English Literature Notes

In the literary history and critical theory of poetry Sri Aurobindo’s ‘The Future Poetry’ is one of the most vital and unique documents. In this book he directly and candidly refers to his reading of James Cousin’s ‘New Ways of English Literature’ where he finds a clue to the poetry of the future, poetry of enchantment, of magic and prayer, poetry of vision and revelation, and the poetry of the inner self. After reviewing Cousin’s book Sri Aurobindo serialized ‘The Future Poetry’ in a journal called ‘Arya’ between 1917 to 1920 where he gives the idea of a ‘soul-poetry’ through the Rhythmic word in The Essence of Poetry. This theory of poetry also acts as a post colonial resistance on the level of history of English poetry.

In former times poetry was a way of ascending human consciousness. It was a part of man’s spiritual and psychic practice. In the ancient time this rhythmic word was called Mantra that came as a song. With the evolution of human consciousness and intellectuality poetry gradually started loosing its true function. Intellectuality and objectivity became an obstruction in the way of poetry of vision. In the chapter, ‘The Essence of Poetry’ Sri Aurobindo discusses the highest function of real poetry that is to search for the human self and connect it with the cosmic consciousness. This kind of Mantric poetry comes from the supreme height, from the deepest corner of the heart or from some divine. According to him intelligence, intellectuality are not required for creating this rhythmic word, “for neither the intelligence, the imagination nor the ear are the true or at least the deepest or highest recipents of the poetic delight..”. These are not its creator, these are its channels and instruments only. He also says that the rhythmic word has two elements, the sound value and the thought value. And both sound and thought separately and together bring a soul value which is a direct spiritual power and thus making the poetry immortal. “..the more directly the word reaches and sinks deep into the soul, the greater the poetry”. This message can only be realized in the way of a rhythmic word because it’s the most characteristic power of poetry since it goes deep into our secret selves and connects us with the universe.

Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Ghare Baire’ or ‘The Home and the World’ , first published in 1916 portrays a multi-dimensional portrayal of the contemporary Indian society. It raises many debates regarding politics, nationalism and especially gender issues. Tagore through his novel tried to analyse these problems inherent in Indian society in the early twentieth century. In the backdrop of freedom struggle, Tagore’s purpose was to bring to the fore the society and women’s condition, role and importance in it, and at the same time Tagore’s own view regarding women’s freedom. Thus through various facets the shades of woman question in The Home and the World can be seen.

In the swadeshi movement lies the origin of a dichotomy between ‘the home’ and ‘the World’ or ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material’. ‘The World’ represents the outer public life while ‘the home’ is one’s own spiritual self . It may be said that the material world is for male as it deals with reality and harsh objects. Whereas the spiritual world can be represented by women as it holds India’s superior culture, requires conservation. This analogy re-establishes women’s roles as care-givers for the society .

In ‘The Home and the World’ Bimala, the protagonist of the novel, gets married in a house long rooted in the old traditions and customs where women were never allowed to cross the threshold of the house. Bimala, who is brought up in an environment like this, it’s quite obvious for her to conform to the traditional values and believes that husband is the god for women and he should be worshipped. Hence in the very beginning of the novel we can see she takes the dust of her husband’s feet while he is asleep. She wants to worship him as it will be her salvation. Being highly influenced by her mother’s role as a wife Bimala wants
to carry the same legacy of selfless service in her own conjugal life. In fact as she is not much beautiful she wants to uphold her chastity as the replacement of her beauty. This is the very scenario we can see in the beginning.

The source of grotesque in art and literature is man’s capacity for finding a unique and powerful fascination in the monstrous. At the dawn of the twentieth century , a definition of ‘ grotesque ‘ in literary criticism began to take shape. The critical word ‘ grotesque ‘ appeared in a 1906 dissertation titled , ” The Grotesque in the Poetry of Robert Browning ” by Lily B . Carmpbell. Grotesque fell into a kind of ‘ border – land ‘ between the comic and the ugly and fearful things. In 1970 Michael Steig made an attempt to give a psychological definition to the grotesque in his article “Defining the Grotesque: An Attempt at Synthesis” saying “The grotesque involved managing the uncanny by the comic. More widely: a) When the infantile material. is extremely threatening .comic techniques, including caricature, diminish the threat through degradation or ridicule; but at the same time, they may also enhance their anxiety through their aggressive implications and through the strangeness they lend to the threatening figure…” The term absurd which has now shed its constricted meaning to oppose to reason comes very close to the grotesque so that the ‘Theater of the Absurd’ of which Brecht, Beckett and lonesco are members, could almost be called the theater of the grotesque. This admixture of absurdity and menace in The Birthday Party is found quite very well.

There is a beautiful blending of comedy, terror, absurdity and menace in The Birthday Party by Pinter. It’s his second full-length play written in 1957 and published in 1959. These opposing elements of fun and terror have greater operation areas in this play. It extends to engulf all relationships, all sequences, and all actions. One remember Pinter’s own words in this context: “Everything is funny; the great earnestness is funny; even tragedy is funny”. But among the comedy there is the terror, terror of unknown things.

In ‘The Birthday Party’, Meg and Petey run a boarding house in their small, sleepy seaside town. They have only one lodger: the reclusive, bitter Stanley, hiding away from the world outside. All changes, though, with the arrival of two mysterious visitors, the charming Goldberg and the menacing McCann. Stanley is immediately on edge, suspicious that the men are there for him, but Meg is too delighted by her new guests to pay him any heed. Goldberg convinces Meg to throw Stanley a birthday party, though he insists it isn’t his birthday. As the festivities barrel forward, out of anyone’s control, the celebration turns dark and a game of blindman’s bluff grows violent as Stanley’s past catches up with him, threatening to shatter him inside and out.

Symbols are the very soul of Tagore’s plays. His philosophy towards life is expressed through different symbols. As K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar says it is “not the logic of careful plotting , but the music of ideas and symbols is the ‘soul’ of his drama” . A symbol works through suggestion or association that can have layer after layer meanings. It expresses even the inexpressible sensation in a very convenient way. Thus, a symbol is a vital literary tool to make a drama highly meaningful. And the symbols employed by Tagore in his plays like ‘The Post Office’ , ‘Chandalika’ , ‘Chitra’ and ‘Red Oleanders ‘ not only appeal to our intuition, they also touch the soul. Tagore’s ‘Red Oleanders’ , originally written as ‘Raktakarabi’ is a powerful and intense play in one act, published in 1925. The conflict between free human spirit and machine like existence; juxtaposition of rural and urban life which shows the social, political and economic effects of the scientific and industrial development are delineated in this play. It also portrays elements of Tagore’s idea of nation and political freedom as against the British rule. However symbols in Red Oleanders are often found and hence considered as a symbolic drama in the true sense of the term as it contains a plethora of symbolism merging one another.

In its first appearance the play had the title ‘Yakshapuri’ – an imaginary city full of wealth. Later on,Tagore changed the title to ‘Nandini’ after the name of the heroine who challenges the system in Yaksha town. In 1923, when the play was published for the first time in the magazine ‘Probashi’ , the title was changed to ‘Raktakarabi’ – a red flower. Tagore himself took on the task to translate the play into English and gave it the title of ‘Red Oleanders’ . It can be suggested that this reconstruction of the play’s title gives the play a more symbolic temperament than the preceding ones as it indicates the beautiful and toxic nature of the flower and its association with beauty and death in the play.

William Butler Yeats is regarded as one of the most important symbolist of the modern period of English literature. Yeats’s symbolism is the way of conveying new ideas which want to say more than what sees the eye and which wants to suggest something beyond the familiar. It is Yeats’s symbolism that helped him to express the richness of man’s deeper reality, something mystical in essence. As he himself said that as a poet his purpose is that “i have no speech but symbol, the pagan speech I made/ Amid the dreams of youth”( Upon a Dying Lady,1917). So in order to comprehend his symbolism, one has to be acquainted with his own version of myths, legends, occultism, theosophy, magic and history which he created through his lifelong study and quest.

Yeats had a great interest on mysticism, occultism, symbolism and he widely read books on these subjects. In 1887 he joined the Theosophical Society and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890. The purpose of this associations was to experiment with the spirit world through occult researches. The Golden Dawn was however more active in its research for symbols. According to them certain symbols evoked certain kinds of visions or dreams. Yeats with his friends made many experiments to see if same kind of dreams would result in many people from similar symbolic stimulus. This society believed in “two pillars”, one symbolized water which in other ways stood for peace, night, silence and indolence; and the other, fire represents passion, energy, music and day. This study gave him a vast bucket of symbols stocked with multiple antithetical and secret meanings. Yeats also delighted in creating puzzles through symbols which would be interpreted in unlimited number of ways. Yeats’s study on Cabalism, Neoplatonism and oriental philosophy also helped him to draw symbols. Thus in articulating the pattern of his own symbolism Yeats heavily relied upon what he learned in this organizations.

Yeats was also influenced by the French symbolist movement. Although Yeats later questioned great many techniques of the French symbolists, and also abandoned certain ideas but he seems to have accepted the basic symbolist proposition which is that “the great symbol is not contained in the poem but is the poem itself”.