Baji Prabhou : one of the longer poems by Sri Aurobindo, based on the historical incident of the heroic self-sacrifice of a fearless general of Shivaji. The obvious reason he wrote it along with “The Mother to her Son” & Prince of Edur, was to implant the spirit of fearlessness in those who loved their motherland.
... romances or romantic epics, Baji Prabhou is quite obvious a heroic poem. Like Vidula, Baji Prabhou also was written during the period of active political life, and first appeared, not long after, in February-March 1910 in the Karmayogin; but it was during his stay at Baroda that Sri Aurobindo first received the impact of the story, drawn from Maratha history. Baji Prabhou is a story of Maratha... Moghul flood A moment. Ever foremost where men fought, Was Baji Prabhou seen, like a wild wave Of onset or a cliff against the surge. At last they reached a tiger-throated gorge; Upon the way to Raigurh.. Narrowing there The hills draw close... 36 Shivaji, in dire extremity, entrusts to Baji Prabhou the defence of that crucial gorge. Baji accepts the charge with... long dead. 47 and the poem closes at the moment when death is turned into victory, and Baji Prabhou becomes, by the very act of losing his life, an heir to immortality. The poem is thus rich in tragedy and triumph, and it both ennobles and exalts the subject. . In Sri Aurobindo, Baji Prabhou has indeed found a minstrel worthy of his imperishable sacrifice; but the poet has carefully ...
... Mother Spirit that is a face and Page 83 front of the Supreme Power creative of the universe. A virile offspring of this political mysticism is Baji Prabhou, based on the actual episode of the self-sacrifice which Baji Prabhou, a lieutenant of Shivaji, made in order to cover his master's retreat. Here is a blank verse no longer packed with colour and sorcery, passion and fantasy, yet... common earth with an uplifting hold upon it. The sense of the tangible and the orientation towards flesh-and-blood actualities, along with the thrill of the ideal, run also through the narrative, Baji Prabhou, which he wrote soon after the time of most of the plays: that is, during the dawn of the mystic in him. But they take an extreme and martial shape now. For, at first the mysticism is part of a ...
... Narrative Poems Published in 1910 Collected Poems Baji Prabhou Know more > Author's Note This poem is founded on the historical incident of the heroic self-sacrifice of Baji Prabhou Deshpande, who to cover Shivaji's retreat, held the pass of Rangana for two hours with a small company of men against twelve thousand Moguls. Beyond the single... hills; only Their rear sometimes with shouted slogan leaped At the pursuer's throat, or on some rise Or covered vantage stayed the Mogul flood A moment. Ever foremost where men fought, Was Baji Prabhou seen, like a wild wave Of onset or a cliff against the surge. At last they reached a tiger-throated gorge Upon the way to Raigurh. Narrowing there The hills draw close, and their forbidding... purpose was there need To call the Prabhou from his toil. Enough, Give me five hundred men; I hold the pass Till thy return." But Shivaji kept still His great and tranquil look upon the face Of Baji Prabhou. Then, all black with wrath, Wrinkling his fierce hard eyes, the Malsure: "What ponders then the hero? Such a man Of men, he needs not like us petty swords A force behind him, but alone will ...
... years before that. A partial draft of Baji Prabhou is found in a note-book he used from around 1902 to around 1910. The handwriting of this draft is that of the later years in Baroda (1904–6), and it is probable the poem was written during that period. (Sri Aurobindo spent a good deal of time in Bengal during these years.) Baji Prabhou was published for the first time in three... version of "The Birth of Sin". Unlike that piece, it is not structured as a play, and so has been printed here as a dramatic poem. Narrative Poems Published in 1910 Baji Prabhou. Circa 1904–9. Sri Aurobindo wrote that this work was "conceived and written in Bengal during the period of political activity". This leaves the precise date of its composition unclear... (1948, 1949), and others. He also published poetry in twelve books: Songs to Myrtilla and Other Poems (c. 1898), Urvasie (c. 1899), Ahana and Other Poems (1915), Love and Death (1921), Baji Prabhou (1922), Six Poems (1934), Poems (1941), Collected Poems and Plays (1942), On Quantitative Metre (1942), Poems Past and Present (1946), Chitrangada (1949) and Savitri (1950–51). Details ...
... for the quotation-lover. The same can be said of Baji Prabhou, written indeed in a different vein but no less splendid an achievement—granite in its suggestion of strength and at the same time as brightly flexible and resonant as a Damascus blade. It is founded on the historical incident of the tremendous self-sacrifice of Baji Prabhou Deshpande, who to cover Shivaji's retreat held the fort... to his superabundant genius. For he has made it difficult for us to attempt restraint in speaking of the marvellous imaginative alchemy of Love and Death or the pure epic strength and sweep of Baji Prabhou, his two hitherto published poems of long breath. 1 In the former he touched in one magnificent flight heights which can only be called classical. This is high praise indeed, but is it after all... To call the Prabhou from his toil. Enough, Give me five hundred men; I hold the pass Till thy return." But Shivaji kept still His great and tranquil look upon the face Of Baji Prabhou. Then, all black with wrath, Wrinkling his fierce hard eyes, the Malsurè : "What ponders then the hero? Such a man Of men, he needs not like us petty swords A force behind him ...
... father's prescient love, seems to have escaped notice, for it remains a tetrameter. The blank verse is akin to that of Urvasie and Love and Death while suggesting in places the style of Baji Prabhou, Only one technical liberty stands out clear-cut-line 6 with its inverted fifth foot: Prescient of grey realities. Rising,... But there is another line with a curious and unusual scansion... frame, That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world, Then breaks its user. This passage may be compared with the slightly earlier poem entitled The Dwarf Napoleon, Baji Prabhou, though not written on the whole in the strictly epic style which blends amplitude and poise with power, is epic in substance and suggestion everywhere and makes without the least loss in essential ...
... was not so much a studied attempt at perfection as a spontaneous outflowering of his genius, and this in its wake created the needed style. Savitri is separated from his Love and Death and Baji Prabhou by an enormous gulf. While the earlier work shows a poet who has already found his footing in English and is not influenced by the late Victorian age of poetry, the latter shows a poetical genius... Keats, Arnold, Tennyson, to name only some. Each gave something to it, some lucidity, grandeur, beauty, sweetness or flow. Sri Aurobindo's earlier attempts, like Love and Death, Urvasie and Baji Prabhou, reveal part influence of these poets. But in Savitri there is a total break from the past. Just as Milton cancelled the past licences which had made blank verse a love or Page 330 ...
... questions were put by J:] Kindly say who are the epic writers. I want to read them all. Is your "Love and Death" an epic, and "Urvasie", and "Baji Prabhou"? Love and Death is epic in long passages. Urvasie is written on the epic model. Baji Prabhou is not epic in style or rhythm Are your 12 recent poems 137 too in epic style? No, they are lyrical, though sometimes there may come ...
... metrical flow anywhere, there must be a flow but not a loose flux. 146 Sri Aurobindo had tried blank verse of the ordinary kind in his early poems, Urvasie and Love and Death and Baji Prabhou, as also the plays (including his translation of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie as The Hero and the Nymph), but now his aim in Savitri was, "to catch something of the Upanishadic and Kalidasian... Page 338 Fresh clouds come stored with thunder toiling up From a black-piled horizon. 149 Here is another passage, from the narrative poem, Baji Prabhou: Clamorous, exultant blared The Southron trumpets, but with stricken hearts The swords of Agra back recoiled; fatal Upon their serried unprotected ...
... 87; translation from Bhartrihari, 88; from Kalidasa, 90ff; The Birth of the War-God, 92ff; The Hero and the Nymph, 94ff; on Vikramorvasie, 98fn; Urvasie, 99-107; Love and Death, 108; Baji Prabhou, 1148; Perseus the Deliverer, 120-9; The Viziers of Bassora, 128-34; Rodogune, 13441; Eric, 141-7; Vasavadutta, 147-52; The Witch of Ilni, 152; The Maid in the Mill, 153; The House... children,775-6, press tributes, 775-6; advanced colony, 776; Adiseshiah on, 777, 778; role of TV in, 777-8; inauguration of school, 779; Matrimandir, 780 Bahadur, Naresh, 761 Baji Prabhou, 68, 114ff; a mini-epic, 114; a modem Thermopylae, 116; rich in tragedy and triumph, 118; spiritual connotation, 118,119, 174, 177, 185 Baker, Sir Edward, 322, 368m Bande Mataram ...
... present and the three previous chapters, in considerable detail. The many translations from Greek, Bengali and Sanskrit; the metrical romances, Urvasie and Love and Death; the heroic poem, Baji Prabhou; the dramatic romances and fragments; the many philosophical and spiritually oriented poems - amounting to many thousands of lines of verse, excluding the pieces lost in the "house-searches, trials... s of verse among his exact contemporaries in England have given proof of the same facility and dexterity in wielding the instrument of blank verse as is evidenced in Urvasie, Love and Death, Baji Prabhou and the several dramas (including The Hero and. the Nymph). The late Lytton Strachey aptly compared blank verse to the Djinn in the Arabian Nights story: it is either the most tyrannical of ...
... greatly increased speed of poetic composition, often some 200 lines in less than an hour. So too we shall find him, in the thick of the political period, essaying powerful verse narratives like Baji Prabhou and Vidula or adventuring into the realm of poetic drama in Perseus the Deliverer. Although Sri Aurobindo's first acquaintance and his growing intimacy with Bengali and Sanskrit literature... the Baroda College Miscellany and the early narrative poem Urvasie (1896). During Sri Aurobindo's editorship of the Bande Mataram and later of the Karmayogin, some of his poems including Baji Prabhou and translations like Vidula (from the Mahabharata) and his original play Perseus the Deliverer appeared in those papers or in the Modern Review. Songs of the Sea, Sri Aurobindo's translation ...
... very much obliged if out of the three typed copies of it I sent you a couple of years ago you will kindly let me have one. Was this work composed before Love and Death? Does Baji Prabhou also antedate the latter? Baji Prabhou was written much later. I do not remember just now about the Hero and the Nymph —it might have been earlier, but I am not sure. I shall see about the typed copy of the t... are referring as the translations of Kalidasa. Most of all that has disappeared into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career. 4 July 1933 The Hero and the Nymph and Baji Prabhou It is curious how you repeatedly forget that you have so wonderfully Englished Kalidasa's Hero and the Nymph. Surely it cannot be that you want it to be rejected and forgotten? Its blank verse ...
... may be printed, as he suggests, by the Aligarh or Osmania University. But please tell me: is this Aligarh or Osmania University business a possible scheme? ... What about Love and Death and Baji Prabhou? Are they to be printed in toto or in part? I have not the least notion whether it is possible; I suppose that ordinarily no University in India would accept as text-book the (English) poems... because one is not ready with the materials, a chance is lost of getting something done. Love and Death is too long for inclusion in a book of selections; passages would be sufficient. For Baji Prabhou that holds still more, since it has not so much poetic value as Love and Death . As to your selections, it seems to me that you have chosen with judgment and taste; but the comparative judgment ...
... of the more energetic among the lines you have been writing. 3 May 1937 Page 614 Is your Love and Death an epic, and Urvasie and Baji Prabhou? Love and Death is epic in long passages. Urvasie is written on the epic model. Baji Prabhou is not epic in style or rhythm. Are your twelve recent poems too in the epic style? No, they are lyrical, though sometimes there may come ...
... laugh) He says "Night by the Sea" has been addressed to my English sweetheart. (Laughter) And "Estelle" to a French girl! He is trying to make my biography out of my poetry! He also says that "Baji Prabhou" was written in Gujarat under the influence of Tilak and the Mahrattas. In fact it was written in Calcutta. (After reading the whole instalment) He has not made enough out of the poetry. He ought... SATYENDRA: That is not interesting. SRI AUROBINDO: There is nothing about my life here. It is all about my poetry, also the poetry of Tagore, Das, Monomohan, etc. He also says "Love and Death" and "Baji Prabhou" are ballad poetry. (Laughter) People are funny. Somebody criticising "Love and Death" said it was all Keats, and Girija says there is nothing of Keats, but it is a ballad! SATYENDRA: As in ...
... of the Mundaka Upanishad was begun on the 5th Feb, 1910. In the 19th February issue Sri Aurobindo started his poem, Baji Prabhou. It was prefaced by the following note: "This poem is founded on the historical incident of the Page 338 heroic self-sacrifice of Baji Prabhou Deshpande who, to cover Shivaji's retreat, held the pass of Rangana for two hours with a small company of men against ...
... always love that sets the pace of the action; and love is a redeeming power, and poetry is the native language of love. As for the narrative poems, Urvasie, Love and Death and Baji Prabhou, all belong to the pre-Pondicherry period, at least the first two to the Baroda period. Urvasie is an Aurobindonian narrative version of Kalidasa's play, Vikramorvasie. The Urvasie myth goes... Ruru and Priyumvada, come together, and they perceive that their union is, ...magically Inevitable as a perfect verse of Veda. 116 Page 52 Baji Prabhou, on the other hand, is about war and heroism and sterling patriotism; making their stand in "a tiger-throated gorge", Baji and his band of stalwart warriors resist the invaders and make a Thermopylae ...
... the Baroda period should show up here and there the sharp edges of his current political and revolutionary preoccupations. It was seen earlier that Sri Aurobindo's Urvasie, Love and Death, Baji Prabhou, Chitrangada and Vidula are not merely notable for their evocative power, but they are also poems - or translation - with a purpose. How shall man conduct himself on what seems to be no better... and conqueror, and not only she did not try to hold him back, she actually encouraged and almost induced him to break away from the bonds of love and fare forward seeking avenues of heroic action. Baji Prabhou, of course, was a pure flame of sacrifice that won the day for Shivaji - Thirty and three the gates By which thou enterest heaven, thou fortunate soul, Thou valiant heart. 6 ...
... your similes both in Urvasie and in Love and Death. Less openly, a general tone of poetic mind from him can also be felt: it persists subtly in even the poems collected in Ahana, not to mention Baji Prabhou. I don't know whether Swinburne is anywhere patent in your narratives: he probably does have something to do with Songs to Myrtilla. Stephen Phillips is the most direct influence in Urvasie and ...
... the Homeric comparison outside Homer are in Matthew Arnold's blank-verse narratives — particularly his Sohrab and Rustam — and in those early works of Sri Aurobindo: Urvasie, Love and Death, Baji Prabhou. We may cite one from Sri Aurobindo. He is describing the heavenly nymph Urvasie awaking from a swoon into which she fell under the abducting assault of a Titan. She awakes to the presence of her ...
... concordant continuity is maintained in the sense. Enjambment (overflow from line to line) which was used to impetuous effect in Sri Aurobindo's early narratives — Urvasie, Love and Death and Baji Prabhou — is not altogether avoided, yet end-stopping is the rule as serving better the graver, more contained movement demanded by the scriptural mood. A notable feature, in Savitri, of this mood ...
... pulses throb with earth's in Savitri, where the utmost heavens are spanned by The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face, [p. 677] than in Urvasie and Love and Death and Baji Prabhou with their more directly human interest and - to adapt slightly a Savitri- phrase to characterise them - their Words winged with the red splendour of the heart. [p. 615] Indeed ...
... similes both in Urvasie and in Love and Death. Less openly, a general tone of poetic mind from him can also be felt: it persists subtly in ever the poems collected in Ahana, not to mention Baji Prabhou. I don't know whether Swinburne is anywhere patent in your narratives: he probably does have something to do with Songs to Myrtilla. Stephen Phillips is the most direct influence in Urvasie ...
... contributed articles of rare inspiration. The early issues also carried his translations of the Isha, Katha and Kena Upanishads. There were literary contributions as well — several of his poems, 'Baji Prabhou', 'The Birth of Sin', 'Epiphany' and others appeared in the paper for the first time; it also published his translation of the first thirteen chapters of Bankim Chandra's Anandamath. In the later ...
... to Myrtilla, Urvasie, Love and Death and follow his career as a poet; his renderings from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata —the fragments, Nala and Chitrangada, the 'heroic' Vidula and Baji Prabhou, the blank verse dramas, the many philosophical poems culminating in Ahana —the numerous 'mystical' pieces included in the 1941 volume and in Last Poems —the varied experiments in quantitative ...
... contains war, but it is imaginative. So I suppose the opposing forces may not object. SATYENDRA: What would that commentator Girija make of it? SRI AUROBINDO: He said nothing biographical about "Baji Prabhou" either. He could have said that it was the glorious account of a scuffle I had with some Mahommedan!. NIRODBARAN: But what was this man trying to prove? He seems to be trying to establish some ...
... means original, I suppose. DR. MANILAL: But certainly very few people will understand the poems, Sir. I have asked many here. SATYENDRA: The poems are like his prose works. But poems like "Baji Prabhou" Dr. Manilal will understand. DR. MANILAL (smiling): Oh yes, that even I can grasp. SRI AUROBINDO (smiling): You remind me of Molière. You know that story? DR. MANILAL: No, Sir. SRI ...
... historic speech at Uttarpara, describing his visions and experiences in jail. June 19 : Started the English weekly Karma yogin. Long patriotic poem Baji Prabhou and several long and short poems some of which written in jail were published in the Karmayogin. August : Started the Bengali weekly Dharma, himself writing most of the ...
... . Some of his poetry and translations were published—the five-act blank verse drama, Perseus the Deliverer, Vidula or "The Mother to her Son' (from the Mahabharata) in Bande Mataram, and Baji Prabhou in Karmayogin. At the time of publication, all these had a pointed political appeal. In the play the stress was on the word 'deliverer'; Vidula exhorts her son to fight while Baji lays down his ...
... as it could go - and it was to great heights indeed. The scaling of high heaven in Urvasie, the descent into Hell or Patala in Love and Death, the fight for the mountain pass in the later Baji Prabhou: one would almost think that, between them, are comprehended the essence of Paradise, Inferno and Purgatorial Earth. But the demiurge that was Sri Aurobindo's poetic energy sought other avenues ...
... Collected Poems Index of Titles Adwaita 621 Ahana 475 All here is Spirit 597 Appeal 210 Ascent 581 Baji Prabhou 293 A Ballad of Doom 657 Radha's Appeal 34 Because Thou art 623 Because thy flame is spent 179 The Bird of Fire 547 The Birth of Sin 275 The Bliss of Brahman 616 ...
... sentence-totality to develop the story and its spiritual perspective. Though enjambment is not avoided on any strict principle, it is less ingenious and precipitate than in Urvasie, Love and Death or Baji Prabhou. The scriptural mood demands a graver, more contained movement. To such a mood end-stopping comes with greater naturalness. But Sri Aurobindo does not make a fetish of end-stopping. What he does ...
... his pulses throb with earth's in Savitri, where the utmost heavens are spanned by The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face, 33 than in Urvasie and Love and Death and Baji Prabhou with their more directly human interest and — to adapt slightly a Savitri- phrase to characterise them — their Words winged with the red splendour of thy heart. 34 Indeed, just ...
... Love and Death. But, as we perceive when we read further, we have more mental power of insight than in those narrative masterpieces of an impetuous romantic vitality. Like the semi-historical Baji Prabhou which came after those poems, it makes - though in a different and deeper style than that dynamic martial composition's - a transition between the afflatus of the early Sri Aurobindo and the i ...
... lengthen quantity, the sound-effect of many lines of English poetry would suffer. Such lines are expressive in their vowels because they ignore the classical canon. Take one instance: Sri Aurobindo's Baji Prabhou begins with the description of an extremely hot "noon of Deccan", making nature and man alike feel Imprisoned by that bronze and brilliant sky. It is because the English ear receives ...
... were written Page 44 in England except five later ones which were written after his return to India. Vidula ... originally appeared in the Weekly Bandemataram of June 9, 1907; Baji Prabhou appeared serially in the Weekly Karmayogin in 1910. It is not, however, unlikely that they had been actually written, or at least mentally sketched, during Sri Aurobindo's last years in Baroda. ...
... translating? 4 February 1966 Mother, The reason for retelling Sri Aurobindo's stories in Hindi is very simple. It is honesty. We do not want to pretend that we can translate his "Baji Prabhou" or "Perseus the Deliverer". We can reach nowhere near the original unless, as you told me once, "we reach the consciousness from where he has written", which is beyond our dreams. The stories are ...
... less do his pulses throb with earth's in Savitri, where the utmost heavens are spanned by The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face, than in Urvasie and Love and Death and Baji Prabhou with their more directly human interest and—to adapt slightly a Savitri-phrase to characterise them—their Words winged with the red splendour of the heart Page 165 Indeed ...
... of the Homeric comparison outside Homer are in Matthew Arnold's blank-verse narratives—particularly his Sohrab and Rustam —and in the early works of Sri Aurobindo: Urvasie, Love and Death and Baji Prabhou. We may cite one from Sri Aurobindo. He is describing the heavenly nymph Urvasie awaking from a swoon into which she fell under the abducting assault of a Titan. She awakens to the presence of ...
... doom by which an infinitesimal object will remain unmoved. A play of antithetical imagination involving the fundamental framework of physical existence cuts to our hearts. Sri Aurobindo, in Baji Prabhou, grips us with many lines that have no special music yet are of notable poetic quality. I give a few from a speech of Baji himself: God within Rules us, who in the Brahmin and the dog ...
... different kind of poetic creation which Ilion represents, there are three long early narratives of greater "human" interest developed in another cast of blank verse: Urvasie, Love and Death, Baji Prabhou, the last-named a martial episode of the time of the great Mahratta leader Shivaji. Then there are dramas ranging over many epochs and types of human culture: Page 94 Perseus ...
... alone, because He is dealing with His own ancient message. For that matter, you will see that any other book that He has written is all out of personal experience. Take His narrative poem "Baji Prabhou", for instance. In His descriptions of the battle, of the see-saw of fortunes, of the flight of the soldiers and of their forward movement, the minutest details are given. It would have been ...
... discussion of Sri Aurobindo's poetic style & word combinations, 455-456; Sri Aurobindo's life-work culminating in Savitri reviewed, 457-465. Bain, F.W. 403,451 Baji Prabhou 12,52,53,340,342,458 Bande mataram 3, 9,10,12,51 Bede,The Venerable 459 Berdyaev 34,35,270 Bergson 33,34,399,400,404 Bhagavad Gita 21, 25 ...
... Poems: Ahana and Other Poems, excluding "Ahana" (See 3), Perseus the Deliverer (See 65). Volume II, Contents: 1895-1908: Translation: Vikramorvasie (See 97). 1902-1915: Baji Prabhou (See 5); Nine Poems: "The Mother of Dreams", composed in Alipore Jail in Page 381 1908 or 1909 and first published in the Modem Review,July 1909; "An Image", "The ...
... Upanishads. The paper also published his renderings from Kalidasa's Ritusamhara and the first thirteen chapters of Bankim Chandra's Anandamath, besides several of Sri Aurobindo's poems. Who, Baji Prabhou, Epiphany, The Birth of Sin and An Image. Among the constructive prose contributions were several series of essays like A System of National Education, The Brain of India, The National Value ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.