‘The Lotus’-An Examination

‘THE LOTUS’ – AN EXAMINATION

E. B. SATYAM, M. A.
Andhra Loyola College, Vijaywada

“The Lotus” is one of the two sonnets of Toru Dutt with which the ordinary reader of Indo-Anglian literature is familiar, the other being “Baugmaree”. Both these poems deal with themes and things nearer home; there is about them nothing of the exotic gleaned in a foreign field. The sonnet, ‘Baugmaree’ sets out to describe Govin Chunder’s beautiful Garden-House at Baugmaree near Belgachia which Toru loved dearly as a child and which she is never tired of describing in many a poem of her later days. In “Buttoo”, a version of the Mahabharata episode or Ekalavya, the same trees are mentioned in almost the same manner. The ‘light- green graceful tamarinds’; ‘the mangoe clumps of green profound’; the palms, ‘pillars grey’; the ‘semuls red–red and startling like a trumpet’s sound’; ‘the ranges of bambooes’–which we find so lovingly described in the sonnet recur in ‘Buttoo’. In the latter poem we have ‘the betel-nut, – a pillar tall’, ‘the light-leaved tamarind’, ‘the semul, gorgeous as a bride, with flowers that have the ruby’s gleam’; ‘the bamboo boughs that sway and swing ‘neath bulbuls as the south wind blows’ and the ‘mangoe-tope, a close dark ring’. The lotus which is the main theme of the other sonnet indeed finds mention, a casual but exquisitely beautiful mention, in ‘Baugmaree’: “and the white lotus changes into a cup of silver.” Perhaps, we will not be far from the truth in saying that the ‘Psyche’s bower’ in ‘The Lotus’ is but the Garden-house at Baugmaree.

It is surprising though that Toru should devote a whole sonnet to a flower, lotus though it is, an Indian flower and as such particularly appealing to her at a time when her interest in all things Indian was awakened. Toru is essentially a poet of trees and wood-land wilds. She is not a poet of flowers. There are not many more thana dozen floral references in all her mature poetry; and most of them are vague and general. While she lovingly describes the various trees in the forest in great detail, she passes by the flowers with just the bare mention.

‘At morn Satyavan to the wood
Early repaired and gathered flowers
And fruits etc.” (Savitri. Part II. St. 8)

“Now on the fruits they flowers amass
That with their red flush all the place
While twilight lingers.” (Savitri, Part II, St. 19)

“He wistfully the basket eyed
Laden with fruit and flowers” (Savitri, Part V, St. 9)

“At morn
Fuel, and flowers, and fruit, and holy grass.
he gathered for oblations.” (The Royal Ascetic, Li. 15-17)

“Then at the statue’s feet he placed
A bow, and arrows tipped with steel,
With wild-flower garlands interlaced, etc.” (Buttoo. St. 19)

“Huge straw ricks, long huts full or grain,
Sleek cattle, flowers, a tinkling bell,
Spoke in language sweet and plain.” (Jogadhya Uma, St. 10)

In Toru’s poetry apart from the sonnet on the Lotus we find only seven lowers being mentioned by name–the lotus, the role, the semul, the nagessur, the palasa, the sirish, and the water-lily, The lotus has the pride of place among them. It is mentioned as many as six times. But it is an exception. The rose is mentioned only four times; the semul twice and the other flowers once each. But in none of these references to the various flowers do we find any desire on the part ofthe poet to indulge in an elaborate description. The rose, in spite of being mentioned four times, is not described at all. The poet makes do with the phrase, ‘roses red.’ She says again, ‘sweet were the roses.’ The semul indeed meet with better treatment at the hands of the poet. In one place she refers to

“The semul, gorgeous as a bride.
With flowers that have the ruby’s gleam.”                      (Buttoo)

and in another poem (Baugmaree) the poet says that the semuls are “Red, red, and startling like a trumpet’s Sound.”

The Sirisha is not described but just referred to:

“The sirish famed in Sanskrit song
Which rural maidens love to wear.”

The nagessur and the palasa, however, are decked by the poet in bejewelled phrases:

“The Nagessur with pendent flowers
Like ear-rings”                                                              (Buttoo)

and
“Under the faint bealns of the stars
How beautiful appeared the flowers.
Light scarlet, flocked with golden bars
Of the palasas, in the bowers
That nature there herself had made
Without the aid of man.                                                 (Savitri)

Outside of the sonnet The Lotus. the lotus does not meet with any beater  treatment at the hands of the poet, except for being mentioned many more times. It is mentioned five times, but thrice it is merely mentioned. Only once the poet refers to the colour of the flower and another time to it, fragrance.

“Fair as a lotus when the moon
Kisses its opening petals red,
After sweet showers in sultry June!                                (Savitri)

and in the poem’ Jogadhya Uma’ the poet mention how
“The lotus flower exhaled a smell
Faint, over all the solitude.”

It is strange that Tofu who is said to be very sensitive to nature ‘and specially to colour’ (Amarnath Jha, P. 27) should be so reticent in describing flowers. Except for the ‘golden bar,’ in her description of the palasla flowers, we do not have in her descriptions of flowers words suggestive of any colour besides white and red.

It is therefore surprising that the Poet should devote a whole poem to the lotus and elevate it to the Position of the Queen of flowers. And in the process she has woven a beautiful myth. A strife between the rose and the lily in the garden of Psyche is described. Flora is unable to give Cupid the queen of flowers because flower factions are raging in the garden and it is undecided whether the lily or the rose is the queen. Cupid suggests that he should have a flower which contains the virtues of both the claimant to that position. Flora takes the cue from him and gives him the lotus.

“rose-red” dyed,
And “lily-white,” queenliest flower that blows.”

The main consideration in any examination of the poem is not its beauty. There can be no doubt about it. The chief concern should be to find out how the poet comes to think of a strife between the rose and the lily, the arbitration of Flora and the final choice of the lotus. It does not appear that to this point due attention has been paid by critics and historians of Indo-Anglian literature. Kotoky has only this comment to make upon the poem that little justice can be done to it unless it is reproduced in full. Prof. Iyyengar is also silent about this point in his monumental work on Indo-Anglian literature. Padmini Sen Gupta’s monograph in the “Makers of Indian Literature” series does not mention this sonnet, ‘The Lotus’, even once. Amarnath Jha indeed makes a very interesting suggestion. “In the sonnet entitled ‘the Lotus’, one feels as though the poet had read Tennyson’s ‘Akbar’s Dream’:

Shall the rose
Cry to the lotus ‘No flower thou’?

But Tennyson’s poem appeared in 1892!” We have here at least one eminent critic who seems to have thought of the origin of the poem. But unfortunately the hint given by him seems to be misguiding for the strife in the sonnet, ‘The Lotus’, is not between the rose and the lotus but the rose and the lily.

The problem of the origin of the poem is really three-fold: the strife between the rose and the lily, the arbitration of Flora: the choice of the lotus.

The strife between the rose and the lily

The strife between the rose and the lily seems to be one of the favourite conceits of the Renaissance and Elizabethan poets, particularly the sonneteers and the songsters. The lady’s cheek is the battleground for the lily and the rose. Thus Gascoigne writes in Dan Bartholomew of Bath

Upon her cheek the lily and the rose
Did intermeet with equal change of hue.

And John Wotton in a madrigal says

Amidst her cheeks the rose and my strive,
Lily snow white:
When their contend doth make their colour thrive,
Colour too bright
For shepherd’s eyes,

But Toru does something which we do not find in Elizabethan sonnets or songs: she locates the strife in a garden and she also supplies an arbitrator. In doing this she seems to be greatly indebted to William Cowper’s poem, The Lily and the Rose. The poem is here reproduced in full to point out how much Toru Dutt owes to Cowper in the writing of her sonnet, The Lotus.

The Lily and the Rose
The nymph must lose her female friend
If more admir’d than she–  
But where will fierce contention end,
If flowers can disagree?
Within the garden’s peaceful scene
Appear’d two lovely foes,
Aspiring to the rank of queen,
The Lily and the Rose.
The Rose soon redden’d into rage,
And swelling with disdain,
Appeal’s to many a poet’s page
To prove her right to reign.
The Lily’s height bespoke command,
A fair imperial flow’r;
She seem’d design’d for flora’s hand
The sceptre of her power.
This civil bick’ring and debate
The goddess chanc’d to hear,
And flew to save, ere yet too late,
The pride of the parterre.
Your’s is, she said, the nobler hue,
And yours the statelier mien
And, till a third surpasses you,
Let each be deem’d a queen.
Thus sooth’d and reconcil’d, each seeks
The fairest British fair,
The seat of empire is her cheeks, 
They reign united there.

There are too many parallels of thought and expression between the to say that they are accidental and that Toru was not aware of Cowper’s poem. The ‘civil bick’ring’ of Cowper must have suggested to Toru the far happier expression ‘flower-factions’. ‘The statelier mein’ of line 22 is transformed into ‘June mien’. The idea of arbitration between the rose and the lily by Toru Dutt and of a possible verdict in favour of a third flower surpassing both the rose and the lily is also found in the penultimate stanza of Cowper’s poem.

But this is not to say that Toru Dutt copies Cowper or completely borrows from him the idea of her sonnet. ‘The Lotus’ is only a poetic sequel to Cowper’s ‘The Lily and the Rose’. That the third flower surpassing the rose of ‘noble hue’ and the lily of ‘statelier mien’ should be the lotus is the happy idea of Toru Dutt. How the lotus could have ever come to be associated with the rose and the conflict between the rose and lilly, it is hard to explain unless it is assumed that in a glow of patriotic fervour the young Indian poet prefers the sacred flower of Indian lore and legend and lets it supplant both the rose and the lily, the flowers favoured by the West.

At least in one of her poems, though not one of her best, Toru Dutt seems to be thinking of the rose and the lotus together; not indeed in conflict and not rivals, but merely as flowers which can under certain conditions and in certain respects be suggestive of each other. Thus in the poem ‘Near Hastings’ written towards the close of her stay in England she recounts the gift of ‘some roses red that seemed wet with tears’ by a kind lady, a perfect stranger to her and her sister Aru. She says:

“Sweet were the roses,–sweet and full,
And large as lotus flowers
That in our own wide tanks we cull
To deck our Indian bowers.”

Is it too much to expect of the alembic of the poet’s imagination to distil chance associations and casual similitudes into the beautiful and fragrant thought of a beauty contest among flowers in which the lotus not merely resembles the rose but supplant her as the queen of the flowers?