Asian Journal of
Multidisciplinary Studies
ISSN: 2321-8819 (Online)
2348-7186 (Print)
Impact Factor: 0.92
Volume 3, Issue 2, Feb. 2015
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Guruprasad Mohanty’s Kalapurusha:A Journey within
Saswati Subhadarsini
Lecturer in English,
Angul Autonomous College, Angul, Odisha
Abstract: Trend-setters of literary epochs are a few and T. S. Eliot was one such luminary, whose literary
gamut gave new shape to poetry, criticism, essay and poetic drama. His chef d‟oeuvre „The Waste Land‟,
voicing Western society‟s desolation, dilemma and decadence got a strong following in other languages and
literati. One litterateur‟s influence on other cultures and languages enhances the growth of literature as a
whole, though the anxiety of influence is very much discernible in the successor. This paper aims at
a comparison between two personae: T. S. Eliot‟s Tiresias of „The Waste Land‟ and Guruprasad Mohanty‟s
Kalapurusha of the poem „Kalapurusha‟. The analysis rests on studying their inner and exterior selves, their
differing and different points-of-view, while exploring their positions in their respective decaying systems.
The focus is on discovering the nature of their communion with humanity. These two representative
voices may belong to different times and climes, but incidentally they tell the same story for every human
soul.
Keywords : anxiety influence, Comparative Literature, Point of View
When The Waste Land was published, I.A.
Richards opined that the work had expressed “the
disillusionment of a generation”. But Eliot did not
agree to that view. He preferred to describe the
poem as an expression of his state of mind rather
than a social criticism. Both Eliot and I.A.
Richards‟ views were justifiable. An artist‟s
anguished view depicts a human in distress; that
human is a voice of society and finds its resonance
in hearts of other humans. There are a multitude of
voices and personae with music, discord, myth,
symbols and layers within the layer in The Waste
Land that tell the stories of existence here and
beyond. Illusion of success, money, fate, progress,
sexuality, invincibility that had its blindfold on
contemporary society faced the big question – is
there soulfulness in such life?
Later, Eliot modified his stance and said in
his On Poetry and Poets, “A Poet may believe that
he is expressing only his private experience; his
lives may be for him only a means of talking about
himself without giving himself away; yet for his
readers what he has written may come to be the
expression both of their own secret feelings and of
the exultation or despair of a generation” (p.12223).
T.S. Eliot was conscious of his social
responsibilities. The moral chaos in the
contemporary society troubled his Puritan spirit. He
was a poet who wanted to express the inner
struggles of man and his quest for a meaningful
end. He has indirectly presented his own spiritual
autobiography in The Waste Land, and his personae
in the poem are voices of his own as well as that of
others.
The poem left its impression on Indian
literary world. Writers of the pre-independence and
post-independence times were eager to give vent to
their anxiety, reality, despair and revolt. Eliot was
the right icon for them: the break from the
traditional expression, the projection of the grey
side of the hero, the use of personal symbols,
existential questions, depiction of the split self,
spiritual vacuity struck the right cord with the
literati. In Odia literature the Eliotian influence was
already felt though the expression took concrete
shape in the 1950s, in the writings of Sachi
Routray, Binod Nayak, Pranakrushna Samal,
Gyanindra
Verma,
Guruprasad
Mohanty,
Ramakanta Rath, Sitakanta Mohapatra, Soubhagya
Mishra, Rajendra Kishore Panda, Harihar Mishra,
Prativa Satpathy and many others. They took a
plunge in the Eliotian repository and penned their
own Waste Lands.
Guruprasad Mohanty (1924-2004) can be
called “the second major modern poet next to
Radhanath Ray”, says JatindraMohan Mohanty in
his critique (p.129). He reflected the voice of his
people, in a crumbling milieu, at a time when there
was a need to express the real pictures of inner
complexities. Guruprasad acknowledges the
influence of T.S. Eliot and says that he wanted to
create a „Waste Land‟ in his own language (poet
Radhamohan Gadnaik insisted him to write his
magnum opus in the mode of The Waste Land).
“His masterpiece Kalapurusha is often considered
a trans-creation and transformation of Eliot‟s The
Waste Land”, says Priyadarshi Patnaik (p.1). The
present decadence of Indian life is no less terrifying
than the Western Scenario, observed Guruprasad.
Like Eliot, he travelled with the innocent, guilty,
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T.S. Eliot‟s The Waste Land and Guruprasad Mohanty‟s Kalapurusha:A Journey within.
helpless trickster, rape-victim split-personality in
their journey through life. He wanted to tell them to
find their true self.
The blind prophet Tiresias, having both
the body and spirit of man and woman, is the
personae who can find his parallel in Guruprasad‟s
Kalapurusha. Kalapurusha, according to Odia
Bhagabata author Jagannath Das is the messenger
of God of Death. He is, in fact, Time personified.
He stays with every moment of every human life;
he is co-traveler of every human experience; he is
the reminder of the flux of human existence. He is
of both temporal and ineffable world. Both Tiresias
and Kalapurusha are helpless in spite of their
divine strengths. They have to go through the
human experience as they are assigned to do so on
the Earth. They see the surface activities and also
the meaning beneath: birth, growth, sex,
procreation, material amassment, religion, hatred,
love and death. But the irony is that they cannot
intervene. Even the cosmic man Kalapurusha and
the immortal prophet Tiresias aspire for spiritual
rain. They aspire for it not for themselves, but for
the humanity. Their stay in the transient world has
metamorphosed them into earthly beings.
Tiresias‟ turning into the body of woman
was the result of his „human error‟. Two stories are
associated with this mythic phenomenon. He struck
a pair of copulating snakes with his stick and thus
incurred the wrath of Goddess Hera, who turned
him into a woman. The other legend is that he saw
the naked Goddess Athena and thus he was blinded
by her; though later she relented a bit and granted
him the gift of oracles and divine hearing.
Tiresias‟ mistakes were the mistakes of a
mortal man. Thus, he decides to lead the life of a
mortal, not of a celestial being. He observes the
rape and mutilation of Philomela by her cruel
brother-in-law Tereus, but he can do nothing
except soaking his heart with tears. Philomela‟s
transformation into a bird (nightingale) to escape
death was the divine intervention of the Gods. Does
such divine intervention take place in the present
Waste Lands? Time and again Tiresias hears the
heart-breaking screams of girls being disgraced.
Kalapurusha is the mute representation of
Time and Death, but nobody cares for his presence
or warning. The mortals cannot see through the
surface. They cannot see Kalapurusha in their
mortal eyes. Kalapurusha sees the destruction of
mighty empires and people: the Kauravas, the
Pandavas and the Yadavas becoming part of the
dust. He sees women disgracing their souls and
bodies for the sake of existence:
Pratima Nayak smiles
black saree on her body,
make-up and
ugly pimples on her face.
Red saliva on her lips
„Namaskar, Sir‟
Smarta Das stands up
discovering himself all of a sudden.
Minati Nayak comes
scattering jasmine flowers
numberless grey clouds float
above the city,
Pratima, Minati and Meera
their make-up, pimples, chocolates
and their red saliva
leave their stains on the sky.
(Trans. by Sangram Jena
and Aurobindo Behera)
Tiresias sees Lil and Albert going through
a pressing time and Lil taking abortion pills to
abort her sixth issue. It may be her indulgence; but
the ravages of hard, poverty ridden life make the
Waste Lander a scare-crow like entity:
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was
there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice
set,
Lil has lost some of her teeth though she is only
thirty one; she is a victim of negligence and
poverty.
Tiresias and Kalapurusha do not try to
transcend the world or to go beyond to achieve the
„Supreme‟. They accept the harsh, cruel, ordinary,
fragmented lives as they experience. They do not
seek any solution. Nor any escape. But their
message is undoubtedly to experience divine in the
mortal life, regeneration in death, cosmic in the
atom and spirituality in sacrifice. „Shantih‟ is the
word that the world will find easily, if it is realized
by the mortal himself.
Reference :
Eliot, T.S. “Virgil and the Christian World”. On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
Mohanty, Jatindra Mohan. Surya Snata. Bhubaneswar: Suvarnarekha, 1999.
Patnaik, Priyadarshi. “Kalapurusha of GuruprasadMohanty”. Muse India, 59th Issue Jan-Feb, 2015.
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(2) February, 2015
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