Sarojini, A Romantic Poet:
Sarojini Naidu craves for the beautiful, the ideal, high flight of imagination, strange beauty of phrase, vision and thought, intense emotion and imagery, simple diction, sensuousness, picturesqueness, love of man, nature, God. Mysticism or the supernatural, lyricism, subjectivism, etc. all these characteristics can be found in Sarojini’s poems. In her poetry we find an urge for the ideal and the unattainable, a subtle sense of mystery, liberty of imagination, strange beauty of thought and vision, of phrase and rhythm.
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| Sarojini Naidu—Her Romanticism |
Predominantly A Lyrical Poet:
She is a gifted writer of lyrics, and is endowed with a bird-like quality of singing. She has chiefly composed lyrics, songs, sonnets and odes in which she deals with the joys and sorrows of life, and sings of love in its various aspects. Her lyrics are marked with emotional intensity and musical quality. She is a lyrical poet par excellence. Her genius is essentially lyrics. Simplicity of utterance, spontaneity and emotional intensity characterize all her lyrics. She possesses Shelley's musical quality and Tennyson's rhythmical skill. She has written love-lyrics such as Indian Love Song, Song of Radha, The Poet's Love-Song, If You Call Me. She has written nature-lyrics like Leili, Songs of Spring Time and Spring in Kashmir etc. She has written lyrics about life and death, such as Life, To the God of Pain, Love and Death, and Death and Life. She has written patriotic lyrics like The Lotus, Awake and To India. She has written folk-lyrics like Village Song, Palanquin Bearers, Indian Weavers and Bangle-Sellers.
Her Mysticism:
Sarojini had deep mystical insights as a poet. To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus is a mystical poem. Lord Buddha, sitting on a lotus throne with praying eyes and hands elate enjoys immutable and ultimate mystic rapture which poor mortals can never attain. The bubbly joys of Human life are evanescent and are marred by the fever and fret of life. Just mark how mystical the following lines are:
“And all our mortal moments are
A session of the infinite.
How shall we reach the great, unknown
Nirvana of thy Lotus-Throne?” — (To a Buddha)
Similarly, there are other famous mystic poems of hers. For example, In Salutation to the Eternal Peace is a mystical poem. Her mysticism has an Indian-dye.
Her Intense Love for Nature and Sensuousness:
Like Wordsworth and other English Romantic poets, Sarojini Naidu is a poet of Nature, though her approach to Nature is sensuous like Keats and not spiritual like Wordsworth's. She sings about various natural objects and scenes joyfully. She is chiefly concerned with the joy and peace spread in Nature, and hardly shows any interest in its fiercer aspects or in nature "red and tooth and claw". She is moved to ecstatic delight by Indian natural scenes and landscape, and portrays them skilfully. She chiefly writes about various seasons, especially spring, and flowers like the lily, the rose, the Champak and the Gulmohur. A Song in Spring, The Call of Spring, Autumn Song, June Sunset, Champak Blossoms, The Time of Roses and Spring in Kashmir are some of her numerous poems of Nature. In fact, Nature pervades through the whole of her poetry. Sensuousness is the key to Sarojini's attitude towards nature. She looks with childlike delight at the objects of nature. Colours, sounds, scenes and feel of nature fascinated her. Her whole being was thrilled by what she saw and heard. She had no theory of Nature but enjoyed nature for its own sake. Just mark how her love for nature and sensuous go together:
1. "The sense of sound
O'er hill-side and valley, through garden and grave,
Such exquisite anthems are ringing
Where rapturous bulbul and maina and dove
Their carols of welcome are singing."
2. "The sense of the Eve and the Colour:
What can rival your lovely hue
O gorgeous boon of the spring?
The glimmering red of a bridal robe,
Rich red of a wild bird's wing?
Or the mystic blaze of the gem that burns
On the brow of a serpent-king?" — (In Praise of Gulmohar Blossoms)
An Interest in the Past and the Remote Marks:
Although she sings chiefly about the common scenes, customs and activities of the Indian life around her, she occasionally slides back into the remoter regions of mythology and history, and even deals with themes and tales related to Persian history. She writes about Indian gods and goddesses like Indra, Krishna, Kali, Lakshmi and others, and mythological figures like Damyanti and Radha, and thus glorifies ancient Indian cultural and religious beliefs. She also writes about Buddha and the martyrdom of Ali, Hassan and Hussain. Damyanti to Nala in Hour of Exile, The Queen's Rival, and The Night of Martyrdom are some of her poems dealing with past legend and history. In The Royal Tomb of Golconda, she silently and serenely muses of the extinction of the glorious dynasty of Golconda. There is a sense of mystery and strangeness in the whole poem, especially when she points out that the beauty of dead queens of Golconda is imperishable because it renews every year the advent of spring:
"O Queens, in vain old Fate decreed
Your flower-like bodies to the tomb;
Death is in truth the vital seed
Of your imperishable bloom.
Each new-born year the bulbuls sing
Their songs of your renascent loves;
Your beauty wakens with spring
To kindle these pomegranate groves.”
A Melancholy Note:
Although Sarojini sings chiefly about the joy of life, Nature and love, she is not blind to the ugly realities and sorrows of life, and portrays them in her poems like The Purdah Nashin, Suttee, The Old Woman and Wandering Beggars. The note of sadness was imparted to her poetry especially by the despair and frustration that she had to face in her love for Dr. Govind Rajalu Naidu before she could marry him after a few years of waiting and uncertainty. Her poems like To the God of Pain, My Dead Dream, The Sorrow of Love, The Menace of Love and The Illusion of Love poignantly express her melancholy feelings. Her physical ailments and illness which troubled her almost throughout her life, may also be said to be responsible for the melancholy strain of her poetry.
Her Humanity:
Humanism is the cardinal feature of romantic poetry. Her poems are also full of humanism. In some of her poems The Old Woman, The Wandering Beggars, The Indian Gipsy and a number of other poems express her humanism. She praises the poor people's honesty and bravery, purity of heart and innocence. Both the wandering singers and wandering beggars are free born sons of fate. How beautifully she portrays the Indian Gipsy:
"In tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace
Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee.
Behold her, daughter of a wandering race,
Tameless, with the bold falcon's agile grace,
And the lithe tiger's sinuous majesty."
High Imagination, Extreme Emotions and Love for Beauty:
Sarojini's poems display richness of imagination and intensity as well as depth of emotion. Some of them express her love for beauty and deal with the theme of love. The Song of Princess Zeb-Un-Nissa in Praise of Her Beauty and The Queen's Rival are highly imaginative specimen of her conception of beauty. Beauty is ethereal and to find its likeness is a difficult task. All beautiful objects of nature are envious of Zeb-Un-Nissa's beauty.
The description of the seven beautiful maidens around Queen Gulnar contained in The Queen's Rival, of the addition of strangeness to beauty:
"Seven queens shone around her ivory bed,
Like seven soft gems on a silken thread,
Like seven bright petals of Beauty's flower,
Queen Gulnaar sighed like a murmuring rose
Where is my rival, O King Feror?"
The Use of Highly Suggestive and Picturesque Expressions:
Her poems abound in highly suggestive and picturesque expressions; as leaping wealth of the tide, moonlight tangled meshes of perfume, golden-vested maidens, petals of delight, silver-breasted moonbeam of desire, a wail of desire, hours-like faces, rhythmical, slumber-soft feet, lily- long fingers, flower-like bodies, travail and heat, broken secrets of our pride, strenuous lessons of defeat, sorrow-trodden grass etc.
Strange World of Romance:
Sarojini's poetry is a tapestry of romantic colouring with quivering threads of gold. Endowed with keen imagination and poetic sensibility she bathed multitudinous aspects of Indian life—the festivals and faiths, the customs and traditions, the fishers and the dancers, the bangle sellers and corn grinders, the palanquin bearers and wandering beggars, the bazaars and flowers, the Indian love lores, Indian scenes and sights—in the light never was on heaven and earth.
Subjectivity, another Romantic Feature:
Subjectivity is another major feature of romantic poetry. She is subjective in two respects. She does not try to write epic and narrative poetry, and secondly, she expresses her personality experiences, feelings, emotion and frustration in love in her poems. Much of her poetry is self-expression. There is an emotional intensity in all she writes, and she sings of joy, peace and beauty in an artless and effortless manner. Her lyrics do not have the intellectual quality of Shelley's lyrics, the spirituality of outlook as found in Wordsworth's poems, or philosophical and metaphysical speculation as is found in Matthew Arnold's or T. S. Eliot's poems. They contain simply the spontaneous overflow of her powerful feelings and an impassioned outburst of her emotions. Such are her poems like To the God of Pain, To Love, Longing, Ecstasy, Guerdon, Devotion and others.