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CHAPTER-3
IRONY AS A TECHNIQUE OF POETIC IMAGINATION IN
THE POETRY OF LARKIN AND RAMANUJAN
Irony has been
an established
technique of modern poetic
imagination. It is involved in the poet's approach to the different
aspects of life, the way he takes to the themes of his poetry, like time,
love, death etc. And if the poet prefers to maintain an artistic
detachment while delineating his thoughts, as both Larkin and
Ramanujan have done, then irony is perhaps the best instrument in
helping them in their craft, for irony,
as nothing else, stimulates a
detached point of view by creating a critical distance. Regarding the
importance of irony in literature, D.C. Muecke has rightly remarked
that, "the importance of irony in literature is beyond question" . 1
Muecke has given a list of major writers starting from Homer upto the
present age to support his view that all art or literature is not only
essentially, but necessarily, ironic.
Let us have a look at the etymology of the term ‘irony’ before
discussing the function of irony in poetry and its changing role
according to the changes in time and circumstances. M.H. Abrams in
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his book A Glossary of Literary Terms says about the origin of the
term irony:
In Greek comedy the character called the eiron was a
“dissembler",
who
characteristically
spoke
in
understatement and deliberately pretended to be less
intelligent than he was, yet triumphed over the alazon the self-deceived and stupid braggart. In most of the
modem critical uses of the term “irony” there remains the
root sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the
case; not, however, in order to deceive, but to achieve
special rhetorical or artistic effects .2
In some of the translations of Poetics, as Muecke has pointed out, the
word “irony” has been used to present Aristotle's 'peripeteia' which is a
sudden reversal of circumstances.3 This meaning of irony perhaps
includes the meaning of dramatic irony also.
In the Romantic period, we notice a radical change in the
concept of irony. Before, irony was an intentional instrument to serve a
particular purpose; now it became a part of the artistic idiom. It could
be unintentional and could be manifested in art by representing some
happening in such a way that the reader or the audience becomes
aware of something implicit.
Then on irony has become double-
natured — both intentional and hidden, but perceivable. W e can take
“A slumber did my spirit seal”, one of the “Lucy” poems by Wordsworth,
90
as an example
of implicit irony where the contrast inherent in the
theme has not been shown consciously; it might have come to the
poet's mind quite spontaneously in a natural manner. But the reader
can find ironical connotations in the context. We can say that there is
ironical contrast in the conditions of the girl whom the poet loved.
Initially she was full of fearless love and "could not feel / The touch of
earthly years”, but now that she being in her grave, “She neither hears
nor sees”; but is “Rolled round” with the universal whirl of the "earth’s
diurnal course” and thus becomes a victim of time's indomitable power.
Here there is an ironic contrast between the finite power of man and
the infinite power of time as an indomitable force. Now the sphere of
irony from being local or occasional has been transformed to a
generalized phenomenon, where the whole world can be seen as a
stage where the human beings are mere actors and hence passive
instruments of an unknown force.
A more important meaning to the word “irony” was imparted by
the German ironologist Friedrich Schlegel. He also showed irony in
someone’s being the victim of irony and by this the attention of the
reader or the spectator was shifted from the active to the passive
where man is being victimized by someone or by Fate. Schlegel also
showed man as having limited powers and who is trying to understand
and combat the infinite power of nature. As a result, his knowledge of
nature remains limited and he becomes a victim of the infinite power of
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nature. But Schlegel’s importance lies in his showing life as a “dialectic
process”. According to him, the artist, who himself is a part of nature,
by the power of his imagination would not let man become a hopeless
victim of nature's indomitable
force. He would save man from his
predicament by allowing him to transcend the situation. Here man has
the power 'to create and de-create'.
Schlegel had shown that the
artist's Instrumental irony can counter-attack the implicit irony.
The last of the many new meanings of the word ‘irony’ as
Muecke has pointed out, is the objectivity of the artist. This meaning is
also attached to ‘irony’ by German Romanticism. Both Friedrich
Schlegel and his brother A.W . Schlegel supported this view. The
objectivity of the artist in irony differentiates it in the primary level from
invective which is a direct weapon of attack. An invective
for its
directness does not demand the intellect of the reader. But
the
objective
the
and
hence
detached
nature
of
irony
demands
participation and association of the reader’s intellect and indirectly
convey an implicit compliment to the intelligence of the readers. While
differentiating direct invective from indirect irony
Dryden in his
Discourse Concerning Satire has pointed out the advantage that the
ironist has because of his detached attitude:
There is ... a vast difference between the slovenly
butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that
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separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing
in its place .4
Dryden indeed talks here about the finest instrument of irony itself.
Verbal or intentional irony is a crude and gross instrument. But when
the artist is finely detached, and he internalizes the instrument as it
were, he becomes objective and universal.
A.W.Schlegel, while pointing out the limitation of the majority of
the artists where they choose to find a particular character as his
mouthpiece and project his views through him, appreciated the
mastery of Shakespeare’s art by saying that
Shakespeare, though he endows each of his
characters, his ’created forms', with so much life that we
cannot doubt that he has entered into their feelings, is at
the same time detached from them all and ‘soars freely
above’ the subjects of his plays, so that they do not
express his own subjectivity but collectively ‘express the
whole world’, which, as Goethe says, is the mark of a real
artist. 5
Irony as a poetic technique has been appreciated in the modern
times by T.S.EIiot as a kind of ‘wit’ present in the user; according to
him, it is a kind of intellectual equilibrium which has the power to deal
with one kind of expression while at the same time to be able to imply
the possibility of some other kind of experience that can be derived out
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of the same context. I.A. Richards in his Principles of Literary Criticism.
defines irony by saying it as an equilibrium of opposing attitudes and
observes,
Irony in this sense consists in the bringing in of the
opposite, the complementary impulses; that is why poetry
which is exposed to it is not of the highest order, and why
irony itself is so constantly a characteristic of poetry
which is.6
These observations by Eliot and Richards have been further
developed by the new critics like Cleanth Brooks. According to them if
a poem becomes solely devoted to a single attitude or feeling, and
remains invulnerable to irony, there is the risk that such poem may be
vulnerable to the reader’s ironic scepticism. On the other hand, the
greatest poetry remains invulnerable to external irony, that is the
ironical interpretation of the reader of his work by being already aware
of the ironic opposite and involving it in his work .7 What is important
and essential then, is a synthesis of irony and the pressure of the
context,
... that is, a poetry which does not leave out what is
apparently hostile to its dominant tone, and which,
because it is able to fuse the irrelevant and discordant,
has come to terms with itself and is invulnerable to irony.
Irony, then,
in this further sense,
is not only an
94
acknowledgement
of
the
pressures
of
Invulnerability to irony is the stability of a
a
context.
context in
which the internal pressures balance and mutually
support each other.8
The scope of irony in poetry has been very aptly explained by
Muecke in his First Edition of the book Irony and the Ironic which is
entitled Irony. It sums up the role of irony in literature:
Like the graphic arts, it can depict ironic situations. But
the language it employs is obviously far more able to
deal with what people say, think, feel, and believe, and
consequently with the differences between what people
say and what they think and between what is believed to
be and what is the case. And this precisely is the area
within which irony operates.9
But apart from that supremacy of language and production of
rhetorical effect in poetry, irony has a far deeper implication today. We
have seen that irony as a technique has traversed a long way from
being the lightest wit of the Greek comedy to the present times when it
has become a modern and sophisticated mode of perception of the
different aspects of life. Naturally, the function of irony has also
become more serious. Again, in modern times, English language has
been transformed to such a degree that the role of irony had extended
itself from supplying mere artistic effects to retaining its past glory by
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reinforcing its spirit. Therefore, though the responsibility of developing
and purifying language is perennial “it is imposed on the modem poet
as a special burden". Cleanth Brooks's comment on this issue is worth
contemplating:
A great deal of modern poetry does use irony as its
special and perhaps its characteristic strategy. For this
there are reasons, and compelling reasons. To cite only a
few of these reasons: there is the breakdown of a
common symbolism; there is the general scepticism as to
universals; not least important, there is the depletion and
corruption of the very language itself, by advertising, and
by the mass-produced arts of radio, the moving picture,
and pulp fiction. The modern poet has the task of
rehabilitating a tired and drained language so that it can
convey
meanings
once
more
with force
and
with
exactitude . 10
While being aware of all these responsibilities, the modern poet also
has to be conscious of his readers who are no longer simple and
docile: they always tend to be sophisticated and curious,
II
It is ironical that the public to whom the modern poetry is
addressed in most of the poems is itself being ironically attacked. In
most of the poems of both Larkin and Ramanujan, we find that they
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have used irony not merely as a part of their rhetoric but also for some
other deeper purpose. As their irony is not bitter, it gently mocks at the
limitations of modern life itself, while at the same time it betrays their
sentiments for tradition and faith in continuity. Larkin's anti-modernist
stand in literature and the warmth of his feeling for his native land have
placed him in the line of the tradition of English poets, that includes
Wordsworth. I think this point needs a little elaboration to explain how
Larkin’s poetry belongs to the tradition of English poetry, and at the
same time, maintains its relevance and importance in modern English
poetry by showing the ethos of the age sincerely and convincingly.
Geoffrey Harvey in his book titled The Romantic Tradition in Modern
English Poetry has included Larkin with Wordsworth, Hardy, and
Betjeman and has remarked:
... the poets under consideration represent the modern
continuation of an English tradition in which there is a
dynamic
co-operation
between
the
sympathetic,
affirmative and the ironic, detached response to life; and
moreover that the tradition they represent (including, for
instance, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wyatt, Donne and
many of the Augustans), which might usually be called
the poetry of equipoise, was given a new infusion of life
and vigour by Wordsworth. 11
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Modern poetry is post-Romantic in the sense that it rejects
some fundamental concepts which are attached to the Romantic
poetry - transcendence and an 'egotistical sublime'. However, postModernist verse inherits Wordsworth’s poetry of equipoise where
reality and transcendence are blended together. W e have talked about
Larkin's appreciation of this tradition of English poetry and his
resentment at the interruption of the flow of tradition in Chapter 1. In
Larkin’s poetry we find his preoccupation with the ordinary life around
him which he is experiencing. There are poems by Larkin where we
find the poet’s wish to transcend the encircling gloom persisting in the
modern world. But then it is difficult to say whether he has attained the
equipoise between his consciousness of the reality of the modern
complex world and his yearning to overcome that darkness. In the
poems where we find the co-existence of these two sensibilities, we
observe a kind of tension. In such poems the moment of epiphany
comes after a long delineation of the present state of things. These
poems, rather, register the inherent ambivalence in the modem mind
that accepts the reality of life but at the same time feels that there must
be some way to overcome this constraint of modern life,
it has
happened because the modern man finds it difficult to accept anything
as absolutely positive or affirmative though he feels the urgency of its
need. It is impossible to find in modem poetry the “colouring of
imagination whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind
98
in an unusual aspect” . 12 In Larkin's poetry, we find that, poetry that
arises spontaneously from the experience of life, has been enriched
not by the colouring of imagination, but by the poignancy of the reality
of human life that is absolutely devoid of romanticism. Larkin's poetry
registers a characteristically twentieth-century refusal of romanticism
in a very convincing manner. It is convincing because it is deeply
rooted in the sentiments and atmosphere of the contemporary British
life as Philip Thody has pointed out:
In a cooler emotional temperature, some of the success
of the poetry of Philip Larkin stems from the way
he
embodies a way of looking at experience which reflects
something of the national mood in the England of the
second half of the twentieth-century. 13
It is quite natural that the poets, who want to retain tradition and
at the same time wish to delineate the contemporary degenerated
state of things in a sensitive and sophisticated manner, would prefer a
technique that can help them in expressing themselves obliquely.
There is, perhaps, no other appropriate instrument in literature, other
than irony, that can help the poet in expressing his views in a detached
manner.
In the poetry of Larkin as well as of Ramanujan, we. find an
extensive use of both verbal and situational irony. Their poetry reflects
the psychology of the modern man who has seen the cruelty of human
99
beings, the insincerity of feelings of human beings towards their fellow
beings. The modern man sees the power-game between two human
beings, between nations. This experience, in its turn, points to the irony
and also paradox to some extent, in the rejection of Christianity by
some of the twentieth-century writers ( e.g.,
Plague
Albert Camus's The
and, in more recent times, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic
Verses) because they find God's ways to be cruel and unjustified. The
irony in this misconception of the writers of this century lies in the fact
that it is in the twentieth-century that we have experienced and still
experiencing a constant or steep disorientation of human values by
human beings themselves. The degradation of political values and its
strong influence on the modem mind, have also made us sceptical
about the power of literature to change the present scenario. And we
find an echo of this feeling in Auden’s remark when he says sadly that
none of his poems was able to save a single Jew from the gas
chamber. It “expresses the irony of one of the greatest poets of the
century coming to realise that there are times when the pen is not,
after all, mighterthan the sword” . 14
In the poetry of Larkin and Ramanujan, we find that they are not
trying to transfer the responsibility of man's miseries to God or to some
inconceivable power whose ways transcend the human perception.
Their poetry is empirical not only in the sense that they deal with
contemporary situation and characters, but also because they have a
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very clear conception of the root cause of human sufferings - that is
the insensitivity of the modern man towards his fellow men. As a result,
they are not ready to accept things as merely the design of Fate or
God, that we find, say, in the works of Hardy. Hardy has seen irony
belonging to not the structure of poetry but to the structure of the
universe itself. Thus, he has introduced irony in his works but that has
taken the shape of cosmic irony. He has seen God’s ironic design in
the situations that a person faces in life. For example, the heroine of
his novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. or the hero of
Jude the Obscure.
is a victim of the design of fate; in the case of Tess, we find that
whenever she tries to be happy, an adverse force comes to shatter
that. But in Larkin’s as well as in Ramanujan’s poems we find that it is
not God, it is the modern life itself and the modern man himself that
have been entangled in ironical situations created by themselves only.
Thus irony has taken on a very special significance in the poetry of
these two poets. In Larkin’s poems we find that there is a tension, a tug
of war between the inner meaning and the content out of which the
meaning wants to be released. This tension is present in his most
significant poem “Church Going’’ (TLD. 28-29), The title itself is ironical
as if going to the church is one of the many uneasy compulsions of the
modern man:
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
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Another church: ...
Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, ...
Therefore, as 'going to the church' is ironical, it is also clear that the
church itself is a ‘going’ or ‘declining’ concern as it has apparently lost
its central importance. The agnostic and sceptical mind of the persona
is hesitant while entering the church. His approach is of a post-war
middle-class man who is underpaid and underfed. He has lost his
simple faith but does not know where else to put his faith in. So, he
enters the church but behaves like an awkward misfit. However, the
poem leans to positive thinking towards the end, though irony
pervades the beginning of the poem. And here we acknowledge the
tension between the detached ironical personality of the persona and
his serious and sincere change of mood in realizing the seriousness of
religious institutions. The final stanza appears as trying to adjust and
give a more developed coherence to the inner ironic temper. There is a
clear ironical contrast between the two different levels of perception in
the mind of the persona: his initial, casual survey of the church and his
ironical remarks related to it, and the level where the modern, agnostic
mind of the persona cannot but accept the value of the traditional
beliefs and institutions as having the power to give some relief to the
suffering humanity.
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The same tension can be found in the title poem of Larkin’s
another book The Whitsun W eddings. Here the persona while
journeying by a train observes the passengers who are on board and
who are boarding the train from different stations. Most of the
passengers are newly-married couples; their relatives and friends have
come to see them off. The persona is observing all these people as a
person observing and laughing up his sleeve. The poem, like most of
the longer poems of Larkin, has a casual start. Thus gradually the
persona’s ironical remarks come,
... grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, ...
And again,
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
W hile girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding.
The ironical remark “religious wounding” reflects Larkin's disbelief in
marriage as an honourable sacrament. But suddenly towards the end
of the poem, his ironic undertone gears up to a thought that is definitely
different from-his initial stance:
there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
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Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
The implication of ‘rain’ can be taken as a hint of Larkin’s hope for
regeneration. In such poems we find that Larkin's satirical remarks and
his hope for affirmation with his praise for the positive values emerge
from the same ironical context. About this speciality in Larkin's poetry,
Terry Whalen has remarked that:
His mocking tones are most useful as a guard against
pomposity. When Larkin is most strongly sarcastic, he is
often moving carefully and ironically toward praise. His
irony tends, therefore, to act as a device of exploration
more than a shield signifying a recall from experience . 15
Such poems by Larkin can come, to some extent, under the fourth type
of ambiguity as classified by William Empson in his book Seven Types
of Ambiguity:
An ambiguity of the fourth type occurs when two or more
meanings
themselves,
of
a
but
statement
combine
do
to
not
make
agree
clear
among
a
more
complicated state of mind in the author. 16
Empson further explains,"... the stress of the situation absorbs them,
and they are felt to be natural under the circumstances”. In Larkin's
case, it is not a statement, but a state of mind that holds the ambiguity
and this is “felt to be natural under the circumstances” because they
reflect the complex pattern of a modern mind.
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When we come to Ramanujan’s poems that are tinged with his
ironical vision, we find that he has used verbal irony in such poems in a
very distinct manner. Ramanujan surveys the Indian scene from across
the Atlantic. He is looking at things Indian with an amused detachment
while standing at a distance literally. When he wants to hit some
cultural
practice, his concern is related and confined only to that
particular theme, it does not ascend to some sublime thought. As a
result, his ironical poems do not register any special kind of ambiguity
or tension between his ironical stance and a further growth into its
opposite. For example, in his three “Hindoo” poems, “The Hindoo: he
doesn’t hurt a Fly or a Spider either", “The Hindoo: he reads his Gita
and is calm at all events,” and, “The Hindoo: the Only Risk”, his verbal
irony is crystal-clear. When the persona in the first Hindoo poem
(Rejatjons,6) says,
It's time I told you why
I’m so gentle, do not hurt a fly.
Why, I cannot hurt a spider
either, not even a black widow,
for who can tell Who's Who?
Can you? Maybe it’s once again my
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great swinging grandmother,
and that other (playing at
patience centered in his web)
my one true ancestor,
the fisherman lover...
there is no tension. It is clear that the poet wants to hit the Hindu faith
in the transmigration of the soul, though naughtily. Here Ramanujan’s
projection of irony is so gentle and sophisticated that it becomes
difficult for the reader to come to the conclusion that he disbelieves in
rebirth. This quality of Ramanujan’s irony has saved his poem from
becoming sarcastic. Again, in the second Hindoo poem, “The Hindoo,
he reads his Gita and is calm at all events" (Relations. 23) the persona
says,
I’ve learned to watch lovers without envy
as I’d watch in a bazaar lens
houseflies rub legs or kiss. I look at wounds calmly.
Yet he says in the next stanza,
... when I meet on a little boy's face
the prehistoric yellow eyes of a goat
I choke, for ancient hands are at my throat.
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Here we observe an ironical contrast between the fapade and the
depth. Ramanujan’s verbal irony is hitting sharply but gently at the
Hindu’s belief that the reading of the Gita has given him the power to
remain calm at all events which is a mere false outward appearance. In
fact
he gets disturbed by meeting “on a little boy’s face /
the
prehistoric yellow eyes of a goat", and it testifies to the reality that the
Gita has not yet really helped him to be really calm. The poem
obliquely hits at the ineffectuality of the reading of the Gita on the
persona. The irony helps to reveal that the mere negation or
suppression of desire, need not mean a genuine disinterestedness.
The same ironic tone can be witnessed in the title poem of The
Striders. The poet’s irony here points to the sense of the worthless
power of the yogis or prophets by saying
No, not only prophets
walk on water. This bug sits
on a landslide of lights
and drowns eyedeep
into its tiny strip
of sky.
The balloon of the superior claim of the yogis is deflated by the simple
analogy of a small insect, a bug. There is nothing great in a yogi’s
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being able to walk on water, as an insect can also do that without
practising any strenuous yoga.
Again, “Saturdays” (Second Sight. 43) by Ramanujan is a poem
where the poet is ironical
about the superstitions regarding the
ominous foreboding of Saturdays. The persona’s mother and one of
his brothers died on a Saturday. It is ominous in Roman history. In
Indian folk-belief it brings disaster, while in western belief, one who
was born on this day, does not have a common human nature, he may
become gloomy or of a sad nature. But, as Vmay Dharwadker has
commented on the attitude of the poet on this issue in his poem
“Saturdays",
In a moment of ironic superstition and saturnine irony, the
poet can imagine his own end as a ‘good omen’, since
dying on a Saturday would have the force of a
predestined or overdetermined event. In fact, he feels
that his body’s internal rhythm is already synchronized
with this composite calendar....17
Because,
Saturdays ache
in shoulder and thigh bone,
dim is the Saturday gone
but iridescent is the Saturday to come:
the window, two cherry trees,
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Chicago’s four November leaves,
the sulpheric sky now a salmon pink,
a wife’s always clear face
now dark with unspent
panic, with no third eye, only a dent,
the mark marriage leaves on a small forehead
with ancestors in Syria, refugees
from Roman Saturdays.
At the back of Larkin’s ironical portrayal of human behavior or
nature we find an unmistakable sign of the poet’s sympathy for the
common people; at the same time, they reflect his love of tradition
which implies a continuity. This is evident in the poems discussed, i.e.,
“Church Going” and "The Whitsun Weddings”. The same approach to
the realities of life can be seen in the poetry of Ramanujan. His poetry
is basically rooted in Indian culture and specifically South-Indian
Brahmin culture and tradition, and his irony naturally rotates mainly
around this sphere of the poet’s perception. W e find irony in Ezekiel's
poems, but his poetic savoir-faire precludes any profound attachment
to Indian culture. Ezekiel’s use of the tongue-in-cheek way of
109
commenting on the contemporary life has made it possible for him to
keep himself detached. His Jewish origin too, together with his urban
upbringing, has perhaps helped him to maintain so steadily a poetic
detachment. Being asked whether any other poet has used the
‘tongue-in-cheek’ mode of expression, Ezekiel says,
No other Indo-Anglian poet has used the “tongue-incheek style" so often as I have. It seems to be rooted in
my temperament, whereas the others use it as an
occasional device . 18
As a result Ezekiel's irony remains only as a mode of technique in his
poetry which is typical of any urban sensibility. The poem “Background,
Casually" by Ezekiel expresses the ironical relationship of the poet with
India where he says that “The Indian landscape sears” his eyes not
because he has his roots here, but because he has made his
commitments to stay where he is.
But “with poets like A.K.
Ramanujan”, as Paul C. Verghese comments, it “is not merely a sense
of belonging but a commitment to her history and heritage’’. 19
In
R.K.Narayan’s novels also we find a comparable attachment to the
Indian culture and tradition. One advantage of the novelist is that he
can explain his ideas explicitly in his narrative or description, whereas,
a poet has to express his perception within the concentration of his
poetic medium. In Ramanujan’s poems, we find a subtle delineation of
his ideas and views. The very title of the sequence of his two poems,
110
“Lo ve P o em for a W ife . 1” and "Love P oem fo r a W ife . 2" is ironic.
W ritin g “love po em s” for a w ife in a traditional Indian setting is absurd.
It o b liq uely refers to th e u n d esirab le distance that exists betw een the
hu sb an d and th e w ife in th e Indian m ilieu, w h eth er th e reason be the
“u n sh ared childhood” or lack of m utual
understanding. In Larkin’s
p o em s on love also w e find an undesirab le distance existing betw een
th e lovers, e ith e r at
th e physical or th e m ental level. But Larkin’s
projection of irony in th e context of love has b een shown from a
d ifferen t p erspective. “N o R o a d s ”, “T a lk in g in Bed" or “If, M y D arling”
a re po em s by Larkin w h ere w e find the sad, ironic contrast betw een
ou r expectatio n from love and its despairin g resultants. H ow ever, in
R am a n u ja n 's poem “Love poem for a W ife . 1", under th e veil of an
ironic tone, th e re a re hints of th e p o et’s respect for som e perennial
v a lu e s th a t a re v e ry m uch p resen t in th e Indian context, e .g ., th e line
“In th e tran s ve rs e m idnight gossip of cousins’ reunions” gives hint of
th e joy of fam ily reunion, or w e can fe e l a fa th e r’s concern for his
d a u g h te r in th e lines “th e burning en d of cig arette in th e balcony,
p acin g / to and fro as you c a m e to th e gate, late, ..."
But th e final
am using re fe re n c e to th e an cien t custom of betrothing th e children
b e fo re birth, “forestallin g s e p a ra te horoscopes" is definitely ironical and
m a y b e ta k e n a s a hint of th e irony of the fact that m aturity in a g e or
relationsh ip being n a iv e ly b ypassed by a fond but futile cleverness.
Ill
The
poem
by
Ramanujan
that
presents
an
ironic yet
“celebratory profile of a large Hindu extended family, tracing its history
thematically (rather than chronologically) from about the end of the
nineteenth century to the third quarter of the twentieth” 20 is “SmallScale Reflections on a Great House” (Relations.40). The poem
contains all the myths, the superstitions, and the tragedies that
happened to the family, but all these details are presented with a tinge
of irony. And while the irony in the lines “Neighbours' dishes brought
up / with the greasy sweets they made ...II never leave the house they
enter”, lightly hints at the human habit of absorbing other's things in a
consciously unconscious manner, the lines
... the women who came as wives
from houses open on one side
to rising suns, on another
to the setting, accustomed
to wait and to yield to monsoons
in the mountains' calendar
beating through the hanging banana leaves
perhaps ironically points to the monotonous, uneventful lives of the
women belonging to an orthodox Hindu joint family. It is the irony of
112
their fate that though they had come to the house to start a new life,
their new life has offered only stagnancy to their existence. In short,
this poem acts as a metaphor for the national history where once
someone or something comes never goes out and gets absorbed by it.
Commenting on the nature of this poem Vinay Dharwadker in his
Introduction to The Collected Poems of A.K.Ramanuian has said that:
Coloured by the ambiguities, paradoxes, and ironies that
are typical of Ramanujan's social poetry, this poem
points one of the most memorable ‘national portraits' of
modern India that we have in twentieth-century poetry.21
There are a number of poems on family and relations by Ramanujan
that are tinged with his gentle ironic tone. Ayyappa Paniker has rightly
observed that
The
confessional
note
in the
poems about close
relations, mother, father, grandfather, wife and children
gains its aesthetic validity from this ironic stance.22
It is his art that has given an 'aesthetic validity' which, in its turn, has
saved Ramanujan’s descriptions of his family from being just 'drab
autobiographical details'.
113
IV
When Eliot says in his much quoted essay ‘Tradition and the
Individual Talent” that “The progress of an artist in a continual selfsacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” ,23 his view is rather
extreme. Later, he changed his view regarding the poet’s personality
and realized that the personality of the poet and tradition can co-exist
without any conflict. In “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of
Seneca",
Eliot accepted the fact that a great poet can serve his personal artistic
moods
and also his tradition perfectly.24 Eliot
writes in the early
thirties:
It is too much to expect any writer of the present time to
be a model of orthodoxy ... it is a very different thing to
be a classical author in a classical age and to maintain
classical ideas in a romantic age .... W hat we can try to
do is to develop a more critical spirit, ...2S
To develop a “more critical spirit" in the twentieth-century and to
maintain a detached view as far as possible, about the happenings
around, it is almost essential for the modern poet to take the help of
ironical technique that in its turn needs a good deal of dramatization of
the situation. Michael Hamburger in his book The Truth of Poetry has
remarked about the poetry of Laforgue that, the Romantic-Symbolist
aesthetic told Laforgue that "poetry should not be an exact description
114
(like a page of a novel), but it should be bathed in dream". He further
says,
His irony could serve to mediate between ‘gross' realities
and delicate fantasies, but the same irony attested that
the
observer
and
the
dreamer
must
remain
as
irreconcilable as the empirical and the poetical selves. 26
Here Hamburger clearly states the importance of the presence of the
observer with his empirical and at the same time poetic selves. The
same empirical and poetical selves, which are well-nigh irreconcilable,
are present in the poems of Larkin and Ramanujan. W e have seen that
Larkin writes and comments on very conventional things or aspects of
life, while Ramanujan’s poetry remains rooted in his family and
relationships. But their style of projection has made the poems
remarkable. And it is also remarkable that though Larkin and
Ramanujan have handled their themes with a detached stance, their
emotional attachment to their respective traditions and cultures, and
also their consciousness about the paradox inherent in human
existence
itself that makes
man’s life anything but happy,
is
conceivable from their handling of their themes. With the help of irony,
they have exposed the paradox in human existence, but their
sympathy for the suffering humanity saves their irony from becoming
bitter.
115
In t h e p o e m “T o t h e S e a " ( H W , 9 ) L a r k in h a s w ritte n a b o u t th e
B ritis h c u s to m o f g o in g to t h e s e a a n n u a lly w ith f a m ily a n d fr ie n d s . T h e
r e f e r e n c e to t h e p e o p le w h o h a v e c o m e “to lie , e a t , s le e p in h e a r in g o f
t h e s u rf” is iro n ic a l. P e o p le h a v e c o m e to t h e n a tu r a l s c e n e r y a n d
a t m o s p h e r e o f t h e s e a - s h o r e b u t t h e y h a v e n o t fo r g o tte n to b r in g th e
m o d e r n g a d g e t s lik e t h e tr a n s is to r , th o u g h
b e f o r e t h e s o u n d s o f t h e s e a . T h is
a n n u a l p le a s u r e ,
h a lf a
r ite ”. “T h e
its s o u n d s e e m s “t a m e ”
is w h y it h a s b e c o m e “h a lf a n
cheap
c ig a r s , / T h e
c h o c o la te -
p a p e r s , t e a - l e a v e s ” r e f e r to t h e m o m e n ta r y a n d in s ta n t p le a s u r e s o f
m o d e rn
life .
T o w a rd s
th e
end
of
th e
poem ,
we
see
th a t
th e
t r a d it io n a lis t in L a r k in a s s u m e s
It m a y b e t h a t th r o u g h h a b it t h e s e d o b e s t,
C o m in g to w a t e r c lu m s ily u n d r e s s e d
Y e a r ly ; t e a c h in g t h e ir c h ild r e n b y a s o rt
O f c lo w n in g ; h e lp in g t h e o ld , to o , a s t h e y o u g h t.
T h o u g h t h e e n d in g o f t h e p o e m g e a r s t h e in itia l c a s u a l d e s c r ip tio n o f
t h e p o e m to a lm o s t a m o o d o f t r a n s c e n d e n c e , a n im p re s s io n o f iro n ic
c o n tr a s t is c o n c e iv a b le b e t w e e n t h e e n o r m o u s p o te n tia lity o f n a t u r e o f
w h ic h t h e s e a is a p a r t a n d m a n 's lim ite d c a p a c ity t h a t is b o u n d to
s u r r e n d e r t o t h e in d o m ita b le p o w e r o f tim e . T h is c o n tr a s t is e v id e n t in
t h e e x p r e s s io n s -C o m in g to w a t e r c lu m s ily u n d r e s s e d ”, “t e a c h in g th e ir
c h ild r e n b y a s o rt / O f c lo w n in g ”. It m a y b e th a t L a r k in h a s p e r c e iv e d a s
K u b y h a s p o in t e d o u t, a k in d o f c o u r a g e o n t h e p a r t o f t h e p e o p le w h o
116
co m e a n n u a lly to th e eno rm ous s e a with an intention to give continuity
to a cultural trad itio n.27
"Faith H ealing" ( T W W .15) is a poem by Larkin w h ere w e find the
trag ic irony th at is in h eren t in hum an life. H e re w e find that th e antihero within th e L a rk in -p erso na cannot accep t th e evangelist's pow er to
h e a l th e pains of th e w o m en . Th o u g h th e fa ith -h e a le r poses a s th e Son
of G o d and claim s that h e will b e a b le to secu re th e visitors a peaceful
life, in reality h e is th e re p resen tative of this
com m ercialized world
w h e re h e h as no tim e to p a u s e and sym pathize. T h e Larkin-persona
h a s show n sym p ath y tow ards th e ignorant and helpless ladies who
h a v e put th e ir faith in th e p o w er of th e evan g elist an d a re being victims
of
th e
artificial,
d e c e p tiv e
m odern
w orld.
T h e re
is
a
tinge
of
com passion in Larkin ’s description of th e em otional reaction of the
w o m en to th e fa ith -h e a le r's blessings, but Larkin, as a sceptic, cannot
but b e ironical in describing
th e w om en's belief in the po w er of the
evan g elist. H o w e v e r, tow ard s th e end, as in m ost of th e distinctive
po em s of Larkin, th e trag ic irony, inherent in m an's life, attains a
universal applicability w h en h e says, “in ev ery o n e th ere sleep s / A
s e n s e of life lived acco rd ing to love”. It is
nothing
cures".
Larkin's
com m en ted , “is bound
"everyo n e”,
to be
Larkin's assum ption “T h at
as
disappointed:
A n d rew
M otion
all peop le
has
a re either
unloving or unloved".28 A s e n s e of th e vacuum or nothingness touches
ou r m inds w h en w e read:
117
An immense slackening ache,
As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,
Spreads slowly through them - that, and the voice above
Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.
In Larkin’s other poems of love, as well, we find the ironic contrast
between our expectations from love and the resultant effect. There are
poems like “No Roads", “If, My Darling”, “Talking in Bed”, where we
find that the ironical juxtaposition of the ideal state in a love-affair and
the exact opposite of it that we find in reality deflates the romantic
notions related to love as a divine passion. Regarding the place of love
in Larkin’s ‘scheme of values’ Bruce Martin has observed:
... compared with those earlier twentieth-century poets especially Yeats, Auden, and Thomas
Larkin appears
much more determined to depict love as a largely
unattainable goal. He depicts the consequences of failed
love not as a potentially glamorous Byronic despair, but
simply as an unexciting descent back into the dull
existence making up most of life. His repeated insistence
that common sense need not preclude feeling and
affection, indeed that it must not, makes him no more a
sentimentalist
than
Swift
or
Pope,
and
probably
constitutes a major source of the humane appeal his
poems have had.29
118
In his poem "I Remember, I Remember”,
Larkin adopts the
ironical technique to deflate all the romanticized and sentimentalized
myths about childhood. The title of the poem ironically hits the
sentimentalized remembrance of his childhood by Thomas Hood in his
poem with the same title. Gary Day has seen this practice of re-using
the same title as a ‘tactic’. He has noticed how the same title is
adopted by the later generation of poets to emphasize the difference
the new poets want to convey. Gary Day further comments that the
poet uses “a literal quotation from the past in order to re-evaluate and
give it a new meaning in the present” .30 The persona in Larkin’s poem
feels that his childhood is “unspent” in his place of birth. The word
“unspent” carries, as P.R. King has pointed out, a sense of a world of
disillusionment where there was nothing special but just another drab
and mundane life of the common man .31 The last line “Nothing, like
something, happens anywhere” refers to the omnipresence of a
nothingness. Here the irony points to the contrast existing in the myth
that we create about our childhood and the actual and real state of
things that were there. The irony here is cerebral in provoking us to
think whether there is really something to be romanticized about
childhood. W hat we actually lose is not the past moments of childhood,
but the most precious gift, that is our innocence in this crude
materialistic adult world as is evident in the last stanza of Hood’s poem
where he says that his true knowledge about the high trees does not
119
g ive him a n y p le a s u re or satisfaction of knowing. Larkin is perhaps the
first poet to point out this fa c t abou t childhood. Philip T h o d y has
re m a rk ed a b o u t this p o em that
It is not until P hilip Larkin’s ironically titled poem
'I
R em e m b e r, I R em e m b e r' in 1954 , with its insistence on
th e b o redo m of childhood and its a ckn o w led g em en t that
'Nothing, like som ething, h a p p en s an yw here', that the
myth of th e s p len d o u r of childhood started to be seen in
poetry for w h at it can often b e .32
Larkin ’s o th e r p o em “T a k e O n e H o m e for th e K iddies” (T W W ,2 6 ) also
d e fla te s th e in n o cen ce a tta c h e d to th e children.
“Living toys a re
som ething novel, / But it soon w e a rs off som ehow ”
refer to their
in sensitive n atu re. It is in contrast to th e soft n ature th at w e gen erally
attribute to them . Larkin's irony supports his sceptical v ie w abou t the
b lessed n ess of childhood w h en he rem arks on th e re view of a book on
th e lore and la n g u a g e of childhood that
It w as th a t v e rs e ab o u t becom ing a g a in as a little child
th at c a u s e d th e first sharp
w aning of m y Christian
sym p ath ies. If th e kingdom of H e a v e n could b e en tered
on ly by th o s e fulfilling such a condition I know I should be
un h ap p y th e re .33
T h e irony that is in h erent in our fre e choice or will is d elin eated
in a hum orous m a n n e r in the s e q u e n c e of Larkin’s poem s “T o a d s ”
120
(TLD. 32-33), and “Toads Revisited (TWW. 18-19). Though Larkin
refused to accept the second ‘toad-poem’ as a sequence to the first
one, there is a thematic continuity between them, in ‘Toads” the
persona desperately asks,
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
The boredom of everyday life is here felt to be oppressive, it is a cyclic
repetition of the same round of activities. W e can call this condition of
human life as Baudelaire’s ‘ennui’, a combination of insensitivity and
boredom. It is the most tragic element in modern life. Peter Nicholls
has explained this complex modern psychological phenomenon:
Modern man is ‘nerve-ridden’, in Baudelaire’s phrase
(BSW.186). dominated by a ‘psychology of nerves’ and
increasingly unpredictable, caught between a cult of
‘multiplied sensation’, on the one hand, and an impasse
of inaction and impotence, on the other. Afflicted by this
typically ‘modern’ vacillation, the axis of the self seems
precarious, barely sustainable, as it is buffetted by
dizzying excesses of emotion which veer from disgust to
inexplicable exaltation.34
121
A s a r e s u lt o f b e in g a v ic tim o f “m u ltip lie d s e n s a t io n ”, th o u g h h e w a n ts
to g e t rid o f r o u tin e w o r k , h e r e a liz e s t h a t to b e w ith o u t a n y w o r k , to b e
c u t o ff f r o m t h e m a in s t r e a m o f life is n o t le s s u n b e a r a b le . S o h e c r ie s
o u t,
N o , g iv e m e m y in -tr a y ,
M y lo a f - h a ir e d s e c r e ta r y ,
M y s h a ll- I- k e e p - t h e - c a ll- in - S ir :
G iv e m e y o u r a r m , o ld t o a d ; .. .
It is t h e
tr a g ic
iro n y o f h u m a n
e x is t e n c e t h a t w h e n e v e r w e try to
b e c o m e h a p p y b y c h o s in g s o m e th in g a t t h e c o s t o f t h e o th e r , w e fin d
t h a t o u r c h o ic e ir o n ic a lly p r o v e s o u t to b e a w ro n g o n e . L a r k in ’s g e n tle
iro n y in th is p o e m
has
a b ly d e lin e a t e d t h e d ile m m a in t h e h u m a n
psyche.
In
h is
o th e r
poem
“S e l f s
th e
M an"
(T W W ,2 4 ),
L a r k in
is
c o n tr a s tin g h is life w ith h is fr ie n d A r n o ld ’s. H is d e s c r ip tio n o f A r n o ld 's
life is f la v o u r e d w ith iro n y a n d g e n t le h u m o u r. A r n o ld is a v ic tim o f t h e
ir o n y o f f a t e .
H e w a n t e d to b e h a p p y b y g e ttin g m a r r ie d , b u t w h a t h e
h a s g o t is a ll w o rk , n o re s t, a n d a s u b m is s io n to t h e w is h e s o f h is w ife
w h o m “H e m a r r ie d . . . to s to p h e r g e ttin g a w a y / N o w s h e ’s t h e r e a ll
d a y , . . . ” A t firs t t h e p e r s o n a s a y s t h a t A r n o ld is “le s s s e lfis h t h a n I" a s
h e h a s d e v o te d h is t im e to h is f a m ily w h ile t h e p e r s o n a h a s r e m a in e d a
b a c h e lo r w ith n o c o m m itm e n t. S o o n h e c o r r e c ts h is v i e w b y s a y in g th a t
122
A rnold is not selfless as h e got m arried “for his own s a k e / Playing his
ow n gam e"; so “h e a n d I a re th e sam e". T h e irony and hum our is so
g e n tle th a t thou gh w e can re a liz e th e path etic condition of A rnold's life,
w e ca n n o t but enjoy Larkin’s w a y of d elin eatin g it all. T h e realistic
pictu re of A rnold's life m a kes him as close to us as our next-door
n eig hbo ur. L a rk in ’s wit a n d hum our is as m uch an integral part of his
conceptio n of th e w ays of th e world as is his sym pathy for the
suffering, v ictim ized
hum an existen ce
in th e m odern
m ech an ized
world.
W e can a c kn o w led g e th e s a m e function of irony in R am a n u ja n ’s
po em “O bituary" (R e la tio n s . 5 5 ). T h e s a m e lines, that h ave been
q u oted in th e previous C h a p te r to show th e sceptical s ta n c e of th e poet
in h an d lin g th e th e m e of th e poem , can b e quoted fu rth er to show how
R am a n u ja n h a s d e lin e a te d th e trag ic irony that ta k e s p lace in most of
th e m id d le -cla ss In dian fam ilies:
F a th e r, w h en h e p a s s ed on, left dust,
on a ta b le full of papers,
left d e b ts a n d d aughters,
. . . h e left us
a c h a n g e d m other
a n d m ore than
o n e a n n u al ritual.
123
The sense of tragedy at the death of the head of the family is there; but
it is ironical. At the same time it is a fact that the sons will inherit not
the father’s wealth but his burden. Things considered most sacred
have received ironic treatment by Ramanujan when he says, “being
the burning type". It may be that by using the phrase “the burning type"
Ramanujan’s irony here points to the meaninglessness of the
differences among different sects of people about the last rites of the
human body, for after death every human body will mingle with dust,
whatever be the way of this transformation. William Walsh has
observed that
There is a vein of melancholy in the portraits of father
and mother, crisper and more ironic in that of father,
more deeply sorrowful in that of mother, a cogent
reminder of the power of the dead to affect the living.35
In “Self-Portrait" (The Striders.21). we find the persona's feeling
of uncertainty about his self. The persona feels that he does
“resemble everyone”, but to himself he is a stranger; he can know by
seeing a portrait in shop-windows to be his own, by seeing the
signature of his father in a corner. M.K. Naik has observed this
preoccupation with the memories of family and familial relationships as
a hint for a search for one’s racial roots in the long run.36We find in the
poem, apart from "a search for racial roots", a subtle suggestion of the
fact that is inherent in our existence, in our being: it is the compulsion
124
th at w h e th e r w e w an t to inherit a particular identity as a fa th e r’s son or
not, w e h a v e to a c ce p t it. A nd in accep tin g this identity a s belonging to
a p a rtic u la r p a re n ta g e o n e som etim es loses o n e ’s individual identity.
H e rem ain s id en tifiable by resem bling e v e ry on e but his own individual
self, a n d abjectly rem ain s
a stran ger to him self. T h e poem perhaps
im plies th e m ean ing th at in trying to assim ilate ourselves with the
fam ily's identity, ironically w e fa c e the d a n g er of losing our own
individual identity. A bout this poem T re v o r J a m e s has rem arked that
R a m a n u ja n ’s poetry “e c h o e s th e w ry
irony an d
com posed self­
recognition of E u ro p ea n im agists .... H e re th e la n g u a g e has a cool
g las s -lik e quality, it h a s precision and is sim ultaneously detached: in
brief, la n g u a g e has b e c o m e an artifact.37
An alm ost sim ilar ironical interpretation of th e paradox, that lies
in hu m an
existen ce,
can be found in “E lem ents of C om position”
(S e c o n d S ia h t.1 1-131 by R am an u jan . In this poem the persona states
th e fa c t th a t th e re is a reciprocity in th e relationship betw een him self
a n d th e e le m e n ts of w hich h e is com posed. H e h as given a list of th e s e
e le m e n ts starting from “fa th e r’s s e e d and m other's egg" an d says,
p ass through them
“I
/ a s th e y pass through m e / taking and leaving / /
affections, seed s, s k ele to n s 1';
but tow ards th e e n d he realizes that
“e v e n a s i add, / I lose, d eco m p o se / into m y elem ents,"
“c a te rp illa r on a leaf, e a tin g , / being e a te n ”.
like a
125
The ironical treatment of the themes in these poems by Larkin
and Ramanujan are alike in their gentleness and sophistication. Their
projection of irony as a technique of poetry has surpassed the mere
trick of a poetic strategy and has enriched their poetic style irrespective
of the specificity of their themes.
The presence of irony is all pervasive in the poetic world of
Larkin and Ramanujan. The poems where they have dealt with the
contemporary scenes and events in their respective countries show
that they are very much conscious about the seriousness of their
vocation. Though Larkin expresses his stress on 'pleasure principle' in
literature,
his
irony
cannot
but
be
bitter
while
showing
his
disappointment at the changing scenario of his country. In “MCMXIV”
CTWW. 28) his tone is ironical when he says,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all d a y ;...
But his disappointment at the interfering of the modern artificial culture
is clear when he sadly says, “Never such innocence, / ... Never such
innocence again”. In his other poem “Essential Beauty" (TWW.42) we
find an ironical contrast projected by the juxtaposition of reality and the
allurements of perfection that the advertisements of the commercial
126
w orld d isp lay b efo re us. T h e
large fram e s of th e advertisem ents
“s c re e n g ra v e s with custard", “c o ver slum s with p raise / O f m otor-oil”,
“H igh a b o v e th e g u tter / A silver knife sinks into golden butter”. T h e
repetition of th e adjective ‘p u re ’ in th e seco n d s ta n za (“pure crust, pure
fo a m ”, “P u re coldness”) ironically refers to th e im purity th at pervad es
th e m odern co m m ercialized world.
In “G o ing, G o in g ” (H W .,2 1 -2 2 ) Larkin fo resh ad o w s th e d a n g er of
rapid industrialization of th e country side. All the natural beauty of
E n g la n d will vanish and it is th e irony of situation that
T h e re ’ll b e books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all th e rem ains
F o r us will b e concrete and tyres.
It is trag ic and a t th e s a m e tim e ironical th a t w h ile w e a re rushing
m ad ly fo r m ore com fort a n d m ore develo p m en ts, w e a re losing our
n atu raln ess.
It is w orthw hile exploring th e a m azin g s c o p e of irony in Larkin’s
p o etry th a t p e rv ad es from th e life of th e 'com m on m an' like A rnold to
th e gravity a n d serio u sn ess of th e contem porary social a n d political
occu rren ces. In “H o m a g e to a G o ve rn m e n t” (H W .2 9 ). Larkin expresses
his disap p ro val a n d distaste o v e r th e Lab o u r G o vern m en t's decision in
1 9 6 8 to red u ce m ilitary expenditure:
N ext y e a r w e a re to bring th e soldiers hom e
F o r lack of m oney, an d it is all right.
127
H e re th e p erso n a's v o ic e is a p p a re n tly calm . T h e underlying irony in
th e im m ed iate expressio n, “P la c e s th e y g u ard ed , o r kept orderly, /
M ust gu ard them selves, an d k e e p th em selves orderly”, is evident. T h e
repetition of th e p h rase "all right” hints to th e fact that nothing is right.
H e re Larkin ’s irony aro u s e s his an g er, rath er than his sadness at the
crum bling integrity of Britain. T h e country which used to b e th e epitom e
of cultu re has n o w b e c o m e a c e n tre for m aterialistic pursuits.
T h e poet's dissatisfaction a t th e hum an indifference tow ards the
o th e r living beings can b e seen in R am a n u ja n ’s poem s, "B readed Fish”
(T h e
S trid ers.5 ) a n d “A R iver” (T h e S trid ers.36-371. In th e poem
“B re a d e d F ish ”, th e p e rs o n a is not being a b le to ta k e the taste of the
fish w hich is c o vered by b re ad , b e c a u s e it rem inds him of a d e a d lady
w h o w a s lying on th e s e a -s h o re all co v e re d with th e sand of th e s e a ­
shore. T h e “g ra in e d indifference of th e s a n d ” obliquely hints at the
in d ifferen ce of
hum an bein gs tow ards th e pathos of actual life. It is
ironical that th e p e rs o n a w ho could not or did not do anything for the
d e a d w om an at th at tim e, is n o w sacrificing th e b re a d e d fish specially
p re p a re d fo r him b e c a u s e th e m em ory of that s c e n e haunts him.
in the p o em “A R iver” R a m a n u ja n ’s irony can n o t but b e bitter
to w ard s th e neg lect of th e individuals by hum an beings. T h e “river
w hich dries to a trickle / in th e san d , / b arin g .th e sand-ribs”, the poets
sing “on ly of th e flo ods” of that river w hich “h as w a te r enough / to be
p o etic / abou t on ly o n ce a y e a r...." T h e n e w poets q u o te th e old poets
128
but n o body refers to th e p reg n an t w om an a n d th e cows w ho w ere
c a rrie d a w a y by th e river. M .K . N a ik h a s m arked this poem as an
e x a m p le of an “un questioning a c c e p ta n c e of tradition” which is on e of
th e
s e v e ra l
lim itations of th e
H indu
v ie w
of life.
R eg ard ing the
in sensitive attitude of th e poets N a ik fu rth er ironically rem arks,
T h e p rop er su b ject-m atter and th e right techniq ue for
poetry h a v e e vidently b een codified an d no divagation
from it is perm issible, ev en if it m ean s shutting o n e ’s
e y e s to th e stark realities of life.38
But R a m a n u ja n ’s irony is m ore bitter a n d pungent in his poem s
“S h a d o w s ”, “B osnia”, and “A R eport", that a re included in his fourth
v o lu m e of po em s n a m e d T h e B lack H en and published posthum ously.
In th e s e p o em s R a m a n u ja n ’s irony is directed to th e insensitive and
d e g e n e ra te d m ind of th e m odern m an. T h e last s ta n z a of “Shadows"
(C o lle c te d P oem s. 1991 cle a rly re ve a ls th e bitterness of the irony:
W a r h e ro e s return in sp ecial trains
c o v e re d with blood a n d flags. T h e y blow
bu gles at hom e, braw l in pubs, a n d bark
orders at dogs, kill an d fla y tw enty-on e
nu rses a n d h ang o n e from a m aple.
The
ironical contrast in th e b e h a v io r of th e w a r h eroes w ho a re
su p p o s ed to protect th e p e o p le of th e country, hits a t th e contem porary
situation w h en m an can n o t d a re to d e p e n d on or trust in others. In
129
“B o s n ia "
( C o lle c t e d
P o e m s .2 4 7 ) .
and
“A
R e p o r t"
( C o lle c te d
P o e m s .2 4 8 - 2 4 9 ) . R a m a n u ja n ’s iro n y is fu ll o f s a d n e s s w h ile d e s c r ib in g
t h e s t a t e o f a f fa ir s a n d t h e c o n d itio n o f h u m a n life in t h e in s e n s itiv e
m o d e r n w o r ld . T h e lo s s o f v a lu e s in t h e m o d e r n w o r ld h a s b e e n h in te d
iro n ic a lly ; t h e p a s t h e r o e s S ta lin , L e n in h a v e lo s t t h e ir s ig n ific a n c e , a n d
“G a n d h i a n d K in g / a r e b la c k a n d w h ite p h o to g r a p h s s m ilin g / / a w a y in
b id i s h o p s " (" A R e p o r t" ). In t h e s e p o e m s R a m a n u ja n ’s iro n y s u r p a s s e s
t h e lim ite d s p h e r e s o f f a m ily a n d r e la tio n s a n d h is n a t iv e c o u n try ; h e r e
iro n y
a t ta in s
a
sense
of
u n iv e r s a lity
in
s h o w in g
th e
a ll- p e r v a d in g
d e g e n e r a t io n o f m o r a l v a lu e s a n d in its tu r n , o f t h e m o d e r n w o r ld a s a
w h o le .
A f t e r a n e la b o r a t e e x p lo r a tio n a n d d is c u s s io n o n t h e p la c e o f
ir o n y in t h e p o e tr y o f L a r k in a n d R a m a n u ja n , o n e q u e s tio n in e v ita b ly
c o m e s to o u r m in d ;
th a t is, w h a t a r e t h e s u c c e s s e s t h a t t h e m o d e r n
p o e ts h a v e a c h ie v e d b y u s in g iro n y a s a t e c h n iq u e to e x p r e s s t h e ir
w o r ld v ie w ?
O r has
it (ir o n y ) a t a ll h e lp e d
th e m
in a c h ie v in g
any
s u c c e s s in t h e ir v o c a tio n ? W e k n o w t h a t t h e m o d e r n m a n is in e v ita b ly
e x p o s e d to c o n tr a d ic to r y f o r c e s a n d is w e ll- n ig h in c a p a b le o f s e e in g
th in g s
in
an
in n o c e n t w a y .
The
‘g a m e
o f iro n y ’ is n o w
in e v ita b ly
in v o lv e d w ith t h e s e r io u s n e s s o f p u r p o s e a n d t h e m e o f t h e c r e a tiv e
130
writer.39 As Linda Hutcheon observes, “irony may be the only way we
can be serious today" . 40 The modern man has experienced so much
bitterness in the world that the ironical interpretation of things comes to
his mind spontaneously. So he has gained ‘modernity’ at the cost of his
simplicity . And, as a result, as Hamburger has aptly observed:
Paradox and irony are no longer the clowning of a
divided self; they have become part of a vision of human
existence as a whole, and all references to the poet's
personal predicament illustrative of a wider concern with
the cruelty and fortuitousness of life.
41
Now he is able to grasp several layers of significance of a single
phenomenon and wants to accommodate them simultaneously. Here
irony helps his poetry to become many-dimensional. But in such
poems, as the poet's identity is expected to remain detached, there
has to be a coherence among all the many-dimensions of the poem
that can give an authenticity to the meaning of the poem as a whole.
Otherwise all the layers of meaning would be warring. But the modern
mind itself is so perplexed that to attain coherence in art is not only
difficult, but is next to impossible. The first part Eliot’s The W aste Land
can be taken as an example where, as Rainer Emig has pointed out,
The arrangement of irreconcilable elements, .. each with
its own paradigmatic shadow, devalues every possible
meaning and taints it with irony. By stressing both its
131
metonymic collage and its multi-layered structure,
the
text continuously avoids fixed point of view, a textual
identity. Like echoes in a complex building, the effect
makes the speaker always seem somewhere else. Every
utterance
becomes
equally
inauthentic,
a
mere
quotation.42
But 'detached'ness need not produce inauthenticity, and 'multilayered'
meanings need not lack coherence. This limitation of modern poetry
differentiates it from the great literature of the world, say,
the great
tragedies of Shakespeare as Kina Lear. Othello, or Macbeth. In these
great works we find that the detached tragic irony of the artist at first is
limited to a particular person or a particular couple, but towards the
end, it surpasses the local limits and reaches to the summit of a
universal appeal having a perennial value. W e will take Kina Lear for
explaining this point. W e find several layers of ironical meaning in the
play. The complexity in the relationship between Lear and his
daughters points to the ironical contrast that sometimes occurs in
parent-child relationship. Again, it is a paradox that when Lear
becomes mad, his words more powerfully express his wisdom. But
when he was sane, he failed to differentiate his good daughter from his
bad ones. But the most touching tragic irony occurs in the moment
when
Lear condemns himself for his own
crime.
One
of the
Shakespeare critics, Terence Hawkes has found a larger irony here
132
when ‘The great wielder and advocate of reason has begun to lose his
own hold on precisely that faculty".43 Above all these ironical shades,
the play remains as John Holloway writes, an example of the “facets of
that universal disruption of Nature, that Descent into Choas, which for
millennia had been a standing dread of mankind and at the same time
one of mankind’s convictions about providential history in the future".44
The universal appeal of the play lies in Lear’s learning the value of love
and humility by making himself free from the bondage of ego and
selfhood, in this play, as in the other plays, Shakespeare’s characters
are very much convincing and they register their creator’s involvement
with their feelings, but at the same time, Shakespeare maintained a
detached stance from his subject-matter and the play as a whole
represents a world-view in a collective universal manner instead of a
subjective projection of the creator’s impressions. Shakespeare’s irony
attains the status of a serene, and higher insight through the plays'
“detached acceptance of the eternal opposition of life and spirit, the
ironical (in a more sceptical sense) and the radical".45
But while discussing irony in the present context, we have to
remember that at the time of Sophocles or Shakespeare, the
connotation of irony was different. George Steiner’s book The Death
of Tragedy (1961) rightly argues that there is something in modern
society which prevents the modern writers from producing tragedy in
the sense which the word has traditionally had when used in a literary
133
context.
46
W e share the view that Philip Thody expresses supporting
the argument of Steiner:
Steiner’s argument is based on the idea that we lack the
reverence for sacred and transcendent values which was
an outstanding feature of the cultures which, like fifthcentury Athens and Renaissance Europe, originally gave
birth to tragedy.47
What Steiner and Thody say about European literature can be
applicable to world literature as a whole. With the emergence of
bourgeois and industrialization, both the innocence and idealism of
man, as also the sense of the sacred have fled.
However, when we come to the poetry of Eliot or Yeats we find
that both these eminent poets have used irony in their poems. But the
irony that is present in Eliot’s The Waste Land or “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock", and in Yeats's
“Second Coming”, though it has
emanated from human life itself, lacks the ‘radical’ or total imagination
of Shakespeare that has made him a great artist. Yeats’s “The Second
Coming” depicts the fall of Christianity and prophesies the coming of a
new civilization. But here the inherent subjectivity of the poem, the
weighty presence of the artist himself prevents the poem from
depicting an actual universal predicament.
134
In
a
later period,
we
find
that th e
poetry
of
Larkin
and
R am a n u ja n a re enriched by th e ir ironical rem arks; th ey do not deviate
from th e ir aim of expressing th e m anifold
n ature of th e am biguity
p re s en t in th e m odern w orld a n d in th e hum an existen ce itself. T h e y
rem a rk ab ly reach to th e h e a rt of th e m atter. But still w e cannot but
a c kn o w led g e th e fact th at th e poetry of Larkin an d R am anu jan cannot
re ach th e pitch of g re a t poetry. T h e y do not even , w e can say, have
th e p o p u lar com m and th a t E liot’s a n d Y e a ts ’s poetry enjoyed. O n e
reaso n m ay b e th at th e p o etry of eith er Larkin or R am an u jan does not
m anifest a c o m p reh en sive w orld v ie w or reveal a larg er perspective.
T h e y a p p e a r to b e frag m e n tary records of their creators' experiences
an d th e projection of th eir own im pressions about the am bivalent ways
of th e w orld. A no th er reaso n m ay be that both Larkin an d R am anujan
h a v e show n th e am biguity or irony prevailing in the world of existence,
but
have
fa ile d
p redicam ent.
to
have
a
significant
insight
into
th e
m odern