The brother of the gifted Sarojini Naidu, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya is a poet of lyric prowess and reflective substance. He is a versatile genius - poet, playwright, actor, musician, socialist rebel, wayfarer and Bohemian. As a poet he is the creator of the poetry of pure gold. His first volume of poems The Feast of Youth appeared in 1918 and was reviewed by Sri Aurobindo in the Arya of November 1918: “English poetry written by an Indian writer who uses the foreign medium as if it were his mother - tongue, with a spontaneous ease, power and beauty. The author, a brother of the famous poetess Sarojini Naidu, one of a family which promises to be as remarkable as Tagore's by its possession of culture, talent and genius, challenging attention and sympathy by his combination of extreme youth and a high and early brilliance and already showing in his work, even though still immature, magnificent performance as well as a promise which make it difficult to put any limits to the heights he may attain. The book at once attracts interest and has come into immediate prominence amidst general appreciation and admiration. It shows high gifts. Here perhaps are the beginnings of a supreme utterance of the Indian soul in the rhythms of the English tongue.”
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| Poetry of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya |
The Feast of Youth written at the age of 20 demonstrates Harin's mystic strain, lyrical sensibility, subjectivity, magnificent sweep of imagination and poetic beauty of expression. The collection is Romantic cum - Victorian; the imagery is largely drawn from the world of nature:
The spring - hues deepen into human bliss.
The hearts of god and man in scent are blended,
The sky meets earth in one transparent kiss.
A poem entitled “Fire” shows his mystic urge:
I am a thirst for one glimpse of your beautiful face, O Love,
Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the purple of skies.
To quote Sri Aurobindo again, it shows “a rich and finely lavish command of language, a firm possession of the metrical instrument, and almost blinding gleam and glitter of the wealth of imagination and fancy, a stream of unfailingly poetic thought and image and a high thought as yet uncertain pitch of poetic expression”. But there is not yet that sufficient incubation of the inspiration and the artistic sense which turns a poem into a perfectly satisfying whole; even in the sonnets, beautiful in themselves, there is an insufficient force of structure. The totality of effect in most of these poems is a diffusion, a streaming on from one idea and image to another, not a well - completed shapeliness, The rhythmic tune is always good, often beautiful and admirable, but the smallest secrets of sound have not yet been firmly discovered; they are only as it were glimpsed and caught in passing.
Harin wrote a number of poems which appeared in various volumes such as The Sea of Adam (1946), Edgeways and The Saints (1946), The Divine Vagabond (1950), Spring in Winter (1955), Marks and Farewells (1961), Virgins and Vineyards (1967), etc. Harin's poetic canvas is versatile and large. He has written on varying themes from mystic longing, love and divine devotion to patriotic and progressive movements and the unpoetic subject of poverty and squalor. Harin is no doubt a poet of essentially romantic sensibility. In the words of K.R.S. Iyengar, “Harindranath has veered between the extremes of Aurobindonian mysticism and Marxism materialism, and he has sampled every variety of experience, and exploited every possible mood, pose and stance. The result is a body of verse that has impressive bulk, though it is also inevitably perhaps, of uneven quality. (Indian Writing in English, 1962: 371).
“Compared with his sister, Sarojini, he shows more poetic freedom and vigour, greater variety in form and content and a deeper poetic sincerity. While she lays more emphasis on the melody of words his stress has been on its poetic meaning.” (P.C. Kotoky, Indo - English Poetry, 1969: 69) Of all the pre - Independence Indo - Anglian poets, he alone has enriched Indo - Anglian verse with new theme and to some extent has dealt with contemporary problems. He shares social awareness with such recent poets as Nissim Ezekiel, Daruwalla and Gieve Patel. There is no denying the fact that much of what the Workshop poets were reacting against is represented by the poetry of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. But by impregnation Vedantic awareness of God's omnipresence and his treatment of Shiva, he has infused Indianness in his poetry.
Harin's poetry is in the tradition of Indo - Anglian Romanticism. His romanticism is manifest in the mystical strain of his poetry and its lyricism, in his imaginative capacity and sense of wonder, in his emphasis on personal experience in poetry and sensuousness, in his delineation of external Nature and its inner spirit, in his themes of love and life, in the spontaneity of his poetry and its romantic imagery. Just mark his descriptive power in a poem. “Noon”;
The noon a mystic dog with paws of fire
Runs through the sky in ecstasy of drouth
Licking the earth with tongue of golden flame
Set in a burning mouth.
It floods the forest with loud barks of light
And chases its own shadows on the plains.
Its Master silently hate set it free
Awhile from silver chains...
At last towards the cinctures end of day
It drinks cool droughts from sunset - mellowed rills,
Then chained to twilight by the Master's hand
It sleep among the hills.
Harin's best poetry presents him as a lyric poet of power and beauty. Like his sister's his poems are mostly lyrical though he does not seem to go in for melody only. The lyric is his dominant poetic form but he wrote sonnets, longer poems and blank verse also. Sometimes he finds the lyric too slight to sustain his poetical ideas, as in Virgins and Vineyards. However, his numerous lyrics illustrate his lyrics powers and the lyrical impulse behind them, as in Spring in Winter (1955). His lyrics are brief, sensuous, passionate, delicate, musical and spontaneous. They are full of lyrical subjectivity and experimental meaning. His love - lyrics are marked by his personal lyrical notes. Taking to lyric poetry Harin gave it a new charm and thoughtfulness. His lyrics appeal to us and make us think also. His best lyrical gift can be illustrated rightly says Dr. Amar Nath Jha, “Harindranath Chattopadhyaya has lyrical gifts of a rare order. Some of his pieces are gems of pure delight. Full of the joy of life.” (“Introductory Memoirs”, Toru Dutt's ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, 1969, p. 15.)
Though primarily a lyric poet, Harin is not without a mystic strain. Tagore and Aurobindo influenced him deeply. His father's on his tender mind. He also studied Blake for research, and Blake's influence should have naturally converted him to mysticism. The Feast of Youth reveals the impact of Blake and Aurobindo. Just mark a few of his mystic lines:
1. I am a thirst for one glimpse of your beautiful face. O Love, Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the purple of skies. — “Fire”, The Feast of Youth.
2. When I with me come face to face
And cancel the dividing line
Between the body and the soul.
….. …. …. …. …. …. … …. ……
And then the one reply
Shall be that I am thou and thou- art - I!
And no more call a rope a snake. —Masks and Farewells.
Harin is a poet of recognition. “He is every inch a poet. In imagery, in embellishments, in figures of speech, in suggestively, in his power imagination he is of a very high order.”:
I sat beside the silent lake
Beneath the evening's blue and gold
And felt my spirit rise and make
Obeisance to its Love of old.
All quietly I sat and heard
The myriad voices of the broad
Green fields and saw a sapphire bird
Pass like a fiery glimpse of God
Across my silent dreaming broke
A twinkling blossom like an eye.
God's little crimson masterstroke
To wake in me an ancient cry. —“Masterstroke”
Indeed, this poem is his masterstroke. It brings to light his prominent features as poet - mysticism, romanticism, lyricism, deftness in the handling of images, suggestibility and superb diction. His is a facile muse. His lyrics are simple and direct. His verbal ease and beauty of expression are also matchless and striking:
Centuries's slumber hid
Inside a rose
Each petal, a lid
Sealing their deep repose, —“Eyelids”, Masks and Farewells
His early poetry is distinguished by the presence of “the feather weighed precious perfume of mystic vision and magic words.” It is also characterised by the felicity of beautiful phrases of which he is a master. Like his sister he is an adept corner of matchless, musical suggestive and luxuriant phrases which make his poem bedecked with poetic excellence. Poems such as “Peacock” and “Message” are remarkable for his first rate craftsmanship, exquisite felicity of phrase, marvellous suggestively and wealth of poetic imagination.
Harin has offered numerous new images. “Time with his magic wand is necromancer " ; the evening star rising above the dark hill - hop Is “a throw like the throat of a snow - white peacock sipping pool water drop by drop”; sadness slowly comes over me / As mist comes over a town “are a few of his good and fresh images. His imagery is large drawn from the world of nature - different seasons, heavenly bodies, different times of day, flowers and birds etc. His images reveal his necromantic spirit and concern with the infinite and the vague. Very often he uses allegory and symbolism and yet there is no obscurity of expression. His poetry is not fragile: rather it is full of poetic energy and love of life. He is both conventional and unconventional. His poetry is not only rich in meaning, imagery and craftsmanship but equally rich in themes which are varied - God , Man , Birth , Life and Death . He has written poems of an idealistic nature, for getting the penury and squalor around, poems, suffused with mysticism and also fiery poem on realistic and revolutionary themes. Philosophical and abstract ideas are expressed in a simple and appealing manner. For example:
You lost the day in running after
Fruitless love and fleeting laughter.
You played a hundred games and missed
The real game, my friend!
And all the while the daylight burned,
Great fame and wealth you sought and earned,
Now at its close you find you have
Not even a pie to spend. —“In the Evening”.
Or
When from the crowded ways I move apart
Silent ancestral seers I seems to meet
Treading the lonely roadway of my heart,
The rhythm of my football in their feet. —Edgeways and the Saint (1946)