Keats's Sensuousness

Topic :-‘ Keats’s Sensuousness’

Name :- Upadhyay Devangana S.

Sub :- the Romantic Literature

Paper :- 05

Std :-  M.A. Sem-2

Roll No :- 06

Submitted to :- M. K Bhavnager University

-: Keat’s Sensuousness :-

·       Introduction:-

Keat’s short life was perceived by those

Who knew him to be of unusual intensity;

It insisted on being recorded in many ways, from the

Attempt to capture his ardent look with pencil

Or pen to the watchful preservation of his hastiest

Scrap of verse…..

                                                                                        Edmund Blunden

                English romanticism attains in Keats the final stage of its progress. Keats grew to be a poet in the atmosphere of romanticism dominate by Wordsworth and Coleridge. He felt their great influence and in the fervor of enthusiasm wrote, ‘Great spirits now on earth are sojourning.’ The traditions of the great romantic poets were carried forward by Keats There traditions reached their culminating point in his poems. All the qualities that characterized the romantic movement during the early nineteenth century found their culmination in Keat’s poetry. Since in his poetry we notice both romantic and classical features, it is necessary for us to differentiate between classical and romantic poetry. Romantic poetry aims at the complete expression of the individual as compared to classical poetry which aims at the expression of social experience.

                      Romantic poetry is marked by heightened sensibility and imagination, while classical poetry is marked by a sense of balance and proportion. Romantic art creates the kind of beauty which is strange, mysterious and uncommon; classical art tries to create the kind of beauty which is orderly, familiar and significant. Repose satisfies the classic; adventure lays emphasis on individual talent. In spite of the fact that in Keat’s poetry there is a fusion of both romantic ad classical qualities, he is most romantic of all the romantic poets of his times. H is is purest poetry. Let us now analyze the romantic qualities in Keat’s poetry.

                  All the romantic poetry had love of Nature and Keats was also a great poet of Nature. He had loved Nature for her own sake without finding any mystical meaning as Wordsworth found in the objects of nature. He was tremulous with joy at the presence of nature’s loveliness and charms. There was not a mood of earth he did not love, not a season that did not cheer and inspire him. For him the poetry of earth was never dead. He was in his glory in the fields. The humming of the bee, the sight of the flower, the glitter of the sun seemed to make his nature tremble. He was so deeply fascinated by Nature that he composed wonderful descriptions of the beauties of nature.

                  Romanticism had its roots in the soil of melancholy and weird sadness. In Keat’s poetry the note of melancholy and sadness is at many a place. We hear it only in La Belle Dame Sans Merci, in the Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Melancholy, but also in poems dealing mainly with Nature. The poet strikes this sad note of despair in the following lines from Ode to a Nightingale:

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

              The Indian Maid’s lament in Endymion is particularly representative of this haunting note of sadness in Keats’s romantic poetry:

To sorrow I bade good morrow

And thought to leave her far away behind

But cheerly, cheerly,

She love me dearly

She is so constant to me, and so kind

I would deceive her

Bt ah! She is so constant and so kind.

·       Keats’s Sensuousness

                     The term ‘sensuousness’ in poetry implies that it is related, not to didacticism, but mainly to the task of making a strong appeal to the senses of sight, he arms, small, taste and touch and employs techniques which simultaneously exploit the sensuous use of language ( among them, rhythm, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia, generating clusters of mouth filling sounds). A complicating factor is that in the past there has been a strong tradition of Christian asceticism, warning people against the seductions of the senses. However, it was Milton who declared that poetry should be ‘simple’, sensuous, impassioned, and so various poets have attempted to give extreme aural richness to poetic diction.

              Among all these poets Keats remains unparalled for the sensuous impact of his verse. What creates the impression of Keats’s supremacy is partly the sheer abundance of Keats’s sensuousness. He made an excellent use of all the genius. “It was a temper in Keats”, says Stop ford A. Brooke, “of unruffled pleasure, sensitive, girl-like sensuous pleasure in beauty and in the consolation of beauty to the soul. He flies from one beautiful object of beauty to another in a butterfly fashion, tasting and sipping honey and little caring to settle upon anyone. He is thus completely and frankly sensuous in his attitude towards Nature”.  Keats’s friend Haydon also bears testimony to the sharpness of his sense percetions:“ The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower the glitter of the sun seemed to make his nature tremble; then his eyes flashed, his cheeks glowed, and his mouth quivered”.      

·       Keats as the most sensuous of English poets

               At the beginning of his review of Keats’s poems and letters (1880), included in Essays in Criticism : Second series, Matthew Arnold wrote:

“No one can question the eminency, in Keats’s poetry,

Of the quality of sensuousness Keats as a poet is abundantly,

And enchantingly sensuous; the question, with some people,

Will be whether he is anything else”.

This impression does, to some extent, still persist that Keats was above all else a poet of sensuous experience, a poet who early in his career once proclaimed, ‘O for a Life of Sensation rather than of Thoughts’! (Keats’ letter to Bailey, 22 November 1817) Sensuousness is the part and parcel of Keats’s genius. Recently an anonymous reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement, nearly a hundred years after Arnold’s essay spoke of ‘the fleshly, sensuous, pictorial, unreflective nature of Keats’s verse: 

                   Fleshly’ is a fair and obvious epithet for Endymion, and the truth of the second and third of those adjectives is evident even to a casual reader. Keats is the most sensuous of English poets, although other poets are quite as sensuous, in their various ways what creates the impression of Keats’s supremacy in this respect is partly that the other poets are often doing additional things at the same time, whereas in his the sensuous tends to be isolated: they may put the experience in a critical framework, whereas he tends to relish it relatively uncritically. In other comparable poets the abundance of sensuousness is frequently the cumulative effect of extensive passages of writing, in Keats’s mature style what is so particularly remarkable is the richness of sense impression and sensation that he continually compacts into a few words – into such characteristic lines as.    

1.     ‘Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white and budded Tyrian,

2.     The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

The two brief quotations from the Odes just offered clearly illustrate the variety of diverse sense impressions, often in swift succession, that are so frequently evoked. In the first quotation, for instance, just thirteen words, there are references to colour, shape, scent, coolness, and even an odd, but characteristic, suggestion of silence.

·        Density of sensuousness as the most obvious quality of Keats’s poetry.

                   Keats is not philosophical poet as Milton and Wordsworth are. Even then we notice his concern about the mystery of human life both in his poetry and letters. In the process of throwing out scattered guesses and observation Keats touches on those problems of human life which have concerned the philosopher and the moralist. Yet a whole side of his work is strong in sensuous descriptions and does not seek to probe the mystery of life. In this connection David Masson writers,” The most obvious characteristic of Keats’s poetry is certainly its abundant sensuousness”. Some of his finest little poem are all but literally lyrics of the sensuous embodiments of the feeling of ennui, fatigue, physical languor, and the like, in tissues of fancied circumstance and sensation. In following his in there luxurious excursions into a world of ideal nature and life, we see his imagination wining about, as if it were his disembodied senses hovering insect-like in one humming group, all keeping together in harmony at the bidding of a higher intellectual power, and yet each catering for itself in that species of circumstances which is its peculiar food.

·        Keats’s use of all five senses in his poetry :-

              More than Wordsworth and Shelley, Keats reveled in sensuous pleasures of life. In Wordsworth the dominant sense is sight. He becomes a mere epicure of visual sensations, but he has not the falcon’s eye that Dorothy noted and admired in Scott. J. C. smith tells us that other senses save the sense of sight do not have a fair play in Wordsworth’s poetry. In Shelley’s poetry senses of sight and ear are dominant but he was not a pure sensuous poet because he made his poetry the instrument of social reforms. He is full of fire and fury against despots and tyrants, kings and priests. It goes to the credit of Keats alone that he enchantingly made use of all the senses in his poetry. He believed in a life of intuition, guided by high test of feeling, rather than a life lived by rule and devoted to purely mental activity. His art was full of passion; it was above all aspiration and desire, and the object of this desire was not the intellectual beauty of Shelley, but beauty that revealed itself to the enchantment of the senses. Keats’s poetry works by encouraging us to perceive - to feel – vivid and district sensuous impressions. We illustrate it from the Ode to a Nightingale:    

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the doughs

The above lines taken from stanza 5 of the Ode to a Nightingale alludes to the sense of sight, or its absence (I cannot see); the senses of touch and of smell (soft incense); and by the end of the verse, with its evocation of ‘the coming musk- rose, full of dewy wine, the murmerous haunt of flies’, the senses of taste and hearing have also been incorporated. A general recognition of this quality lead to the consensus that Keats’s poetry is particularly successful at depicting, representing or conveying ‘reality’ or ‘experience’, persuades us to imagine that we are literally perceiving the objects and the experiences that the verse describes.

·        His sensuous word – pictures :-

                 Keats’s poems are saturated with sensuousness. All the five senses of sight, smell, touch, and taste are enchantingly put together in his poems. In the following lines from The Eve of st. Agnes the appeal is to the eye, to the sense of touch, to the sense of smell, and to the ear:

Of all its wreathed pearls, her she frees;

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;

Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:

                                                              (Stanza XXXVI)

As Madeline prepares for bed we are told how she Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one. Now the sensory qualities we normally associate with jewels are brilliance, colour, and to some extent perhaps, their tactile properties Keats might have positively suggested any one of these qualities by some epithet like ‘brilliant’, ‘dazzling’, etc., or he might have left the sensory association to our imagination as he does in the preceding line, ‘Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees’. In either case (and this is true of the different descriptive reference ‘wreathed’) there would probably have been some remoteness of suggestive effect. As it is, the perception communicated through ‘warmed’, that the jewels still retain something of the heat of Madeline’s body, not only leads us to experience the jewels of this particular episode, instead of precious stones in general, but also bring us into imaginary physical with living woman.

                For Sound there is the ‘willful choir of small gnats in To Autumn, or the surging of the sea in one of his best sonnets:

It keeps eternal whispering around

Dissolate shores

For the sensation of touch there is;

Cooled a long age in the deep- deled earth

In the Ode to a Nightingale, or ‘the cold full sponge to pleasure pressed in Isabella.

            The opening lines of the Eve of st. Agnes describe extreme cold:

St. Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter child it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a cold;

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for haven, without a death

Past the sweet virgin’s picture while his prayer he saith.

We see the sense of smell in there line:

She was a Gordian shape of dazzling hue,

Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and hlue;

Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,

Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson – barr’d.

Again, for visual description we take an example from Lamina:

Full of silver moons that, as she breathed.

Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed,

Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries.

The sense of taste is well expressed in Ode to a Nightingale:

O for a breaker full of warm south:

Full of the true, blushful Hippocrene.

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci:

She found me roots of relish sweet

Of honey wild and manna dew.

·       Instinctive response to life:-

                  Keats’s response to life was deeply instinctive, as he wrote to Benjamin Bailey, ‘I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning’. Although it is possible to dscern a pattern of thought in his work, the dominating lecture of his poetry is his delight in the senses. He welcomed every lovely sensation and reveled in it to the full whenever the opportunity occurred. We learn that nothing escaped him, the song of a bird and the undernote to response from covert or hedge, the rustle of some animal, the changing of the green and brown lights and furtive shadows, the montions of the wind just how it took certain tall flowers and plants- and the way-faring of the clouds. We can illustrate it from Endymion:

 The nested wren

Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken,

And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf

Takes glimpses of thee; thou art a relief

To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps

Within its pearly house. – The mighty deeps,

The monstrous sea is thin – the myriad sea!

O Moon ! far – spooming Ocean bows to thee,

And Tellus feels his forehead’s cumbrous load.

              C.N Herford is of the opinion,

‘poetry as it came to Keats, was not a spiritual vision as with Wordsworth, nor an emancipating vision, as with Shelley but a joy wrought out of sensations as exquisite as Coleridge’s by an imagination not weird and mystic like his but plastic and pictorial” “Whereas Wordsworth spiritualises, and Shelley intellectualizes Nature, Keats is content to express her through the senses.” As a sensuous poet he falls into line with Marlowe and Tennyson.

·        Blending of sensuousness and contemplation in Keats’s poetry:-

               This delight in pure sensations gave way to the perception of the necessary relation of beauty with truth, and both with joy. As his mind matured, his symyathies broadened, and after the death of Tom he murmured: ‘Scenery is fine but human – mature is finer. ‘Thus, we can say that there is a blending of sensuousness and contemplation in his poetry. Keats’s mind is mainly sensuous by direct action but it also works by reflex action passing from sensuousness into sentiment. Certainly, some of his works are merely, extremely sensuous; but this is the work in which the poet was trying his material and his powers, and rising towards mastery of his real faculty, and his final function. In his mature performances in the Odes, for example, and Hyperion, sensuousness is penetrated by sentiment, voluptuousness is permeated by vitality, and aestheticism is tempered by intellectualism. In Keats’s place of poetry, the nucleus is sensuousness, but the superstructure has chambers or more abiding things and more permanent colours.

·        Life must be undergone:-

                 Keats wrote in one of his letters, ‘Life must be undergone’. The carefree, sensuous delight of the earliest verse gave way to a sterner mood in The Fall of Hyperion On 10 June, 1818, he wrote to Bailey, ‘I would reject a Patriarchal coronation – on account of my dying day, and because woman have cancers’. This is the world’, he wrote to George and Georgiana in March 1891, after the trying ordeals of 1818, - ‘thus we cannot expect to give away many hours to pleasure – Circumstances are like clouds continually gathering and bursting – while we laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events – while we are laughing it spouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck’. He wrote elsewhere: “I have been always till now almost as careless of the world as a fly – my troubles were all of the Imagination. Now I find I must buffet it – I must take my stand upon some vantage ground and being to fight – I must choose between despair and energy – I choose the latter – though the world taken on a quakerish look with me, which I once thought was impossible :

Nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass and glory in the flower

I once thought this a Melancholist’s dream

(Letter to Sarah Jeffrey, 31 May, 1819)

                           There was a tendency in ‘The Fall of Hyperion’ to be free from the hold of sensation. He was not satisfied with the life of grapple with the sorrows and suffering of the world. The spirit of humanitarianism that touched Shelley also came to have its influence on Keats. He started to cherish the vision of glorifying human life, and the grim truth began to

Have its way with the poet that higher scales of life could not be attained by anyone except those:

To whom the miseries of the world

Are miseries and will not let them rest.

                   The poet sought to give up the early ideal of sensuous poetry when he had once, written.

And they shall be poet kings

Who simply tell the most heart – easing things.

  For something higher and noble. Now he realized that he could attain immortality better by moving to higher tasks than merely reveling in sensuous joys:

Yes, I must pass for a nobler life.

Of human heart.

If Keats had lived for a few years more, he would have surely succeeded in realizing his new destiny, would have been another Wordsworth in his impassioned love of humanity.

·        Conclusion

                     At the end we came to know that how Keats use sensuousness in his work, and how it appear in his poetry. 

   

  

Topic :- The Satiric Vein in Donne’s Poetry

Name :- Upadhyay Devangana s.

Sub :- The Renaissance Literature

Pepa :- 1

Std :- M.A. Sem-1

Roll No :-07

Submitted to :- M.K. Bhavnagara University

“The Satiric Vein in Donne’s Poetry”

·      Introduction

                           There was an unprecedented rise of the spirit of satire in the last decade of the 16^th and opening one of the 17^th century. The exhaustion of the Renaissance spirit, religious and political controversies, uncertainty as regards the accession to the throne, the unpopularity of James 1,his extravagance and immorality, the clash between the old and new philosophies, all contributed to a growing sense of disillusionment and defeat self-introspection and self-criticism. It was but natural that satire should flourish under the circumstances. Men felt that the times were out of joint, eyes were focused on the many ills of society and so satire had its heyday.

“Donne is the greatest of the period, others being

John Marston, Joseph Hall, Ben Jonson etc.”

·      Ruggedness of Donne’s satires: Its causes

                         Donne has left behind him only five satires, all belonging to the early years of his poetical career, but the satiric vein penetrates even those Iyrics of his which are not professedly satiric. The harshness can be accounted for in a number of ways. As a both Saintsbury and Leishman notice, most of the Elizabethan satirists are harsh because they believed that the harsh and unpleasant nature of satire, needed a correspondingly harsh versification.

“It cannot be too often insisted that the harshness of which

Dryden and others accused Donne, and which is most apparent

In his satires, was deliberately cultivated, although it is much more

Apparent in his last two satires, the fourth and the fifth.

And we must remember that when Dryden and the eighteenth

Century criticism accused Donne of hardness they werethinking

Chiefly, if not exclusively, of his satires.”

Moreover, Donne did not intend to publish his satires so he did not take care to polish them up; further, the laws of versification were not fixed and much license was allowed in the age.

·      Analysis of Donne’s satires:

·       Satire: 1

“The originality of Donne as a Satirist, his themes,

And his many merits and demerits are easily brought out by a

Brief analysis of his five satires.”

                     In the first satire, Donne describes how he was persuaded to leave his books and take a walk with a foolish companion, who after smiling at ‘every fine silken painted fools’ they met, let him first for a celebrated tobacco-smoker, then for a celebrated judge of clothes, and finally for his mistress, in whose house he for his mistress, in whose house he quarrelled with other gallants and was turned out of doors with a broken head….. Here realistic detail, such as Jonson loved, predominates over mere wit, although there is s passage in which he insists on his companion’s inconsistenct and absurdity in hating naked virtue, and although souls only enter into felicity when they are naked of bodies, and although man was naked in the state of innocence…..

“The poem is also much more dramatic than most

Elizabethan satires, which generally deal in mere

Description and denunciation…….”

·       Satire: 2

                                The second satire on poets and lawyers is much less individual and characteristic and much closer to the general run of Elizabethan satires poets who starve themselves by writing for idiotic actors, ho ‘ write to Lords, rewards to get,’ Who plagiaries these Donne declares like other monstrous sinner, don’t trouble him, for they punish themselves but he cannot stand Cocus  who is proud of being a lawyer. Then by a very abrupt and obscure transition Donne proceeds to satirise men who take up the practice of law for mere gain and who like thet William Gardiner on whom Dr.Leslie Hotson flashed his lantern combining law with usury, cheat prodigal heir out of their with usury, cheat prodigal heirs out of their estates.

·        Satire: 3

                            In his Third satire, on search for tre religion, says Leishman

“Donne is inspired and his wit and his similes never get out of hand.

He is not merely witty but passionately witty, or wittily passionate

And the poem gives an unforgettable picture of an eager mind at

Wor-for even here Donne is in a sense dramatic as he is nearly in all

His best and most characteristic work.”

The poem proves too, thet his investigation of the rival claims of the Roman and the Anglican churches, although it may have begun partly and even, perhaps, largely from motives that We should call worldly was nevertheless prosecuted with what we should call ”Sincerity” , a burning sincerity for the rough line of this satire are penetrated by an intense eagerness for truth on the discovery of which the soul’s salvation depended and by a deep contempt for indifference.

              We must seek for truth he exclaims, but where is she to be found? Some seek her at Rome, because she was there a thousand years ago, others at Geneva others at home, while some are content to suppose that all religian are the same:

“But unmoved thou of force must one, and forc’d but one allow;

And the right; aske thy father which is shee, let him ask him, though

Truth and falsechood dee neare twins,yet tru’h a little elder is; Be busie

To seeke her, believe mee this Hee’s not of none nor worst, but seekes the best.

To adore, or scorne an image, or protest, may all be bad; doubt wisely in strange

Way to stand inquiring right, is not to stray; to sleepe, or runne wrong, is

On a huge hill Cragged, and steep, truth stands, and he that willreach her,about must and about must goe;”

       “An unforgettable picture…… an almost dramatic expression of an eager mind at work.”

·        Satire: 4

                                    “The Fourth Satire is the longest of Donne’s satires, the roughest in versification and on the whole the least interesting the nearest to the common run.” Donne describes how, having been foolish enoughto go to court, he was unable to be a great traveler, linguist, and repository of secrets. Having got rid of him by lehding him a criwn. Donne went home and reflected on the folly and futility of those whom he had seen at court. There is no clear plan or dominant idea, detail is piled upon detail and although lines are often stinking, they do not co-operate to produce the desired effect.

·       Satire:5

                        “The fifth and last of Donne’s satires is on suitors and law officers. Here we feel continually that the particular abuse Donne professes to be satirizing is merely a topic for the display of his wit, which is a thing we almost never feel in reading Dryden’s satires, however true it may be that he never writes as one inspired by his subject in itself.”  Almost the whole point of the following passage turns on the exploitation of the double meaning of the word angel:

“Judges are Gods; he who made and said them so,

Meant not that men should be forc’d to them to goe.

By means of Angels; when supplications we send to God, to Dominations,

Powers, cherubim’s, and all heavens courts if wee

Should pay fees as here Daily bread would be

Scare to kings.”

·      Originality of Donne :The All – pervading satiric

                          Though Donne was considerably influenced by the contemporary love of antiquity, he was too great a genius to be a mere imitator or camp-follower. Donne was no imitator for he could not but stamp his individuality upon anything that he wrote. Thus Donne may borrow something from the Romans and yet we find the elements of satire in his works working beyond the bounds five formal attires that he wrote. Gransden  stresses the historical significance of Donne as a satirist when he writes:

“Donne put much more into satire than any English

Writer did  before him, and in any history of English

Verse his satires would have to be described as a landmark.”

·      Satire on Contemporary Life

“Donne frequently satirizes contemporary life,

And glimpses that we have of this life are very

Revealing whether it be the ordinary social, circle or

  life at the court.”

·      Satire on False sense of Honor

                          Donne is conscious of the apparent concern of the renaissance people with honor, when he speaks of their greed for wealth and favoure. The exuberant sense of honor as an object of display is ridiculed both y Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in their plays. Donne also recognizes honor as a mere affectation between the attack by the dramatists and Donne that while Shakespeare and Ben Jonson do it through their Fall staffs, corvine, etc. It is this integrity that is conveyed in ‘Break of Day’   through the following line with the subtle suggestion that the worldly sense of honor is a fake:

“Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

If it could speak as well as spie, this were the worst,

That it could say, that being well, I faine would stay,

And that lov’d my heart and honor so,

That I would not from him, that ha them, go”

·      Religious poetry :The satiric Vein

                           In fact Donne could not be committed to anything partial; the total was always important for him. He was not fascinated and overswayed by the Renaissance stress on reason; rather he question it and shows its limitation when he says in Holy Sonnet :xIv :

“Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,

But is captitv’d and proves weake or untrue”

In his religious poetry also Donne often writes in a satirical vein. He positivel asks people to seek ‘true religion’.

·      The Progress of the soul

                     It is the same liberality of outlook that embraces the satire in the progress of the soul. Wherein the intention of Donne was to parade all the heretics of history from Eve to calvin and Queen Elizabeth by tracing the progress of the soul of the apple which Eve tasted in the Garden of Eden, and his conclusion is what the moderns may very well appreciate:

“There’s nothing simple good nor ill alone;

Of every quality comparison the only measure is and judge”

·      Donne’s Originality

                            Donne is one of the most humanisitic of the great English poets and therefore, one of the least typial of satirists with Donne this concern for value does not become an opportunity for idealism; rather his sense of realism gives him a chance to satirise the idealists. This can be specifically perceived in his love poems. He has no patience with petrarchan idealism whose- notions of love are not to be comprehended on the plane of reality. On the other hand, he would not even be with the protagonists of physical love that cannot stand any test of endurance:

“Dull sublunary lovers love whose soule

Is sense cannot admit absence, because it doth

Removethose things which elemented it.”

The satire cannot be missed in what the lover imagines the heart will tell him:

“Yet goe to friends, whose love and means

Present various aontent;

To your eyes, ears, and tongue, and every part, If then your body

Go,what need you a heart?”

The element of satire is implicit in the progress of thought in the prohibition from the two apparently contradictory warnings in the first two stanzas to the synthesis in the final stanza:

“Yet, love and hate mee too”

·      Satire on Religious controversies

                      In satire 3 his consciousness includes knowledge of the contemporary religious controversy, the claims of the Roman Catholics the protestants and the Anglicans each sect deeming itself to be the true follower of God by being committed to a particular creed, and he satirizes each of them in a tone that suggests the worthlessness of the dogmatic protection and who entertain creed. He attracts even those who entertain an indifferent sense of contempt for every sect, because he generalize anr thinks that none of them can be good:

“carless phygious doth abhore all, because all cannot be

Good as one knowing some woman, whores, dares marry none.”

·      Conclusion

                              To conclude: the element of satire in Donne’s poems is all-pervasive and is not confined to any particular subject; here as elsewhere in Donne, the range is cosmic, for Donne can satirize love, religion, social life, scientific discoveries ,old idealism every kind of exuberance that produces a gap between what things really are and what they appear to be; in fact the incongruity in any sphere is what forms the basis of his satires. His individuality is seen in his realistc attitude that is expressed through wit, dramatization and with a marked vividness that leaves no scope for obscurity. Despite some shortcomings, Donne must be raned very high as a satirist. K. W. Gransen’s view;

“literary history of England Donne’s satire must be

Described as important landmarks”

Topic :- Kanthapura as aGandhian Epic

Name :- Upadhyay Devangana s.

Sub :- Indian Writing in English

Pepar :- 4

Std :- M.A. Sem-1

Roll No :- 07

Submitted to :- M.K. Bhavnagar University

Kanthapura as a Ganghian  epic

·        Introduction:-

                     Mulk Raj Anand, R.K Narayan, Raja Rao those three person are great dramatist of the Indian Writing in English. In Indian literature we have many forms like Epic, Lyrics, Drama, Short sorties and Fables but we should wit of Novel very long time. Bana’s ‘Kadambari’ and Subandhu’s ‘ Vasavadatta’ are also novels but the description would not rally fit; and, besides, there were isolated marvels for the Novel, property so called, we have to wait till the latter half of the nineteenth century.

                    The first Novel written in Bengali was ‘ Alaler Gharer Dulal’ which is come out in 1858. However the real beginnings  with the work of the great Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. His first novel publish in English “Rajmohan’s Wife’ . It was followed next year by ‘ Durgeshnandini’ in Bengali. His other novels are:

·        Kapalkundala

·        Vishavriksha

·        Krishnakantar Uyil

·        Anandamath

·        Dexi chaudhurani

In the meantime Raj Lakshmi Devi’s ‘the Hindu wife’ was published in 1876 . Toru Dutt’s ‘Bianca’ in 1878.

                 There novels, written in English have for us today no more than an antiquarian or historical interest.

                  This is beginning of the novel form. Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, and Raja Rao, there are great novelist in India writing in English.

                  Raj Rao is most remarkable person of Indian Writing in English ,in Novel. A novelist and a short story writer, he too is a child of the Gandhian Age, and reveals in his work his sensitive awareness of the forces let loose by the Gandhian Revolution as also of he thwarting or steadying pulls of past tradition. His four books up-to-date are the novels  Kanthapura, The serpent and the Rope, The cat and Shakespeare, and The Cows of the Barricades.

                        ‘Kanthapura’ is Raja Rao’s First novel . Raja Rao was born in 1908 and die in 2006. He is a distinguish writer and philosopher, is acknowledged as the author of the first major Indian novel in English. Beginning his career in writing in Kannada for an Indian periodical, he moved to Mercure de Frane, a Paris periodical, where he served on the editorial board for several years. Later, he also taught Indian philosophy at The University of Texas. Apart from Kanthapura  his work include :

·        The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories

·        The Serpent and the Rope

·        The cat and Shakespeare

·        A Tale India

·        The Chessmaster and His Moves

Internationally recognized Raja Rao’s novels blend philosophical and spiritual insights into the fabric of everyday life. for the serpent and the Rope (1960), he received the sahutva Akademi Award in 1964. He also received the restigious Neustadt international Prize for Literature in 1988.

‘ (Raja Rao ) is a novelist in search of equation, in search of understanding a novelist looking for explanation, for wisdom….. (he) has a reach, a capaciousness, a resonance, that is sufficient to contain the largeness.’

                                                                            _ Edwin Thumboo, poet and critic

·     Kanthapura as a Gandhian epic

                       Raja rao’s Kanthapura is best cited to illustrate this purpose. The novel recodes the Gandhian impact on atypical Indian village through an informal but very intimate narration of an elderly widow, Acchakka.  Gandhi is again portrayed here as Rama, Krishna, and Shiva whose birth has a divine significance. As the novel says, once Valmiki,the great sage and the writer of Ramayana, in the novel goes to the Lord Brahma and says:

“O Brahma, you who have sent us the Prince propagators

Of the Holy Law and sages that smote the darkness of

Ignorance, you have forgotten us so long that men have

Come from across the seas and the oceans to trample on

Our wisdom and spit on virtue itself….. O Brahma, deign to

Send us one of your gods so that he may incarnate on

Earth and bring back light and plenty to your enslaved

Daughter. O’ sage…siva himself will forthwith go and

Incarnate on the earth and free my beloved daughter from

Her enforced slavery.”

          Raja Rao in Kanthapura has portrayed women as active participants or revolutionists against the social and political disturbances during the satygraha movement in India. In the opening chapter of the novel there is a folk song which is an invocation it the goddesses Kenchamma, whom the villagers believe to have killed a demon to save their young ones:

“ Kenchamma, Kenchamma ,

Goddess bening and bounteous,

Mother of earth , blood of lie ,

Harvest – queen , rain – crowned,

Kenchamma, Kenchamma ,

Goddess benign and bounteous “

        This is symbolic. The woman folk in village draw inspiration from the great goddess showing tremendous courage when they come in contact with the British soldiers. Rangamma, a childless widow, the daughter of a learned father Ramakrishnayya of the Brahmin community , in the course of the novel becomes the source of inspiration not only for the woman of the village but also for young man who look up to her as Aunt Rangamma . She emerges as the symbol of courage and boldness or otherwise can be seen as Kanchamma , the incarnate . In the novel Raja Rao dutifully described the situation of Indian Woman . He try to described condition of widow how they suffer from society. The political stance of woman under Rangamma shows their allegiance to the practical man , Gandhi rather than the idealist Nehru , despite the men folk including Moorthy resolving to follow Nehru. To quote  for instance a letter written by Moorthy to Ratna:

“Since I am out prison , I met this Satyagrehi and that ,

And We discussed many a problem , and they all say the

Mahatma is a noble person , a saint , but the English will

Know how to cheat him , and he will let himself be

Cheated . Have faith in your enemy , he says , have faith in

Him and convert him . But he world of men is hard to

Move , and once in motion it is wrong it stop till the gold

Is reached . And yet , what is the gold ? Independence ?

Swaraj ? is there not Swaraj in our states , and is there not

Misery and corruption and cruelty there ? Oh no , Ratna , it

Is the way of the masters that is wrong.”

          ‘Kanthapura’ is the most powerful of the Indo – Anglian novel portraying the impact of the Gandhian movement on the Indian people. The time 1920 is a renaissance period of India because this time Gandhi movement become more powerful. Raja Rao with this novel wants to represent this movement indirectly The scene is set at Kanthapura , a remote south Indian village near Hassan. The evolution of the national movement as it advances through various stages till it gains strength has been traced forcefully and realistically. In this novel Moorthy is a symbol  represent as a Gandhi. In this novel we can see Gandhian non-violent non – cooperation movement, through the Moorthy. Gandhi aimed at the total involvement of all section of the people and had so launched a programme at socio-eonomic , religious levels. His programme of action was fourfold.

1.     Swadeshi and Khaddar were necessary for Swaraj , hence he encouraged Charkha , weaving of one’s clothes and boycott of foreign clothes .

2.     Eradication of untouchability and other social evil like pardah system so that woman and people of lower class could play their part in the freedom struggle.

3.     Eradication of poverty , illiteracy , castism and village uplift.

4.     Communal harmony stress on truth and non – violence. Congress communities were formed to carry out these programmes.

                  In the novel Moorthy places the very Gandhian programme of action before the people of ‘ Kanthapura ‘. Gandhi’s message of truth and non – violence is carried to the remote part by fellow workers , communities are formed , Satyagrehies trained to carry out  the programme. Publicity material is brought from the city and freely distributed; Moorthy inspires them to Charkha spinning and weaving; literacy is spread; and they are trained to be non – violent in the face of repression by the rulers . The people of ‘Kanthapura’ are enthused with the spirit of Gandhi and they march ahead heroically despite all the suffering and the hardship they have to undergo. In the end it truly becomes a mass movement , the villages comprising men and women of all castes and professions and the labourers of the coffee estate readily meeting the onslaught of bureaucracy. An unequal fight it proves it be for the Satyagrahies; they are maimed , broken and scattered ; they leave ‘Kanthapura’ and are forced to settle at Kashipura , when the non – cooperation movement was abruptly brought to an end by Gandhiji. They had still not lost their faith in Gandhi , thought felt a bit uneasy . When Gandhi signed the Gandhi – Irwin pact , it was see as the right step.

                      Indian sensibility is essentially religious and even politics gets spiritualized. The religious element and the socio- political issues are artistically transformed into one entity. The objective is independence, but the means adopted are religious: ‘Harikatha’, ‘Bhajan’, ‘fasting’, and ‘prayer’ non – violence and truth. By using the mythical technique through harikatha juxtaposing the past and the present, Raja Rao has not only brought religion in politics, but has lated Gandhi as the invisible God and Moorthy the Avthar Gandhi’s trip to England to attend the Round Table conference to seen as rama going to Lanka to Rescue Sita Gandhi was Rama going tobring back bharat Mata. It is the use if the mythical technique that has made Kanthapura a Gandhian Epic a Gandhian myth

Daniel O’ an Irish politician said

“Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong”

C. D. Narasimhaiah praiaing ‘Kanthapura’ as a Gandhian novel says:

“If ever in India boy or girl today or in years to come

Wishes to gain some insight into story of India’s struggler

And suffering for independence it is in Kanthapura as it is in

Nehru’s Autobiography that he must expect to find it, and not in

Those tomb called Histories of the freedom movement, in which

The suffering and the song that was born behind the dull

Tracts of the laborious scholar untouched by Gandhi’s

Living flame. If Gandhi has been the cause of one

such minor classics in the English language, he has helped

to enrich the language as he has helped him to

exalt him that he wrote.”

·      Conclusion

                        It is remarkable to not that culmination of Kanthapura has an element of doubt while shifting from Gandhis to Nehruism and it is here that sane critics raise question and it is on the integrity of Rao as a Gandhian thought doth Gandhi and Nehru have the same destination, there is difference in his ‘barrowing and difference’, Gandhi is abit nostalgic and principle unscientific and so unwelcomed. Right from the beginning a reader feels orthodox village, the great village, the great is completely transformed Moorthy, the motivation is complete and experience a sort of nationalism. Transformation continues ; Moothy continues to develop, though he does not get support from all quarters and imperialism seems to be crumbling. Achakka’s thinking and behavior reflects her understanding of the dynamic between the village and the Indian nation as the blending of tradition and modeninty. Kanthapura undergoes the process and the process is an internal one. Achakka is a perpetuator of Hindu revivalist propaganda and Rao stands as aHindu reformers to encourage self exploration.