UNIT 3 MICHAEL MADHUSUDAN DUTT AND THE EVOLUTION OF MODERNITY -- - - Structure Obje~ctives Introduction The Hindu College and Michael Madhusudan Dutt A Personal-Intellectual Biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Literary Output in English Michael Madhududan Dutt and Early Nationalism Why Michael Madhusan Dutt Stopped Writing in English Let Us Sum Up Questions 3.0 OBJECTIVES The aim of this Unit is to understand another person associated with Hindu College, Calcutta, Madhusudan Dutt, a student who had to leave the institution prematurely because, as a result of the lessons he learnt there, he converted to Christianity from Hinduism. An account of his life and the new name he acquired under his new religion will be provided. The unit will also give details of his literary output in English, the language in which he began to write as an author. An analysis of why he subsequently switched to writing in Bengali, his native tongue, will also follow the discussion of his writings. 3.1 INTRODUCTION Michael Madhusudan Dutt is often rated as one of the greatest poets between Bharatchandra Ray and Rabindranath Tagore. He was responsible for innovating different forms and types that eventually altered the course of Bengali literature while enriching it tremendously. His contribution to the literary writings in Bengali has been the blank verse, the sonnet form, the first modem comedy and tragedy and the first epic. He is also regarded as the pioneer of westemised poetry and the new drama. His contributions as may have been noticed were largely in the field of Bengali literature. He was born Madhusudan Dutt in 1824 and educated at Calcutta S Hindu College and Bishop's College. He is said to have converted to Christianity in order to avail himself of free education at Bishop's College, (Prasad, p. 18, 1999). These points of information help us to grasp the various shifts witnessed in his writing. They are also of use to specifically underline the important interventions Madhusudan Dutt made in the society of his time. MADHUSUDAN DUTT Unlike Derozio, who was on the faculty ofHindu College, Dutt (then Madhusudan) was in the institution as a student. He amved at the college two years after Derozio departed from it, but came to imbibe many of the same ideas that Derozio had tried to take to his students. An avowed Anglican, he wrote exclusively in English in his early writing years. The chief inspiration for his early writing was drawn from Captain David Lester Richardson, one of the luminaries of the teaching staff of Hindu College in those days. Richardson was a poet, and some of his works were published, including in journals as reputed as the Athenaeum. Besides he was an Michael Madhusudan extremely gified professor whose pedagogy had been praised by no less a man than Dutt and the Evolution Macaulay. With the encouragement of Captain Richardson, Madhusudan came of Modernity into contact with several literary journals of India - all of them journals in English, of course - The Bengal Spectator, Literary Gleaner, Calcutta Literary Gazette, Literary Blossom, Comet, and was happy to see himself published in some of these. His poetic expression, then, was imitative of English models, and therefore largely inconsequential in terms of literary merit. A representative poem of his Hindu College, Calcutta period, goes thus: (SOMVET) (Written at the Hindu College) Oh !how my heart exulteth while I see Thosefirtureflow 'rs, to deck my country's brow, Thus kindly nurtured in this nursery! - Perchance, unmark'd some here are budding now, Whose temples shall with laurel-wreaths be crown 'd, Twined by the Sisters Nine: Whose angel - tongues Shall charm the world with their enchanting song. And time shall waft the echo of each sound To distant ages; - Some, perchance, here are, Who, with a Newton's glance, shall nobly trace The course mysterious of each wandering star; And like a God, unveil the hidden face Of many a planet to man S wondering eye, And give their names to immortality; It is not difficult to sight the shadow of Derozio on the sonnet, especially if one compares this sonnet to Derozio's sonnet on a similar topic: (SONNET) (To the Pupils ofHindu College) Expanding like the petals of young flowers I watch the gentle opening ofyour minds And the sweet loosening of the spell that binds Your intellectual energies andpowers That stretch (like yqur birds in sop summer hours) Their wings to try their strength. O! how the winds Of circumstance, andpeshening April showers Of early knowledge, and unnumbered kinds Of new perceptions shed their influence ; And how you worship truth 's omnipotence! Whatjoyance rains upon me, when I see Fame in the mirror offirturity , Weaving the chapters you have yet to gain, And then I feel I have not lived in vain. , 1 Incidentally, Derozio was the first and Dutt the second Indian English writer to write in the sonnet form so much a favourite with the poets of England. One can notice the absence of dichotomy and conflict in Dutt's sonnet that merely asserts the obvious. The descriptive nature of Dutt's sonnet also points towards his facile perception in this phase of his poetic career. 3.3 A PERSONAL - INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL MADHUSUDAN DUTT Madhusudan Dutt was born on January 25,1824, in the village of Sagardanri in Bengal to Rajnarain and Jehnavi, an educated couple, that ran a prosperous household. When the couple's other sons, both younger than Madhusudan, died, the family moved over to Calcutta, the location of Madhusudan's first formal schooling. Beginnings of Indian Madhusudan attended a Grammar School at La11 Bazar in which, along with other Englislt Writing disciplines, he was taught Latin and Hebrew. After five years in this Grammar School, Madhusudan joined the Hindu College, Calcutta, in 1937. At Hindu College, Madhusudan breathed in the air of rebellion that permeated its climate in the early nineteenth century. This had something to do with the fight against orthodoxy. The deep admiration for things European - language, literature, culture, society and religion - that is evident in Madhusudan's early writings, was rooted in the contrast that the Hindu College pupils perceived between Europe and their own country. The contrast was, however significant since it symbolised the fight of the new with the old. C H Cameron, a member of the Governor - General's Council, records this sense of antithesis even in an essay that earned Madhusudan a Gold Medal awarded. His aversion to things Indian, at least to things Hindu, drove him to convert in 1840 from Hinduism to Christianity, something that diluted the spirit of the struggle he had so far waged. Perhaps, the answer did not lie in Christianity but in the modem, enlightened point of view. The conversion resulted in a rupture between him and his family for a while, and his college, forever. Undeterred, he (now Michael Madhusudan) enrolled for studies at Bishop's College, which he attended till 1847. Around this period there happened a decline in his parent's fortunes. Realising that he would not be able to receive much support fiom them, Michael Madhusudan decided to tap his own potential at sustaining himself by moving, with some Tarnilian friends, to Madras. Soon after settling down in Madras, Michael Madhusudan married Rebecca McTavish, an inmate of the Orphan Asylum to which he was attached as a tutor. They had four children and had a reasonably happy mamed life. In Madras, as in Calcutta, Michael Madhusudan wrote without remission, but most of his writings were still moulded upon foreign models. Some of his writings appeared in The Madras Circulator under the pseudonym of Timothy Penpoem. If his shorter poems were written in Calcutta; in Madras Michael Madhusudan attempted his longer poems such as Visions ofthe Past and The Captive Ladie. One can go into the question of the choice of the long poem. Initially, as we have seen, Dutt gave vent to simple feelings and emotions. His sonnets were responses to some ordinary situations of life unexpectedly presented. This made them sketchy and impressionistic. In the case of the long poems to which he shifted later, we see an urge on the part of the poet to relate disparate feelings and ideas to one another. This was the phase of taking account of the poet's earlier changes and deviations in attitude. Dutt also wished perhaps to offer a rationale of why he moved away from a fight for rationality to an effort to reconcile with the gtven circumstances. At the sapne time he composed a few prose- pieces. Needless to say, all these poems were written in English, as were the few prose- pieces that he wrote. Among these prose-pieces, the most eminent was an essay entitled "The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu", initially delivered as a talk and by-and-by brought out as a book. While in Madras, Michael Madhusudan lost his parents and received word from his friends that his family inheritance was about to be appropriated by his cousins. These evepts made him hasten back to Calcutta in 1856, leaving his wife Rebecca and four chil9en behind in,Madras. Though his first marriage was never dulled legally, he married a second time, within a year of returning to his native city. Michael Madhusudan had three children by his second marriage. In the course of litigation to obtain his ancestral properties, he visited his ancestral village of Sagardanri. His homecoming, apart fiom being a,material necessity, reflected a cultural nostalgia as well. There was now in him a growing inclination to write in Bengali and Bengali only.