TORU
DUTT AND SAROJINI NAIDU:
A
STUDY IN COMPARISON
In
the rich and variegated garden of the English muse, there appeared in the
latter half of the nineteenth century two plants of exotic growth, bringing to
it a new colour and a strange beauty to which it was
hitherto unused. One was the lily of Toru Dutt, pale
and fragile, but stately, graceful and delicate. The other was the rose of Sarojini Naidu–tiny, bright,
sweet and fragrant.
To
change the metaphor, one could think of Toru Dutt as
the skylark, singing loud and clear, soaring high into the sky, like a star of
heaven in the broad daylight. The other was the Nightingale, more familiar and
melodious, tiny but powerful. One was the “blithe spirit,” with a strain of
sadness, “the unbodied joy whose race is just begun.”
The other was the happy, light-winged dryad of the trees.
In
considering the poetry and personality of the two in more specific terms, we
might remember that Toru Dutt
was almost classical in her sense of form, her restraint and reserve. Sarojini Naidu was obviously and
impenitently romantic in her outlook–her sense of colour,
her wide-eyed wonder at the world and her spontaneous ecstasy. One had a flair
for the narrative and and ambitions for the epic
achievement. The other was lyrical in her impulse, with a natural lilt in her
song.
If
one was cut off in the prime of her life and ever remains the heir to an
unfulfilled renown, the other had, in the hectic throes of a nation in the
making, to exchange the lyre of the poet for the sword and shield of the
patriot and the freedom-fighter. Both wrote in English, familiar to them as the
functional mother-tongue, though still dubbed an alien language. Both were
children of Bengal and of
Both
were precocious in their intellectual development and had discovered themselves
as poets while still in their early teens. About the age of eleven, Sarojini began to write a long poem in English, while
struggling unsuccessfully with a problem in Algebra, which was her bugbear (as
that of many other poets and writers). Toru attained a commendable mastery of
English and French by the age of fifteen and contributed substantially to the Dutt Family Album, brought out by her father
and his cousins.
Toru
Dutt was born in
Her literary output, not too large in itself, was not
inconsiderable for a girl of 21. Her earliest book of
poems was A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, published in
Ancient
Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, which is her major
poetical work, was posthumously published in
Besides
these two, she wrote a novel in French (Le Journal de Madmoiselle
D’ Arvers) and an unfinished romance in English, Bianca or The Young
Spanish Maiden, serialised in a
She
also wrote some essays and translations in prose from French.
One of her essays was on Derozio, the pioneer Indo-Anglian poet of
Toru
Dutt’s chief title to fame as a poet rests in her
poems collected in the volume, Ancient Ballads and Legends of
The
poems in this volume run to about 140 to 150 pages. They are in two
sections–the nine ballads and legends, which form the bulk; and seven short
miscellaneous poems which occupy about 20 pages in
all. Among the legends the one relating to Savitri is
the longest and the most ambitious. All the other ones are shorter–they relate
to Lakshmana, Sita, Dhruva, Prahlada, Ekalavya (referred to as Buttoo here) and so on.
There
is absolutely no doubt that the second book marked a notable advance on the
first. It was more mature and had a better finish. Edmund Gosse,
writing of the Sheaf, gave expression to his mixed feelings:
“The
English verse is sometimes exquisite. At other times, the rules of our prosody
are absolutely ignored, and it is obvious that the Hindu poetess was chanting
to herself a music that is discord in an English ear.”
He
was persuaded to be more generous in his response to the Ballads and
Legends. In fact, he was all praise for it. He was almost in ecstasy:
“Literature
has no honours which need have been beyond the grasp
of a girl who, at the age of 21, and in languages separated from her own by so
deep a charm, had produced so much of lasting worth.”
In
Savitri, the longest of these pieces,
and the most ambitious, one could sense the epic intentions of the young poet, if not quite see her epic achievement. Her powers of
narration and description are seen to good effect throughout this poem.
The
description of Yama, the God of Death, is
particularly striking:
Upon
his head be wore a crown
That
shimmered in the doubtful light;
His
vestment scarlet reached low down,
His
waist, a golden girdle dight.
His
skin was dark as bronze; his face
Irradiate
and yet severe;
His
eyes had much of love and grace,
But
glowed so bright they filled with fear.
The
vivid majesty of the picture evoked here, and the vigour of the diction remind the reader of at least two
well-known Victorian poets–Tennyson in his Mort’de
Arthur and Mathew Arnold in his Sohrab
and Rustum. The poet employs stanzas of twelve
lines, with the alternate lines rhyming. Each line has eight syllables and the metre is lambic.
The
dialogue between Savitri and Yama
is conducted with persuasive skill and dignity of behaviour.
Asking her not to persist in following him any further, the latter (i. e., Yama) says:
“It
shall be done. Go back, my child,
The
hour wears late, the wind feels cold,
The
path becomes more weird and wild,
Thy
feet are torn, there’s blood behold!”
While
these are not a copy of Tennyson, these lines sound like a parallel to some of
those in Ulysses:
The
long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends….
The
moral law that governs all human life, as well as this story,
eloquently brought out in the words of Savitri
addressed to Yama:
“Virtue
should be the aim and end
Of
every life, all else is vain,
Duty
should be its dearest friend
If
higher life it would attain.”
When
Dharma or the law of duty conquers all, Savitri
attains her end. Her father-in-law regains his lost sight and kingdom. Her
father is blessed with many sons, who start a valiant race.
As
for Savitri, to this day,
Her
name is named, when couples wed,
And
to the bride the parents say
Be
thou like her, in heart and head.
Lakshman
is a poem of 22 stanzas woven around the incident in which Sita and Lakshmana left alone in
the Ashram in the forest when Rama runs in search of the golden deer. On
hearing the dissembled voice of Rama crying for help, Sita
gets agitated and implores Lakshmana to make haste.
Confronted by his reluctance, in obedience to his brother’s instructions, she
taunts him with pricking words, accusing him of cowardice and worse:
“But
then thy leader stood beside!
Dazzles
the cloud when shines the sun,
Reft of his radiance, see it glide
A
shapeless mass of vapours dun;
So
of thy courage,–or if not
The
matter is far darker dyed,
What
makes thee loth to leave this spot?
Is
there a motive thou would’s
hide?”
A
mystic touch is provided in the poem entitled Jogadhya
Uma, celebrating the encounter of a poor, simple
bangle-seller (a vendor of shell bracelets), near the village tank with the
Goddess Uma, the harbinger of good luck and
prosperity to the Hindu women of Bengal. He does not know who she is, but gives
her the bracelets
and goes to her house as directed.
Without
referring to her celestial identity in so many words, the poet hints at the
character in her graphic, sensitive description of her form and shape:
Oh,
she was lovely, but her look
Had
something of a high command
That
filled with awe. Aside she shook
Intruding
curls by breezes fanned
And
blown across her brow and face
And
asked the price, which when she heard
She
nodded, and with quiet grace
For
payment to her home referred.
To
which are added the four lines:
Well
might the pedlar look with awe,
For
though her eyes were soft, a ray
Lit
them at times, which kings who saw
Would never dare to disobey.
In
another poem called The Royal Ascetic and the Hind, she retells
an anecdote from the Vishnu Purana, in which Maitreya relates the story to Parasara.
As for the conclusion, she draws her own moral, which is
modern in its world view, and presents it in unequivocal terms. Is it possible
to attain salvation by running away from this world, by turning one’s face away
from one’s mundane duties and responsibilities? Here’s her answer:
“Not
in seclusion, not apart from all,
Not
in a place elected for its peace,
But
in the heat and bustle of the world,
’Mid
sorrow, sickness, suffering and sin,
Must
he still labour with a loving soul
Who
strives to enter through the narrow gate.”
There
were some contemporary English critics, who had their own serious reservations
about the Ballads, though they could see the unmistakable signs of her
promise. E. J. Thomas, for instance,
“Yet,
even amid the many marks of immaturity and haste, there are signs that she would
have escaped before long from many of her prosodic limitations.”
He
hoped that her greater faults would have been removed by experience. He did recognise that “the Ballads are that portion of her
work which has most chance of some sort of permanance
for its own sake.” He felt they were “careless and diffused, yet binding
the whole work into unity.” What is more serious, he sees lack of sympathy in
the poet, who, according to him, stands outside her themes and does not enter
deeply into them. The suggestion is that she being a Christian, her emotions
and imagination were not involved in the Hindu or pagan ballads and legends,
which a proselytising padre, might dismiss as
cock-and-bull stories.
But
the plain fact of the matter is that though Toru was baptised,
she came of an orthodox Hindu stock steeped in the Hindu cultural tradition.
She learnt these legends in childhood, seated in her mother’s lap. Her
imagination was fired and engaged by the Hindu legends as vigorously as that of
Keats’s was by the Greek legends (or that of Emerson by the Hindu metaphysics).
No devout Hindu believer could have done more justice to them than this
Hindu-born pious Christian. A careful and sympathetic reader can’t find any
instance of lack of commitment to the theme or its moral.
That
apart, there are quite a few intelligent readers and perceptive critics, who
prefer her miscellaneous poems, purely on artistic grounds. Some of them are
sonnets. The poet’s love of Nature, her sensitiveness to beauty as also her
mastery of the sonnet form, The Lotus, for instance, is one of her
widely recognised and best acclaimed of them:
Love
came to Flora asking for a flower
That
would of flowers be undisputed queen,
The
lily and the rose, long, long had been
Rivals
for that high honour...
And
Flora gave the lotus, “rose-red” dyed,
And
‘lily-white,’ queenliest flower that blows.
Another
is Our Casuarina Tree, not a sonnet, but
rather longer, as long as three sonnets put together. It has greater warmth of
feeling, almost as a member of the household. In fact, she vividly personifies
it with her wealth of refreshing similes and stimulating metaphors:
Like
a huge python, winding round and round
The
rugged trunk, indented deep with scars
Up
to its very summit near the stars,
A
creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
No
other tree could live. But gallantly
The
giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung
In
crimson clusters all the boughs among,
Where
on all day are gathered bird and bee;
And
oft nights the garden overflows
With
one sweet song that seems to have no close,
Sung
darkling from our tree, while men repose.”
Dear
to her sight it becomes dearer still, when sight of it is denied in the foreign
country (Italy or france), where she wrote the lines:
In
memory, till the hot tears blind my eyes!
What
is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like
the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It
is the tree’s lament, an eery speech
That
haply to the unknown land may reach.
The
vision of a loved tree is even more powerful than that the sight of it in
actual life. She recalls:
When
earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon:
And
every time the music rose–before
Mine
inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy
form, O tree, as in my happy prime
I
saw thee, in my own loved native clime.
She
counts the tree as dear to her as the departed brothers and
sisters, buried in their garden. She sums up the touching poem with a
melancholy benediction:
Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done.
With
deathless trees–like those in Barrowdale,
Under
whose awful branches lingered pale
“Fear,
trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And
time the shadow;” and though weak the verse
That
would thy beauty fain, Oh fain rehearse,
May
love defend thee from oblivion’s Curse.
And
so does one hope that love of Indian literature, including Indian writing in
English, will defend the work of Toru Dutt from
oblivion’s curse.
Reference
has already been made to the views of the critic, E. J. Thomas (mentioned by
Padmini Sengupta in her
monograph). Dr. Amarnath Jha,
who has written an appreciative introductory memoir to the Indian edition of The
Ballads and Legends brought out by Kitabstan, Allahabad, in 1941, refers to the tribute paid by Dr.
Edward Thompson (friend and translator of Tagore) to Toru Dutt.
He speaks of her as a poet whose place is with Sappho
and Emile Bronte. Dr. Jha thought this was a
singularly inapt comparison, for there was nothing in common among them, except
in regard to their common womanhood. “Sappho, that
creature of fire and force, who even in translation can move and charm with
impassioned personal lyrics, had little in common with Toru Dutt”,
adds Dr. Jha, setting aside all speculation about the
might-have-beens as idle and futile.
But
then, has Toru Dutt as a poet anything in common with
her compatriot, Sarojini Naidu?
Not much in poetic sensibility or style or in theme and treatment. Even Sarojini cannot be compared with Sappho,
whose songs are powerful and passion-laden, and marked by the fine frenzy of
reckless abandon. A song of Sappho reads, for
example:
“Oh,
come then, and release me from alarms,
That
crush me: all I long to see
Fulfilled,
fulfil –A very mate-in-arms
Be
thou to me.”
Though
she has composed quite a few pieces, on aspects of Nature, including seasons,
flowers and fruits, she cannot be classified as a Nature poet. She has, for
instance, burst forth in song on the charms of spring, the refreshing warmth of
summer, the sweetness of Champak blossoms, the glory of Gulmohur,
the brilliance of Cassia, the poignant perfume of Nasturtiums. But more often
than not, these titles are yet another occasion for the outlet of her bubbling
emotions. The excitement is there, but the expression is so deliberately
rounded, that one cannot escape the impression that she has been looking for a
peg to hang her thoughts. It seems less a case of her musings, set off by a
scene or a spot.
Curiously
enough, she has a poem, a sonnet to boot, on The Lotus on which Toru Dutt had composed one. Beyond the title and the broad theme,
there is not much else in common between the two sonnets. Toru Dutt’s poem seems to be the simpler in meaning, based on a
Greek or Roman legend (real or contrived, one does not know) of love coming to
Flora (the Goddess of Flowers) and asking for the queen of flowers. The claimaints for the honour
were–the Rose and the Lily–both of which were found wanting:
“The
rose can never tower
Like
the pale lily with her Juno mein”–
“But
is the lily lovelier?” Thus between
Flower-factions
rang the strife in Psyche’s bower.
“Give
me a flower delicious as the rose
And
stately as the lily in her prise”–
“But
of what colour” – “Rose-red,” Love first chore,
Then
prayed,–“No, lily white,–or both provide;”
And
Flora gave the lotus, “rose red” dyed,
And
“Lily white,” queenliest flower that blows.
Sarojini’s poem is of a different
type altogether. It is an invocation, dedicated to M. K. Gandhi, and is
obviously symbolic, from beginning to end. It reads:
“O
mystic Lotus, sacred and sublime,
In
myriad-petalled grace inviolate,
Supreme
O’er transient storms of tragic Fate,
Deep-rooted
in the waters of all Time,
What
legions loosed from many a far-off clime
Of
wild bee hordes with lips insatiate,
And
hungry winds with wings of hope or hate,
Have
thronged and pressed round thy miraculous prime
To
devastate thy loveliness, to drain
The
midmost rapture of thy glorious heart....”
Is
the poet thinking of the beautiful Lotus flower, or of the Lotus, which, along
with the Elephant and the Serpent, has been a favourite
symbol of grace, power, wisdom, in the Indian tradition? The poetic and the
philosophical tradition is replete with this symbol. It is also rich with
mystic significance, even without the poet saying it in so many words, as
students of Sri Chakra might well be familiar with.
Traditional Hindu symbolism apart, does the Lotus stand here for mother India,
whose freedom and integrity are threatened by the armed hordes of foreign
invaders wailing to suck her precious juice like the hungry wild bees? The hundred-petalled lotus (Sata patra sundari) is also a
well-known image used by the poets. Or does it stand for the greatness of
Mahatma Gandhi, of whom the poet is an ardent devotee?
In
any case, ‘the mystic lotus’ of the poet is unconquerable, as declared by her
in the last four lines:
But
who could win thy secret, who attain
Thine ageless beauty born of Brahma’s breath;
Or
pluck thine immortality, who art
Coeval
with the Lords of Life and Death?
Somehow,
one feels a sense of overstatement here, with the crowding in of over-used
images and expressions like Time, Fate, Ageless Beauty, Immortality of Soul,
Life, Death, etc., which seem to confront the reader in most of the poems of Sarojini Naidu. Even if meant as
a tribute to Gandhi, it could be construed as hyperbolic. As a piece of
resounding rhetoric and lofty sentiment, yes. But as a poem, it does not click.
It rather overhits the mark. Toru Dutt’s
sonnet, simpler, softer and more subdued in tone, seems to fill the bill
better.
The
gaiety of her tunes and the vividness of general images notwithstanding, there
is an undercurrent of pain and sorrow in Sarojini’s
poems. This is especially true of the section called “The Broken Wing” –“Why
should a song-bird like you have a broken wing” was the question posed by her
friend and well-wisher, G. K. Gokhale. The poems in
the section, tearful, poignant, might provide an indirect answer to that
question.
Sarojini has written quite a
few songs of love and devotion and they are pretty, colourful
and melodious. But power and passion are not the qualities associated with
them. She composed The Gate of Delight, comprising a series of eight
songs –The Offering; The feast; Ecstasy; The lute-song; If you call me; The
sins of love; The desire of love and The vision of love.
The
opening stanza of the “Offering” reads as follows:
Were
beauty mine, Beloved, I would bring it
Like
a rare blossom to Love’s glowing shrine;
Were
a dear youth mine, Beloved, I would fling it
Like
a rich pearl into Love’s lustrous wine.
The
spirit of self-surrender, as of a devotee is certainly here but not the
full-blooded passion of a human lover. The stanza as well as the whole poem, is
replete with the mystic ecstasy of medieval saint-poets and the well-turned
conceits of Persian poetry, with all its polished conventions. She says in The
Feast:
Bring
no pearls from ravished seas,
Gems
from rifled hemispheres;
Grant
me, Love, in priceless boon
All
the sorrow of your years,
All
the secret of your tears.
The
imagery is so pretty, the expression so neat, the rhymes so tidy, that one is
led to suspect the depth of spontaneous emotion.
Slightly
more convincing is the expression of her emotion in another similarly designed
longish poem, The Sanctuary. The eighth and last section
dealing with Devotion has more of warmth, though this too has its share
of conceits and conventions:
Take
my flesh to feed your dogs if you choose,
Water
your garden-trees, with my blood if you will,
Turn
my heart into ashes, my dreams into dust–
Am
I not yours, O Love, to cherish or kill?
Strangle
my soul and fling it into the fire!
Why
should my true love falter or fear or rebel?
Love,
I am yours to lie in your breast like a flower,
Or
burn like a weed for your sake in the flame of hell.
Of
Sarojini’s lyricism, however, there is hardly any
doubt. The whole body of work, be it based on folk songs, personal
recollections, of the sights and sounds, tributes to the dead, offerings to the
Divine, is an expression of her lyric genius.
If
Toru Dutt wasan epic poet
in the making, cut off before the fulfillment, Sarojini
Naidu was the lyric poet in the fullness of her
efflorescence. Toru, what with the mid- Victorian code of conduct, marked by
restraint, fought shy of expressing her personal emotion, with the exception of
innocuous sentiments like attachment to family members, domestic pets and the
trees and plants and creepers in her garden. She was severely classical in her
restraint, though she might have been romantic in the choice of her favourite French poets.
Sarojini was an uninhibited
Romantic in her responses, tending to be eclectic in her tastes. But she was
neat and pretty like a Moghul miniature in her
expression and polished like a Thanjavur plate.
Symmetrical and well-carved, its appeal was more decorative than emotional.
That may be the reason why she achieved her unqualified victories in
short pieces, like Palanquin bearers, Indian Weavers and
Bangle-sellers. She was able to capture and reproduce the Indian
melodies and folk song tunes to a nicety. Her ear was Indian, or Hindustani,
but her tongue was English.
While
her ear is attuned to the sound of Indian folk music, her soul is en rapport
with the silence of the Universal Maker, which explains the success of
another of her songs, The Call to Evening Prayer, in which she weaves a
garland made of the four Indian flowers of devotion–the Muslim, Christian,
Parsee and Hindu prayers. Hers was the voice of integration, spontaneous and unpremeditated.
Toru
Dutt, Bengali by birth, was English by intellectual
training and consciously French in her political sympathies. James Darmesteter, a noted French critic, spoke of her
personality as a confluence of three souls and three traditions (an English
mind and a French heart in an Indian body!). But the soul, if any, is
indivisible. Toru Dutt’s poetic soul is as Indian as
that of Sarojini Naidu. In
both the cases, it was dressed in the garb of the English language, which is
native to both. One can’t be sure about the English literary establishment or the
Indian cultural hierarchy, but both Toru Dutt and Sarojini as poets, have an assured place in Indian
literature as long as Indian writing in English stays alive in this country.