Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Some Thoughts on Similes

N. Rama Rao

BY RAJASEVAPRASAKTA N. RAMA RAO

“Simile (Latin neutral of similis, like) is a comparison of one thing with another, especially as an ornament in poetry or rhetoric.” The comparison should be both true and beautiful, and what is more, the juxtaposition must result in a revealing flash that illuminates both the things compared. The statement of a mere resemblance, without truth, or beauty, or illumination, is a banality. As Johnson said, a simile to be perfect must both illustrate and ennoble the subject, and Addison declared that one of the secrets of Milton’s sublimity was that he “never quits his simile till it rises to some very great idea.”

Most people, I believe, have moods in which they love to summon up remembrance of things which have been a joy to them. Words and thoughts which have comforted me in my journey are often with me as I spend a solitary evening in my arm-chair, or go out for an early walk to take the morning air and revel in the freedom of sun-lit spaces. At such times, similes that I have loved come to me, with a fresh wonder that is almost awe.

A simile derives its beauty and illumination from the oneness of the Universe, and is not only poetry but philosophy. It is a flash of revelation, and the poet who sees and utters it, is a seer. It is, therefore, not by chance, nor yet owing to penury of language that the Sanskrit word for poet means also seer and the All-knower. As, witness:


A simile is the expression of that essential unity of all things, which flashes upon the inward eye which is the bliss of solitude, and which can get a glimpse, be it never so evanescent, of reality.

How beautiful, and yet how simple-and, once seen, how self-evident-are such similes as:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud.” –Wordsworth.

“Perhaps losing hold of both (this world and the next) he is lost like a torn cloud in the vastness of the Eternal” –Bhagavadgita.

Here is the yearning of a life left from its setting, and all too aware of its desolation. This sadness–all mutt have felt it at one time or another in varying degrees of acuteness–what a ground it is for the joy of fulfillment when the lonely poet found himself caught up in the (gaiety of a jocund company, when all at once he came upon a crowd of golden daffodils fluttering and dancing in the breeze, tossing their heads in sprightly dance, outdoing in glee the sparkling waves that danced beside them; and-in the other case-when the soul. drifting like a lost wisp of vapour in space beheld the truth, and in the rapture of realisation exclaimed:

“All before is Brahma and Immortality–all behind–all above–all below–verily, All is Brahma.”
–(Mundaka Upanishad)

The earliest literature, as we see it in the Vedic hymns, is figurative; impressionist, as the earliest script is pictorial -and for the same reason. The mind observes, but it has not come to analyse and make abstractions. Things are still things, and have not become symbols. The most prevalent figure is personification, and the most frequent approach, the apostrophe, There are sometimes similes and metaphors (a metaphor is just an abbreviated simile) of surpassing beauty, incandescent from the seers mind.

The following extracts from the Hymn to Night in the Rigveda is an example:

Night approaching looketh forth in many places with her eyes. She hath put on all her glories.

The immortal Goddess has pervaded the wide space, the depths and the heights.

So hast thou come to us today and at thy coming, we do go home, as birds to their nest on the tree.

Home have gone the villagers, home all creatures, even the greedy hawks.

Ward off the she-wolf and the wolf, ward off the thief, O Night; be thou happy for us to pass.

The Darkness, thick, painting black, palpable, has enveloped me; O Dawn, clear it off like debts.                              (R. V. X-127)

The words of solemn Farewell to loved ones Hymn are strong with courage and hope:

“Go forth, go forth by those ancient paths your fathers trod.”

The Upanishads mark a further step in the development of the simile. The resemblances are not only observed, but pursued in thought. The series of beautiful similes in the Chhandogya whereby the sage Aruni illustrates to Svetaketu the identity of the individual soul with the Eternal–that thou art–are perfect of their kind, and would lose by an abridged quotation. The invocation of the dying sage in the Isavasya to the Sun who “as with a golden cover hideth the face of Truth” beseeching him to gather up and withdraw his dazzling rays, so that the sage’s dying eyes might look unafraid on the absolute Truth, is difficult to match in literature. But perhaps the simile most impressive of all in its sublimity is the following from the Mundaka:

“Seize then the mighty bow, the Upanishad; place on the string the arrow of thy Soul sharpened by constant meditation, make the Brahman thy mark, and courageously shoot thyself forth to reach thy mark.”

It is no matter, for wonder that Shankaracharya’s mind, saturated as it was with the Upanishads, imaged itself forth in similes of a grandeur hardly inferior:

“The Asvattha is the tree of life–the manifest world of living beings, changing from moment to moment, and vanishing like an illusion, or the waters of a mirage or a cloud-city............... It bears the sweet flowers love and charity, self-sacrifice and renunciation. In it are the nests of myriad life, tumultuous with the many-toned voices of pleasure and pain, love and dancing and laughter, and groans, wringing of hands and loud lamentation. It is cut down by the axe of detachment.”

The classical period was rich in poets of whom any age or clime might be proud–Kalidasa Bhavabhuti, Bharavi, Bana, Magha, and others illustrious in Indian Literature. Kalidasa, prince of poets, was universally acknowledged the unrivalled master of simile.

The similes in Kalidasa are invariably examples, taken at random, will illustrate:

Parvati and Parameswara, the parents of the Universe, inseparable as the word and its meaning”
–Raghuvamsa.

“Saddening yet beautiful is this love-lorn maid drooping like the madhavi creeper whose leaves have been oppressed by the summer wind.”
–Shakuntala.

This puts one in mind of Tennyson’s

“My passion, sweeping through me left me dry” –only, it is incomparably better poetry.

Perhaps the most perfect simile in literature is in the description of Queen Sudakshina, the expectant mother of Raghu. No translation can do justice to the original–and here (with many apologies) is the nearest I could come to it in English:

Her jewels laid aside, till but a few
Sparkled upon her drooping slenderness,
Her face, set in her tresses, now the hue
Of lodhra in its pallid tenderness,
Fair as the fainting night at dawn of day
With pale moon, in a thinly spangled sky
Was the sweet queen, as glowing in her lay
The rising sun of Manu’s lineage high.

The best of translations are but shadows, and this is a poor one, containing at least twice as many words as the original–words, too, which to the Sanskrit are as withered leaves to flowers bathed in dew.

You find in the original, set to the music of immortal verse, the pale moon of the fading night, the hushed expectancy of a cold gray world yearning for sunrise, on the one side; and on the other, the sweet young queen wan and faint with her hero-burden, and the eager country waiting for the birth of a great king.

Only a Shakespeare could render a Kalidasa adequately–but, then, a Shakespeare would not need to render any body but himself to reach the very summit of human language. The one simile that occurs to me as challenging a place with Kalidasa’s is in Troilus and Cressida:

“We two, that with so many thousand sighs
Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves
With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
Injurious time, now with a robber’s haste
Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
As many farewells as be stars In heaven,
With distinct breath, and consigned kisses to them,
He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
And scants us with a single famished kiss,
Distasted with the salt of broken tears”

I wonder if the power of words could go any further -this is the very anguish of a sudden parting such as presses the life from out young hearts,” darkens the face of the sky, and makes a bleak promontory of the world. If Kalidasa’s simile is the glory and travail of sunrise, Shakespeare’s is the agony of “a huge eclipse of sun and moon.”

So far I have spoken of similes on the large and elaborated scale. There is yet another kind, small and dainty rather than grand, which is to the other as jessamine to the lotus–and which is to be found in all true poetry, as for example:

“With thirsty eyes the queen drank her lord’s presence.”            –Raghuvamsa.
“The thirst that from the soul doth rise.”                                     –Ben Jonson.
“The moon over the night her silver mantle threw.”                     –Milton
“Poor withered leaf, where goest thou?”
“I go where all things go
Where goes the petal of the rose,
And the leaf of the laurel”                                                          –Arnault.

Poetically, the most beautiful use of such flowerets is their harmonious combination into a colourful pattern of the poets fancy. Here is an exquisite example from Bhasa (a description of winter):

“The lord of the night is wan
like a damsel parted from her beloved;
Feeble now are the rays of the sun
like the behests of fallen greatness;
Without, the snow-laden wind is
cruel, like the clasp of a pretended friend;
But the fireside within, with its
smarting smoke, is sweet like
the young wife in her first love-quarrel.”

Here are a number of images beautiful in themselves–the pale wintry moon, the wan love-lorn maid waiting for her lover, the sun shorn of his erstwhile power, the snow-laden winter-wind, sharp like benefits forgot, the young couple in their first lovers’ difference, and the welcome warmth of the homely fire, with its provocative tang of smoke.

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