THE PASTORAL TRADITION

By E. NAGESWARA RAO, M.A.

(Research Scholar, Andhra University)

“There is scarcely a species of poetry that has allured

more readers or excited more writers, than the pastoral”

–DR. JOHNSON

Pastoral poetry and the poetry of Nature are apt to be confused with each other. The pastoral is a conventional type of poetry handed down by the Greeks and Romans, and its greatest exponent in England was Edmund Spenser. It deals with rural life, especially the life of the shepherds. The poetry of Nature, on the other hand, depicts the varied splendours of the visible Universe. William Wordsworth might be said to be the greatest exponent of the poetry of Nature. We are here concerned with the pastoral, how it originated and developed at different times and places.

The origins of pastoralism may be traced back almost to the beginnings of literature. Vedavyasa, whose time cannot be determined with certainty, depicted the life of Lord Krishna in detail in the tenth section of his Bhagavata. This legend has ever since become popular and hundreds of songs, lyrics and poems were written taking it as their central theme. Among such varied compositions, the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva (1150 A. D.), written in Sanskrit, is acknowledged by many to be the finest. Krishna, who belongs to the shepherd community, was engaged in amorous sports with the Gopis, the cowherdesses who allegorically represent the pleasures of the illusory world. Later, when he sees Radha, the personification of Divine Love and Beauty, he feels ashamed of his previous conduct and eagerly awaits union with Radha. After some delay, which only serves to increase the longing of the one for the other, they are brought together and this wonderful lyric drama ends in the inevitable union of Krishna with Radha. Thus, the half-human and half-divine hero of the poem is the allegoric representation of a person attracted alternately by earthly and heavenly love and finally emancipated from all sensuous attractions. The same story is told by Yerrapraggada (14th century) in his Harivamsa in Telugu. It is only natural that such a popular legend as this should be transcribed into several Indian literatures. What is more, a great oriental scholar like Sir Edwin Arnold translated Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda into English.

In the West, the earliest traces of Pastoralism may be found in the Sicilian folk-songs. It was, however, Theocritus, the Greek poet of the third century B.C., who created the literary pastoral in his ‘Idylls’ and ‘Epigrams’. He delineated the fantastic scenery of the conventional Arcadia which included the rich beauty of the Sicilian landscape, the wooded lawns of Aetna and the cool streams from the high snows. Sometimes, the poet himself spoke in the guise of a shepherd. The pastoral atmosphere is seen in the singing match in which two shepherds competed by improvising alternate verses or stanzas, often preceded by an exchange of banter or insults. Sometimes, there is a dirge for a dead shepherd. The love-lay of courtship or complaint is also introduced in some old pastorals. Theocritus took over these motifs and turned the lyric rhythms into his own melodious hexameter and infused much of his own poetry into rustic phrase. The religion of the shepherd was the germ of strange developments in later times. Bion, the younger contemporary of Theocritus, wrote Adonis imitating Theocritus. The story of this poem is taken from the Greek mythology. Adonis, son of Cinyras, was loved by Aphrodite; he was killed by a wild boar while hunting, and was changed by Aphrodite into the anemone. He was restored to life by Proserpine. This poem is remarkable for its gorgeousness. Moschus, a pupil of Bion, mourned the death of Bion in a fine poem. This poem owes more to the intellect than the heart. When all is said, the elements of artificiality mark off the work of Bion and Moschus from that of Theocritus.

Virgil, the renowned Roman poet, also comes under the Classical school. He elaborated the pastoral more subtly and thoughtfully than Theocritus. He portrayed ‘delicate, distilled beauties,’ but their charm is somewhat artificial and exotic. Virgil added the ‘panegyric’ to the pastoral forms. The allegorical pastoral was his original contribution to this genre. His bucolic ‘Eclogues’ were so famous that the term ‘eclogue’ became a synonym for a pastoral poem. These eclogues of Virgil marked the distinct beginnings of pastoralism in poetry. It had developed into regular genre, ranking below Epic and Tragedy, but highly respectable, a scholarly form having its own functions, rules and scope. The conventional country for this pastoral was not Sicily, nor an imagined Arcadia, but the poet’s own surroundings. The mind was not removed from everyday life and the poet’s own interests, but it was occupied with them. Virgil made the shepherd a mouthpiece for compliments addressed to statesmen in the city, and with equal readiness, the eclogue in the Middle Ages passed from civil into ecclesiastical allegory for the purpose of flattery or satire. A certain convenient obscurity thus began to cover all pastoral utterances, so that, to quote the words of Petrarch, “if the author does not provide a commentary, its meaning may, perhaps, be guessed but can never be fully understood”.

Petrarch was the leader of the Humanist school and he was the first person to use the pastoral as a vehicle of veiled political satire. Boccaccio, the great Italian story-teller, wove the eclogue material into the first pastoral romances in his Ameto (1342). Three generations later, Mantuanus (1448-1516) and Sannazaro whose influence coloured all the pastoral writing of the sixteenth century, followed the, two lines of development initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio. Mantuanus, who died just before the dawn of the Renaissance, following the tradition of his predecessors, wrote his eclogues in Latin. His pastorals were a vehicle for piquant but intelligible satire. He refreshed the worn-out topics and scenery with drastic realism. Sannazaro wrote his Arcadia (1504) in Italian which exercised considerable influence over the contemporary poets of all climes. The shepherds in Mantuanus meet to discuss society, whereas those in Sannazaro meet to forget it. Sannazaro feigns himself to have lived in remote Arcadia among the herdsmen and witnessed their innocent gaieties. Here, the scenery becomes purely ideal and conventional. Arcadia is a land of fountains, and birds that never cease to sing and woods that never decay. Here was a form in which the tenderer idealisms and feminine sentimentalities of the sixteenth century could find expression, in which all who sighed for rural simplicity, or shrank from the splendid or sordid artifice of cities and courts, could embody their golden dreams. Towards the middle of the century, this indolent Arcadia was quickened by an infusion of the nobler idealism of chivalry, and in this form it inspired both Montemayor’s Diana (1542) and Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1580) where the trumpet is heard as often as the lover’s lute, and we are not for long allowed to forget that Arcadia borders on Sparta. In the French Humanist school, Clement Marot was the portant poet. He naturalised the form of the Latin eclogue in French vernacular and wrote a dirge for the mother of Francis I.

In England before Spenser, some people like Barclay, Turberville and Barnabe Googe translated eclogues from Latin and Italian. Sidney and Spenser were the chief poets who made pastoralism all-embracing and all-comprehensive by bringing allegory and morality into its fold. In Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, the king, Basileus, had retired to the ideal haven of Arcadia where he brought up his daughters as shepherdesses. The country portrayed in it is the most delightful in the world, its people the earth’s happiest inhabitants.

Pastoralism supplied to young Spenser “the poetry of personal atmosphere” which he needed. And it was he who first turned from the artificial Latin style to the peasant dialect of the actual rustics, and Sidney blamed him for this. Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) is an epitome of all the trends of pastoralism. The twelve eclogues are a sort of summary of the whole past history of pastoralism. In one, the naturalism of Theocritus is more prominent, in another the conventions of Virgil, in a third the political diatribes of Mantuanus, in a fourth the gracious pathos of Marot. The shepherd does not talk of his life only as a shepherd. He is a moralist, a lover, a poet and a rustic. Colin, the unsuccessful wooer of Rosalind, is the least indistinct figure in the poem, and his melodious despair recurs with the persistent iteration of a chorus or a burden. The shepherd as a poet is portrayed in the October eclogue where Spenser gave direct expression to his poetic ideals. This noble and pregnant piece is the very core of the Shepherd’s Calendar. An undertone of indignant scorn pervades it, but with the ethical and satiric strain there mingles the thought of Colin’s love and of his poetry. Spenser’s high Platonic creed of love is embodied in the Calendar. He would have confined himself to the rendering of the traditional idea of pastoral love adapted to the changes of different seasons. But, the unity of design solely lies in an allegorical calendar, treated ethically, in agreement with the physical characteristics of the different months. The idea of love is presented prominently only in four of the eclogues, viz., those for January, March, June and December; the rest four, those for February, May, July and September deal with matters relating to morality or religion; two are complimentary or elegiac, those for April and November; one, that for Augu describes a singing match pure and simple; one, that for October is devoted to a lament for the neglect of poetry. Spenser used the monologue as Virgil and Marot did, in January and December, dialogues in February, and a conversation of three in August. This last, again, may be of three kinds. It may be a genuine discussion as in October and June, a contest as in August, or a narrative as in February, March and May. Spenser was quite untrue to English scenery, flowers, speech, weather, habits and everything else, since he was not writing about real shepherds, but creating an English version of a convention and he gives just enough detail to naturalise and anglicise it. He invented a new gambit in linking his eclogues together in a calendar, but in most other respects he followed the tradition. The Calendar could be recognised as belonging to the new tradition which had triumphed in Italy and France, yet no one could call it Latinised or Frenchified. Professor Herford rightly remarked that “the Calendar marks the entrance into English poetry of the exaltation of beauty and the rapture of song”. Professor Oliver Elton refers to it as “the bright flower in the seedlings of the pastoral lyric, which has descended from Greece through ancient and modern Italy”.

In the exuberant enthusiasm of the memorable Elizabethan Age several writers were attracted by the pastorals, and some of them introduced this element into their writings. Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, and Drayton’s Idea: The Shepherd’s Garland may be mentioned in this connection. The pastoral found its way into the drama also quite naturally, since it was the most popular literary form in the great Elizabethan Era. A number of plays were written with pastoral themes between 1600 and 1642. Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd, Shirley’s A Pastorall Called the Arcadia, Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepheardesse, Randolph’s Amyntas or The Impossible Dowry and Rutter’s Shepheard’s Holy-Day-these and many others were dramatic essays in pastoralism. Ben Jonson and Fletcher were the most successful in this genre. It is needless to add that Shakespeare towers aloft in this as in many other things. His sixteenth century comedies were, in general, pastoral in character. In As You Like It, Orlando and Rosalind woo each other in the Forest of Arden amidst a natural pastoral atmosphere. The sheep-shearing scene in The Winter’s Tale, where Florizel falls in love with Perdita, the ‘Queen of Curds and Cream’, has hardly anything to compare with, in its charm. It clearly shows us that Shakespeare had few equals in the delineation of pastoral atmosphere.

The pastoral elegy was also successfully handled by poets like Milton, Gray, Shelley and Matthew Arnold. Milton laments the death of his friend, Edward King, in Lycidas, Shelley the death of Keats in Adonais, and Arnold that of Clough in Thyrsis. In Lycidas and Adonais there is the same general plan. Both begin with grief for the dead. This is followed by a stern denunciation the living and finally there are strains of solemn joy. Gray’s Ellegy Written in a Country Churchyard is not a conventional lament any particular personal friend, but a pathetic presentation of the short and simple annals of the poor’, ‘their homely joys and destiny obscure’. Gray shows us the transient nature mundane pleasures and declares that

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

When we come to the eighteenth century, we will at once notice that the conditions in the villages have been changing. Oliver Goldsmith and George Crabbe have depicted country life with stark realism. The Deserted Village of the former and The Village of the latter are a tirade against the conventional and stereotyped pastorals of the previous centuries, which only idealised and prettified everything in the village. George Crabbe declared that he would paint the village life.

As Truth will paint it and as Bards will not.

In The Deserted Village, an imaginary village called Auburn which is believed to be a mask for Goldsmith’s own village, Lissoy, was described in its state of prosperity at first, and later we are given an account of the manifold changes that had occurred in almost every walk of life in the village. All these were attributed to the prevalent system of land-ownership which helped the accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few hands. Goldsmith stoutly opposed this and boldly declared that

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade:

A breath can make them, as a breath has made:

But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,

When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom this poem was dedicated, disagreed with Goldsmith regarding the contents of the poem. But the poet maintained that he sincerely believed what he had written and that the miseries mentioned in the poem were real and that the land-owners were incredibly luxurious in their habits. Recently, a speaker on Marxism quoted extensively from The Deserted Village to support the thesis of Marx, and declared that Goldsmith would have been a prominent Communist, had he been born today.

George Crabbe also wrote in a similar vein and dealt with the life of the sinners, the toilers and the have-nots who are at the bottom rung of the social ladder. He wanted to picture reality and so he did not very much care for the melody. He had succeeded well in rousing the conscience of the readers and enlisting their sympathy for the poor. In the words of Lord Byron, he was ‘Nature’s sternest painter’.

Matthew Arnold in his The Scholar Gipsy, scorns

the strange disease of modern life

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its head so o’er tax’d, its palsied hearts;

and praises the serene life of the vagabond gipsies. An Oxford scholar had to give up his studies due to poverty and join the gipsies. Living in their company, he learns their ways and habits of life and later gives an account of the same to his friends who come there by chance. This poem also testifies to the very difficult conditions of life in the nineteenth century.

The Industrial Revolution had changed the texture of country life considerably and the mechanisation and urbanisation affected life in the villages also. The inhabitants of the villages gradually deserted them and opted for the urban areas to earn their livelihood. This is not the singular misfortune of England. This is equally true of our own country which we consider to be lagging behind in industrialisation. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, the renowned Bengali novelist, portrayed the heart-rending conditions of the villages in one of his novels and suggested that the only remedy for the present evils rests with the educated youth of the village whom he urged to return to their villages and improve the conditions, thus giving the benefit of their education to their own villagers.

The Industrial Revolution was followed by the two world wars which only served to upset the normal peaceful life of the people everywhere on the globe. The Atomic Age has shattered the hopes and aspirations of the people and increased their fears. Indeed it has become an Age of Anxiety. All these things influenced the writings of the last hundred years or so. Britons, particularly the English Muse, have an innate love for country life, but they could not produce a pastoral poem in the old tradition.

Things are not very different even in India. Though we did not have any ‘tradition’ of pastoral poetry, there were poems dealing with rural life. In the songs and lyrics of renowned poets like Basavaraju Apparao, Nanduri Subbarao, Rayaprolu Subbarao, Abburu Ramakrishnarao, Kavikondala Venkatarao and Adivi Bapiraju, we often come across fine descriptions of rural life. Duvvuri Rami Reddi’s Krishivaludu gives a full account of the life of the peasant. Mention may also be made of Etukuri Venkata Narasayya’s Kshetralakshmi. The writing of pastorals in the same quantity and quality as in the Elizabethan Age cannot be expected under the changed conditions, and the pastoral tradition seems to have withered away.

From the foregoing sketchy survey of the Tradition of Pastora1 Poetry in different times and climes, it may be seen how the pastoral, beginning in the West as a simple pipe to represent either a contest in singing between two shepherds, a lover’s complaint, or a dirge for a dead shepherd, was transported into the region of allegory. The singing dialogue was turned into a channel for discoursing on the contemporary state of poetry. Love was sometimes treated in its Platonic character. The dirge was developed into a court panegyric. The eclogue was invested with a certain novelty of appearance. Thus the pastoral provided the accepted and acceptable way of treating personal and contemporary affairs. It was an added virtue that it provided opportunities for pretty and amusing descriptions and evocations of rural life and scenery; but no one pretended the shepherds were real.

In the words of Dr. Johnson, “the Pastoral is a way of perturbations into Elysian regions, where we are to meet with nothing but joy and plenty and contentment; where the gale whispers pleasure, every shade promises repose.” The pastoral brings a perfect freedom with it:

Soft as breezy breaths of wind

Impulses rustle through the mind.

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