Mr. Bendre and His Poetry

(The Fergusson College, Poona)

(4)

In the preceding sections,¹ I dealt with the poetical aspects of the modern Kannada Renaissance and presented the poetry of Mr. Bendre against a very picturesque ground. I will now confine myself to an examination of the intrinsic qualities of his poetry.

In ‘The song of the Unemployed’ Bendre speaks of the relations of art to society:

Now that the world is chained in gold
Shall we not be quick and bold
To set it free? We will likewise
Bring away from paradise
The tree of plenty, bread and food,
And plant it here, aye, for good.
Till then all song’s a cry, a dread:
‘Bread! Give us our daily bread!’

There can be no real art till society is a fraternity, a brotherhood of emancipated and self-sufficing men. But there is also the relation of art to itself and to the self of man. He says elsewhere:

The river shall fountain forth
Born of the gestures of joy,–
The Milky Stream of radiant love
And faith none can destroy.
And in those holy waters
The soul a plunge will take,
And with conch–throated ease
Transcendent music make.
It will build the world anew
With Om and with Amen
And with new oracles
Bless us indeed, poor men.

Ripeness in inward life and harmony and peace in the outward,–these are essential if great art is to flourish. It is fortunate for Kannada poetry that these ideals should be held high at the present time.

Bendre confesses, in ‘The Song of Every Day,’ that conception and expression change with the ages, adjusting themselves to new spiritual needs. But in his ‘Four-fold Beauty’ he tells us, after the manner of Kanakadasa of Karnataka and Sri Aurobindo, that Beauty, the ideal of all poets, can always be approached in one or the other of its four forms,–sensuous, imaginative, intellectual and spiritual.

This vision of Beauty in its four manifestations leads the poet very often to the altar of high aspiration. He yearns to attain the very peaks of Olympus, but is satisfied with his own place in the scheme of things, because all fractions lose their meaning when the integral factor is an Infinite Whole. Ambition knows no end. It is the Child dancing on the shoulders of Age in ceaseless progression.

Bendre starts with a clear sense of the necessity of objectivity in art. ‘Leave my sufferings and my delights to me. But I will give you the poetry of my pain, the melody of my mirth. And if your heart melts at the strains like sugar-crystals, will you not permit me to taste its sweetness?’ He tries to learn the lesson of comradeship in weal and woe and to realise the truth of the remark that the poet is the least poetical of all human beings. But he does not forget the fact that it is only out of the labours of the spirit that song can be fashioned. Poetry were but gossamer in air unless it is strengthened by seership. And in his quest after a newer life he falls on Inspiration. He feels it in his heart that remembrance of Prakruti is his inspiration, and her image the theme of his song. In such inspired moments he finds the joy of it all descend on him in a flood. And he feels that words can only profane his meaning. He is overwhelmed with the sight of sublimity in Nature. Standing on the banks of the Ganges he exclaims: ‘How can ever one compose a song comprehending the river which even Siva’s head could not compose?’

Coupled with this inexpressible joy of aesthetic experience is the delight he feels in the age-old traditions of Kannada poetry and in the innovations with which he and others are enriching them. It is self-expression in his mother-tongue alone that can quench the thirst of the poet. The poetic tradition of his Motherland must flow in his veins. And he reminds the Karnataka goddess of the fact that it was only yesterday that the Tungabhadra made the rocks blossom into domes and cupolas. Can she not once more minister the milk of paradise to the tongue that is lifeless?

All these strands of thought are gathered into one complex whole in the lyrical ode called ‘Oh! Song.’ It begins as a meditation on art and rises into the domain of supramental life. It is also a fulfillment of the very desire it voices forth. Here are the opening and the concluding stanzas:

Into the bright sky of my mind
A cloud its way doth gently find.
Enthroned on it is a maiden fair
And in tresses falls her hair.
With meaning looks of glad surmise,
Like twinkling stars, she beams surprise.
And like a tender lotus-bud
Half-opened in the morning’s flood
Of light, her mouth she opens slow.
What songs, what chants from it would flow
To captivate the weary world?
I have come in sorrows hurled,
For your benison I long:
Give it me, oh Song! oh Song!
As when a mother lulls to sleep
Her child when it doth wake and weep,
So did you ease my troubled mind
With ministrations gentle, kind.
And it was you who sang the strain
That echoed in my soul’s domain
And lingers even now. All verse
Doth spring from you and I rehearse.
My tongue were but a nurse whose worth
Lies in waiting on your birth.
Could it be otherwise, oh Song!
Song! Oh! Song!

(5)

This is the poetry that Bendre has produced while tracking Inspiration on its way: I will now take to his other poems. A consideration of his plays, critiques and the forewords with which he has introduced most of the young poets of North Karnataka to the Kannada public, would overburden this article. I will now summarise the technical aspects of his poetry and then pass on to its substance and significance.

His style is rich and diverse. There is the imaginative wealth of his love-poems, the traditional idiom of his spiritual lyrics, the grandeur of classical style in the sonnets, the rhetorical fire of poems like ‘The Stomach,’ and the colloquial idiom of the pastoral lyrics. In a lyric like ‘The Dance Eternal,’ all these diverse currents meet in one great confluence. He uses certain age-old words with an appropriateness that brings them to life. And in his use of nal, tay, ta etc., he has traced Kannada roots to their mystic essences as ‘A. E.’ has done with Sanskrit words in ‘The Candle of Vision.’

His method of presentation results in intricate harmony. Almost every poem turns on some elaborate pattern of meaning as well as of language. And he has introduced many innovations. One is Nalvari or the four-fold lyric illustrated by ‘Four-fold Beauty’ and ‘Young Ambition.’ It consists of four stanzas in Shatpadi metre, each of them illustrating successively one of the four aspects of Beauty manifest in the theme. There are also lyric-sequences like ‘Kama Kasturi’; and two long poems, ‘Krishnakumari’ and ‘Moorti.’ The first has almost a labyrinthine design. And both illustrate the contention of Herbert Read that a long poem is essentially a complex harmony of many moods.

Perhaps the most interesting technical development in his recent poetry is the humorous variation he has played on ‘Futurism’ and ‘Imagism.’ Here is given the rendering of what can be called a ‘featuristic’ lyric. The lines in ordinary type are the real poem. In the italicised lines the poet himself has given us the interpretation of the movements:

IMAGE

Cheek resting on hand……….
(The lover is out and away to a distant land!)
The palm bent on the brow………..
(Is he coming now by the palm-row?)
Finger on chin……….
(She finds at last the heart that hers did win!)
Arms outspread………
(The severed halves do meet as one and wed!)
Smiles and sobs………….
(The warp and woof of love that ceaseless throbs!)

It is not necessary to enumerate his metrical and stanzaic innovations in this connection. Most of the traditional metres are employed, but always with fine adjustments. And in his Miltonic sonnet on the Sonnet, he makes a point as remarkable as those found in Wordsworth and Rossetti (‘A gay myrtle-leaf,’ ‘A moment’s monument’): ‘The eyes are indeed two; but the vision is always one.’ There are certain radical changes introduced into the structure of the sonnet itself. Folk-tunes and balladic tunes find a place as well as the ragas employed in devotional lyrics. There is the fierce and unredeemed flight of poems like ‘Behind a Corpse,’ the powerful free verse of ‘Narabali’ and the poetic prose of ‘Karulina Vachanagalu’ and other prose–poems.

This music of his is the very delicate mansion of his lovely imagery. His muse is decked up in rainbow splendour. The imagery is cosmic, grotesque or delicate, as suits the content. Here is an instance of delicate imagery:

I have a longing all the while
To reach the haven of deep-blue skies
And lie down on the gossamer pile
Of pillowy clouds and quite despise
The very remembrance of pain
And be the being of bliss again!
Against the moon’s I would lean my cheek
Though it be grown so wan, and seek
A similar paleness in his cheek.

This mastery over imagery is very often displayed over the extent of whole poems in creating the atmosphere suited to the dominant mood. And the mood, again, gets distilled into a symbol. As S. Krishna Sharma of Hyderabad has remarked, and as Prof. V. Seetharamia also pointed out independently, ‘The realm of symbolism in Kannada poetry belongs peculiarly to Mr. Bendre.’ His poetry is a storehouse of symbols. Literally every poem traces its theme to the root where it takes on a symbolic character. Allegory supports the symbolism in ‘Moorti’ and stands by itself in ‘Mysore,’ where Mr. D. V. Gundapppa, Prof. B. M. Srikanthia and ‘Srinivasa’ are referred to as Space, Wind and the Pole-star. But this is purely occasional. Whether inward or outward, life is always, in his eyes, a big procession of symbols.

I may just refer to some of the types of symbolism persistent in his poetry. Nature and love come in for a large share. ‘The Butterfly’ puts on the colour of temptation. ‘Morning’ becomes symbolic of peace. The reflection of one mirror in another and of each other’s image in each other’s eyes are images which symbolise infinity for the poet. He sometimes draws his symbols from the world of visions, as when his body itself becomes a tongue symbolising upward aspiration. In ‘Sachidananda’ and some other lyrics, he has contented himself with traditional symbolism.

Sometimes the process becomes cosmic as in ‘The Bird of Time,’ ‘The Stomach,’ ‘The Dance Eternal,’ ‘Narabali,’ ‘The Sword of Life,’ ‘Blind Gold Is A dancing,’ ‘Annavatara’ and ‘Earth the Girlish Wife.’ It were better to refer to ‘Moorti’ or ‘Icon,’ symbolic of the soul. The first part deals with the endless vistas opened by the Infinite Being and emphasises the lesson for the scientist that ‘None ever beheld Truth; Truth is incomprehensible.’ The second part describes the rock formation on earth and of that quarry out of which the Icon (named the Beautiful), the hero of the poem, is to be hewn. The third part reveals a monarch dreaming of a big temple with a lovely image enshrined in it. In the fourth, the artist sets forth in search of fine rock with instructions from the king and comes across the destined piece of stone. He chisels it into shape and the stone takes on the lineaments of his vision. He dies as his work is completed. In the fifth part, the Image is seen to be a many-faceted work of art, comprising all the nine rasas and more. It is set up in the temple. And in the sixth is described the far-famed glory of the Icon, how devotees gathered at its shrine from far and near and realised their dreams with the inspiration of their own aspirations. But in the seventh part the end draws near. Decadence has set in. The temple has become a market place. The Image itself is buried in gold. And the priests are tyrannising in its name. The nautch-girls are there to lure the worshippers from the Image. And the inevitable end of it all sweeps over it in the eighth part. An iconoclast besieges the temple, drawn by the lure of gold, and shatters the Image to pieces. The dream of the monarch, the form shaped forth by the artist and the love lavished by worshippers, are all done into dust. And the poem closes with the famous utterance: ‘Rasa is janana or birth; virasa or the absence of it is marana or death; and samarasa or perfect harmony alone is life.’

It is apparent how very essential this symbolism is. The stone that becomes an image for a time and then relapses into its original shape, becomes a symbol of the soul and its passing pilgrimage through the world. It may also stand for a theory of art or a movement in art, commenting on its origin and growth, its relations to society and its inevitable decay. Or it may signify the building and unbuilding of empires. One remembers the saying of Yeats that the meaning of a symbol can never be exhausted!

It is their capacity for silent and intense suffering that distinguishes his heroines. And in this capacity Mother Earth beats them all. There is Bharati, the mother of 33 crores of human beings and more, trying to learn her lesson at the feet of Earth. And there is Karnataka Devi, the Queen Cathleen of Bendre, needing sacrifice on the part of her children but asking for it only on demand. Then there are the women ‘Sitting like Patience on a monument’ in their domestic sphere: the mother who lost her suffering child while she slept and the unfortunate wife distracted with the indifference of her husband. Above all, there is the Rajput maiden, Krishnakumari, made to drink poison like Socrates, though it be for beauty, not truth. She revolts against her fate in the beginning. She passes through a bitter mood of cynicism and disillusionment. And she consents to her fate after having transcended the trigunas. She overcomes death by accepting it.

Bendre’s heroes, on the other hand, are great aspirants who typify effort, the adamant hardness of the human will. Viswamitra who sits down to penance again after his affair with Menaka, the parrot that beats its wings ceaselessly in the void to secure a footing, the young volunteer of Ahimsa Vrata who, torn betwixt doubt and despair in prison, persists in his principle and is liberated the very next moment he is reconciled within himself,–all these have made up their mind, like Ulysses, ‘To strive and not to yield.’

These are the pilgrims and seekers. But there are the victors of life belonging to either sex. If Chinta, Winter and Shravana, please or displease the human mind and play with it like Puck and Titania, there are the goddesses who deserve our worship–Shakti in her triple manifestation, Bhuvaneshwari who blessed Vidyaranya the empire-builder, and Ganga greater than any of the ten Incarnations, for she still favours humanity with her sacred presence. And there are also heroes in different spheres of life: sages like Allama and Gandhi, militant seers like Agastya, Vidyaranya and Shradhananda, and poets like Ratnakara and Pampa the soldier-poet.

Perhaps the loveliest of all the symbols in Bendre’s poetry is the smile of Buddha. We know little of the sculptor who conceived and presented Buddha with that faint flicker of a smile on his lips. But the poet knows what the sculptor meant and describes the smile thus:

’Tis but a likeness of the Dream Divine
Envisaged by the Peace of Buddha when
It sat in penance on the Everest
Of Buddha’s Grief and glimpsed it in the cave
Of contemplation deep; the only blossom
That ev’r the tree of joy bore on its bosom.

Very rarely has the poet made himself the explicit theme of his song except in poems which were written to represent the crises in his life: ‘Will,’ ‘Invocation to Intoxication,’ ‘Destiny’ and ‘Augur Well, Oh! Bird of Omen.’ But friendship is one of his important themes. There are poems interpreting the inward life of friends and others in which he defines the spirit of friendship. A friend is a leelavatari. He would be mother and beloved to his soul-mate, praise him or scold him and make him flow in abundance:

Blest were this life indeed if once
A soul did blossom by its side.
What other immortality
For us can ever be descried?

This was the conviction which, later on, developed into the Geleyara Gumpu. But he also knows that inward ripeness was quite essential if one was to magnetise a group. And, above all, there is that isolation of spirit which makes man essentially a lonely pilgrim. He tells the parrot of his own soul:

Higher still and higher
As on thy way thou springest,
No friend nor fellow-traveller
With thee thou ever bringest.

And in ‘The Lyric of Life’ he tells us how the Idea comes riding in all its grace on Imagination, the bumble-bee, and forms and dissolves groups in wonderful succession, just to steal the spirit of man for further endeavour. And yet, to friends who complain of parting, he would say that no barriers can ever rise between souls which even lives could not lead astray.

But love is naturally a wider theme and affords large scope for dramatic study. In two lyric-sequences of pastoral love, he gives us the generalised expression of a complete experience of love in its normality. There is the first flush of love when the magnetic lady on the river-bank watches the needle-like stripling swimming in the river; or as when the youth is enamoured of the peacock of a royal smile riding high on the face of his beloved. The youth brings for his beloved an ear of sweet basil (‘Kamakasturi’) and would be satisfied even if she were to wear it in her hair and if he could catch the tale of its fragrance carried by a gentle gust of wind. He follows her, at a distance, when she goes to fill her pitcher in the lake. There is mutual love, agitation of heart, long waiting, vain remembrance, parting and regret. Then there is reunion, marriage, samsara. The young husband finds Rati in his beloved; there is perennial spring in her arms; her very touch is a fountain of joy; she is a veritable mine of precious children, the lady of his Dream. And so he sets sail in the pleasure-boat of marriage on the quixotic quest of domestic felicity. And what do the stars say? They assemble in the sky, as usual; and the night has a twinkle in its eye!

Then, as is inevitable, sets in disillusionment. He remembers in vain the smile that lit the proud face of his beloved when he met her by the river-side. Was it a dream that he saw the smile riding on a mirage? Was it a myth that her smile flashed like the lightning glance of monsoons? Where could have vanished the lustre from her eyes, the radiance from her face, and the cherry-red ripeness from her lips? Her beauty has been baked in the oven of life, crucified on the altar of poverty.

Desperate and woebegone, the husband beseeches his beloved to forget her sorrow and smile for once, that he may do the same. Both wealth and poverty are evanescent. But the joy of heart endures for ever. Let her not lose this only oar in the sea of life. The beloved understands him and smiles indeed, but what a smile! She endeavours to bury her infinite sorrow in a smile. But the lover is too clever to be pleased. Is he fool enough not to see through this game? Can real sorrow be screened away by building the Taj over the tomb of the beloved? And thus drags on the tale of endless misery; so much so that love takes on the ghastly colour of the anarchic dance of Siva and Parvati in Kailasa and the soul sinks into a swoon, unnerved at the sight.

But then the poet suddenly gives up playing fiddler to sorrow and takes his cue from the Dance Eternal. Even the crow dances out of joy, though it owns not a single peacock-feather. Our dearest may die and our nearest may weep in misery. But what does it matter? The Dance is the thing. This life is a mere illusion, an inexplicable riddle, a going by the same door from which we came. Let us be at rest for once and turn our eyes within. Let us dance in reckless measure and outbid the winds in freedom. Let us entwine our arms, unite in embrace and whirl about in a dance royal like Spring’s. Let us sway our heads as the serpent sways its hood, and move with the agility of lightning and the ecstacy of the potter’s wheel.

And is this Dance all for man? No, says the poet. The hills will keep time with mad approval and the valleys resound with delight. Earth and ocean will take up the burden and throw themselves into the magnificent Dance. There is not a spot in creation where the Dance is not going on! Grassy lawns, standing lakes and star-sown skies,–all are a party to it. The Dance knows no end save itself. And it is limitless. It is the only course left open to man. Why not dance, then, to the tune of days and nights? The orchestra of lives past will strike the chorus and Time will be the spectator. Life and death are annihilated, Earth has embraced the sky. Let us, then, dance like the waves of the immortal sea of joy! Let our bliss fountain forth to all the worlds living and yet to be.

In another poem the poet sees marriage as a period of spiritual probation for human souls. And the fact that two persons of different sexes should be made to cling to each other through life is in itself an object of intense wonder. The conflict between love and lust is, perhaps, one of the most momentous in life. The poet grapples with it in a series of poems entitled ‘To–’ and lays bare his conception of beauty in Woman.

But love is not only the sympathy which has its basis in sex. Man and Woman meet in manifold relations and these, in turn, open up the infinity of the spirit:

Unceasing fount of love! oh mother mine!
Oh sister! Home of peace and rest and love!
Ministering angel! that will starlike shine,
Gleaming with happy graces from above!
Belov’d! Incarnate Love! My star! my wife!
Daughter! Oh nursling of my heart and life!
When bare existence did my spirit wither
And life was all a starless, moonless gloom,
With healing hands of love you travelled hither
And made my wintry heart to burst in bloom.
When with my wandering mind, in this dull world
I roamed bewildered, stricken with dumb pain,
You came as Inspiration and unfurled
Your noblest visions, crooned your loving strain
Into my ears. Friend of the smiling moon!
To one in darkness, to the soul in swoon,
You came as Peace and Quiet; spreading free,
Oh! bright companion of my eager eyes!
Tee only ministration that could be
A coverlet of sleep ev’n as the skies!
In bounty of the spirit you became
The myriad waves of ocean: Kindliness,
Remembrance, Beauty, Hope and Love and Fame,
Patience, Affluence and Friendliness,
And rocked with them my heart that is a-tremble!
Woman! Immortal youth that doth resemble
Eternity! You free us from the thrall
That men call death and ev’n as Mother Earth
You spread your healing arms and bless us all:
I bring to you my song of little worth!
As in the image of a mirror found
Reflected in a mirror, as in eyes
That gaze on one another spirit-bound
And find in each their selves reflected rise,–
So doth Infinity attend our ways
And knit us two together all our days!
Yes! On the moonlight-loom of our own mind
Great Weaver, Love, eternally doth bend!
She twists our hearts as yarn and has designed
A cloth still woven and without an end!

Before I pass on to the next topic, I must just introduce the reader to the poet’s skit on ‘Modern Indescribable Beauty’ in which he very cleverly plays off modern fashions against the ancient traditions of poetry:

Squint or blind, how can I stint
Myself to glorify the tint
Of your eyes when fast you wear
Of darkened spectacles a pair?
I may describe your pearly tooth
But are these teeth your own, forsooth?
I might well your cheeks have painted
Were they not with paint anointed!
As for your feet, they have undone
Either the poet or the sun
For when the shoes conceal your feet,–
Both of them must own defeat!
We poets cannot lend a shade
Of colour to your form, Oh maid!
When you have done yourself the paint,
All colour we devise is faint!

If love is all a mystery and a wild desire to the poet, the child is always an object of delight and wonder. There is a remarkable sequence of prose-poems expressing the love of a young mother for her child. She wonders at his closed fist and dreams that it may hold untold treasures in its grasp. She compares him to the ten Incarnations. He swims on the ground like Fish and tries to lift the skies with his face like the Boar! He is an Ardhanariswara. For, the kindness beaming in his eyes is reminiscent of herself; while his bold glance reminds her of her husband.

And what of Karnataka, the soil in which these children are to grow? The poet remembers the greatness of her past. Every stone in the land has a story to tell. And the ruins of Vijayanagara, the empire of this ‘Land of goddesses,’ stir him to his depths:

I stood before that land of great renown
Made one with dust by that wild dancer, Time,
In ghastly masquerade, who trampled down
The glory of its name and peerless prime:
Grey, ruined streets and ruined palaces
And ruined glory scattered in the dust,
I saw that home of long-forgotten graces,–
Some food to satisfy Time’s heinous lust.
Is this a dream? Is this the broken heart
Of some high-hearted emperor exiled?
Of pageantries of clouds the fleeting art?
Or flower-offerings of charm beguiled?
Or is it some prostrating, sinful being
Bathed in repentant tears, weeping ov’r wrongs,
Low-lying at the feet of Heaven’s King
When some new consciousness his grief prolongs?
This is no ruined realm but one to rise
And Hampi, dreaming ov’r it, is a sage
That seeks for inspiration to devise
A kingdom new; and when it comes of age,
Stainless and radiant it will endure:
Thus spoke my mind: but ov’r it rose my soul
And said: ‘There hangs as yet a mist of lure
And doubt. A mystic riddle is this whole!’
Ev’n as a Master taking by the hand
A novice in the path of karma: ‘See!
How karma degenerate doth often stand!
To righteousness eternal victory!’
To heights of glory this empire risen
By dharma and by karma so decayed,
Teacheth the lesson of a truth arisen
Out of its dreadful and time-haunted shade!

He speaks of her great poets and would believe that the time is ripe for a similar race of giants to be born in Karnataka. Her literary tradition is waiting in all its neglected grandeur for their coming. Even Nature is consecrated and conserves its beauties for the poets that are to come. This home of mango and jasmine is chosen, indeed, for some divine revelation! Make it once more, he says, the home of seers and prophets. And he sings the cradle-song of the Karnataka child, confident that it is dawn. He dedicates his own life to her service; his body is the pillar on which her mandates can be inscribed. Arid he calls upon the youths of the land to do the same. The Hero will appear when the people are ready to receive him.

The poet’s vision of a Greater Karnataka transcends all barriers. In a sonnet he tells us that the Unification is deemed, at present, to be an impossible project. The Kannada mirror seems to have been shattered to pieces and scattered in all directions. Weeds have strangled the growth of this fair garden. The grandeur that was Karnataka seems now to be a romance turned to stone. And the Hand that can set things right is invisible. But the innermost voice of the poet–contained in the sestet of the sonnet–revolts against such pessimism. The dust of the Kannada land may yet be raised on the Milky Way. The Universal Dance may yet be celebrated fittingly in Kannada and set on it the seal of universal renown!

‘The Young Volunteer of Ahimsa Vrata,’ ‘Three And Thirty Crores,’ ‘Shradhananda’ and ‘Agastya’ are some of the poems which express the stirring of depths that India has felt during recent years. The second poem is a great choric utterance and is the most thrilling of all. In the midst of a shoreless sea, Mother Earth is sitting meditating. Reclining on her lap is Bharati, leaning her face on her right palm. She sings the song of her own distress, gesticulating with her left hand. And countless creatures of various shapes are lying about her in numberless attitudes:

Are these my sons, oh! mother; these three and thirty crores?

Three and thirty crores! And three and thirty crores!

Are all these my sons, mother, of my blood and bones?

Say, some are but worm and some blind and infirm,

And others are but sheep and sucklings yet asleep!

Yet manliness is a cipher if I try to decipher

This long account

Of no count:

Three and thirty crores!

Some of them are shattered and most of them are scattered!

Friends they are and brothers but they have their tethers

Of hatred and contempt which make them feel exempt from speech

Each to each:

Three and thirty crores!

I have but reproduced two of the stanzas in the poem with the refrain. And yet the reader will easily see into its drift and choric design.

Brooding over the destiny of India, the poet is over-whelmed with a sense of her misery and turns his eyes to the fabric of Society as a whole on earth. ‘Beyond the Margin’ presents a complete vision of social and domestic felicity. But it is no fool’s paradise, within easy reach. The very foundations of society are laid on a strange universal law,–life feeding on life. Is there no other creative and self-protective process? The sons of Manu are being chased about on earth. Man has made a fool of himself by taking to war and its ways. War is nothing but a barbarous worship of ‘Kali.’ And yet this blood-thirsty goddess tramples Liberty under foot. She demands the price of death for Liberty, the birthright of humanity. Labour, again, knows no rest. ‘The Song of the Unemployed’ rises in tremendous chorus. The

cry for daily bread almost becomes an invitation to chaos. ‘Blind Gold is A-dancing’ and trampling life under its heels. The Sea and Earth–man and wife as they are–are mourning over their dying son, the human soul, standing on each side. The ten Incarnations could not solve even the basic problem of food. And Anna-deva–the God of Food–has yet to put in his appearance! ‘Annabrahma’ or ‘The stomach’ is empty. ‘Nadabrahma’ or the heart is silent with anguish. The dome of ‘Shabdabrahma’ or the brain resounds with endless controversy. The human soul is tired with its suspension in the spider’s web of good and evil. The rich are relentless though their barns are full. The gods are nectar-drunk. But the hungry man alone knows the pinch of hunger! Food has become more precious than life. Empty, dead-empty is the stomach of the poor:

And the inmost voice of the poor
Who are half-starved, ill-fed,
Is surging, threatening and thundering
As they are clamouring for bread:
‘We’ll bury God under the ground
And watch His tomb on our nightly round!
Set fire to creeds of men that rave,
To burn as incense on His grave.
We’ll swing the soul into death-knells
And follow them with shrieks and yells.
Stung into madness by death-dearth,
We’ll make a morsel of this earth!

This meditation on the world-situation draws the poet into a mood of holy dread in a poem called ‘Rudra Veena’:

I know not why
As days go by
Loud wails the Rudra lute
As the soul communes
With its own runes
It sounds and nev’r is mute.
The chords flash,–tremble in splendour;
And creaks and crashes in thunder
The voice. And sweeping, oh! wonder!
The fingers vanish in the sky!
Hairy planets arise.
The planets swim in the skies.
And sun and moon devise
Strange light as Time goes by.
Earth’s volcanic again,
The mountains split amain,
And the dykes dam streams in vain
As they slake the red soil.
The seat of justice upturns
And the thrones of kings are urns
And caste and creed returns
Behind the mind’s turmoil.
Men and women groan
Labouring and bemoan
The fate that’ll be their own
In coming days.
Loth are they to change
But a New Life doth range
Abroad and will estrange
Them from their ways.

If the poet finds thus in Society a state of chaos which is but an intermittent stage in the evolution of humanity, Nature is for him a dome of many-coloured glass, a pageantry of splendour. There are charming and familiar descriptions of the parijata flower, the bee-hive and the millet-leaf. He sees a dam and exclaims that, like a man of the world, it is levying the toll on the goods (waters) coming from the wild! Nature, is also a ground for different themes as in ‘Rodana’ and ‘Ragarati.’ But the general process is that of symbolism illustrated already in the preceding section. There is sometimes the motive of contrast, as in ‘New Year’s Day.’ The new year makes everything new but ourselves! Could we but die and resurrect ourselves every day even as we sleep and awaken! Further on, as already referred to, the poet detects lovely mythical existences in Nature: Winter and Sravana, the truant boy who laughs and weeps. Above all, Nature takes on a cosmic beauty in poems like ‘The Bird of Time,’ ‘The Dance Eternal’ and ‘Earth the Girlish Wife.’ In the last he expresses his belief that earth herself will give birth to divinity.

(6)

The Intellect may be able to detect problems. But it will not always be able to solve them. It is only in an emotional apprehension of life that all its glories are revealed to man. Many a time has the poet harped on this cult of Beauty in his poems. For joy is the mystery behind creation. Grasp the secret of joy and you will understand God Himself!

And yet the world, sprung from Light, is full of darkness! That is the greatest riddle of all. How could ever joy give birth to Evil? This is the question writ large on the Vedas and on the brows of suffering humanity. The poet tells us in a sonnet how, as a child, he used to play day-long in the streets. His elders would fish him out and take him home to meals at nightfall. He would sit in the darkened kitchen, glance up at the chimney that let in a faint streak of light and ask his mother: ‘Light was here and everywhere. Whence, then, this darkness that fills the world ?’ The utterance gains a stabbing irony in retrospective narration.

That is how life becomes a spiritual art. Time and Destiny, Sorrow and Bereavement, make of life a mystery-play which God alone can understand. And he would be the Hero who wields ‘The Sword of Life’ like a true swordsman. And here enters the poet’s faith in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. Man is the master and not the servant of life. The soul is the radiant daughter of earth blessed with the love of her mother. And death is only a portal unto brighter birth. The earth is destined to be heaven itself and humanity is only a step towards divinity. The seers like Aurobindo help the Cosmic Evolution by awakening its consciousness in many minds.

But what is to be done in the meanwhile? To receive both good and evil at God’s hands with grace:

Never before nor ever after,
Not in the breathing present
Can I admit injustice in Thy scheme.
What comes to my lot
Is just what Thou hast wrought
And the one that I have sought,–
Thy justice supreme.
Well it is if I can know it.
Nor is it worse if I know it not.
I will peer to glimpse it with all my might.
’Tis well for me if I exist
And ’tis well for me if I come to nought
For it is Thou who brought’st me to birth,
Oh! Master of Light!
I watch Thy doings and wait
To see that which may come to pass,
Thy witness to be.
Oh! Knowledge in Essence!
That I may comprehend the same
I submit my very instruments
Of knowledge to Thee.
I do not insist on Thy doing it.
Do or undo as Thou willest.
I leave it to Thee.
I am silent in my faith
That, whatev’r Thy deed, Thou art my friend indeed!
Thou art the doer and Thine the deed!
Give me the power to bear and be.

To please God with the life we lead; to live a life of perfect harmony; to forget our own sorrow and lessen that of others; to find compensation in the beauty of the Living Present, of Life and Nature and the dreams of youth; to accost pain which disciplines us into joy; to enter into the lives of others and expand our personality; to adventure into new worlds and never own defeat; to explore life in all its phases; and to dance the Dance Eternal,–that is the burden of the poet’s song, the drift of his utterance that is gathering volume and grandeur. God is the great Ploughman and we are the plough and the hoe in His hands. Let us pray to Him from the depths of our own hearts. We can even take up life as Play (‘Leela’):

Straying clouds in shower fling
Dew-drops shaken from their wing
And now the sun is shining free
And smiling clouds reflect his glee.
Beneath the roof of golden rays
The little children have their plays.
Their magic touch turns into gold
Every heap of earth they fold.
They build their sparrows’ nests with mirth
While those they built fall to the earth:–
Not vain their fall! Their ruins yield
Fresh earth with which new nests to build.
Oh! I will yoke Mind’s lightning-car
To summer-steeds that glowing are
Like visions fleeting; make them fleet
To some far quarterless retreat!
With burnished arrows I will fill,–
Arrows of new thought that will
Be glittering star-like in the skies,–
My scabbard, store of new surprise!
And numberless do cities grow
In every quarter. I’ll throw
My shafts in showers without aim,–
A hit or miss, ’tis all the same!
For what they hit or where they go,
Oh! never can I care to know!
No arrow from its goal can stray;
Nothing is wasted in a play!

I must now take leave of the reader. For, though nothing is wasted in play, space may as well be spared in the Triveni for better or similar purposes. I have liked these poems and their author. Nay, I have undoubtedly loved them. And I am sure that the reader will like them too. I have kept myself sedulously away from these later pages in order to enable him to see things for himself. The only other question which I may be asked, now that I am pilloried, is: ‘What about the defects of your poet? Is he so faultless that you hold your tongue and are silent?’ It would be too presumptuous on my part to answer saying, ‘Judge for yourself!’ Every poet has his pets. And his pets are most likely to be his defects,–for he does not turn them inside out. The unceremonious style of some of his early poems, the infernal love of rhymes which besets them now and then and strangles them with too many sweets, (This is to be taken with caution; for, as Humbert Wolfe says, rhyme is hardly a less glorious invention than that of fire!), the fondness for puns, (A very wicked habit, for once you get into it, you will never get out of it), and the like are all that I can find. And the later poems are free even from these. The only indictment to which some of these have been subjected is their obscurity,–a charge which the undiscerning level against all good poetry.

‘Srinivasa’ (Masti Venkatesa Iyengar) came out with a fine collection of sonnets some time ; its two most notable features being, in my opinion, an oracular confidence of thought and a miraculous ease of expression. This radiant personality stands out in the sequence as a whole, not so much in the individual pieces themselves. He distributed rewards and punishments and confessed his likes and dislikes in the most majestic manner; and we all felt that it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. And Bendre also came in for his turn. ‘Srinivasa’ praised the rain-bow vesture of his verse; referred to him as a wizard; and called him a snake-charmer who would expose the harm of Evil to the people. Bendre could as well have pocketed these compliments and quietly slept over them. But he returned the compliment in a Bonnet, saying:

‘Mine is an imperfect vision; yours has the perfection suggestive of infinity.’

His imperfect vision may contain many perfections. But the fact that it is imperfect is the crux of the matter. Here is a great promise. Its fulfillment lies in the lap of the gods.

1 The earlier sections were published in Triveni for July–Aug. 1934