great results of the modern scientific study of nature is not required as a part of our culture, as well as knowing the products of literature and art. But to follow the processes by which those results are reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to be made the staple of education for the bulk of mankind. And here there does arise a question between those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm "the Levites of culture," and those whom the poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars.

The great results of the scientific investigation of nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much of our study are we bound to give to the processes by which those results are reached? The results have their visible bearing on human life. But all the processes, too, all the items of fact, by which those results are reached and established, are interesting. All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. It is very interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers; while, from the fatty yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which enable it at length to break its shell and begin the world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing with facts, which is given by the study of nature, is, as the friends of physical science praise it for being, an excellent discipline. The appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observation and experiment; not only is it said that the thing is so, but we can be made to see that it is so. Not only does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does actually happen. This reality of 49 natural knowledge it is, which makes the friends of physical science contrast it, as a knowledge of things, with the humanist's knowledge, which is, say they, a knowledge of words. And hence Professor Huxley is moved to lay it down that, "for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education." And a certain President of the Section for Mechanical Science in the British Association is, in Scripture phrase, "very bold," and declares that if a man, in his mental training, "has substituted literature and history for natural science, he has chosen the less useful alternative." But whether we go these lengths or not, we. must all admit that in natural science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a most valuable discipline, and that every one should have some experience of it.

More than this, however, is demanded by the reformers. It is proposed to make the training in natural science the main part of education, for the great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I confess, I part company with the friends of physical science, with whom up to this point I have been agreeing. In differing from them, however, I wish to proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one important thing out of their account: the constitution of human nature. But I put this forward upon the strength of some facts not at all recondite, very far from it; facts capable of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, and to which, if I so state them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing to allow their due weight.

But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed another thing: namely, that the several powers just mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the generality of mankind, a perpetual tendency to relate them one to another in divers ways. With one such way of relating them I am particularly concerned now. Following our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of knowledge; and presently, in the generality of men, there arises the desire to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our sense for beauty,--and there is weariness and dissatisfaction if the desire is baulked. Now in this desire lies, I think, the strength of that hold which letters have upon us.

All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting; and even items of knowledge which from the nature of the case cannot well be related, but must stand isolated in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying Greek accents, it is interesting to know that pais and pas, and some other monosyllables of the same form of declension, 50 do not take the circumflex upon the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, from the common rule. If we are studying physiology, it is interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries bright blood, departing in this respect from the common rule for the division of labour between the veins and the arteries. But every one knows how we seek naturally to combine the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them under general rules, to relate them to principles; and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it would be to go on for ever learning lists of exceptions, or accumulating items of fact which must stand isolated.

Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, which operates here within the sphere of our knowledge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and knowing,--the vast majority of us experience,— the need of relating what we have learnt and known to the sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense which we have in us for beauty.

A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arcadia, Diotima by name, once explained to the philosopher Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men that good should for ever be present to them. This desire for good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our fundamental desire, of which fundamental desire every impulse in us is only some one particular form. And therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose,—this desire in men that good should be for ever present to them,—which acts in us when we feel the impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and human nature is preserved by our following the lead of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify this instinct in question, we are following the instinct of self-preservation in humanity.

But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot be directly related to the sense for beauty, to the sense for conduct. These are instrument-knowledges; they lead on to other knowledges, which can. A man who passes his life in instument-knowledges is a specialist. They may be invaluable as instruments to something beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ them; and they may be disciplines m themselves wherein it is useful for every one to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that the generality of men should pass all their mental life with Greek accents or with formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester, who is one of the first mathematicians in the world, holds transcendental doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but those doctrines are not for common men. In the very Senate House and heart of our English Cambridge I once ventured, though not without an apology for my profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a little of mathematics, even, goes a long way. Of course this is quite consistent with their being of immense importance as an instrument to something else; but it is the few who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk of mankind. 51

The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the same footing with these instrument-knowledges. Experience shows us that the generality of men will find more interest in learning that, when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, or in learning the explanation of the phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circulation of the blood is carried on, than they find in learning that the genitive plural of pais and pas does not take the circumflex on the termination. And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions of such reach and magnitude as those which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of the world were all wrong, and that nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes.

Interesting indeed, these results of science are, important they are, I and we should all of us be acquainted with them. But what I now I wish you to mark is, that we are still, when they are propounded to us and we receive them, we are still in the sphere of intellect and knowledge. And for the generality of men there will be found, I say, to arise, when they have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor was "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," there will be found to arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition to the sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men of science will not do for us, and will hardly even profess to do. They will give us other pieces of knowledge, other facts, about other animals and their ancestors, or about plants, or about stones, or about stars; and they may finally bring us to those great "general conceptions of the universe, which are forced upon us all," says Professor Huxley, "by the progress of physical science." But still it will be knowledge only which they give us, knowledge not put for us into relation with our sense for conduct, our sense for beauty, and touched with emotion by being so put; not thus put for us, and therefore, to the majority of mankind, after a certain while, unsatisfying, wearying.

Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do we mean by a born naturalist? We mean a man in whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly strong and eminent, that it marks him off from the bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life happily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part he did not experience the necessity for two things which most men find so necessary to them,— religion and poetry; science and the domestic affections, he thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I can well understand that this should seem so. So absorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong his love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time or inclination for thinking 52 about getting it related to the desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for beauty. He relates it to them for himself as he goes along, so far as he feels the need; and he draws from the domestic affections all the additional solace necessary. But then Darwins are extremely rare. Another great and admirable master of natural knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemainian. That is to say he related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid off that respectable Scottish sectary Robert Sandeman. And so strong, in general, is the demand of religion and poetry to have their share in a man, to associate themselves with his knowing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that, probably, for one man amongst us with the disposition to do as Darwin did in this respect there are at least fifty with the disposition to do as Faraday.

Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn mediaeval education, with its neglect of the knowledge of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its formal logic devoted to "showing how and why that which the Church said was true must be true." But the great mediaeval Universities were not brought into being we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a jejune and contemptible education. Kings have been their nursing fathers, and queens have been their nursing mothers, but not for this. The mediaeval Universities came into being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered by Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men's hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating itself to their desire for conduct, their desire for beauty. All other knowledge was dominated by this supposed knowledge and was subordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength of the hold which it "aimed upon the affections of men, by allying itself profoundly with their sense for conduct their sense for beauty."

ut now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers have been forced upon us by physical science. Grant to him shalt they are thus fatal, that the new conceptions must and will soon become current everywhere, and that every one will finally perceive them to be fatal to the beliefs of our forefathers. The need of humane letters, as they are truly called, because they serve the paramount desire in men that good should be for ever present to them,—the need of humane letters, to establish a relation between the new conceptions, and our instinct for beauty our instinct for conduct, is only the more visible. The Middle Age could do without humane letters, as it could do without the study of nature, because its supposed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant that the supposed knowledge disappears its power of being made to engage the emotions will of course disappear along with it, —but the emotions themselves, and their claim to be engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now if we find by experience that humane letters have an undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the importance of humane letters in a man's training becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to the success of modern science in extirpating what it calls "mediaeval thinking." 53

Have humane letters, then, have poetry and eloquence, the power here attributed to them of engaging the emotions, and do they exercise it? And if they have it and exercise it, how do they exercise it, so as to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? Finally, even if they both can and do exert an influence upon the senses in question, how are they to relate to them the results. —the modern results,—of natural science? All these questions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence the power of calling out the emotions? The appeal is to experience. Experience shows that for the vast majority of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next, do they exercise it? They do. But then, how do they exercise it so as to affect man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? And this is perhaps a case for applying the Preacher's words: "Though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it." Why should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say, "Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer,

Even if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The attackers of the established course of study think that against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be needed in education, they say; but why on earth should it be Greek literature? Why not French or German? Nay, "has not an Englishman models in his own literature of every kind of excellence?" As before, it is not on any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsayers; it is on the constitution of human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature and art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. We may trust to it for even making the study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally than at present; but it will be increasingly studied as men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need. Women will again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did; I believe that in that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are now engirdling our English universities, I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State of New York, and in the happy families of the mixed universities out West, they are studying it already.

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favour of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed against them when we started. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more; we 54 seem finally to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.

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Part Three Hons. Paper-VII

Indo English Literature: Poetry Selection

(1) Poetry of Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt was an Indian poet who wrote in English and French. In England she continued her higher French Studies. While living in Cambridge between 1871- 3 she attended the Higher Lectures for Women at the University. Toru Dutt met and befriended Mary Martin, the daughter of Reverend John Martin of Sidney Sussex College. The friendship that developed between the two girls at this time continued in their correspondence after Toru’s return to India. A collection of Toru Dutt’s correspondence includes her letters written from England to her cousins in India. Toru Dutt was a natural linguist and in her short life became proficient in Bengali, English, French and, later on, Sanskrit. She left behind an impressive collection of prose and poetry. Her two novels, the unfinished Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden written in English and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, written in French, were based outside India with non-Indian protagonists. Her poetry comprises A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields consisting of her translations into English of French poetry, and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan which compiles her translations and adaptations from Sanskrit literature. A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields was published in 1876 without preface or introduction. At first this collection attracted little attention. When her collection of Sanskrit translations Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published posthumously in 1882 Edmund Gosse wrote an introductory memoir for it. In this he wrote of Toru Dutt: "She brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous."

2. Our Casuarina Tree

Our Casuarina Tree is a poem published in 1881 by Toru Dutt, an Indian poet. Its a perfect example of craftsmanship.In this poem Toru Dutt celebrates the majesty of theCasuarina Tree and remembers her 55 happy childhood days spent under it and revives her memories with her beloved siblings. It still remains one of the more popular poems[1] in modern Indian literature.

The poem begins with the description of the tree. The poet says that the creeper has wound itself round the rugged trunk of the Casuarina Tree, like a huge Python. The creeper has left deep marks on the trunk of the tree. The tree is so strong that it bears the tight hold of the creeper. The tree is described as being gallant, and possibly brave, as very few trees could survive in the strangle-hold of this creeper. The poet then goes on to describe the life that thrives amidst every facet of the tree. The tree is metaphorical said as a giant due to its huge size, strength and boldness. The Casuarina Tree is covered with creeper which bears red crimson flowers which appear as though the tree is wearing a colorful scarf. Often at night, the garden echoes and it seems to be jubilant and the song (of a nightingale) has no end; it continues till dawn. At dawn when the poet opens her window she is delighted to see the Casuarina Tree. Mostly in winters a gray baboon is seen sitting on the crest of the tree seeing the sunrise with her younger ones leaping and playing in the tree's boughs. The shadow of the tree appears to fall on the huge water tank. Toru Dutt says that its not because of the majestic appearance of the Casuarina Tree that it is dear to her heart and soul, but also that she along with her siblings spent happy moments under it. Toru Dutt has brought out the theme of nature as something that shares feeling with humans, that lightens the burden on the heart. The poet continues with a description of how strong the image of the tree is, even when in lands far away. Even in France and Italy (where the poet studied), she can hear the tree's lament. The poet wishes to consecrate the tree's memory and importance for the sake of those who are now dead - and looks ahead to her own death, hoping that the tree be spared obscurity (or that no-one will remember it). She immortalizes the tree through this poem like how Wordsworth sanctified the Yew trees of Borrowdale. She says "May love protect thee from Oblivion's curse'"- by which she means that she is glad that her love for the Casuarina will protect it from the curse of being forgotten.

Our Casuarina Tree is an autobiographical poem . While living abroad, she is pining for the scenes of her native land and reliving the memories of childhood . In the first part of the poem the poet depicts the 56

Casuarina Tree trailed by a creeper vine like a huge python, winding round and round with the rough trunk, sunken deep with scars . It reached to the height touching the very summit of stars . The Casuarina Tree stood alone unaccompanied in the compound . It was wearing the scarf of the creeper hung with crimson cluster of flowers among the boughs accompanied by the bird an hives of bees humming around . the tree is dear to the poet because it is the solo bod between the poets past and present, when she recalls it a chain of pleasant and poignant memories to her mind and again she tastes the flavour of her childhood . In her imagination she is again transported to the golden age and hears the same cries, laughter and noise of her sweet departed playmates, this tree reminds of her childhood friends who used to play with her under this Casuarina Tree.

In this poem, Toru Dutt sings glories of the Casuarina tree and describes it in detail. On the surface of it, it appears that it is all about the Casuarina tree, but actually the tree is just a medium to link the poet’s past with the present. The poet remembers the tree because of the many happy memories of childhood days that are linked to it which are a source of comfort and consolation to her in another country. The poem, therefore, underlines the importance of memories in human life. The tree brings to her mind the memories of time when she used to play under it in the company of her brother and sister, both of whom are already dead. She was very close to her dead brother and sister named Abju and Aru who loved the Casuarina tree very greatly. So she loves the tree greatly.But lost in the memories of her siblings who are now dead, she is looking forward to death as an acceptable thing. The memories of her brother and sister brings tears into her eyes. She hopes that the tree will be remembered for ever as the yew trees of Borrowdale immortalized by Wordsworth are still remembered. She immortalizes the tree for the sake of her loved ones by writing a poem for it.

Songs of Radha The Radha poems of Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), through their depiction of Radha's love for the Divine Beloved, worshipped as a worldly lover, Ghanashyam, forcefully delineate and critique the traditional Indian concepts of love and woman's destiny. Through the depiction of Radha and her overwhelming love for Krishna, 57

Naidu covertly negotiates and sculpts the concepts of womanhood in a nationalist India aspiring to be free. Naidu's female protagonist Radha, is not the silent, submissive and sacrificial prototype of the nineteenth century Angel-in-the-House of the West, but an individual conscious of her choices in life and vocal about her love, a person in her own right more allied to the forgotten traditions of the East. Drawing on the rich heritage of women's writing both from India and the West, Naidu portrays her Radha as a simple village girl, a milkmaid, who is fearless in proclaiming her passion for Govinda, her divine lover; unabashed in face of social censure Radha not only longs for Krishna but recognizes, values and expresses her desire. Notably, Naidu in her Radha poems redeploys the concepts of the medieval Bhakti movement to mirror the unique construction of the feminine self in control of her life charting ways to circumvent her repressed life trapped in the male- defined role of the passive, silent, asexual 'eternal feminine'. The spiritual path of Bhakti with its implied ideas of egalitarianism and lack of hierarchy helped Naidu envisage an alternative, counter hegemonic and liberating space for women. In Village Songs from The Bird of Time (1912), through the imagery of the everyday, grounded realities of women in India, Naidu again picks up the Radha theme. (Paranjape:29) Left alone with her pitchers full of water in the lone long way from the Jamuna river to her home in the village the apparently innocent gullible young girl directly invokes the Lord R?m, an avatar of the dark God of Love, to 'succour' her 'footsteps and guide' her to the security of her home, safe from the travails of the dark road. The utter defencelessness and fear of Radha, the Gopi of Mathura, comes out in the refrain 'R?m re R?m! I shall die'. Interestingly, though the girl speaks in a conventional way, Naidu not only presents her Gopini Radha as a young girl aware of the lurking dangers that lay strewn on the paths of life, but also as an agentive person who by her own volition, journeys alone to the riverfront knowing full well the dangers that might befall her and chooses 'to tarry/ lured by the boatman's song'. Her surprisingly direct address to R?m, as a companion and support in time of need, in the last two lines of the poem, allies Naidu's Gopi with the female Bhakti poets and their strategy claiming the right to personal communion with God. By her studied surrender, an apparently innocent Radha cannily shifts all responsibility of her safety onto R?m thus not only gaining access to Him and establishing her right to claim His 58 protection but also masking her independence under the conventionalities of female helplessness. Her enchantment with the swiftly falling 'shadows of night' and the deep waters of the Jamuna, symbolically connoting the union of the lovers, comes out persuasively: The Jamuna's waters rush by so quickly, The shadows of evening gather so thickly, Like black birds in the sky…

Through this apparently simple poem typical of the mythical tales of Krishna and the Gopis, the complex politics of representation in Naidu's poetry gets showcased as Naidu recreates with a subversive twist 'the archetypal love cry of Radha for the eternal flute player Krishna'- a song of the soul caught in the vicissitudes of this temporal world craving for union with the divine. (Khanna:80)

Song of Radha, the Milkmaid from The Bird of Time (1912) charts a journey from the material to the mystic, the physical to the spiritual. In her all consuming love for Govinda, the Divine Beloved, Radha becomes oblivious of her surroundings-she is so 'full' of the 'beauty', the 'music' and the 'worship' of her Beloved that she even forgets to pray at the altar of her God-she has surrendered all worldly cares, lost all consciousness of societal sanctions, all knowledge of humdrum life; in the sense of surpassing ecstasy and complete abandon that she experiences in her sublimation to her beloved, Radha obliterates all memories of her own mundane self, trapped within the confines of society and customs and gains mystic consciousness - the pure Light of Divinity itself. Her gradual emancipation is powerfully brought out in the cadences of the changing refrain: 'How softly the river was flowing!…How gaily the river was flowing!…How brightly the river was flowing!' The intensity of her ecstatic fervour matches the rising crescendo of the conch shells as if in answer to Panchajanya, Krishna's conch; it is only by identifying herself completely with her divine love that Radha attains a transcendental experience in which desires for divine and human love are fused. Demonstrating an utter disregard for societal wrath, derision, ostracism and mockery, Naidu's Radha consciously allies herself with the women poet-saints of the Bhakti movement, who extolled the devotee's passionate personal love for the Divine: 59

But my heart was so lost in your worship, Beloved, They were wroth when I cried without knowing: Govinda! Govinda! Govinda! Govinda! . . . How brightly the river was flowing! Outraging the society by her scandalous behaviour, her utter disregard for its norms of silence and feminine modesty, Radha flouts society's dictums and openly celebrates her overwhelming love for her beloved; like Meerabai, the legendary woman poet of the Bhakti cult and devotee of Krishna, Naidu's Radha upholds only the supreme independence of the spirit which allows no barriers to corrupt its self-awareness, converting the temporality of the body into a momentary phase in the search for the self. Spurning rituals she stands as an equal before the Almighty, chanting his name aloud in place of inane prayers learnt by rote. Free from inhibitions, Radha flagrantly defies all notions of conventional womanhood and asserts her identity by claiming as her right the equality of beings through direct and immediate communion with God thus retaining her autonomy and independence. The persona of Radha in Naidu's poems breaks out of stereotypes; radically rejects the existing social structure, its norms and values and behavioural modes and transcends the accepted codes of womanhood, the tradition and the orthodoxy that seek to control and shape the lives of women in a patriarchal culture.

Songs of Radha from The Feather of the Dawn (1961) comprises of three songs: At Dawn, At Dusk and The Questin which Naidu rewrites the classical story of Radha and Krishna. In At Dawn Radha speaks about her 'lonely vigil' through the night for her 'King' Ghanashyam, whose 'wanton footsteps went wandering' to seek love in someone else's bower as Radha waited adorned in 'bridal' attire. Like the women poet-saints of the Bhakti cult Naidu too often uses wedding imagery, or even covert sexual images to extol her love for Krishna. Naidu's Radha becomes almost akin to the eighteenth century Telegu poet Muddupalani's Radha of the controversial classic Radhika Santwanam (re-edited,1952) in her intense physical desire for her Divine Beloved which is masked as jealousy as she rages against her truant King for having abandoned her: 60

Couldst thou not find upon my sheltering breast Thy rapture and thy rest? Whose are the fingers that like amorous flocks Raid the ambrosial thickets of thy locks? Ah, whose the lips that smite with sudden drouth The garden of thy mouth?

Her plight and anguish at being abandoned comes out palpably in the lines: What shall it profit to revile or hate Thy fickleness, her beauty or my fate, Or strive to tear with black and bitter art Thine image from my heart?

As her life is nothing without his 'loveliness' Radha pleads poignantly 'Come back, come back from thy wild wandering./ Sweet Ghanashyam, my King!' The erotic overtones of the poem also resonate with some of the lyrics of the Vaishnava poets of the past.

At Dusk depicts a euphoric, ever hopeful Radha awaiting the arrival of Krishna Murari, her 'radiant lover'. Deploying the typical convention of shringar, Naidu has her Radha adorning herself in elated anticipation of that long yearned moment of union: O like a leaf doth my shy heart shiver, O like a wave do my faint limbs quiver. Softly, softly, Jamuna river, Sing thou our bridal song.

The softly flowing waters of the Jamuna river have an added enchantment for Naidu's Radha, the lure of the boatman's song, of Krishna's flute and the union of the lovers by the dark waters of the river.

The Quest has Radha in futile pursuit of her 'sweet lover' Kanhaya, her Flute-player, amidst the elements of Nature; but 'Dumb were the waters, dumb the woods, the wind, / They knew not where my playfellow to find.' In a subversive stance, the weeping Radha becomes aware that she herself holds the key to her happiness and 61

fulfilment: it is not an outward Krishna she seeks but her own self. As she tastes the 'nectar bubbling from [her] own heart's chalice', Naidu's Radha understands the 'secret' that dwells in her self. The 'loveliness' of the Divine Beloved that she sought so desperately mistakenly believing in the poem, At Dawn that 'without thy [Krishna's] loveliness my life is dead'. Naidu's Radha ultimately realises that 'loveliness' is not to be found 'without', but within her own self as Radha herself is a 'part' of Krishna, 'I am of thee, as thou of me, a part. / Look for me in the mirror of thy heart.' It is her own self image that can give her the fulfilment and happiness she desires in her life. This portrayal of Radha as agentive of her own destiny is covertly subversive as it counters the age-old ideal upheld by the patriarchal Indian culture that a woman's destiny lies in marriage and her fulfilment can only be found in her devotion to her husband. Naidu's Radha poems thus try to put forward a new concept of Indian womanhood that values the female self, inculcating in it the principles of autonomy and self worth.

Tiger and the Deer

Devotion and an instinctive dislike for an antiquated rhetoric have worked together with equal force to obscure the poetic status of Sri Aurobindo. The devotees have done their best to discourage critical studies - which Sri Aurobindo himself would have disapproved of - and the detractors have missed the deeper layers of Sri Aurobindo's vocabulary and rhetoric. Thanks to K.D. Sethna, V.K. Gokak, K.R.S. Iyengar, Prema Nandakumar, Sisir Kumar Ghose and R.Y. Deshpande for their balanced views, which should be our entry points to a world that has been thoroughly misinterpreted by critics and poets like William Walsh, Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jussawalla and their literary friends.1 The true spirit of criticism should be an effort to find what we can get from a work of art, not what we cannot get from it.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) seems to have been a victim of changing trends between two ages. He changed his prose style from 1926 onwards, but he could not or did not wish to write poetry like Eliot or Yeats in the last fifty years of his life. There were three reasons for his choice or behind his incapacity. Firstly, he wished to be an original poet. Secondly, he was the first Indian poet 62 who tried to fuse an Indian sensibility with the English language. Lastly, he wished the spirit of Sanskrit to enter into the character of the English language.

Call it modem or antiquated, he was creating a tradition. I agree with K.R.S. Iyengar when he says:

Without question, Sri Aurobindo is the one incontestably outstanding figure in Indo-Anglian literature. Tagore, no doubt, holds a comparable position in modem Bengali literature.2

The linking with Tagore suggests that Sri Aurobindo too is the maker of a new tradition in Indian literature. His theory of poetry is both revivalist and dynamic. He looks back to the past in search of the lost word, the mantra, which had once dropped from the lips of the ancient rishi, but he also looks ahead anticipating a greater utterance in the mystic poetry of tomorrow. Fascinated by his contemporaries and immediate predecessors like Tagore, Whitman and Carpenter, he sees a further evolution of mantric poetry (poetry of incantation, hymn, prayer and magic) in the days ahead of him. Poetry, like everything else, evolves. Sisir Kumar Ghose was both apprehensive and optimistic:

Contrasted with the 'disinherited minds' that crowd the modem scene Sri Aurobindo reveals, no doubt, an antique cast. To many he would seem to belong to a tradition, a mode of self-expression, which is hard to accept or to continue. (This of course is a convenient error). All in all, he seems to stand outside the mainstream of modem poetry or what has imposed itself as the mainstream. Perhaps we are in for a revaluation or revolution of the Word. Poetry such as Sri Aurobindo's might help in that cleaning-up operation.3

Sri Aurobindo, a believer in Art for Art's sake and Art for Life's sake at the same time, believed that poetry is the highest form of art and he wished to keep it at the centre of human knowledge and action, as the captain of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery, a mystic fire carrying us forward on the long high road to timelessness. soundless paws of grandeur and murder

It is not “soundless paws” that is noteworthy but ‘of grandeur and murder” ,which at once evokes an ambivalence ,that is almost philosophical. Grandeur comes first or murder? Murder is banal, a deliberate act of killing that does not make the tiger any more grand than any common carnivore but there is a grandeur in its “burning bright” form(“tiger,tiger burning bright” of Blake),in 63 the beauty of the beast in the green heart of the forest, in its importance in the grand design of the forest.Thegrandeur transforms “murder ” into an activity that the tiger performs as a key role holder in the forest’s scheme of things.

In the forest’s coolness and shadow

A beautiful usage in which “shadow” becomes part of “coolness” but is much more than contributor to coolness , a visual image of the trees casting their shadows on the forest floor combined with a tactile image of their coolness i.e leaves filtering both light and heat of the sun.

The wind slipped through the leaves as if afraid lest its voice and the noise of its steps perturbs the pitiless Splendor

-*-Another beautiful image. I love the wind slipping through the leaves.Try to imagine a gentle breeze entering the latticed foliage of the trees without shaking the branches and blowing on the dry leaves of the forest floor.Even the wind is terrified of the pitiless Splendor.

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Nissim Ezekiel as a modern Indian Poet

Nissim Ezekiel is one of the most popular and eminent Indian poets of the Post-Independence Era. Unlike the earlier poets, he is a poet of urban landscape employing irony and wit to expose the various ugly aspects of city life with its squalid surroundings, slums, loneliness, neurosis and frustration. The city is “a living hell” and “Like a passion burns.” Unlike Baudlaire’s dry self-lacerating despair, Ezekiel is sympathetic but scrutinizing. He loves the city despite its ugliness and thus adopts a paradoxical approach bringing together contrary attitudes and harmonizing them.

In the poem “Island” he frankly confesses though Bombay is a pleasure island of “slums and skyscrapers”.

“I cannot leave the island

I was born here and belong 64

Even now a host of miracles

Hurries me to daily business——”

As a typical Indian Poet, he vividly portrays the sufferings and problems of the common people. In “India” and “Entertainment” the poverty of people is movingly picturised.

As a poet of human relations Ezekiel raises or sublimates the common place and ordinary lives and incidents to the level of highest poetry. In “Night of the Scorpion” he juxtaposes in an effective way the various responses of typical Indian villagers restricted by their superstitions and belief in destiny. In “Boss” the mechanical life of a big official is described in terms of mechanical objects. In “The Truth about Dhanya” a typical Indian Beggar is portrayed.

“His old skin/is like the ground

on which he sleeps/

So, also his rags.”

The great human agony, the official indifference and apathy for the victims of the flood are highlighted with a touch of satire in “The Truth about the Floods”. Ezekiel’s most famous volume of poems. “The Unfinished man” reveals him as a great poet of human relations. In “A poem of Dedication”, which may be regarded as the poet’s manifesto, he expresses his modest objectives without aspiring for God-Like super human powers.

“I do not want the Yogi’s concentration

I do not want the perfect charity

Of saints or the tyrant’s endless power

I want a human balance humanly

Acquired fruitfully.” 65

The poet expresses his aversion for hypocrisy and pretensions in every field including religion and poetry. In “Rural Site” the exploitation of superstitious villagers is depicted. The hypocrisy of Indian gurus and Saints is revealed in “Guru”. In “The Visitor” the poet ridicules the Indian Superstition about the cawing of the crow and drives home the truth that miracles do not take place in real word. His disgust for dull and stupid conversation of the so-called polite society without genuine feeling is clearly brought out in poems like “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S.” He denounces mass civilization and regrets for the loss of minority and folk cultures with their unique and distinct features.

Unlike other Indian poets who exult in religious mysticism, Ezekiel prefers “a poetry of human expression.” Though he was an atheist and rationalist from 1942 to 1967, in April 1967 he had his first LSD trip - the voyage of discovery to the centre of life.” In his later poetry the religious feelings found expression without vague mysticism. Like Eliot he is a religious humanist deeply involved with moral concerns rather than outward show of orthodox devotion. Ezekiel thinks that spiritual growth comes only when man has liberated himself from all falsities, shams and pretensions. In this aspect he is one of the modern Indian poets who view religion in broader moral perspective.

The “Poster Poems” and “Hymns in darkness” the poet’s mood is one of reverence and submission. The poet looks to God for the resolution of all his doubts and problems. He speaks to God informally like a friend with an undertone of mocking and flippancy.

“From this human way of life

Who can rescue man

If not his maker? 66

Do thy duty, Lord.

Confiscate my passport, Lord,

I do not want to go abroad

Let me find my song

Where I belong.

Like other modern Indian poets, Ezekiel treats the theme of love and sex in a bold and frank manner. As Linda Hess says “He is a poet of the body…who has explored sexual love in all its myriad forms and varieties, but always there is an attempt to transcend the physical act of sex and to transform it into something spiritual, something nobler and higher….” Like Donne and other metaphysical poets he tries to depict the tension between the opposite poles of physical and spiritual love which ultimately finds fulfilment in lasting relationship of domestic harmony. According to Ezekiel life is made up of compromises. In “Declaration” he shows a Donne-like concern for the body and stresses that our natural instincts and impulses must be gratified. He is both a Psychologist and a poet of the body.

Though Ezekiel has been criticized as being not authentically Indian on account of his Jewish background, and urban outlook, he could see the essential India in the urban climate of Bombay where he was born and brought up. As he said the Indian writers “Have to make a synthesis between ancient and modern cultures”. In his own poems he tried to achieve a remarkable cultural synthesis between the Jewish and the Indian, the western and the Eastern, and the urban and the rural. In “Background Casually” he says: “I have made my commitments now / This is one; to stay where I am.

In his own words “My background makes me a natural outsider; circumstances and decisions relate me to India”. 67

Like other Indian poets, Ezekiel tried to achieve a cross-cultural harmonization not just by having an intellectual perspective but by having proper sensibility to know the basic human issues. He avoided both “the sophistication of the rootless” and “the parochialism of the native”. Though he has not inherited the great classical tradition of India, of Vedas and Upanishads, he availed himself of the composite culture of India to which he belongs.

Ezekiel is entirely Indian not only in his sensibility but also in proper use of Indian English to depict characteristic Indian attitudes. In the “Very Indian poem in English” the common mistakes committed by Indians in using English and other Indianisms are freely employed to create the typical Indian flavor with an artistic purpose in a realistic way. In “Goodbye party for Miss Pushpa T.S.” Ezekiel parodies the typical way of English used by the modern westernized ladies to expose their pretensions, affected manners and lack of ideals. The use of common Hindi words – Guru, Ashram, Burkha, Pan, Mantra—, syntactical peculiarities, vernacular words, and imagery drawn from the common senses and sights of India make him essentially an Indian poet in his sensibility.

Ezekiel fashioned his own style which is terse, clear, simple and precise with contemporary idiom and colloquial words assuming a new meaning and emotive significance in poetic contexts. His imagery and symbolism are functional and not merely decorative. He has a fine sense of metrical ability using effective rhyme and subtle use of rhythm in his singing lines to achieve different effects. In this aspect he may be compared to great poets like Eliot and Auden.

To sum up, Ezekiel’s poetry shows all the typical features of a modern Indian poet in thematic variety, use of symbolism, awareness of social and human problems, depiction of common people, portrayal of colorful and varied cultures, religions and professions, sense of alienation and 68 search for identity along with satirical and witty remarks on drawbacks in society with sincere presentation of urban problems and views on human relationships and interests with a sympathetic and harmonizing outlook. His style and verse add more effects to his subjects. In the bulk of his poetry he affirms that he is very much an Indian and that his roots lie deep in India.

Finally like a typical Indian Poet with a universal vision he sincerely prays for doing human good.

Tagore as a great Indian Poet

Even a cursory reading of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (Songs Offerings) shows its deeply religious and devotional character. The one hundred and three songs in this celebrated book are written in prayers to God and were intended by Tagore as his personal tribute to his maker. Gitanjali has therefore to be valued and cherished as a book of religious poems which undoubtedly lift the reader spiritually and transport him to an altogether different world from the one in which he lives. In numerous occasions in his songs Rabindranath assures many a time that he is absolutely certain that he has been nothing but hollow bamboos, and God has been singing through him. He has been flutes, but the song is not his. It has flowed through them, but it comes from some unknown source. He has not hindered – that’s all he has done. But he has not created it. The paradox! And, in fact it is the power of supreme father.

Tagore’s Have you not heard his silent steps? (Gitanjali No.45) can also be read from above perspective. It is a deeply religious poem. The poet is of the view that God never fails to visit human beings. Whether it is sunny April or rainy July, God would surely visit the poet, the poet hopes

The poem begins with a rhetorical question: Have you not heard God’s silent footstep? The answer is given instantly that God comes, he comes; he always comes. With 69 an emphatic voice he claims that God comes at every moment, in every age, everyday, and every night.

The poet then says that he has composed many poems in many different moods and different states of mind; but all his verses which he has composed and all the tunes to which they are sung always announces the arrival of God who never fails to come.

The contrasting condition of weather, be it environmental or psychological, God never seizes to visit the human son. He is sure to come in the sunny days of the month of April when sweet flowers are in bloom. He is also sure to come in the darkness of the rainy July nights’ riding his chariot which consists of the roaring of clouds.

The poet further states that despite of one misfortune after another, it is God’s footsteps which touch his heart most firmly in order to comfort him; and it is the glorious touch of his feet which fills him with joy.

Thus, Have you not heard his silent steps? (GitanjaliNo.45) is another poem of hope and joy. The poet expresses his sense of certainty about God’s visits to him. God never fails to come, says the poet with confidence. However, the poet does not here shut his eyes to his earthly sorrows and refers to them in the phrase ‘sorrow after sorrow’. The repetition of the word he comes, comes, ever comes’, lend emphasis to the idea of the poem which expresses unshakable faith in God’s concern and love for human being.

Rabindranath Tagore: ‘No, I’m not afraid of death. Death is beautiful, as beautiful as life. I am weeping and crying because better and better songs were coming lately. Up to now I was just a child. Now a maturity was happening, and God was giving me more and more. The more I sang, the more was flowing out of me. In fact, now the veena was ready and the time has come to leave. This is unjust. Now I was feeling ready to really sing!’ 70

An Introduction by Kamla Das

Every work of art that a writer creates or writes actually carries some germ of the writer’s life. There is by any attempt to say something about a poem or any piece of literature is actually an attempt to say something about one’s own self. Kamala Das in her autobiography My Story asserts that “. . . a poet’s raw material is not stone or clay; it is her personality.” This assertion confirms the presence of autobiographical elements in Kamala Das’s poem. Following the precedence of the romantic poets Kamala Das makes her poem an outcry of her personal feelings, experience and reaction to situation.

As the name suggests An Introduction, gives an introduction to Kamala Das not only as a human being but also as a poet. This poem is not merely an autobiographical poem but also a confessional poem. In a confession a person talks not only about himself/herself but also about his or her deepest and darkest aspects of life. The poem is a kind of bildungsroman where Kamala Das gives a vivid representation of her childhood, her coming of age, her puberty and her adulthood. Kamala Das not only gave a detailed picture of her ego but also a catalogical detail of her existence. She mentions her nationality, her complexion, her place of birth and her political orientation within a few lines. Then she goes to talk about her linguistic preference where she mentions:

“ . . . I speak three languages, write in

In her celebrated essay, Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak points out the ability and inability of the subalterns to speak about their issues in their voices. Kamala Das’s poem is also the voice of the subaltern. Here the subaltern are the women, especially Indian women. Kamala Das becomes a spokesperson (well almost) for this suppressed gender that is women.

When Kamala Das sets out to (consciously or unconsciously) bring out the voice of the women in general, she instead of using the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ uses the singular ‘I’ which makes her attempt weak in the sense that instead of talking about or for everybody she talks about her personal experience. However, her experience can be regarded as a signifier of the experience of all women.

The poetess’s ignorance of politics shows the perceived general ignorance of women about politics. However, like any other educated women 71 she knows those who rule the country. This ignorance is however a posture which negates the importance of politics in the lives of the women where a greater system of gender politics is at play. The names of the politicians are remembered as names of the months are which shows the futility of the nomenclature. Very early in the poem Das introduces herself as an Indian, who is very brown. A woman in India should not have a brown complexion which disqualifies her from the prospect of a good marriage since fairness is equated with beauty in our society. Women in India were not supposed to be educated and even if by mistake they must not write, and if they write thy must write in English. Kamala Das is educated, she is writing and that too in English. She has to face many problems because of this. She is criticized by critics, friends, and even cousins. This choice of language shows the rebellious voice of women who choose the path contrary to what the society has designed, Kamala Das refers her choice of her language to be natural to her as roaring to lions and cawing to crows.

Kamala Das here, is perhaps talking about the concept of ‘ecriture feminine’ developed by feminist criticism, where the feminists try to create a system of language that will suit a women writer. According to Helene Cixous, who coined the term, ‘ecriture feminine’ is a system of writing where the imaginary system of language is used rather than the symbolic. Both the terms are here used in reference to Jacques Lacan’s three orders- imaginary, symbolic and real. The imaginary stage is the pre linguistic stage of the human development where the restrictive norms of the language do not operate. Hence the women should debunk the way of male writing and adopt the female way of writing.

Kamala Das negates the taboo related to the description of a woman’s pubic hair and her sexual maturity and openly talks about these issues in the poem. Kamala Das also talks about the problem of marriage. The women in India are supposed to get married early otherwise they might be considered as either bad women or women with defect. Marrying at an early age creates a lot of problem for the young lady whose mind is not prepared for the responsibilities of neither family nor sexuality forced sexual relations destroy the body and the mind of the woman.

The bitter sexual experience of marriage made Kamala Das hate herself and her feminity. She thought that if she could change her gender or her appearance then she might not be subjected to further humiliations. This is the 72 lowest point of Kamala Das’s personality which shows the amount of intense pressure on women. Even in these roles she is not acceptable. The society wants her to be a proper woman who wears sarees and ornaments and quarrels with her servants. This desire for identity on the part of the society comes from the threat that a truant woman poses to the established order of the society.

DAWN AT PURI

Jayanta Mahapatra`s poem "Dawn at Puri" narrates by describing the Oriyan landscape, especially the holy city of Puri. Mahapatra is deeply rooted in Indian culture and ethos with which he is emotionally attached as a poet. Though the language of expression is English his sensibility is 'Oriya'.

In order to appreciate the prescribed poem it is important to understand his sensitive attitude to the native socio cultural practices.Here in the poem under discussion, Puri is the living protagonist for him .Puri is not only a setting but also a protagonist because he presents a graphic description of Puri as a central as a place for the four ' dhams 'or 'sacred cities' but also for the 'math' or the monastery set up by Shankaracharya . Lord Jagganath is the main deity in Puri who is in the form of Lord Vishnu. The way Mahapatra delineates the events and incidents in the poem shows us that he disapproves of what is going on under the cover of tradition and practices. You will notice how life lies like "a mass of crouched faces without names" and you also can see how people are trapped by faith as expressed in the expression "caught in a net ". The shells on the sand are "ruined" the word, "leprous" is suggestive of decadence and infirmity. The poem evokes loss of identity, anonymity, death, disease and decadence. As I have mentioned above, most of the Hindus wished to be cremated in the land of Lord Vishnu. The speaker's mother also had such a last wish, the wish to be cremated in Puri. This is fulfilled by the effort of her son in the blazing funeral pyre which is seen as "sullen" and "solitary" .The poem winds up on an uncertain note like the corpse of his dead mother.character .Here Puri is personified.

At Puri, we find a stretch of beach called Swargadwara or 'Gateway to heaven' where the dead are cremated. Many pious Hindus and widows feel that 73 it is possible to attain salvation by dying at Puri. Mahapatra states: "Her last wish to be cremated here/ twisting uncertainly like light/ on the shifting sands."

A River

The poem A River by A.K. Ramanujan is a tour de force of impressive potency and insightful philosophy and yet a poem characterised by its graceful lucidity and finely honed criticism. Through the poem A River, the poet raises the question of an artist’s commitment to the society. In this poem, the poet has compared and contrasted the mind-set of the old poets and those of the new poets to human misery. Both the poets are apathetic to human sorrow and suffering. Their poetry does not mirror the miseries of the human beings; on the other hand they are concerned with the themes that are far away from the stark reality before them. They write about the beauty of the river in full flood completely ignoring the devastation and human tragedy wreaked by this beastly force. In this poem, the poet refers to the river Vaikai which flows through the city of Madurai. Madurai, reputed for its rich cultural and spiritual heritage, is a well known city in Tamil Nadu. In the poem A River the poet presents two strikingly contrasting pictures of the river: a vivid picture of the river in the summer season and the river in its full flow when the floods arrive with devastating fury. In the summer, the river is almost barren and arid. Only a very thin stream of water flows revealing the sand ribs on the bed of the river. There is also the picture of the river in the monsoon season, flooded and with its immense destructive power yet startlingly beautiful in its majestic flow. Both the old and the new poets have celebrated the beauty of the flooded river but they were not alive to or sympathetic with human suffering caused by the monstrous flood. The poet-visitor, a modern poet probably Ramanujan himself, visits Madurai when the Vaikai is in flood. He was extremely shaken by the dismal scene of utter destruction caused by the river to life and property all around. He is even more stunned by the insensitive attitude and the complete unconcern of the city poets, both old and new, towards this tragic situation of human suffering and fatality. He was distraught that they ‘sang only of the floods’ when they should have rather tried to alleviate the people of their miserable 74 state. Being a realist himself, he takes a dig at these city poets for dodging reality and attempting to flee into a made-up world of fantasy and fancy. The poem A River illustrates many significant features of Ramanujan’s poetry, such as his adept linking of the past and the present so as to introduce the idea of continuity, his effortless depiction of the typical Indian surroundings. The use of wit, irony and humour, and dramatic imagery is distinctive of his style. Using the figure of speech simile, the poet compares the wet stones to sleepy crocodiles and the dry boulders to shaved buffalos. The sleepy voracious crocodiles hint at the impending disaster because of the unhygienic and polluted environment. Probably, the disaster has already occurred because the poet evokes the image of shaven buffalos. In all probability, the buffalos have lost all their hair because of some fatal disease caused by the contaminated water and the environment. The poet paints a picture of disaster and ruin by presenting the dried river in summer and the likely consequence of the unhealthy environment on man and beast. However, both the old and the new poets are apathetic to the bleak and harsh reality around them. Ironically these poets totally ignore the misery around them and write about the romance of the river in flood. The poet says that the monstrous flood had carried away three village houses, a pregnant woman and a pair of cows. These images signify the terrible loss of property (three village houses], enormous loss of human life (a pregnant woman) as well as the loss of villagers’ livelihood (a pair of cows). The people were apathetic toward the tragic destruction caused by the flood; they talked about superfluous matters like the exact number of cobbled steps run over by the flood or about the gradual rising of water in the river. The use of phrase ‘as usual’ suggests the familiarity of the villagers with the havoc caused by the flood. The flood has become a usual annual event and the villagers have become immune to its destructive fury. The poet here depicts a harrowing picture of human struggle and its futility. The twins are frantically kicking at the wall of the womb of the pregnant women to escape from their awful condition. However, the struggle is futile. They also drown along with their mother. The scene is too deep for tears. In a way, the poet implies that for the common man the struggle starts even before his birth and there is no escape from the bleak and dreary life he has to face in the world. 75

The pregnant woman might have dreamt about the unborn children and might have had great hopes and aspiration of them. The drowning of the pregnant women signifies the drowning of the hopes and aspiration about the ordinary people which are shattered by the tragic flood. The theme of the poem is the insensitive attitude and the complete unconcern of the city poets, both the old and the new, towards the tragic situation of human suffering and fatality. We are distraught that they ‘sang only of the floods’ when they should have rather tried to alleviate the people of their miserable state. The poem also raises the question of the commitment of a poet or artist towards the society.

The Guide: A novel by R. K. Narayan

Summary of the novel, The Guide R.K. Narayan's novel The Guide is the story of a man named Raju who comes from a small village in India called Malgudi. Malgudi itself does not exist. This fact gives Narayan's novel the feeling of a fable or fantasy. Raju's life is predicated on a series of self-deceptions which eventually lead the character down a road of confusion, loss of self and then to spiritual transformation and awakening. Throughout Raju's life, he does his best to be whatever people require him to be at any given moment. When he runs a shop in the Malgudi train station, he is "Railway Raju," an extraordinary guide and procurer of all things needed. When Raju meets a beautiful dancer named Rosie, he becomes her lover and her guide as well by helping Rosie realize her wish to dance professionally. When Rosie becomes famous, Raju then becomes "Raj," a man of influence and elevated social standing. This does not last very long, however, and Raju eventually ends up in prison. While incarcerated, Raju again works his chameleon magic, whereby he becomes well-known and well-liked. However, Raju never seems to understand the lesson life wishes for him to learn.

After being released from prison, Raju finds himself wondering what to do with the rest of his life. Raju has no desire to return to Malgudi to face gossip and rejection. He hides out in an abandoned temple on the banks of the Sarayu River and buys himself a little bit of time. One day, a man named Velan appears 76 at the temple and through a series of conversations, Velan comes to regard Raju as some sort of a holy man. Finding the situation beneficial, Raju plays along with the ruse. However, there comes a day when, due to some rather comical miscommunications, Raju is forced to reveal the truth about who he is and where he comes from. Raju believes that this act of disclosure will free him from playing the part of the accidental swami, but it has just the opposite effect. Sitting in the ancient temple on the riverbank, Raju's final incarnation is that of "Swamiji." Raju's metamorphosis occurs when he is finally able to release his need to be all things to all people. He comes to an understanding of what it means to serve others selflessly. His entire life, Malgudi, Rosie, money and fame, all fall away until finally, Raju is left with nothing but the essence of himself as just another man. It is at this point that Raju becomes the saint he has been playing all along. Raju's deceptions prove valuable after all, as he eventually acts his way into his true self, finally becoming able to sacrifice himself willingly in order to restore hope to the lives of others. In the first chapter Raju, who has recently been released from prison is sitting in an abandoned temple wondering what to do now that he is free. Raju is approached by a visitor named Velan, a man who lives in Mangal, a village not far from Raju's home village of Malgudi. Velan has just come from visiting his daughter who lives nearby. The narrative then shifts to the past as Raju remembers stopping at the barber shop located just outside the prison. Raju goes in for a shave and a haircut before beginning his life outside the prison walls. The barber tells Raju that he can easily recognize an ex-convict. The barber tells Raju that he can tell how long a man has been in prison simply by looking at him. Raju and the barber engage in a brief conversation during which the barber tries to guess. When Raju is released from prison after serving two years for forgery, he goes to the temple located on the Sarayu River in his hometown of Malgudi. He thinks prison is not too bad a place, and he is wondering what to do next with his life. Then a villager named Velan shows up and, taking Raju for a holy wise man or guru, consults with him about his sister, who refuses to marry as the family wishes. Well aware that he is not a guru, Raju is evasive, but Velan brings his sister anyway, and after their meeting she conforms to her family’s wishes. So begins Raju’s life as a holy man. He recalls his boyhood in a poor family; his father, who kept a very small shop; and his mother, who often complained of their life. Meanwhile, Velan returns with others from his village after work. No matter what Raju says, or 77 even if he says nothing at all, they bring him food and beg him for words of wisdom. They feel the need for a spiritual adviser, so they make one out of a very unlikely prospect. Raju then reflects on his father’s small stall at the railroad station and on how he built up the business himself after his father’s death. His memories are interrupted periodically when other villagers come to seek his advice. Almost by accident, Raju finds himself appointing an old man to run a school at the temple for the village children. This increases his fame, and Raju begins to bask in the light of his own glory. Later, Raju recalls, he became known as Railway Raju, and people began to ask for him when their trains stopped at Malgudi. Before long, he had become a guide, even though he knew relatively little about the historic and scenic sites in the area. He simply learned from what he heard others say. He called on old Gaffur, who had a car, to act as chauffeur, and soon he was prospering. One day he met a beautiful traditional dancer named Rosie—an odd name for an Indian—and when he took her to see a cobra and watched her do a snake dance he was charmed himself. Rosie’s husband was a cold, distant art historian named Marco, and it was obvious to Raju that she had married him only for social status and financial security. Marco refused to allow Rosie to dance, and he ignored her for his scholarly research. Raju remembers the day he became romantically involved with her.

UNTOUCHABLE

Untouchable, written by the Indo-English writer Mulk Raj Anand, has a simple but very uncomfortable, depressing plot. The novel’s protagonist is "Bhaka", who is an untouchable, outcast boy. The novel is historical in the sense that it touches upon the caste system, which gave rise to the practice of “Untouchability” that was much prevalent in the Indian society. The entire plot gives an account of events happening in a single day in the life of Bhaka. It exposes the harsh life and struggles of the so-called Untouchable people. Bhaka doesn’t like to do toilet cleaning. He wants to study and be a learned man. Much of the novel’s success lies in the revolutionary idea of education of Untouchables. The outcasts were not allowed to draw water from wells, enter temples or basically touch anything, as everyone believed that 78 their touch would make anything impure and corrupt. Bhaka is also mentally and physically abused by the upper caste Hindus. Pandits, or the upper-caste Hindus, are hypocrites as one of them tries to touch Sohini’s (Bhaka’s sister) breasts but claims to have been defiled when touched accidentally by an "Untouchable". In the end of the novel, Mulk Raj Anand presents three answers to this malpractice. Bhaka is offered to accept Christianity that has no caste system, and so in this way he will no longer be an outcast. But Bhaka fears such a religion change, even if that means equal treatment and opportunity to visit a church. After that Mahatma Gandhi comes to Bhaka’s village and educates everyone on Untouchability. Bhaka loves to hear someone talking on behalf of people of his caste. In the concluding paragraphs, a person randomly comes into the scene and informs everyone about a machine (toilet-flush machine, perhaps) that will clean faecal matter automatically, ending manual collection of excreta. Bhaka thinks that this will be a solution to all his problems. Untouchable is Mulk Raj Anand's first novel and it brought to him immense popularity and prestige. This novel shows the realistic picture of society. In this novel Anand has portrayed a picture of untouchable who is sweeper boy. This character is the representative of all down trodden society in pre-independence of India. The protagonist of this novel is the figure of suffering because of his caste. With Bakha, the central character, there are other characters who also suffer because of their lower caste. They live in mud-walled cottages huddled colony in which people are scavengers, the leather-workers, the washer men, the barbers, the water-carriers, the grass-cutters and other outcastes. The lower castes people are suffering because they are by birth outcaste. But Mulk Raj Anand had depicted the hypocrisy of the upper caste people that men like Pt. Kali Nath enjoy the touch of the Harijan girls. Mulk Raj Anand exposes all this hypocrisy and double standard or double dealing. In this novel Bakha is a universal figure to show the oppression, injustice, humiliation to the whole community of the outcastes in India. Bakha symbolizes the exploitation and oppression which has been the fate of untouchables like him. His anguish and humiliation are not of his alone, but the suffering of whole outcastes and underdogs.

The Portrayal of the Lower Class People in Mulk Raj Anand's Novel Untouchable 79

One of the prime concerns of a great author is to highlight the cause of the dumb and the deserted, the lowly and the lost of an adverse society. The author also flings a harsh irony on the snobbery and hypocrisy, ostentation and fabrication of the aristocratic people who, sometimes stoop low to achieve the end. A writer, the prince of the pen, is the true voice of the million mass particularly of the untouchable and the vulnerable victimized by undeserved tyranny and injustice from the time immemorial. And this is what prompted Mulk Raj Anand to present the deplorable description of the destitutes. Anand‘s novel Untouchable expresses his great advocacy of the marginalized and defenseless against their age long humiliation, persecution and oppression. Anand himself observes : “All these heroes as the other men and the women who had emerged in my novels… were dear to me because they were the reflections of the real people I had known during my childhood and youth. And I was only repaying the debt of gratitude I owed them for much of the inspiration –they had given me to mature into manhood, when I began to interpret their lives in my writings. They were not phantoms. They were the flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood and obsessed me in the way, in which certain human beings obsess an artist‟s soul. And I was doing no more than what a writer does when he sees to interpret the truth from the realities of his life.” Untouchable, the author‘s tour de force, peeps into the life of an untouchable, Bakha, the protagonist who, represents the misery and inhuman treatment of the crushed and the have-nots before Independence. It also shows how an outcast has to lead a life meaner than the animals; how inspite of his virtue, he has to tolerate insult and abuse, ―fret and fever‖ some times on cause and sometimes without cause; how he feels like a caged bird that flutters its wings for a free flight. The novelist narrates a single day‘s events in the life of Bakha, an eighteen years old boy. He is the son of Lakha, the sweeper. Through this two prominent characters, the author hammers hard on the caste-conflict; a conflict which constitutes the core of Hindu religion and procures an obstacle in the path of peace and prosperity. Though this dangerous disease of caste- conflict was on its summit before Independence, it is still seen much or less in almost every state of India. The untouchables, the socially isolated people who form the most vital part of a nation have to lead a deplorable and miserable life beyond description. E. M. Forster rightly holds the view: 80

“The sweeper is worse off than a slave, for the slave may change his master and his duties and may even become free, but the sweeper is bound for ever, born into a state from which he can‟t escape and where he is excluded from social intercourse and the consolation of his religion. Unclean himself he pollutes other when he touches them…..”

As the novels opens, we see Bakha receiving so many derogatory epithets by Lakha, e.g. „son of a pig‟ (P.15), „you illegally begotten‟ (P.1), „scoundrel of a sweeper son‟ etc. We also get the detail description of the uncongenial surrounding where Bakha has to live:

“The absence of a drainage system had, through the rains of various season, made of the quarter a marsh which gave out the most offensive smell.” (P.11).

He goes to clean the latrine of Habilder Charat Singh, the famous Hockey player of the 38th Dogras regiment. He works quickly but earnestly and as such Mr. Singh promised to give him a hockey stick and Bakha was overcomed by the man‘s Kindness. Through this episode of hockey stick the author wants to point out the inner urge of the untouchable which seems to be covered with the “dead leaves” or “the sapeless foliage” (P.B.Shelley‘s phrase in Ode to the West Wind). The kindness of Mr. Charat Singh unfurls the layers of dead leaves and thus “the winged seeds” which are suppressed for the ages, begin to sprout and bloom.

In the Well Incident, Anand tries to show the water problem among the untouchables. The feeling of untouchability was so powerfully engraved in the mind of the upper castes that they never permitted the untouchables to fetch water from the public well. They were not allowed to touch even the brook or pond as they would contaminate stream. They had no well of their own because it cost a lot of money. They had to wait hours beside the well had to request the upper caste to pour water in the pitchers. This piteous plight of the untouchables reminds us of the Booker Prize author, Arundhuti Roy, who presents a similar attitude in her debut novel, The God of Small Things. Velutha, like Bakha, in this novel, is not allowed to enter the house of the upper castes. They weren‘t allowed to touch anything that Touchables touched. It is interesting to note that Roy‘s 81

portrayal of Velutha is somewhat different form that of Bakha. The emotions full of rage and anger don‘t find any place in the character of Velutha. He never tries to hammerthe age old norms of society and tradition.

Once Bakha inadvertently touched a caste Hindu in the market. The caste men became so furious that they began to chide him by dint of abusive language e.g. „swine dog‟, you brute‟, „dirty dog‟, etc. Bakha continued to listen to their insults and humiliation but he never opened his mouth. He bent down his forehead and mumbled something. But all his requests fell flat on them. The other man sitting there also began to hiss like a snake. Bakha was surrounded by the crowd of the people. He was so confused that he was dumb-founded. He felt he should run, just to shoot across the throng away from this unbearable torment. But inspite of his earnest apologies, crowd was sadistic in watching him covered with abuses and curses. Fortunately, a Muslim tonga-wallah rescued him from this critical juncture. What an irony! A Hindu humiliating a Hindu but a Muslim consoling him. This episode created a furrow in the gentle mind of the untouchable, Bakha, whose smoldering rage broke like a volcano eruptions:

“Why are we always abused? The santry inspector that day abused my father. They always abuse us. Because we are sweepers. Because we touch dung. They hate dung. I hate it too. That‟s why, I came here. I was tired of working on the latrines everyday. That‟s why they don‟t touch us, the high caste.” (P.58)

It is to be noted that untouchability is one of the greatest evils of our country. The untouchables have been bearing brunt of social persecution from the time immemorial. In the “Manusmriti”, the law book of Hindu social code and domestic life, we see the pathetic plight of the untouchable, who are deprived of gaining knowledge particularly the Vedic knowledge. An untouchable, this book says, has no right to go to the temples; no liberty to listen to the incantations of the Vedas or the other great scriptures. They are also deprived of the right of reading and studying the language, Sanskrit which is supposed to be the richest language of the world. And this resulted in the deterioration of this language which has come to almost a standstill these days. So one of the causes of the degeneration of the Sanskrit language is untouchability and 82

perhaps this is why Mahama Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar, R.N. Tagore and Swami Vivekananda, Maharshi Dayanand – all have given a scathing attack on the casteist mentality of India. Mahatma Gandhi even went to the extent of saying the untouchable “the Horizon”; that is, the man of God. Truly speaking, the caste division mentioned in the Vedas (Purush Sukta: Sukta 90:12) and in the Srimad Bagavad Gita (IV, 13) was not to create breaches among various castes but to run the society easily and smoothly.

The fault of casteism arose through misinterpretation of our scriptures. The Temple Incident of Untouchable flings a harsh and rugged satire on the hypocrisy and ostentations of the upper caste people like Pandit Kali Nath who, though hates the untouchables, yet invites Mohini, the sister of Bakha, to the temple in order to quench his carnal thirst. He makes improper suggestion to her. On her denial he begins to shout – „polluted, polluted, polluted‟. Anand strongly believes in the uplifttment of the downtrodden specially the untouchable. His primary concern as a novelist is to present a humanitarian compassion for the Dalit and the deserted. He himself admits:

“I hope for a world in which the obvious primary degradation of poverty has been completely removed. So that man can have enough food, clothing and shelter to grow up as strong and healthy human beings, physically and mentally and pro-create a fine race to people the universe……. I want this for all men and women, irrespective of race, colour or creed with special provisions for planned health and housing facilities for the backward and extraspecial provisions for the care of the very old and the very young.” And this is what the novelist has sought to express in Untouchable. To crown the effect, he has introduced even Mahatma Gandhi as a character in the novel who delivers a lecture against untouchability, superstitions and other evils fomenting the nation from the time immemorial. Bakha feels delighted when Gandhi gives the appellation of „Horizon‟, sons of God to the ‗bhangis‟ and „chamars‟. Bakha is richly influenced by his words:

The fact that we address God as „purifier of the polluted souls makes it a sin to regard any one born in Hinduism as polluted – it is satanic to do so. I have never been tired of repeating that it is a great sin. I don‟t say that this thing 83 crystallized in me at the age of 12, but I do say that I did then regard untouchability as a sin.

Thus, the speech of Gandhi littered with humanistic compassion and motherly affection acts like the balm on the wounds of the protagonist, who longs for asserting his identity in a caste-dominated societal framework. It is his powerful advocacy that consoles Bakha‘s long suppressed heart fractured by remorse and despairs. Consequently the ray of hope and patience descends in his life.

This brief survey aptly shows that Anand‘s primary business as a writer of fiction is to attack the social snobbery and prejudice, superstitions and untouchability. He seems to urge for an attitude full of love and sympathy for the millions mass living under the poverty line and leading a life worse than an animal. This way his attitude is tantamount to G.B. Shaw and Tolstoy, Balzac and Zola, Sarat Chandra and Prem Chand. In the history of Indo-Anglian fictions the credit at first goes to Mulk Raj Anand who identifies himself with the weak and the vulnerable, the hated and the insulted. From the foregoing discussions, it is clear that Mulk Raj Anand is a novelist with some notions; a novelist who seems to have taken a hammer in his hand to blow hard on the dead customs and misleading traditions, a novelist whopleads for those unnoticed pearls and diamonds which “the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”

KANTHAPURA : a novel by Raja Rao

The story shows the birth of new ideas in old India. The arguments against change which in the Gandhian sense is a change of soul and not simply of caste or social function are made forcefully by reactionaries who point to the disorder, corruption, and arrogance of pre-British rule. As the old government man puts it, the British have come to protect dharma, or duty. Playing upon raw fear in the populace, the antinationalists argue that reform will mean the eventual corruption of castes and of the great ancestral traditions. Although this novel does not have the profound philosophical nature of The Serpent and the Rope (1960), Rao’s most massive novel, its 84 thrust is certainly didactic in that it glorifies the idea of revolt. It is surprising, indeed, that the author was not incarcerated for his views. Raja Rao’s Kanthapura enacts some of the motifs of postcolonialism. In my previous post here I point out that Raja Rao critiques the simple position that the discourse of colonialism instituted a notion of the natural superiority of the colonising race and this was internalised by the colonized. In the second piece on the novel I point to how the novel problematizes viewing colonial modernity as having had a liberating impact on the Indian society. Let me take this reading further. The problematizing potential of the novel extends to anti-colonial nationalism too. In order to examine this let us turn to another dimension of the novel. The emergence of novel as a genre in 19th century India raises the question of whether it is derivative. While there is a debate on this issue, the novel’s role in enabling the notion of nation-state to take shape is an important one. Benedict Anderson has argued that novel is partly responsible for a community to imagine itself as a nation. The novels written in 19th century and even beyond in India may be used to support this claim. While in Kanthapura, the action is restricted to the village itself with none of the characters venturing too far out, yet the village is not insulated against the happenings in other places. In fact, the stimulation for action is not local. The grand events that form the focal points of the novel take place in response to events elsewhere – Lahore, Bengal, Gujarat, etc. The village community moves from an insulated identity towards a national identity. In one sense, Kanthapura chronicles the formation of a national identity within a remote village. This thematic is also supported by the manner in which the village becomes a kind of a microcosm of the nation. The narrative tends towards mythicizing. For example Moorthy’s fast, Ramakrishnayya’s death, the receding of the flood, and nationalist struggle itself are mythicized. The narrative takes recourse to Vedantic texts and Puranas and inserts nationalist struggle into them. For example, in a harikatha, Jayaramachar brings in an allegory between Siva, Parvati and the nation. The three eyed Siva stands for Swaraj. Later Rangamma standing in as the commentator of Vedanta after the death of her father reads the Puranas allegorically, interpreting hell as the foreign rule, soul as India and so on. Shall we say nation is thus constructed hermeneutically? 85

The process of imagining a community – of imagining nationhood – also underlines the homogenising tendency of nationalism. The congress workers, who so vehemently are ‘swadeshi’ and give up anything foreign, unwittingly embrace the European model of nation. This notion requires a nation state to have a singular form. A nation is a community of people who have a common language etc. Thus in Kanthapura, Congressmen including Moorthy follow the same model of the nation-state. Sankaru epitomises this: his insistence on speaking Hindi even to his mother instead of the local language Kannada; his fanatic resistance to the use of English and so on. This conception of the nation informs that of everyone: e.g. the narrator visualises Moorthy {when in prison} to be wearing kurta pyjama instead of dhoti. The Hindi teacher is not from any Hindi speaking region but a Malayali [Surya Menon]. Thus, the very conception of ‘Nation’, which is conceived after the European model of the nation-state, undermines the ‘Swadeshi’ spirit of nationalism. Any pure form of nationhood untouched by colonialism is seriously questioned. Another problem arises when this novel is read as a record of a nation-in-the-making. It would seem to exemplify Jameson’s argument that third world literature is necessarily a national allegory. When we keep in mind that Benedict Anderson’s thesis about the emergence of nation-state is a work on the emergence of nation-state in Europe, Jameson’s argument seems to put third world literature in the past of European literature. This only re-enacts the familiar theme that comes across in the colonialist historiography of Indian nationalism: that Indian nationalism is a learning process as has been pointed out by Ranjit Guha (Subaltern Studies I). This particular view of nationalism characterises Indian nationalism as a response to the stimulus of colonial administration. The view of the history of the colonised society as a march towards the teleological goal of becoming ultimately ‘Europe’ places them always at a past time in relation to the colonisers present time. The denial of coevalness of time is a necessity in the discourse of colonialism. This view of India’s history being bound to Europe takes us to Dipesh Chakravarthy’s thesis that as far as history as a discourse is concerned, Europe remains the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories, including the one we call Indian (Provincialising Europe OUP, 86

2001). Further, he says, as opposed to other narratives of self and community, history is the meta-narrative that looks to the state/citizen bind as the ultimate construction of sociality. Other constructions of self and community speak an anti-historical consciousness. With modernity, history becomes the site where the struggle goes on to appropriate other collocations of memory. In Kanthapura, the narrative in the beginning reflects an ahistorical consciousness. The description of the village life is as a timeless continuum in the form of Sthalapurana. Or the Harikatha wherein nationalist figures become mythical. Whereas, colonialism disrupts the narratives of the community and introduces ‘history’. In as far as the change in the narrative technique, which becomes more linear while narrating the freedom struggle in Kanthapura, history really begins with Europe inhabiting Kanthapura. This is most clearly suggested in the loss of mythicizing tendency of the narrative in the later part when the arrival of newspapers, novels and pamphlets has exposed the first person narrator to techniques of historicizing. This whole reading of the novel harps back upon the exchange between the coloniser and the colonised. The interesting insights offered by the novel are about the immense complications and violence that attend the arrival of colonial modernity in India. The novel highlights with no subtlety the collusion between colonialism and Brahmanism. The manner in which Moorthy becomes an outcaste in the Brahmin quarters with his campaign against untouchability indicates the tension between Brahmanism and nationalism. For Brahmanism, the colonial ruler is not the enemy but Gandhi’s anti-untouchable movement is. The collusion between Brahmanism and colonialism is suggested through the alliance between Bhatta, Bade Khan the policeman and the Sahib of the Estate. Swami, who is waging a war against ‘caste pollution due to this pariah business’, sees British rulers as protectors of the ancient ways of Dharma. Swami receives a large amount from the govt as Rajadakshina and is promised that he would receive moral and material support in his war against caste pollution. While this reading posits nationalism in conflict with brahminism, something more interesting is available if we push our reading a little further. Moorthy’s politics in the village mobilises people of all castes for the struggle against colonisers. In so doing Moorthy radicalises his 87 sociality by visiting the untouchable quarters, and even having milk offered by one of them. Interestingly after this he is troubled by his action and takes a bath. Though he does not change his sacred thread as then he would have to do it daily, he does take a little Ganga water and we are promised that he would do that every time he visits the pariahs. His politics aims at assimilating the lower castes into the nationalist movement. This may also operate as a move towards containment. For example, the discourse of nationalism meets the discourse of religion at different levels in the novel. While Bhatta, Swami and their followers {who have often material motives such as Venkamma) resist Gandhism in the name of religion, in Kanthapura, the nationalists increasingly employ the religious discourse and customs and symbols for nationalist purposes. Religious resources are mobilised for the politicisation of the people. But the customs, rituals and symbols that become tools of nationalist mobilisation are primarily Brahminic: arthi, puja, conches, bells, Vedanta, bhajan etc. They do not include the cultural practices of the lower castes though their participation is prominent.

Thank you! Best of luck1

For further contact- Dr. S. K. Paul Professor and Head Department of English R D S COLLEGE Muzaffarpur-842002 Email- [email protected]