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.