Table Of ContentCENTRAL LIBRARY
Poetry :
Text and Context
IOth UGC-Sponsored Refresher Course
in English
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Published by
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Department of English
University of Calcutta
CENTRAL LIBRARY
Editors
Jhama SanyaJ
Krishna Sen
Publisher
B. K. Duti (Honorary Director ASC-CU)
Editorial Board
Dipcndu Chakra bait i
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
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Santanu Mazumdar
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Sanjukta Das gup ta
Sinjini Bandyopadhyay
Sona Roy
Srobona Munshi
Subhadra Kumar Sen
Sudeshna Chakra varti
Sumita Naskar
G\ S
Surabhi Baneijee
Tapati Gupta S
© Academic Staff Coliege. University of Calcutta
Published : December 2003
Designed and printed by
Blue Pencil Publishing Editorial & Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd.
2At D. P. P Road. Kolkata-700 047
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Message
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Besides organising a large number of Orientation
Programmes, Refresher Courses, Seminars and Workshops, the
UGC-Academic Staff College has a programme of publication of
quality books primarily based on the lecture materials provided by
the Resource Persons, A Refresher Course, in particular, is an
opportunity to the participant teachers to listen to and interact with
many eminent speakers and researchers at one place. The
documentation of such discourse is essential not only for the
professional benefit of the teachers hut also for dissemination of
knowledge and thoughts to a broad spectrum of people interested
in the concerned area.
The thrust area of the 10th Refresher Course in English -
Poetry : Text and Context - is unique in itself The course was
designed by the Joint Coordinators, Professor Sona Roy and Dr
Santanu Majumdar, to convey the rnultj valent appeal of this thrust
area. The efforts of the editors Professor Jhama Sanyal and Professor
Krishna Sen have culminated in this intellectually fulfilling
publication. The book is a worthy addition to the titles published
by the UGC-ASC. University of Calcutta.
Binay K. Dutt
CENTRAL LIBRARY
Preface
We take great pleasure in bringing out the third volume of a senes ol publications
of the Deparfmenl el English which are the outcome of Peiresher Course programmes
sponsored by the UGC. and administered by Ihe Academic Staff College, University o!
Cakxrtta, The First eight fteiresher Courses in Engltsh had dealt with literary periods, literary
theory, and various soao-CulturaJ contexts ol literalura. From the ninth Course, which was
on ‘Drama: Literature and FerTomance\ the Department is offering a senes of genre-based
explorations, looking into (he ways in which the discourse on the genre has developed from
traditional perspectives to contemporary concerns.
Poetry, a hallowed pursuit in times past, occupies a particularly ambivalent site
today. On the one hand, there are debales about its relevance Jn an increasingly
fragmented and dystopic world. On the other hand, poetry now embraces more spares
or smcui'aijon than ever before, including not only new cultural contexts, but at$o issues
such as mtenexluatity and translation. This mulli-dimen$ional discourse has evolved Irom
ihe interface of the poei, Ihe critic, and the translator.
We are privileged that m the current volume we have been abte lo include alf
these voces m our galaxy of national and international contributors, among them renowned
pc*ts, eminent academicians, and distinguished translators, The grouping of the contents
aims to project the diversity of (he current thinking about poetry. The volume begins
appropnatefy with poems by an earlier and a contemporary poet - Mohini Mohan
Chatiegee and Meena Alexander. A novel insight into Colonial perspectives on poetry is
provided by two rare reprints from The Calcutta Review. The evolving nature of ihe genre
is explored in the contributions of Keki N. DaoiwaFla. Jayanta Mahapatra, Huck Gutman
and Anisur Rahman We then move to Indian English poetry rn its various manifestations
- indigenous, diaspora: and Dab! - in the pieces by Maya Shankar Pandey. Sudeshna
Chakravarii. Murari Prasad. K Suneetha Rant, and Sanjukta Dasgupta. Canadian and
British poetry are analysed irom diverse viewpornts by Subir Dhar, Mary Ellis Gibson,
Visvanath Chattegee, Srobona Munshi. Jharna Sanyal. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya and
Jayah Gupta The important area ol inteitextuarity is addressed by Subhas Sartar and Uyal
Kumar Majumdar Finally. the new insights on translation as a constitueni ol the discourse
on poetry are analysed by Fakrul Alam and Chinmoy Cuba
We would tike to thank the Registrar ol the University of Calcutta, Dr Ujjal Kumar
Base, for his kind permission to reprint articles from The Calcutta Review and past
numbers of the Journal of the Department of English We are grateful lo Dr. Binay K. Dull,
Honorary Director o! Ihe Academic Slafl College o! this University, lor hi$ enoOuragemeni
and help in publishing Ihis vorume. We thank our contributors and all members of our
Editorial Board, especially Protestor Sanjukta Dasguple, for their unstinting cooperation.
The First and Second Tear MA students who manually copied material from The Calcutta
Review, which is too brittle to be photocopied, deserve our special appreciation. We musl
particularly mention here our Departmental Project Fellows. Sanghamitra Dalai and
Debapriya Paul, who took charge ol ai! the Laborious tasks associated with this publication
Finally, our grateful thanks are due lo Mr Sujoy Gupta, who undertook to design this book
and see it through the press in record time.
December IS, 2003
Jharna Sanyal
Krishna Son
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I Moh ini Mohan Chatterjee :
1
A Poet Rediscovered
H Meena Alexander
15
Poems
III George Smith
25
Poetry of the Rebellion
IV William Douglas 41
The Critique of Pure Nonsense
V Keki N, Daru walla 51
The Decolonized Muse
VI Jayanta Mahapatra 57
Hedging the Heart :
To What is the Poet Responsible?
VII Huefc Gutman 63
The Plight of the Modern Lyric Poet
VIII Anisur Rahman 79
Inverting the Language of Power :
Two Wayj of Seeking Identity
IX M. S, Pandey 89
Fragments of a Broken Geography :
Diasporie Conftgu rat on in the
Postcolonial South Asian Immigrant Writing
X Sudeshna Chakravarti 99
Yeats and the tradition of re-incarnation :
*rMohini Chatterjee " and other works
XI Murari Prasad 113
Indian Poetry in English *
Turn -of- the - Centu ry Signposts
XU Kh Sunwtha Ranj 127
The Negated Narrate :
Dai it Literature and the "Nation "
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XIU Sanjukta Dasgupta 135
The Politics of Language :
Post-Independence Indian English Poetry
149
XIV Subir Dhar
Imagined Indians : Duncan Campbell
Scott adn the Psychology of Colonialism
XV Mary Ellis Gibson 159
The Garden and the Empire :
Family Drama and Global
Politics in Tennyson's Poetry
XVI Visvanath Chatteijee 175
Prometheus and the Poet
XV)I Srobona Munshi 1S5
Thomas Caret's Visual Conceits
XVIII Jhama Sanya! 201
Criseyde Through the Boethian Glass
XIX Ramkrishna Bhauacharya 221
A Possible Political Reading of Gray's Elegy
XX Jayati Gupta 231
A Re-Reading of the Landscape
Poetry of Alexander Pope
XXI Subhas Sarkar 245
Modernism in Indian English Poetry
and P. Lai : The Influence of T. S. Eliot
XXII Ujjal Kumar Majumdar 251
Truth is Beauty
XXIII Fakml Alam 257
Translating Rabindranath Tagores Verse
XXIV Chinmoy Guha 285
Out of Place : the Translator's Identity'
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Mohini Mohan Chatterjee
A Poet Rediscovered
Mohini Mohan Chaltcrjcc (1858-1936) is remembered today
mostly becau.se of the fond tribute paid to him by W. B, Yeats in his
poem Mohini Chatterjee (1930), But U may be a surprise lo us to
know that he was a poet and translator by his own right and wrote
both in English and Bengali,
Mohini Chatterjee completed his M.A., LL. B, from Calcutta
University. His life-long engagement with the traditional Vedantic
philosophy brought him close to the Theosophists and he travelled
to Europe as the private secretary of Madam Blavatsky in 1883, H
is during this period he met Yeats, then a boy of sixteen, and
initialed him to the idea of reincarnation. To Yeats he appeared to
be a Christ-like figure. Bui it seems, apart from Yeats, there were
many others whom he influenced by this wonderful eloquence.
According to the apocryphal account given by O C, Ganguli, in his
memoirs, Mohini Chatterjee had an encounter with the Pope in
Rome where the Pontiff supposedly failed to win Chatterjee over lo
Christianity and accepted the superiority of Hinduism. Yeats on a
different occasion recounted how orthodox Chatterjee was, for he
never allowed Yeats to touch him physically. Mohini Chatterjee
preempted the arrival of Swami Vivckananda in America, And in
1885 he brought out a wonderful prose translation of
Srimadbhavadgita from Boston, Massachusetts.
Coming back to Calcutta in 1889 he started practising as an
attorney. He was the permanent attorney of the Tagore family. By
his marriage to the daughter of Dwijendranath Tagore he became a
distant relative to Rabindranath. He and his brothers were the
members of 'Khamkheyali Sabha1 - a club established by the
Tagores, Perhaps because of his non-Brahmo attitude and deep
knowledge of Hindu philosophy, Mohini Chatterjee became a good
friend of Sister Nivcdita. He was present in the only meeting
between Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath, which took place
in 1899, at the behest of Sister Nivedita.
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2 Poetry: Te.tt and Context
Mohini Chatterjce's Bengali poems were published in
magazines like Bharati. When in 1921 the periodical The Calcutta
Review was taken over by the University of Calcutta, Chaiterjee
became one of its regular contributors. His poems in English, both
original and translations from Bengali and Sanskrit, continued to be
published till his death in 1936. The terse expression and the
consummate artistry of the poems make us suspect they were
perhaps not the compositions of a frail old man in the last decades
of his life (Vishnu Dey recalls by 1930 Chaiterjee had become
completely blind). They appear to have been composed earlier,
perhaps during his tours in Europe and in America.
Though we have the names of two anthologies of his
Bengali poems Bhikkhar Jhuli (The Beggar's Bowl) and Jiban
Prabaha (The Flow of Life) and also some of his other English
works like Indian Spirituality and History as a Science, his English
poems have so far remained uncollected. We present a selection of
his poems From the pages of 77ie Calcutta Review with the hope
that some day in the future we will be able to bring out an
anthology with a full biographical account of this fascinating
Bengali intellectual.
(Collated by Debapriya Paul and Sanghamitra Dalai |
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Mohini Mohan Chatterji
Quest of Beauty
L Aspiration
I sit me down by Beauty's stream,
I dare not touch the water.
The day is bleak and bitter cold.
Around rain's cold, soft patter.
I rise resolved to plunge in stream.
My courage shivers cold,
I land-ward look, my courage comes,
I re-resolve, I'm bold.
In doubt my courage flutters fast,
I know not what to think:
Misfortune’s sprinkled on my face,
I care not if 1 sink.
1 jump —1 plunge — the die is cast.
All doubt, all fear forever past.
II, Resolution
Lend ear, ye faithful sons of truth,,
Record my solemn vow,
I’ll lose my life in Beauty's sea.
And never turn back now.
Unseen, in silence Beauty rapes
What I have known as me,
A sweetness steals o'er all that's left,
Serene in agony.
By liquid light on Beauty's sea
Without is made Within,
Without, Within in Beauty merged;
To think of aught is sin.
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Poetry: Text and Context
tii. Conservation
I fear i'm wrecked on Beauty’s shore.
My lines have snapt.
My crazy craft
Is helpless, helmless, 'reft of oar.
The wind, called mind, is clean distraught;
Its rise* its fall
Are madness all.
Obsessed by devils, vainly fought,
|Tve sailed by words from somewhere heard.
Whene'er it thunder'd*
I only blunder'd
And whirl’d as Pass ion-storm bestirr’d.
The horrid, ugly thing called life
The shore enshrouds
In deep, black clouds.
Unpierced by lightning's thinnest knife.
The mind dies to see her.
The eye dies to flee her.
Take her or leave her - so rages the strife.
IV, Consummation
O take my father's richest store*
Take diamonds great and pearls galore.
Gems* red and green,
- How sweet their sheen!
Take silver cold
Bold, bright gold*
Take all - take all that you need more.
But buy me Beauty - Beauty find.
Let be all else but light to Blind,
Seek dark and glow.
Above, below,
Scour sky and eunh.
Seek death and birth,
Make beauty "lone the light of mind.
