Early Cultural Writings

"The Feast of Youth"

This is the first published book of a young poet whose name has recently and suddenly emerged under unusually favourable auspices. English poetry written by an Indian writer who uses the foreign medium as if it were his mother-tongue, with a spontaneous ease, power and beauty, the author a brother of the famous poetess Sarojini Naidu, one of a family which promises to be as remarkable as the Tagores by its possession of culture, talent and genius, challenging attention and sympathy by his combination of extreme youth and a high and early brilliance and already showing in his work, even though still immature, magnificent performance as well as a promise which makes it difficult to put any limits to the heights he may attain,—the book at once attracts interest and has come into immediate prominence amidst general appreciation and admiration. We have had already in the same field of achievement in Sarojini Naidu's poetry qualities which make her best work exquisite, unique and unmatchable in its kind. The same qualities are not to be found in this book, but it shows other high gifts which, when brought to perfection, must find an equal pitch with a greater scope. Here perhaps are the beginnings of a supreme utterance of the Indian soul in the rhythms of the English tongue.

That is a combination which, it may be well hoped for the sake of India's future, will not become too frequent a phenomenon. But at the present moment it serves both an artistic and a national purpose and seems to be part of the movement of destiny. In any case, whatever may be said of the made-in-India type of second-hand English verse in which men of great literary gift in southern India too often waste their talent, Mr.

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Chattopadhyay's production justifies itself by its beauty. This is not only genuine poetry, but the work of a young, though still unripe genius with an incalculable promise of greatness in it. As to the abundance here of all the essential materials, the instruments, the elementary powers of the poetical gift, there can be not a moment's doubt or hesitation. Even the first few lines, though far from the best, are quite decisive. A rich and finely lavish command of language, a firm possession of his metrical instrument, an almost blinding gleam and glitter of the wealth of imagination and fancy, a stream of unfailingly poetic thought and image and a high though as yet uncertain pitch of expression, are the powers with which the young poet starts. There have been poets of a great final achievement who have begun with gifts of a less precious stuff and had by labour within themselves and a difficult alchemy to turn them into pure gold. Mr. Chattopadhyay is not of these; he is rather overburdened with the favours of the goddess, comes like some Vedic Marut with golden weapons, golden ornaments, car of gold, throwing in front of him continual lightnings of thought in the midst of a shining rain of fancies, and a greater government and a more careful and concentrated use rather than an enhancement of his powers is the one thing his poetry needs for its perfection.

The name of the volume, taken from its first poem, The Feast of Youth, is an appropriate description of its spirit, though one is inclined to call it rather a riot or revel than a simple feast. It is the singing of a young bacchanal of the Muse drunk with a bright and heady wine. In his first poem he promises to himself,

O! I shall draw the blue out of the skies
And offer it like wine of paradise
To drunken Youth,

and the rest is an ample fulfilment of the promise. For the thought and sentiment are an eager, fine and fiery drinking of the joy of life and being, not in the pagan or physically sensuous kind of enjoyment, but with a spiritual and singularly pure intoxication of the thought, imagination and higher sense. The spiritual joy of existence, of its primal colour and symbolic

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subtleties, its essential sense, images, suggestions, a free and intense voluptuousness of light is the note. Occasionally there is the attempt to bring in an incidental tone of sorrow, but attacked by the glowing atmosphere of exultation, overcome and rendered unreal by the surrounding light and bliss, it fails to convince. Expression matches substance; there is here no holding back, no reticence, no idea of self-restraint, but rather a reckless ecstasy and outpouring. Suggestion chases suggestion, fancy runs after or starts away from fancy with no very exacting sequence; the exhilaration of self-utterance dominates. One is a little dazzled at first and has to accustom the eyes to the glitter, before one can turn to the heart of the meaning: excess, profusion, an unwearied lavishing of treasures creates the charm of the manner as well as its limitations, but this is often an excellent sign in a young poet, for it promises much richness in the hour of maturity; and here it is almost always,—not quite always, for there are lapses,—a fine, though not yet a sovereign excess, which continually attracts and stimulates the imagination, if it does not always quite take it captive.

There is here perhaps a side effect of one remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Chattopadhyay's poetical mentality. There is a background in it of Hindu Vedantic thought and feeling which comes out especially in "Fire", "Dusk", "Messages" and other poems, but will be found repeatedly elsewhere and runs through the whole as a sort of undercurrent; but the mould of the thought, the colour and tissue of the feeling betray a Moslem, a Persian, a Sufi influence. This source of inspiration appears in the title of some of the poems, and it has helped perhaps the tendency to lavishness. Sanskrit poetry, even when it clothes itself in the regal gold and purple of Kalidasa, or flows in the luscious warmth and colour of Jayadeva, keeps still a certain background of massive restraint, embanks itself in a certain firm solidity; the later poetry of the regional languages, though it has not that quality, is oftenest sparing at heart, does not give itself up to a curious opulence. But the Moslem mind has the tendency of mosaic and arabesque, loves the glow of many colours, the careful jewellery of image and phrase; its

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poetry is apparelled like a daughter of the of the of the of the Badshahs.

Her girdles and her fillets gleam
Like changing fires on sunset seas:
Her raiment is like morning mist,
Shot opal, gold and amethyst.

Mr. Chattopadhyay's spirit and manner are too expansive for the carefully compressed artistry of the Persian poets, but the influence of the passion for decorative colour is there. But though the kinship is visible even in the external expression, what is more striking, is a certain idiosyncrasy of the fancy, the turn given to the thought, the colour of the vision, which are very often of the Sufi type. Something of the union of the two cultures appeared in the temperament of Mrs. Naidu's poetry, but here it is more subtly visible as part of the intellectual strain. This is however only one shaping influence behind; except in one or two poems, where we get some echo of his sister's manner and movement, this young poet is astonishingly original; it is himself that he utters in every line.

The thought-substance, the governing inspiration of this poetry is such as might well spring from a fusion of the Vedantic and the Sufi mentality. It is the utterance of a mystical joy in God and Nature, sometimes of the direct God-union,—but this is not quite so successful—more characteristically of God through Nature. Yet this is not usually the physical Nature that we feel with the outward bodily sense; it is a mystic life of light and ecstasy behind her, hidden in sun and moon and star, morning and noon and dusk and night, sea and sky and earth. It is to bring this remoter splendid vision near to us that image is strained and crowded, symbol multiplied. We get this mystic sense and aspiration in the poem, "Fire", in an image of love,—

I am athirst for one glimpse of your beautiful face, O Love!
Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the purple of skies.

The closing lines of the "Hour of Rest" express it more barely,—I quote them only for their directness, though the expression stumbles and even lapses badly in the last two lines,—

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There is a sweetness in the world
That I have sometimes felt,
And oft in fragrant petals curl'd
His fragrance I have smelt...
And in sad notes of birds, unfurl'd
The kindness He hath dealt!

It is more beautifully and mystically brought out in another poem, "Worship",—

Like a rich song you chant your red-fire sunrise,
Deep in my dreams, and forge your white-flame moon...
You hide the crimson secret of your sunset,
And the pure, golden message of your noon.

Your fashion cool-grey clouds within my body,
And weave your rain into a diamond mesh.
The Universal Beauty dances, dances
A glimmering peacock in my flowering flesh!

Spring lives as a symbol of inner experience, universal spring,—

The Spring-hues deepen into human Bliss!
The heart of God and man in scent are blended...
The sky meets earth and heaven in one transparent kiss.

Simple, moving, melodious and direct is its utterance in "Messages", with one image at least which deepens into intimate revelation,—

In my slumber and my waking
I can hear His sobbing flute...
Thro' the springtime and the autumn
Shaping every flower and fruit...
And His gleaming laughter colours
Orange hills and purple streams,
He is throbbing in the crystal,
Magic centre of my dreams....
Silver stars are visible twinkles
Of His clear, transparent touch...

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He is moving every moment
To the world He loves so much!

In the sea

God churns thy waters into silvern foam
And breathes His music into every shell.

Noon is the Master's "mystic dog with paws of fire" and "Behind the clouds some hidden Flutist plays His flute." These are some of the more overt and express phrasings of the predominant idea, exquisite in harmony, lovely and subtly penetrating in their thought. Elsewhere it is simply Nature and the bliss, light and wonder behind her that are expressed, the rest is concealed, yet suggested in the light. But there is always the same principle of a bright mystic vision and the transmutation of natural things into symbol values of the universal light, joy and beauty.

This poetry is an utterance of an ancient mystic experience with a new tone and burden of its own. Its very character brings in a certain limitation, it is empty of the touch of normal human life; our passion is absent, the warm blood of our emotion does not run through the veins of this Muse to flush her cheek with earthly colour. There is indeed a spiritual passion, a spiritual, not a physical sensuousness. Light and ecstasy there is, not the flame of earth's desire. Heaven takes up the symbols of the earth-life, but there is not the bringing of the Divine into the normal hues of our sight and our feeling which is the aim of Vaishnava poetry. Crystal is a favourite epithet of the poet, and there is here something crystalline, a rainbow prism of colours in the whiteness of shining stalactites. There is at first even some impression of a bright and fiery coldness of purity, as of a virgin rarity of the atmosphere of some high dawn, or as if that had happened which is imaged in "Dusk",

Ah God! my heart is turning crystalline
Seeing Thee play at crystal stars above!

or as if the poet had indeed, as he writes elsewhere, "put out the lamp of his love and desire, for their light is not real", and

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replaced them by the miraculous fire of this shining ideal. In the Sonnets, however, in some other poems and in the poet's later work there is the beginning of a greater warmth and a nearer sweetness.

The genius, power, newness of this poetry is evident. If certain reserves have to be made, it is because of a frequent immaturity in the touch which at times makes itself too sharply felt and is seldom altogether absent. I do not refer to the occasional lapses and carelessnesses of which I have noted one example,—for these are not very numerous, and the flagrant subjection of the expression to the necessity of the rhyme occurs only in that one passage,—but to the fact that the poet is still too much possessed by his gifts rather than their possessor, too easily carried away by the delight of brilliant expression and image to steep his word always in the deeper founts of his inspiration. The poetic expression is always brilliant, but never for long together quite sure,—lines of most perfect beauty too often alternate with others which are by no means so good. The image-maker's faculty is used with a radiant splendour and lavishness, but without discrimination; what begins as imaginative vision frequently thins away into a bright play of fancy, and there are lines which come dangerously near to prettiness and conceit. Especially there is not yet that sufficient incubation of the inspiration and the artistic sense which turns a poem into a perfectly satisfying artistic whole; even in the Sonnets, beautiful enough in themselves, there is an insufficient force of structure. The totality of effect in most of these poems is a diffusion, a streaming on from one idea and image to another, not a well-completed shapeliness. The rhythmic turn is always good, often beautiful and admirable, but the subtlest secrets of sound have not yet been firmly discovered, they are only as it were glimpsed and caught in passing.

These limitations however matter very little as they are natural in a first and early work and do not count in comparison with the riches disclosed. Moreover there is quite enough to show that they are likely to be rapidly outgrown. Young as he is, the poet has already almost all the secrets, and has only to use them more

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firmly and constantly. Already—in most of the poems, but I may instance "Memory", "My Unlaunched Boat", the three Sonnets and some of the Songs of Sunlight,—there is the frequency of a full and ripe expression and movement, sometimes varying from a mellow clarity to a concentrated force,—

daylight dies
In silence on the bosom of the darkening skies...
And with him, every note
Is crushed to silent sorrow in the song-bird's throat,—

sometimes in a soft, clear and magical beauty,—

The Spring hath come and gone with all her coloured hours.
The earth beneath her tread
Laughed suddenly a peal of blue and green and red...
And for her tender beauty wove a flowery bed...
She gathered all her touch-born blossoms from bright bowers...
And fled with all the laughter of earth's flowers,

sometimes in a delicate brightness and richness, constantly in a daring yet perfectly successful turn, suggestion or subtle correspondence of image. There is often an extraordinary and original felicity in the turning of the physical image to bring out some deep and penetrating psychological or psychical suggestion.

Since the appearance of this book Mr. Chattopadhyay has given to the public one or two separate poems of a still greater beauty which show a very swift development of his powers; he is already overcoming, almost though not yet quite entirely, the touch of unripeness which was apparent in his earlier poems. Sureness of expression, a thought in full possession of itself and using in admirable concordance its imaginative aids and means, subtler turns of melody and harmony, especially an approach to firmer structural power are now strongly visible and promise the doubling of the ecstatic poet with an impeccable artist. There is also a greater warmth and nearness, a riper stress, a deeper musing. We may well hope to find in him a supreme singer of the vision of God in Nature and Life, and the meeting of the

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divine and the human which must be at first the most vivifying and liberating part of India's message to a humanity that is now touched everywhere by a growing will for the spiritualising of the earth-existence.

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