LIFE KINDLES THE FLAME OF POETRY

LIFE KINDLES THE FLAME OF POETRY

SPEECH

Learned Friends,

I am asked to speak on Creative Experience - in Literature. Creative

experience is a time-worn subject. However I shall endeavour to say a

few words in the light of my experience as a Poet.

Life kindles the flame of poetry, the poet being the 'wick' that burns

to shed warmth and light. Sun can show visible objects like buildings,

trees, rivers, birds, hills, people and so on. Poetry shows on the other

hand, life with its joys and sorrowers, secrets of life, problems of life and

finally its solutions. Wisdom is given in capsules of 'metaphors' Metaphor

is the basic unit of the poem.

Wise men say that it is not right to demystify poetry by submitting it

to critical analysis which is perforce involved in a narration of creative

experience. Nevertheless, no less than intellectuals defied this and

analysed the Act of Creativity, in Art: and specially in poetry, volumes of

criticism evolved from centuries on end. However to my knowledge no

poet on his own explained how he got his symbols, metaphors and his

Purple passages. Either the Poets or Critics said only in general terms in

what state of mind the poet got his lines and what happened to one to

reach that state of mind. In the East and to some extent in the West too,

in the old world, Dialectics of Poetry was an intense activity in Literature

and in the East particularly Indian Sahitya Sastra flowed down the

centuries with uninterrupted continuity, perhaps from times earlier than

the 4th Century B.C, down to about 16th/17th Centuries A.D

Earliest known Rhetorician is Bharata in whose times Play and

Ballad were the only dominant genres - but it is obvious that Bharata was

the last Author on the Dialectics of Play - writing which indicates after a

long duration of time Play- Writing was reduced to a trickle and

eventually vanished. Then followed the endless period of kaavya. While

in the Play action i.e, Abhinaya is the crucial factor, in Kaavya Metaphor

i.e. Alankaara is the crucial factor. With Bhamaha probably in between

the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C. the Era of Kavya Shastra commenced

ringing the curtain on the Natya and Natya Shastra. After Bharata nobody

wrote a natyashastra. In the modern times in India, Play- Writing draws

on the techniques of the Western Play.

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This is only a preface to say that a naration involving critical analysis

of how his symbols and metaphors are acquired by a Poet in the given

cases will demystify the poetry and rob it of this enchantment. That too,

it is bound to happen when the Poet himself indulges in such narration.

Even the Critics do it, their analysis and interpretation are not uniformly

the same but vary from each other whereby the mystery of poetry

survives and the poetic enchantment continues. But when the poet comes

out with the unfolding of his secret his statement becomes the final on the

issue and the statements of the critics differing from that of the poet

become invalid wholesale. Thus the art of Literature ceases to be 'the

moveable feast', and becomes a dead fish by one such grevious mistake

of the Poet.

Nonetheless I would speak in general terms how the Symbols and

Metaphors that a Poet gets are like uninvited guests who spring a pleasant

surprise on the host the Poet. After he comes out of the poem, the poet

himself feels surprised how they came to him. In other words how they

occurred to him. So the Symbols and Metaphors are not deliberately

manipulated and captured like criminals by the police.

Symbols and Metaphors visit only those who have prepared

themselves as the medium to receive those visitors. The poet is of course

only the ordinary individual but with the difference that he cultured

himself by going near and getting involved in life and Literature. By such

a process of involvement one ceases to be the ordinary individual and

becomes too sensitive and therefore suseptible to the invasion of life on

him. He is final limit, and even a whiff of wind can knock out a note of

melody from the vibrant strings. At this point the individual is called Poet

Referring to this condition called 'poet' Bharata says Yortho hridaya

samvaadee yasya bhaavo rasodbhavah Shareeram vyaapyathe thena

shushkam kaashtham ivaagni naa.

(the object with which the poet gets involved and thereby gets totally

involved due to constant engrossment with it, spreads through out his

body from head to foot, like fire spreads through a piece of dry wood).

The French poet Beaudelaire said that the poet reaches this condition by

'perfected sensibility' and the Spanish poet Lorca called it 'sensibility

perfected by reading and experience'.

It is in this condition that the poet's physical EYES become inert so

to say and the THIRD EYE the metaphysical eye opens. The third eye is

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the VISION which sees the invisible things through the visible things;

that is, 'the thing in itself" as kant called it.

Charles Baudelaire lines are for instance useful here to explain what

I said 'the furniture appears to be dreaming and the cloth materials

speak a silent language like flowers', 'the vast park abandons itself to

the eye of the scorching sun like Youth to the domination of love' here

'furniture', 'cloth materials', 'flowers', 'park', 'sun', etc., are seen by the

physical eye but 'furniture dreaming', 'silent speech of flowers', etc., can

only be seen by the metaphysical eye which is called by the Indian

Kaavya Shastra 'darshanam'. 'Naanrishih kavirithyukthah rishishcha

kila darshanaath/ samastha vasthu dharmamscha tatva prakhyaa cha

darshanam'. (kaavya koutukam by Tauta Bhatta). Balzac called it the

'second vision and the greaf Russian Poet Mayakovsky described it as

'the celebrated absent - mindedness of the poet'.

But the most vivid and appealing description of the condition called

'poet' is given by Sharada Tanaya in his Bhava Prakasham as follows.

'parasyasukhaduhkhadeh anubhavena chetasah tadbhava bhavanam

yena bhavet tadanukoolathahtat satwam' he says that Satva Guna which

an individual attains by abhyaasa i.e. practice renders him emotionally

too delicate, too kind and extremely sympathetic, by which he is pained

when his fellow-being is pained, he is happy when his fellow being is

happy. Here fellow-being includes all the living beings of the

creation. This is called 'karuna vedithwa' in Ramayan.

'tathahkarunavedithwaath adharmoya miti dwijah nishaamya

rudateem krauncheem idham vachana mabraveeth' - The more famous

line is 'shokhah shlokathwa maagathah' so out of 'shoka' the poet rises

like the sun. 'shoka' here is equivalent to 'RASA' taadaathmya.

The poet in this condition characteristially reacts with great

vehemence against 'adharma' i.e, 'injustice' and takes the side of

dharma i.e justice, spontaneously. This is how the poet is the real supreme

court of a country.

I think enough is said of the magnificent role of the creative artist.

Thank you.

Central Sahitya Academy

February 22nd, 1995 New Delhi

Seshendra : Visionary Poet of the Millenium

http:// seshendrasharma.weebly.com