A Study of Selected Allusions in K.R. Srinivasa

A Study of Selected Allusions in K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s ‘Sitayana’

As an avid teacher and great admirer of Shakespeare, Milton and other great poets and with the ripe experience of studying Oriental as well as English Literatures over a long period, it is but natural that Srinivasa Iyengar’s writings are filled with many allusions. As such, Sitayana is richly allusive in more places than one.

In Book I, Canto I, Janaka conversing with Narada, philosophically refers to birth and death as the poles of existence and in lines reminiscent of Macbeth in Shakespeare, the poet describes life as a tale told by an idiot:

We swing between the poles of existence:
here at the nadir, a tale
by an idiot told, a race towards
the final embrace of Death;
(Sitayana, P.4)

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the protagonist philosophises on the news of his wife’s death being brought to him:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more, it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth utters these lines with a sense of resignation, born of despair while Janaka is a philosophical doubter.

In his reply Narada speaks about the trials and tribulations of human life on earth and in line reminiscent of Shelley, remarks that we fall on thorns again. The defeat of man is often caused by his own ego which vitiates all other virtues. Here Iyengar, an avowed admirer of Shakespeare, brings in the parallel of Hamlet by insinuation, makes Narada Shakespearean as he is made to say:

Sometimes, too, a singular ensemble
of excellent qualities,
Yet marred by a single mole of nature,
explosive in the context:                                         (Sitayana, P. 5)

The above lines are modelled on what Hamlet speaks to Horatio in Act I, Scene IV, of his fellowmen, the Danes. Hamlet bemoans that all the virtues of the Danes stand cancelled as a result of this one vicious habit.

So oft it chances in particular men
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin;

The descent of the Divine which is a typical Aurobindonian concept along with the reference to the Dawn which is ushered with the touch of the divine, is used by the poet to demonstrate the fact of Sita being an incarnation of the Divine destined to uplift Dharma for the benefit and betterment of humanity.

If only our age with its discontents
and proneness to suffering
could invoke the descent of the Divine
in a meltingly fair form,
that Radiance, the blessed Feminine,
that compassionate Power,
that symbol of Shakti as sufferance,
might usher in a New Dawn.
(Sitayana, P.12)

Prof. Iyengar was an avid teacher of Shakespeare and did not hesitate to quote such excerpts from his work which seem to suit the Indian mind with its Karma theory and belief of the Indian mind that God is the all-doer. The poet borrows from Hamlet, ‘There is divinity that shapes our ends rough hew them how he will’, an unshakable faith in the Divine which is far more casually accepted by the Indian mind than its Western counter part .

Some inscrutable divinity shapes
our ends, and we don’t see all;
(Sitayana, P.79)

In another brilliant stroke the poet takes an opportunity to compare Bharata’s predicament with Hamlet’s.

And perhaps, when things go awry, and fair
turns foul, and Time’s out of joint,
You’ll sustain me - silently and unseen ­
and that’ll be the higher bliss.
(Sitayana, P. 89)

The absence of Rama makes Bharata feel the burden and also feel that the time is out of joint in the absence of Rama, like Hamlet who feels the time as out of joint, troubled with the mysterious death of his father. The analogy is easy to work out, (although not easy to include in a work of art as it would not have suggested itself to anyone less than Prof. Iyengar) - as Bharata’s grief over the death of his father accentuated by his devotion to Rama finds its analogue in the poet’s mind, in Hamlet’s devotion to his dead father. The noble comparison confers greater glory on Shakespeare’s Hamlet as Valmiki is far more ancient and India has the Sanatana Dharma.

Sitayana seems to bear spiritual analogy to Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. Prof. Iyengar was a great devotee of Sri Aurobindo. Aurobindo, we know, calls Savitri, ‘Legend as well as a symbol’. Savitri is no mere physical entity but a spark of the Magna Mater. Sita like wise is aptly described by the poet not merely as a woman, not merely as the beloved but as the all pervasive, all - inclusive Mother.

Prof. Iyengar creatively telescopes the literal meaning of Doll’s House with the sentiments which Ibsen voices in favour of the freedom of women.

This, my lord, this popular assumption
that we’re but Doll’s House creatures.
(Sitayana, P. 141)

In using capital letter for Doll’s House the writer intends both a reference to Ibsen and his creations, nevertheless retaining the general sense of the living creation as mere puppets in the hands of God. The poet hints that even from the times of Ramayana there was no dearth of women voicing their sentiments freely, as Sita castigates Rama as a woman in man’s image. Only Prof. Iyengar could have thought of the camparison between Valmiki and Ibsen, the former a sage and the latter, a social reformer.

Even Shakespeare in his Hamlet refers to the inward temple that grows wide withal –
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but as this
temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal.

In lines reminiscent of the above the poet writes:

‘Isn’t the body the Temple of the lord?
Why, then, this mangling, maiming,
mutilation of God’s tabernacle?
what Vandalism is this.     
(Sitayana, P. 198)

In another philosophical statement, Prof. Iyengar holds that the mind is responsible for the perversions of human behaviour:

All errors and perversions of human
behaviour must proceed from
the mind’s suggestions, vital impulses;                                                (Sitayana, P. 199)

In this, he acts like other Hindus who believe that the mind is responsible for human bondage and human salvation:

Taking a clue from the well-known proverb, ‘all that glitters is not gold’, the poet makes use of the proverbial wisdom to illustrate the gulf between the apparent and real.

Glitter is not gold, and gold is not life,
and seeming is not being.
(Sitayana, P. 215)

The true quality of life is not to be measured by the clap-trap that goes with it, as mere glitter cannot be gold and life is not merely to be measured by physical grandeur. The true quality of life is often invisible and beyond more interpretations which base themselves upon superficial and luxuriant growth however abundant it might be.

The frailty of woman of which Hamlet makes so much occurs in a very different form in Sitayana.

O the frailty of Woman, she mumbled;
She had inferred treachery
in the blameless Saumitri, but welcomed
the deceitful anchorite.
(Sitayana, P. 268)

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet it is a reference to the blemish in Gertrude but Sita is a woman of spotless virtue. The expression frailty therefore works upon a different level in the epic of Iyengar. Here the word refers to the temptation caused partly by visual deception and partly by inquisitiveness for things that are rare and unnatural. However, both the temptations are met with consequences which are fatal in the extreme.

Prof. Iyengar compares Kumbhakarna of demonic impulses to a Leviathan.

......…..Kumbhakarna
the unwieldy hulk of a Rakshasa,
a Homo Leviathan.                                                                            (Sitayana, P. 429)

In paradise lost we see Milton describing Satan as,

……….extended long and large
Lay floating many a rood in bulk or huge
...............
…………or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream;

Milton compares Satan to a Leviathan because this sea monster was phenomenally huge. Kumbhakarna is compared to the Leviathan by the poet for his huge frame as well as the fact that he spends more than half his life only in sleeping.

The poet strikes an ingenious comparison between Satan and Indrajit. The arguments of Indrajit also exude hollow rhetoric like the words of Satan. Satan realises that he has lost the battle and he wants to compensate the loss with hollow rhetoric,

What though the field be lost
All is not lost, the unconquerable will,
Study of revenge, immortal hate…….

‘Indrajit is thus no less in that he recognises that much has been lost on their side and like Satan, speaks of his will being unconquerable:

What though so much is lost? All is not lost,
and the day may still be ours;
with my will unconquerable, I will
shock and break the enemy.                                                             (Sitayana, P. 434)

Thus, the allusions, native and cross-cultural employed by the poet tend to be not merely ornamental but purposeful and functional in that they serve to highlight the delineation of character and the message of the epic. As in Paradise Lost here also the allusions and similies serve to bring to the reader’s mind the intention of the poet with a sense of vividness all its own.
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‘Industrialist’s Best Friend’

Modernity-snobbery, though not exclusive to our age, has come to assume an unprecedented importance. The reasons for this are simple and of a strictly economic character. Thanks to modern machinery, production is outrunning consumption. Organized waste among consumers is the first condition of our industrial prosperity. The sooner a consumer throws away the object he has bought and buys another, the better for the producer. At the same time, of course, the producer must do his bit by producing nothing but the most perishable. ‘The man who builds a skyscraper to last for more than forty years is a traitor to the building trade.’ The words are those of a great American contractor. Substitute motor car, boot, suit of clothes, etc., for skyscraper, and one year, three months, six months, and so on for forty years, and you have the gospel of any leader of any modern industry. The modernity-snob, it is obvious, is this industrialist’s best friend. For modernity-snobs naturally tend to throw away their old possessions and buy new ones at a greater rate than those who are not modernity-snobs. Therefore it is in the producer’s interest to encourage modernity-snobbery. Which infact he does–on an enormous scale and to the tune of millions and millions a year–by means of advertising. The newspapers do their best to help those who help them; and to the flood of advertisement is added a flood of less directly paid-for propaganda in favour of modernity-snobbery. The public is taught that up-to-dateness is one of the first duties of man. Docile, it accepts the reiterated suggestion. We are all modernity-snobs now.

–Aldous Huxely in ‘Selected Snobberies’ included in A Book of English Essays, Ed. W.E. Williams, Penguin Books. pp. 363-64.