A few small sprays, and bound them round my
head.
Oh, the delicious touch of those strange leaves
No longer throbbed my brows, no more I felt …..
“Bind too my father’s forehead with these
leaves.”
One leaf the Angel took and there with touched
His forehead, and then gently whispered “Nay!”
------------then, all at once
Opened my tear- dimmed eyes –When lo! The light
Was gone –the light as of the stars when snow
Lies deep upon the ground. No more, no more,
Was seen the Angel’s face. I only found
My father watching patient by my bed,
And holding in his own, close- prest, my hand.55
These lines portray the whole truth that she should in her supreme moment of happiness plead for her father also to be blessed, shows how much she brooded on the fact that she would be taken from him and he would be left alone sorrowing, for his was not to be that divine vision-not yet.56
The last poem of this volume Our Casuarina Tree is worth remembering on account of its relation with Toru’s past. The tree in the family home at Baugmaree where she lived till the age of twelve, is invested with the glamour of ‘an Indian childhood, laced with thin reminiscences of English and French literature’:
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
For your sakes shall the tree be ever dear!
Blent with your images, it shall arise
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!” 57
Her stay in England only increased her awareness of India she was familiar with:
In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay
When slumbered in his cave the water–wraith
And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon, …..
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. 58
Toru, in the fourth stanza of this poem, humanizes the tree, for its lament is a human recordation of pain and regret.59 Once again we find a moving detail of a sense of loss and loneliness in this poem. Through her verse Toru has immortalized the Casuarina Tree which was the sole witness to things past, as she wanted to defend the tree from Oblivion curse. The feelings expressed here are not only of Toru’s but the common enough experience of all the exiles. It was Toru’s wish to recapture the memories of her childhood in association with the tree :
Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay
Unto thy honour, Tree, beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,
Dearer than life to me, alas! Were they!60
Each and every line of this poem echoes the sense of loss and loneliness, which Toru suffered in the last days of her life.
Her Sonnet Baugmaree is splendid as an evocation of tree in Toru’s garden, no doubt Toru was deep in touch with her Indian background and excellently she connects herself with India through her verses. Our Casuarina Tree and The Baugmaree garden house, both are lovely poems and are the proof of Toru’s Indian ness in spite of her western faith or belief. It is quite clear that nobody can survive unless and until its roots are not strong in its own soil. The same is the case with Toru Dutt, Indian environment has given her the fame and name and not her French or English background.
In fact in the very beginning, Toru realized this thing, and went back to her own motherland in order to triumph over the feeling of being isolated and alienated. Moreover her alienation was not self-imposed or by her own will, as in the case with Emily Dickenson, it was circumstantial. Toru never wants to live alone or aloof from society but external factors, forced her to live isolated and alone. Firstly, her family’s conversion to Christianity, secondly, her voyage to Europe and lastly her own weak health caused her to live alone. Toru fought bravely with her isolation, with literary creativity.
REFERENCES
Vincent O’Sullivan, James K. Baxter, (Oxford University Press, New Zealand, 1976),
V.S.Naipaul, The Middle Passage, (Vintage Publishers, 2002),
Jean Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus, ed..Leopold Sedar Senghor ( Presence Africine, Paris, 1948)
R.Parthasarathy, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999),
J.N.Gupta, Life and Work of Romesh Chunder Dutt, (J.M.Dent, London),
Quoted in Harihar Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, (Oxford University Press, London, 1922),
Ibid.
Toru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, (Kegan paul & Company Limited, London, 1880),
Toru Dutt, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, (Kitabistan, Allahabad, 1969),
Harihar Das, LLTD,
K.R.S.Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, (Sterling Publishers, Delhi, 1985),
Dr. Sant Singh Bal, ‘The Poetic Vision of Toru Dutt’, article written in Indian Poetry in English, ed. by Hari Mohan Prasad, (Parimal Prakshan, Aurangabad, 1983),
Padmini Sen Gupta, Toru Dutt, (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1982),
Ibid.
Harihar Das, LLTD,
Ancient Ballads,
Harihar Das, LLTD,
Mile Clarisse Bader, ‘Preface’, Le Journal de Madmoiselle D’Arvers. (Didier, Paris, 1879)
Sheaf,
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ancient Ballads,
Edmond Gosse, ‘Introductory Memoir’, Ancient Ballads,
Sheaf,
Ibid.
Ibid.
Harihar Das, LLTD,
Toru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, a new edition printed and published by B.M.Bose, (Saptahic Sambad Press, Bhowanipore, 1870)
Sheaf,
Ancient Ballads,
Sheaf,
Harihar Das, LLTD,
Ibid.
Sheaf,
Harihar Das, LLTD,
Sheaf,
Harihar Das, LLTD
Ibid. Appendix,
Sheaf,
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ancient Ballads,
Idem.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Idem.
Ibid.
K.R.S.Iyengar, Indian Writing in English,
Ancient Ballads,
05. Life And Death
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living. If a man writes about man, his life, his love, sooner or later he has to deal with the end of his life, death. No author can write about life and ignore its end. Due to this inevitable juxtaposition of life and death in the world, they are ever present in literature. They are not disjointed but are intertwined themes.
Death is a way of reflecting on life. The view of life is best in a backward glance when the destination has arrived. Any midway looking back may invite the curse on Eurydice. Life in other words turns out to be a forward gaze to death to reflect upon itself in a backward glance. Death therefore has given more life to literature than any other theme engaged by the literary imagination. The very opening lines of Tagore’s Gitanjali describe death in the image of the renewal of life:
“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.”1
There is no greater truth than that every living being on the earth will die, and that the dead will have rebirth. The Gita says, “The death of him who is born is certain and rebirth of him who is dead is inevitable”.2
It is also certain that one who thinks about death nevertheless, one may understand the mysteries of life within the limit of the po
wer of one’s mind, but one can hardly go beyond conjecture as far as the mysteries of death are concerned. However, it is the poet who traverses the unknown regions of death through imagination. It is of little importance whether the poetic treatment of death is correct or false. Poetry, however abstract it may be, treats of the reality of life irrespective of its aspects-physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. This sort of treatment cannot ignore the end of reality, which is death.
In fact, in the presence of death the sense of life becomes heightened. One does not, any longer, discuss questions of what ought to be done, one broods, rather, on the ultimate facts, and the ultimate mysteries of existence.
Death has been a perpetual theme with the Indian poets in English: From Derozio to Dutts, from Tagore to Aurobindo, from Ezekiel to Mahapatra, from Daruwalla to Bhatnagar. Except, perhaps, Toru Dutt, Tagore and Aurobindo no one treats Death with epical grandeur and felicity. But yet, the images of death, decay and darkness are interspersed so much so that they often remind us, at every turn, of our mortality and instill in us a sense of glory of being the homebound pilgrims.
Toru Dutt deftly deals with life and death as another fact of life. In her poetry we find the facts of life and death, its mysteries, the God, the finite and the infinite, the cohesion between human and divine everything that is related to human existence and its ultimate destination.
Like Hardy and French existentialists Camas and Sartre the dark image of an incomprehensible fatality and absurdity of life seems to have become a permanent part of Toru’s consciousness. Her outlook upon life had been pessimistic and gloomy. It appears from her works that the pathetic incidents of life moved the poetess most; the comic and the heroic rarely appealed to this ‘fragile exotic blossom of song.’ The main reason for this outlook was that she saw a number of tragedies at home, and that she herself hardly enjoyed a sound health.
Her sad life reminds us of the great romantic poet Keats. Abju, Toru’s only brother died in 1865 at an early age, plunging the entire family into misery and disappointment. Thereafter her loved sister, Aru, an adept in poetry and painting, died of consumption in 1874. This made the sensitive poet sad and companionless. On the death of Aru, Toru wrote to her dear friend, Mary Martin as follows-“I could not write to you before. The lord has taken Aru from us. It is a sore trial for us, but His will be done. We know he doth all things for our good. She was very peaceful and happy to the last, we feel lonely without her, who was the life of our small family. She was so cheerful and happy always.”3 One of Toru’s most beautiful translations, perhaps, also expressed her own sorrow at losing her sister, is a poem by de Parney entitled The Death of A Young Girl:
She died in earliest womanhood;
Thus dies, and leaves behind no trace,
A bird’s song in a leafy wood, -
Thus melts a sweet smile from a face.4
By and by, Toru’s own health ran down owing to recurrent attacks of fever and cough spasm; she spat a great deal of blood, which left her quite weak and prostrate. The Fall of the Leaves by Charles Millevoye translated by her expresses the sad feelings of Toru Dutt:
Our leaves are yellow, see they die!
They vanish, take a last long look,
Thy night of death, too, draweth nigh;
More pale than autumn, like the brook
Thou glidest onward to the sea
Wild- heaving of Eternity.
Before the green grass non the meed,
Before the vine-branch on the hill,
Thy youth shall wither.” And indeed
I die. A breath, funeral, chill
Has touched me, and my winter lowers
Ere yet my spring has hardly flown,
A shrub in one day overthrown! 5
Extraordinarily, sensitive and touching poem, it brings in front of our eyes the last journey of the leaf, which is identical to the last journey of a human being. Here death is portrayed as a soother or comforter, not cruel or harsh. There is no fear or horror of death.
Toru was compelled to keep within doors on account her illness and even writing letters was an effort she could not stand. It is harrowing tale indeed. How could a girl constantly attacked by disease and suffering be of optimistic nature or paint the comic and sunny sides of life in her work? Toru’s poetical compositions bear out the above statement.
The subjects, however, which were dearest to Toru, were pathetic ones, “those that spoke of separation and loneliness, exile and captivity, illusion and disappointment, loss and bereavement, declining seasons and premature death.”6
In both A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields and Ancient ballads there are so many poems dealing with the buffets and sorrows of life, with death and disease, with lost hopes and suppressed feelings. The captives and the prisoners, the down trodden and the poor also attracted Toru’s attention, and there are certain poems on these themes, too. No doubt, Toru’s inner susceptibility to the pathos of life has manifested itself.
In the Sheaf, we have poems like The Peasant’s Dilemma, The Young Captive, The Emigration of pleasure, My Vocation, The young Girl, The Lost Path, Morning Serenade, The Death of a Young Girl, The Captive to the Swallow, Sonnet-The Broken Bell, Loneliness, On Desert of the Heart, The Rose and the Tomb, The Political Prisoner, The Death of a Wolf, Sonnet-A Dream, The Death of a Daughter, Sonnet- Isolation and The Tears of Racine, which are all based on unhappy and none too fresh conditions of life.
The first poem in the earliest edition of the Sheaf is The Sleep of the Condor by Liconte de Lisle, on whom Toru had written an article in December 1874 for the Bengal Magazine. The poetess was, in her own small way, inspired, like Lisle, by a longing for the sublime and realization of the infinite. There are the same surrender to and even rejoicing in death. But Toru’s surrender to death was her faith in rebirth, as it was the conviction of a number of Victorian writers. Charlotte Bronte was far ever harping on the need to resign oneself to God’s will7 :
And let thy glory like a blood-stream pure
Flow from thy wounds, but in thy death rejoice!
Thou shalt arise again! Thy hope is sure!
Who shall again a lease of life procure? 8
A sweet and almost melodramatic resignation always accompanied the far too frequent tragic incidents that took place, both in the reality and fiction of that straitlaced age.
Here is a beautiful poem about a lover’s wish after death. The treatment of death is all positive though a tint of jealousy is mixed with it:
May we repose beneath two twin-like stones,
And may twin roses grow above our bones,
Roses of perfume rare, of colours bright,
From darkness springing into glorious light,
United, like our souls borne far away
To the warm sunshine of an endless day; -
And near on trees, to symbolize our loves,
In pairs still nestle the white turtle doves!” 9
In A lover’s Wish death is treated in a romantic vain, the lover is not sad about death but he thinks it -as envious, death is personified into a jealous person that snatched away the two lovers. Still the lover wishes that he would reunite after his death with his beloved. Apparently, death snaps off the bond between the lover and the beloved. But in reality, death intensifies the relation and invisibly strengthens the bond.
Among the collection of poems, The Young Captive translated by Aru, to be marked out for its deep pathetic feelings. In it the captive says thus:
O Death, thou canst wait; leave, leave me to dream,
And strike at the hearts where Despair is supreme,
And Shame hails thy dart as a boon!
For me, Pales has arbours unknown to the throngs,
The world has delights, the Muses have songs,
I wish not to perish too soon. 10
Padmini Sen Gupta in her book Toru Dutt remarks “Some critics even think that Toru’s poetry is appreciated because it is so closely associated with her sad life. ‘Beauty a
nd tragedy and fatality criss-crossed in the life of Toru Dutt And it is difficult, when talking about her poetry, to make any nice distinction between poetry and what C. S. Lewis would call “poetolatry”… When we read Emily Bronte’s poems or her novels, Wuthering Heights, speculation starts and makes all kinds of guesses, and the “might have beens” both fascinate and depress us. So it is with Toru……11 Toru came across a poem that she herself may have sung in the first instances. The translation was most tremblingly articulate, as, for example, My Vocation by Beranger:
Love cheered for a while
My morn with his ray,
But like a ripple or smile
My youth passed away.
Now near Beauty I sigh,
But fled is the spring!
Sing –said God in reply,
Chant, poor little thing. 12
Suffering and the dark image of an incomprehensible fatality were Toru’s ‘shadow companions,’ [13] and one therefore feels that the following lines communicate as much the translator’s sensibility as Victor Hugo’s or Eugene Manuel’s:
The tomb said to the rose-
Of the tears the night strows,
What makest thou, O flower of the dawning?
The rose said to the tomb, -
Of what falls in thy womb
What makest thou, O gulf ever yawning?
The rose whispered-O tomb!
From those tears shed in gloom,
Is the scent famed in song and in story.
The tomb said-O my pet!
Of each soul that I get
I create a winged angel of glory. 14
And look at this extract of Eugene Manual:
Along the green sward of the Bois, the child
Begged. She had veritable tears in her eyes
Humble her air, a face modest and mild,
And hands clasped tight, to wake men’s sympathies.
A sun-browned brow by dark, dark hair o’erhung,
Tangled and long, feet gray with dust, for dress
Around her figure an old garment hung,
That barely served to hide her nakedness.
Than wakening up, as to neglected task,
To every passer she went begging round,
Her visage donned its sad and sombre mask,
And took her voice its low pathetic sound.
Heart rending and pitiable description of a baby girl who is begging a farthing (a coin or a penny) and a bit of bread and her parents were sick and invalid. Her brothers were in cradles and there was nothing to eat for them. Beggar’s sad and pitiful condition reminds us of any beggar child of Indian street. A universal appeal to all heart, nothing artificial or affected, the sentiments expressed here are pure and refined. The last few lines are stirring when the poet passes comments about her pitiful condition:
Toru Dutt Page 13