The quality which lends charm to Sarojini Naidu's verse, according to Arthur Symons, is the bird- like quality of song, which it contains. The poems in which this quality may be particularly and perceptibly visible are To My Fairy Fancies, To My Children and The Flute-Player of Brindaban. She longed, in her own words, to be a wild free thing of the air like the birds, with a song in her heart.
As mentioned in Sarojini
Naidu's poem, the rich gifts that Mother India gave the world are the raiment, grain
and gold. This refers to all the resources from agricultural productions to priceless
metals which the foreign colonisers took to their country while they were
ruling India. She also mentions her soldier sons whom she had sent to foreign
lands to fight for others in the world wars.
"Priceless
treasures torn from my breast,
And yielded the sons
of my stricken womb.”
These lines presenting the fact of Indians'
being slaves of the British before being Indians and also referring to the
exploitation of Indians in the hands of the white colonialists, have been
extracted from the poem entitled The Gift of India, written by
Sarojini Naidu. Here, Sarojini has lent voice to her patriotic fervour by
personifying Mother India. She speaks through the mouth of India to its
citizens. Mother India laments the loss of India's resources which the British
were exploiting for their own selfish interests and depriving the Indians of
their own wealth.
Through the mouth of mother India, Sarojini asks the British whether there is a need to make them deprived of its richness such as clothing, food and precious minerals such as gold to make them understand and realize their wrong doing of misusing India's property. (This is indirectly a warning to the Britishers as they were exploiting India's richness). India's richness which is very valuable, was extracted by the British from Indian earth as rude as taking one's heart by tearing chest. British ruling produced the sons of Mother India, the Indian soldiers to obey their orders referred to as 'drum beats of duty' which were like curved blades which cut down lifetime that ultimately led to their death.
On the basis of their themes, Sarojini Naidu's lyrics may be
divided into five broad categories: (1) Nature-lyrics, (2) love-lyrics, (3)
lyrics of life and death, (4) folk-lyrics dealing with the life of the common
folk of India, and (5) miscellaneous lyrics, including patriotic lyrics. These
are not watertight compartments, there is much overlapping and such division is
made merely for the convenience of study.
Sarojini has a number of beautiful
nature-lyrics to her credit. The seasons of India, particularly, the spring,
fascinate her. She sings of the joys of spring in a number of lyrics. Some of
Sarojini's best known nature lyrics are: "Leili", “Songs of the
Springtime" (ten poems describing Spring in all its splendour),
and “The Flowering Year" (six poems of which "June
Sunset" is the most charming), "Spring in
Kashmir", "The Glorison Lily", “The Water Hyacinth",
etc. Mark the following lines from "Spring in Kashmir"
included in “The Feather of the Dawn”:
“Heart, O my heart, hear the
Springtime is calling
With her laughter, her
music, her beauty enthralling.
Thro' glade and thro'glen
her winged feet let us follow,
In the wake of the oriole,
the sunbird and the swallow.”
The heart of the poetess is wholly taken up with the Spring. She has the feminine partiality for flowers and a number of colourful flowers bloom in her lyrics. Herself a song-bird, the songs of the birds fascinate her, and the Koel and the Papeeha are among her favourites. The Yamuna provides the background to a few of her love-lyrics, and one is surprised to find that there is no reference to the Ganges and the Himalayas which have been a perennial source of inspirations for Indian poets. Her response to nature is sensuous—she enjoys her beautiful scenes, and sights, her colours, her sweet melody and fragrance—and striking pen-pictures of nature in all her glory and majesty abound in her lyrics. Nature for her is a "sanctuary of peace", a refuge from the fever and fret of the world and is often coloured by human moods and emotions. It is also to be noted that though she has the romantic partiality for Nature, she is not insensitive to the charms of the city, as is evidenced by her lyrics on the city of Hyderabad. However, it shall have to be conceded that her picture of nature is one-sided, that we do not get from her nature, "red in tooth and claw." Neither does she philosophise nature, she is content to enjoy her sensuous beauty and to use it as a magazine of similes and metaphors.
The love theme looms large in the lyrics of
Sarojini. There are a number of fine love-lyrics scattered all over her four
collections of verse. One may mention such beautiful lyrics as "Indian
Love-Song", “Humayun to Zubeida", "Ecstasy", "The
Poet's Love-Song", "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid", "The
Temple", "The Flute Player of Brindaban", "The Gift",
"The Amulet", "Immutable" and "Songs of Radha". However,
“The Temple, A Pilgrimage of Love”, a collection of twenty-four lyrics,
divided into three sections—The Gate of Delight, The Path of Tears, The
Sanctuary—is her most extended and elaborate statement as a poet of
love. Her love-lyrics deal with a variety of love experiences, are characterized
by intensity and immediacy and draw both on the Hindu tradition of love-poetry
and the Sufi-Muslim tradition. Her attitude to love is typically feminine and
is characterized by a total self-surrender of the beloved to her object of
love. The beloved may be the Divine, the Supreme, or Krishna, the Eternal
lover, and such lyrics derive their poignancy and appeal from the soul's hunger
for union with the object of love. They have an autobiographical interest also,
and may be read as experience-expressions of her own deep and passionate love
for Govind Rajalu Naidu, with whom she fell in love early in life, and whom she
ultimately married.
A large number of her finest lyrics deal with
the problem of life and death. Life has its sorrows, and its pain and
suffering, and it all ends with death. The poet is conscious of the pain of
life and the inevitability of Death, and hence a note of melancholy runs
through many of her lyrics. But the poetess bravely accepts the challenge of
Death and is determined to enjoy her life, despite all sorrow and suffering. "Life",
"To the God of Pain", "Damayanti to Nala in the Hour of
Exile", "The Poet of Death", "To a Buddha Seated on a
Lotus" "Dirge", "Love and Death, “Death and Life",
"The Lotus", "The Soul's Prayer", "A Challenge to
Fate", "In Salutation to the Eternal Peace" and "Invincible"
are some of her lyrics of life and death. Sometime she may be seized with the
fear of pain and death and in agony may cry out, as she does in the lovely
lyric, “To the God of Pain”:
“Let me depart, with faint
limbs let me creep
To some dim shade and sink
me down to sleep.”
but such death-wish, such a mood of despair, is
rare with her. A heroic response, to the challenge of Death, to pain and
suffering, is more characteristic of her. In "Transience",
the poetess, working within the Hindu spiritual tradition, concludes that sorrow
is transient, whereas joy is permanent. Ananda is the unperformed but potential or evolutionary end of creation.
Time is, therefore, only "an artifice of Eternity", and its
melancholy contingencies are but a passing phase in the cosmic process. This simple
faith is expressed without any metaphysical density, in the folk experience of
India, which cuts across religious diversities and cultural differences-her
conception of life and death rests on the Hindu vision of the unity and oneness
of the individual soul with, "the soul of all the world", The Atma
and the Brahma are one, and Death is merely the soul's return to its
prime origin. As she observes in "Love Transcendent":
“So, you be safe in God's
mystic garden,
Enclosed like a star in His
ageless skies,
My outlawed spirit shall
crave no pardon,
O my saint with the sinless
eyes.”
The folk-theme
predominates in the lyrics of Sarojini. The opening section of The
Golden Threshold is entitled 'Folk-Songs', and
in The Bird of Time one of the sections is 'Indian
Folk-Songs'. The folk-theme also appears in many of the lyrics of
the other sections. Sarojini loved the common folk of India and their land and
she celebrates their occupations, their joys and sorrows, in a number of
beautiful lyrics. The pageantry of Indian life fascinated her, and she sings of
it with zest. Like her own Wandering Singers, she sings of "Happy, and simple
and sorrowful things", which characterize the life of the common man in
India. Her lyrics are a veritable portrait gallery of Indian folk-characters.
The palanquin-bearers and the pardah-nashins may be memory of Kipling's India,
but the weavers, and the bangle-sellers, and fishers and beggars, and even the
snake-charmers, are still authentic presences on the Indian scene, although
they seem to be simply picturesque, decorative and ornamental. Sarojini invests
them with a sense of personality. The nature and quality of their experience,
as well as their style of confrontation with the laws of being, genuinely
reflect the Indian culture and tradition. Whether romantic, mystic, or
symbolic, they breathe the genius of that land out of which they arise. They
are presented not as faded types, but as live individuals acting out their
humanity in the general drama of life, with its fluctuating tides of joy and
sorrow. There is no sense of alienation in them: no breakdown of communication
between their sense of self and the sense of life. Sarojini deals not with
outmoded or faded types, but rather with figures who had so far been ignored,
and who the first time in her poetry, emerge from folk-life to claim a place in
the world of literature.
They are all individualized by their human passions and aspirations, and thus also linked up with humanity at large. Sometimes, the folk theme is invested with the richness of all gory as in " Indian Weavers”, “Palanquin-bearers", “Corn-grinders", etc. Sarojini's folk-lyrics also reveal her awareness of the synthetic nature of the Indian folk-culture. "Despite the political polarization, and tension between the Hindu and Islamic sides of the Indian personality, there has always existed a synthesis and fusion of their religious and spiritual elements in the folk-culture. In rural India, the Hindus pay homage to Muslim saints, while the Muslims exchange gifts and benedictions with the Hindus on festive occasions. Steeped in the folk customs and rituals, Sarojini captures the true spirit of Muslim folk-festivals. Her lyrics are resonant with the muezzins, prayer-calls, litanies and incantations of Islam. "The Night of Martyrdom" is a splendid evocation of the spirit of sacrifice and brotherhood, through suffering and purification, which underlies the Muslim festival of Moharram. As a mark of faith and devotion, the act of martyrdom is dramatically relieved by the followers of Mohammad who take out a procession and perform the fire-walking. Moharram, with its religious trance and magical ordeal and procession, assumes the quality of a collective rite of renewal and restoration. The festival has, like the Holi, Deepavali and other Indian festivals, the intensity and freedom of folk-drama. It aims at a reintegration of the individual into the total culture, through a revival of the memories of the sacred history.
A number of Sarojini's lyrics deal with miscellaneous themes not covered under the above mentioned four categories. The more important of such lyrics are those which throb with her patriotism or in which she pays tribute to someone or the other of the contemporary personalities. The Gift of India is the finest of her patriotic lyrics, and The Lotus, the lyrics in which she pays her homage to Mahatma Gandhi, is one of the finest of her lyrics in which she celebrates contemporary personalities. In Salutation to My Father's Spirit, an elegy on the death of the poetess' own father, is the finest of her topical lyrics.
The Koel of South, the nightingale of India,
the peacock of Bengal, Sarojini Naidu as a poetess is half Keats, half-Yeats,
partly in the tradition of the Indian devotional poetry, partly in the rut of
the Pre-Raphaelites and the Georgian poets. Hence it is difficult to categorize
her; she is sue generis as a poet. She is fresh, original and appealing.
Like Jane Austen, her range is limited. But whatever work in the form of 384
poems she has given us as a poetess is the work of filigree, finished and
polished like a work on ivory-piece. She is an immaculate artist and a perfect
craftsman of high quality in the field of prosody. As a poet of Indian sense
and sensibility, of the Indian landscape and skyscape to West she will always
be remembered with Tagore, Aurobindo and Toru Dutt. She will be remembered much
more as a poet of visions—the Vision of Love, the Vision of Faith, the Vision
of the Mother, the Vision of patriotism, the Vision of India, etc. What Gokhale
said of her conversation, can be said of her poetry too: "You begin with a
ripple and end in eternity."
Though death, misery and sorrow figure in her
poems, yet her poems are free from the dirt and squalor of the world. Politics
she shuns; satire and exaggerations are absent from her poetry; quibbles and
paradoxes do not haunt her. Her imagination is pure and undefiled by worldly
desires. She contemplates beauty in all its forms and expressions. She is the
supreme poet of beauty. To quote Dr. Iyengar, "She was, above all,
sensitive to beauty, the beauty of living things, the beauty of holiness, the
beauty of the Buddha’s compassion, the beauty of Brindavan's Lord. She didn't
specially seek out the bizarre, the exotic, the exceptional, but her poems lack
neither variety nor the flavour of actuality."
She sings like a bird. Her poetry is remarkable
for its ease and spontaneity. Words flow from her pen as honey from a bee-hive.
Brevity, melody, subjectivity, intensity of emotion, condensed thought—these
features of lyric poetry are found in her poetry. Like a true romantic poet,
she is a lover not only of beauty and of Nature but also of melancholy and
gloom. But she is no rebel, although she is fully patriotic. One has to quote
only a few lines to illustrate some of her major qualities of head and heart,
of Indian sensibility, of spiritual clamour, of melodious tune, of sweet
harmony, etc.:
1. “Full are my pitchers and far to
carry,
2. “I muse among those silent fanes
3. “Life is a prism of My light,
Her lyrics are "short swallow flight of song"; they transport the reader to the realm of rapturous Spring, inner ecstasy and spiritual elation.
Love is her main theme—lokik (this worldly)
and parlokik (other worldly) love, union, separation and other moods of
love are portrayed by her. Irony, hope, despair, expectation, challenge,
ecstasy, etc. are all there. Union and separations—both the aspects of love are
portrayed by her. Her poems scattered in all her volumes of poetry about love
relate to the ecstasy, fear, anxiety, separation, illusion, unity, entreaty,
devotion, etc. The Three songs of Radha, 'A Persian Love Song', 'A Rajput
Love Song', 'A Love Song from the North', 'Indian Love Song', etc., are
some of her famous love poems.
"Children's poems, nature poems, patriotic
poems, poems of love and death, even poems of mystical transcendence, Sarojini
Naidu essayed them all; and with her unfailing verbal felicity and rhythmical
dexterity, she generally succeeded as well. Seldom did she venture out of her
depth; she wasn't interested in wild experimentation; she didn't cudgel herself
towards explosive modernity. But she had genuine poetic talent, and she was a
wholesome and authentic singer." (K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar). Dr. Dastoor
opines that ‘life's colours dazzle her, its beauty intoxicates her and its
endless variety excites her.’
Her poems like “The Purdah Nashin,"
"Corn Grinders," "The Indian Weavers," and "Palanquin
Bearers," and others project the suffering and humble life of the
poor and oppressed.
Edmund Gosse hoped Sarojini to come up as the
Indian Keats. Her love of man, nature, folk-lore dreams, past and future,
youth, beauty, glory, magnificence, grand buildings, delight and tears, gods
and goddesses, her emotional intensity, her melancholy, her love for beauty,
and above all her subjectivity make her a truly romantic poet. She believes in
giving away one's love and life in a good cause, and thus incorporates the
ideals of true, good and beautiful:
“O Fate, betwixt the
grinding stones of Pain,
Tho' You have crushed my
life like broken grain,
Lo! I will leaven it with my
tears and knead
The bread of Hope to comfort
and to feed
The myriad hearts for whom
no harvests flow
Save bitter herbs of woe.”
Sampson has praised her mastery of English. She was also a master of rhyme, possessing a sensitive ear for every delicate sound. Her poems have "a prosodical correctness and regularity which seldom—if ever—become merely mechanical." (H.G. Dalway Turnbull). Her metrical felicity charms us, her rhythmic sweep takes the reader off his feet. Sensuousness and love of beauty are two cardinal characteristics of her poetry. Her images are natural and functional; there is no deliberate artistry. "Her songs must be listened to with their gesture and the accompaniment of musical voice. For Mrs. Naidu is above all a singer." (E.E. Speight). Just read a few of her images and bite your finger under your teeth with wonder:
1. “But I have placed you, O miraculous
Flower of my desire,
The word "Mysticism"
is a derived from "Mystes" which means a person initiated into the
"mysteries". "Mystes" in its turn is derived from the Greek
word “muein" which means "to keep silence". Thus, Mysticism is
the belief that knowledge of God and of Real Truth is independent of the mind
and the senses. Being independent of understanding and senses, this knowledge
can be obtained through contemplation or spiritual insight. The term Mysticism
is embloved to cover:
1.The first-hand experience of direct communion with God or Ultimate Reality; and
2.The theologies-metaphysical doctrine of the
soul's possible union with the Ultimate Absolute Reality or God.
Mysticism and Religion:
One thing should be
clearly understood that prayer, worship and religion may form a part of
mysticism but they are usually viewed as means and not essence because they are
continuations of sensory experiences where as "mysticism" is
unaduterated unity consciousness or a union with God. "Mysticism"
like poetry and depends more on contradictions and unusual use of language. Philosophies
may lead to or follow from mysticism but are not mysticism themselves. "Mysticism"
conforms the claims of religion and is viewed as providing a foretaste of life
after death.
1." 'MYSTICISM' is the immediate experience
of oneness with the Ultimate Reality. When we call mysticism an experience of
oneness, we mean that the relationship into which the mystic is inducted transcends
the ordinary distinctions between the subject and the object of between I and
thou. And the term 'Ultimate Reality' in the definition seeks to make clear
that the mystic knows himself to be involved with no more idea or thing but
with that beyond which nothing can be known or imagined." -
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA VOL. XV., P. 1129.
2."... religion in its most concentrated and exclusive form", as "that if the mind in which all other relations are swallowed up in the relation of the soul to God." --ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
3."The essence of Mysticism is the assertion of an intuition which transcends the temporal categories of the understanding. ... Rationalism cannot conduct us to the essence of things; we, therefore, need intellectual vision.” - ADOLE LASSON.
"... a stretching out of the soul into God
though the urge of love, an experimental knowledge of God through unifying
love."
5.“... ... the immediate feeling of unity of
self with God; it is nothing, therefore, but the fundamental feeling of
religion, the religious life at its very heart and centre." —OTTO
PELEIDERER.
6.“Mysticism is the consciousness that
everything that we experience is an element, and only an element, i.e., that in
being what it is, it is symbolic of something else." – RICHARD NETTLESHIP
7."Mysticsm” in religion is an immediate
knowledge of spiritual presence and a sense of direct contract with it. In
religions with a belief in personal God, Mysticism may involve a direct
communion with the Supreme Being. A mystical experience may come through visions
or ecstogies, or through meditation (the burning of mind on itself and into the
realm of the spirit). Mysticism in philosophy is the experience of personal
union with the Ultimate Reality, and is the belief that the chief end of man is
to seek such a union, Philosophical mysticism often becomes a pantheism that
sees God in all things." - NEW STANDARD ENCYCLOPAEDIA, VOL. VIII.
Sarojini
Naidu is the supreme poet of love. She is an Indian version of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning or John Keats. She deals with all the aspects and hues of
Love-union, separation, moods of hope, despair, challenge, frustration, sorrow,
expectancy, ecstasy etc. jealousy, suspicion, anger, revenge are also
there. Love in both violent and delicate aspects is depicted in her poetry.
Occasionally we discern an unmistakable strain of mysticism in her poetry,
especially in The Temple—sequence of poems, "Song of Radha, the Milk-Maid", "The Flute
Player of Brindaban", etc. It is for this reason that Sarojini is often
called the English Meera Bai. Engrossed in the love of Krishna, she is
unmindful of her immediate surroundings and abruptly cries out "Govinda!
Govinda!
—From Stanza II and I, "Song of Radha, The Milkmaid"
There is dearth of poems depicting her intense Love for God, desiring union with the Supreme Soul:
Similarly, she expresses the intense desire for union and is prepared to go to any length and pay any price to fulfil her wish:
Truly, many of "mortal moments are a session of the Infinite", as may be clear and amply illustrated by the above excerpts.
Sarojini's mysticism enchant, exalt and sanctify her poetry and qualify her to take her place among the great poets of all times.
Besides such poems as "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid", "The Flute-Player of Brindaban", and many other poems, she has The Temple—sequence of poems divided into three parts, each consisting of eight poems of spiritual love, “The Gate of Delight”, "The Path of Tears” and “The Sanctuary” corresponding to the temple architecture. Mysticism is the leading strain in these poems. In her love-poetry with an undercurrent of mysticism and spirituality the poet is very severe on herself often castigating flagellating herself for her lover. Throughout there is an exaggerated self-abasement and excess of emotion. But the path to the sanctum sanatorium (The Sanctuary) is through the annitutation of the self and the ago-the essential ingredients for merging with the Supreme Soul.