GROWING IN UNDERSTANDING

NATIVE  CHARM

GROWING IN UNDERSTANDING

Learning is one of the chief pleasures of growing up. The modern age has mistaken schooling for education , and education for learning. But we of the older generation know better.  The inimitable Chesterton said education is what remains after we have forgotten all that we have studied. And when we properly digest our education, we really learn. If we keep our eyes and ears open, and the mind too, keen and open, there is no limit to what we may really learn.

Learning does not mean getting to know new information or facts or ideas. It is often a new way of looking at old 'knowledge'. It is a new insight suddenly gained.  We take so many  ideas for granted, we use words routinely; sometimes, someone opens our eyes and new understanding dawns. That changes the world, for us!

We learnt  while young ( not necessarily at school) Tamil National poet Subramanya Bharati's songs.

He was  revolutionary, but not like the modern loonies. He had a strong dharmic base. Classical poet Avvaiyar had written a few charming lines of moral instruction for children. Bharati took them up and modernised them- and how! 

Grandma Avvai  said: Desire to follow dharma (Aram seyya virumbu), Subdue anger ( Aaruvadu sinam) etc. Bharati said: Achcham Tavir, Aanmai tavarael! ( Avoid fear, do not slip from manliness.) Bharati was writing for a generation of Indians meekly submissive to foreign colonial looters and he was teaching their children to be bold and brave!

And what is this fear? The child  is afraid of the dark. Many people are afraid of ghosts and spirits.  Most people are afraid of the unknown. Most fear poverty and illness. Youngsters fear old age. Older people fear financial instability, ill-health,etc. Statesmen like  Roosevelt taught us that fear alone was to be feared. Our great celluloid poet Shailendra sang:

Apne saaye se bhi log dhar ne lage

Ab kisi ko kisi par bharosa nahi

( People are now beginning to fear their own shadows.. Now, no one trusts another.)

Thus we see that as we grow old, we don't grow out of fear, but catch hold of new things to be afraid of!

And yet, what is the greatest fear?  It is that great unknown- death. The subject is even taboo in western culture. Indians have a better way of stating it. We are not afraid of death- but birth! Yes- we are afraid of the repeated births in Samsara- which cause repeated deaths.  The Bhagvad Gita calls this 'Mahato bhayaat'= the great fear. It calls this world 'mrutyu samsara sagara', 'mrutyu samsara vartmani', etc. 

So, the Hindu Deities are always shown with an arm showing the sign of freedom from fear:  Abhaya hastam. The first thing they do is to assure the devotee  freedom from fear. But they also show the way. The second arm points to the feet of the Deity. Yes- the Lord's feet are our refuge, and there is no fear there. That is the only place which is free of fear!As we grow old and also in understanding, we traverse the lands of many fears and reach fearlessness. Once we have learnt to look death in the face, we lose every fear on earth!  

Lord Nataraja- symbolising the Cosmos.

Look at his lower right hand- it shows the Abhaya hastam= the sign of the assurance of freedom from fear. And the left hand points to his feet which is our refuge and source of fearlessness. Every aspect of Hindu iconography is symbolic.

John Donne wrote this sonnet which has been called the Holy Sonnet. 

Picture from Wikimedia.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Some seek to overcome death ie attain immortality by leaving their name behind through great acts.  Again, Shailendra sings:

Ganga aur Jumna ki gehri hai dhaar

Aagey ya peechey sabko jaana hai paar

Dharti kahe pukar ke

Beej bichale pyar ke

Mausam beeta jaaye

Apni kahani chod ja

Kuch to nishaani chod ja

Kaun kahe iss ore

Tu phir aaye na aaye.

(The waters of Ganga and Jumna run deep. Early or late we all have to traverse to the other side.#

Earth demands that  you go along, sowing the seeds of love. The seasons pass away.

Leave your story behind.& Leave some marks before you leave.Who knows whether you will pass this way again)

# Ganga and Yamuna have been running deep. ( That is, before you were born, and will do so even after you are gone. Life is unfathomable)

& Give up your preoccupation with your own little concerns, and make some contribution to the world.

Really, 50 years after his death, Shailendra lives in his poetry, which lives in the memory  and mind of the people! His words still move us.

Our philosophy teaches us that to understand the true nature of life and death is the only way to overcome the fear of death, and death itself!

 Our Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi taught us:

Those who have intense fear of death seek refuge at the feet of Lord Supreme who is birthless, deathless. Then their egos and attachments die. Can they fear the thought of death again? They become deathless.

( Reality in Forty Verses- Invocatory verse 2. This is a very loose rendering of the exquisite and profound Tamil verse of Bhagavan himself. Who can translate it?)

(Picture from the cover of a publication from  Sri Ramanasramam)

Most of us must have read the poem 'The Brooke" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, at school or on our own

I come from haunts of coot and hern   I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern   To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down,   Or slip between the ridges By twenty thorps, a little town,   And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow   To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go   But I go on for ever. Picture from the National Portraits Gallery, London. There are of course ten more stanzas. While at school, we thought it was just about the stream. If we came from the countryside,we might actually have seen such streams (called Odai in Tamil), emerging suddenly from the hills yonder, and running with all noise, among the stones and pebbles.  The poem describes how the brook chatters,bubbles flowing through fields and fallows, how it winds about, in and out. But as it nears its destination, the chatter turns to a murmur, it glides and glances, curves and flows. All the initial noise and high spirit get subdued as it joins the river. That was all in the poem- so we thought when young. But later, the same words made us think again.  What is this 'I' business? What does joining the river mean? As men come and go, this 'I' goes on forever!  Everything in the world is impermanent; then how can this "go on forever"? So we are led to 'learn' that this poem is not about the earthy brook, after all! The brook is a symbol or metaphor for the eternal Spirit in man- his Atma- which is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. It  then joins its Source and/or Destiny- which is the river. Thus we see that Tennyson is talking about the indestructibility of the Soul (in the Western usage) and it joining the Maker. We Hindus are mightily pleased as it expresses the Vedantic idea that our final goal is Union with God, no less. The brook and  the river are of the same stuff- water. They appear separate due to name and form, but are one in essence. Realisation of this Eternal Unity brings to rest all the wanderings through hills and valleys, fields and fallows- the endless wandering of the mind! Our entire Vedic poetry is symbolic like this. Western idiots like Max Muller and mere academics like him could never understand  such poetry. It takes a poet to appreciate poetry. They get and give us a glimpse. Not that Tennyson is Vedantic, but the spirit is unmistakable. This is how we grow in understanding, as we keep learning. Salutations to all the masters who help us learn.

Victory of the Victorians-2

        POEMS  AND  POETS

       40. VICTORY OF THE VICTORIANS-2

However important colonialism might appear to be for us now, it was not the most important issue for the Victorians. In any case, colonialism was not new and the renewed focus it received was itself due to other factors, which were vastly more important.

These related to various branches of science. In 1830s Charles Lyell published 'Principles of Geology' which proposed that the earth had developed over extended periods of time. Charles Darwin published 'Voyage of the Beagle' in 1839 and 'On the Origin of  Species' in 1859, proposing natural selection  as the basis. But some of his ideas were current even before this time. The idea that species might become extinct in the absence of the right conditions was propounded by Robert Chambers in 1844. But the word 'Darwinism' coined by Thomas Henry Huxley caught on., and was applied to a range of ideas about evolution. Sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the terms 'survival of the fittest' and somehow it got blended with ideas of Darwinism,viz natural selection. By 1870s the idea of "social Darwinism" had gained currency. If it is only a fit species that survives in nature, why not apply this to society?If a society expands, prospers and gains, it is only by its superior nature! In course of time, this served as the basis of Fascism, Nazism and ideas of ethnic cleansing. Renewed interest in Imperialism and its association with ideas of racial superiority was also an off-shoot of this.

But the real effect of these developments on British society was shattering. If the geological findings were true, then the Biblical time-scale ( that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.) was wrong! If the species were propagated by natural selection, the Biblical story of creation was wrong! Thus in one stroke, the foundations of Christianity were shattered. By this time, 'science' had gained respectability as a profession, people had started studying about science in earnest, facilitated by the spread of literacy and print media. No one who was 'educated' could take the Bible seriously. Even earlier, German scholars had questioned the historical basis of the Bible. Faith in organised Christianity was collapsing.

One specific incident  of the times is legendary. The British Association in Oxford convened a meeting in June,1860 to consider the issue of 'evolution'. ( 'On the Origin of Species' had been published by Darwin in 1859). Hundreds of people had gathered. Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford had come prepared to establish the superiority of the Church doctrine. During his speech, he turned to scientist T.H Huxley, and taunted him, asking whether he claimed descent from monkey from his grandfather's or grandmother's side! Huxley did not lose his cool; he explained lucidly and simply the basic ideas involved,  pointed out the ignorance of the Bishop, and concluded by saying that descent from monkey was not so  shameful as  keeping company with people who obscured truth! The crowd overwhelmingly supported Huxley and Wilberforce stood humiliated. You can say this is the public funeral for Christian Faith in the Victorian era. It was indeed Science which was the real victor in the Victorian age!

However, Huxley himself was not an atheist, but only agnostic. (Agnosticism was again a word coined by Huxley himself) One statement of Huxley is worth remembering:

"There is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical as well as an ideal unity"

                                                        Lecture 'On The Physical Basis of Life',1868

Well, this is as much philosophy as science!

These ideas of science had their repercussions in literature. This is the special characteristic of English literature: it responded to each age and was in turn shaped by it. We do not see this in other countries, in India for instance. During the same period, Mughal rule had ended in India; thousands of Muslims had been massacred and hanged in Delhi; the seven old cities of Delhi had been sacked; the old way of life and an entire civilisation was collapsing. But how many literary figures talked about it,wrote about it, sang about it? We find only a Mirza Ghalib writing about those conditions in Gazals and private letters in Urdu which not many people read; but our smart academics have interpreted it as the pessimistic outpourings of one man! Incidentally, it raises questions about the existence of a 'national' political consciousness at this time. Did people at large consider the Mughal ruler as the national king or emperor or Delhi  as the national capital? Then, why has no one written about it in any other language?

But the Victorian loss of Faith in the authority of the Church and the certainty of its teachings is a major element in their literature in all forms. How it affected society is recorded in novels by Dickens; how it affected individual psyche and the inner landscape of man is depicted by Hardy. It becomes a big theme in poetry. We saw how disturbed the Romantics had been  in the aftermath of Newton  and they turned to Nature. But developments in science had disturbed that Nature further, and had knocked faith in God out of reckoning. Where could man now turn to? Gerard Manly Hopkins  tried to reconcile science  somehow with religious feeling, but others were sure that the tide of faith was ebbing out. Mathew Arnold wrote:

DOVER BEACH 1867

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
.............
.................for the world,which seems
To lie before us  like the land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful,so new,
Hath really neither joy,nor love,nor light,
Nor certitude,nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.



The first part merely records the poet's impression that faith was fading; but the latter part is prescient. It tells us that with loss of faith, there is now no joy,love, or light; certitude is gone, there is confused struggle and fight by ignorant armies. Within 50 years after these lines were written, the nations which tried to  civilise the world , all following the Book, were engulfed in the Great War; and in another 20 years, in the Second World  War. 

Tennyson too captures some of these problems in his poetry.
'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is about the British spirit of conquest, "theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die", sort of obeying the dictat of the times. 'Ulysses' (1833) is a song of the spirit of the times, of unending voyage and conquest: 
 "To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

But where would it all lead to? Human thought had no bounds at all and in the words of Macaulay:

"A point which was invisible yesterday is its goal today, and will be its starting point tomorrow."

Extend it , and it becomes invisible in turn! Science makes everything uncertain! So what could man make of life? Darwin's  theory of origin of species was published in 1859, but the ideas were current before that. It was believed that Nature was concerned with whole species and not about the preservation of the individuals  and that even whole species had suffered extinction .(Georges Couvier, 1769-1832)This thought must have disturbed the faithful. Tennyson was surely seized of the matter. In his long poem In Memoriam, he takes up the issue:

IN MEMORIAM   (55)

Are God and Nature then at strife,
     That nature lends such evil dreams?
        So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,

That I, considering everywhere
     Her secret meaning in her deeds,
     And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,......

56


"So careful of the type?" but no.
     From scarped cliff and quarried stone
      She cries, A thousand types are gone;
 I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me.
     I bring to life, i bring to death;
     The spirit does mean but the breath:
  I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair.
     Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
      Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him franes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
     And love Creation's final law-
     Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed-

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
     Who battled for the True, the Just,
      Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
     A discord. Dragons of the prime
     That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
     O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
     What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil,behind the veil.

What hope is there for man then? Other species had come and gone before him, so he too shall go!

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
     O earth, what changes have thou seen!
     There where the long street roars hath been
The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows, and they flow
     From form to form, and nothing stands;
     They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.       (123)

Scientific knowledge has supplanted faith, but has given nothing but doubt and uncertainty. Each new discovery brings a new level of uncertainty, more profound doubt. So, Tennyson makes a simple U-turn and comes back to faith!

O, yet we trust that somehow good
     Will be the final goal of ill,......

That nothing walks with  aimless feet,
     That not one life shall be destroy'd,
     Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

Behold, we know not anything;
     I can but trust that good shall fall
     At last- far off- at last,to all,
And every winter change to spring.

'In Memoriam' was written over many years, but published  in 1850. The ideas do not run in a straight line, but the passages written at different periods do reflect the poet's varying ideas and reactions about science, till he is so thoroughly disillusioned that only a return to simple faith could satisfy him. This he states clearly at the beginning:

Strong son of God, immortal Love,
     Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
     By faith, and faith alone, embrace'
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are the orbs of light and shade;
     Thou madest Life in man and brute;
     Thou madest Death; ....

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
     Thou madest man, he knows not why,
     he thinks he was not made to die;..

Our little systems have their day;
     They have their day and cease to be;
     They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, are more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know,
     For knowledge is of things we see;
     And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
     But more of reverence in us dwell;
     That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster.

Strong statement of faith, expressing the hope that knowledge and faith will be reconciled in a vaster harmony. But that was not to be. As the century advanced, science made steady inroads into the both human intellect and heart. Faith was completely disowned by the educated class. But the poem is pervaded by a  strong sense of  doubt . Personally I like the assessment of T.S.Eliot  best:

"  It happens now and then that a poet by some strange accident  expresses the mood of his generation, at the same time that he is expressing a mood of his own which is quite remote from that of his generation.......Tennyson himself on the conscious level......consistently asserted a convinced, if somewhat sketchy, Christian belief......he had a good deal the temperament of the mystic- certainly not at all the mind of the theologian....Tennyson is distressed by the idea of a mechanical universe.......(but) The hope of immortality is confused (typically of the period) with the hope of the gradual and steady improvement of this world........an interesting compromise between the religious attitude, and what is quite a different thing, the belief in human perfectibility...... 
It is not religious because of the quality of its faith, but because of the quality of its doubt."
                         From: The Selected Essays of T.S.Eliot,1932

But we must note one fact. 19th Century science triumphed over organised Christian teaching- Christian theology based ideas of creationism. It did not mean Science had disproved Religion as such. Religion is more than Christianity, and their infantile ideas of Biblical creation are not the last word on the subject. But as the century advanced the fact of science V.Christian theology was presented as Science V. Religion as such; it is this notion which holds the common mind even now, even in Asia.It was scepticism, agnosticism which triumphed at the end of the Victorian age, dyed in stark intellectual colours and clothed in powerful and attractive labels and formulae. This is the ultimate victory of the Victorian Age. In this light, it has not yet ended. Whatever might be advances in astro-physics or particle physics or in other areas, it is the 19th century ideas which still run the establishment.

Note: The idea that nature favours groups over individuals for preservation is not new to us Indians. There is the well known passage in the Mahabharata which says that an individual can be sacrificed for  the  family, the family for the village, village for the country etc. I think the Greek story of Iphigenia and Agamemnon too illustrates this point!

The Outward Look

                                 POEMS  AND  POETS

                 34. The Outward Look

Great poets everywhere are moved by lasting themes and lofty thought. This connects them in an invisible way with the basic currents of life, though the expressions are conditioned by the immediate cultural context one is familiar with. Hunger is universal, but 'Gives us this day our daily bread'  pleads the Lord's prayer, while our Rudram seeks 'wajascha me, godhumascha me' etc.

Poetic inspiration comes from many sources. It can be spiritual-intuitional, as in the Upanishads; it can be intellectual, or even a mere verbal exuberance and linguistic felicity. But true poetry must leave a hint  at least of something beyond the words or objects described. Thus when Tennyson makes the brook sing " for men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever", it is the  very Time Spirit which is addressing us in the form of the brook. Man's mortality is set against eternity. The site and sounds associated with the brook are beautiful, but it is not just the physical dimension which matters.

Any true artist has to take us beyond the physical medium. He has to use nature to make us transcend it. A painter makes us forget the canvas, or he is no artist. One who just reproduces nature is a photographer, not painter. Photography is limited by the instrument, painting is not, music is not. When we listen to Kenny G, are we mindful of the instrument, or the music? Does not the music take us beyond the instrument ? " That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound but a star.", as said by Browning. Imitation is not art, but creativity is.

The same holds true with words. In the olden days, poetry was read or recited aloud, where the sound suggested something beyond the sense words conveyed. A poet is not a mere wordsmith. True inspiration brings words in its own train.Sri Aurobindo remarks:

"it is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision and always new and more and more uplifted or inward ranges of experience."

This we see in poets across cultures, ages. Sri Aurobindo, our greatest poet and Rasika writes:

" In spite of a broad gulf of difference we yet find an extraordinary basic kinship between these two very widely separated great ages of poetry, though there was never any possibility of contact between that earlier oriental and this later occidental work,- the dramas of Kalidasa and some of the dramatic romances of Shakespeare, plays like the Sanskrit Seal of Rakshasa and Toy-Cart and Elizabethan historic and melodramatic pieces, the poetry of the Cloud Messenger and erotic Elizabethan poetry, the romantically vivid and descriptive method of Spenser's Faerie Queene and the more intellectually romantic vividness and descriptive elaborateness of the Line of Raghu, the tone and manner of Drayton and that of the much greater work of Bharavi. This kinship arises from the likeness of essential motive and psychological basic type and emerges and asserts itself in spite of the enormous cultural difference."

                                  From: The Future Poetry p.126
                                   Sri Aurobindo Ashram,2000

For the last thousand years or so, India has not expressed its soul in Sanskrit poetry; nor in regional poetry,either, except in the Bhakti movement. In modern times, this spirit briefly raised its head in Bengali, in a Bankim Chandra, or Tagore, and in Tamil in Subramanya Bharati. Alas, it was all too brief.

Providence brought English to India, but the education that became its vehicle made us  revolve "around a lawyer's office and a Government cutcherry, ...far away from the great stream of world's living thought and action"....giving us " the falsest possible education, a knowledge always twenty-five or fifty years behind the time.", in the words of Sri Aurobindo. Even so, the English language and literature remain our only window to the world, painfully small as it is. We have to ensure that this does not fall a victim to cultural chauvinism in the name of narrow patriotism, or linguistic jingoism..

                                                       

The Wrong Bitch!

                                      POEMS AND POETS

                    24. The Wrong Bitch!

Many years ago, in 1961 or 62, I read a joke printed as a page-filler in that lovely monthy, The Reader's Digest. An American tourist was  in  London. He got into a city bus,  but found no seat. He noticed a fat lady occupying a seat, with her dog next to her. He looked at her for some time, then bent forward, gathered the dog in his arms, and threw it out of the window. An occupant of a near-by seat remarked: " You Americans always do the wrong thing. You eat with the wrong hand, drive on the wrong side of the road, and now have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window!"

Come to think of it , we are all Americans now!   Dealing with the wrong bitch all the time!

Look at our economics. The more we talk about growth, development,wealth, the more poverty grows, and  so does the gap between the rich and the poor. In politics, the more they talk of empowerment, the more people are getting marginalised. New groups of deprived , or new forms of deprivation,emerge. Look at health-care. The more we talk about it, the more we turn it into sick-care, building more and more hospitals; health-insurance is the label for payment system for sickness attention. If you don't have insurance, you can't buy health, by definition! But which company will sell you a policy to cover real health care- buy good walking or jogging shoes, a tennis racquet, a bicycle, use a jogging track,etc? Just last week, we read how the American medical system is swindling the public, and  how the Judiciary is dealing with it.

This economic preoccupation with wealth seems meaningless, considering how counter-productive it has become. In Sanskrit, the word 'artha' is used for wealth. But artha also means 'meaning' ! So what does wealth really mean?  What is real wealth? Philosopher Sankara said: " artham anartham"., which means wealth causes harm, or  untruth depending  on how the word 'anartham' is spelt . Stunningly, in Tamil too there is just one word: 'Porul' which means both wealth and meaning!

What about our philosophy and organised religions? The one has become incomprehensible to uninitiated minds like us, and the other has become irrelevant to our times and needs. So, both have ceased to be guides to life. Many people have indeed thrown both out of their lives, which is our biggest window on the Universe! This is a pity.

Structured, systematised philosophy is not sure what it has to deal with , or how to go about it. Books are written only for the peers, and perhaps understood only by them. Religion is not sure of what it has to concern with- Life or Death, Man or God. Actually, there is no choice here. One means and involves the other.

It is said that once Tennyson was seriously ill, and was slowly being nursed back to  health. But he was grumbling. The nurse asked him why he could not write some poetry,  in gratitude for his recovery, instead of grumbling. So, he composed a poem and read it out to her. She heard it and silently ran from the room. This is the poem.

Tennyson : "Crossing the Bar"

Sunset and evening star,
   And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
   When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving  seems asleep,
   Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
   Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
   And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
   When I embark.

For tho' from out our bourne
   The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
   When I have crost the Bar.

Tennyson said the poem "came in a moment." When questioned about the presence of the Pilot, and why the speaker sees him only when the vessel reaches the open sea, Tennyson clarified:

"The Pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him".

 He further said:

He is " that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us."

                                                                 (  From Tennyson's Memoir.
                                                                    See: Tennyson's Poetry -
                                                                     Norton Critical Editions.)

Is this sad? Morbid?  To me, it does not seem so. Can it be sad, when we get to meet the Pilot? In fact, this conveys to me the whole failure of religion: the Pilot has been with us all along, but we are taught to look for him elsewhere! It is only a genuine poet who can remind us.

Tennyson believed in personal immortality, and its mysteries. " burned for ever and for ever! I can't believe that", he said.  He also said:

" I can't call myself orthodox. Two things however I have always been convinced of-God,- and that death will not end my existence."

Here is an ancient Tamil poet singing on this theme:

Tirumular

Is the sweetness of honey black or red?
You fools, who search for God in the high heavens,
Just as sweetness pervades honey
God pervades as our Self,  this very fleshy body.

The Pilot is with us all the time, but we do not get  or try to know!

Here is John Donne confronting the subject more directly, defiantly.

John Donne:  DEATH BE NOT PROUD

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st,thou dost overthrow,
Die not,poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me;
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure,then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones,and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

Donne is almost mocking death. From where does he get the courage ? Death is like a longer sleep and rest. If we find pleasure from rest and sleep, which is usually short, how much more should we get from a longer sleep  and rest! And then, death only catches our body, but can it touch our spirit? It becomes free!- rest of the bones, but soul's delivery!

Donne is not called a metaphysical poet for nothing!

But our dear Shakespeare is not so sure! Let us see what he says.

Shakespeare: Hamlet. 3.1.

  "...............the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than  fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."

We do not know what happens after death and so fear it. This fear   ( 'Conscience' here ) makes us cowards. distorts our thinking and results in our messing up with our action. But there is a rub. Earlier, when we read Tennyson and Donne, we knew the poets were speaking to us. But here? It is Hamlet- and this occurs in that most famous passage beginning " To be, or not to be?". So, we are not sure it is Shakespeare speaking  out his thoughts here.

How do we resolve this? It is where true philosophy and religion will have to teach us. The only true question in philosophy is whether life/existence/world  has any meaning or purpose. If everything ends with death, life on earth has no meaning. That is, if death has no meaning, life will have none either! What is the point in having a little fun on the ship, when we know it is going to sink? It is the idea that there is a Pilot who is guiding it safely that gives us comfort.

It is this sense of certainty or certitude- and not this or that doctrine- that is what we mean by philosophy. It is an attitude, rather than a formula.  What we make of this world immediately raises the question how we relate to it.It provides us with a view of life, and also a way to live it! It leads to uncomplicated thinking, and uncluttered living. Great poets give that. Both by their words, and their lives. William Blake is one of the greatest in this respect. 

William Blake

Throughout his life he was guided by visions. He produced his songs and illustrations by a process which came to him in a vision, when his deceased brother appeared to him and explained the process. But he had the larger vision too- he " kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble". He firmly believed in the spiritual reality of the universe. He wrote:

 " Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah's night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton's  Sleep."

Blake had said to a friend earlier:

" I cannot consider death as any thing but a removing from one room to another."

Blake died a glorified death.

" Just before he died, His Countenance became fair-His eyes brighten'd and He burst out in Singing of the things he Saw in Heaven.....He Died like a Saint."

iIt is such poets who provide us a true,simple approach to life.

'Newton's Sleep' here refers to Newton's laws which make of this world a mechanical device, denying the spiritual reality. Ironically, science itself has travelled far from Newton's days and views, and the present view of science is that the universe is more like an organism, rather than a mechanism, which is but a tool of the former. Jacob Needleman,philosopher,explains:

"Every day, in almost all its branches, the revelations of modern science offer evidence that the universe,reality itself, is alive- alive beyond all imagining. All those who love science must know this truth in their bones, whatever may be the view officially sanctioned in the corridors of our universities and institutions of research. In any case, this is and always has been the view offered by the great spiritual traditions of the world, East and West, in all cultures and  at all times previous to our own."

"The very word "cosmos" signifies that the universe itself is a living organism.....Mechanism is the instrument of organism."

                                                 From the Preface to the 2003 Monkfish edition
                                  of 'A Sense Of The Cosmos'  .

Where a poet conveys such a spiritual view, he is restoring our real sight!  But poetry is also now taught in the very same universities  which  may not allow the poets to speak of their vision  or faith. Browning's religious convictions may not be discussed  in academic books, just as the dream experiences of Srinivasa Ramanujan, from where he got his theorems, do not find mention!

                                                 

Poets and Philosophy-3

                                           POEMS AND POETS

                      23.Poets and Philosophy-3

Two problems confront us .
1. Does any lofty thought become a 'philosophy'?
2. Since a poet speaks through many characters and voices, which of them can be taken as expressing the poet's own mind?

Consider the following scene from KING LEAR: IV.1

GLOUCESTER

                            ............. Full Oft 'tis seen,
                            Our means secure us and our mere defects
                            Prove our commodities.

EDGAR
                  
                           (aside) And worse I may yet be. The worst is not
                            So long as we can say, "This is the worst".

GLOUCESTER

                          I'  th'  last night's storm I such a fellow saw
                          Which made me think a man a worm.........
                          As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods.
                          They kill us for their sport.


Shakespeare has peppered this small space with at least three ideas,which  may claim to be 'philosophy'.

• having something ( being well to to) spoils us while not having it often turns out to be advantageous. ( Remember Thomas Gray said something similar: the poor lot of some not just 'circumscribed their growing virtues' but 'their crimes confined' )
• So long as we are sensible enough to say we are facing the worst, it is not the worst: it could be worse, for we have not seen the last yet.
• Man is no more significant than a worm. The gods just use us for their amusement, as schoolboys play around with flies, inflicting cruelty and killing them.

Do these become philosophies?

All these are based on experience of specific circumstances, but do  they remain valid across time and space? I think this should be a standard test of true philosophy- whether it is universal.

Refraining from doing bad- due to our inability - cannot be a virtue. I do not deal with  a person physically  abusing me because I am not physically strong enough - can I claim that I am a pacifist,and non-violent?

 It is only at the end of a life-time that one can say that one has seen the worst. As the Hindi poet Shakeel Badayuni wrote:

ive Hoga faisla Manzil ki Kismat Ka Khel

ie only on reaching the destination can one say what has been the destiny! So long as we have not seen the end, we cannot say what it is!

For another, Sahir Ludhianvi said: Dum hai gam nahi BhaKi TOH!

ie so long as one is alive, one need not give up hope totally.

As yet another, Majrooh Sultanpuri Said: Alta rahe toh Aadmi jo mil Jaaye Haar khazaana.

ie if a man keeps going, he will attain all goals.( how can he stop and say he has seen the worst?)

As for man being dealt with arbitrarily by the gods- this is the very stuff of Greek Tragedy and so can be considered some sort of philosophy. Thomas Hardy's novels also adopt such a view. Hardy wrote towards the end of Tess about "the President of the Immortals" having "ended his sport with Tess"- heart-wrenching words,really, but authentic Greek. Yes, it represents a basic point of view about life. But is it a sure guide to life for every one?

I am reminded of the controversy in early Management thought about the nature of man. One theory said that man inherently resented work and had to be forced.. Another said the opposite: that man liked  work as naturally as play, and had only to be suitably motivated ie rewarded. Then a third came along in different versions and compromised both. Now, of course management has become too technical and mechanical to bother about theories- so long as you can manipulate man, anything would do!  Abraham Maslow and his kind are an exception- man has to exceed himself, resulting in Self-Actualisation. Each of these can be taken as a 'philosophy' of management, but do they become philosophy of life?

I feel they are not universal enough.

So, it is difficult to say if any of these Shakespearean lines can be taken as philosophy- especially, his!

Now, take a poet like Tennyson. Starting as a Romantic ( but not of the Wordsworth type), he turned more conventional or got "institutionalised" later on. The most important influence in his life was  his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam affected Tennyson strangely- both when he lived,and after he died early,unexpectedly at just 22. He is reported to have  directly inspired the Romantic elements of Tennyson's early poetry . But after his death, which affected Tennyson profoundly, his poetry is said to have become somewhat sad or elegiac. What sort of philosophy do we expect from him?

I take these lines from 'Ulysses'.

TENNYSON:  Ulysses

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

We are all shaped by all that we have seen and absorbed in life. Yet, no matter how long and how varied that life has been, can any one claim he has seen all and 'known or understood' life? The untravelled and unseen part seems ever larger, and there  seems to be no border in sight! Life is a strange landscape!

How dull it is to pause,to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life!

.............you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

....................................Come,my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

.......

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive , to seek, to find, and not to yield.

What do we make of this?

In Tennyson's own Victorian Age, people had no doubts at all:

the poem reflected the spirit of the age- ever striving forward. However, our age is different: nothing should be simple,nothing straight! So, critics and scholars have read all sorts of meanings in to the poem, and given it varied interpretations.

 I distrust critics and academics.. I go by more substantial reason. There are two statements by Tennyson himself which merit attention:

1.In his Memoir, Tennyson said:

"Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life."

2.Once, speaking of In Memoriam  to James Knowles, the architect who built his house and who remained on good terms with him for twenty five years, Tennyson said:

"There is more about myself in 'Ulysses', which was written under the sense of loss and all that had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end."

This makes two things clear to us:

• this poem reflects largely Tennyson's own mind and convictions
• that we must struggle  and move forward in life , in spite of all losses and adversities.

The key to the whole structure is, in my view, found in this line:

"As tho' to breathe were life".

Life is not mere physical existence . You have to be up and moving, striving to ever new heights, reaching ever farther horizons,' to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought'. We have rubbed shoulder with the gods; should we not  do some noble work of note, worthy of that association? Should we just rest,rust and fade away? Should we simply vegetate and die?

Shakespeare says in Hamlet:


"What  is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and  feed ?A beast,no more.
He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused."


I think the message is clear: do not rest on your laurels. Do not just retire, to be overtaken by senility, and succumb to death "which closes all". Age may weaken the body, but the heart and will are made strong,with which we have to seek newer fields, ever striving, never yielding. A loftier philosophy cannot be stated in plainer terms.

After his new house was completed, Tennyson was standing with Knowles and remarked to him that he (Knowles) would outlive him , and that the house would last five hundred years. Knowles replied that the English language would last longer. I would only add: this philosophy of Tennyson would last for ever,or it is no philosophy, and  this,no poem.


Note
There is one feature in the poem which particularly appeals to me  as a Hindu. This is the reference to his  blameless son Telemachus. Ulysses is about to go on a fresh voyage. He leaves the ruling to his  son, whom he loves and in whom he has the  confidence that he, centered on his common duties and by his prudence, will subdue the rugged people, and make them useful and good ( a task in which he himself probably failed, as hinted in the first few lines).He will also be tender, and pay proper adoration to the household gods!
Hindu dharma says that a householder should proceed to the forest at the appropriate time to pursue spiritual knowledge, when his son should take over the household obligations, including worshipping the household gods! I am so touched.