The Feast of Youth *
THIS is the
first published book of a young poet whose name has recently and suddenly
emerged under unusually favourable auspices. English poetry written by an Indian writer who uses the foreign medium
as if it were his mother- tongue, with a spontaneous ease, power and beauty,
the author a brother of the famous poetess Sarojini Naidu, one of a family
which promises to be as remarkable as the Tagores by its possession of culture,
talent and genius, challenging attention and sympathy by his combination of
extreme youth and a high and early brilliance and already showing in his work,
even though still immature,
magnificent performance as well as a promise which makes it difficult to put
any limits to the heights he may attain, – the book at once attracts interest
and has come into immediate prominence amidst general appreciation and
admiration. We have had already in the same field of achievement in Sarojini
Naidu’s poetry qualities which make her best work exquisite, unique and
unmatchable in its kind. The same qualities are not to be found in this book,
but it shows other high gifts which, when brought to perfection, must find an
equal pitch with a greater scope. Here perhaps. are the beginnings of a supreme
utterance of the Indian soul in the rhythms of the English tongue.
That is a combination which,
it may be well hoped for the sake of India’s future, will not become too
frequent a phenomenon. But at the present moment it serves both an artistic and
a national purpose and seems to be part of the movement of
destiny. In any case, whatever may be said of the made-in-India type of
second-hand English verse in which men of great literary gift in southern India
too often waste their talent, Mr. Chattopadhyay’s production justifies itself
by its beauty. This is not only genuine poetry, but the work of a young, though
still unripe genius with an incalculable promise of greatness in it. As to the
* Poems by Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar,
Madras.
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abundance here of all the essential materials, the instruments, the elementary
powers of the poetical gift, there can be not a moment’s doubt or hesitation.
Even the first few lines, though far from the best, are quite decisive. A rich
and finely lavish command of language, a firm possession of his metrical
instrument, an almost blinding gleam and glitter of the wealth of imagination
and fancy, a stream of unfailingly poetic thought and image and a high though
as yet uncertain pitch of expression, are the powers with which the young poet
starts. There have been poets of a great final achievement who have begun with
gifts of a less precious stuff and had by labour within themselves and a
difficult alchemy to turn them into pure gold. Mr. Chattopadhyay is not of
these; he is rather overburdened with the favours of the goddess, comes like
some Vedic Marut with golden weapons, golden ornaments, car of gold, throwing
in front of him continual lightnings of thought in the midst of a shining rain
of fancies, .and a greater government and a more careful and concentrated use
rather than an enhancement of his powers is the one thing his poetry needs for
its perfection.
The name of the volume,
taken from its first poem, The Feast of Youth, is an appropriate
description of its spirit, though one is inclined to call it rather a riot or
revel than a simple feast. It is the singing of a young bacchanal of the Muse
drunk with a bright and heady wine. In his first poem he promises to himself,
O! I shall draw the blue out of the skies
And offer it like wine of paradise
To drunken Youth…
and the rest is an ample fulfilment of the promise. For the thought and
sentiment are an eager, fine and fiery drinking of the joy of life and being,
not in the pagan or physically sensuous kind of enjoyment, but with a spiritual
and singularly pure intoxication of the thought, imagination and higher sense.
The spiritual joy of existence, of its primal colour and symbolic subtleties,
its essential sense, images, suggestions, a free and in- tense voluptuousness
of light is the note. Occasionally there is the attempt to bring in an
incidental tone of sorrow, but attacked
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by the glowing atmosphere of exultation, overcome and rendered unreal by the
surrounding light and bliss, it fails to convince. Expression matches
substance; there is here no holding back, no reticence, no idea of self-restraint,
but rather a reckless ecstasy and outpouring. Suggestion chases suggestion,
fancy runs after or starts away from fancy with no very exacting sequence; the
exhilaration of self-utterance dominates. One is a little dazzled at first and
has to accustom the eyes to the glitter, before one can turn to the heart of
the meaning: excess, profusion, an unwearied lavishing of treasures creates the
charm of the manner as well as its limitations; but this is often an excellent
sign in a young poet, for it promises much richness in the hour of maturity;
and here it is almost always, – not quite always, for there are lapses, – a
fine, though not yet a sovereign excess, which continually attracts and
stimulates the imagination, if it does not always quite take it captive.
There is here
perhaps a side effect of one remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Chattopadhyay’s
poetical mentality. There is a background in it of Hindu Vedantic thought and
feeling which comes out especially in "Fire", "Dusk",
"Messages" and other poems; but will be foul\d repeatedly elsewhere
and runs through the whole as a sort of undercurrent; but the mould of the
thought, the colour and tissue of the feeling betray a Moslem, a Persia’n; a Snfi influence. This source of inspiration appears in the title’ of some of the
poems, and it has helped perhaps the tendency to lavishness. Sanskrit poetry,
even when it clothes itself’ in the regal gold and purple of Kalidasa, or flows
in the luscious warnith and colour of Jayadeva, keeps still a certain
background of massive restraint, embanks itself in a certain firm solidity; the
later poetry of the regional languages, though it has not that quality, is
oftenest sparing at heart, does not give itself up to a curious opulence. But
the Moslem mind has the tendency of mosaic and arabesque, loves the glow of
many colours, the careful jewellery of image and phrase; its poetry is
appareled like a daughter of the Badshahs.
Her girdles and her fillets gleam
Like changing fires
on Sunset seas:
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Her raiment is like morning
mist,
Shot opal, gold and amethyst.
Mr. Chattopadhyay’s spirit and manner are too expansive for the carefully
compressed artistry of the Persian poets, but the influence of the passion for
decorative colour is there. But though the kinship is visible even in the
external expression, what is more striking, is a certain idiosyncrasy of the
fancy, the turn given to the thought, the colour of the vision, which are very
often of the Sufi type. Something of the union of the two cultures appeared in
the temperament of Mrs. Naidu’s poetry, but here it is more subtly visible as
part of the intellectual strain. This is however only one shaping influence
behind: except in one or two poems, where we get some echo of his sister’s
manner and movement, this young poet is astonishingly original; it is himself
that he utters in every line.
The thought-substance, the
governing inspiration of this poetry is such as might well from a fusion of the
Vedantic and the Sufi mentality. It is the utterance of a mystical joy in God
and Nature, sometimes of the direct God-union, – but this is not quite so
successful – more characteristically of God through Nature. Yet this is not
usually the physical Nature that we feel with the outward bodily sense; it is a
mystic life of light and ecstasy behind her, hidden in sun and moon and star,
morning and noon and dusk and night, sea and sky and earth. It is to bring this
remoter splendid vision near to us that image is strained and crowded, symbol
multiplied. We get this mystic sense and aspiration in the poem,
"Fire", in an image of love, -
I am athirst for one glimpse of
your beautiful
face, O Love!
Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the
purple of skies.
The closing lines of the "Hour of Rest" express it more barely, – I
quote them only for their directness, though the expression stumbles and even
lapses badly in the last two lines, –
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There is a
sweetness in the world
That I
have sometimes felt,
And
oft in fragrant petals curl’d
His
fragrance I have smelt…
And in sad notes of birds, unfurl’d
The
kindness He hath dealt!
It is more beautifully and mystically brought out in another poem,
"Worship", -
Like a rich song you chant your red-fire
sunrise,
Deep in my dreams, and forge your white-flame
moon…
You hide the crimson secret of your sunset,
And the pure, golden
message of your noon.
You fashion cool-grey clouds within my body,
And weave your rain into a
diamond mesh.
The Universal Beauty
dances, dances
A glimmering peacock
in my flowering.flesh!
Spring lives as a symbol of inner experience, universal spring,-
The Spring-hues
deepen into human Bliss!
The heart of God and
man in scent are blended…
The sky meets earth
and heaven in one transparent kiss…
Simple, moving, melodious and direct is its utterance in "Messages",
with one image at least which deepens into intimate revelation, -
In my slumber and my waking
I can hear His
sobbing flute…
Thro’ the springtime and
the autumn
Shaping every flower and
fruit…
And His gleaming laughter
colours
Orange hills and purple
streams,
He is throbbing in the
crystal,
Magic centre of my
dreams…
Silver stars are visible twinkles
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Of His clear,
transparent touch…
He is moving every
moment
To the world He loves so
much!
In the sea
God churns thy waters
into silvern foam
And breathes His music into
every shell…
Noon is the Master’s "mystic dog with paws of fire" and "Behind
the clouds some hidden Flutist plays His flute". These are some of the
more overt and express phrasings of the predominant idea, exquisite in harmony,
lovely and subtly penetrating in their thought. Elsewhere it is simply Nature
and the bliss, light and wonder behind her that are expressed, the rest is
concealed, yet suggested in the light. But there is always the same principle
of a bright mystic vision and the transmutation of natural things into symbol
values of the universal light, joy and beauty.
This poetry is an
utterance of an ancient mystic experience with a new tone and burden of its
own. Its very character brings in a certain limitation, it is empty of the
touch of normal human life; our passion is absent, the warm blood of our
emotion does not run through the veins of this Muse to flush her cheek with
earthly colour. There is indeed a spiritual passion, a spiritual, not a
physical sensuousness. Light and ecstasy there is, not the flame of earth’s
desire. Heaven takes up the symbols of the earth- life, but there is not the
bringing of the Divine into the normal hues of our sight and our feeling which
is the aim of Vaishnava poetry. Crystal is a favourite epithet of the poet, and
there is here something crystalline, a rainbow prism of colours in the
whiteness of shining stalactites. There is at first even some impression of a
bright and fiery coldness of purity, as of a virgin rarity of the atmosphere of
some high dawn, or as if that had happened which is imaged in "Dusk",
Ah God! my heart is
turning crystalline
Seeing Thee play at crystal stars
above!
or as if the poet had indeed, as he writes elsewhere, "put out the
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-309
lamp of his love and desire, for their light is not real", and replaced
them by the miraculous fire of this shining ideal. In the Sonnets, however, in
some other poems and in the poet’s later work there is the beginning of greater
warmth and a nearer sweetness.
The genius, power, newness
of this poetry is evident. If certain reserves have to be made, it is because
of a frequent immaturity in the touch which at times makes itself too sharply
felt and is seldom altogether absent. I do not refer to the occasional lapses
and carelessnesses of which I have noted one example, – for these are not very
numerous, and the flagrant subjection of the expression to the necessity of the
rhyme occurs only in that one passage, – but to the fact that the poet is still
too much possessed by his gifts rather than their possessor, too easily carried
away by the delight of brilliant expression and image to steep his word always
in the deeper founts of his inspiration. The poetic expression is always
brilliant, but never for long together quite sure, – lines of most perfect
beauty too often alternate with others which are by no means so good. The
image-maker’s faculty is used with a radiant splendour and lavishness, but
without discrimination; what begins as imaginative vision frequently thins away
into a bright play of fancy, and there are lines which come dangerously near to
prettiness and conceit. Especially there is not yet that sufficient incubation
of the inspiration and the artistic sense which turns a poem into a perfectly
satisfying artistic whole; even in the Sonnets, beautiful enough in themselves,
there is an insufficient force of structure. The totality of effect in most of
these poems is a diffusion, a streaming on from one idea and image to another,
not a well-completed shapeliness. The rhythmic turn is always good, often
beautiful and admirable, but the subtlest secrets of sound have not yet been
firmly discovered, they are only as it were glimpsed and caught in passing.
These limitations however matter very little as they are natural in a first and
early work and do not count in comparison with the riches disclosed. Moreover
there is quite enough to show that they are likely to be rapidly outgrown.
Young as he is, the poet has already almost all the secrets, and has only to
use
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them more firmly and constantly. Already – in. most of the poems, but I may
instance "Memory", "My Unlaunched Boat", the three Sonnets
and some of the "Songs of Sunlight," – there is the frequency of a
full and ripe expression and movement, sometimes varying from a mellow clarity
to a concentrated force, -
daylight dies
In silence on
the bosom of the darkening skies
And with him,
every note
Is crushed to
silent sorrow in the song-bird’s throat,-
sometimes in a soft, clear and magical beauty, -
The Spring hath
come and gone with all her coloured hours.
The earth beneath her
tread
Laughed
suddenly a peal of blue and green and red…
And for her tender beauty wove a
flowery bed…
She gathered
all her touch-born blossoms from bright bowers.. .
And fled. with all the laughter of
earth’s flowers…
sometimes in a delicate brightness and richness, constantly in a daring yet
perfectly successful turn, suggestion or subtle corres- pondence of image.
There is often an extraordinary and original felicity in the turning of the
physical image to bring out some deep and penetrating psychological or
psychical suggestion.
Since the
appearance of this book Mr. Chattopadhyay has given to the public one or two
separate poems of a still greater beauty which show a very swift development of
his powers; he is already overcoming, almost though not yet quite entirely, the
touch of unripeness which was apparent in his earlier poems. Sure ness of
expression, a thought in full possession of itself and using in admirable
concordance its imaginative aids and means, subtler turns of melody and
harmony, especially an approach to firmer structural power are now strongly
visible and promise the doubling of the ecstatic poet with an impeccable
artist. There is also a greater warmth and nearness, a riper stress, a deeper
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musing. We
may well hope to find in him a supreme singer of the vision of God in Nature
and Life, and the meeting of the divine and the human which must be at first
the most vivifying and liberating part of India’s message to a humanity that is
now touched everywhere by a growing will for the spiritualising of the earth
existence.
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