chapter-ii: quest for self in life and...
TRANSCRIPT
32
Chapter-II:
Quest for Self in Life and Literature
One of the most important theme and sub themes of literature is a quest
for ‘self’. In life as well as in literature the attempts to understand ‘self’
are predominant. All human activities are perhaps centered on these
endeavors to coming in terms with the self. The philosophers all over the
world and of all the ages have inquired into the question of what I am and
what I am doing here. The concern of query has led to various theories
and discourses on the topic. In literature also the search for self is a
predominant concern of authors of all genres. This search is more
obvious, direct and subtle in the poetry for the simple reason that poetry
is basically lyrical and autobiographical in nature. But before we go into
that, it is primarily important to understand what is self. All our activities
sprung from this fountainhead.
A step back to the discussion of ‘self’ is life itself. The most inclusive
perspective of the human individual is what coomonly is called his life.
‘A life’, without further definition suggests some biological totality,
sometimes the temporal span of an organism between birth and death.
Although it is conception that we can not dispense with, by itself does not
suggest what is peculiarly and comprehensively human. The tendency
then is to think of conscious life, as the essential perspective of human
order. But in the discussion of the ‘search for self’, we may need to
restrict ourselves to experience, poetic self, awareness and the role played
33
by consciousness. In the words of Justus Buchler, “The order that
constitutes a human being (or human being) is itself located in wider,
more pervasive orders. For a man or any other natural complex to be
located in or included in such an order is to share traits that are of wider
scope. Any order, any complex includes and is included in other orders.
There is no privileged order of being, no inherently primary order.
Another way of saying this is: any order may be primary in a given
respect. Thus the order of a man’s consciousness is one among the
countless orders of the world, and one among the orders that go to make
up his being. It may become primary, however, when man stand in a
relation to other complexes which are felt, or of which they are aware. It
is the kind of order, and presumably the only kind, which can define its
own limits, and which can define the forum of primary belonging to other
orders. (Buchler, Justus. The Main of Light- On the Concept of Poetry.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. p. 90)
There are few subjects in metaphysics which are more interesting than
the topic of ‘self’. The word ‘self’ is not a very common one in ordinary
language. We are probably more familiar with the reflexive form e.g.
myself, yourself, himself and so on. Earlier philosophers wrote much
about the ‘soul’, and if we turn to the writings of this century we find that
yet another term has gained considerable currency- that of the ‘person’.
The word ‘self’ is perhaps a conveniently neutral word which avoids the
religious connotations of the former term and the existentialist aura of the
other.
Selves are evidently very unique phenomena. Even in saying this one is
saying something which would give offence to many. Selves are not
34
phenomena at all, some would say. What we mean is something obvious,
something which the man in the street would agree with, and even
philosophers too in their day-to-day life- selves are not the same as the
objects. Human beings have spatio-temporal existence. They have a
beginning, live, and then, as far as we can see, come to an end; at least, if
they continue, they do not do so in exactly in the same way that they did
before. Whatever account we give of the self we shall have to remind
ourselves constantly of the fact that the self is intimately related to the
body. The body is the place of our existence.
The most remarkable thing about the self is that they are conscious. Not
only this, for animals is after all conscious too, but selves are self-
conscious. On the evolutionary view man has emerged on the scene of
things after a long process in which mutation followed mutation. The
most amazing thing that has emerged during this process was the gradual
growth of what we might call ‘awareness’, something that can be pointed
to and which comes full flowering in the self consciousness of man.
Another remarkable characteristic of selves is their capacity for
‘memory.’ The memory of animals is relatively short. The time bound
nature of man’s existence is something which takes on a special
character, for man is able not only to live in the present, which indeed he
must, but to recreate the past in memory and to look to the future in
expectation or dread.
Selves are plural and one of the strongest arguments given in the favor of
the pluralism is the fact that there is no one ‘I’. Selves, however, are
capable of coming into a form of association with each other. If there is
35
‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘He’, there is also the possibility of ‘We’ and recognition
of this in others in the word ‘They’. But the self is something not simple.
It is a constant struggle going on inside every human being to find
coherence among the selves. The innumerable selves within one self are
source of constant conflict and lack of harmony inside a human
existence. The search, in fact, of every human being, religiously or
otherwise, is to find coherence among and amidst these internally
fighting selves.
This leads to the question of the identity of self. Margaret Chatterjee puts
the problems associated with the identity of the self by saying that, “The
question of the identity of the self is no less fraught with puzzles. In what
sense are you the ‘same’ as you were ten years ago? There are similar
puzzles too about the identity of physical things. Hume has given a
brilliant analysis in his Treatise showing how empirically-based are our
criteria for judging one thing to be the same as it was earlier date. I the
case of physical things, the problem is less difficult. In judging of the
identity of persons general structure resemblance may or may not be
there. When we say ‘so and so has changed’ we often say this on the
basis of a change in the other’s attitude to ourselves. (Chatterjee,
Margaret. Philosophical Inquiries. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1968. p.
202)
Perhaps the characteristic of the self that has most impressed the
philosophers is the quality of self which knows. Now this brings up the
whole question of what it means to ‘know’. Consciousness has always
been considered to be the presupposition of knowing. But philosophers
have been by no means in agreement as to what sort of self-knowing
36
demands. Knowing in the case of man is bound up with his capacity to
speak, with his capacity to put his knowledge in propositional form. Man
has a dual capacity, both to do and to think.
Margaret Chatterjee has given a detailed analysis of the various views
about the self in the book titled as Philosophical Inquiries. She notes that,
“The view that the self is a substance was held by the rationalist
philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the origin
of the theory is to be found earlier than this, in the writings of Aristotle
and Plato, and in the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages. The
rationalist theory of the self does not stand up very well against a battery
of arguments from both epistemology and psychology. Kant showed that
whereas knowledge does require a cognitive subject this is by no means
the same thing as to say that knowledge requires a substantial self. The
self, the empiricist will say, is reducible to its experiences, although
whether presupposed in the notion of ‘experience’ is something which is
itself not an experience is something to give us a pause. On a strict
empiricist view the concept of substantiality is a redundant one. The
empiricist account of the self is also known as the ‘serialist’ or
‘phenomenalist’ theory. The other contemporary theory of the self which
must be mentioned is that of existentialism. The most noteworthy feature
of this existentialist treatment of the self is the way in which it lifts the
discussion out of its usual context of cognition. That man is being who
acts rather than contemplates had been emphasized by philosophers
before. The existentialist reminds us that man is not only a being who
tries to know but a being who feels and acts.” (Chatterjee, Margaret.
Philosophical Inquiries. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1968. p. 213)
37
J. Krishnamurty, a non-conventional teacher and philosopher gives the
following account while understanding ‘self’: “I would like to ask you
what your fundamental, lasting interest in life is. Putting all oblique
answers aside and dealing with this question directly and honestly, what
would you answer? Do you know? Isn’t it your self? Anyway, that is
what most of us would say if we answer truthfully. I am interested in my
progress, my job, my family, the little corner in which I live, in getting a
better position for myself, more prestige, more power, and more
domination over others and so on. I think it would be logical, wouldn’t it,
to admit to ourselves that that is what most of us are primarily interested
in –‘me’ first? Some of us would say that it is wrong to be primarily
interested in ourselves. But what is wrong about it except that we seldom
decently, honestly admit it? If we do so, we are rather ashamed of it. So
there it is- one is fundamentally interested in oneself, and for various
ideological and traditional reasons one thinks it is wrong. But what one
thinks is irrelevant. Why introduce the factor of its being wrong? That is
an idea, a concept. What is fact is that one is fundamentally and lastingly
interested in oneself.” (Krishnamurty, J. Freedom from the Known.
Chennai: Krishnamurty Foundation India, 1969, p. 46)
Although this is very basic understanding of the self it is relevant because
the fact is that we are basically interested in ourselves only. Only after
recognizing this fact we can proceed further. In understanding the real
self the concepts and ideologies don’t work. What is really valuable is to
observe the factual details, and if possible, to accept them. So a human
being is selfish by nature. Even the ‘self’ in which a man is interested is
not a whole one. It is fragmented into innumerable pieces. In the words
of Krishnamurty, “We live in fragments. You are one thing at the office,
38
another at home, you talk about democracy and in your heart you are
autocratic, you talk about loving your neighbors, yet kill him with
competition; there is one part of you working, looking, independently of
the other. Are you aware of this fragmentary existence in yourself? And
is it possible for a brain that has broken up its own functioning, its own
thinking, into fragments-and when you admit time into the process in of
understanding yourself, you must allow for the every form of distortion
because the self is a complex entity, moving, living, struggling, wanting,
denying, with pressures and stressing influences of allsorts continuously
and work on it. So you will discover for your self that this is not the way;
you will understand that the only way to look yourself is totally,
immediately, without time; and you can see the totality of your self only
when the mind is not fragmented. What you see in totality is the truth.”
(Krishnamurty, J. Freedom from the Known. Chennai: Krishnamurty
Foundation India, 1969, p. 33)
So one sees there is no becoming of the self, there is only ending of
selfishness, of anxiety, of pain and sorrow which are the content of the
psyche, of the ‘me’. There is only the ending of all that, and that ending
does not require time. J. Krishnamurty believes that “Our lives are so
short and during that short period there is nothing to learn about the
whole field of psyche, which is the movement of memory; we can only
observe it. Observe without any movement of the thought; observe
without time, without past knowledge, without the observer who is the
essence of the past. Just watch. When you watch attentively, with
diligence, there is nothing to learn; there is only that vast space, silence
and emptiness, which is all consuming energy.” (Krishnamurty, J.
39
Krishnamurty to Himself. Chennai: Krishnamurty Foundation India,
1987. p. 70)
In order to understand oneself, it is imperative that one understands as he
is; without any fabrication or duplicity. The understanding of what you
are, what ever it be- ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous- the
understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of
virtue. J. Krishnamurty is one of the major exponents of the theories of
knowing one self as he is. He writes that “The transformation of the
world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self
is a product and a part of the total process of human existence. To
transform one, self knowledge is essential, without knowing what you
are; there is no basis for right thought; and without knowing yourself
there can not be transformation. One must know oneself as one is, not as
one wishes to be which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal;
it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish
to be. To know oneself as one is requires an extraordinary alertness of
mind, because’ what is’ is constantly undergoing transformation, change,
and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular
dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action.” (Krishnamurty, J.
The First and the Last Freedom. Chennai: Krishnamurty Foundation
India, 1954. p. 32)
This brings to the conclusion regarding the methods of searching the self.
There is, in fact, no particular time tested method for self knowledge.
Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result- and
that is what a man wants. We follow authority- if not that of a person,
and then of a system, of an ideology- because human beings want result
40
which will be satisfactory, which will give them security. Human beings
really do not want to understand themselves, their impulses and reactions,
the whole process of their thinking, the conscious as well as the
unconscious.
In fact, if there can be any tool which can help in knowing oneself is that
of awareness. The poets have been gifted with this faculty to be aware of
everything; happening inside as well as outside. But awareness is not
introspection. In a question to “What is difference between awareness
and introspection?”, J.Krishnamurty gave the explanations that first “Let
us first examine what we mean by introspection. We mean by
introspection looking with in oneself. Why does one examine oneself? In
order to improve, in order to change, in order to modify. You introspect
in order to become something; otherwise you would not indulge in
introspection. Awareness is entirely different. Awareness is observation
without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding, because there is
no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If I want to
understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not
condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure.
There must merely be the silent observation of the fact. There is no end
in view but awareness of everything arises. That observation and
understanding of that observation ceases when there is condemnation,
identification or justification. Introspection is self-improvement and
therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness isn’t self
improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of self, of the ‘I’, with all
its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands and pursuits. In
introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there
is no identification and condemnation; therefore there is no self
41
improvement. There is a vast difference between the two. Introspection
leads to frustration, to further and greater conflict; whereas awareness is a
process of release from the action of the self; it is to be aware of your
daily movements, of your thoughts, of your actions and to be aware of
another, to observe him. You can do that only what you love somebody,
when you are deeply interested in something, when I want to know
myself, my whole being, the whole content of myself and not just one or
two layers, then there obviously must be no condemnation. Then I must
be open to every thought, to every feeling, to all moods, to all the
suppressions; and as there is more and more expansive awareness, there
is greater and greater freedom from all the hidden movement of thoughts
motives and pursuits. Awareness is freedom, it brings freedom, it yields
freedom, where as introspection cultivates conflict, the process of self
enclosure; there fore there is always frustration and fear in it.”
(Krishnamurty, J. The First and the Last Freedom. Chennai:
Krishnamurty Foundation India, 1954. p. 156)
One can ask a question: why do we seek after all? We are always seeking
some form of mystery because we are dissatisfied with the life we lead,
with the shallowness of our activities, which have very little meaning and
to which we try to give significance, a meaning; but this is an intellectual
act which therefore remains superficial, tricky and in the end
meaningless. And yet knowing all this- knowing our pleasures are very
soon over, our everyday activities are routine, knowing also that our
problems, so many of them, can perhaps never be solved; not believing in
any thing, nor having faith in traditional values, in the teachers, in the
gurus, most of us are always probing or seeking, trying to find out
something really worthwhile, something that is not touched by thought,
42
something that really has an extraordinary sense of beauty and ecstasy. In
Zen Meditations, this is also suggested. Scott Shaw gives the account that
“People seek salvation because they are experiencing emptiness in their
lives. This emptiness can take the form of lack of love, lack of purpose,
lack of fulfillment, and so on.” (Shaw, Scott. Nirvana in a Nutshell.
Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2004, p. 14)
The religious way to search the self has failed. There is more disillusion
than satisfaction. The Zen way of preaching also hints at that:
When people enter onto the spiritual path
They generally seek guidance from a higher power.
They often times go to a guru or a spiritual teacher
In order to be directed down to the road to Nirvana.
If we are all human beings
And we all possess Buddha nature,
What does one person possess that another does not?
What makes one person more than the next?
Is it simply they have more disciples?
How many people, throughout history,
Have claimed to hold the keys Nirvana only to be later
revealed as a fake?
If somebody claims to hold the key to Nirvana-
43
Ask them to give it to you right away.
(Shaw, Scott. Nirvana in a Nutshell. Mumbai, Jaico
Publishing House, 2004, p. 18)
So there is given a difference between self-actualization and self-
realization:
Self-Actualization is not Self-realization.
A Self-Actualized individual focuses on what their needs
are,
How to systematically obtain them,
And how each individual should interact with one another.
A Self-Realized individual understands that
Needs and proper interactions are only as temporary as this
physical existence.
Thus, overtly seeking them keeps one away from Nirvana.
(Shaw, Scott. Nirvana in a Nutshell. Mumbai: Jaico
Publishing House, 2004, p. 52)
To look into the question of how this self is shaped is equally important.
Along with conditioning, circumstances and environment, sentiments
play key role in shaping the self. Sentiments are innumerable, depending
as they do on the aspect of an object to which they are linked, the
cognitive core round which they are organized and the quality of the
impulse which originates from it. They are the mainsprings of all human
activity. They are part of mental structure, whereas emotions are only a
part of mental process. The march of time and civilization engenders new
44
sentiments and tend to dissolve old ones. New modes and objects of
individual and social living beget new experiences and their recurrence
results in the formation of new sentiments. Within a community, they
vary according to individual. The advancement of self knowledge and
world knowledge creates new fields of experience which promote the
growth of new sentiments. In this regard, V.K.Gokak gives the example
of poetry. He says that “The nationalism of modern Indian poets, the
imperialism of Kipling, the internationalism of Tagore, the democracy of
Whitman, the pacifism of Gandhiji, the socialism of younger Indian
poets- all these are the sentiments of modern Indian poets. The fact
remains that there is a continuous progression of sentiments along the
lines set by the evolution of humanity. The goals that a human being
pursues in life, individually or collectively, are neatly summed up by
ancient Indian thinkers as Wealth (artha), Satisfaction of Desire (kama),
Duty (dharma) and Illumination (moksha).” (Gokak, V.K. An Integral
View of Poetry. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1975, p. 68)
Thus there is a close relationship between the poet and the structure of
personality. In the essay titled as ‘The Poet and Structure of Personality’,
V.K.Gokak refers to Herbert Read and mentions that “Sentiments
therefore form the very substance of man’s personality. Herbert Read
makes the distinction between character and personality. Character is the
tragic conformity of a man to his ego-ideal. It is the power to keep the
selected motive dominant throughout life, inhibiting impulses in
accordance with a regulative principle and maintaining certain integrity
in the midst of the herd. The emotions are largely irrelevant to character,
for character expresses in action man’s attitude towards the world. It is
the front that he actively presents to the world. A man with perverse
45
intelligence, like Don Quixote, is a deformed character. Character is thus
a limited organization, based on a selected motive or sentiment or
sentiments to which the claims of all other sentiments and emotions are
sacrificed. (Gokak, V.K. An Integral View of Poetry. New Delhi:
Abhinav Publications, 1975, p. 68)
How does the personality expand? In other words how does the ‘self’
getting shaped and reshaped. Herbert Read thinks that this happens
through the intermissions of inspiration- the light that comes from the
latent memory of verbal images in the preconscious state of mind or from
the unconscious in which are hidden, not only the neural traces of
repressed emotions but also those inherited patterns which determine our
instincts. More significant than inspiration, the essential faculty that
makes the poet is the capacity to cultivate the inherent activities of one’s
own personality without division or inner revolt. V.K.Gokak offers the
following remarks that “Thought and personality go hand in hand and
their goal, whether confessed or not, is that state of vision or revelation
which all great spirits have attained. The highest personality is
inconceivable without the intuition of pure being. In the fleeting
moments of his vision, the poet’s vision penetrates very deep and far, and
the degree of its penetration is measured by the range of the poet’s
thought or intelligence. The mind must rise above the realm of existence
to the realm of being, and this can only be achieved by vision.” (Gokak,
V.K. An Integral View of Poetry. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications,
1975, p. 69.)
Attitudes also play a vital role in shaping and re-shaping the ‘poetic self’.
In fact it’s a reciprocal process. The patterns or possibilities into which
46
sentiments tend to be grouped may be called modes of perception or
attitudes- the attitudes of the seer towards the object. Unlike the moods of
human beings, these moods or attitudes have the quality of permanence
about them. The moods of an individual may change from moment to
moment. Sentiments vary from one individual, country or age to another.
But though sentiments which, in a way, constitute their substance vary
enormously in this way, the moods or attitudes always remain the same
for they are the possible relations which a subject can have with object.
These possibilities do not change unless human nature itself is
transformed out of recognition. V. K. Gokak gives the elaborate
description of attitude by defining it as “an innate disposition or pre-
disposition and, in this form, it exists in every human being. It is a
significant element in the composition of his personality through which
he responds or reacts to the world around him or within himself. A
number of the sentiments evolved by him constitute the substance of an
attitude.” (Gokak, V.K. An Integral View of Poetry. New Delhi: Abhinav
Publications, 1975, p. 72)
V.K.Gokak gives the following other tendencies of attitude to understand
the ‘poetic self’:
1. It is a significant element in the composition of the
personality.
2. Secondly, an attitude brings with it its own peculiar feeling tone.
3. Thirdly, an attitude is rooted in human experience. It is not a
momentary feeling or undeveloped disposition, a raw response to
reality. It proceeds from a hierarchy of sentiments.
47
4. Fourthly, an attitude is directed towards a peculiar aspect of the
object, the aspect being determined by the structure of the
sentiments that constitute the attitude.
5. Fifthly, an attitude is not a fleeting impulse but an enduring mode
of perception. Moods are to a poet what leaves are to tree. They
flutter for a while and disappear. But attitudes are the branches that
divide the tree of human personality and yet show that it is one.
6. Sixthly, the relation between the attitude and vision is that
between a mood and an attitude. (Gokak, V.K. An Integral View of
Poetry. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1975. p. 72)
In the same essay, V.K.Gokak gives “twelve clearly defined attitudes at
work”. He elaborates that “If we think of the most comprehensive human
personality, that of a Vyasa or Shakespeare, we can detect in it twelve
clearly defined attitudes at work. ‘Negative capability’ seems to consist
in the free and unfettered exercise of these attitudes proceeding from a
state of inspiration and leading to a state of vision. We do not include
among these twelve a state of anoetic quiescence. It is a blank or neutral
state of consciousness void of any responses or reactions. It is a distinct
from a state of pain or pleasure, of pure sorrow or delight. It is
uncreative.” (Gokak, V.K. An Integral View of Poetry. New Delhi:
Abhinav Publications, 1975. p. 73)
So according to Gokak, these twelve attitudes of poetic self are as
following:
1. The first attitude may be termed the Attitude of objectivity.
2. A kindred attitude is that of Intellectuality.
48
3. The subjective attitude is the opposite of the first two.
4. The attitude of Ardor is rooted in hope and in a certain amount of
self confidence.
5. The attitude of Pity reveals another side of our personality.
6. A sense of superiority implies a critical attitude towards others.
7. The attitude of Repulsion has the impulse of indignation at its core.
8. The next attitude is one of terror.
9. The attitude of sorrow shows that the object is not only desired and
loved.
10. The attitude of sublimity concentrates on the transcendence of the
object.
11. The attitude of delight shows the object and subject held together
in a state of union.
12. Finally, the attitude of peace implies a mastery of all that tumult of
soul that is connoted by the foregoing attitudes.
The most comprehensive personality will have the curiosity to know
everything in the universe. He will be grounded equally well in the
intellectuality. He will just not be a naked mass of sensibility but
sensibility organized according to an inner perspective. He realizes the
romance of the past and of the future; of the natural and supernatural; the
rural and the urban; the retrospective and the introspective: in short, he is
at home in all the avenues of subjective. While his sensibility in terms of
ardor and pity is profound, he can turn the search light of his critical
reason on everything. He can identify himself dramatically with any
mood of repulsion. He is as much at home with sorrow as with sublime.
And all this, not out of mere good will for an aesthetic creed but out of
49
the very depths and innermost springs. The core of such personality
moves in many directions.
How can the study of poet’s attitudes help to understand his self?
V.K.Gokak offers the logic that “It will help us considerably to grasp the
range of a poet’s perceptions if we analyze the attitudes prominent in his
work and the level on which his sentiments are formed. There is much
hope and enthusiasm in Shelley as there is sorrow. Beauty and sublimity
strive for mastery in his work.” (Gokak, V.K. An Integral View of Poetry.
New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1975. p. 93)
One of the simplest understandings of ‘self’ is ‘personality’. But
personality is outer expression of inner self. May be there can be
modifications and fabrications attached to the personality of a person, but
even then the easiest traces of ‘self’ can be found in the study and
observation of a person. On personality, there are innumerable
influences. One of the major influences is that of culture. We can easily
say that culture shapes the personality. Man’s outstanding characteristic
is his personality. Heredity exerts universal influence in shaping
personality but the social and cultural environment is equally important.
P.K.Dhillon, in an essay ‘Culture and Personality’, focuses on the
cultural influences on the personality by saying that “Kluckhohn and
Murray (1953) have brought out the fact that man is in certain respects
like some other men (cultural group) and at the same time like no one
else. Each individual’s behavior is strongly influenced by the culture in
which he is born and brought up even differences in subcultures make
vast differences in personality. The all embracing influence of culture on
the interactions actions, attitudes and values cannot be underestimated.
50
There are numerous definitions of culture but Taylor (1871) has the
credit of providing the first formal definition: “culture taken in its widest
sense is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief art,
morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as member of society.” This definition includes everything that is
acquired or learned by individuals as members of society.” (Dhillon, P.K.
‘Culture and Personality’ Quest for Truth ed. Mittal K.K: Delhi, Prof.
S.P. Kanal Abhinandan Samiti, p. 307)
The human child unlike other living organism completely depends on the
culture for its survival. No infant can escape his cultural heritage. Culture
exists in influence mainly because it provides ready made solutions
(though not always correct) to the characteristic problems of the society,
thereby making life simpler and easier for the struggling morals. Culture
is not only a set of devices for meeting the needs of the members of the
society but it also provides a coherent outlook and way of life.
There is also a psychological effect of culture on self. In the words of
P.K.Dhillon, “The psychological effect of each culture is that it develops
a somewhat distinctive personality structure different from the other
cultures. An infant is born into a world of established values and he
begins to teach them without reflection and without awareness that
people of other cultures may not share these values. One only becomes
aware of one’s cultural values when meeting people of alien cultures.”
(Dhillon, P.K. ‘Culture and Personality’ Quest for Truth ed. Mittal K.K:
Delhi, Prof. S.P. Kanal Abhinandan Samiti, p. 309)
51
In the same essay, Dhillon also gives the cultural Anthropologists and
Sociologists’ view on the cultural effect on personality. He notes that
“Cultural Anthropologists and Sociologists have carried out hundreds of
studies to find out the differences existing in the personalities of the
members of various cultures. The pioneers are Ruth Benedict and
Margaret Mead, who have emphasized the powers of cultures in shaping
human behavior. Individual differences in the personalities of the
members of a cultural group no doubt are due to the difficulties in the
biological potentialities of each individual in the process of socialization
within the same culture. The important and significant persons, who are
the agents of culture, transmit the culture in the form in which it makes
an impact upon them.” (Dhillon, P.K. ‘Culture and Personality’ Quest for
Truth ed. Mittal K.K: Delhi, Prof. S.P. Kanal Abhinandan Samiti, p. 311)
Now let us come to the discussion of the search for self with reference to
the poetry and a poet. Inquiry must be regarded as only one species of
query. Art is another. The art of poetry is another. All exemplify the
interrogative temper. In poetry this does not entail asking a question and
looking for answer. In science it not only does, but further entails both
the initial separation of questions and their structuring. For these
questions do more than raise the hope of unequivocal answers; they guide
the process of achieving them. Justus Buchler explains the point in
discussion by giving example of Greeks. He notes that “When the ancient
Greeks said that the pursuit of wisdom begins in wonder, they laid the
foundation for the concept of query. But there are at least two kinds of
wonder. There is the wonder that seeks to be appeased and a wonder
which to which appeasement is irrelevant. In the species of query
exemplified by science, the former dominates; in that exemplified by
52
poetry; the later. Scientific wonder seeks to resolves questions it
provokes. Poetic wonder seeks no resolutions; its interrogative ness is not
generated by vexations. Each of these forms of query methodically
discriminates traits in the world….Terminally; a scientific finding
excludes and opposes other findings previously thought to be possible.
Terminally, a poetic finding opposes no others. Yet it is the finding that it
is, and not another. Scientific wonder, despite its need for mitigation,
extends itself systematically. Poetic wonder seeks its own extension,
though each poetic product inevitably curbs itself as a contrivance.”
(Buchler, Justus. The Main of Light- On the Concept of Poetry. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974, p.110)
But before that, it is essential to know what a poet is. A beautiful
description is given by James Reeves by quoting Wordswoth and
Coleridge. It runs as “What is a poet? This is one of the questions asked
by Wordswoth and Coleridge in their famous preface to the second
edition of Lyrical Ballads. What is a poet? To whom does he address
himself? And what language is to be expected from him? He is a man
speaking to men: man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility,
more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human
nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than to be supposed common
among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and
who rejoices more than other men in the spirits of life that is in him;
delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in
the going on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them
where he does not find them…. He has acquired greater readiness and
power in expressing what he thinks and feels…A bold claim is made
here. Can we agree that poets are so very different from other men? Have
53
they more lively sensibilities, more understanding of human nature, more
comprehensive soul, and more powerful imagination than the rest of the
mankind? Leaving this aside for a moment, I think we can agree that a
poet is ‘pleased with his own passions and volitions’ and that he ‘rejoices
more than other men in the spirits of life that is in him’. In other words,
he not only has a marked capacity for sheer animal delight in life, he
takes pleasure in this capacity, and rejoices in the sheer gratification of
his instincts. We may agree that he is acutely sensitive, and that he has a
powerful imagination- that is, the capacity to project himself beyond his
immediate surroundings.” (Reeves, James. Understanding Poetry.
London: Heinemann, 1965, p. 40)
Moreover, there is a process going on in constructing a poetic self.
Sonjoy Dutta-Roy gives an analytical description of Reconstructing
Poetic Self, where in he discusses the progressive methods of the poets
like Tagore, Whitman, Eliot and Yeats. It seems that the ‘self’ in ordinary
sense of the word and that self as ‘poetic self’ are different and same at
the same time. He cites the example of Mahabharata and says that “A
text like Mahabharata generates an un ending discourse on personalities,
selves, ways of life, philosophies in a state of creative conflict by the
very suggestive and indicative quality of its language….Besides, the
Mahabharata is the autobiography of one man, Vyasa himself, the
history of one family, the chronicle of one country- because one human
being Janamejaya wants to know about himself- and how can he know
himself without knowing his mula, sthula,phula ( roots, shoots, fruits.)”
(Dutta-Roy, Sonjoy. (Re)Constructing the Poetic Self. Delhi: Pen craft
International, 2001, p. 16)
54
Thus the story of the poet can be extracted from the book of poems and
presented in a historical and discursive format. Which means, that a book
of poem can contain, as silentsub-text, the stories in the historyof the
poet? This hidden narrative is so unlike the explicit historic narrative of
formal autobiography or fiction that it is more often ignored in theories of
narrative structures. In this regard Sonjoy Dutta-Roy presents two
models. He notes that “we can notice a continuum of two models of
thinking and writing, of self consciousness and self-representation. One
is the poetic model and the other is the historic model. In the historical
mode it include all fictional, discursive, and scientific modes of
representation and exploration operating within a formally set time that
organizes, connects, combines facts, experiences, ideas and data. In the
poetic model, I include all focused, concentrated, meditative, intuitive,
associative modes of representation and exploration that resist temporal
formulations by preserving them.” (Dutta-Roy, Sonjoy. (Re)
Constructing the Poetic Self. Delhi: Pen craft International, 2001, p. 23)
A book of poems, planned and edited by the poet, could contain both
these models. It is poetry, by its very nature, but is shaped in
autobiography as the poet discovers hidden narratives connecting poem
to poem. The process begins with the backward glance over the body of
one’s poetry, a glance that reveals stories of the growth of the poet from
poem to poem in secret narratives encoded in the poems, and only later
discovered by the poet.
Neither the persona nor the poet we abstract from the poem is ever quite
the actual man: so much is clear. Nevertheless, the picture of a poet can
be abstracted from every poem, a picture made up partly of qualities the
55
poet wishes to credit him with, partly of qualities he does not deliberately
display. In satire, probably, the poet’s arrangement of this picture is most
conscious because the satiric poet detaches himself from his persona. But
the attitude that contrasts with that of the persona is not the attitude of the
poet himself, but the face of the poet as he himself has prepared it. In
light satire the author shows us a sly, laughing face. In lyrics, too, the
dimensions of the poet’s personality in his poems are subtly various. In a
sense, all that is in the poem reveals what he is; in another sense, every
particular character, every momentary attitude, every habit of reflection,
every turn of phrase is drawn from what the poet is, from what he has
observed in himself. But in addition to all the characters whose actions
are reported by an observer, there are two specific personalities that
define every work of art: that of the speaker and that of the implicit poet.
Neither of these is a living poet himself, they are divided from him but
the same gap that differentiates art from life. But either of them may
serve, and may be intended to serve, as approximate representation of the
poet himself.
In fact, the poet in the poem, the intelligence with which the poet
identifies himself and with which the reader is invited to identify himself,
may exist any where between the persona and the whole poem, Poet and
reader meet together most clear and most comprehensive. But since
different ages have different views of meaning and of the poems, their
location of the poet in the poem will vary. While persona always serves
as an apparatus for giving perspective on the surface action and events of
the poem, the area of vision at which poet and reader meet provides a
perspective from which the actions and events can be interpreted as
meaningful in a world of meanings.
56
Once upon a time poetry and science were one and they both were
supposed to search ‘a truth’ with different tools. If poetry is a way of
knowing, it is a means towards a special kind of knowing. What is this
special kind of knowing that is claimed from poetry? Poetry gives us a
keener awareness of life. This argument may be a bit vague, but from the
poetry we read we definitely get the idea of awareness at work. There can
be objections raised to this notion. One of the major objections is based
on perception. We know what we do know through our senses. Science is
concerned with the perceptible world: poetry, though it uses the material
of the perceptible world, is concerned with the imperceptible. But the
imperceptible admits of no examination, no proof; therefore no activity
within the field of the imperceptible can claim to produce knowledge.
But the truth of poetry and more precisely, the process of knowing by
poet through poetry can only be perceptible to those who go through the
poetry with the same kind of sensitivity.
The discussion of ‘imperceptible’ takes us to the ‘inner world’ of poet.
The notion of inner world goes very far. But with reference to searching
the self through poetry, to examine the inner world in very specific terms
is very important. But a few questions, at least, can be raised with regard
to the belief that such a world is the world in terms of which poetry is to
be understood. These questions are nicely posed by Justus Buchler. “Is
there an inner world common to all poets? Or is each poet’s world his
inner world? Or is every private inner world continuous with every
other? Such a continuum of private worlds would constitute a fairy
common world. And if this is the world of poetry, is it closed to all
poets? Is it, indeed, the world of poetry or the world of poetry? In other
57
words, is it accessible to all but expressive only but poets? Is the inner
world there for poets to enter, or is it there only because there is poetry?
Is the world of actual poetry an outcome of the inner world, a product of
that world? Or is the world of poetry, as constituted by poems and other
linguistic complexes, that which gets to be called “inner”? What is to be
found in the inner world? Is there any thing besides the feelings or ideas
of the poet- of poets? If there is nothing but feelings and ideas, what are
these feelings or ideas about? To what do they relate? The outer world?
Or are they feelings about other feelings- with no need to trace how the
original feelings arose?” (Buchler, Justus. The Main of Light- On the
Concept of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. p.23)
To describe the poet’s world as the world of experience is conceptual
empty. The reason is not merely that the term “experience” has many
meanings, all established if not clearly articulated in either common or
theoretical usage, and that some of these are incompatible with others
even in the face of subtle interpretation, but that none of these established
meanings can be regarded as intrinsically more legitimate than any other.
Some of these meanings remain useful and hard to get along without. But
there is reason to believe, and increasingly as time goes on, that the
philosophic usefulness of the term is exhausted. Justus Buchler explains
that “To say that the poet resorts to “experience” is about as clarifying as
the parallel saw that the scientist resorts to “experience.” The experience
of the poet is intended to be contrasted with “fact”. The experience of a
scientist is intended to be contrasted with fancy. Everyone resorts to
“experience”; nor is it necessary to “resort”. In one sense or another, in
one respect or another, everyone experiences. Sooner or later it is evident
that those who speak of the poet’s world as the world of “experience”
58
neatly entrap themselves. For inevitably, in seeking to reinforce the
integrity of this domain, they also call it “inner experience”, thereby
implicitly accepting “outer experience” as equally experimental and
therefore equally relevant to the designs of the poet.” (Buchler, Justus.
The Main of Light- On the Concept of Poetry. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974. p. 27)
Though poetry and poets existed since the time immemorial, it is only
recently that modern individual man has turned inward into himself,
seeking to know all that he is and to unify that all he knows himself to be.
The inner quest for the totality of the self, uneasy ardent self
introspection, cultivation of self consciousness, does not go too far back
in time. Somewhere in the heritage of the myths and the exploration of
the unconscious lie hints of language continuum with the possibility of
recovery and assimilation felt with in the individual. The poet is no
longer the writer of epics depicting vast realities of impersonal allegories,
or the praiser of kings and courts, or the presenter of the large dramatic
actions, or the narrator of great historical events. The court, the battlefield
and the drama is all inside the individual poet and he is protagonist of his
poetry. The names of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Byron thus
suggest individual poetic personalities created by the poetic texts, in a
way in which the names of Chaucer, Spencer or Shakespeare don’t.
Sonjoy Dutta-Roy sums up the discussion nicely by saying that “Every
great poet in the recent times can be seen to develop gradually an
extremely self conscious and individual sense of being a poet in his time
or beyond his time. Inevitably it leads to an ever expanding retrospective
view of one’s poetic career and the compulsion to unify, connect,
combine as much of one’s poetic life as possible. This is where a reading
59
of a poems reveals that how this unity of being or unification of
sensibility takes place, becomes very important. We can locate the
relationship between the poetic act and the autobiographical act right
here. This would apply equally well to the poets celebrating the full-
blooded poetic personalities (like Yeats or Tagore) and to the intellectual
poets talking of impersonality (like Eliot). For the style can be
impersonally-personal or personally-impersonal but it can not escape the
intrinsic relationship between the two.” (Dutta-Roy, Sonjoy. (Re)
Constructing the Poetic Self, Delhi: Pen craft International, 2001. p. 30)
There is also a difference between experiencing and feeling all in the
universe and only passing through those immediate happenings which
affect the poetic self. The understanding of the selfcan begones through
this way as well. Brian Lee gives the example of Rilke and Eliot to make
this point. He says that “Rilke took on the burden of experiencing all
things with a more naked determination than Eliot- a singleness of
purpose which is reflected in his resistance to any form of religion- as
institution, or politics as institution, and also in his expressed love to the
example of Christ along with the rejection of the doctrine of the Christ as
mediator between man and God. To be a poet, to re-confirm praise of the
Creator, the poet himself is to become the mediator, through language, of
what he tries to experience without the protective resistance of any
‘armature’ at all. Nothing must interpose between the self and ‘reality’; in
the conjunction of the two one can at last say ‘One is at one.” (Lee,
Brian. Theory and Personality- The Significance of T.S.Eliot’s Criticism,
London: The Athlone Press, 1979. p. 104)
60
Another very crucial aspect associated with searching the self through
poetry is marketability of poetry in general. This of course is a brain-
child of Marxist way of criticizing texts and the authors of the texts. In
fact the whole gamut of literary activity can be brought under the Marxist
way of perception. That may be a different issues altogether, but there
definitely an effect on the poetic self by the market forces affecting
literature. Randall Jarrel gave a nice illustration in an essay titled as ‘The
Obscurity of the Poet’ by saying that “knowledge of literature is not an
essential requirement of the society of which one is a part. We belong to
a culture whose old hierarchy of values- which demanded that a girl read
Pope just as it demanded that she go to church and play the pianoforte-
has virtually disappeared; a culture in which the great artist or scientist,
in the relatively infrequent cases in which he has become widely known,
has the status.”(Jarrel, Randall. Poetry and the Age, London: Faber and
Faber Limited, 1955. p. 26)