Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

ELIOT was perhaps the first to lay down the principle that the style of poetry should be like that of prose. By prose he means the current way of talk. According to him the language should be current, if not colloquial. Common words and sentences and the order of prose will satisfy this principle of poetic diction. Even in earlier times more than one poet acted upon this principle. Wordsworth's method was of this nature:

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Or

'Tis eight o'clock, – a clear March night

The moon is up, –

But the moderns demand something still more. Merely current words and expressions won't do; common parlance, even the commonest of common, has to be adopted.

There is the style of poetic prose. It is a special feature of literature of all climes. Since the time prose writing began enriching itself, this mode of composition has been in vogue. In addition to this, there is the prose poem. It is a step to rise from prose to poetry. The next step is free verse. But what the moderns aim at is quite different from these approaches. It will as far as possible contain the structure and outer form of poetry, but the style will be of prose, i.e., its measure and rhythm will be of poetry, but the tone will

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be of prose. The French Alexandrine; the high order of twelve-line poetry of Corneille and Racine – if it is read as poetry should be, it would sound totally dry and monotonous, but if despite pause and rhyme, it is read like prose, it would reveal its beauty. Because the noted actress Rachel discovered this, she has become renowned in the world of French drama. The intention of the moderns is somewhat like this. Take, for example, Eliot; but Eliot may be considered afterwards. Let us first take the echo of a Bengali poet:

From the point of view of technique, it has been said to be flawless. One likes to characterise these lines as doggerel in English. But they are not so. From the standard of modern appreciation they are really solemn poetry. Such sort of appreciation reminds us of the Sanskrit rhetorician's wit: What is an instance of a faultless sloka or verse? – Dugdham pivati marjarah (the cat drinks milk). – How? – A sloka must have four feet. Marjara (the cat) has them. A sloka must have sweetness or rasa (lit. juice). What can be there more sweet than milk?

Let alone wit and humour. The real problem is not perhaps with the style and trend of colloquialism, but with

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something deeper. The question, no doubt, raises a special aspect, but that is a mere symptom or complexity of the disease. For the composition of all ancient poetry was neither artificial nor unnatural. Rather, the reverse is the truth. Matthew Arnold has given proof of the grand style in poetry. For example, Milton's

Fall'n cherub! to be weak is miserable

(Paradise Lost, Book I, 1. 157)

Or Dante's

E'n La sua volontade è nostra pace...¹

(La Divina Commedia 'Paradiso', III. 85)

What could be easier or more natural, more common and colloquial than such expression? Milton's line may be taken as an exception to his usual style, but the entire composition of Dante borders on popular speech. Yet the fact of the matter is not that. Even though the ancients speak in popular terms, they choose the zenith in poetry, they swim on the crest of its waves, never in its pit. The moderns choose their poetic note from the trough of the common day-to-day speech and hold fast to it, rejecting as far as possible the high note of the ancients. Hence Eliot says:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe.

(The Waste Land, I)

Or

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself;

One must be so careful these days.

(Ibid.)

¹ Literally: "And His will is our peace."

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But why? What is the intention? What purpose does it serve? First of all, we do not want any more of the poetic in poetry, we do not want imagination, we do not want anything of castles in the air. We want the real, the rude, not the good and the beautiful. Strong feeling, powerful emotion – these you want. Such materials are lying about in ordinary day-to-day life; you need not soar into the skies and rummage the Heavens. The true interest and meaning of life are inherent in the workaday world's ways and manners. Not so? Well, listen further to Eliot:

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May.

Goodnight.

Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,

good night, good night.

(The Waste Land, II)

The thing to note here is whither this slow moving prose – don't we see that the sense has become a bit concrete? The trend has undergone a seachange and there is a flush of colour in the style – almost a blush. All is prose, indeed, prosaic in spirit, but the poet has had to playa trick – whatever be the principle; if the prose is left entirely as prose the poet's purpose is not fully served. When the poet's heart swells to overflowing, it can despite its efforts never remain in the ditch.

I say, where the heart of the poet is in depth and intensity, his voice rings with that depth and intensity. If Eliot has been a true poet, he became so when he spoke like this:

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

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There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column.

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

This bit of jewel is far above his 'Madame Sosostris' or even his 'Good Night'. Theory is one thing. Reality is another. Theory is of the poet's mind, his expression tied to his fancy, but that which is real in creation is the dictate of the poet's inner Soul – which bloweth where it listeth.

One aspect of that theory is this. The subject of poetry is free from design, free from covering. Stripped of all embellishments, what is demanded is 'Sunlight on a broken column.' Things have to be seen with the unblinking eye of the burning sun. Hence truth is dust, sand and grit – hard substance reduced to powder, covered, over with an illusory soft, green layer. Wealth and prosperity are the eternal pomp and luxury of a few; as for the masses, theirs are poverty and want, disease and sorrow. The civilised man, the educated man are mere parasites. The forthright children of the earth are the poor, the wretched, the primitive and the uncivilised. One has to go down to the root of all things, in other words, to cut off the head and move towards the lower limbs. The mystery of the lotus has to be sought in the mire. The thing has to be cut and pruned and reduced to its minutest, lowest, most despicable form. Our saints and seers transformed man and raised him to the level of a spiritual seeker. In the present age too we have aimed at the same thing in the reverse direction towards the lowest. The reason why we like prose and its low-pitched movement is that we do not want to remain in the higher spheres of the mind – we like to grovel in the dust.

It is not that the petty, commonplace and insignificant

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matters of daily concern cannot be the material for poetry. These can be freely used in a poem, but it will not do to have them exclusively in the poet's consciousness which should be of another stuff. The ancient thinkers have equated the poet's consciousness with seer-vision.

The moderns do not even recognise this truth. They do not bother about the Infinite. Neither do they feel the need of it nor do they admit it for the beauty and sublimity of poetry. Their procedure is otherwise. A prosaic thing may be accepted, but it should be treated as something more than that. Otherwise there is no difference between prose and poetry. The two things seem alike. The modern poets seek to be considered poets. Hence they practically admit and establish a difference between poetry and prose.

The fundamental principle of this procedure is that the thing and the event which are subjects for poetry should be developed along with their characteristic nature and virtue. That is to say, the thing and the event should be shown as speaking for themselves without the poet speaking for them. Perhaps, it will not be much of a mistake to say that here lies the difference between the moderns and the ancients. For example, if a wasteland is taken for the subject-matter, then we do not look for the poet's account or his description of it as in the case of Kalidasa's Himalaya. If a wasteland could speak for itself, then the poet would be the organ of his speech, the poet could identify himself and be one with it. Similarly if 'hollow men' are the poet's theme, then we do not require their introduction, nor a delineation of their character. We expect such a co-ordination of rhythm, sound and sense as would suggest dryness, despair and emptiness. The wasteland must float right before our eyes; not only that, we must feel like physically walking through it when we hear:

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

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And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock...

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

(The Waste Land, I)

And don't we become Hollow Men when we hear the words –

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms...

(The Hollow Men, IV)

It has to be admitted that Eliot by his own method has achieved considerable success in such instances.

A little before I have referred to Good Night. Various poets have variously described their parting scenes. These are perhaps the most poetic features in poetry. Othello's

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate…

(Othello, V. ii. 324)

Or Hamlet's

... the rest is silence...

(Hamlet, V. ii. 372)

Or when Virgil's Orpheus says:

Heu sed non tua palmas...

These are the immense outpourings from the depth of the

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human heart. But the moderns tend to give such feelings a different expression. These are articulations but the moderns want not articulations but incantations. Articulations may make things beautiful and touching, no doubt, but incantations make things look lifelike. Eliot's Good Night... Good Night... and the repetition of the phrase – are they not making the parting vibration physically felt?

Another feature of their incantation is not the transparency of sense, but its mystification. For it is not the sense, but something more. Just as the aim of incantation is to have the descent of the deity, so the aim of poetry is to present the truth or the object as living and conscious. So we find that Eliot goes on ignoring reasonable sequences or the order of prose. By the impact of co-ordination of sound and suggestion he makes up his presentation of the truth. So he feels no hesitation in mixing up various tongues. He has expressed his thought by quoting even an Upanishadic utterance in one of his poems in order to prove the power of poetry as a medium of incantation. Listen:

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.

Poi s' ascose net foco che gli affina

Quando flam ceu chelidon – O swallow swallow.

Le Prince d' Aquitaine à la tour abolie.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

Why then Ile fite you. Hieronymo's mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhavam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih.

(The Waste Land)

This is, however, what may be called an incantation with a vengeance in poetry.

It may be thought that we have here moved a good way from the method and ideal of turning poetry with the spirit of prose. But it is not exactly so. This type of incantation is

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the quintessence of prose itself. Perhaps it may have measure but no tune.

Yet, in Bengal, we have not been able to rise to the standard of Eliot. The reason is that Eliot is highly serious and has depth of feeling. However whimsical and arbitrary may be his brains, he has behind all that an intensity of emotion, although we may not call it the joy of poetry. Those of our countrymen who want to follow Eliot's style seem to have had its form and not its spirit. However intellectualised may be the mode of modern Western poetry, it is the particular expression of Western life. Behind it there lies a profound need, an urge of life. But here in our country this sort of creation is an artificial flower. As in the social and political fields, so in the domain of poetry the modern European trend has at most to a certain degree stimulated our brain. It does not move our heart, far from touching our soul.

That poetry is incantation may be taken for granted. But incantation is of two kinds. The moderns follow the incantation of the left-wing tantriks. The ancient poets took to the Vedantic and the right-wing of the Tantra as the best.

Yat te daksina-mukham tena mam pahi nityam.

(Protect me, O Rudra, by your right aspect.)

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