FORE GROUNDING
IN CHAMBIAL’S POETRY
A STUDY OF THE JUNGLE OF HYENAS & VIRTUE WEEPS
Bairagi Charan
Dwivedy
Foregrounding has always been known as a sort of deviation from the normal English expressions at semantic as well as syntactic levels. Devices of foregrounding always draw the attention of a reader not only towards the lexis or the text but also to the fact that these stylistic expressions conform to the underlying of the poem. Style is usually seen as a specific form of a text which includes lexical and grammatical structures. In modern poetry foregrounding is largely used as a stylistic device for analysing and interpreting various concepts, ideas and problems that guide the themes. The normal expressions of a language act as a back-ground for the deviations or the abnormal features that draw the special attention of readers. These features are known as foregrounding.
Chambial, one of the new established Indian English poets takes recourse to various stylistic features, one of which is foregrounding, for interpreting the principal ideas in his poems. His poem, The jungle of Hyenas, proclaims in the very first line “Anger is death” which is highly metaphorical. For a layman anger and death are far different from each other; one of them is a human complex and the other is a state where all complexes come to an end.
The poet beautifully sets the “phoenix” symbol in the second stanza to make the subject of anger prominent in the feelings of the reader:
Everyday die
A hundred deaths
unlike phoenix
burning itself to ashes
Who dies the hundred deaths? “Everyday” is certainly not the doer or the subject here. The subject is cleverly kept implied in order to make the meaning more powerful. The construction is a deviation from the norm and hence foregrounded. The poet does the same thing with the object in the third stanza for a similar purpose – something more serious than “death” is pointed at and fire has taken the place of anger.
The fire doesn’t consume
Completely
It singes mind.
Chambial’s foregrounding has deep impact on the meaning of his poems. The impact is experienced more at the semantic level than at the structure. The jungle is teeming with hyenas - a symbol for bestiality – and so only moans and cries can be heard. It is obviously an expression of horror. The last part of this stanza – “full of moans and cries” – is a grammatically detached one from the sentence and thus it indicated human alienation. The subject in the next stanza makes it clear that the “jungle” is the society, the world in which humanity is in utter despair, where man sinks into the hell that pulls everything into it without freedom from evil, without escape from the “fire” that burns. The last stanza is a clause only. The very construction suggests of the uncertainty of life on earth; it declares man’s place of living as “inferno”. The poet’s expression in this foregrounded construction is a clear indication of today’s human predicament. Anger has begot machination that munches man resulting in nothingness and that is the reward for man’s anger that reminds of the scene.
The poem ends where it begins i.e. a journey from death to death through life. Foregrounding provides the scope for perfect expression of the poet’s ideas. The title itself is an implied metaphor.
“Virtue” has been given a human status in another poem. The title of the poem, Virtue Weeps, shows personification of “virtue”. The theme no doubt centres round human predicament that has been interpreted through a set of parallelism which is a powerful stylistic device.
A dew drop
on a green blade of grass
enthrals the golden light
from the sun.
Man on earth
no less sublime and pure
than the dew drop
but reluctant to catch at
the crystal rays
Dew drop and the sun have been given equal status as objects of nature. The first stanza mentions of some virtue that has been made to weep in the last stanza and thus the poet gets a scope to express his view about the drawback of modern man’s character. The first stanza has simple sentence structure that shows the poet’s power of expression and lucid flow of words in superb collocation as if to make “Virtue” more significant. The similar structure in the second stanza suffers a fragmentation so as to express the reluctance of the modern man to receive the virtues. It is not a sentence, rather a series of fragments. The “sun” and the “seventh heaven” are two parallel objects in the first stanza.
The first and the last stanza have almost the same structural frame with a little deviation at the end. The unconventional expression, “A true amalgam of angel and Satan” (Satan with a capital beginning) nicely depicts modern man. The final declaration is very much decisive.
Virtue weeps
Silently sobs dew
Satan smiles at his success.
Another significant personification is “dew” - an image for innocent beauty of nature. But, why does the “dew” sob? “Dew” and “Man on earth”, both are objects of nature; both take in cosmic rays and both are expected to “send it out”. Naturally it is another foregrounded statement with a clear inversion in the normal simple sentence structure used in order to bring a better poetic effect. The last statement with three’s sounds - word initials - in the stressed syllables (obviously an alliteration) indicates the negative implication of poet’s tongue which is slanderous of the Satan and a harmonious decline of human nature in the modern world. Obviously, after a deviation in the second stanza the rhythm has been restored - an underlying appeal for revival of strength, honesty and purity in man.
It is now clear that at many instances Chambial uses words, phrases, constructions that are linguistically deviant and have very important psychological consequence for the reader; in other words they stand out and thus become highly noticeable or foregrounded. The linguistic features that are used in Chambial’s poetry are stylistically relevant. His series of linguistic choices result in the unfolding of various aspects of the meaning.
Both the poems have somewhat similar endings:
Death, the best reward
While living in inferno (the Jungle of Hyenas)
Silently sobs dew,
Satan smiles at his success (Virtue Weeps).