Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

The Poetic Genius of K.D. Sethna

AMAL KIRAN is little known outside a particular circle, but his poetry is a new light which is destined to spread. His poetry seeks "a new intensity of vision and emotion, a mystic inwardness" that catches alive "the deepest rhythms of the spirit". It really becomes "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery". What is most interesting is Sethna has his individual style in spite of his being very close to Sri Aurobindo. His companion poet, Nirodbaran, has a different poetic style. Sri Aurobindo insisted on originality and this must have helped them.

One of Sri Aurobindo's favourite poets, Amal Kiran was born K.D. Sethna, a member of the Parsi community in Bombay. He was a brilliant student of literature and philosophy in St. Xavier's College, Bombay. He arrived at the Pondicherry Ashram while studying for his M.A. in philosophy. Joining the Ashram and becoming involved in its life, he discontinued formal study and cultivated the literary life under Sri Aurobindo's inspiration and guidance.

To Sethna, the Divine is surely a being above him, but he often uses the rhetoric of a romantic lover to pray to Him. This is not the Tagorean style we find in the English Gitanjali. Let us listen to the rhythm of the following lines:

This errant life is dear although it dies....

If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow

Its mortal longings, lean down from above,

Temper the unborn light no thought can trace,

Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow.

For 'tis with mouth of clay I supplicate:

Speak to me heart to heart words intimate,

* This article is reproduced from Indian Literature: Points of View, edited by Goutam Ghosal (1986). - Editors

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          And all Thy formless glory turn to love

          And mould Thy love into a human face.

Sri Aurobindo praises the poem exuberantly detailing its qualities, but any ordinary reader can feel the exquisite beauty of the words and the rhythm. To Sri Aurobindo and his poet disciples Truth is primary, and then a technique expressive of the truth in the form of beauty has to be found.

Sethna is not just a religious poet; he has the mystic mind which has often access to the spiritual planes. Sri Aurobindo has characterised the planes, but we are concerned with the overall beauty of Sethna's poems. Mystic or spiritual, great things come out through his pen and a few examples will speak of the presence of the Muse:

A white shiver of breeze on moonlit water,

Flies the chill thought of death across my dream....

A white bliss curving through our blinded deeps

To give the darkness' mouth a shadowless smile....

Waves of spiritual secrecy broke white

Along the heart's shores a rumour of deathless love

Afloat like a vast moon upon the deep....

Fuelled with forests I come, an ape on fire,

A brown beast burning towards the unbarred Blue.

Not to have ever seen such aspects is the world's idea of sanity. But, for the mystic poet, these things are realities. The language is a discovery. Sri Aurobindo tells us that in the past the English language has been plastic enough to succeed in expressing all that it was asked to express, however new; "it must now be urged to a further new progress. In fact, the power is there and has only to be brought out more fully to serve the fall occult, mystic, spiritual purpose."

Sometimes Sethna writes a poetry full of mystic suggestions, as in Evanescence:

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Where lie the past noon-lilies

And vesper-violets gone ?

Into what strange invisible deep

Fall out of time the roses of each dawn ?

They draw for us a dream-way

To ecstasies unhoured,

Where all earth's form-hues flicker and drop,

By some great wind of mystery overpowered.

The first four lines contain the questions in simple diction. The Second stanza answers in a simple but inspired language. The Word "unhoured" is unusual, but surely apt in the context.

Sethna's prayer poems are quite simple and charming, their charm lying in what Sri Aurobindo calls "psychic stamp".

Sometimes Sethna follows the Shelleyan tradition; but the newness is too sure, for the substance is not Shelleyan.

Though void, a fulness richens

The heart I give to Thee —

For, what more can I offer

Than all my penury ?

Some poems can be appreciated by any casual reader of poetry. Crownless King, Fragments and The Sea, are poems which may attract instantly.  The wonderful opening of The Sea may be cited:

The day floated for the last time on the sea.

Twilight's blur, washing the horizon's edge,

Made the immense waters loom infinite.

It would be interesting to read the whole of Fragments.

We love, but scarcely know

What they mean —

The unsated kisses, the deep quiets

Hung between.

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Suddenly in our eyes

A fall moon glows

And, quick with tears, the mind

Feels that it knows.

Aloof, some rounded hush,

A secrecy

Of Oneness, troubles the heart's surge

And breaking cry.

In quite a few poems, Sethna has used the adjective "shadowless". It just shows his passion to see the shadowless face of the Divine. Or does he see such a face frequently ? His art of phrase-making follows the Aurobindonian tradition, as we can feel in "an oceaned eternity of love", "the body's blinded cry", "a rose of fire", "azure height beaconing above the mind", "a spirit washed in whiteness", "a universal hunger's white embrace", "the shadow in the moon's whiteness", etc. But many of these are either new phrases or re-ordered or used in a different context. The Sethna-style is an individual style.

Amal Kiran. That was the name given to him by Sri Aurobindo. In Sanskrit, it means the clear ray. How true was the Master! The modern man is in need of such clear rays. "His heart has grown insensible to the sorrows and struggles of humanity." The poetry of Sethna reminds us of our forgotten identity.

SUNETRA CHATTOPADHYAY

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