Tagore and Hopkins Essays

Tagore and Hopkins Essays Tagore and Hopkins Essay Tagore and Hopkins Essay Essay Topic: Keats Poems and Letters Both the poets appreciated with a sense of wonder every object of nature in minute detail and at the name time saw in them a universal significance. Hopkins was a religious poet and Etageres appreciation, particularly in the west, was as a mystic poet. Both Étagà ¨re and Hopkins practiced a theocratic aestheticism. They felt that God is not merely the creator; he Is also the force behind each and every object of nature. Although there Is no concrete evidence that Étagà ¨re was acquainted with the poems of Hopkins, It may be deduced on the basis of some literary facts that such a possibility is not altogether a remote one. Key words: Victorian, sensuousness, painting, religion, prosody, sprung rhythm. A study In poetic affinities between Arbitrating Étagà ¨re and Gerard Manley Hopkins may perhaps seem a bit strange to the readers. Apparently there Is no connection between the two great poets?one belonging to Victorian England and the others poetic career spanning from t he last two decades of 1 9th century to the modern period in the 20th century. Survey of Étagà ¨re criticism also does not corroborate any resemblance between the two poets. Edward Thompson in his book Arbitrating Étagà ¨re: Poet and Dramatist points in one place to a possible resemblance between Etageres poem Sea Waves and Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutsche (71). In fact comparative study between two or more poets of different runes and belonging to different nations can be taken up by any scholar. But why do I choose Hopkins and no other poet to compare with Étagà ¨re probably requires an explanation. And here is my apology before I go into the details of my study. When I read the poetry of these two poets the affinities between them strike me as not something accidental, rather both of them appear to me as belonging to the same poetic tradition. In respect of their poetic vision, their technique, their attitude o nature and the mundane world there is a remarkable similarity between the two minds. Besides, temperamentally also the two poets share a close relationship. Apart from being a poet Hopkins was also a painter Repeat Journal on Interdisciplinary studies Humanities (SINS 0975-2935), Volvo 2, NO 4, 2010 special Issue on Arbitrating Étagà ¨re, edited by Miriam Seen URL of the article: http://repeat. Common/no/disproportionate. PDF O www. repeat. Mom Repeat Journal Volvo 2 No 4 and showed a keen interest in music. The multitude of his drawings reveals his preoccupation with the beauty of nature. His numerous pencil sketches evince a clear influence of Russians The Elements of Drawing. Etageres genius was a versatile one?he was a poet, novelist, and dramatist all combined into one. Side by side he was also a painter of eminence and musician. Etageres drawings sometimes resemble Victorian illustrations (Negro 199) and like those of Hopkins his paintings also reveal an intensity of visualization (Negro 200). Both Hopkins and Étagà ¨re wanted, at one point of time, to opt for the career of a painter, and in both of their cases, the art of painting exerted considerable influence on their literary career. Hopkins made a number of pencil sketches and Étagà ¨re, on the other hand, made his early monochromes in pen. Both of them returned to painting at the later stage of their lives although in case of Hopkins the return, unlike Étagà ¨re, was rather desultory. The emphasis on the particular was a feature of both. Their drawings reveal their ability to observe critically and carefully and both of them could divine the Infinite in the finite. In a letter dated 28th November, 1928 Étagà ¨re wrote: The Joy that pictures bring is the Joy of definiteness; within the restraint of lines we see the particular with distinctness. Whatever the object I perceive whether it is a piece of stone, a donkey, a prickly shrub, or an old woman?I tell myself that I see it exactly as it is. Whenever I see a thing with exactness I touch the Infinite and feel delighted. (CTD. N Maitre 169) The ability to fuse the response to the beauties of external nature with a profoundly inward religious quest can also be seen in Hopkins. For example, on May, 1870 Hopkins recorded in his Journal: Oneida when the bluebells were in bloom I wrote the following. I do not think I Have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at I know the tatty of our Lord by it. (199) Both the poets appreciated with a sense of wonder every object of nature in minute detail and at the same time saw in them a universal significance. In respect of poetic technique Étagà ¨re is acknowledged as an innovator in prosodic measures. In the Introduction to The Oxford Étagà ¨re Translation of Etageres Selected Poems Shanks Gosh discusses in some detail the poets experiments with traditional prosodic measures. He observes that Arbitrating proceeds from Balk (Flying Geese, 1916) onwards to break free of patterns and conventions and evolve the masturbated or ere-bound verse form. This consists of rhymed lines (usually couplets) of irregular length and varying prosody, often drawing on conversational rhythms. And finally in the interim in Lippie), he sets aside all constraints by using free verse to capture the authentic patterns of contemporary life. (29) Hopkins is regarded as the innovator of a new rhythm?Sprung rhythm. Talking about the use of new rhythm in The Wreck of the Deutsche Hopkins wrote to 541 Arbitrating Étagà ¨re and Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Study in Poetic Affinities Dixon: l had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I legalized on paper (Correspondence 14). And his rhythm, he himself said, was oratorical and his advice always was to read his poems not with the eyes but with the ears: My verse is less to be read than heard (Letters 46). What Hopkins wanted to point out was that the language of poetry should be energetic, forceful. Hopkins was thinking in a positive way about the shape or structure of the poetic medium and incidentally how it can achieve maximum stress or emphasis. Politically the two minds had something in common as far as their attitude to England as a colonial power was concerned. Both of them regretted and spoke against the unjust domination and oppression practiced by the British over countries like India and Ireland. Hopkins in a letter to Coventry Pattern wrote in 1886: I remark that those Englishmen who wish prosperity to the Empire (which is not all Englishmen or Britons, strange to say) speak of the Empires mission to extend freedom and civilization in India and elsewhere. No freedom you can give us is equal to the freedom of letting us alone: take yourselves out of India, let us first be free of you. Then there is civilization. It should have been Catholic truth. That is the great end of Empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our Empire is less and less Christian as it grows. (Hopkins Poems and prose 182-83) Etageres attitude towards the British government was not much different from that of Hopkins. When in 1903 Lord Curran was trying to divide Bengal there was wide spread protest all over Bengal. Étagà ¨re gave voice to the protest of his countrymen. Shanks Gosh observes: There was fierce resistance to the proposal, and Arbitrating became one of the Chief ideologues of that resistance. Through rallies, wrought the rakishness ceremony (tying the brotherly knot) that captured the popular imagination, through song after song, he strove to arouse the patriotism of his countrymen. (Gosh 37) In 1919 after the brutal massacre in Shillelaghs in Punjab Étagà ¨re strongly condemned the incident and considered it a shame to use the Knighthood conferred Viceroy which was published in The Statesman, June 3, 1919, he wanted to be relieved of the honor. Never since Arbitrating used the title. Hopkins was a religious poet and Etageres appreciation, particularly in the west, was as a mystic poet. According to Sunlit Kumar Chatterer Étagà ¨re was a mystic and devotional poet, who takes his place with the greatest seers, sages, and devotees of India and the world (21). Mansard Josh also opines that Étagà ¨re was looked up to as an oriental sage, a seer, a prophet (40). Hopkins was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1868 and for a time being he felt that he should not write poetry any more because the admiration and praise that he might enjoy 542 as a poet would be detrimental to his spiritual growth. So he decided not to write any more poems and there ensued a self enforced silence for seven years. He did not compose almost anything up to 1875. In a letter to R. W. Dixon Hopkins wrote in 1878: L meant that it [fame] is a great danger in itself, as dangerous as wealth every bit, I should think, and as hard to enter the kingdom of heaven with (Hopkins Poems and Prose 183). And it is almost the same view that Étagà ¨re held as far as the reputation of a poet is concerned. Although he never allowed his poetic career to suffer a break like that of Hopkins we may, at this point, take note of Etageres view on this. In a letter, dated 20th September, 1921, written to E. J. Thompson, who was a professor of English at Banker Wesleyan Mission College, (presently known as Banker Christian College) Étagà ¨re wrote: Reputation is the greatest bondage for an artist. I want to emancipate my mind from its grasp not only for the sake of my art, but for the higher purposes of life, for the dignity of soul. What an immense amount of unreality there is in literary reputation, and I am longing To come out of it as a saying, naked and aloof. (A Difficult Friendship 132-133) In a way Étagà ¨re was a saying and he did achieve a kind of poetic nirvana in his mature life when praise or adverse criticism did not affect him. Ill A close look at a number of Hopkins poems shows that the treatment of nature is reminiscent of the romantic tradition, particularly the Keating tradition. The sensuous appreciation of nature and her objects, the pictorial details, the use of words for their sonorous effects?all these are features of romantic poetry. I would like to quote here the first couple of lines from a poem The Handover, by Hopkins. The poem was composed in 1877, the most prolific year in Hopkins poetic career, and talking about the poem in 1879 in a letter to Robert Bridges, Hopkins himself said that the poem was the best thing I ever wrote (85). The poem begins thus: I caught this morning mornings minion, kingdom of daylights dauphin, dappled- drawn falcon In his riding. The handover, as described by the poet in the above lines, is a feast for the eyes. Is multicultural and the falcon is attracted by the beauty of the morning. The compound dapple-dawn-drawn reminds one of Keats. Wallboard Davies, one of the editors of Hopkins, rightly points out that The bird is attracted by the dawn, certainly; but it is also pictorially drawn, being outlined vividly against the dawn light. And we suddenly realize that it is a poet who was also an artist (Hopkins Major moms 24). Side by side with such sensuous description of nature the reader is struck by the brilliant use of alliteration and consonant chiming in the poem. The repetition of the m and d sound in the first and second lines respectively create a sonorous effect. Side by side in the first line the inning endings create an effect of consonant chiming. In fact the word kingdom has been deliberately broken in the middle by the poet keeping king in the first line and taking doom to the second for creating a sonorous effect. Hopkins always wanted his poems to be read aloud.