Seer Poets

The Shakespearean Word

The Vedic rishi, says the poet, by his poetic power, brings out forms, beautiful forms in the high heaven.

In this respect, Shakespeare is incomparable. He has through his words painted pictures, glowing living pictures of undying beauty.

Indeed all poets do this, each in his own way. To create beautiful concrete images that stand vivid before the mind's eye is the natural genius of a poet. Here is a familiar picture, simple and effective, of a material vision:

Cold blows the blast across the moor

The sleet drives hissing in the wind,

Yon toilsome mountain lies before,

A dreary treeless waste behind.

Or we may take a pictorial presentation of a gorgeous kind from Milton:

High on a Throne of Royal State, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,

Satan exalted sat by merit raised

To that bad eminence...

Or take this image drawn by a more delicate and subtle hand—it is Wordsworth—

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I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Or that wonder-image magically wrought in those famous unforgettable lines:

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

We may turn to an Eastern poet to see how he too has gone the same way although in a different tone and temper. Here is a Kalidasian image:

To climb upon his Bull high and snow-white even like

Mount Kailas

The great Lord graciously presses his holy feet upon

this back of mine;

I am his slave, Kumbhodara by name, Nikumbha's

comrade.¹

One can go on ad infinitum, for in a sense poetry is nothing but images. Still I am tempted to give a last citation from Dante, the superb Dante, in his grand style simple:

¹ Kailāsagauram vṛṣamārurukṣoḥ

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Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno

Toglieva gli animai, che sono in terra

Dalle fatiche loro.¹

Characteristically of the poet these lines give an image that is bareness itself, chiselled in stone or modelled in bronze.

All these images however, or most of them, belong to one category or genre. They are painted pictures, still life, on the whole, presented in two dimensions. Kalidasa himself has described the nature or character of this artistic effect. In describing a gesture of Uma he says, 'she moved not, she stopped not' (na yayau na tasthau); it was, as it were, a movement suddenly arrested and held up on a canvas. The imagery is as though of a petrification. The figures of statuary present themselves to our eyes in this connection-a violent or intense action held at one point and stilled, as for example, in the Laocoon or the Discabolo.

This is usually what the poets, the great poets have done. They have presented living and moving bodies as fixed, stable entities, as a procession of statues. But Shakespeare's are not fixed stable pictures but living and moving beings. They do not appear as pictures, even like moving pictures on a screen, a two-dimensional representation. Life in Shakespeare appears, as in life, exactly like a three-dimensional phenomenon. You seem to see forms and figures in

¹ Now was the day departing, and the air,

Imbrow'd with shadows, from their toils released

All animals on earth.

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the round, not simply in a frontal view. A Shakespearean scene is not only a feast for the eye but is apprehended as though through all the senses.

However, we must not forget Michael Angelo in this connection. He is living, he is energetic, to a supreme degree. If we seek anywhere intense authentic life-movement, it is there at its maximum perhaps. Even his statues are a paean of throbbing pulsating bodies. Still he has planted moving life in immobility and stilled rigidity. It is a passing moment stopped as though by magic; a mortis rigor holds in and controls, as it were, a wild vigour spurting out.

We know that almost no paraphernalia are really needed to present a Shakespearean drama on the stage. His magical, all-powerful words are sufficient to do the work of the decorative artist. The magic of the articulate word, the mere sound depicts, not only depicts but carries you and puts you face to face with the living reality. I will give you three examples to show how Shakespeare wields his Prosperian wand. First I take the lines from Macbeth, that present before you the castle of Duncan, almost physically —perhaps even a little more than physically—with its characteristic setting and atmosphere:

Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

Ban. This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,

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By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed

The air is delicate.

The next scene is the famous episode in King Lear where Gloucester attempts—though vainly—comically, to kill himself. Here is the photograph, rather the cinematograph that defies, surpasses all cinema-artifice. I present it in two parts:

(I)

Glo. When shall I come to th' top of that same hill?

Edg. You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.

Glo. Methinks the ground is even.

Edg. Horrible steep.

Hark, do you hear the sea?

Glo. No, truly.

Edg. Why then your other senses grow imperfect

By your eyes' anguish.

Glo. So may it be indeed.

Methinks thy voice is alter'd, and thou speak'st

In better phrase and matter than thou didst.

Edg. You're much deceiv'd; in nothing am I chang'd

But in my garments.

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Glo. Methinks you're better spoken.

Edg. Come on, sir, here's the place; stand still. How

fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark

Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy

Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,

That on th' unnumbered idle pebble chafes,

Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight

Topple down headlong.

Glo. Set me where you stand.

Edg. Give me your hand. You are now within a foot

Of th' extreme verge. For all beneath the moon

Would I not leap upright.

Glo. Let go my hand.

.................................

Edg. Now fare ye well, good sir.

Glo. With all my heart.

..............

Glo. O you mighty gods!

This world I do renounce...

Now, fellow, fare thee well.

Edg. Gone, sir—; farewell.

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(2)

Edg. ...Alive or dead?—

Ho, you sir! Friend! Hear you, sir! speak!

.............

What are you, sir?

Glo. Away, and let me die.

Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,

So many fathom down precipitating,

Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg; but thou dost breathe,

Hast heavy substance, bleed'st not, speak'st, art sound.

Ten masts at each make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell:

Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again.

Glo. But have I fall'n, or no?

Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.

Look up a-height; the shrill-gorged lark so far

Cannot be seen or heard: do but look up.

Glo. Alack, I have no eyes.

.............

Edg. Upon the crown o' th' cliff, what thing was that

Which parted from you?

Edg. As I stood below, methought his eyes

Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,

Horns whelked and wav'd like the enridged sea.

It was some fiend...

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Glo. 'The fiend, the fiend': he led me to that place.

The last one is the opening scene of Hamlet, an extraordinary scene familiar to the whole world.

(Francisco at his post. Enter to him Barnardo)

Bar. Who's there?

Fran. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

Bar. Long live the king! Fran. Barnardo? Bar. He.

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.

Bar. 'Tis not struck twelve, get thee to bed, Francisco.

Fran. For this relief much thanks, 'tis bitter cold,

And I am sick at heart.

Bar. Have you had quiet guard?

Fran. Not a mouse stirring.

Bar. Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Fran. I think I hear them. Stand, ho!

Who's there?

(Enter Horatio and Marcellus)

Hor. Friends to this ground.

Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.

Fran. Give you good night.

Mar. O! farewell, honest soldier:

Who hath reliev'd you?

Fran. Barnardo hath my place;

Give you good night.

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Mar. Holla! Barnardo!

Bar. Say,

What, is Horatio there?

Hor. A piece of him.

Bar. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus.

Mar. What! has this thing appear'd again to-night?

Bar. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us;

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night,

That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Hor. Tush, tush! 'twill not appear.

Bar. Sit down a while,

And let us once again assail your ears,

That are so fortified against our story,

What we two nights have seen.

Hor. Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

Bar. Last night of all,

When yond same star that's westward from the pole

Had made his course to illume that part of heaven

Where now it bums, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,—

(Enter Ghost)

Mar. Peace! break thee off, look, where it comes again!

Bar. In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

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Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it Horatio.

Bar. Looks it not like the king? Mark it Horatio.

Hor. Most like; it harrows me with fear and wonder.

Bar. It would be spoke to.

Mar. Question it, Horatio.

Hor. What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak.

Mar. It is offended.

Bar. See! it stalks away.

Hor. Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak!

(Exit Ghost)

Mar. 'Tis gone and will not answer.

Bar. How now, Horatio? you tremble and look pale?

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

Hor. Before my God I might not this believe,

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar. Is it not like the king?

Hor. As thou art to thyself.

Such was the very armour he had on,

When he the ambitious Norway combated;

So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle

He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

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This is not at all a theatrical representation on a stage where personages are acting; there is no make-up, no decor. It is a real incident happening before our eyes as it were, that we are invited to attend and contemplate. It is not a story narrated but an event occurring upon earth disclosed to our view.

Such is the magical creative power in the Shakespearean word. It is the evocative force of the articulate sound. In India, we call it mantra. Mantra means a certain sum of syllables charged with dynamic force, creative consciousness. It is that which induces life into the body of a clay image, it is that which awakens the Divinity, establishes Him in a dead material form. Shakespeare has, as it were, instilled his life's breath into his words and made them move and live as living creatures, physical beings upon earth.

Borrowing an analogy from modem knowledge, I may say that the Shakespearean word is a particle or wave of life-power. Modem science posits as the basis of the material creation, as its ultimate constituents, these energy-particles. Even so it seems to me that at the basis of all poetic creation there lie what may be called word-particles, and each poet has a characteristic quality or energy of the word-unit. The Shakespearean word, I have said, is a life-energy packet; and therefore in his elaboration of the Word, living figures, moving creatures leap up to our sight.

Shakespeare himself has said of his hero Romeo, characterising the supreme beauty the hero embodies:

When he shall die

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

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And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with Night.

Even so the whole body of Shakespearean utterances may be described as consisting, in the last analysis, of starry vocables, quanta of articulate life-energy.

Yes, Shakespearean syllables are indeed the glorious members cut out of the body as it were of a beautiful vital being transmuted into heavenly luminaries.

In the world of poetry Dante is a veritable avatar. His language is a supreme magic. The word-unit in him is a quantum of highly concentrated perceptive energy, Tapas. In Kalidasa the quantum is that of the energy of the-light in sensuous beauty. And Homer's voice is a quantum of the luminous music of the spheres.

The word-unit, the language quantum in Sri Aurobindo's poetry is a packet of consciousness-force, a concentrated power of Light (instinct with a secret Delight)—listen:

Lone in the silence and to the vastness bared,

Against midnight's dumb abysses piled in front

A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.

O Word, cry out the immortal litany:

Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.

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