BY KALIPADA MUKHERJEE, M.A.

"The sonnet will do wonderfully well in our language."

–Michael M. S. Dutt.

I

The Bengali sonnet was born full-grown Minervalike. Though the first Bengali sonnet under the title ‘The Poet’s Mother-tongue’ was written in Bengal by Michael M. S. Dutt, curiously enough, the first Bengali book or of sonnets was written by the same poet in Europe. Written in France, it was sent to Calcutta for publication. Michael M. S. Dutt who had started for England in the June of 1862, with his French wife Emilia Henrietta Sophia and four children, after a year and a half there, went over to France and lived at the historic city of Versailles for two years. While there, he learnt French, Italian and German; and read for the first time the sonnets of Petrarch who inspired him to write Bengali sonnets. The sonnet he now cultivated regularly with the result that the first tricklings of the stream welled into fullness in his own pioneer work as a sonnet writer.

Yet, his sonnets are no imitations of any European poet, except in their form: the subjects treated are all Indian except five or six. These can be classified as follows,–

1. Sonnets of Nature.

2. Commendatory Sonnets.

3. Sonnets on Indian Epics, Dramas and Poems, popular gods and goddesses and popular customs and ceremonies.

4. Personal Sonnets.

The book ‘Chaturdaspadi kavitabali’ (Sonnets)¹ is important from the autobiographical point of view. The poet, a Hindu by birth and a Christian by adoption, who had apostatized in his epic poem by belittling Rama worshipped as an Incarnation of God by the Hindus, here laid bare his whole soul and showed his regard for the religion and customs of his forefathers. Indeed, for a proper understanding of the inner life of the poet, one must go to this book of sonnets, for it shows clearly that he was an Englishman without, but a Bengali within, as he himself admitted to one of his friends. Some of the titles of the sonnets will show this clearly; –Deva Dol (The Swing Festival in Honour of Sri Krishna), Sri Panchami (The Festival in Honour of Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth), Asvin Mas (The month of Asvin when is celebrated the greatest Hindu festival in Bengal, Durga Puja or worship of the Goddess Durga), Vijaya Dasami (The last day of the above festival when the immersion of the goddess takes place), Kojagari Lakshmi Puja (Festival in Honour of the goddess Lakshmi in an autumnal night of the full moon).

The sonnet (either from Provincial ‘sonnet’ diminutive of sonar sound or from Italian ‘sonetto’ a diminutive of sonus or sound) was probably first composed by an Italian poet of the 13th century, Fra Guittone d’ Arezzo. The Italian sonnet consists of eleven, the French sonnet of twelve, the English sonnet of ten, and the Bengali sonnet of fourteen syllables.

The titles of his sonnets on Nature may be rendered as–Evening. The Evening Star, Night, The Milky Way, The Canker in the Flower, The Banyan Tree, The Garden of Nandan (The Indian Eden). The Kapotaksha River, The Bee, The Tank in the Garden, The Cobra, The Boat on the Sea, The Star, The Zodiac, Saturn, The Sun, The Creation, To a Bird in Spring, The Shyama Bird, and The ‘Bou Katha Kou’ Bird.²

The Commendatory sonnets we should begin with that containing his homage to Petrarch,–

Italy is a grove of poesy fair,

Where cuckoos numerous sweetly sing,

Raining sweet dews of nectar rare,

And filling the heart with the joys of spring.

Even the sweet-voiced bird was born there.

Famous Petrarch, whose upbringing

Did Minerva look to with utmost care,

The golden lyre for his hands did bring.

He did find this precious small gem,

And laid it in his fane at Minerva’s feet.

Mother, I weave a wreath with the same.

Do thou with boons this effort of mine greet.

At the feet of Bharati of India’s fame

I offer this guerdon, deemed as meet.

Two sonnets were written on the venerable Pundit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, but for whose constant and timely help the Poet would have to suffer endlessly in Europe and at Calcutta. In his sonnet on Iswarchandra Gupta, the Poet put forward the plea for a worthy memorial for one of Bengal’s worthy sons. He wrote a sonnet on Satyendranath Tagore, the second elder brother of Poet Tagore, who was the first Indian member of the Indian Civil Service. He also eulogised the Bengali writers of the Ramayana and Mahabharat, Krittibas and Kasiram; and ]aydeva, and Valmiki, the Indian peots’ Poet.

But, the most important of this series of sonnets, are those on his contemporary European poets and savants, Victor Hugo and Alfred Tennyson, Theodore Goldstucker, the celebrated German Indologist; and the one on Dante. He wrote a sonnet on Versailles also. Tennyson also wrote a sonnet on Hugo, ‘Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance’: so we reproduce below a rendering of Madhusudon’s sonnet on the French Poet,–

Play, play on the lyre by Minerva giv’n thee,

Play sweetly and with full joyousness.

Thy country is full of thy fame’s nobleness,

As Gokul with bokul flowers doth glorious be

Maddened is the mind that is in me

In spring, with thy flower’s nectareousness.

Victor thou art, victor among men I see,

To Death thou dost show a boldened face.

Thy name will live ever as the Tree of Life,

In the grove of thy country–live for aye.

A poet is a prophet, the idea’s rife

Through all the world. When dire decay

Shall dissolve stone-pillars in the strife

For existence, thou shalt still find thy day.

The most interesting yet of all the sonnets is the one on Dante composed on the occasion of the tercentenary of the great Italian poet, afterwards translated into Italian and French and sent to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. The King was so delighted that he remarked, "It will be a ring which will connect the Orient with the Occident." But these were words that contained the motto of Madhusudon’s own life,–the mingling of the East and the West. And in these sonnets he appeared before the world as our first great cosmopolitan in letters, who believed with Tennyson that–

……England, France, all men to be

Will make one people ere man’s race be run.

Of the third group of sonnets, we should begin with ‘Kamale Kamini’ (The Lady on the Lotus), and ‘Annapurnar Jhampi’ (The Treasure-chest of Annapurna). In these, the Poet paid poetic tribute to our older Bengali poets, Kavikankan Mukundaram Chakravarty and Raigunakar Bharatchandra. He wrote separate sonnets also on, ‘The Coronet of Srimanta’, a subject from Mukundaram’s ‘Chandi’ poem, and on ‘Iswari, the Boatwoman’ a subject from Bharatchandra’s ‘Annadamangal’. Two sonnets are on Kalidas’s ‘Meghadutam’ (The Cloud Messenger). In a sonnet on Sakuntala, he sings of her great charm on the minds of all, and of her sorrow when she had to live in separation from her husband. Throughout life, the Poet greatly reverenced Sita, the type and Ideal of Indian womanhood, on whom also he wrote a sonnet. Later, in a couple of sonnets on ‘Sita Banabase’, or ‘Sita in Exile’ he sang of her woes in her forest exile. He wrote also a sonnet on the Mahabharat, in which he sang the praises of its great author, and one on the Kiratarjuniyam by Magha. He wrote separate sonnets on themes and characters depicted in the greatest store-house of Indian themes and the Mahabharat,–The Abduction of Subhadra, The Fight with the Maces, At the Battle of Gogriha, In the War of Kurukshettra, Subhadra, Urvasi, Dussasana, Hidimba, Pururava, Shishupal, and The Death of Draupadi on Hari Mountains. Sonnets which can be grouped with these are,–The Temple of Fame, Poesy, Saraswati, Imagination, Fame, Fortune, Worldly Knowledge. Language, Rhymed Verse; and the five sonnets on his favourite ‘rasas’ or literary emotions,–The Pathetic Feeling, The Heroic Emotion, The Amatory Emotion, and the Emotion of Awe.

Besides the above, Madhusudon wrote two sonnets which may be termed politico-patriotic. These breathe patriotic fervour and are instinct with the Poet’s great personality. The first sonnet ‘Bharatbhumi’ (India), bears as motto, these two lines of Filicaia, with their Bengali rendering,–

Italia! Italia! te tu eni feo la sorte

Dono infel ici di belezza!

In the magnificent ‘Amra’ (We), the Poet looks back to the days of India’s past glory–the splendour that was Ind–and gives expression to his sense of humiliation while sojourning in an independent country, France.

A couple of sonnets he addressed to a French beauty. These were originally written in French and then translated into Bengali and are probably in the nature of an overture, like the Italian sonnets of Milton on a Bolognese lady, and another with whom he probably fell much in love.

Last of all, we come to the personal sonnets having in them great and solemn beauty as revelations of a great spirit. In ‘Past Time’, the Poet who had given up his religion, and society and–parents, lamented his past, and asked how he could retrace his steps. The next sonnet is on his beautiful and virtuous wife, Henrietta Sophia. In a sonnet on Hope, he sings how hope beguiled him into his many trials in life. And in ‘The Last Sonnet’, the Poet with a heavy heart, bids farewell to his Muse for ever.

The sonnets of Madhusudon like those of Milton, conform more to the Petrarchan type. Like Milton and Wordsworth, he used the sonnet for occasional purposes, Petrarch’s sonnets being all on his love for Laura. Madhusudon wrote all his sonnets after he had written his dramas and poems and the great epic poem ‘The Slaughter of Meghnad.’ Wordsworth too was a favourite poet of Madhusudan, whose sonnet of apology for the sonnet he knew by heart and once recited with wonderful effect. Like Milton, he wrote two double sonnets on the same subject; and even wrote like him an irregular sonnet containing a line of eight syllables. The sonnets of Madhusudon are not only among his own glories, but are among the glories of Bengali poetry. The note that rings in them is the one of union between aspects of nature and the thought and emotion of man. "With the key of the sonnet, like Shakespeare, Madhusudon unlocked his great heart; and as in those of Milton, in his hands too, the thing became a trumpet whence he blew ‘soul-animating strains’". ³

II

After Madhusudon’s death on June 29, 1873, the sonnet was for long out of favour, till it fell into the hands of his great successor Rabindranath Tagore. Neither Hemchandra Banerjee nor Nabinchandra Sen wrote sonnets. Rabindranath came under the spell of the sonnet decidedly about 1885 when he published his ‘Kari O Komal’ or ‘Sharps and Flats’. It has become a favourite form with him, so much so, that he has used it many times since. ‘Kari O Komal’ which was the crowning achievement of his earlier poetic career, is remarkable for its group of sonnets, some of which at least can be pronounced splendid. These are fifty in number. The titles of some like The Language of the Heart, The Swell of Music, The Female Breast, The Breast of the Mother, To A Lover, The Kiss, The Nude Beauty, The Arms of a Beauty, The Two Feet, The Portrait of a Woman Sleeping, The Sky of the Heart, Imagination as a Bee, The Perfect Union, The Prisoner, Illusion, Bodily Union, The Body, Memory, Satiety, Why?, Chaste Love, Song-making, Night, The Desire of the human Heart, The Setting Sun, On the Other Side of the Sunset Mountain and The Smile, show the nature of their subject-matter. Some of these have been derided as fleshly for their oversensuous strain; but properly speaking, most appear not to be so, when read in the spirit of appreciation and not of hostile criticism. These wounded the susceptibilities of some of his readers who pronounced him daring and wicked!

The form used by Rabindranath in these sonnets, is extremely irregular, one only being Shakespearean, and another having only 13 lines. And this form he used for several years, till he evolved a special form, that of seven rhymed couplets,–‘an easy-flowing form,’ ‘the Muse in slippers.’ The form used in ‘Smaran’ (Remembrance) is really feeble. But a close examination of the same form used in ‘Naibedya’ (Offerings), reveals that it is not really easy-flowing, as the couplets are not end-stopped. The feeble sonnet form of seven rhymed couplets was for its artlessness probably used in his exquisitely pathetic ‘Smaran’ or ‘Remembrance’ written to the memory of his wife in 1902, which contains eleven sonnets. What this form is like, will be clear from this rendering of mine of a sonnet of this book, if the reader remembers that the Bengali sonnet has lines of fourteen syllables,

No more is she to be found in my home:

I enter it hopeless, and out I roam.

O Lord, my home is of but little space,

Whatsoever is lost there, leaves no trace.

Thy home is limitless, the world’s Thy home:

To seek her therein. O Lord, do I come.

I stand to-day in the setting sun:

To Thee I look, and my tears do run.

I bring my sick heart where nothing is lost.

No face, no happiness; no hope is cross’d.

No thirst is lost there. O Thou, do drown

My sick heart in the nectar which’s Thine own.

The touch ambrosial which I so miss

At home, do I find in Thy world of peace.⁴

Chaitali (1895) ⁵ was the first book to be written almost entirely in this flowing, peaceful form of seven rhymed couplets. The sonnets are a succession of rural pictures of simple, artless beauty, dealing with the commonest subjects like a girl with a buffalo, a baby and a, kid, a prostitute, the ferry-boat plying between villages, folk going forth to their labour at daylight. The Poet makes them all sub specie aeternitatis. In ‘Bangamata’ or ‘Mother Bengal’, he says, "Mother, you have seventy million sons who are Bengalees, but not men."

In Manasi (1890), there are four sonnets of which ‘Tabu’ or ‘Yet’ ‘Hridayer Dhan’ or ‘The Treasure of the Heart,’ and ‘Nibhrita Ashram’ or ‘The Lonely Sanctuary’ are in Shakespearean form while, ‘Nishfal Prayas’ or ‘The Fruitless Attempt’ is very irregular.

Tagore’s greatest book of sonnets is probably Naibedya, the worthy sequel to the Bengali Gitanjali, which gave to the Engish Gitanjali many of its lyrical gems. These sonnets are seventy-eight in number. Some of these have been translated by the Poet himself into his own inimitable English, one of which we quote below,–

The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. The horizon is fiercely naked–not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.

Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.

But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.

Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of the mother on the day of the father’s wrath.⁶

Indeed the thoughtfulness of these Sonnets, and the great and noble sentiments they embody, have invested them with a peculiar grandeur, which their easy form has in no way impaired. The Muse of the Poet here soars into the highest regions of thought. At times he appears God-intoxicated; at others, as a great patriot, he fulminates against the social and religious abuses of his own countrymen; sometimes, he inveighs against the materialistic West rushing impetuously towards its own annihilation; while at others, he preaches to the world the great messages of the Upanishadic seers who walked in love and by faith in forest hermitages, ‘with God and Nature communing.’⁷

With the living Sonnet writers of Tagore’s Age, who have so to say, risen and flourished in his shadow, I shall not deal here; but shall treat of the sonnets of three who are no more. One of them was the great Bengali lawyer, politician and poet-patriot C. R. Das (1870-1925); and the others were the greatest Bengali poetess Mrs. Kamini Roy (1864-1933); and Mrs. Priyambada Devi (1871-1934). ⁸

The late Mr. C. R. Das wrote only five books of poems all very small, the longest being ‘Sagar-sangita’ or ‘Sea Songs’, and thus ‘arrayed his temples with the Muse’s diadem’. His poetry has not anything common with that of Tagore: it has a distinctness all its own. His ‘Sagarsangita’ contains eleven sonnets, six of which contain seven rhymed couplets, and the rest are of the Shakespearean type. These were written in 1912. Earlier Mr. Das had written three sonnets in ‘Malancha’ (The Bower), all the three being of three four-line verses of alternate rhymes ending with a couplet. These are all on love. In ‘Akanksha’ or ‘Desire,’ the Poet asks his sweetheart to come beside him and create an Eden on the pale earth. But in ‘Jagaran’ or ‘Awakening,’ he sings that he has awakened from his illusion, and bids her finish her song as ‘the call of the world fills my life’. But in ‘Trisha’ or ‘Thirst,’ the Poet says that his life is probably an unslakable thirst, and that his whole life is one long sleepless night.

In ‘Sagarsangita,’ the sonnets are of a devotional nature, revealing a genuine Vaishnavite heart, The sea is a devotee of God, and so is also the sky: and as brother devotees they are his friends. Some of the sonnets are addressed to the sea, but the last two, to God. I close this account of the sonnets of C. R. Das with my renderings of the last two sonnets of ‘Sagarsangita,’

Mrs. Kamini Roy, regarded by many of our critics as the greatest Bengali poetess, crowned her life with her sonnet sequence of exquisite self-revelation and spiritual autobiography, ‘Jibaner pathe’ or ‘On the Path of Life.’ This is a book of the same class as Mrs. Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘Monna Innomianata’; and will, like them, retain permanent rank, for

The book is divided into three sections,–Companionship, Alone and The Fallen Flower. The first deals with the maidenhood of the poetess, with its hopes intermingled with fears. Here is a picture of her life as it had been before she met her lover–

‘Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.’ She yet doubted the troth of her lover, and remained unmoved. But he still came and said:

At some future time, this love was to suffer a rude shock. Utterly bewildered, she asks, "Is my spring-time done?"

Towards the end of the book, she becomes great with the glory of self-effacement and self-abnegation,–

Then death intervenes, and her lover is no more. She is alone in the world. But she is not really alone, for she believes in the life after death, and in the fuller union with the lord of her life. He is always with her, so she believes, though not in body, yet in mind, and spirit.

‘On the Path of Life’ is certainly one of the greatest sonnet sequences ever written. Its diction is chaste, sweet and faultless. Its metre is that of the Petrarchan sonnet; and it ranks with the noblest efforts of that great form. In it, like Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Roy said to her lover,–

This book of sonnets shows "that in the chaste heart of this votaress of Apollo, uninfluenced by the power of outward change, there bloomed a flower

A graduate of Calcutta University like Mrs. Roy, and proficient in Sanskrit, Mrs. Priyambada Devi lived for about 63 years. But she was very unhappy in life. In 1892, she was married to Taradas Banerjee, a lawyer practising in the Central Provinces, who died in 1895. In 1894 was born her only son and child Tarakumar, who also died in 1906, while a student of Benares University. Thus bereaved of both husband and son, Priyambada devoted the rest of her life to literary and philanthropic pursuits. Her writings fall under three categories, poetry, juvenile literature, and religion. To my mind, her chief title to fame rests on her book of exquisite spiritual self-portraiture ‘Patralekha’,¹¹ a collection of short poems and 26 sonnets of which three are of the Shakespearean type, one irregular and the rest of seven rhymed couplets. She dedicated this book to the memory of her husband, which shows her inner life of eternal love and ever-lasting affection. This book has appealed to me very much, for it contains among many exquisite poems, a sonnet on tender mother-love, the like of which I have never read in any literature.

But thou wilt ever remain a sweet memory to me, only mine!

Well did Michael Madhusudon prophesy, "The sonnet wilt do wonderfully well in our language." For, as the years roll, there will certainly be, as there are at the present day, many Bengali poets, who, like Wordsworth, having felt the weight of too much liberty, will find delight in being bound

‘Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.’