DEROZIO’S
SONNETS
Prof. K. R. RAMACHANDRAN NAIR
Tagore Arts College, Pondicherry
[Herny Louis Vivian Derozio was born on 18th
April, 1809 in Calcutta, died on 26th December, 1831 and was buried in the Park
Street Cemetery. His father was Portuguese and mother English. Thus he had no
Indian blood in him. But he was born and brought up in India, he taught Indian
students in an Indian college and the themes and sentiments of his poetry are
purely Indian. So Derozio is, undoubtedly, an Indo-Anglian poet. During his
brief but exciting life of twenty-three years he was a clerk, teacher, poet,
journalist, free-thinker and social reformer. In 1828 he became an Assistant
Master in the Hindu College, Calcutta. However, in 1831 he had to resign the
job against accusation by the management that his teaching and influence had
corrupted the young minds and that he was a rebel and an atheist. Eight months
later, Derozio died.
Derozio wrote lyrics, narrative poems, ballads and
sonnets. The present article is an appreciative study of his sonnets though
there are references to his other poems also.]
The most well-known among Derozio’s sonnets is the
one addressed to the pupils of the Hindu College. Derozio was an Assistant
Master of English Literature and History in the Hindu College, Calcutta, from
1828 to 1831. During this brief but eventful period, Derozio acquired
such ascendancy over the minds of his pupils that not only in matters academic
but also in private concerns they sought his help and advice. Derozio fostered in
them a taste for literature and arts and also awakened them against the evils
of superstition and prudery. He asked them to pursue knowledge and seek
diligently after truth. He was deeply devoted to his pupils and they, in turn,
admired him as their friend, philosopher and guide. In “To the Pupils of Hindu
College” the young teacher-poet expresses his abiding affection and concern for
his pupils, those “young flowers” whose minds are opening “to the freshening
April showers of early knowledge,” He urges them to assimilate the “new
perceptions” and “worship truth’s omnipotence” so that a rational generation
may evolve attaining “fame in the mirror of futurity.”
Derozio’s concept of love has the overtones of the
Romantics like Scott, Byron, Keats and Shelley. For him love is a noble and all-embracing
passion that transcends social and religious barriers. It may be a sudden burst
of emotion as in “Love’s First Feelings,” a dreamy and gossamar concept as in “My
Dream” or a mature passion that withstands the vicissitudes of life as in “The
Fakir of Jungheera.” The delicacy and warmth of love and its celestial energy
to transform the human mind are suggested in “The Neglected Minstrel.” “The Golden Vase” and “Ada.” “Love and song are twins”, Derozio
wrote and it is the woman who sings through the medium of love.
O, woman when she loves, and truly loves
Can bring its music forth-all its sweet notes
Of hope and fear, love’s many griefs and joys.
(The Neglected Minstrel)
Derozio knew that love, in spite of its all
purifying energy, often creates upheavals in the life of man
this is love – a thing of fear,
And doubts, and hopes, and sighs, and tears,
A feverish feeling of the heart,
A pain with which we are loath to part,
A shadow in life’s fleeting dream,
A
darksome cloud, a morning beam. (Ada)
Derozio’s vision of love is tinged with a touch of melancholy and tragedy.
Love integrates but Fate seems to play havoc with the fortunes of lovers. “Life’s
darksome night of unchanging sorrow”1 spreads its gloom over the
refulgence of love. This is so in “The Fakir of Jungheera”, “Bridal”, “The
Maniac Widow”, “Ada” and “The Golden Vase.”
Several of Derozio’s sonnets reiterate this vision
of love. Since Philip Sidney addressed Penelope Devereux through a series of
love-laden sonnets, several poets in England have used the sonnet as a most
effective vehicle for expressing the agony and ecstasy of love. In Shakespeare’s
154 sonnets addressed to a mysterious Dark Lady, the sonnet-form reached its
highest watermark of perfection, both in craftsmanship and thematic felicity.
Derozio’s love sonnets express a deep and often wounded passion and are centred
round an indefinable sense of nostalgia.
In “To the Dog Star” the very sight of the star’s “trembling
light” evokes rapturous love thoughts in the poet. The brightness, loveliness
and etherialness of the star are transposed into the “beautiful and bright”
form of the poet’s beloved and he feels an exultation in the very contemplation
of that most “refined soul/made for tenderness and purest love”. In “Romeo and
Juliet” the poet identifies himself with the immortal lover and through a
process of psychic surrogation exults in the agony, ecstasy and dream of that “consuming
fire of love”. In “Sappho” Derozio resurrects the tragic story of the immortal
Greek poetess whose “love was like the raging of a storm”. The poet is moved by
the fate of Sappho who wrote fiery love poems and when alighted and wronged by
her lover committed suicide by jumping into the sea from the Leucadian
mountains. “To the Rising Moon” is a fanciful and delicate identification of
the moon hidden behind the trees with the poet’s beloved. The ascending “melancholy
queen” is presented as having committed some “bidden sin”. The poet seems to
suggest some unmentionable act of betrayal or momentary lapse on the part of
the beloved. Now, out of remorse she is a “grief-stricken maiden” whose guilt stands
revealed to all the world, whose “hapless Frailty’s
tale” can no more be concealed. The sonnet has several Shakespearian undertones
in its implied suggestion of disloyalty, waywardness, remorse and agony. In
another sonnet2 the poet addresses a fair lady whom he loved when he
was but a boy. The fragrant memories of that adolescent love
sustains him now. The consoling nostalgia of love soothes the poet’s
spirit which is engaged in a perpetual war with a malignant world.
Derozio’s love sonnets exhibit a wide range of
passion and ecstasy. They are the results of his brooding over a deeply felt
personal sorrow at the loss of love or betrayal of love. In all his wounded
expressions of love, Derozio has never betrayed any symptom of malice or
decline in intensity. His is a love that does not alter with the alteration of
love on the other side.
Another important theme in Derozio’s sonnets is an
anguished meditation on the enigma of life. Life’s sorrow, madness and despair
as well as its joys and ecstasies find place in Derozio’s sonnets. In fact, this
is one of the main concerns in Derozio’s poetry as a whole. In larger poems
like “Ada”, “Bridal”, “The Neglected Minstrel” and “The Fakir of Jungheera” the
poet is painfully conscious of the horror and hostility of this malignant
world. Derozio wrote,
Mark this bleak world, and ye shall find
’Tis cold, relentless, and unkind;
The sufferer rarely meets relief,
But, like the yellow autumn leaf,
Is driven by every fatal gale
Where sorrows wound, and woes assail
(Ada)
For a poet so young, almost in his teens, Derozio’s
sensitivity to the shine and shadow of life’s experiences was amazing.
The roses of our life must have their thorns,
And storm and sunshine burst on us alike.
(The Neglected Minstrel)
“Yorick’s Skull” and “Dust” are sonnets that smell
of the charnel. The poet dwells on the “humiliating thought” that man who
prides himself as the lord of all should come to nothing, his “divine face”
reduced to a mere skull. Like Hamlet the poet meditates on the Yorick’s skull,
the skull that once was a face· In “Dust” we are told ironically that “man is a
noble work”; but soon we are confronted with the revelation through a pinch of
cemetery dust that man is dust and to dust he must return. Both these sonnets,
probably, owe their inspiration to Edward Young’s “Night Thoughts” and the
melancholia of the graveyard school of poetry of the first half of the
eighteenth century. Man’s foolish sense of grandeur, his elaborate plans to
stretch out a powerful streak through the darkness of existence, his dilatory tactics
and his ultimate disillusionment are the sources of Derozio’s meditative
lyrics.
The sonnet “Scarce has it blossomed” dwells on the
transience of life’s glories. Hope departs from man’s heart with the suddenness
with which a rainbow loses its colours
Scarce has the sunlight quivered on the stream
Before a black cloud hides that beauteous beam
Each Iris made of rain with many a ray,
Even as you gaze upon it, melts away.
In “To the Moon” the poet painfully acknowledges
the truth that hopes flee from our life leaving behind “thought of sadness in
their stead.” Observing the travails of the world from above, the moon appears
to be pale with sorrow and sympathy, with “a patch of grief on her cheek.”
Derozio’s meditations on life naturally
leads him to a consideration of the other side of life – Death.
Certainly the poet loves life and its several experiences. But
... ...
... .... there’s a strife
My soul has long engaged in –’its
with fate3
With telling irony the poet says, “I must be / Soon in that conflict vanquished.4 For a poet who
was to die within a couple of years at the prime of youth, such utterances
sound like forbidding prophecy. There is a lingering death-wish in Derozio’s poetry.
In another sonnet5 the poet addresses Death as “my best friend.” As
if caught in the grip of a consuming apprehension of his imminent death, Derozio
defiantly announces
It boots not when my being’s scene is furled.
6
This mood of defiance gradually develops into one
of bold acceptance of Death. For the poet Death becomes an ally to circumvent
the tyranny of Fate. In fact, Death is his best friend and Fate his enemy. “Death
my best Friend” is the finest sonnet Derozio wrote on that theme. It expresses
his readiness to accept Death, his intrepidity in the face of Fate’s
blandishments and above all his effervescent faith in the immortality of the
soul.
But man’s eternal energies can make
An atmosphere around him, and so take
Good out of evil………..7
In another sonnet 8 Derozio wisely
accepts the coexistence of good and evil, happiness and misery, joy and sorrow
in our life. Fate leaves our mind vanquished and man suffers from memory
... .... .... . .. Human ill
Is with our nature linked
eternally.
Man and misfortune are twin-born.
A fitting culmination of Derozio’s preoccupation
with death is the sonnet “The Poet’s Grave” meant to be an epitaph for a poet.
The grave stands beside the ocean’s foamy surge holding the ashes of the poet
who died “cold and unmourned.” Nobody would weep for him, nobody would visit
his grave, no pilgrim would worship at this shrine
“There, all in silence,
let him sleep his sleep” 9
“To India - My Native Land” and “The Harp of India”
are sonnets inspired by an intense love for the motherland. Though
by blood a Eurasian, Derozio had immense faith in India’s historical greatness
and destiny. He took pride in being an Indian and lamented that
our country writhes in galling chains,
When her proud masters scourge
her as a dog.
(The Golden Vase)
“To India – My Native Land” is a glorification of
India’s past glory and a self-dedication by the poet in the service of the Mother
who is grovelling in the lowly dust. “The Harp of India” is a lyrical
refurbishment of the faded image of India by recalling her ancient greatness.
In an age when nobody thought of India’s agony under a foreign rule and Indian
nationalism was still inchoate, Derozio sang about India’s glory and misery with
uncommon patriotic fervour. He was the first Indo-Anglian poet to sing of
Indian nationalism.
“Morning after a Storm” consists of two sonnets
describing the placid beauty of nature after the ravages of a storm in the night.
Excellent in their craftsmanship, the sonnets strike a contrast between the
stormy, truculent night and the balmy, bright morning. The poet responds to the
two aspects of nature–the desolation laid by the strong spirits of the
storm” and the freshness and fragrance on her lovely face. The contrast
suggests a “moral lesson” to the poet – an awareness of the twin aspects of
nature, her all consuming power of destruction on the one hand and her
sustaining power of beauty, freshness and solace on the other. The travails of
the human spirit in a world of sin and suffering until it achieves eternal
peace in the sunlight of God’s grace is a hidden theme
in the sonnets.
“Night”, a series of six sonnets, is perhaps
Derozio’s most ambitious and sustained effort in sonneteering. Most of the
major themes in Derozio’s poetry –love, hope, grief, death, oblivion, nature –
reappear in these sonnets. The unity of the series is gained by the device of addressing
them to Night and integrating the several themes through deftly contrived
images and smoothly flowing diction. There are excellent patches of nature
imagery such as
There sails the moon, like a small silver bark
Floating upon the ocean
vast and dark (Night)
The fifth sonnet in the series is a sonnet on
death. There is a thoughtful mingling of nature imagery with that of death and
a powerful harping on the thoughts about “those who once were dear.”
The moon is gone; and thus go
those we love (Night) The
thematic presentation in the Night sonnets reveals a metaphysical strain we
associate with the poems of Donne. Derozio, like Donne, is deeply concerned
with the ephemeralities of our gloomy existence circumscribed by the marvellous
spectrum of the universe created by an indefatigable superpower. The misery of
our existence is that
we look around
But vainly look for those who formed a part
Of us, as we of them, and whom we wore
Like gems in bezels, in the head’s deep core
(Night)
References
1 The Bridal,
2 Sonnet: “Fair Lady, I was
but a minstrel boy.”
3 Sonnet: “Where are thy
waters, Lethe?”
4 Ibid.
5 Sonnet: “Death, my best
friend.”
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Sonnet: “Misery on
misery.”
9 Sonnet: “The Poet’s
Grave.”