riddhi28bhatt@gmail.com
Sem 3
Roll No. 15
PG year 2020-2022
PG Enrollment No. 3069206420200004
Paper Name 201 (Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence)
Topic Name “A Shadow of a Magnitude”: Toru Dutt’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Submitted to Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English
“A Shadow of a Magnitude”:
Toru Dutt’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Cross-Cultural Dialogue
CONTENTS
2. BIOGRAPHY OF TORU DUTT
3. LATER LIFE AND WORKS
4. PUBLISHED WORKS
5. ONE EXAMPLE OF TORU DUTT’S POEMS
6. FEMINIST ELEMENTS IN TORU DUTT WRITINGS
7. “A Shadow of a Magnitude”: Toru Dutt’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Cross-Cultural Dialogue
8. CONCLUSION
9. WORK CITED
INTRODUCTION :
Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
For your sake, shall the tree be ever dear.”
– Our Casuarina Tree by Toru Dutt
Toru Dutt or Tarulatha Dutt was an Indian poet born in the Bengal province in 1856 to the well-known Rambagan Dutt family. As the youngest child of Govin Chandra Dutt and Kshetra Mini Mitter, Toru belonged to a family of writers.Toru Dutt attained much recognition for her compositions. Her work went on to being reviewed favourably enough to get republished. Yet she would not live very long to see any of it.Here we are dealing with this topic, “A Shadow of a Magnitude”: Toru Dutt’s Writing.
Tarulata Dutt, also known as Toru, was born to a Bengali family on March 4, 1856 in Rambagan, Manicktollah Street, in erstwhile Calcutta. She came from a liberal family where education, art and linguistics were encouraged. Her ancestor Nilmoni Dutt had settled in Calcutta leaving his hometown in Ajapur, Burdwan some decades before. Nilmoni Dutt, though a pious Hindu loved conversing with people from different spheres of life. As a result the family was well acquainted with many Christian missionaries and European settlers, which was a sign of affluence in those days.
Her father, Govind Chunder Dutt,employee of the Government of India, was a linguist himself. He had published some poems sporadically over his lifetime. His wife Kshetramoni Mitter, who loved Hindu mythology, translated an English book, The Blood of Christ, to Bengali. Hence art and literature were ingrained in the young Toru since she started gaining senses. Owing to her father’s employment the family traveled frequently. In 1862, after the death of his older brother Kishen, Govind Chunder Dutt and his family embraced Christianity.However, the young Toru was captivated by the lore and characters in Hindu mythology that she knew through her mother. This had an enormous impact on her compositions in later life. The early death of her older brother Abju at the age of fourteen profoundly affected her father who became quite protective of his two daughters. Toru and her older sister Aru were never left alone and accompanied their father wherever he went.
Her family moved to France in 1869, following the death of her brother Abju. In France, she was educated in language, history, and the arts. Toru, along with her sister Aru, mastered the French language during their short stay in France. This fascination with the French language and culture would be sustained through Toru's life, and her favorite authors were the French writers Victor Hugo and Pierre-Jean de Béranger.
Sometime later, the family moved to Britain, where Toru pursued her education at the University of Cambridge, along with her higher French studies. The pastoral landscapes of southern England, combined with Toru's experiences growing up on her family's country estate in Baugmauree, played a large role in shaping her personal and poetic fascination with the natural world. It was also at Cambridge that Toru met and befriended Mary Martin. Their correspondence lasted even after the family returned to Bengal in 1873. Later on, these letters became a major source of information about Toru’s life.
Sometime later the family moved to Britain where Toru pursued her education in Cambridge along with her continued French lessons. There she began corresponding with a new friend Mary Martin, who would later become a source of information on her life. In 1873 the family returned to Bengal.
Toru Dutt was a natural linguist. In her short life she became proficient in Bengali, English, French and later Sanskrit. She left behind an impressive collection of prose and poetry. Her two novels, the unfinished Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden in English and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers in French, were based outside India with non-Indian protagonists. Her poetry appears in A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, consisting of translations into English of French poetry and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, composed of translations and adaptations from Sanskrit.
In 1876, the first edition of her book A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields was published by the Saptahik Sambad Press, Bhowanipore. It was a compilation of translated French poems that she had been working on with her late sister, along with personal observations and anecdotes. Dedicated to her father, the book contained no preface and was poorly printed in bad quality paper. Thus it did not gain any significant notice right then. In India many did not believe it to be a work of an Indian woman. It was passed off as the work of an Anglo-Indian person trying to disguise himself to gain fame. The condition in which the book appeared also contributed to its lack of appeal to the French and English audience.Some well-remembered poems from the volume include "A Sea of Foliage", "The Lotus", "Sîta", and "Our Casuarina Tree." The last in particular is often taught in high schools in India as a part of the English curriculum.
Most of her works were published posthumously. Following her death her father started going through her papers and began the task of popularizing them. A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields was edited and published a second and a third times in later years.
ONE EXAMPLE OF TORU DUTT’S POEMS :
LIKE a huge Python, winding round and round
The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,
Up to its very summit near the stars,
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
No other tree could live. But gallantly
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung
In crimson clusters all the boughs among,
Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;
And oft at nights the garden overflows
With one sweet song that seems to have no close,
Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.
When first my casement is wide open thrown
At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;
Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest
A gray baboon sits statue-like alone
Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs
His puny offspring leap about and play;
And far and near kokilas hail the day;
And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.
But not because of its magnificence
Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:
Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.
Blent with your images, it shall arise
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!
What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach.
Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!
Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away
In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith
And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,
When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:
And every time the music rose,—before
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.
Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay
Unto thy honor, Tree, beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,—
Dearer than life to me, alas, were they!
Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees—like those in Borrowdale,
Under whose awful branches lingered pale
“Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And Time the shadow;” and though weak the verse
That would thy beauty fain, oh, fain rehearse,
May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.
“Feminist Elements in Toru Dutt Writings” She placed her country, and was among the first to do so, on the international map of letters. She, nevertheless, was not slow to realize that her own oriental background of literature was so precious that she would have to commingle it with her earlier abundant knowledge of French and English. She soon began to educate herself, with her father’s help, in Sanskrit. It is to observe that the first generation of women writers like Toru Dutt were confined to the spiritual themes. Their consciousness and sensibilities are imprisoned in the exploration of spiritual themes.
Feminism in Indian English literature is a by –product of the western feminist movement but it acquired sustenance from the freedom struggle. The availability of western feminist theory should not lead us to its.Though she was always identified with Indian and as a daughter of the “green valley of the Ganges; her mind was unclouded by narrow national or linguistic inhibitions or mental barriers. Happily true to herself, she delved into the treasures of English and French literature, the two forging tongues in which she was educated, and acknowledged without reserve her debt to the countries which inspired her. She placed her country, and was among the first to do so, on the international map of letters. She, nevertheless, was not slow to realize that her own oriental background of literature was so precious that she would have to commingle it with her earlier abundant knowledge of French and English. She soon began to educate herself, with her father’s help, in Sanskrit. Some critics think that Toru’s poetry is appreciated because it is so closely associated with her sad life: “Beauty and tragedy and fatality crisscrossed in the life of Toru Dutt and it is difficult, when talking about her poetry, to make any nice distinction between poetry and what C.S. Lewis calls her.
“A Shadow of a Magnitude”: Toru Dutt’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Cross-Cultural Dialogue :
Toru Dutt’s literary sensibility was informed by her vast and encyclopedic erudition of European classics which she was able to read from her family library, along with the intellectually enriching atmosphere of her home, which reflected thoroughly the larger reformist discourse produced as a part of the nineteenth-century Renaissance in Bengal. Her letters, primarily those written to her friend Mary Martin, shed light on her quotidian reading habits, her knowledge of the literary and cultural journals in circulation at that time – the most notable one being the Revue des deux Mondes, the renowned French literary journal – as well as her opinion on contemporary writings.
Dutt’s poetic craftsmanship reflects a remarkable cross-cultural and trans-discursive dialogue which was being generated as a part of the transmogrification of intellectual paradigms during the nineteenth century. Her remarkably articulate poetry captures a seamless blending of not only ancient Indian classical and European categories of thought, but also a wider coalescence of modernity and tradition. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882), a posthumous publication, serves as a brilliant testament to this intermingling of categories which is a distinctive feature of Dutt’s oeuvre.
Dutt’s poetry, with its eloquence of diction and clarity of rhetoric, reflects her prowess as a retentive reader too. She herself writes in one of the letters to Mary Martin that she has the first two books of Milton’s Paradise Lost memorized, and the Miltonic echoes one finds in her work are unmistakable, as we find in “Our Casuarina Tree” – one of those poems in the pantheon of world literature that surpass the boundaries of time, space and context:
A critical introspection into Dutt’s poetry unravels several literary echoes which are intertwined in a woven tapestry of the poet’s distinctive approach to style as well as subject matter. One finds a distinct similarity in tone with the lyrics of the poets of the Romantic tradition, especially Wordsworth, as well as the Victorian lyric poets, with an uncanny resemblance to that of the poetic corpus of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti.
Her letters also reflect the rich cultural atmosphere of her home, where significant literary works, contemporary and classical, were read and discussed, as evident in the following excerpts:“We are now reading with papa Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. We have finished Waverley.” (Letter to her cousin, Omesh C. Dutt; December 11, 1870)
“Have you read Black’s A Princess of Thule or A Daughter of Heth? They are both very readable and rather well written novels. Far from the Madding Crowd is a very powerfully written novel by a Mr. Hardy. it reminds me in places of George Eliot’s Adam Bede.” (Letter to Mary Martin; October 31, 1876)
Significantly, this was written while she was staying in London with her family, and, in a previous account in the letter, Dutt talks about her visit to the Drury Lane Theatre where she would be going to see Amy Robsart (a theatrical by Andrew Halliday). It is to be noted that Dutt writes this at a time when women of her age where still denied access to public spheres, and an engagement with literary art was undoubtedly a dauntless step to freedom and emancipation, much like authors like Frances Burney and Jane Austen, who reacted to this “debilitating” silence (borrowing the word from Gilbert and Gubar) which women writers experience in a male-defined literary tradition.
Dutt’s initial published works include introspective essays in the Bengal Magazine on Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Leconte de Lisle, and her involvement with poetry and fiction – in English as well as French – grew mature and deep. Dutt was prolific in the field of music and had considerable interest in paintings. Her letters shed light on her knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, for instance, Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’ (which she saw in the Kensington Museum) and Jacques-Louis David’s “Napolean Crossing the Alps”. Dutt was interested in art criticism too, as she wrote: “I like the Art Journal very much. There are beautiful steel engravings in it.”
She even writes of a personal anecdote where she expresses her wish to archive her fondness for art in a gift to her father, Govin Chunder Dutt: “Papa’s birthday was on the 28th of January … I gave him a book of photographs taken from the paintings of the great masters of the Georgian Era.”
It is significant to note that this element of aesthetic appreciation deeply informed her writing too, as did Constable’s paintings to the work of John Keats, to a certain extent. Graphic and visual synesthetic imagery profoundly inform her detailed and neatly crafted depictions of natural harmony, the musicality of a divinely maintained cosmos, the rhythm enshrined in the turbulence of the Romantic quest for spiritual deliverance:
Troubling the sweet peace of my thoughts, give birth
To unclean slime, that in dense spirals roll
To mar thy gracious image in my soul.”
(Untitled Lines, Introductory Page of A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, 1876)
However, soon this turmoil paves the way to tranquility, an invocation of peace which concludes the poetic process itself: “And the calm enters in my sense instead”. Remarkably, this has a striking resemblance to the poems of the Romantic tradition where a deeply tumultuous psychic dichotomy yields a refined harvest of verse, or in the words of MH Abrams “the dynamic conflict of opposites, and their reconciliation into a higher third.”
References to music too abound in her letters and writings, and it’s important that this element of musicality (with both sacred and secular resonances) sheds light on her writing. Therefore, Dutt’s work resonates with a profound intellectual sublimity which can be traced back to the poet’s varied interests in the diversified field of the humanities. A consciousness of liberation moreover always underpins her writing: recognition of the vastness, the stillness, the magnanimous dynamic of silence working in the nooks and corners of a neat, naturally sustained world, certainly echoing the idea of a pre-Lapsarian moral order. The sonnet “Baugmaree” offers a brilliant exploration of this, which concludes with:
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval Eden, in amaze.”
While Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) assimilates Dutt’s diverse knowledge of French literature with her own independent style of writing, Ancient Ballads of Hindustan (1882), a posthumous publication, traces the poet’s deep association with the mythical tales of the canonical Indian classics. She talks about characters like Sita, Savitri, Prehlad and others – from Indian mythology – and presents them in a light which blends her reverence for tradition and love for modernity. When read minutely, these poems are densely symbolic too, as they voice the freedom of indigenous thought at a time when the discourse of colonialism was intensifying, when debates about independence and nationhood were gaining prominence. Thus placed within the historical and discursive context of nineteenth-century Bengal, Dutt’s poems, letters and writings also voice a resistance to a discourse which aimed at homogenization of categories in thought, ideas and diction. Her poetry embodies power, her poetry bespeaks diversity – her poetry becomes one with that continuing tradition of literary history which celebrates the minute workings of the natural world, the sound of spring, the delights of summer, the hope after winter, the sorrows which time encapsulates and treasures in “the deathless trees of Borrowdale” or Casuarinas in the poet’s “own loved native clime.” It is the same sentiment captured later in the phenomenal writing of Rabindranath Tagore,
Toru Dutt’s verse captures this essence – it reconciles the personal with the universal, it searches for musicality in discord, permanence and hope in a temporal, despair-stricken world, it is redemptive like “sunlight after rain.”
Toru Dutt remains an exemplary poet, and her works are widely regarded as being among the best of Indian-English writings. In particular, critics have paid much attention to Toru Dutt's lyric focus on the complexity of individual emotions, especially in light of her mixed religious heritage and her encounters with death from a young age. Much critical attention has also been paid to Toru Dutt's successful combination of European and Indian cultural influences, linking her identity as a cosmopolitan and multicultural figure to her poetic synthesis of English verse forms (such as the ballad) with Indian inspirations and legends.
WORK CITED :
- Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 1980.
- The Transnational in the History of Education: Concepts and Perspectives, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldan
- Mitra, Dipendranath. “THE WRITINGS OF TORU DUTT.” Indian Literature, vol. 9, no. 2, Sahitya Akademi, 1966, pp. 33–38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23329477.
- Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature. Sahitya Akademi. 1982.
THANK YOU
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