Her Genius, Essentially Lyrical:
Sarojini's genius was essentially lyrical, like Shelley's. The bulk of her poetry consists of lyrics, and the lyric impulse penetrates even those poems which are not lyrical. She has written a few ballads or narrative poems, but these too are suffused with some particular mood or emotion. They may be called lyrical ballads like the lyrical ballads of Wordsworth.
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| Lyricism in Sarojini Naidu's Poetry |
Her poetic output is slender, but even this slender volume consists of lyrics which would last as long as the English language lasts. She has attempted every species of the lyric, as hymn, ode, elegy, sonnet, and has achieved excellence in each. An object of beauty was for her a joy forever, as it was for Keats, and beauty of every kind thrilled her and inspired her to poetic activity. Her eyes turned towards beauty as the sunflower turns towards the sun, and it is this beauty which she celebrates in one lyric after another. The beautiful gave her a "strange sensation", and lifted her up and transformed her into an elfin spirit. Her lyric appeal is, "various, and wonderful, and full of the magic of melody". Some of her lyrics, like the Festival of Memory; The Palanquin Bearers, To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus, Guerdon, Indian Weavers, are among the lyric classics, and favourite anthology pieces.
Song-like Quality: Simplicity and Spontaneity:
A lyric is characterized by simplicity, brevity, spontaneity, music and melody, and it is essentially these qualities which her poetry has. She exhales a lyric as a flower exhales fragrance, and İyrics come to her as spontaneously and naturally as do leaves to a tree. She was primarily a 'singer of song' and a 'song-bird', and is rightly called 'the Nightingale of India'. She herself wrote to Arthur Symons, "I sing just as the birds do, and my songs are as ephemeral." Time has proved her to be wrong for her lyrics are not ephemeral, but they do have the quality of a bird-song. They sing as if by some natural magic of their own. Their song-like quality is the first that strikes the eyes when one begins reading her lyrics, and it is for this bird-like quality of song that they would always be valued. Her lyrics are characterized not only by the melody, but also by the simplicity of a bird-song. Sarojini did not seek to grapple with life's intricate problems as does a philosopher. Beauty made her nerves tingle and stirred her into quivering songs. Life for her was not a riddle to be solved, but a miracle to be sung and celebrated. Its endless variety excited her, its colours dazzled her, its beauty intoxicated her. Her spontaneous response to it may be interpreted by some as her weakness, but in this lies also her strength—the secret of her perennial youthful- ness. Sarojini was "a supreme singer of beautiful songs, songs bathed in melody and thought." Lack of intellectual depth or philosophical profundity—except in a few poems—is not a fault, but a great merit when we consider her attainment as a lyric-poet.
Emotional Intensity and Fervour:
Emotional intensity and exultation is another important characteristic of a lyric, and this emotional intensity and rapture also characterize the lyrics of Sarojini. "The lyric proper is the product of a swift, momentary and passionate impulse coming from without for the most part, suddenly awaking the poet into a vivid life, seizing upon him and setting him on fire." It is a short-lived fire, but it completely possesses the poet as long as it lasts. There is one emotion expressed in all its intensity in a lyric. All her lyrics possess this emotional depth and intensity. The joys of spring, the rapture of love, the sufferings of lovers in separation, colourful spectacles of Indian life, the mystic peace enjoyed by Buddha, and numerous other emotions thrill her and in the heat of emotion she begins to sing. Cousins writes, "the poems like The Broken Wing were of a depth of emotional intensity that swept me off my feet. I remember especially the love and reverence which she poured into her poems to her father and her national Guru, Gokhale." An impulse from without, or her own thoughts and emotions would impel her to sing, and then she would sing naturally and spontaneously. Emotional fervour and intensity is an important quality of her lyrics.
The Romantic Note:
Sarojini's lyrics belong to the English romantic school of poetry. She was in England during the last decades of the 19th century and thus came under the influence of the English aesthetes. They were in the romantic tradition of Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites, and represent a decadence of that tradition. They cultivated beauty for its own sake and their poetry was characterized by sensuousness, by opulence in words, phrasing and imagery, and was frankly escapist. Sarojini's lyrics also have these qualities. They have a Keats-like sensuous apprehension of thought and feeling, and opulence of diction and imagery. It has been said that we miss in her poetry the contemporary reality, the urban murk and roar, loneliness and anxiety, which characterize life in a modern city. Her picture of India has been called romantic, sentimental, in short, “Kipling's India". It has been said that palanquin-bearers, weavers, wandering singers, snake-charmers, coromandel fishers, bangle-sellers, all evoke the image of an India which is romantic, sentimental and no longer true of India as it is to-day.
The Soul of India:
We hear in her lyrics echoes of countless Indian myths and legends. When she sings,
“If you call me, I will come
Fearless, what betide.”
There, in no uncertain terms, is the voice of Radha, addressing Krishna, given a new urgency and compulsion. She sprang from the soil of India, and it is the very soul of India that finds expression in her lyrics, in her imagery, in her vocabulary, in her incantatory music and melody, and in her themes. As one critic has aptly remarked, "with her eager sensibility, she was always ready to receive impressions from all corners of the richly coloured Indian life throbbing around her". The commonest of sights and sounds, the shrillest of street cries, the humblest of her fellowmen: all had for her some peculiar intimation, some mysterious meaning. Out of the simple chants and homely joys of her people, she "fashioned a subtle, melodious measure, capable of an astonishing range of notes and rhythms. The bazars of Hyderabad, the palanquin- bearers, the weavers, the snake-charmers, the wandering beggars and minstrels, all inspired in the poetess a strange, rich mood, and she portrayed different walks of Indian life in the glittering pages of her poetry. She has never falsified reality, though she has glorified and romanticised it. She was inspired to write only by the beautiful, and, therefore, the ugly and the seamy do not find a place in her lyrics, but merely for this reason her picture of India cannot be called sentimental or dismissed as "Kipling's India". She chose to work on her "three inches of ivory", like Jane Austen, and herein lies her great- ness as a lyric poet.
Classification of Her Lyrics:
On the basis of their themes, Sarojini's lyric may be divided into five broad categories: (1) Nature-lyrics (2) love-lyrics (3) lyrics of life and death (4) folk-lyrics dealing with the life of the common folk of India, and (5) miscellaneous lyrics, including patriotic lyrics. These are not watertight compartments, there is much over-lapping. and such division is made merely for the convenience of study.
1. Nature-Lyrics:
Sarojini has a number of beautiful nature-lyrics to her credit. The seasons of India, particularly, the spring, fascinate her. She sings of the joys of spring in a number of lyrics. Some of Sarojini's best known nature lyrics are: "Leili", "Songs of the springtime" (ten poems describing Spring in all its splendour), and "The Flowering Year" (six poems, of which "June Sunset" is the most charming), "Spring in Kashmir", "The Glorison Lily", "The Water Hyacinth". etc. Mark the following lines from "Spring in Kashmir" included in The Feather of the Dawn:
“Heart, O my heart, hear the Springtime is calling
With her laughter, her music, her beauty enthralling,
Thro' glade and thro' glen her winged feet let us follow,
In the wake of the oriole, the sunbird and the swallow”.
The heart of the poetess is wholly taken up with the Spring. She has the feminine partiality for flowers and a number of colourful flowers bloom in her lyrics. Herself a song-bird, the song of the birds fascinates her, and the Koel and the Papeeha are among her favourites. The Yamuna provides the background to a few of her love-lyrics, and one is surprised to find that there is no reference to the Ganges and the Himalayas which have been a perennial source of inspirations for Indian poets. Her response to nature is sensuous—she enjoys her beautiful scenes, and sights, her colours, her sweet melody and fragrance—and striking pen-pictures of nature in all her glory and majesty abound in her lyrics. Nature for her is a “sanctuary of peace", a refuge from the fever and fret of the world and is often coloured by human moods and emotions. It is also to be noted that though she has the romantic partiality for Nature, she is not insensitive to the charms of the city, as is evidenced by her lyrics on the city of Hyderabad. However, it shall have to be conceded that her picture of nature is one-sided, that we do not get from her nature, "red in tooth and claw". Neither does she philosophise nature, she is content to enjoy her sensuous beauty and to use it as a magazine of similes and metaphors.
2. Love-lyrics:
The love theme looms large in the lyrics of Sarojini. There are a number of fine love-lyrics scattered all over her four collections of verses. One may mention such beautiful lyrics as "Indian Love- Song", "Humayun to Zubeida", "Ecstasy", The Poet's Love-Song", "An Indian Love Song from the North”, “A Rajput Love-Song", "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid", "The Temple", "The Flute Player of Brindaban", "The Gift”, “The Amulet", "Immutable" and "Songs of Radha". However, Temple, A pilgrimage of Love, a constellation of twenty-four lyrics, divided into three sections—The Gate of Delight, The Path of Tears, The Sanctuary—is her most extended and elaborate statement as a poet of love. Her love-lyrics deal with a variety of love experiences, are characterized by intensity and immediacy and draw both on the Hindu tradition of love-poetry and the Sufi-Muslim tradition. Her attitude to love is typically feminine and is characterized by a total self-surrender of the beloved to her object of love. The beloved may be the Divine, the Supreme, or Krishna, the Eternal lover, and such lyrics derive their poignancy and appeal from the soul's hunger for union with the object of love. They have an auto-biographical interest also, and may be read as expressions of her own deep and passionate love for Govind Rajalu Naidu, with whom she fell in love early in life, and whom she ultimately married.
3. Lyrics of Life and Death:
A large number of her finest lyrics deal with the problems of life and death. Life has its sorrows, and its pain and suffering, and it all ends with death. The poet is conscious of the pain of life and the inevitability of Death, and hence a note of melancholy runs through many of her lyrics. But the poetess bravely accepts the challenge of Death and is determined to enjoy her life, despite all sorrow and suffering. "Life", "To the God of Pain", "Damayanti to Nala in the Hour of Exile", "The Poet of Death”, “To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus". "Dirge", "Love and Death", "Death and Life", The Soul's Prayer", "A Challenge to Fate", "In Salutation to the Eternal Peace" and "Invincible" are some of her lyrics of life and death.
Sometime she may be seized with the fear of pain and death, and in agony may cry out, as she does in the lovely lyric, "To the God of Pain",
Let me depart, with faint limbs let me creep
To some dim shade and sink me down to sleep
but such death-wish, such a mood of despair, is rare with her. A heroic response, to the challenge of Death, to pain and suffering, is more characteristic of her. In "Transience", the poetess, working within the Hindu spiritual tradition, concludes that sorrow is transient, whereas joy is permanent. Ananda is the unperformed but potential or evolutionary end of creation. Time is, therefore, only "an artifice of Eternity", and its melancholy contingencies are but a passing phase in the cosmic process. This simple faith is expressed without any metaphysical density, in the folk experience of India, which cuts across religious diversities and cultural differences—her conception of life and death rests on the Hindu vision of the unity and oneness of the individual soul with, "the soul of all the world". The Atma and the Brahma are one, and Death is merely the soul's return to its prime origin. As she observes in "Love Transcendent":
“So, you be safe in God's mystic garden,
Enclosed like a star in His ageless skies,
My outlawed spirit shall crave no pardon,
O my saint with the sinless eyes.”
"Sarojini shows in her poetry a primordial awareness of Death. Without developing a death-complex, she reveals its capacity to bring both pain and deliverance. Her faith in the creative power of life, and love, enables her to view death as a coeval lord of life, and acknowledge its redemptive and liberating nature. She proceeds from the experience of death to the knowledge of death, and progresses from the consciousness of death to the understanding of death. Finally, she finds death as a door kept ajar for the soul to re-enter the sovereign reality, of eternal life which suffers no mitigation, no bisecting temporality." Since Death returns the Self to "the very vision of God's dwelling place", it consecrates what it touches. It has the quality of Grace, twice blessed, by Divine and human love, so that the poet can fervently pray:
“And every sunset wind that wandereth
Grow sweeter for my death.”
Her perception of the problem of life and Death is precise and in- tense, but she is no philosopher, and her lyrics are mood-dictated, and no coherent system of thought is to be expected from her. P.E. Dastoor rightly remarks, "life for her, is not a riddle to be solved; it is a miracle to be celebrated and sung. Its endless variety excites her, its colours dazzle her, its beauty intoxicates her. Her response to it is immediate: it is not sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. In this, no doubt, is her weakness, but in this is also her strength. In this is the secret of her perennial youthfulness. Because of this she casts a spell over young and impressionable hearts, and, while perhaps not quite satisfying the spiritual hunger of those who have suffered disillusionment or defeat, revitalizes them by leading them out of the murky atmosphere of a complex existence into the clear fresh air of life's elemental experiences: its recurrent joys and woes, its lavish gifts and mysterious denials."
Life, taken all in all, is for Sarojini Naidu not an obsession, but a possession, not an experiment, but an adventure, a graceful movement into things, by means of which we recognize the wonder, magnificence and splendour of the world. Sarojini is a minstrel of life, not its prophet raising a finger of admonition at right and wrong, but praising and thrilling to its beauty and purpose. Life for her ever remains "a little lovely dream" which makes all men kind- red, and all the world our home, as her "wandering singers" sing,
“Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.”
“The song of loss and pain is continually transformed into a hymn of love and worship in her lyrics. One touch of life, and all is a consecration or joy. Life for her, then, is both a burning veil and luminous web, a mystery to be adored and a glory to be celebrated" —(Rajaylakshmi)
3. Folk Lyrics:
The folk-culture of Sarojini's motherland became alive and vibrant in her poetry. She was greatly impressed and inspired by simple, unsophisticated and unpretentious folk-life. Sarojini dealt with the multifarious aspects of folk-culture in her many lyrics. The simplicity and grandeur rub shoulder in these lyrics. She deals with their occupations, customs, traditions, joys and sorrows, wealth and want, smiles and tears, agony and ecstasy with great knowledge and ease.
It may be noted that like the theme of Love and Nature, the theme of Folk-culture and lyrics has also been discussed at considerable length; whole chapters have been assigned to such discussions and some lyrics: "Palanquin-Bearers", "Indian Weavers", "Wandering Singers" have also been discussed in detail in this book. Then there are others like "Coromandel Fishers", "Corn-grinders", “Suttee,” “Raksha Bandhan", "Indian Dancers", "Village Song" (this lyric has also been discussed in this book), "Harvest Hymn", "The Snake Charmer", "The Cradle Song", "In Praise of Henna”, "Bangle-Sellers". The lyrical quality of these lyrics, like the lyrics of Love and Nature, makes these lyrics memorable, delightful, entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
4. Miscellaneous Lyrics:
A number of Sarojini's lyrics deals with miscellaneous themes not covered with the above mentioned four categories. The more important of such lyrics are those which throb with her patriotism or in which she pays tribute to someone or the other of the contemporary personalities. The Gift of India is the finest of her patriotic lyrics, and The Lotus, the lyric in which she pays her homage to Mahatma. Gandhi, is one of the finest of her lyrics in which she celebrates contemporary personalities. In Salutation to My Father's Spirit, an elegy on the death of the poetess' own father, is the finest of her topical lyrics.
Diction and Language:
As regards the diction of her lyrics, it is a rare union of simplicity with sophistication. She was a conscientious and painstaking artist who could often achieve almost classical simplicity, austerity and perfection. Many of her lines have epigrammatic terseness and brevity. But as she was influenced by the English romantic poets—Keats and Shelley—and the Pre-Raphaelites, like Swinburne and Rossetti, her diction is steeped in sensuous warmth and more often than not decorated with a Pre-Raphaelite tapestry. She shows a marked propensity for an ornate style, studded with the choicest jewels of language. Often, she uses archaic and uncommon words and phrases and this creates an impression of artificiality. But to her credit it may be said that her words are carefully chosen both with reference to their sense and sound. This very care for the music and melody of words predisposes her to the use of sonorous words, which, in many cases, are unusual and unfamiliar. An important aspect of her diction is her imagery. Her similes and metaphors are usually drawn from the common scenes and sights of nature, and are vivid and graphic. Images like that of the moon being a "caste-mark" on the azure brow of heaven are highly original and fresh, and startle and capture attention. Sometimes, there is a string of telling images, in the manner of Shelley, as in "Palanquin-bearers". Sarojini's imagery is usually pictorial and visual, and is a source of perennial joy for the readers.
Versification:
Sarojini was a great metrical artist, who experimented with a number of verse-forms and stanza-patterns. Her lyrics have a bird-like singing quality, they sing as if by some natural magic of their own. Often their music is mantric or incantatory as is frequently the case in the lyrics in which Indian cries and phrases are woven into the texture of the lyric. Alliteration, refrain, assonance, concentration of vowel sounds, and the use of liquid consonants, are some of the devices resorted to by the poetess to create musical effects.
Conclusion:
Sarojini Naidu has her faults, and as a lyricist she cannot rank with the greatest, but it cannot also be denied that, "no Indian woman has written so many and such perfect songs of India" in English as Sarojini. She has rightly been called the, "Nightingale of India", and "a singing bird".