CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
Cultural heritage and its continuities as tradition make a nation
strong. India with its cultural heritage and traditional wisdom opened to entire
humanity an avenue of rich poetic imagination that finally resulted into the
creative process of literature. Irrespective of the bonds of the linguistic taboos
from the Vedic period to the development of Indian English literature, India as a
nation underwent ever expanding experiments of creative forum through its
literary existentialities.
Not only has it produced great savants in its native
languages but many Indians have adopted and excelled in their writings in the
language they choose for the creative writings. English is one such foreign
language which not only flowered in India but took on new semantic dimensions,
hitherto unseen even in its native places. Poetry as the highest literary
manifestation of emotional, cultural and civilizational expressibility occupies a
foremost position in literary genre. Linguistic and semantic features are also
rational to the higher zone of emotional properties and this fact stamps the
validity of creative poetry written in English by Indian writers.
Now from abstraction to the concretization, the systematic growth
of the genre of poetry arrests our attention; and it seems that who initiated the
principles of meter, rhythm, language and form of Indian English poetry. The
name Derozio strikes one first in the analysis. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was
considered Anglo-Indian but was of mixed Portuguese descent. However, he
always remained in India with the poise of Indianness and accepted Bengal as his
homeland. The same sensibility can be perceived in his famous poem, To India
My Native Land:
My Country! In the days of Glory Past
A beauteous halo circled round thy brow
And worshiped as deity thou wast,
Where is that Glory, where is that reverence now?1
At the tender age of 14 he shifted to Bhagalpur, and inspired by the
great scenic beauty of the banks of the Ganga he started writing poetry. He
2
already had a sound grounding in English literature, rational thinking and Western
philosophy, though he sometimes unnecessarily criticized native customs without
looking deep into the roots of these customs and rituals. He died on 26 December
1831 at the tender age of 22.
He was quite a fan of Byron and wrote poetry in a romantic vein,
following his ideal. He wrote many lyrical ballads like The Song of the
Hindustanee Minstrel:
Dildar! There's many a valued pearl
In richest Oman's sea;
But none, my fair Cashmerian girl!
O! none can rival thee.2
He was an influential figure in the Bengal Renaissance. Though he
lived for only 22 years he started a great legacy of Indian poetry in English.
Toru Dutt was another Indian poet in English who died young (at
21) and left a great legacy for future generations of poets to come. Born in 1856
she spent her childhood in Calcutta. She was one of the first converts to
Christianity in the British era. She started by translating French poems into
English, mainly for the benefit for Indian audience, but she had also some quite
original poetry. She left an unfinished volume of original poems in English,
Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, composed primarily of new renditions
of classic Hindu tales in English. It contains the poem Our Casuarina Tree, which
is biographical. She was known for her lyrical finesse which becomes clear by
looking at the first lines of Our Casuarina Tree ―Like a huge Python, winding
round and round, the rugged trunk, indented deep with scars…‖3
Her entire poetry brings into being a fine texture of myths, symbols
and legendary figures. Moreover, the semantics woven closely in using the
various myths and symbols shows her linguistic command. The images used in
Our Casuarina Tree such as ―The rugged trunk‖, the climbing of a ‗dredger‘,
‗crimson clusters‘, ‗bird and bee‘ and sweet songs become suggestive of her
genius which paved the way to the poets like Derozio. She died when she was
3
making efforts to come up to the level of a great poet. But some of her lyrics are
to find a place in a representative anthology of poets. ―the nostalgia expressed so
poignantly in her ―Our Casuarina Tree‖ and ―Sita‖ was surely not manufactured
in England, for it was the cause of her soul.‖4
After her came the golden age of early Indian English poetry which
gave the world Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo.
Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India was not only a child
prodigy and a freedom fighter but also a brilliant poet. Her poems had English
words but Indian soul. Her poetry is known for its lyrical excellence and the sheer
celebration of Nature. An excerpt from Song of a Dream:
Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.5
Many collections of her poems were published in her lifetime: The
Golden Threshold, The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death and the Spring, The
Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, The Sceptred Flute: Songs of
India and The Feather of the Dawn.
But the soul of Indian English Poetry was incomplete without
Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. Their understanding of the Dharma and
culture of India gave their poetry a spiritual edge which made Indian English
Poetry complete.
Rabindranath Tagore was a polymath who reshaped his region's
literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and
beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the
1913 Prize in Literature. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and
mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other-worldly
4
dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His "elegant prose and
magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.
Tagore modernized Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms
and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and
essays spoke to topics political and personal.
Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by
15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the
comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of
Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir,
and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his
exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as
those of the bard Lalon. Later on his poems took on a lyrical voice and he started
writing poetry meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the ‗living
God within‘.
This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and
the emotional interplay of human drama. Gitanjali is Tagore‘s best-known
collection internationally, earning him his Nobel. Its poems not only delight but
fill the readers‘ hearts with spirituality:
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail
vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and
dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its
limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands
of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.6
The greatest spiritual poet of India was however, Sir Aurobindo
Ghosh. Born in 1872, he was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher,
yogi, guru, and poet. He was the first to make a major literary corpus in English,
with Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol his magnum opus.
5
It is an epic poem, written in blank verse, in 12 books, 24,000 lines
about an individual who overcomes the ignorance, suffering, and death in the
world through her spiritual quest, setting the stage for the emergence of a new,
divine life on earth. It is loosely based on the ancient Indian tale of 'Savitri and
Satyavan' from the Mahabharata.
6
1.2 THE CONTINUITIES AND THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY
It was Sri Aurobindo who constituted the nucleus of the Indian
philosophical poetry in English. He not only had a firm theoretical grasp of the
religious scriptures of India but he also was a great practitioner of meditation
himself. His legacy continues today, with the efforts of the Mother in Auroville
where the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo seen through the lens of the Mother is
given shape in the form of the Matra Mandir.
It is to Sri Aurobindo to whom we have to look to understand the
continuities and the characteristics of philosophical poetry. According to
Aurobindo, poetry is better described than defined. Aurobindo asserted that poetry
is not merely an aesthetic pleasure of the imagination, the intellect and the ear.
They are not the true recipients of the poetic delight. They are not the creators of
poetic delight, either. They are only its channels. Sri Aurobindo says the true
creator or the true hearer of poetic delight is the soul. Poetry, therefore,
transmutes pleasure into the highest form of delight - a divine Ananda.
Aurobindo admitted that in all arts technique is an important first
step towards perfection. Poetry makes use of the rhythmic word. This word has a
sound value, a thought- value and together they make a soul-value. This power,
says Aurobindo, soars high beyond the" laws of mechanical construction". A poet
does not have to create with his eyes fixed on the technique.
According to Sri Aurobindo the rhythmic word of the poet is the
highest form of speech available to man. Poetic utterance has a great intensity.
Words have a life of their own. They denote feelings and sensations. Sound has a
natural property to raise vibrations in the soul. This made primitive languages
very powerful. This power was lost when language gained in clarity and
precision. Poetry tries to re-gain this lost power by making use of the suggestive
power of sound.
7
Revelation is one of the most stupendous expressions of Sri
Aurobindo‘s poetic genius. Among the Anglo-Indian poets only Sri Aurobindo
could have conceived and written such a short poem of immense power. Only the
blessed can have the rare vision of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo belonged to the
blessed few who could experience the vision of the many-splendoured but
amazing Divine. To have the experience is one thing, but to put that into poetry is
quite a different thing. The seemingly unutterable experience of revelation is
concretized through tangible imagery wind-blown locks, a startled bright surmise,
a cheek of frightened rose, a hurried glance behind, a thought ere it is caught - all
these capture the fleeting moment of divine revelation. It is a philosophical height
in poetry which is rarely touched by others.
But it is Savitri, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo, which marks
the zenith of the philosophical height of the Indian tradition. It is in line of Indian
tradition of great spiritual epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It
aspires to the spiritual and philosophical heights of the Upanishads. It continues in
the line of the story-telling tradition of the Puranas. In short it shows the
continuity of the philosophical tradition of Indian poetry.
Savitri does not lend itself very often to any precise chronological
reading. Yet much of it is undoubtedly an accurate transcription of the spiritual
experiences of the poet, sometimes remembered or relived many years later. Sri
Aurobindo wrote in a letter in 1946:
The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen
in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or
experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to
the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand
according to his capacity.‖ He especially insisted that "all that is spiritual
or psychological in Savitri is of that character". No doubt, the
autobiographical aspect of the poem has to be seen in the context of its
elements of legend and symbol and the demands of its massive narrative
8
structure and literary architecture. But such a work could not have been
written without direct access to the domains of reality of which it speaks.
From this point of view, the Record of Yoga can help us to gain a fuller
understanding of the experiential background of Sri Aurobindo's epic.7
Savitri is such a masterpiece because Sri Aurobindo was as
meticulous in its execution as he was in its conception. He revised the book
eighteen times before publishing it and it took nearly fifty years for completion. It
consist of 12 books and there are 49 cantos in it which are further consist of near
about 24,000 lines. Sri Aurobindo had intended to write a lengthy introduction to
Savitri, which never occurred. Many other poets after Sri Aurobindo were K D
Sethna, N K Gupta and the academicians such as B N Seal, G K Chettur,
Armando Menezeo and other maintained the poetic spectrum in their own
manner.
The post-independence scenario witnessed a new growth for the
genre of poetry. This period shows its relationship to the nineteenth century in the
same way as that of modern age in British literature to Victorian. The
achievement of freedom in 1947 created a question for the emergence of a new
national psyche for post-independent writings. Politics ceased to be an idealistic
pursuit and was reduced to a new power game and this newly developed
atmosphere of the country has dethroned the theory of cause and effects theory
and the cause of selfless service. The era of hope, aspiration and certitude was
gone; and in place of these virtues the ideologies of merciless self-scrutiny,
questioning, debating and ironic expose commenced. However, the work of more
than a dozen poets such as P Lal, Nissim Ezekiel, Mamta Kalia, A K Ramanujan,
R Parthasarthy and Arun Kolatkar, Krishna Bannerjee, Niranjan Mohanty, A K
Mehrotra, Kamala Das, Pritish Nandy and Charu Sheel Singh to name a few
appeared to our scrutiny.
Charu Sheel Singh follows in his writings the great tradition of
poetry. He writes among these poets, but he does not follow the low-mimetic
9
zones of the realistic poetry either of A K Ramanujan or of Nissim Ezekiel. He
follows the manner and the poetic form of Sri Aurobindo and Tagore, though
using originally the mythic as the symbolic world of empiric and epistemological
derivatives from the scriptures of India from the Vedas to modern theory of
literature. It is simply an introduction or a separative method which makes Charu
Sheel Singh a distinct and distinctive poet in comparison to others who are
writing in the same age. Dr. Singh is such a poet who hardly cares to be
anthologized only on the basis of low-mimetic zones of form and semantics. He
abides by the high principles of poetic craft.
10
1.3 MAKING OF THE POET
Charu Sheel Singh is a poet, critic and literary theorist. He has a
long experience of research and is well-acquainted with various schools of
thought in literary criticism. But the most important aspect of his literary
personality is his thorough knowledge of the spiritual traditions of the East. Often
scholars attain perfection or near perfection in the Western traditions of theology
and spirituality but seldom do they attain such a hold on the Eastern philosophical
and spiritual traditions.
Dr. Charu Sheel Singh, was born in Farrukhabad district of
Western Uttar Pradesh, and had his schooling at Tundla (Agra). He went to
Aligarh Muslim University for his graduate and post-graduate studies and came to
Varanasi in 1977 for his PhD in English. His PhD dissertation on the poetry of
William Blake in the light of Hindu thought has been called as a work of classical
scholarship by Modern Language Review (1983). His postdoctoral studies took
him to the University of Warwick in (1982). At Warwickshire, he worked on
post-1950 British Poetry. Later on his work was published as ―Auguries of
Evocation: British Poetry during and After the Movement‖ (1987).
Dr. Charu Sheel Singh has received many honours and awards. He
has been a British Council Fellow (1982-83), Associate (1991) and Fellow (1996)
at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Dr. Singh scholarly worked as
Research scientist ‗B‘ from 1986 to 1991, the only candidate to have been
selected for that fellowship in the year. There are several other awards conferred
upon Dr. Singh from India and abroad. Dr. Singh has been considered a poet of
high and serious motifs. He has so far published nine collections of poems in
English. Presently he is working as Professor of English, Department of English,
Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth (University), Varanasi.
His Literary theory has been published as book titled Mandala
Literary Theory: Concentric Imagination.
11
To attain the desired success in academic field depends on the
cognizance one receives from one‘s immediate environment. As an undergraduate
student the poet was highly influence by Adi Shakaracharya‘s interpolation of the
Vedanta and the Sunyavad of Gautam Buddha. Both the philosophers as the
realized forces influence him so much so that the poet underwent the
philosophical impact of them on his personality. The Vedantin philosophy does
not find the dualistic motifs in Sadhana. The entire phenomenology can be
perceived inside the man and the Sunyavad of Buddha earmarks deeply about the
sufferings that generate the knowledge in man. Apart from the influence of
Gautama Buddha and Adi Shankaracharya, the poet also studied. The
philosophical writing of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Ramtirtha influenced
him highly. Both are the saints of high caliber who professed the lessons of
Vedantin philosophy.
Nonetheless, the immediate environment also counts much. He
upheld an educated and academic atmosphere ever in his family. His father used
to be a railway officer with excellent academic leanings. His father thought of
making his soon as is the usual practice in our society, an officer, but he realized
finally literary aptitude of his son and supported him wholeheartedly to his
literary excellences. As a father, he performed an uphill task of translating his
son‘s first collection of the poems, Tapascharanam as Shukadev ki Pida. This
then is the literary and academic background of the poet and this made him what
he is today.
12
1.4 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
Charu Sheel Singh had inclinations towards philosophy and
comparative religion. He used to study the basic texts of Hinduism and Buddhism
as an undergraduate student at Aligarh Muslim University. The poet was greatly
influenced by Adi Shankaracharya‘s interpretations of the Vedanta and the
Buddhist philosophy of Universal flux and emptiness (Sunyavada). The writing of
Swami Vivekananda and Ram Tirtha played their role in firing the creative
imagination of the poet. What makes Dr. Charu Sheel Singh‘s achievement more
important is that in spite of being a poet, who writes in English, he never let
himself be bound by the narrow confines to language. He is a well-read poet so
far as the study of Indian scriptures are concerned. He also studied while Warwick
as post-doctoral fellow of the Western literary theory and the associational
attributes of their theoretical principles determine his future vision.
A Western scholar is adept at understanding and interpreting the
Western classics but is lost in the Eastern texts and sometimes in his ignorance, he
even denies their importance. A traditional Sanskrit scholar is spiritually
unconcerned with the Western philosophies and does not take them in his
purview. Dr. Charu Sheel Singh is unique in the way that on the one hand he
writes in English and on the other he comprehends the spiritual implications of
the Eastern classics. He adopts the standard ways for using English language as
medium of reinterpreting the Eastern classics with a blend of postmodernism.
His reading of Indian scriptures, and more expecially of the Vedas,
the cognitive mode for the creative afflatives of the poet is determined. In his
reading to the text of the Vedas, the poet does not regard their origin from the
written scrolls or from the efforts of any man. The texts of the Vedas are selfemanative and are meant for higher human and divine knowledge – the
knowledge of the interiority and exteriority of body-soul relationships. The scene
appropriate to quote the poet himself about the orality of the Vedic texts and their
influencing nature on him as a poet:
13
The Svayambhu status of Vedic textuality has selfemanative gestures. Words are on a mantric journey to get back to
wherefrom they have come from – a carry for the return to the origins. To
generate taxonomical structures that configure meaning only in a
temporal way would be a self-defeating exercise in the case of our study of
the Vedas. So, the text is identified even before it is understood because
there is an internal telos that shapes the destiny of our understanding.8
One deeply cogitates about the two things: the orality of the serious
knowledge and the origin of the words (Vagasthan) – the origin as exteriority
finally goes back to the interiority in order to make the organic whole of anything
as internal telos, and that is the way to understand any tool of literature and more
especially the text of Charu Sheel Singh.
With this he has the fruitful imagination which helps in taking
flights of fancy which are meaningful yet vastly poetic. His imagery evokes the
poet in his reader and combines the oriental and the occidental, the sensory, the
psychic and the mystic.
He works as a bridge between East and West, much like Eliot and
Yeats, but with a more Indian and more spiritual perspective. Indian spirituality
for Yeats and Eliot worked more as a mere peppering for their Western
philosophy, but for Dr. Charu Sheel Singh it is the main ingredient.
Besides producing many masterpieces in Mandala literature, such
as Tapascharanam, Tapascharanam: Sukadev ki Pida, Songs of Life and Death,
The Indian Hero, Creation Cocktail, Terracotta Flames, Scripture on Stone etc.
He has also made significant contribution to contemporary literary criticism.
He has given his mandala theory, which is very useful for a better
understanding of his poetry, as he defies categorization and his poetry cannot be
explained by the existing tools of literary criticism. So unique and fresh is his
poetic approach that he himself had to devise a way to analyze his poetry and give
14
literary theory along with his poetic output so that readers can better understand
his thoughts. His mandala theory is not deconstructivist but is rather pitted against
it. It renovates and revives interest in some ancient concepts of Indian philosophy.
This theory projects an idealist and archetypal notion of poetry and the poet.
According to this theory the optimum expression of the poetic genius can only be
the epic form.
He also theorizes the post-modern/ post-structural perspective
which becomes symbolic of his universal elements in literature. Recently he has
also been included in the list of the poets prepared by Sahitya Academy. It is the
dharma of high forms of literature to express the universal concerns.
India has had a long tradition of illumined spiritual masters. In
their own unique way, they have used poetry as a method of alluding to the
transcendental consciousness. The contribution of these poets in Indian English
poetry has been to enlarge and extend the image of India as a nation. The writers
and poets felt the urgency to defend their choice of English as a creative medium.
Charu Sheel Singh follows and continues with the thought process of Sri
Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore so far as the creative urge of his poetry is
concerned.
Charu Sheel Singh also followed the philosophical and cultural
configurations and works out the real motives for the process of indigenous
aspects and the Indian sensibility in the entire corpus of his poetry.
Apart from the indigenous element one sees in his entire poetic
bulk he creates a class of the poet who excels in the genre of poetry. The poetry as
the expression of low mimetic zones is fully arrived in his creative process and
instead of surfacial reflections of the realistic mode he enters into the deep regions
of human mind for spreading out the real meanings of poetry as the genre of
literature.
15
1.5 HIS WORKS
His first long poem Tapascharanam becomes an example in
continuity of the mystical journey from the world of time to eternity. The poems
are a blend of medieval devotional poetry, yogic and spiritual traditions of the
country. The context of Tapascharanam evokes legendary mythological
characters of Indian tradition. Krishna Dwapayan, Ved Vyasa, and Shukdev Poem
open with the churning process of creation to write human story. Poet invoked
―fossilized bones to erect museum of meaning.‖
Charu Sheel has written nine full collections of the poems that
make his body corpus of his poetry.
1.
Tapascharanam – The text of Tapascharanam, with
the context one hundred and eight forms, reveals the associational form of
time and timelessness. The title of the poem is metaphoric and that purely
becomes symbolic of great tradition about the original and assimilation of
poetry and the poetic imagination. It is through as one has often been
made to perceive, the penances one finds oneself in unison with body-soul
relationships. Or in other words, it shows a perfect associational bond
between temporal and trans-temporal unity. The text of Tapascharanam
works out the riches of imagery, metaphoric expressions, literary
allusions, the specific semantics and the literary essence that suggest the
creative fecundity of the poet.
2.
Songs of Life and Death – The continuities of the
first collection, Tapascharanam can be seen to be studied in this
collection. Even staying at Warwick, England, does not generate in the
poetic depth of the poet to follow the mimetic zones of human thinking for
popularity. Once again, he follows the parampara of high principles of
poetry. The ruptured and the hollow existence do not create the sense of
poetry. They are concerned with the exterior representation, and the
external phenomenon finds its full realization when it becomes one with
16
the source of all knowledge. The source that generates the words and their
meanings. The textual lines, ―Let the instinctual sorrow go and disappear
fissures of a ruined earth where Sita is lost for ever‖. In these lines
instinctual sorrow is linked with the fissures of a ruined earth. And this
metaphoric cry of the poet clears his vision – the vision that brings into
being the loss of Sita, the loss of virtues and the loss of the Sita principles
from society just for the sake of cheap popularity.
3.
Indian Hero (1993) – As a text of inter-linearity
Indian Hero displays the narrative power of the poet. Distinctive from the
earlier texts in the sense that reveals the technique which is based on the
association of sensibilities for the creation of his poetic imagination. In the
epical form. As a variant of Krishna figure for associating the thought
process, civilizational points, cultural and yogic reflections and the tantric
traditions of India as nation. In shaping and making the personality of the
hero, there one hardly finds the predictability of the hero in the text. The
empiric knowledge of the poet expands into the thought process for
creating the concept of the hero – a thought process that goes deep inside
and forms the universality of existence, intertextualities, cross-cultural
motifs and the theoretical reflections of the poet. The various images used
in the text symbolize the cyclicity of being and the process of becoming.
The exterior properties of language come to a point of cessation and
finally merges with the echoes of sabda-Brahma – the real motifs of the
poet in the creation of the hero.
4.
Creation Cocktail – It is a narrative poem which is
based on the myth of the earth. The earth as a woman remains barren. This
is different from the earlier poems in the sense that it minimizes the
temporal syllogistic progression. The tension between two body postures
prevails and finally the earth as sustainer gives the real meaning of life and
beyond. Brahma the creator has created the Earth. The many ideas and
ideologies fructify the pregnant condition of the earth. The poem
17
represents the dialectics of creation and de-creation with anew that the
thing created will surely come to de-creation and the objects de-created
will further take the form of creation. Finally, the myth of earth becomes
linear and inter-linear. The high mimetic zone of the creation has yielded
the trans-temporal new points that the Absolute form (One) may be
perceived in many forms. The poetic imagination is almost volcanic here
celebrating disruption as the key to understanding the mystery of creation
and destruction. the poet becomes philosophical or echoes the voice of the
BhagvadGuta when the synonymizes ―Sabda‖ as Brahma that can be
understood through an appropriate association of Sabda-artha (wordmeaning) clarity. The beginning of the creation which shows the demand
of the earth and the water with the sense of mental components – a
specific grammar that needs to be coded and be decode for comprehending
the mystical meanings of the poem. The poem is rich for the use of myth,
symbols and images.
‗Songs of Life and Death‘ (1989) have the ‗Upanishadic texts
merged into the arteries of a sleeping global Man‘ ‗while the deep rivers infinite
flow indefinitely‘. ‗Songs of Life and Death‘ laments the loss of balance and they
become the anguished out pouring of a suffering soul. As the text of ―Songs of
Life and Death‖ reveals the interior motifs of human soul, based on the mandate
system of the Vedas the analysis write in the operation that brings into being the
gradual development in the personality of the protagonist. The protagonist as hero
destined by his present condition hardly makes a compromise with the work he
lives in and feels inner pangs – the pangs of sufferings that make him real
spiritual hero.
Recently Charu Sheel Singh has also translated Tagore‘s Gitanjali
in 2010 and he has also included Tapascharanam both the original text and
translation with that of Tagore translation of Gitanjali. In the foreword to this text
he has pointed out that there are some similarities in working out the spiritual and
temporal territories of the being for the process of becoming. He felt at ease
18
academically with the poetic pattern of Tagore for continuing the mystical
tradition of poetic creation. The translated work of Gitanjali shows his ability and
aptitude as bilingual writer. Mandala are the suktas (incantation) in almost all the
Vedas and they indeed are the reflections of knowledge (Jnana) Bhakti (devotion)
and the poets of spiritual and temporal view points. The poet uses such images of
poetic essence which make him an agonized soul because of the loss of moral
values.
The Indian Hero (1993) reflects a sensibility completely immersed
in the Indian mythical tradition. Charu Sheel Singh, the poet opens manifolds of
imagination in his poetry apart from following the cultural and mystical ideology
of India.
The poem Kashi: A Mandala Poem is related to the spiritual theory
of bindu (cosmic seed) and it brings this into being the creative process of the
Universe. There are two forms of God, Shiva in this poem: Dharma and Dharmin.
Again, the dharma is divided into two forms: male and female. The female
becomes consort of the supreme Shiva (Dharmin). The male form, that is, Vishnu
becomes the natural cause (upadana) of the Universe. Fortified with the four
presiding deities along with their female emanation – Kal Bhairava and
Kamakhya in the East, Nata Bhairava and Gauri in the West, Rudra Bhairava and
Bhuvneshwari in the North and BhutaBhairava and Kali in the south. Kashi
becomes symbolic of the creative process. These deities along with their female
emanation become the source of all arts, creativity, the aesthetic experience and
finally the realization of Shivatattva. The poet seeks and finds the essentialness of
Kashi on the foliopage of cremation.
Shiva tattva becomes the visionary nucleus of Kashi. With
the mandala chorus and Hansmudra, Lord Shiva‘s incarnation becomes
suggestive of the theory of time and space and the generic manifolds of the
specific territories thus Shiva-tattva includes inside its circle all the
theories and beyond them. Shiva is victory over desire makes him an
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unconditioned cosmic being and his residence, becomes the existential
motif of Kashi itself. The yogic experiences are explained through the
process of Kumbhaka (inbreathing) it he form of Parvati and rechaka
(out-breathing) in the form of Kashi.9
The ambient dimensionality of Kashi leaves the cultural traces
which are followed by Rama and Krishna. The spiritual union of Parvati and
Shiva (Prakriti and Purusha) weaves a kind of semiotic text. The application of
the mythic world of Kashi restructures a complex world of inter-textuality. The
linguistic competence of the poet in the use of myths and symbols and their
application to the inner regions of human psychic shows the range of his poetic
imagination. The flow of Ganga to the narrative beyond eternity, Jyotirlinga as the
sign of Panchkosha and the concept of bhuyvana bring forth such signifiers that
exhibit the inner quest of being for realizing the essence of shiva-tatta. The poem
as such reinvents a new poetic genre.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
1
Derozio, Henry L. V. The Complete Works of Henry Derozio. Oxford: Baldwin
Press, 2002. p. 56.
2
Ibid. p. 83.
3
Chandani, Lokuge and Paranjape, Makarand. Toru Dutt: Collected Prose and
Poetry. New Delhi: OUP, 2005. p. 29.
4
Naik, M. K. Perspectives on Indian Poetry in English New Delhi:
Abhinav Publications . 1984, p. 213
5
Paranjape, Makarand. Sarojini Naidu: Selected Poems. New Delhi: Rupa, 2010.
p. 41.
6
Tagore, Rabindranath. Selected Poems. London: Penguin, 2005. p. 17.
7
Ghosh, Aurobindo. Collected Letters. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Press, 2008.
p. 197.
8
Singh, Charu Singh. Philosophical Hermeneutics (Vol. VII). New Delhi:
Adhyayan Publishers & Distributors, 200. pp. vii-viii
9
Budholia. O.P. Charu Sheel Singh, Kashi: A Mandala Poem . K. K.
Sharma (ed.) Points of View. Vol. XIV No. 2, Winter
2005, p. 119
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