The Prodigal Son

THE PRODIGAL SON

Patrick White

         Patrick White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English novelists of the twentieth century.  His novels and short stories enjoy wide critical acclaim.  His works include twelve novels, two short story collections, eleven plays and a few non-fiction.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973.

The Prodigal Son is an essay by Patrick White which vividly describes the sentiments of an expatriate. In this essay, Patrick White considers himself as a prodigal son. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the parables of Jesus in The Bible. In the story, a father has two sons.  The younger son asks the father for his inheritance and the father grants his son’s request.  However, the younger son is prodigal and spends his fortune lavishly and becomes a destitute. The younger son is forced to return home empty handed and begs his father to accept him back as a servant. The father pardons him and tells the elder son that ‘he was lost and now he is found’. Patrick White finds similarities between him and the prodigal son of The Bible.

Patrick White was himself an expatriate.  He was an Australian but was born and brought up in England.  He had spent more than 20 years of his life in abroad.  He studied in an English public school and had his higher education at King’s College, Cambridge. During those days, he had a high opinion on Britain.  Later when he wandered through west European countries and United States, he began to think of his own country, Australia.  The Second World War that broke out then also intensified his love for his motherland.  Earlier, life in the European countries seemed to be brilliant, intellectual and highly desirable to the author.  But now it appeared to be disgusting and meaningless.  He started thinking that he achieved nothing and his life rootless.
 
During the Second World War, Patrick White had to be there in the Middle East countries. The desert landscape found there aggravated his desire to go back to Australia. But, later when he visited Greece, the perfection of antiquity and the warm human relationship which he experienced there made him forget all about Australia.  Soon he realised that though he loved Greece, the country was not his own. So he came back to Australia, bought a farm at Castle Hill and with a Greek friend started to cultivate vegetables and flowers.

After returning back to Australia, White forgot himself as a writer.  He did not write anything. The Aunt’s Story, a novel which he had written immediately after the war was well received by the critics in abroad and failed to receive the attention of the critics in Australia as usual. He spent his life at the farm house eating and sleeping.  Nothing seemed more important than those activities.  But suddenly he began to grow discontented.  He realised that the only successful thing he could do was writing novels.  He wanted to write about the life of the Australians.  He wrote Voss, the story which he conceived during his stay in London. This novel proved that the Australian novel was not ‘dreary, dun coloured offspring of journalistic realism’. It presented the voice of the Australia to the world.

Patrick White loved the landscape of Australia though it was shabby.  He started appreciating even the ugly things in Australian life.  He adored the simple and humble life of the Australians. These are the personal reasons why Patrick White decided to stay back in Australia.  He considered the appreciation letters sent by unknown Australians praising White for depicting the Australian life in his novels as the best reward for his decision to stay in Australia.

Every Man in His Humour

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR AS A COMEDY OF HUMOURS

Ben Jonson is considered by many critics to be the equal of Shakespeare. The value of Ben Jonson’s plays is that they give us vivid pictures of Elizabethan society, its speech, fashions, and amusements.  Shakespeare pictures men and women as they might be in any age but Jonson is content to picture the men and women of London as they appeared in the 16th century. He wrote his plays more like a rebel and reformer than a representative of his age. In temperament he was inclined towards comedy.  But the comedies he wrote were different from the romances of the Elizabethan dramatists.  His aim was to expose in his plays the follies and foibles of people clothing them in comic patterns.

In pursuing his cherished aim ‘to sport with human follies and not with crimes’, Ben Jonson was guided by a popular medical theory of the time.  It was believed that a man’s temperament was determined by four fluids or humours present in his body.  These four humours were classified as the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic and the melancholic.  A man of sound character was known to contain the four humours in a balanced proportion.  Too much any one of them made him eccentric or humorous. Ben Jonson’s comedies were directly linked with this theory and therefore came to be known as the comedies of humour.

Every Man in His Humour is one of Jonson’s best-known comedies and the most influential plays. Considered as the comedy of humours, the play describes the efforts of a young, well-born man to wed his true love though his father tries to stop the wedding.

The play opens with the miss delivery of a letter addressed to Edward Knowell. It is written by Wellbred, a friend of Edward inviting the latter to visit the Windmill Tavern.  The letter reaches the hands of Old Knowell.  The letter rouses the suspicion of the father about the nobility of his son. He sets out to investigate the matter. The father always believes that his son Edward has become wasteful and derailed. Edward actually visits the city both to visit his friend, Wellbred, and to seek the hand of Bridget who is from a lower economic and social class. But realizing that his father is following him and intent on damaging his attempts to wed Bridget, Edward begs the help of his father’s clever servant Brainworm who assumes several masks to trick Old Knowell and foil his pursuit.

Kitely, the brother of Bridget, is one of Jonson’s most striking ‘humours’. He is presented as a fool who doubts the fidelity of his wife. He is jealous and colours all his thoughts and behaviour accordingly. Then there is a very thin love intrigue between Bridget and Edward Knowell. All the twists are finally resolved at Justice Clement’s house.  Kitely’s jealousy and his wife’s suspicion are found baseless.  Brainworm unmasks his disguise. Old Knowell realizes that his son Edward is true and honest.  He realizes his folly and gives his consent for the marriage of Edward with Bridget.  The wedding of Edward and Bridget takes place.

Every Man in His Humour introduces a group of eccentric characters.  Each of the character has a particular humour.  Knowell’s humour is that he is excessively anxious and suspicious of the attitude of his son.  Kitely’s humour is his jealousy which is humorous.  Justice Clement is a crazy magistrate and his fond of liquor.  Stephen humour is his melancholy mood.  Edward and Wellbred’s humours are their sense of intellectual superiority.  Humour as the trait of absurdity, eccentricity or abnormality is perfectly portrayed in the play.

A RED RED ROSE

                                                                        Robert Burns

            Robert Burns was a Scottish peasant who took to poetry and became the national poet of Scotland.  Many of Burns’ poems are meant to be sung. He composed many of his songs while ploughing or resting after his work. His poems deal with emotions such as love, hate, sorrow and joy. In many of his poems he expresses his own personal emotions so vividly and powerfully that they have universal appeal.
            A Red, Red Rose is a love poem by Robert Burns. The poem was inspired by a simple Scottish ballad which Burns had heard in the country. The poem has the form of a ballad and is meant to be sung aloud. It describes the speaker’s deep love for his beloved and promises that this love will last longer than human life and even the planet itself, remaining fresh and constant forever.
            The poet is in love with a woman.  The beloved is very beautiful like a red rose that is ‘newly sprung in June’.  In other words, the poet’s love is like a flower that has just blossomed.  Like the flower, his love is new, fresh and young.   This love is also as sweet as a beautiful song played by a skilled musician.
            The beloved is so beautiful that the poet loves her with a deep and strong passion. His love for her is so strong that his love will last until the oceans become dry. Even after the seas have evaporated and the earth has decayed, the poet will still love the beloved. This love will endure until their own lives end and even until all human life comes to an end.
            The poet concludes by saying goodbye to the beloved. He wishes her well during their temporary separation. The poet reaffirms his faithful love by promising to return even if the journey covers a very long distance and takes a very long time.

Kubla Khan

KUBLA KHAN

                                                                                  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

            Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a well-known English poet, literary critic and philosopher. He was one the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake poets.  His poem represents the culmination of Romanticism in its purest form.  Saintsbury rightly calls Coleridge the high priest of Romanticism.

            Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan was written in 1798 but not published until 1816. It is one of those three poems which have made Coleridge, one of the greatest poets of England, the other two being The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Coleridge himself describes this poem as the fragment of a dream which he saw when he had fallen asleep after reading the account of Kubla Khan, a great Mangolian ruler, in an old book of travels written by Purchas.

            Kubla Khan is a brilliant achievement in the field of supernatural poetry.  Coleridge beautifully imagines and skilfully describes the palace of Kubla Khan in the poem.  He achieves a remarkable success in making the description lively and complete. The poem begins with the description of the kingdom of Kubla Khan.  The action takes place in the unknown city, Xanadu.  Kubla Khan was the powerful ruler who could create his pleasure dome by a mere order.  Alpha was the sacred river that passed through Xanadu.  The river flowed through the measureless caves to the sunless sea.  There were gardens in which streams were flowing in a zigzag manner.  The gardens had many flowers with sweet smells and the forests had many spots of greenery.

            There was a wonderful chasm sloping down the green hill.  The cedar trees were growing on both sides of the chasm.  The place was visited by fairies and demons.  When the moon declined in the night it was visited by a demon. She was sad for her lover. From the chasm shot up a fountain violently.  It threw up stones.  They were falling down in every direction. The sacred river Alpha ran through the woods and dales.  Then it reached the unfathomable caves and sank noisily into a lifeless ocean with a tumult.  In that tumult, Kubla Khan heard the voices of his ancestors.  They warned him of approaching war and danger.

            In the second part of the poem Coleridge describes the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan.  Its shadow floated midway on the waves.  There was mixed music of the fountains as well as of the caves.  The pleasure dome was bright with sunlight and also had the caves of ice.  Then the poet tells the reader about a vision that he saw.  In his vision, the poet saw an Abyssinian maid playing upon her dulcimer.  The poet wanted to revive her song and music. The music inspired the poet with divine frenzy.  With the divine frenzy the poet would recreate all the charm of Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome.  The poet would be divinely inspired and so people would draw a circle around him and close their eyes with divine fear.  The poet must have fed on honeydew and drunk the milk of paradise.

            Kubla Khan is a poem of pure romance.  All the romantic associations are concentrated in this short poem.  It contains many sensuous phrases and pictures like bright gardens, incense bearing trees laden with blossoms, sunny spots of greenery etc.  Supernaturalism is also a romantic quality. Kubla Khan is a supernatural poem based on a dream.  There are images and expressions in it which are supernatural in character and create an atmosphere of mystery and awe like ‘caverns measure-less to man’ ‘ a sunless sea’ and ‘deep romantic chasm’ Though Kubla Khan is a fragment, it is regarded as a complete piece and is often hailed as the very definition of Coleridge’s poetry.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

Maya Angelou

            Maya Angelou was an American poet and an activist. She fought for the rights of the black people in America. All her poems and novels centre on themes such as racism and identity.  In her poem Life Doesn’t Frighten Me she lists out the things which one should not afraid of.

            The narrator of the poem is a young girl. She may be Maya Angelou herself. She says that she is not afraid of the shadows cast on the wall by the moonlight spreading strange figures. The noises heard by her in the hall also do not frighten her. She can hear the dogs barking down the street.  In the big cloud close to the moon she can see the figure of a ghost. Generally, children are frightened by these terrible figures and scaring noises but not the young girl.

            The young girl is lying on a bed and the bedspread has the image of a dragon breathing flame. But the girl is not afraid of it and rather says boo to it. Outside her window there are guys fighting. They are tough and violent. This doesn’t frighten her. Even panthers in the park and strangers in the dark frighten her little. She takes even the boys bullying her in the class by pulling her hairs or by showing frogs and snakes in a lighter way.

            The girl convinces herself that nothing can frighten her as she has a magic charm – a mantra which is powerful enough to let her walk on the ocean floor. The magic charm is nothing but fearlessness. This sums up the whole message of the poem that anything is possible if you can conquer fear.

           

A Psalm of Life

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

            ‘A Psalm of Life’ is an inspiring poem written by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem glorifies life and advises the mankind to follow the path of righteousness.

            The poet says that some pessimistic people consider life as unreal and empty.  They discard it as full of sadness. Such people are dead in their spirit. But the poet believes that life is real and interesting. Grave or death is not the destination of life.  The Bible says, “Dust thou art and to dust returnest”. This statement is applicable only to our body. After our death our body vanishes but the soul exists.

            Life means to act at present.  It is not for enjoyment or for sorrow.  We must not waste time in expecting a more suitable time to come.  At the same time, we should realise that yesterday is dead and tomorrow is far away.  Therefore, we must act right now.  When we act, we must keep faith in god and god will reward us for our act.

            Death envelops both the strong and the weak, the brave and the coward.  We are marching towards our grave.  We are losing our valuable period of life day by day. Life is also a battle field.  We are all soldiers in the world’s broad field of battle.  The poet urges us to be a hero in the battle.  We must not surrender.  We must not be driven like dumb animal in the battle of life.

            While we work, we have to follow the footprints of great men who lived in the past.  By following their noble ideals, we can make our lives great and sublime. Later, our lives will be recorded as examples for the future generation. If any person gets disappointed or fails in his attempt, he may look at the examples set by us and get adequate consolation.

            Therefore the poet advises us to get ride of laziness and be brave enough to face any situation in our lives.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

John Keats

            John Keats is one of the celebrated romantic poets.  He occupies a unique position in English poetry as the lover and worshipper o beauty.  He is a poet of sensations.  The poem Ode on a Grecian Urn is written by John Keats in the form of an ode.  In this poem Keats emphasizes that art is permanent and has a lasting beauty.

            John Keats calls the urn a bride of quietness. Though the urn is wedded to quietness, it tells the tale of Greek life in ancient time through the pictures.  The urn is not the child of passion but an adopted child of silence and slow time.  The urn is addressed as a sylvan historian as it records the rustic beauty truthfully.  The poet wonders whether scene depicted on the urn represents life in the vale of Tempe or the life in the dales of Arcady.  He also asks whether the figures carved on the urn are those of men or of gods or of both.

            The poet notices three scenes engraved on the urn – a fair youth playing a pipe, a tree that shelters him and a lover who tries to kiss his beloved.  The poet says that the music of the pipes played on the urn is more pleasing than any song heard by the sensual ear.  The youth playing the pipe will never stop playing and the tree will never shed their leaves.  Similarly, the lover can never kiss his beloved and hence his love for her will never diminish.

            Then the poet describes a procession of men to a holy place.  An unknown priest is leading a heifer to the altar.  The poet wonders from which town the people have come to witness the sacrifice.  It could be a town near a river or sea or on a mountain.  But he is sure that the town will remain empty and silent for ever.

            The poet addresses the beautiful urn and says that with its beauty and silence the urn baffles the human mind.  The urn is a pastoral poem in marble.  Even when this generation passes away, the urn will remain as it has remained for centuries.  Like a prophet, the urn will prophesize the message that beauty is truth and truth is beauty.

DECONSTRUCTION

            The theory of Deconstruction emerged by way of opposition to Structuralism mainly in France under the influence of Jacques Derrida, the renowned French philosopher.  Deconstruction also implies Post-structuralism. Besides Derrida, M.H.Abrams, J.Hillis Miller, Paul de Man and Gayatri Chakravorty Shivak also contributed to the theory of Deconstruction.  But all of them evince the influence of Derrida.

            The term deconstruction may be loosely applied to any rejection of the usual conventions of construction. The New Penguin Dictionary defines it as “ a critical technique which claims that there is no single correct interpretation of a text but that the task of a critic or reader is to dismantle the implied units of work of art to revel the variety of interpretations that are possible”.

            Derrida himself did not give a clear cut definition of deconstruction.  He simply said deconstruction had to be arrived at through a re-reading of texts. According to Derrida, the re-reading of a text shows the multiple meanings at work within language. It breaks the false assumptions that language is capable of expressing constant and unchanging ideas, that the author of the text is the only source of its meaning and that in the order of language writing is secondary to speech.

            Derrida did not define deconstruction as it has no set procedure and logical presentation of its main characteristics.  He only observed that deconstruction had to be arrived at through re-reading of texts.  The theory of deconstruction shows that language is constantly shifting and that a text may have multiple legitimate interpretations. Deconstruction is not dismantling of structure of a text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Literature is a verbal construction in which words have no fixed meaning. Language is not a stable object and therefore does not yield the same meaning in all conditions and circumstances.

            Derrida’s theory of deconstruction found wide acceptance particularly in USA. It was applied to a broad range of subjects including literary theory, linguistics, art, music, architecture, political science etc.  This led to the re-reading of the texts by Shakespeare and the Greek philosophers.

POST-STRUCTURALISM

            Post-strucuralism emerged in France in the late 1960s.  The two figures who are  associated with this emergence are Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.  Roland Barthes was earlier recognised as structuralist critic but in the late 1960s his work began to shift from a structuralist phase to a post-structuralist phase both in character and move. This difference can be clearly seen by comparing the two different works of Barthes – The Structural Analysis of Narrative and The Pleasures of the Text. The Structural Analysis of narrative is detailed, methodological and technical whereas The Pleasures of the Text is mere a series of random comments of Barthes on narrative which are arranged alphabetically.

            During this time Barthes published another essay The Death of the Author (1968).This essay marked Barthes’ deviation from structuralism to post-structuralism.  In that essay, Barthes argues that there is a total independence for the text and the text is not concerned with any external notion like what the author might have intended or crafted into the work. This essay asserts textual independence.  Thus, the ‘death of the author’ gave rise to the birth of the reader. As a result, the text which was seen as something produced by the author is viewed as something produced by the reader. The early phase of post-structuralism enjoyed a free play of meanings and the escape from all forms of textual authority. But later, as Barbara Johnson pointed out, post-structuralism became ‘a disciplined identification’.

            The second key figure in the development of post-structuralism is Jacques Derrida. His lecture Structure, Sign and Play is the starting point of post-structuralism. In this lecture, Derrida talks about the ‘decentring’ of our intellectual universe. Earlier man was the measure of all other things in the universe. His norms of dress, behaviour, architecture and intellectual outlook provided firm centre against which deviations and variations could be detected and identified as ‘other’. However, in the twentieth century, these centres were destroyed and eroded. This was caused by the First World War and scientific discoveries. It resulted in the disappearance of absolutes or fixed points. Instead of movement or deviation from a known centre there was a free play. Since there was no authoritative centre to appeal for validation of our interpretations, all interpretations were accepted.

            The post structuralists read the text against itself so as to expose what might be thought of as the textual subconscious where meanings are expressed which may be directly contrary to the surface meaning. They are concerned with the surface features of the words like the similarities in sound, the root meanings of words, metaphor and bring these to the foreground so that they become crucial to the overall meaning. They show that the text is characterised by disunity rather than unity. They concentrated on a single passage and analyse it so intensively that the language explodes into ‘multiplicities of meaning’. They also looked for shifts and breaks in the text and saw them as evidences of what were repressed and passed over in silence by the text.

            The difference between structuralism and post structuralism can be brought under the following four headings:

Origins : Structuralism derives from linguistics. It follows methods, system and reason. Post-structuralism derives from philosophy. It encourages no facts only interpretations.

Tone and Style: Structuralists writing tends towards abstraction and generalization It has a detached tone and coolness of a scientific writing.

Attitude to Language: Structuralists believe that the world is constructed through language and we can have access to reality only through language. The post-structuralists hold the view that reality itself is textual.

Project:  Structuralists induce us to break free of habitual modes of perception or categorisation and believe that thereby we can attain a more reliable view of things. Post-structuralists consider the human beings as the individual and a product of social and linguistic forces.

                           

STRUCTURALISM

            Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the 1950s.  It is first seen in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi Straus and the literary critic Roland Barthes.  It is difficult to define structuralism in a single line.  However, it can be defined that a work of art cannot be understood in isolation.  They have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of.

            Peter Barry explains structuralism by taking Good Morrow, a poem by John Donne as an example.  According to him, a structuralist believes that a poem can be understood only if one has a clear notion of the genre which that poem belongs to.  Any single poem is an example of a particular genre and the genre and the example relate to each other.  In the case of Donne’s poem Good Morrow, the relevant genre is the ‘alba’ or ‘dawn song’. A dawn song is a poetic form in which lovers lament the approach of daybreak because it means that they must part.  But the ‘dawn song’ can be understood only by the concept of courtly love.  Further, the ‘dawn song’ being a poem presupposes a knowledge of poetry. Thus, the sturcuralist approach takes the reader further and further away from the text.  It takes him into larger and comparatively abstract questions of genre, history and philosophy rather than closer and closer to it. Peter Barry uses the analogy of chicken and eggs.  He considers the dawn song, courtly love, poetry as the chicken and Donne’s poem as the egg. For structuralists determining the nature of the chicken is the most important activity, whereas for the liberal humanists the close analysis of the egg is important.

            Thus in the structuralist approach to literature there is a constant movement away from the interpretation of the individual work and there is a drive towards understanding the larger abstract structures which contain them.  These structures are usually abstract such as the notion of the literary or the poetic or the nature of narrative.

            The arrival of structuralism in Britain and the USA in the 1970s caused a great deal of controversy because literary studies in these countries had very little interest in large abstract issues which the structuralists wanted to raise.  The Cambridge Revolution in English Studies in 1920s encouraged  close study of the text in isolation from all wider structures and contexts.  It was purely ‘text based’.  But structuralism brought a topsy turvy change in the principles of literary criticism by switching its attention from eggs to chicken.

            Though structuralism began in the 1950s and 1960s, its roots can be traced in the thinking of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand Saussure.  Saussure concentrated on the functions of language.  He emphasised on how meanings are maintained and established in a language.  He said that the meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary and that these meanings are maintained by conventions only.  For instance, the word ‘book’ does not contain the meaning in itself but it is only we who have given the meaning to it. Secondly, he said that the meanings of words are relational and no word can be defined in isolation. For example the word ‘good’ will have the meaning only when the word ‘bad’ exists. Thirdly Saussure emphasised that language constitutes our world.  Meaning is always attributed to the object by the human mind and expressed through language.

            Then Peter Barry enumerates the functions of the structuralist critics. According to him, the structuralist critics relate the text to some larger structures such as literary genre, a network of intertextual connections or recurrent patterns or motifs. They interpret literature in terms of a range of underlying parallels with the structures of language. 

            Peter Barry cites Roland Barthes’ book S/Z as an example for structuralistic criticism. In S/Z,  Roland Barthes comments exhaustively on Balzac’s famous story Sarrasine. The five codes identified by Barthes in S/Z are:

a)      The proairetic code - This code provides indications of actions (eg. They began again)

b)      The hermeneutic code – This code poses puzzles which creates narrative suspense (eg. He moved stealthily and opened the door)

c)      The cultural code – This code contains references beyond the text ( eg. Baptism, a ceremony to cleanse a person of his sin)

d)      The semic code or connotative code – This code when organised around a particular proper name constitutes a ‘character’ ( eg. He is a good Samaritan)

e)      The symbolic code – This code consists of contrasts and pairings ( eg. Male and female)

After 1966, two new theories in context with structuralism emerged. They are Deconstruction and Post-structuralism.

A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER

                                                                                                                                    W.B.Yeats

            W.B.Yeats occupies a prominent position in the literature of the 20^th century. His genius is so independent and unique that it cannot be identified with any particular school of poetry.  He was attracted by Irish mythology and folk-lore which he poetized in a remarkably mystic and symbolic way. As a symbolist, he stands foremost among the modern poets experimenting with new and hitherto unused symbols.

            A Prayer for My Daughter is a simple poem of W.B.Yeats which discusses the qualities required by girls in the modern world. The backdrop of the poem is very interesting. In 1889, W.B.Yeats met Maud Gonne, a beautiful and an uncompromising Irish nationalist. He fell headlong in love with her. However, she rejected his love and married a old drunkard, John Mac Bride. This had left an indelible scar in Yeats. He started developing poor opinions about all beautiful women. He wrote this poem immediately after the birth of his first daughter, Anne Butler. In this poem, Yeats prays to god to grant his daughter beauty but not extraordinary beauty because the beautiful women are devoid of kindness and courtesy.

            The poem opens with the image of his child sleeping innocently in a cradle through a howling storm. The poet is gloomy and the problem before him is how to protect his daughter from the dangers of the world. He prays for his daughter and is worried about her future. He prays that she may be granted beauty but not as beautiful as Helen of Troy or the Greek goddess, Venus. In his opinion, the beautiful women attract every one and make people run mad after them. They fall in love with themselves and become proud. They are also incapable of taking right decisions. The poet thinks that beautiful women are silly so that their happiness suffers.

            The poet wants his daughter to learn courtesy.  He considers that courtesy, wisdom and the glad kindness are the permanent assets of women. But many people who are crazy after beauty in their early life realize that love and wisdom are the real riches in their later life.  The poet prays for the daughter that her thought may be like the song bird.  She should be magnanimous and kind and should play and quarrel in merriment.

            Then the poet wants his daughter to be free from hatred.  He thinks that hatred is the chief evil. Harmony can prevail only if there is no hatred. The poet says that the worst hatred is intellectual hatred. He has seen the fate of a most beautiful woman belonging to a well-to-do family (Maud Gonne). Because of her strong opinions about herself, she lost her prosperity and all her good qualities. He wants his daughter to have innocence.  She can learn that innocence is self-delighting, self-appeasing and self-affrighting.

            In the last stanza, the poet-father prays that she be married to a good bride-groom who should take her to a well-appointed home where life is aristocratically ceremonious. Neither arrogance nor hatred should be seen in that home. The poet is worried, but he has hopes for the bright future of his daughter.

           

SELF-PORTRAIT

                                                                                                                        A.K.Ramanujan

            A.K.Ramanujan is an Indian poet who wrote both in English and in Kannada.  He was born and educated in Mysore.  Since 1962, he had been at the University of Chicago serving there as the Professor of Dravidian Studies and Linguistics.  His Indian experiences repeatedly feature in his verses.

            A.K.Ramanujan’s poem Self-Portrait is basically about identity crisis.  In the first line itself the poet feels that he resembles everyone in this world.  He resembles the ones he knows, the ones he does not know, the ones he wants to be compared with as well as the ones he does not want himself to be compared.  He sees only others in himself.

            The poet lacks his own individuality.  This is clear from the line,

                        I resemble everyone, but myself

His own identity seems to be faded or lost somewhere.  He is afraid of creating his own identity in this world.  It seems as if his self becomes irrelevant to him.

            Generally, one sees one’s own reflection in a mirror.  This is the law of optics.  The poet walks past various shop windows.  But instead of seeing his own reflection, he rather sees a portrait of a stranger.  The stranger neither looks like him or his father or any of his ancestors.

            The poem clearly shows that A.K.Ramanujan is suffering from an identity crisis.  Having settled in an alien land, the poet has lost his own identity.  He has absorbed the identity of others.  As a result, he has become faceless.