251

POETRY AS PERSONALITY

Every form of art is the expression of the artist‟s personality.

This is true in the case of poetry and poets also. Every poem that the

poet composes is not merely the expression of his emotions,

thoughts, reflections, musings and vision, but each and every word

and line in the poem carries the personality of the poet which is

distinctive. When the whole poem is subjected to a close scrutiny,

all words and lines in the poem imprinted with the unique

individuality of the poet reveal the personality of the poet, as the

poet‟s personality runs through the poem as a sort of undercurrent.

To understand and grasp the personality of the poet, the critic needs

to penetrate through the poet‟s words and poetic lines and to take a

deep dive into the poem‟s undercurrent where the poet‟s personality

lies hidden. Most poets usually refuse to make their personalities

explicit, wearing it on the surface of their words and lines in their

poems and they choose to have their personalities camouflaged.

This is the practice adopted by most English poets and Indian -

English poets, who veil their personalities in their poems.

252

There is another kind of poets who never like to conceal their

personalities in their poems. Their personalities are so transparent

that each and every word and line in their poems carry them on the

surface. These poets indite certain poems to demonstrate to the

world what stuff their vibrant and distinctive personalities are made

of. Just as we can see in a mirror our physical appearances, the

reader can look into each poem and assess the personality of the

poet very clearly. We can read the poet‟s poems only once and

catch his whole personality instantly, simply because the poet is

astoundingly candid, bares his whole self and places it into our

hands. It is for the reader to have the rare delight of imbibing the

vibrant and beautiful personality of the poet. Harindranath belongs

to this school of poets with transparent personalities.

Harindranath penned a considerable number of poems through

which he bares his whole personality, employing poetry as an

effective means for the revelation of his personality. Though a

mystic, Harindranath is essentially a poet by nature and a singer who

untiringly and ceaselessly keeps singing. His is a musical

personality rooted deeply in poems that flow, like a perennial river

253

from his pen. In poem after poem, Harindranath rejoices celebrating

his poetic and musical personality. So the celebration of the poet‟s

personality becomes one of the themes in the poetry of Harindranath

Chattopadhyaya. The critic, exploring the thematic concerns in the

poetry of Harindranath, can hardly turn a blind eye to this.

To come face to face with the most beautiful personality of

Harindranath ever vibrating with mellifluous music and radiating

with marvellous poetic beauty is an experience that stirs ripples of

raptures in the pools of the readers‟ hearts.

Let us take a close look at his poems. Harindranath always

prides over his being an artist and being blessed with soaring poetic

imagination. For instance, in his collection of poems “Foot-Falls”,

Harindranath sings of his blessed state of being:

I am an artist full of wondrous things;

My thoughts are boats arrived from many a shore

A rich sensation of unnumbered wings,

Is mine for ever, that is why I soar”1

(Sonnet 38)

An artist‟s mind is always filled with wondrous things to

which myriad thoughts come floating like boats and on countless

254

wings, the poet‟s mind soaring higher and higher into the world of

imagination. The images “boats” and “unnumbered wings” are quite

apt and highly evocative. Singing is not at all a pastime, but a

need to the poet and the poet claims to be the king of poetry:

And yet, some how, I must sit down to sing

And when I sit, song comes to me, in deed,

Since being of constant poesy a king,

Song is to me no pastime, but a need 2

(Sonnet 22)

Writing poetry and singing is the essential part of the poet‟s

personality and throughout his life, till his last breath, the poet kept

on singing untiringly. Writing poetry is not a pastime nor is it a

forced business for Harindranath. Poems sprout out of him quite

naturally:

Verses come to me

As blossoms to a tree

As colours to a shell

As seconds to a minute

As circles to a well

When a pebble drops within it3

(Inspiration)

As a tree blooming blossoms, a shell possessing colours, a

minute containing seconds and a pebble perturbed well stirring with

circles of waves, Harindranath ever keeps blooming myriad poems

and scattering hues and perfumes of his poems. What a vivid and

enchanting depiction of his poetic personality! One is reminded of

255

Keats‟s statement that poetry should come naturally like the leaves

of a tree and if it does not, it had not come at all.

Harindranath is undoubtedly a born poet who pens poetry

spontaneously and who never waits for thoughts and words. The

poet further elaborates this natural gift of poetry he possesses:

I stand, a silent tower,

While over me like rain

Incessant verses shower.4

(Inspiration)

Only when blessed by afflatus and divine vibrations, the poet

composes poems spontaneously. That‟s why the poet says that

verses shower over him like incessant rain. The metaphor “A silent

tower” aptly explains the state of poetic creation wrapped up in the

stillness of inspiration and elevated to a soaring height of

imagination. The poet is truly a silent tower who receives incessant

showers of poems like rain from the celestial world.

The poet cannot explain this mysterious process of sprouting

of poems and he does not know how he scatters hues and perfumes

of his poems all his way. The poet does not bother about the

256

reaction of the world to his poetry and striking a stoic posture to the

world, the poet likes to remain immune to both bouquets and brick -

bats his poetry evokes from the world and resolves to continue to

tread his lonely paths:

Go on lonely ways

Immune to blame and praise,

To blessings and to curses5

(Inspiration)

The poet‟s abundant, lasting love for poetry and his iron

resolve to stick on to the muse, unmindful of the worldly reactions,

are amply revealed in these lines.

Harindranath‟s poetic mind in its keen and intense observation

of nature absorbs all things unfailingly in the world and ceaselessly

works out from its memory and turns out innumerable poems on

such things observed and absorbed:

Memory is an album

In which the world has signed.

What proud and precious signatures

Of water, cloud and wind

Are being inscribed each moment

In the pages of my mind 6

(Autograph)

257

The poet‟s creative mind is well compared to an “immortal

album‟ that receives autographs from all things in the world.

Through the aptly chosen image of “Album”, the poet conveys

effectively the potentialities of the poet‟s creative mind:

Planets and purple twilights,

Day breaks and suns withdrawn

Whole centuries of night-fall,

Whole centuries of dawn

In my immortal album

This signatures go on 7

(Autograph)

The poet sings for all people in the world and he sings of

people‟s joys and sorrows. His songs are also for the poor and the

under-privileged like the cobbler, the tinker, tiller, toiler, the

fisherman and the sweeper:

I sing for the peoples of the world,

I sing for the ordinary and the extraordinary

……………………………………………..

…………………………………………….

I sing for my people

Their sorrows, their tragedies

I sing of murder, rape and suicides 8

So to dub Harindranath only as a mystical poet, singing of

mystical subjects is untenable. The lines above serve as the poet‟s

manifesto and reveal the poet‟s involvement in people‟s life and his

commitment to masses.

258

Having learned the cunning craft of word–Jewellery and

finding himself‟ on a plane of dreams‟ and feeling like an

uncrowned emperor of the world the poet utters:

And yet I sat unseen,

Unnoticed, unpublished,

An ordinary solitary creature

Trying to sew the torn sheet of time

With needle of patience and

Thread of affection 9

The poet is a solitary soul unseen and unnoticed by the world.

Absorbed in solitude, the poet keeps penning poems

The poet proclaims proudly, “I found myself on a plane of

dreams/ I found myself to be uncrowned emperor”10

Here, the description of the poet as “uncrowned emperor

certainly brings to our minds, shelley‟s eulogy of the poet as an

unacknowledged legislator of the world. “The poet sewing the torn

shirt of time” is really a rich metaphor that conveys the greater job

the poet takes up to perform with patience and affection for the sake

of posterity. Though the poet is not sure of the world‟s appreciation

of his work, he feels quite confident:

259

…. The bride in eternity

Will read my writings

If not this world on earth….11

These lines tinged with mystical streak affirm the poet‟s

commitment to the muse.

The poet must keep writing poems all the time and he should

not stop it nor can anybody stop him as it is an ever going activity

that knows no end. Just as one can not stop the sun-rise, waves in

the sea, storm and chilly winds, one can not stop the poet from

writing poetry. So the poet proclaims, “Since each breath of mine

is an unborn poem waiting for a cradle to rest in”12

Writing poetry is as natural as the sun-rise, waves in the sea,

storm and chilly winds in nature to the poet and the poet ever carries

the rhythm of nature in his blood. So his pen ceaselessly keeps

writing lines of poetry. Proclaiming his dedication to writing poetry,

Harindranath continues to sing:

Each line leading me to my goal

Nay, do not ask me to stop writing

I shall not stop even after

My breathing . . .

Poetry is my soul

No body dare crush it 13

260

Only true, born poets can make such declarations as is done by

Hrindranath. Painting the poet as a series of fireflies/sparkling into

poetry, Hrindranath describes himself as a fire - fly flying over all

places of the world and carrying the spark of God:

I am a fire fly who fly

Across air, across grass, across flowers

I am God‟s own spark

Expressed in the fitful moods words of the divine

One spark of mine, is worth a million stars…

Since it could save a traveller on the road of

earth

From dropping into a ditch …..14

Employing an apt image of a fire-fly, Harindranath describes

not only the imaginative flights of the poet‟s mind, but also the

profound mission performed by the poet. The poet is the ever-

burning light of the world who sheds the unfailing light over the

path of travellers of the world and guides them properly to the

destinations of their travels. The poet lights the paths of people in

their journey of life and guides and leads them. It is true that the

poet is the beacon light of the world.

Elevating the status of the poet to that of a creator on earth

and of the supporter and helper of God in His creation, Harindranath

261

depicts the magnificent role of the poet in the scheme of things in

God‟s creation. While creating the world and many colours in His

creation, God needed red colour to create sun-rise and sun-set. So

God asked the poet to lend his blood to create sun rise and sun-set.

Refusing to take red colours from sleepless eyes, weeping eyes and

war-fare as suggested by the poet, God wishes to take poet‟s blood

only for His creation of sun rise and sun set:

He says he wants the redness of a poet‟s blood,

Of the blood of a dreamer,

Of the blood of a creator on earth

To help Him, to support his own creation. 15

These lines clearly affirm the fact that the poet is the earthly

creator whom even the Heavenly Creator approaches for help and

support in His creation.

Only when the poet identifies himself passionately and merges

himself absolutely with the subjects on which he writes poetry, he

can have true commitment to his art and he can become a true artist.

The true artist not only needs identification with the subjects of his

poetry, but also a soaring imagination and a penetrating vision:

262

In order to paint a bird

The artist must become the sky,

In order to paint an apple

He must become the entire season of autumn

In order to paint a fish

He must become the whiteness of swirling and

Swishing waters; “16

In order to paint the portrait of a man, he must become

complete humanity:

In order to capture the rapture of colours

He must be self -cancelled into a state of burning

whiteness 17

Here, Harindranath asks the artist to envision beyond the

things of the world and capture the beyond of all things and very

sources of the things. Only when the artist succeeds in becoming the

sources of all things in the world, he can become a true artist. To

paint a bird, the sky, to paint an apple, the whole season of autumn,

to paint a fish, the waters, to paint a man, the humanity, to paint a

colour, the white colour, the poet must capture and identity himself

with them. In these musings too, Harindranath sounds too mystical.

However, the thought expressed in the lines is highly profound.

263

A woman gives birth to her off-spring, experiencing pangs of

birth. Creativity is a sort of motherhood and the man endowed with

creativity has to undergo severe labourpains similar to those of a

mother:

But I am a man

The little kicks of the stomachs are in my heart

Giving birth to thoughts, poems and reflections18

Unlike the mother, quite strangely, the poet experiences the

little kicks of his babies, not in his stomach, but in his heart. A

Strange, but a pleasant creative process the poet undergoes willingly.

Poetry bestows on the poet, the blessing of immortality and

poets are always beyond the reach of the God of death. Failing to

find the poet at his home, Yama, the God of death asks the woman

inside the poet‟s home:

How long shall he escape my grasp?

And a voice echoed. “As long as he writes verses19

That poets are the immortal souls, is established in these lines.

The poet is not all flesh like other human beings. The flesh

of man perishes. But the spirit of the poet never perishes and it ever

continues to exist in the world and serves the divine purpose. That‟s

why God admonishes Yama:

264

God said to yama,:

Fool! You cannot touch the

poet until I need him,

until he serves a purpose in my heaven

-------------------------------------

-------------------------------------

You cannot feed so easily on the flesh of poets

whose flesh is spirit.

And you will not bite and crunch the

Spirit20

These lines proclaim the immortality of the poet. The people

of creativity are blessed with immortality. Of these blessing of

immortality the creative people enjoy, Harindranath mentions, “he

who contributes immortal creations to life, as does a Shakespeare, a

Kalidas, a Picasso, an Ajanta Painter – defeats death, death does not

know what to do with earthly creators of heavenly creations.21

About the power of poetry, the poet utters, “Nay, do not scorn

the poet‟s pen/ It is a flashing sword that wins”. 22

(The Poet).

Through the effective metaphor of “Flashing Sword”, Harindranath

conveys the might of the poet‟s pen.

Though the poet suffers and is tortured in the world, “He is a

Lord of eves and norms / a master – traveller of repose / Although

265

his feet are bruised by thorns / His mind is like a shining rose. 23

(The Poet). Unmindful of the troubles, tortures and persecutions he

faces in the world, the poet‟s mind remains unperturbed and the poet

continues his journey in the world in tranquillity. The equanimity

and tranquaillity of the poet‟s mind and his untrammelled, tranquil

travel in the mundane world are well expressed in these lines,

driving home the power of the poet‟s mind and poetry.

The poet claims no credit for himself for the eternal inspiration

that flows into him. Instead, he realizes “Each word is, as a golden

drop/dripped from Thy Goblets into me.”24

. (Inspiration). The poet is

convinced that each poem penned by him is the manifestation of the

divine. He confesses:

Each poem, poet! Is a brief

Self-revelation of Thy Bough

Of silence in its fullest leaf

Which Thou dost to man‟s heart allow25

(inspiration)

The poet does not sing aimlessly and he believes firmly that

his poetry has a mission of its own which is not mundane and

ordinary. Each of his poems leads him to the divine, fulfilling its

extraordinary, sublime mission and through singing of the divine in

266

myriad ways and in a number of his poems, the poet aspires to reach

the divine and to merge with Him:

Through song, through every verse and line,

I reach Thee in a hundred ways,

And gradually grow Divine

By granting Thee my human praise26

(Inspiration)

These lines sound Tagorean as Harindranath more or less

echoes Tagore on the sublime goal of his verse and songs.

Despite the astounding, enormous poetic output, Harindranath

never finds his writing wearisome and is never tired of writing. Not

content with his voluminous creative output, the poet feels that his

master-piece is yet to come out and he continues to write untiringly

to create the same:

For one who seeks the word of light

The master-piece is still to come

For ever. Thus it is I write,

Nor ever find it wearisome. 27

(Inspiration)

The poet is of the firm belief that a master-piece of an artist is

not an instant product nor is it a fruit of the labours of a few years.

Harindranath opines, “A master-piece is the appearance of centuries

267

in exquisite make up on the stage of Time”28

. In the light of this, the

above poetic lines reveal the poet‟s creative unrest and his relentless

pursuit of the Muse and his patient waiting for the birth of his

master-piece Quintessentially rooted in song and being pure rhythm

always, Harindranath proudly sings of his singing abilities:

By right of ages I belong

To the dominion of song,

Each fibre of me is a wire

Which tingles into singing fire

……………….

……………….

And so from out of every thing

I draw a lovely song to sing” 29

(Poet)

So the poet, unbothering about tomorrow, wishes to have the

joy of singing though nobody listens to his songs:

O Poet! sing while the eyes are wet and the

tear drop glistens

Song is its own reward, why grieve if nobody

Listens30

.

The poet has to wait patiently for the poem to come to him and

when it comes to him, he must capture it and release it on paper.

About the birth of poem and creative process, Harindranath chants:

Some times it breaks to a humming

O poet! a poem is coming”

And I wait and I wait for the poem

Which changes its mind and withdraws31

(Silent Speech)

268

Just as the secret of earth is perfume, the secret of the poet is

song that sprouts out of the poet‟s deepest self. Harindranath lets out

this pleasant truth about the poet‟s unique personality:

Behind mask of the surface

To my deepest self I belong:

The secret of earth is perfume,

The secret of me is song.32

The poet is not of the body, but of the self where in lies the song

as the secret hidden. It is the song that defines the poet‟s

personality. Only when this secret of poet‟s soul is captured, the

poet‟s personality becomes comprehensible.

Waiting for inspiration with sheets of paper before him to

compose poems is an experience alien to Harindranath. A born

poet always in a state of inspiration, soaring high in his poetic

imagination, with a vision capturing all the things of the external

world and the world beyond and a mighty pen, embodying beauties

of the physical world and truths of the world beyond in his numerous

poems, poems come flooding to him like tides in the sea:

Songs, foaming into beauty, full and lush,

Tide after tide come dancing forth to me 33

(Song – Hush )

269

Harindranath never struggled nor took pains to pen poems,

simply because song is an essential part of his life and the very

breath of his blessed life. And he goes on singing and by singing all

the time, he overcomes even sorrow and death:

Song is my life –pulse, song is my breath

And so I go singing away,

Hearing my music both sorrow and death

Look out each other and wonder and hardly

know what to say! 34

(Inspiration)

Just as earth creates a rose easily and spontaneously,

Harindranath in his high moments of inspiration, creates poems.

The creation of poetry is an unconscious, spontaneous and natural

process for a born-poet like him:

I am, as blind as earth which hardly knows

How it creates a rose

When I create a rhyme 35

(Spontaneity)

Why does Harindranath compose poetry? Not certainly for

fame. The poet does not crave nor does he know the art of

becoming famous. Just as blossoms appear on the branches of plants

and trees, poems come to him naturally and spontaneously. The

poet confesses :

270

I do not know the road

Leading to Fame‟s abode

I am ignorant of art ;

……………………..

……………………..

“A poem, late and soon

Comes kindling All the heart” 36

(Spontaneity)

Such is the poetic and musical personality of Harindranath that

is truly committed to poetry with no commercial motive, but only

with the pure artistic purpose.

About his nature and passion of singing, Harindranath says

that he grew up singing and his singing goes on not for money, fame

and awards, but for the people of the world. He sings of the people‟s

sorrows and tragedies:

I grew up singing

And now when I look back at a ripe old age

I find that I have sung

Not for audiences which pay and come to listen,

Not for plaudits,

Not for laurels,

Nor awards 37

The poet eyes and feels a wondrous rhythm of the universe

manifested in varied sounds made by various creatures and objects

in the world. Highly sensitive to this rhythm of the universe,

271

Harindranath absorbs and dances like a peacock to singing birds,

buzzing beatles, falling rain, crushing waves, barking dogs, cawing

crows, crying cocks and sounds of various insects. The poet shares

his ecstatic experience with his readers:

I am a peacock of that there is no doubt

Twenty-four hours of the day

Rooted in my seat or lying on my bed

I dance to the sound of song birds, the buzzing

Of beatles

The falling of rain, the crashing of waves,

The rhythm of barking dogs,

………………………………..

………………………………..

I now understand

The meaning of rhythm

Which is the meaning of the continuance of creation 38

While commonfolk remain insensitive to the varied rhythms

constantly flowing through many a creature in God‟s creation, the

true poet with his hypersensitivity is alive to the perennial streams of

rhythm and with his heart throbbing in tune with the rhythms of the

universe and his soul‟s ever listening to the wondrous melodies of

the universe, the poet‟s pen unfailingly captures these eternal

melodies of the universe in his verse.

Like the eminent American poet, Walt Whitman, Harindranath

celebrates his “poetic self” in many of his poems and what is

272

revealed in all these poems is the rich, vibrant personality of the poet

which is as colourful as the rain-bow and is deeply rooted in poetry.

Harindranath‟s soul is in poetry. He and poetry are inalienable,

inextricably interwoven together for the highest and sublime goal.

He is no doubt a born poet who breathes, drinks and feeds on poetry.

To Harindranath, poetry is not an avocation or a pastime, but a way

of life. Indeed, how blessed and true Harindranath is !

The poetic lines scattered over the huge corpus of

Harindranath‟s poetry provide us with a literary canon about poetry

and the poet‟s personality. When these poetic lines are read

critically, the reader can have a rare insight into the nature of

Harindranath‟s poetry, his personality, powers and blessings of the

Muse, required to grasp the true spirit of the poet.

273

References:

1) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Foot-Falls (Hyderabad :

Writers‟ Anvil, 1983), P.38.

2) Ibid., P.22

3) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, A Bird Sang on a bough,

(Delhi : B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1987), P.33

4) Ibid.

5) Ibid.

6) Ibid., P.37

7) Ibid.

8) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Mirage and mirror, (Delhi

: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1989), P.73.

9) Ibid., P.P.60&61

10) Ibid., P.60

11) Ibid., P.61

12) Ibid., P.53

13) Ibid.,P.54

14) Ibid., P.P.108 & 109.

15) Ibid., P.50

274

16) Ibid., P.97

17) Ibid.

18) Ibid., P.80

19) Ibid., P 14

20) Ibid.

21) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Reflections (Delhi : B.R.

Publishing Corporation, 1988), P. 219.

22) A Treasury of poems, (Bombay : Hind Kitabs, 1948), P.17

23) Ibid.

24) Ibid., P.67

25) Ibid.

26) Ibid., P.P.67 & 68

27) Ibid., P.67

28) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Reflections, (Delhi : B.R.

Publishing Corporation, 1988), P.255.

29) Chattopadhyaya Harinranath, A Bird Song on a bough

(Delhi :B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1987), P.30

30) Ibid., P.36

31) Ibid., P.34

32) Ibid., P.39

275

33) Chattopadhyaya Harinranath, Strange journey

(Pondichery: Bharatha Shakthy Nilayam, 1936), P.71.

34) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Horizon – Ends (Bezwada:

P.R.&Sons, 1948), P.43.

35) Ibid., P.48

36) Ibid.

37) Chattopadhyaya Harindranath, Mirage and mirror (Delhi :

B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1989), P.72

38) Ibid., P.P.111 & 112