A Conscientious Artist with Words:
Sarojini Naidu is a conscientious artist. She believes in the poet's having a gift of communication. She has the classicist's perfection and refinement and the sensuousness of the romanticists. Her diction is influenced by Keats, Shelley, Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. She has a woman's love of words (Armando Menezes). For her words are precious, lovely things like jewels. She rejoices in poly-syllables that roll and rumble, or rattle like long burnished swords.
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| Sarojini Naidu—Her Diction, Versification and Imagery |
She also has a woman's love of flowers and precious stones which she uses for her images. She also loves sensuous, passionate phrase like Keats, e.g., 'silver tears', 'lyric bloom', 'melodious leaves', 'carnival of lights', 'sanctuary of sorrows', 'a spectre in the rose-encircled shroud', 'echoing bough', 'blossoming hopes unharvested', 'the weakening skies', 'the leaping wealth of tide', the kiss of the spray', the dance of the wild foam's flee'. Though she loves an ornate style, yet it is remarkable for its simplicity too. Thus, she combines both simplicity and ornamentation. Just mark how simple the following lines are:
“Hide me in a shrine of roses,
Drown me in a wine of roses
Drawn from every fragrant grove,
Bind me on a pyre of roses,
Burn me in a fire of roses,
Crown me with the rose of Love.” —The Time of Rose
But in this very poem, the second and the third stanzas are composed in a highly ornate style. Thus, simplicity is dovetailed with sophistication. And following is an illustration of her ornate diction which she is frequently fond of:
“…. alabaster box whose art
Is frail as a cassia flower
Carven with delicate dreams and wrought
With many a subtle and exquisite thought
Therein I treasure the spice and scent
Of rich and passionate memories blent
Like odours of cinnamon, sandal and clove,
Of song and sorrow and life and love.”
Her Love or Fondness for Figures of Speech and Images:
In her preference for ornate diction, notwithstanding the sweet fancies of her poetry, she uses similes and metaphors in an abundant degree. The beauty, purity and innocence of a maiden bride are captured by weaving a gorgeous garland of similes around her. The bride is like a flower in the wind of song, like the bird on the foam of a stream, like the laugh from the lips of a dream, like a pearl on a string, like a star in the dew, and like a sweet tear. Another simile is used by her in Coromandel Fishers, which is apt and vivid: "The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night." In Indian Love Song, the nightingale is like a lover. Just mark the torrent of the images in the following lines:
1. “Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow
The sunset hangs on a cloud.” —Autumn Song
2. “Some are complex and winded as in
Like a serpent to the calling voice of flute,
Glides my heart into thy fingers, O my love...”
3. “Like the perfume in the petals of a rose,
Hide my heart within my bosom,
O my love,
Like a garland, like a jewel, like a dove
That hangs its nest in the Ashoka-tree.”
Her later poems abound in similes replete with copious and luxuriant imagination. They are the unstrung pearls of grace and imagination:
“Round the sadness of my days
Breaks a melody of Praise;
Like a shining storm of petals,
Like a lustrous rain of pearls
From the lutes of eager minstrels,
From the lips of glowing girls.”
A few more examples of Sarojini's imagery are cited below:
1. "Evening shadows gather like blackbirds in the sky."
2 "See how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon's throat
Jewelled with embers of opal and peridot."
3. "See the white river that flashes and scintillates
Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates."
4. "O soft! the lotus buds upon the stream
Are stirring like sweet maidens when they dream."
5. "A caste mark upon the azure brow of Heaven
The golden moon burns sacred, Solemn, bright."
We find examples of kinetic (objects in motion) images in 'The Joy of Spring Time' and 'A Song in Spring', e.g.
“The dance of the dew on the wings of a moonbeam,
The voice of the Zephyrus that sings as he goes...”
And
“Fireflies weaving aerial dances,
In fragile rhythms of flickering gold.”
Her Skillfully Using Pathetic Fallacy:
She skilfully uses Pathetic Fallacy by attributing human traits to non-human objects. This figure of speech is beautifully blended in “The Song of Princess Zeb-un-Nissa". Roses, when they look at the unmatchable beauty of Zeb-un-Nissa, turn pale with envy and "from their pierced hearts, rich with pain, send forth their fragrance like a wail", her perfumed tresses outdo "the honeyed hyacinths" when “in a sweet distress". Sometimes, she uses a string of images, following each other in quick succession as in Palanquin-Bearers and putting us in mind of a similar wealth of imagery in Shelley's Skylark.
The Use of Metaphors:
Metaphors also abound in Sarojini Naidu's poetry. Thus, in 'The Snake Charmer', the snake is the subtle bride of the charmer's mellifluous wooing ; in 'Bangle-Sellers', the bangles are the bright rainbow-tinted circles of light, in ‘In Praise of Gulmohur Blossoms', the lovely hue of the gulmohurs is the glimmering red of a bridal robe, and the rich red of wild bird's wing ; in 'Golden Cassia', the golden cassias are the fragments of some new-fallen star or the golden lamps for a fairy shrine, or the golden pitchers for fairy wine, or the bright anklet-bells from the wild spring's feet, or the glimmering ghosts of a bygone dream ; in 'A Rajput Love Song', the day is a wild stallion, and the beloved wishes her lover to be a basil-wreath to twine among her tresses, a jewelled clasp of shining gold to bind around her sleeve, the keora's soul that haunts her silken raiment, a bright, vermilion tassel in the girls that she weaves, the scented fan that lies upon her pillow, a sandal lute, or silver lamps that burn before her.
The Use of Symbolism:
Though Sarojini is not an intellectual poet, and her lyrics lack philosophical depth, yet in a few of her poems she has used remarkable symbols. The three similes used in ‘Indian Weavers’ are symbolic of the three important stages in human life, birth-marriage-death. Similarly, ‘Bangle-sellers’ is an allegorical representation of the various phases in the life of a woman. In ‘The Indian Gipsy’, the gipsy girl, who is twin-born with primal mysteries and drinks of life at Time's forgotten source, is a symbolic representation of the obscurity and oldness of Time. The serpents of 'The Festival of Serpents' fill us with a sense of awe and mystery: "Seers are ye and symbols of the ancient silence". In ‘Song of Radha the Milkmaid’, there is a mystic repetition of the sound of Govinda and the lotus in ‘The Lotus’ has mystic and symbolic overtures.
Her Using Major Stylistic Devices:
Amongst her most frequently used devices are refrain and contrast. Whereas the device of refrain enhances the melody of her lyrics; the device of contrast or comparison lends variety and strength to her poetic art. Another stylistic device peculiar to her is the device of triplicity, i.e., a union of structure, thought and emotion. The result is the compactness of the structure, e.g., poems such as Indian Weavers, Com Grinders, The Bangle-Sellers, Guerdon, etc. For example, in Guerdon, the poetess yearns for the rapture of truth, the rapture of love and the rapture of song; Kanhaya is the little thief, the vagabond, the boastful one; the corn-grinder sings the sorrows of a little mouse, a little deer, a little bride. Sarojini also uses musical words and occasionally symbols too. She wants to convey her meaning exactly, precisely and sweetly. She uses sonorous and colour words too. She also uses words from native languages, e.g., ‘Ram re Ram', 'Allah, Allah ho Akbar'. As mentioned by P.V. Rajyalakshmi, her diction is a synthesis of various cultures and modes of expression. The stylistic device of using the figures of speech and images concretely and vividly has already been dealt with above. Not only her phrase-making genius is very rich but her myth-making quality is also obvious. She possesses, like Shelley and Keats, the rare quality of myth-making. Into her Muse she weaves various myths, now Hindu, now Muslim, and that too with great skill. Her poems are a class by themselves on account of this characteristic. In ‘The Dance of Love’, she personifies music itself. In ‘Death and Life’, she enlivens death. Krishna and Radha, Indra and Kamdev from the mythology of Hinduism recur in her poetry. Her descriptive powers too are rich which are quite obvious in her poems like The Indian Gypsy, Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad, June Sunset, and Indian Dancers.
Her Versification:
Considering that her total poetic output is limited to four slender volumes, we are also impressed by the large variety of metres that Sarojini has used. There are quick changes of pace in harmony with thought and emotion, as in:
“From groves of spice
O'er fields of rice
Athwart the lotus stream.”
There is a sustained rolling effect, appropriate in a song of the sea, in lines such as:
“What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair will hide in his breast our lives.”
In many of her poems Sarojini has tried, with success, to retain in English verse some of the metres and tunes she took from folk poetry in the regional Indian languages. In ‘Wandering Singers’, a popular Baul tune has been used. ‘Slumber Song for Sunalini’ is in a Bengali metre. ‘In the Bazars of Hyderabad’ is based on a tune which she often heard in the markets of her home town. In ‘Coromandel Fishers’, the sinuous long-drawn-out lines are quite appropriate to the theme, and there is perfect management of rhythm and internal and terminal rhymes, and in ‘Indian Dancers’, the movement of the lines fittingly conveys the swaying and the heaving, the flesh and the fire, of the Indian Dancers.