EARLY INDIAN POETRY
Indian English Poetry is not just a branch of Indian literature in English. It is now an essential part of Indian- English literature. In fact, it primarily defines Indo-Anglian literature in the sense that in its birth, Indian-writing in English came to the force with a global recognition. Like American poetry, Indian English poetry is highly distinctive in various aspects. It is not a product that sprang into being in a span of a few years or a few decades. It is a well-furnished product, thoroughly polished from its raw state into its present having undergone an evolution for more than a century since its inception in the early nineteenth century.
India is a multicultural, multi-lingual and multi-racial country and its varied regions, cultures, races, languages and religions contributed amply to the enrichment of Indian-English poetry. In the early nineteenth century, the poets were severely assaulted and mercilessly ridiculed for their so called anti-national Anglophile tendencies. They were condemned. Nevertheless, the Indian English Poet quite heroically, weathered all the humiliations, winning global recognition and reputation.
The evolution of Indian English Poetry makes an interesting history that goes back to pre-independence India and links it up to the Post-independence India. The various socio-cultural factors played a very significant role in shaping the sensibilities of the educated in India during this period. With the introduction of English language as the medium of instruction in schools, colleges and universities, the people in India came in contact with the whole world outside India and interacted with the intellectuals of different countries in the world. They grasped their country's position politically, socially and economically.
With Derozio, who was a teacher in senior section of the Hindu college, there came a regeneration in Bengal with "The Fakeer of Jungheera" which is a long undulating poem where Nuleeni the heroine who is a young Hindu widow is on the verge of mounting the sacrificial pyre whom she never loved, thus escaped with the bandit Fakeer to his cave but with the twist Nuleeni's fear came true and Fakeer's life is lost when the army arrives at the abode of Fakeer and Nuleeni cradles him in her arms and dies together. Derozio thus depicted the inhumanity of sati, the false morality of the women and the hypocritical chanting of the brahmins.
Derozio's intense awareness of India's past glory manifests in many of his poems. In "To India my native land" Derozio goes to the extent of imagining India as a goddess beauty of the halo of her glory. Derozio desires to review and recollect India's past with passionate devotion.
"well-let me dive to the depths of time,
And bring from out the ages, that have rolled
A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime"
Derozio's another sonnet, "The Harp of India" recalls the glory of the past of India through an image of the musical instrument which produced sweet sound once upon a time but is totally silent now:
'Thy music once was sweet-who hears it now?"
Recollecting India's rich heritage, he considers it his prime duty to regain the country's noble culture
"Those hands are cold—but if thy notes divine
May be by mortal wakened once again,
Harp of my country, let me strike the strain"
These sonnets are more attractive to the reader because of the theme of love, death, patriotism and Indianness respectively and the language being English in its medium which makes the line linger in the readers mind.
Toru Dutt represented a very crucial period of Bengal and her poetry shared the quality of being 'distinctively post-colonial'A major displacement in various aspects had occurred: change in religion, place and learning foreign languages like French and thus she translated many French works into English. "A sheaf gleaned in French fields"; the only book published during her lifetime brought her well deserved international acclaim.
Toru's seven miscellaneous poems put together at the close of 'Ancient Ballads' are more or less autobiographical and the experiences and the impression of the poetess in this poem is extremely personal.
The two sonnets 'baugmaree' and 'the lotus' have been praised by one and all. In the first the poetess displays her love for nature where he calls the garden as 'primeval eden' which is girt round with its sea of foliage and amidst it one is bound to feel refreshed and cheerful and is finely executed :
"One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval eden, in amaze."
The lotus professes to give the origin of 'the queenliest flower that blows'. To end the strife whether the lily or rose were queen, psyche at last went to flora and asked for a flower that should be 'delicious as the rose and stately as the lily in her pride'. The result was the lotus, rose-red and lily white.
'Our Casuarina Tree' expresses a poignant grief for the loss of her sister Aru and brother Abju recollected thought of the sight of the tree under whose shadow they played as children are no more and might have reached to an 'unknown land' and thus wishes that the wail of the tree should reach them as she is confined to bed with her illness lying awake all night. The last stanza of the poem unfolds her desire for the immortality of the tree and thus ends like
'my love defend thee from oblivion's curse'
Toru Dutt's poetry intrinsically relate to a nation's language, to its life and tradition. Toru Dutt's poetry circulates between various literatures French, English, and Sanskrit that she read, wrote and translated and the Bengali tongue she was born into.
Prominent poets named henry Derozio, Toru Dutt, Tagore, Aurobindo, Vivekananda, and so on have stretched and refined the domains of Indian English poetry and the major elements in their works are nature, love, separation, Hellenism, nationalism, humanism and freedom which formed the framework of sensitive minds. They steeped in Indianness bit by bit and revealed the evolution of a unique poetic approach that probe the inner and outer world and exhibited immense ethical commitment to society.