Talks on Poetry

TALK TWENTY-THREE

We have brought Shakespeare and Eliot together apropos of the latter's lines on evening as an etherized patient. But Eliot and Sarojini Naidu would indeed be strange associates, the one a sophisticated modernist, the other a romantic traditionalist, the one intellectually inspired, the other emotionally beauty-swept. Yet there are some tracks in my mind along which I must bring them together: perhaps the very ingeniousness of Shakespeare and Eliot drives me in this matter.

The lines we have quoted from Eliot I have considered the surgeon's delight. Well, the husband of the Indian poetess was a doctor and it is by marrying him that Sarojini Chattopadhyaya became Sarojini Naidu. Once an Indian admirer of hers made the fact of her marriage responsible for not only her new name "Mrs. Naidu" but also her original maiden name. At a public gathering which she was going to address, the chairman happened to refer to her husband as the eminent surgeon Dr. Naidu. A man in the audience turned to his neighbour and, with examples like Yogi and Yogini in his mind, said with an air of wonderful discovery: "Oh now I understand. It is because of being Surgeon Naidu's wife that she is called Surgeoni Naidu!"

What this "Surgeoni" does in her poetic capacity is to cut through conventional responses to life and Nature and reach a colourful novelty that can occasionally rival anything the clever-ness-wallahs can spring on us in phanopoeia. See her write about Indian Dancers:

And smiles are entwining like magical serpents the poppies of lips that are opiate-sweet...

To make a smile not only an entity by itself, independent of the lips' curvature — to make a smile also a magical serpent: this is surely a cleverly penetrating imaginative act in the context of the poem. If a smile is an expression of a mood, a magical serpent of a smile is a sinuous and swaying inner delight which is the enchanted source of the body's dance-movement: at once we are drawn from the physical to the psychological, from the outer to the inner form, the mind's way of feeling and seeing, the way which is the true stuff of art-expression. Sarojini Naidu is ingeniously phanopoeic

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also in that brief description of the crescent moon, where she discloses by a sharp gleaming touch the high and sacred sense her country's antiquity had of every detail of social custom and struc-ture: she calls the crescent

A caste-mark on the azure brows of heaven...

But, of course, this poetess is most notable for her emotional intensities or subtleties. An instance of the latter are those three lines from In Salutation to the Eternal Peace, which may be re-garded as the Indian religious transfiguration of the etherized evening-mood of introvert neurotic modernism:

What care I for the world's loud weariness,

Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless

With delicate sheaves of mellow silences?

A surgeon like Dr. Naidu may not give a whoop of joy at this post-harvesting picture of meditation. But our Yogic surgeons may take an equally keen pleasure in thinking of the results of a heavenly harvester's scythe as in thinking of the results of an earthly F.R.C.S.'s scalpel.

Eliot himself is not incapable of a larger and intenser imagina-tion than the opening lines we have discussed of his poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, or that ironic summing up — in the same poem — of the entire triviality of modern life:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

The concluding phrase indicates, through the size of the object to which it refers, the smallness of our interests and motives and achievements. It also indicates the stuff of which our daily life is composed. What is measured out is like coffee, a common drink associated with routine mornings and afternoons and accompanied by issueless conversation. Something far other than a coffee-spoon existence is, however, within the range of Eliot's poetic phano-poeia, and he can rise though not very frequently to the grand style from the merely queer and recherche which modern poets affect. Look at him verbally vivify an adventure of the soul, dangerous and arduous:

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Across a whole Thibet of broken stones

That lie fang-up, a lifetime's march...

Fang means tooth and denotes here the cutting edges of the splintered stones. Imagining a whole Thibet of teeth, one thinks of a huge dragon's mouth; yet, thanks to the stone-picture, this subtle suggestion is held within the sense of physical reality, so that nothing flamboyant is said in spite of the passionate feeling and seeing. But, owing to the associations of the word "Thibet," physi-cal reality itself, without being obscured, is enveloped with a powerful aura of strange significances widening it out into an inner world of pilgrim vision and priestly aspiration endlessly forcing their way through unknown difficult elevations.

The image of the fangs reminds me of a picture in Sri Aurobindo which is a masterpiece of realistic mysticism. He is speaking of the "Bird of Fire" moving between some soul-depth in man and some spirit-wideness above of secret illuminations:

Rich and red is thy breast, O bird, like the blood of a soul

climbing the hard crag-teeth world, wounded and nude,

A ruby of flame-petalled love in the silver-gold altar vase of

moon-edged night and rising day...

This is what may be termed esoteric poetry presented in all its profound suggestiveness without the intervention of the interpre-tative intellect — phanopoeia in a sense which has already been illustrated with certain passages of Sri Aurobindo's incantatory Rose of God. There is also phanopoeic poetry which is mysterious rather than mystical or else is mystery hovering on the verge of mysticism. Look at Keats's description of the sea-bottom, taking us like Milton "under the glassy, cool, translucent wave" but showing us instead of a "Sabrina fair" in whom we may recognise just an imaginatively idealised human loveliness, a Nature-scene shot through and through with a delicately deep subjectivity:

... nor bright nor sombre wholly

But mingled up, a gleaming melancholy,

A dusky empire and its diadems,

One faint eternal eventide of gems.

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The subjective tone is set immediately by "gleaming melancholy" which tends to convert the next two lines into the reflection of a soul-domain as much as an image of the under-water world. In "a dusky empire and its diadems" we seem to have the gloom-glow of a realm of mysterious majestic beings held together by an un-named Overlord or Emperor, and this realm becomes in the last line a portion as if of some eternity of hidden lights whose reality is conjured up for us by an extreme felicity of phrase: mark the word "eventide" combining the suggestion of evening with that of tide, meeting the poetic demands of the occasion from the viewpoint of both colour and substance, implying both the subdued multi-lustre and the sweeping liquid mass and thus preparing for the glimmery water-wrapped jewels. I consider this line one of the most beauti-ful in all poetry — it is superlative at once as melopoeia and as phanopoeia. Milton's Sabrina-lines also are phanopoeic as well as melopoeic, but their quality is different: it is less penetrative.

We have mystery on the verge of mysticism in quite a dissimilar mode in another phrase of Keats's, which too has the sea for its theme. Now the mode is more intellectual than sensuous and we have not a mood-picture but the evocation of a strange presence pursuing a strange function. The evocation is achieved through the play of an imaginative profundity upon the bare fact of waves washing against land:

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.

It is impossible to think that the poet is no more than imaging with a mixture of simile and metaphor the physical purification of the earth by the sea. As soon as we think so we can give body to our idea only by ridiculously reducing, as C. Day Lewis has remarked, the image to a mere illustration of the problem of sewage-disposal! An unformulable spiritual potency is suggested in what the waters are doing: man's tainted earthly existence is felt as coming under the constant influence of fathomless forces from the vast depths of his soul-being which is purificatory with its ocean-like reflection of some immaculate heavenliness.

We have said that Keats phanopoeia here is more intellectual than sensuous — "priestlike", "pure ablution", "human" serve hardly a visual purpose. The only sensuous word is "moving". But

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there is nevertheless a general reminder, as also noted by Day Lewis, of the religious rite of asperges, an indirect vague picture of a priestly procession occupied with the work of sprinkling holy water. Phanopoeia of the mysterious that just peeps into the mystical is sovereignly brought us by Keats without any such description, any outlined image of this sort, in a line which is not even a mood-picture but only the statement of an emotional fact plus an intellectual conception: Keats does the miracle with the help of one indefinite colour-word:

I loved her to the very white of truth.

One feels immediately that some extreme of depth is expressed. But what is this depth? I have called "white" an indefinite colour-word not because the colour itself is in doubt but because no unequivocal clue is afforded us of the reality intended by the vision. One may interpret "white" in prime reference to either "I" or "her" or "truth". The first alternative would yield the idea: "I loved her truly." The second would give the notion: "I loved the true self of her." The third would frame the thought: "I loved the divine truth in her." By not tilting the expression in favour of any of the three concepts Keats fuses all of them and renders his vagueness many-meaninged: the vagueness arises not by a lack of ultimate clarity but by a denseness due to three clarities being simultaneously present. The word "white" itself may be taken as a pointer to a triplicity of significance-shade, just as actual sunlight holds fundamentally the three primary colours — red, yellow, blue. Red would here stand for the passionate intensity of "I loved her truly", yellow for the idealistic keenness of "I loved the true self of her", blue for the spiritual ecstasy of "I loved the divine truth in her" — and the basic original white for a pure infinite of mystery that is the truth of love and the love of truth.

The word "white" has been used by other poets also as part of memorable phanopoeia. Yeats has made a famous comment on some lines of Burns which he quotes as running:

The white moon is setting behind the white wave,

And Time is setting with me, O!

Yeats says: "Take from them the whiteness of the moon and of the

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waves, whose relation to the setting of Time is too subtle for the intellect, and you take from them their beauty. But, when all are together, moon and wave and whiteness and setting Time and the last melancholy cry, they evoke an emotion which cannot be evoked by any other arrangement of colours and sounds and forms." Cleanth Brooks and R. P. Warren point out that though the picture would be more beautiful if we substituted "gold moon" and "gold wave", something would be lost: the beauty would not be organic to the theme, it would be too rich for the idea and emotion of "setting" which call for a paleness as of something waning or dying. What Brooks and Warren say is correct, but I should remark with a bit of kill-joy prosaicality that the symbolic effect seen in the lines and the "relation too subtle for the intel-lect" which is read there may be largely of Yeats's own making. Not that the lines as quoted by him are wanting in all that he finds in them. The trouble is that Burns who was a poet very far by temperament from being symbolically subtle does not seem to have written them as quoted. David Daiches, in a broadcast¹ on the bicentenary of Burns's birth on January 5, 1959, refers to the Scots singer's "magical use of symbolic colour which so impressed the poet W. B. Yeats" but quotes the version of the lines in the original Scots dialect thus:

The wan moon is setting ayont the white wave,

And time is setting with me, oh! —

a version which is indeed very finely atmospheric yet conveys the writer's mood with a distinct and intellectually seizable corres-pondence in Nature by describing the moon as "wan": "wan" means "pallid" and suggests waning or dying.

"White" is an absolutely vital term in Shelley's celebrated simile —

Life like a dome of many-coloured glass

Stains the white radiance of eternity —

but plays its role in a context of clear-cut spiritual thought-vision: the lines are luminous rather than mysterious. We have mystery

1. The Listener, January 29, 1959, p. 205.

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touching mysticism in a somewhat homely way in the modern poet John Wain's:

But she towards whom (though far) I softly cry,

When asked, immediately would find it out,

Swiftly as white intuitive pigeons fly.

The familiar pigeons become a symbol, though vaguely, of an inner revelatory power. "Intuitive" is indeed poetically apt and directly significant, but the essential suggestion is no less in "white". And, so far as the actual word is concerned, "white" is irreplaceable. One may hope to light upon a substitute for "intui-tive", but nothing can do duty for "white". Only the ascription of "whiteness" to the pigeons that seem to know their way by an infallible inner feeling can bring for us a quality of sheer truth-vision unclouded or unweakened by any tinge of complex and confused human nature.

Mysterious phanopoeic poetry of the kind we are illustrating can crystallise also by presenting clearly an unknown figure instead of vaguely a known one. This figure differs from the shapes of eso-teric poetry not as much by going above reason as by acting from behind it, so to speak. It differs from the poetry of Eliot's "whole Thibet" which does not baffle the reason but largens beyond it and provides a hold through which elusive suggestions may be groped for. The poetry presenting a finely realised figure of a mystery tends to break away from whatever hold reason lays upon it and even to escape from all intention the poet himself may have had. Eliot has almost a moment of such poetry in his Gerontion at the end of a passage which is a series of forceful poetic thinkings in which remorse is expressed at the waste of knowledge about the presence of Christ:

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Expositors of Eliot have tracked a clever connection between this line and what precedes the passage whose close it forms and Eliot must have been aware of that connection when, speaking of "de-praved May" and the springing in it of "dogwood and chestnut," he added the highly original expression "flowering judas" for one of the rank growths of depravity, a tree which symbolises betrayal

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and could come to bear the wrath of God. However, the line, on its own, appears to stand in a sort of independent life, making the tree itself both tearful and wrathful, and shadowing some cryptic reality intenser than anything the inspired intellect wanted to fashion.

In older poetry too we have similar figures. Perhaps the most famous short example of the baffling is in Milton's Lycidas. A passage there speaks of the greed of the clergy of Milton's day, the failure of the pastors to look after their flock of believers. After recounting this clergy's slothful wickedness Milton caps the des-cription of the harm done with the semi-mysterious lines —

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing done —

lines which perhaps have the Church of Rome in mind: the word "wolf" may be an allusion to the legendary she-wolf which had suckled the founders of Rome. But the real "baffler" comes soon on the heels of these verses. Milton breaks out into a most sombre warning:

But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.

This is terrific. The presence of an unerring and inevitable doom as if from weird regions beyond the human confronts us. But what is the "two-handed engine"? Don't bring in anything like our steam engine. There was no such puffing monster in Milton's day; and it cannot be two-handed in any pertinent sense, though the engine-driver has two hands. The origin of the word "engine" is the Latin ingenium meaning "skill". So, in general, an engine is an instru-ment which is "something skilful". In Milton's lines, the image has a particular significance: it points to an instrument employed with skill by two hands to do a work of destruction. And it seems to acquire some precision in the light of a formidable phrase in Book VI of Paradise Lost. There the angel Michael, the leader of God's armies against Satan and his rebel hosts, is pictured fighting:

the sword of Michael smote and felled

Squadrons at once: with huge two-handed sway

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Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down

Wide-wasting...¹

Then there is another passage in the same Book of Paradise Lost, in which Michael and Satan are pictured as opposed with their arms "uplifted imminent", aiming "one stroke... That might de-termine, and not need repeat..."² Here we have the exact equi-valent of

Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.

The "two-handed engine" is evidently a long heavy sword, such as was often in use in mediaeval times, allowing and requiring both hands to hold the hilt in order to do its work which was "wide-wasting" with even a single stroke. But is there a special meaning in such a sword being selected by Milton? Some critics opine that he is referring to Parliament with its two Houses — the House of Commons and the House of Lords. And indeed Parliament did behead the chief of the English clergy, Archbishop Laud. But surely Milton could not have foreseen this event which happened in 1645, eight years after the writing of Lycidas. Nor was the instrument of Laud's execution a sword: it was an axe. And, though the executioner's axe was operated with both hands to-gether and though Milton in his pamphlet Of Reformation in England does speak of "the axe of God's reformation", he no-where himself makes it "two-handed" as he makes Michael's sword, and the axe he mentions in his pamphlet has nothing to do with Parliament. Besides, Parliament as such is too poor an origi-nal for the engine-wielder of Milton's lines. Even if Parliament was in Milton's mind, it has somehow opened an inner eye in him to a supernatural power of judgment and retribution and overruling government that has a touch of the Omnipotent. The phrase "God's reformation" is a good hint to combine with the phrase about the "two-handed sway" of the sword of Michael, the divine warrior. Something archetypal, as it were, which goes beyond all earthly authority, has manifested through the poet's imagination: what is conjured up is God as righteous Wrath with full force and needing just one smite to end anything.

1. Ll. 260-63. 2. Ll. 3 17-18.

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An image that has sometimes been taken to represent this Wrath in a mysterious manner is the animal addressed by Blake in the poem he entitled: The Tyger. I prefer, for Blake's own pur-poses, this old spelling used by him of the animal's name: the y instead of an i adds visually to the challenge of that animal as a symbol, for a long threatening tongue seems to be thrust out. If I had my own way, I should respell the whole name and accompany the sense of tongue-thrust with a roaring onomatopoeia: Tygerrrh.

Before we touch upon the poem, let me make a few digressive remarks. In the popular mind the tiger is contrasted with the lion, though both are acknowledged to be beasts of prey and feared by most men. The lion is said to be a gentleman who never exercises his ferocity except when he is hungry: the tiger is regarded as a ruffian who delights in ferocity for its own sake and would display it at any time. This is a gross libel — and any self-respecting tiger would resent it. As the libel is almost as old as history, I wouldn't be surprised if the tiger has avenged it by attacking its calumniator whenever it has met him. But big-game hunters have testified that this animal too, for all its fiercer aspect, is no different from the lion. If it feels that you are out for its skin or that you will be a nuisance in some way or other, it will go for your blood; but if its belly is full and your mind is on your own business, it will not sidetrack to slaughter you. Of course, you must realise the tiger's idea of what minding your own business means. I gather that the main thing is not to make any movement which it may misunder-stand: this amounts practically to saying that you must make no movement at all if escape by movement is not possible. Animals, as you must have observed, are not interested in still objects: whatever moves is alive for them and may be considered a poten-tial danger. I have read of a hunter who came face to face unex-pectedly in an unarmed moment with a tiger. Instead of making any movement he just sat down on his haunches, still as a stone, looking straight at the carnivore. The tiger eyed him with uncer-tainty for a minute, then itself sat down and kept, looking at him coolly for a while, finally yawned with boredom and, swishing its tail a little contemptuously, turned away. Would you dub this a ruffian's behaviour? I would call it quite gentlemanly. I believe that the reason for our usual slander is that the tiger perhaps takes offence more quickly than the lion. There was a Frenchman who said about it: "Cet animal est tres mechant, il se defend quand on

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l'attaque!" ("This animal is very nasty, it defends itself when attacked!")

My own personal experience is more of lions than of tigers. On way to England at the age of six with my parents, I was taken by them to a friend of theirs at Aden when the ship stopped at that port for half a day. This friend had kept a lion as a pet. A year or so before our visit the animal seems to have outgrown the pet-stage and was put into a cage. We were taken to pay our respects to it. It was said to have lost its interest in life ever since it had been caged. As soon as it spotted me it appeared to find life most interesting. For, it followed my movements and glued its gaze very appreciatively to my limbs. I suppose I should have been highly flattered at such attention to my boyish juiciness.

Years later I came across another member of this species, which also got interested in me — but under different circumstances. I had a few hours in hand at Madras en route to Pondicherry; so I decided to visit the Zoological Gardens. There was a magnificent lioness in a big cage which, in addition to having its own bars, was surrounded by an iron railing at a distance of about three feet from them. I noticed that the lioness had thrown its tail outside the bars on to the space between them and the railing. The idea came to me that here was the tail of the grandest animal on earth within touching distance and that I would be the silliest animal on earth if I missed the opportunity. I leaned over the railing and put the palm of my right hand on the fine tuft of hair at the tail's end. As if a shaft of lightning from a sombre cloud had been drawn back into the louring darkness the tail was retrieved into the cage by the offended posterior of the lioness, and the beautiful body turned in an eye's twinkle and the glorious muzzle sent forth a thunder that fairly threw me off my balance. The next moment the animal lost its interest in me and walked away. But that violent volte-face had sent with its thunder a hexametrical line of Sri Aurobindo's into my mind: at the end of his Ahana the Goddess of Dawn tells the spiritual seeker that he surely would meet true Joy

When thy desires I have seized and devoured like a lioness preying.

If it had been a tigress whose tail-end I had known the unique honour of touching, I would have remembered another line of Sri

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Aurobindo's, which is perhaps the most poetic example of descriptive much-in-little phanopoeia about the creature whose image Blake has taken to symbolise his theme:

Gleaming eyes and mighty chest and soft soundless paws of

grandeur and murder.

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