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SECTION SIX INDO-ENGLISH POETRY Achievement of Indo-English Poetry— Literary Decadence in Europe THE idea that Indians cannot succeed in English poetry is very much in the air just now but it cannot be taken as absolutely valid. Toru Dutt and Romesh of the same ilk prove nothing; Toru Dutt was an accomplished verse-builder with a delicate talent and some outbreaks of genius and she wrote things that were attractive and sometimes something that had a strong energy of language and a rhythmic force. Romesh was a smart imitator of English poetry of the second or third rank. What he wrote, if written by an Englishman, might not have had even a temporary success. Sarojini is different. Her work has a real beauty, but it has for the most part only one highly lyrical note and a vein of riches that has been soon exhausted. Some of her lyrical work is likely, I think, to survive among the lasting things in English literature and by these, even if they are fine rather than great, she may take her rank among the immortals. I know no other Indian poets who have published in English anything. that is really alive and strong: Page – 245 and original* The test will be when something is done that is of real power and scope and gets its due chance. Tagore’s Gitanjali is not in verse, but the place it has taken has some significance. For the obstacles from the other side are that the English is apt to look on poetry by an Indian as a curiosity, something exotic (whether it really is or not, the suggestion will be there), and to stress the distance at which the English temperament stands from the Indian temperament. But Tagore’s Gitanjali most un-English, yet it overcame this obstacle. For the poetry of spiritual experience, even if it has true poetic value, the difficulty might lie in the remoteness of the subject. But nowadays this difficulty is lessening with the increasing interest in the spiritual and the mystic. It is an age in which Donne, once condemned as a talented but fantastic weaver extraordinary conceits, is being hailed as a great , and Blake lifted to a high eminence; even small poets with the mystic turn are being pulled out of their obscurity and held up to the light. At present many are turning to India for its sources of spirituality, but the eye has been directed only towards yoga and philosophy, not to the poetical *This was written some years ago and does not apply to more recent work in English by Indian poets. Page – 246 expression of it. When the full day comes, however, it may well be that this too will be discovered, and then an Indian who is at once a mystic and a true poet and able to write in English as if in his mother- tongue (that is essential) would have his full chance. Many barriers are breaking; moreover, both in French and English there are instances of foreigners who have taken their place as prose-writers or poets.
24-1-1935 P.S. About decadence: a language becomes decadent when the race decays, when life and soul go out and only the dry intellect and the tired senses remain. Europe is in imminent peril of decadence and all its literatures are attacked by this malady, though it is only beginning and energy is still there which may bring renewal. But the English language has still several strings to its bow and is not confined to an aged worn-out England. Moreover, there are two tendencies active in the modern mind, the over-intellectualised, over-sensualised decadent that makes for death, and the spiritual which may bring rebirth. At present the decadent tendency may be stronger, but the other is also there. Page – 247 What you say may be correct (that our oriental luxury in poetry makes it unappealing to Westerners), but on the other hand it is possible that the of the future will be more international than it is now. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance. If our aim is not success and personal fame but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry; the English tongue is the most widespread and is capable of profound turns of mystic expression which make it admirably fitted for the purpose; if it could be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying. Mental Theories and Poetic Freedom Why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them? I would suggest to you not to be bound by any but to write as best suits your own inspiration and poetic genius. Each poet should write in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance; it is a habit of the human mind fond of erecting rules and rigidities to put one way forward as a general Page – 248 law for all. If you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression you now have, even if the delicacy of the substance remained with you. Obscurity, artifice, rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the inner movement. I do not remember the precise words I used in laying down the rule to which you refer, I think I advised sincerity and straightforwardness as opposed to rhetoric and artifice. In any case it was far from my intention to impose any strict rule of bare simplicity and directness as a general law of poetic style. I was speaking of "Twentieth century English poetry" and of what was necessary for A, an Indian writing in the English tongue. English poetry in former times used inversions freely and had a law of its own—at that time natural and right, but the same thing nowadays sounds artificial and false. English has now acquired a richness and flexibility and power of many-sided suggestion which makes it unnecessary for poetry to depart from the ordinary style and form of the language. But there are other languages in which this is not yet true. Bengali is in its youth, in full process of growth and has many things not yet done, many powers and values it has still to acquire. It is necessary that its poets should keep a full and entire freedom to turn in Page – 249 whatever way the genius leads, to find new forms and movements; if they like to adhere to the ordinary form of the language to which prose has to keep, they should be free to do so; but also they should be free to depart from it, if it is by doing so that they can best liberate their souls in. speech. At present it is this that most matters. Pitfalls of Indo-English Blank Verse I HAVE often seen that Indians who write in English, immediately they try blank verse, begin to follow Victorian model and especially a sort of pseudo-Tennysonian movement or structure which makes their work in this kind weak, flat and ineffective. The language inevitably suffers by the same fault, for with a weak verse-cadence it is impossible to find a strong or effective turn of language. But Victorian blank verse at its best is not strong or great, and at a more common level it is languid or crude or characterless. Except for a few poems, like Tennyson’s early "Morte d’Arthur", "Ulysses" and one or two others or Arnold’s "Sohrab and Rustum", there is nothing of a very high order. Tennyson is a perilous model and can have a Page – 250 weakening and corrupting influence and the "Princess" and "Idylls of the King" which seem to have set the tone for Indo-English blank verse are perhaps the worst choice possible for such a role. There is plenty of clever craftsmanship but it is mostly false and artificial and without true strength or inspired movement or poetic force—the right kind of blank verse for a Victorian drawing-room. poetry, that is all that can be said for it. As for language and substance his influence tends to bring a thin artificial decorative prettiness or picturesqueness varied by an elaborate false simplicity and an attempt at a kind of brilliant, sometimes lusciously brilliant sentimental or sententious commonplace. The higher quality in his best work is not easily assimilable; the worst is catching but undesirable as a model. Blank verse is the most difficult of all English metres; it has to be very skilfully and strongly done to make up for the absence of rhyme, and if not very well done, it is better not done at all. In the ancient languages rhyme was not needed, for they were written in quantitative metres which gave them the necessary support, but modern languages in their metrical forms need the help of rhyme. It is only a very masterly hand that can make blank verse an equally or even a more effective poetic Page – 251 movement. You have to vary your metre by a skilful play of pauses or by an always changing distribution caesura and of stresses and supple combinations long and short vowels and by much weaving of vowel and consonant variation and assonance; or else, if you use a more regular form you have to give a great power and relief to the verse as did Marlowe at his best. If you do none of these things, if you write with effaced stresses, without relief and force or, if you do not succeed in producing harmonious variation in your rhythm, your blank verse becomes a monotonous vapid wash and no amount of mere thought-colour or image-colour can save it. Practical Suggestions for Writing English Poetry (1) If you want to write English poetry which can stand, I would suggest three rules for you: (1) Avoid rhetorical turns and artifices and the rhetorical tone generally. An English poet can use these things at will because he has the intrinsic sense of his language and can keep the right proportion Page – 252 and measure. An Indian using them kills his poetry and produces a scholastic exercise. (2) Write modern English. Avoid frequent inversions or turns of language that belong to the past poetic styles. Modern English poetry uses a straightforward order and a natural style, not different in vocabulary, syntax, etc., from that of prose. An inversion can be used sometimes, but it must be done deliberately and for a distinct and particular effect. (3) For poetic effect rely wholly on the power of your substance, the magic of rhythm and the sincerity of your expression—if you can add subtlety so much the better, but not at the cost of sincerity" and straightforwardness. Do not construct your poetry with the brain-mind, the mere intellect—that is not the source of true inspiration: write always. from the inner heart of emotion and vision. Practical Suggestions for Writing English Poetry – (2) The poetry of your friend is rather irritating because it is always just missing what it ought to achieve; one feels a considerable poetic possibility" which does not produce work of some permanence because it is not scrupulous enough or has not a Page – 253 true technique. The reasons for the failure can be felt, but are not easy to analyse. Among hem there is evidently the misfortune of having passed strongly under the influence of poets who smell of the schoolroom and the bookworm’s closet. Such awful things as "unsoughten", "a-journeying," "aknocking," "strayéd gift" and the constant abuse of the auxiliary verb "to do" would be enough to damn even the best poem. If he would rigorously modernise his language, one obstacle to real poetic success would perhaps disappear,—provided he does not, on the contrary, colloquialise it too much—e.g. "my dear", etc. But the other grave defect is that is constantly composing out of his brain, while one feels that a pressure from a deeper source is there and might break through, if only he would let it. Of course, it is a foreign language he is writing and very few can do their poetic best in a learned medium; but still the defect is there.
22.6.1931 Requirements for Writing Good English THIS book, returned herewith, is not in my opinion able for the purpose. The author wanted to Page – 254 make it look like a translation of a romance in Sanskrit and he has therefore made the spirit and even partly the form of the language more Indian than English. It is not therefore useful for getting into the spirit of the English language. Indians have naturally in writing English a tendency to be too coloured, sometimes flowery, sometimes rhetorical and a book like this would increase the tendency. One ought to have in writing English a style which is at its base capable of going to the point, saying with a simple and energetic straight- forwardness what one means to say, so that one can add grace of language without disturbing this basis. Arnold is a very good model for this purpose Emerson less, but his book will also do. It is surely better to write your own thoughts. The exercise of writing in your own words what another has said or written is a good exercise or test for accuracy, clear understanding of ideas, an observant intelligence but your object is, I suppose, to be able to understand English and express yourself in good English.
16-5-1932 Page – 255 Current Use of English Language I AM in general agreement with your answer to M’s strictures on certain points in your style and your use of the English language. His objections have usually some ground, but are not unquestionably valid; they would be so only if the English language were a fixed and unprogressive and invariable medium demanding a scrupulous correctness and purity and chaste exactness like the French; but this language is constantly changing and escaping from boundaries and previously fixed rules and its character and style, you might almost say, is whatever the writer likes to make it. Stephen Phillips once said of it in a libertine image that the English language is like a woman who will not love you unless you take liberties with her. As for the changeableness, it is obvious in recent violences of alteration, now fixed and recognised, such as the pronunciation of words like "nation" and "ration" which now sound as "gnashun" and "rashun"; one’s soul and one’s ear revolt, at least mine do, against degrading the noble word "nation" into the clipped indignity of the plebian and ignoble "gnashun", there is no help for it. As for "aspire for", it may be less correct than "aspire to" or "aspire after", but it is psychologically called for and it Page – 256 seems to me to be much more appropriate than "aspire at" which I would never think of using. The use of prepositions is one of the most debatable things, or at least one of the most frequently debated in the language. The Mother told me other listening in Japan to interminable quarrels between Cousins and the American Hirsch on debatable points in the language but especially on this battlefield and never once could they agree. It is true that one was an Irish poet from Belfast and the other an American scholar and scientist, so perhaps neither could be taken as an unquestionable authority on the English tongue; but among Englishmen themselves I have known of such constant disputes. Cousins had remarkably independent ideas in these matters; he always insisted that "infinite" must be pronounced "infighnight" on the ground that "finite" was so pronounced and the negative could not presume to differ so unconscionably from the positive. That was after all as good a reason as that alleged for changing the pronunciation of "nation" and "ration" on the ground that as the ‘a’ in "national" and "rational" is short, it is illogical to use a different quantity in the substantive. "To contact" is a phrase that has established itself and it is futile to try to keep America at arm’s length any longer; " global" also has established itself Page – 257 and it is too useful and indeed indispensable to reject; there is no other word that can express exactly the same shade of meaning. I heard it first from Arjava who described the language of Arya as expressing a global thinking and I at once caught it up as the right and only word for certain things, for instance, the thinking in masses which is a frequent characteristic of the Overmind. As for the use of current French and Latin phrases, it may be condemned as objectionable on the same ground as the use of clichés and stock phrases in literary style, but they often hit the target more forcibly than any English equivalent and have a more lively effect on the mind of the reader. That may not justify a too frequent use of them, but in moderation it is at least a good excuse for it. I think the expression "bears around it a halo" has been or can be used and it is at least not worn out like the ordinary "wears a halo". One would more usually apply the expression "devoid of method" to an action or procedure than to a person, but the latter turn seems to me admissible. I do not think I need say anything in particular about other objections, they are questions of style and on that there can be different opinions; but you are right in altering the obviously mixed metaphor "in full cry", though I do not think any of your four substitutes have Page – 258 anything of its liveliness and force. Colloquial expressions have, if rightly used, the advantage of giving point, flavour, alertness and I think in your use of them they do that; they can also lower and damage the style, but that danger is mostly when there is a set character of uniform dignity or elevation. The chief character of your style is rather a constant life and vividness and supple and ample abounding energy of thought and language which can soar or run or sweep along at will but does not simply walk or creep or saunter and in such a style forcible colloquialisms can do good service.
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