These emotions and feelings surged up in my mind and heart again when I re-read the following poem of Allgernon Charles Swinburne (1837- 1909) called '
A MATCH' If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or grey grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle,
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death,
We'd shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May,
We'd throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day;
If you were April's lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We'd hunt down love together
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain
Swinburne was born in London in 1837.He studied in Eton college and later in Balliol College, Oxford. Like Oscar Wilde, he had the rare distinction of being rusticated from the Oxford University in 1859. He was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and counted among his best friends Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882).Most of his early and still admired poems evoke the Victorian fascination with the Middle Ages, and some of them are explicitly medieval in style, tone and construction, including 'The Leper,' 'Laus Veneris,' and 'St Dorothy'.
Swinburne was an alcoholic and a highly excitable character. His mastery of vocabulary, rhyme and meter can easily be seen in the above poem 'The Match'. He is the virtual star of the third volume of George Saintsbury's famous History of English Prosody, and A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936), a more measured and even somewhat hostile literary critic, devoted paragraphs of praise to Swinburne's rhyming ability. In his time, Swinburne's poems were very popular among undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, though today they have largely gone out of fashion.
T S Eliot (1888 - 1965), commenting on Swinburne's essays on the Shakespearean and Johnsonian dramatists in The Contemporaries of Shakespeare and The Age of Shakespeare and Swinburne's books on Shakespeare and Jonson, found that as a poet writing notes on poets, Swinburne had mastered his material and was 'a more reliable guide to them than Hazlitt, Coleridge, or Lamb,'. Only a man of genius could dwell so exclusively and consistently among words as swinburne.
Even as I was enjoying the romantic poem of Swinburne, I immediately recalled the following beautiful lines of Mahakavi Subrahamania Bharati (1882 � 1921) from his famous Tamil poem �Kanamma�En Kadhali�. We can see the exact parallel between the thoughts, feelings and emotions in English of Swinburne on the one hand and that of Mahakavi Bharati in Tamil on the other. When Swinburne died in 1907, Mahakavi Bharati was just 25 years old and working as Editor, India (Tamil) and Bala Bharatha (English). He had already become famous as a nationalistic poet, thanks to the initiative of that great patriot V Krishnaswamy Iyer, who was the first person who discovered the poetic genius of Mahakavi Bharati by publishing his poems under the title �Desiya Geethangal� in 1906.
What is most fascinating to note is the fact that the above poem was translated into English by Mahakavi Bharati himself and this English version was published for the first time in Agni and other poems and Translations and Essays in English in 1936. C R Reddy, the eminent educationist and K S Venaktramani wrote a beautiful foreword to this volume. I am presenting below the English poem of Mahakavi Bharati. Bharati gave the title of 'IN EACH OTHER'S ARMS' for this poem.
IN EACH OTHER'S ARMS.
(Note'In the following verses the Supreme Divinity, styled here 'Krishna', is imaged as the beloved woman, and The human soul as the lover ' C Subrahmanya Bharati.)
Thou to me the flowing Light
And I to thee, discerning sight;
Honied blossom thou to me,
Bee enchanted I to thee:
O Heavenly Lamp with shining ray,
O Krishna, Love O nectar-spray
With falt'ring tongue and words that pant
Thy glories, here, 1 strive to chant.
Thou to me the Harp of gold,
And I to thee the finger bold;,
Necklace shining thou to me,
New-set Diamond I to thee:
O mighty queen with splendour rife
O Krishna, Love, O well of life,
Thine eyes do shed their light on all,
Wherev'r I turn, their beams do fall.
Rain that singeth, thou to me.
Peacock dancing, I to thee
Thou to me the juice of grape,
And I to thee the cup agape:
Spotless Beauty, Krishna bright,
Perennial fount of deep delight,
O Love, the face hath grace divine,
For there the deathless Truth doth shine
Silver Moonlight thou to me,
Exulting Ocean I to thee;
Thou, the basic harmony
And I the Song that moveth free:
Dear as eyesight, Krishna mine.
O msssed-up, sweet, immortal Wine,
Unceasing yearns my mind to scan
Thy endless charm, but never can.
Inlaid perfume thou to me,
Petalled blossom I to thee :
Thou to me the inner Thought,
And I to thee the Word it wrought;
O honeyed Hope, O Krishna fair,
O Joy, o'erflowing everywhere,
O Star of love, do teach me, pray,
To sing thy praise in fitting lay.
Deep Attraction thou to me,
Living Magnet I to thee;
Thou to me the Veda pure
And I to thee the Knowledge sure;
Voice vibrant of the world's desire,
O Krishna, Love, all-quickening Fire,
In utter stillness, here, 1 see
Thy face that yieldeth ecstasy.
As Life to Pulse, and Gold to rings,
As star to planet, Soul to things,
So Krishna, Love, art thou to me,
Thou, the Force, I, Victory;�
And all the joys of Heaven and Earth
In thee, O Krishna, have their birth,
Eternal glory, endless Might.
O Heart of Mine, 0 Light, O Light!
Swinburne was born in a rich family and he did not have to worry about his daily living. Mahakavi Bharati led a life of poverty bordering on destitution. And yet Swinburne's approach to love was more physical than spiritual. Bharati's approach was spiritually sublime. It was a cosmic macro approach seen through a magnificent telescope. On the contrary, Swinburne's micro approach to love was made through a microscope. Swinburne often contrasted between life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain even in his love poems. Bharati in the above poem spoke about ever enlarging vistas of ecstatic love, joy and freedom.
To conclude in the beautiful words of C R Reddy and K S Venkatramani: 'Subrahmanya Bharati's poetical genius is the happy result of a cross fertilisation, the clash and contact between two great cultures. They say the oyster breeds the pearl in a moment of irritation. Subrahmanya Bharati poured forth his patriotic songs in a like moment of conflict, suffering and struggle, when his sensitive and vigorous nature keenly felt the slavery of his country and man's inhumanity to man. His warm emotional temperament and aesthetic nature quickly responded in song to the immense joys of freedom and sunshine, like a lotus bud to the stimulating rays of the dawn.... Bharati is not a summer cloud, but the first expression and descent of the monsoon itself, scattering its pearls of beauty over land and river, over hill and dale.'
(To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment