Narration and Description:
The narrative and description powers of Toru Dutt are best seen in Ancient Ballads. She had a rare gift of story-telling, of arousing interest and curiosity, of creation suspense, and of drawing character. It may be reasonably said, remarks Dr. Jha, that “had she lived longest she would have attained distinction in narrative verse and in descriptive verse.”
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| Toru Dutt As A Poet: A General Estimate |
The same critic is of the opinion that her descriptive poetry is of a superior order. Her narrative skill is beautifully manifested in the manner she narrates the stories of Savitri, Sita, Jogadhya Uma, Lakshman, Buttoo, Sindhu, Prahlad, Bharat, and Dhruva. But in descriptive poetry she is much better. Just see the description of Yama, the God of Death:
“Upon his head he wore a crown
That shimmered in the doubtful light:
His vestment scarlet reached low down
His waist, a golden girdle dight.
His skin was dark as bronze: his face
Irradiate, and yet severe:
His eyes had much of love and grace,
But glowed so bright, they filled with fear.” —Savitri, p.63
Toru's description of Satyavan's death also shows her immaculate skill.
Her Diction:
The diction that one comes across in Toru's poetry is usually simple, clear and sweet, though this is not literally true in case of some of her translation, e.g.
“What was the meaning was it love?
Love at first sight, as poets sings,
Is then no fiction?”
Occasionally, there are artisans in her poems. We also come across trusted phrases and expressions. She has also used inversion and foreign words, especially French words. But most of the time she writes in formal English; colloquial turns of English seem unhomely to her. Her diction is suitable to her themes and contexts. Many a time it gives the impression of pure English. There are occasional unpleasant inversions (“Her heart - rose opened had at last”) and wrenched accents, no doubt, but as a body of narrative poetry, the first eight, ‘ballads and legends’ are unquestionably and movingly articulate, and disgrace neither the originals nor the language in which they are now rendered.
Versification:
As a master of verse Toru always rises to the occasion. Besides, her management of the versification is adroit enough—the 4- lines ballad stanza, the 8- line octosyllbic stanza, blank verse, Toru is reasonably at home in them all. She has shown remarkable mastery of the sonnet form. There are nearly forty sonnets in the Sheaf and two in Ancient Ballads. Harihar Das, Toru's biographer also speaks of her preference to sonnet. But Toru lacked “mellow sweetness”, though this charge is untenable. Speaking of her melodies , Anant says that they “were often foreign if not harsh to the English ear”, and that they were “the melodies of Bengal, her native land, the melodies which she drank in so often that they now formed part of her very soul.”
Figure of Speech:
Similes, metaphor, onomatopoeia, personification, alliteration, and hyperbole are the figures of speech which Toru often uses. We give below the instances:
1. Similes:
(a) “When glided like a music - strain Savitri's presence through the room”.
(b) “Nor melt his lineage like the frost.”
(c) “Tall trees like pillars”.
(d) “It came as chainless as the wind”.
(e) “He staggers like a sleepy child”.
(f) “His skin was dark as bronze”.
2. Metaphors:
(a) “His merit still remains a star”.
(b) “The pair look statues. magic bound,”
3. Onomatopoeia:
But the good
God's purity there loved to trace,
Mirrored in dawning womanhood.
4. Personification:
Rang trumps, and conch, and perching fife,
Woke Echo from her bed!
The solemn woods with sounds were rife
As on the pageant sped.
5. Alliteration:
Stern warriors, when they saw her, smiled,
As mountains smile to see the spring.
6. Hyperbole:
All these, and thousands, thousands more - rose before
The youth in evening's shadows brown .
Imagery and Symbols:
Toru can concretize her imagination through word - pictures. Her imagery is drawn with a masculine vapour and boldness. Though a weak and fragile person, she displayed a wonderful power in grappling with the sublime and the terrible. Savitri says:
“My daughter, night with ebony wing
Hovers above: the hour is late.”
Here the darkness of the night is compared to the black skin of ebony. Another beautiful image is found in the following lines:
“She took the soul,
No bigger than human thumb.”
In it an abstract thing has been measured in terms of a concrete thing. There are numerous other images in Savitri. For instance in the following image a gnawing asp has been evoked to express the intensity of pain:
“I had a pain, as if an asp
Gnawed in my brain.”
Mark the Indianness of the following concrete and vivid imagery:
“The shaven stalks of grass,
Kusha and kasha, by its new teeth clipped,
Remind me of it, as they stand in lines
Like pious boys who chant the Sa, ga Veda
Shorn by their vows of all their wealth of hair."
No systematic network of symbols is found in Toru's poetry. She uses however, symbols occasionally. For example, in “Savitri” the night and its shades are associated with death and distress: in “The Tree of Life”, the tree becomes a symbol of life, and the “Angel” of Jesus Christ. “Our Casuarina Tree” is more than the poetic evocation of a tree, - it is rather recapturing the past, and immortalising the moment of time so recaptured. In the words of Dr. Iyengar, “The tree is both tree and symbol and in it are implicated both time and eternity.”
Themes:
Pathetic and moving subjects attracted Toru most. The captives, the vanquished, and the sufferers easily caught her attention and moved her to write. Seldom does she speak about Love, and when she does so, it is invariably pure and sublime. Patriotic themes were no less dear to her. Her ballads are couched in patriotic instincts and native traditions. The stories of the past evoked a sympathetic response from her. Of all the themes, the French War against the Prussians touched her profoundly. Her two poems, “France 1870" and Fly Leaf of Erckmann - Christian's Novel Entitled Madame Therese, celebrate it in a grand manner. Ancient Ballads show that for her themes, Toru usually drew upon the Ramayana, the Mahabharata the Vishnu Purana, and the folklore (as in case of “Jogadhya Uma”) Like Shakespeare, Toru shows little originality in inventing new themes for her poetry; her real originality lies in the way she executes them.
Her Treatment of Nature:
Besides the above mentioned themes, her poems are remarkable for her minute observation of Nature. We come across the champak and the kokila, in brief, the Indian fauna and flora, giving a testimony for her love of the Indian milieu. In the presence of natural beauty her heart leapt up with an unspeakable delight, and her lips whispered:
Upon the glassy surface fell
The last beam of the day,
Like fiery dark, that lengthening swell,
As breezes wake and play.
Osiers and willows on the edge
And purple buds and red,
Leant down, —and, mid the pale greens edge
The lotus raised its head.
Thus, The delicacy and lightness of touch displayed in Toru's verse bear testimony to her faultless and refined poetic taste, and the music of her poetry is not the least negligible feature of her work. There is abundant simplicity and spontaneity in her verse. She can manage with ease the ballad metre and the blank verse; she is a mistress of the sonnet form. Her rhymes are rarely far - fetched and sense glides along without interruptions. In connection with her ‘wooden’ blank verse, it is to be noted that it yields its peculiar charm only to the lucky few like her. Speaking of the technical character of Ancient Ballads, Sir Gosse suggests that in spite of much in it that is “rough and inchoate”, it shows that “Toru was advancing in her mastery of English verse.” Harihar Das finds the “classical tradition in her poetry”.
Edmund Gosse calls her a “fragile, exotic blossom of songs.” Dr. Jha sums up her place in the following words: “There were few poetic glories which given maturity. She could not have achieved.” H.A.L. Fisher observes: “This child of the green valley of the Ganges has by sheer force of native genius earned for herself the right to be enrolled in the great fellowship of English poets;”