THE POETRY OF G. K. CHETTUR
S. RAMAN
During
his comparatively short life (1898-1936), G. K. Chettur
has published several volumes of poetry, which include Sounds and Images (1921),
Gumataraya (1932), The Temple Tank (1932),
The Triumph of Love (1932) and The Shadow of God (1934). “Always”,
says Prof. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, “Chettur’s mastery of his medium, the graces of his rhythm,
the structural finish of his sonnets, the general
richness of his articulation have contributed to his success as a poet in
English.” (“Indian Writing in
English”, P. 625)
I
What
strikes us as the outstanding quality that distinguishes G. K. Chettur from his predecessors, is his almost thorough
mastery of English verse forms, particularly the sonnet. His Gumataraya is a collection of sonnets, and The Shadow of God a
sonnet sequence. His sonnets, mostly of the Italian model, consist of two parts–an
octave and a sestet. The octave bears the burden; a doubt, a problem, a
reflection, a query, an historical statement, a cry of indignation or desire, a
vision of the ideal. The sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or the
doubt, answers the query, solaces the yearning, realizes
the vision. It gilds thought with the tracery of instance, crowns it with the
sufficient and inevitable actuality that lies within the wisdom of art.
His
sonnet Gumataraya, for instance, begins
with an octave, describing a vision of the ideal:
I
saw the dawn break on thy marvellous brow,
And
light the depth of thy unseeing eyes:
And
thou didst seem so calm, so stern, so wise,
Almost
I trembled at the thought of how
A
mortal hand had shaped that might of thine,
Till
from insensate rock there did uprise
The
visioned godhead in unmortal
guise,
Unmoved, immovable, serene, divine.
At
the end of the octave, the rhythm of which suggests the arduous climbing of the
rock of Lord Gomateswara, there is a pause. And then
the sestet follows, realizing the strength and peace:
O
stone! O Might! O Heart of Man, made God!
Thou
art the emblem of our hope, our prayer,
Aye,
all our strength! and lo, on bended knees,
With
joined hands, and where rapt feet have trod.
We
yield the burden of our soul’s despair
And
lifting eyes to thee, our hearts are peace.”
Chettur’s poems exhibit his mastery over other less-known
verse-forms as the triolet. The triolet, like the rondel,
repeats not merely a snatch of a verse, but a whole line or two in its
refrain. It consists of eight lines rhyming ABaAabAB,
and it is desirable that the refrains be varied in sentence-structure or
meaning. With what consummate artistry Chettur
handles the following triolets!
If
absence makes the heart grow fonder,
Sweet,
my love, I wish you gone;
For
I shall love you better, yonder,
If absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Cheer
up, sweet, what makes you ponder?
This
is a truth I’ve hit upon:
If
absence makes the heart grow fonder,
Sweet,
my love, I wish you gone.
He’s
a fool who yearns to barter
The present for increase of bliss.
Love
too often proves a Tartar,
He’s
a fool who yearns to barter,
And
I’ve no mind to make a martyr,
While
there’s time, come, let us kiss.
He’s
a fool who yearns to barter
The present for increase of bliss.
(“He and She–Temple Tank”)
This
technical excellence is achieved not at the cost of lyrical spontaneity. As
Basil Mathews has observed, “Mr. Chettur has a strong
lyrical voice, and uses words as an expression of–and not as a substitute for–thought.”
There is not a single poem of his which does not reflect his highly emotional
temperament and keenly sensitive mind.
II
What
is the substance of his poetry? He deals with the three immortal themes of
Love, Nature and Philosophy.
In
many of his poems he sings of the old, old, plaint of love, which is forever new.
He envisages this eternal theme, now joyously, now passionately. He lavishes
upon it a copious flood of colour and sound.
Addressing his beloved, he breaks out into lyrical passion:
You
are the Rose of me,
In
you have I lost myself utterly,
Your
fragrance, as a breath from
About
me ever lies;
I
crush you to my heart with subtlest ecstasy
And
on your lips I live, and in your passionate eyes.
(Sounds and Images)
Absence
from his beloved elicits a cry of pang, more musical and more
sad than the plaintive notes of a male nightingale:
The
little bird that makes its nest
In
yonder cashew’s topmost crest
Has
surely lost its heart to you,
For
it can find naught else to do
But
all the day most plaintively
To
say, ‘Chochee-chochee-chochee’
And
sometimes when you hear that call
Most
sweet, most sad, most musical,
You
turn your pretty head and say,
“The
little bird wants me today,
Hear
how it cries repeatedly–
‘Chochee, chochee,
chochee, chochee!’
But
sometimes when you are not here
His
cry falls shrilly on my ear:
It
makes me sad for then his voice
That
bids me vainly to rejoice
Reminds
me all too poignantly
That you are gone, chochee, chochee.
(
III
In
his enjoyment of Nature, Chettur is sometimes simple,
childlike and spontaneous. A host of fireflies can kindle his imagination, and
he sees them.
“All
lighted up like ships at sea.
A
bright and merry company,” (Fireflies)
or as a myriad stars
fallen on earth. The enchanting beauty of a moon-lit night bewitches his soul
and haunted by its loveliness his fancy mingles the lores
of East and West:
Ah,
here she comes in silver lace,
And
treading with divinest grace
Her
old accustomed pathway through
The smiles of all her courtier crew.
See,
there, Orion bends to her.
Devout
as any worshipper;
And
there, the Twins, with sheepish eye,
Seek
each other to outvie
In
homage to the Queen of heaven:
While,
overhead, the rishis seven.
Seem
with gaze benign and hoar
On her their blessings to outpour.
What
fancies the mind invest
With
mingled lore of East and West
When
Love to Beauty yields her will. (
But
more often Chettur’s enjoyment of Nature reveals his
reflective and introspective mind. He is especially impressed by Nature’s
solitude. He loves mountains, nocturnal scenes of silence, and the deep and
holy seclusion of temple tanks. In such moments, Nature seems to be invested
with godhead. His love for the mountains springs from their grandeur, simplicity
and solitude;
“How
shall I worship you, O mountains, mountains
I,
in whose presence, seem a thing reborn,
Whose deep tree-shadowed vales and springing fountain.
Preserve
the freshness of perpetual morn?
–he
asks; “How of your quiet graciousness partake,
Your strength, your patience, your serenity?”
–he
enquires. And gives his answer:
“Say
nothing, nothing: caught up to the heart
Of
this great silence, lay aside the rods
Of
the world’s chastisement, and kneel apart,
Remembering
how wise those Rishis were,
Who
for all beauty had a use most rare,
And
now seem one with their commemorate gods.” (Mountains)
While
being keenly sensitive to the appeal of earthly beauty, Chettur
is equally conscious of its transcience. But his highly
reflective and philosophic mind sees the face of Permanence, of the Infinite, sparkle behind the evanescent veil of Nature’s
images.
How
lovely the land lies beneath the moon!
Fairer
a hundred times than Love or Life;
Fairer
than Death, the end of mortal strife!
Now,
langorous as lilies in the noon,
The
very palms appear to sway and swoon
With
this excess of loveliness; and the sea
Awaits,
in patience, hushed, expectantly,
For
what?–Ah, who may tell?–Or yet, how soon;
mortal beauty irreconcilable.
Changeless,
yet ever changing mystery,
Holding
at rare times all hearts in fee,
Subduing,
sweet, and tantalising still,
What
in thy glory may we here divine?
A
hope–a longing–nay, a certain sign!
A
sign, that of the living whole, we make
A part incorporate, however small;
A
fragment of the passion that doth fall
In
sudden splendour upon hill or lake:
A
symbol, a remembrancer to awake
The
sleeping godhead to a memory
Of
what has been, and what again shall be,
And
still the heart’s intolerable ache.
Nay
more; a pledge, renewed from hour to hour
In
song, in love, in dream, in children’s eyes;
Writ
on the laughing heavens, the sorrowing sea;
Sealed
on the morning face of every flower;
And,
even as the rainbow in the skies,
A covenant of God’s integrity. (Beauty)
IV
The
unaffected joy and the undoubted song quality of Chettur’s
poetry take however a distinctive shade from the introspective nature of the
age and the peculiar docility to nature which characterizes the Indian mind. He
has been consistently travelling towards his philosophic goal of comprehending one godhead in the countless manifestations of human joys
and sorrows. But there had been moments of great mental distress when he found
it hard to reconcile certain outward manifestations of ugliness with his vision
of an Infinite Beauty. His poem, The Cow, expresses this concern for the
presence of pain and suffering in the universe. On a gay morning, while the
birds were singing joyously in the bright sun, a cow is run over across the
railway line. It lay there, half-crushed and bleeding,
all the day. None seemed to have cared for its fate. Jackals came that night “to
the live feast that cow supplied.”
“But
no man cared, or stopped to see–
So
great life’s little cares are grown,
A
dumb beast’s mortal agony
Is
soon forgot.
To
cruel hearts of wood, of stone,
Alas,
it mattered not!
In
rose and gold it dawned next day,
The
birds again sang tweet-a-tweet,
And
all the world once more was gay,
And sweet and fair.
Lord
how could the world be sweet
With that cow bleeding there? (The Cow)
Is
death the inescapable end of life? Are decay and transcience
an inevitability? The problem of death haunts his
mind. Even in his earlier volumes of poetry there arc occasions when he tries
to reconcile the irreconcilable. The sonnet, The Prison, visualises the world
as a prison-house, and the beauty of the world as its ‘bars of hope’, and Death
as the last gaoler, who
“comes, soon or late,
With
pace unhurried, to the appointed door,
Slips
in the key, draws back the bolts and bars,
And
strong or steadfast, weak or passionate,
Glad
or reluctant, we go forth once more,
To join the grave procession of the stars.” (Prison)
In
another sonnet, entitled Death, he says:
“I
looked on Death today, with tears unshed,
In
bitter humiliation of such peace
As
there, upon that brow, those lips, I read.” (Death)
But
these pictures of Death as ‘freedom-giver’ and ‘peace-bringer’ are more the
creation of poetic fancy than real and authentic presentations of Death drawn
from experience.
In
his last volume of poems, The Shadow of God, Chettur faces this problem squarely. The Shadow of God is his
most mature and best poetic expression of life. He meets Death face to face, as
it were. Chettur’s mother passed away on 10 February
1934. The poet could almost see the approach of Death, and now Death has
arrived, and life is extinct. Prof. K. R Srinivasa Iyengar’s
comments on this part of the sonnet sequence are very illuminating:
“A
brooding melancholy settles for a time upon the poet; the antics of pitiless
Death prey upon his brain, and he needs must conclude that life is but ‘a round
of sorrow and despair’. But out of the dark negation and despair come new
streaks of light at last. Death’s other kingdom might be a hospitable place
after all! Yet the poet is not quite sure whether this is the mood of ‘philosophical
ingratitude’ or whether he is rather chastened in his sorrow, his mind being ‘upborne to thy new sphere.’ But it becomes a settled mood
presently, and he is reconciled to the conundrum of life and death–that if one
would conquer Death, one must first conquer Life. He is thus brave enough to
say:
If
Death should take me by the throat today,
And
hold me up, and look me in the eyes......
I
should but point to yonder bannered skies,
where the great sun quick-flaming in his way,
Pranks
all the East in hues of paradise,
And
murmur’ Strike,!’ and patient wait the blow...”
The
poet’s voice has now become more compelling because it is the voice not of
fancy alone, but of personal tribulation. He has seen the valley of despair,
coursed through the slough of despond, and has reached the
Lord
of unnumbered hopes, unnumbered prayers,
Immaculate
dream, unknown, unknowable
To
mortal sense save dimly through the spell
Of
earth’s delights and quickening despairs,
Forgive
what we have been, and what we are,
For
that which in Time’s fullness we shall be!
Thou art the Light, and
in Thy shadow we
Move in our pathways like a
growing star.
Make
grow our comprehension till we see
Through
life’s bewildering complexity
The
touch by which inscrutably is wrought
Thy
will; and shape each word, each act, each thought,
Until
we learn to read Thy will aright
And
pass from shadow to Eternal Light” (The
Shadow of God)
that song of prayer
convinces us as the expression of a genuine hope, the expression of a sensitive
soul which has purified itself through intense personal loss and which has
learned to look at Death and Decay not as ends in themselves, but as stages in
the evolution of Man and Universe.
“Forgive
what we have been, and what we are,
For that which in Time’s fullness we shall be!”
What a vision of hope for Man’s Immortality does
this prayer present, for Time’s fullness–can it be measured in a single span and does it not hold
up an ever widening vista of life after life striving towards perfection?
Far
from being a minor poet, G. K. Chettur commands our
admiration by his technical excellence, his mastery over his medium, his themes
of perennial interest, and by the addition of a
spiritual dimension to the general richness, grace and charm of his poetry.