Brahma: Emerson

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

How did he come to write Brahma? How were the feelings going within, the undercurrents of thought and idea that he could accomplish about so many years ago when the world knew it not all, when the world was not new? How did he work on Orientalism? It is really a matter of reckoning. Why did he choose Brahma? Did he mean to give a new direction and impetus to American poetry?  Did he attempt to comprehend the creational force, trying to delve into the mysteries and myths of life and death and the world? How the phenomena, the perspectives and realms laid bare, attempted, un-attempted, muffling the truth though cannot be resolved as it is known to all? Instead of it, he tries to have a tryst with the Creational Divine.

Brahma, the Creator of the Universe, the Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent God is the speaker of the poem, the spokesman, the mouthpiece and the poet speaking through make it available the sermon. The concept is, Brahma is the creator of all; everything but into the hands of his.

There is a little bit confusion with regard to the title. Is it about Brahma? Brahma the Hindu God of Creation or Brahma, Brahman, the Over Mind, the Over Soul or the realization of the cosmos within, what is it? What is Brahma or Brahman if thought here as the Universal Soul, the Universal Mind felt within the self, the human soul will relate to as such. But here as words show it there lie in the creational matter as of Brahma, the Maker of the Universe without whose blessings the creative cannot be imagined.

If the red slayer thinks that he can slay and the slain taking it for being killed as there is no way out of, it must be kept in mind that the things keep rounding about, rotating; the things are not so as they seem to be. The Wheel of Fate keeps it rotating and it is difficult to say what is whose lot? The slayer too has nothing to be proud of and the slain too need not to be lowly and annihilated. The god of death may be credited with the limiting of one’s time-span and the cutting short of the drama of life. But to Brahma the slayer and the slain are alike. He sees the slain  too with the same eyes as his blessings are for all.

What to say about the farthest most and what about the nearest ones? He can see it all, foresee and oversee, what it happening, what it to take place, a knower of it all. Nothing is unseen from him; nothing hidden from him. Shadow and sunlight are but the sides of the same element. A cyclic order of the same; the two parts of the same thing, is the matter to be understood. Even gods vanished appear to him as he can feel about. Shame and fame are too but one to him. The world is a lila as this has to go. Things cannot come to a stop and this is called creation.

Those who know him not know it nothing; the universal energy, the life force. What it to say, that creational   force which one assumes or not. To be creative is to think in a new way based on supposition and presumption opening the avenues of thought and idea and a plethora thereafter.

It is without doubt a poem of Brahma that he got to write after reading the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and so on. In Hinduism, Brahma is one of the Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara. If Brahma is the Creator of the Universe, Vishnu is the Preserver and Mahesh the Destroyer. When we think of Brahma, the lotus like imagery, fancy and imagination will definitely be our properties to dispense and deal with. He is both the doubter and the doubt. The Brahmins pray to him most and sing of his glory.

The gods pine for his seat and place, the sacred seven sages too keep thinking about, but he has his own realms to delve into, the fancies to dip into, whims and whiffs to feel and go by, dreams to adorn, imagination to add to and to create and re-create fashioning it all afresh. Man as meek adorer of the good with belief in the heaven must try to find him. One can feel the beauty of the Creation in his works.

A poem of Brahma and his Brahmanda, it is really one of the transcendental poems pre-dating Eliot’s The Waste Land and Yeats’ Meru. Still the people say it as hearsay, Brahma’s writ as he is the doer, nurturer and the unseen fate of all that it happens, takes place. The first stanza of the poem sets the theme rolling:

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

The proposition with which the poem begins is stupendous. If the slayer thinks that he kills is but the mistake of his and if the slain thinks, he is killed and hopeless and helpless this too is a mistake on his part to think as Brahma’s work is to create, fashion it fresh and the Creator never disheartens anyone. He keeps, passes and turns again.

The lines quoted below tell of how his doubts and the things doubted are substantial to his understanding of the Creation:

I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

But one must try to follow him to be endowed and bestowed upon:

But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

When Emerson wrote it few could know it about as such was the celestial fire in him, which kept burning to show it light to the world. We are really proud of finding an Orientalist in him. What we the Indians failed to comprehend, Emerson took to his grasp and understanding. Still now his Brahma is debated and discussed and the readers fail to understand what it is in the poem; what it is that he has written deriving from Hindu texts and mythology. But we are sure of it too that even in future the coming generations will keep debating and discussing what it is in Emerson’s Brahma; why has he written it and has titled so. And as thus his Brahma has turned into an American Brahma, showing light to man, delving deep into the ideas, thoughts and reflections of life, death and the world.

How could he write the poem? How the orign and source of his that he took the notes from to draft it titling Brahma? Really, Emerson was an American pundit, Brahmin; a poet of the Over Mind, the Over Soul; an Orientalist par excellence; an transcendentalist American scholar rarely to be found in the history of letters and poetry who had definitely been ahead of time and his age.

 

The Dark Divine Goddess

A Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey 

 

The Dark Divine

Goddess Kali,

How to paint the images

Of her dark rupa,

The face divine?

 

The Dark Goddess,

Goddess Kali,

How the lila of hers,

How the images of hers

And she doing the lila?

 

The Dark Divine,

How the images,

How the paintings of hers,

How the forms and figures

Of delving artistically?

 

Somewhere as Kamakhya,

Vaishno Devi,

Somewhere as Ma Tara,

Cchinnamasta,

Somewhere as Sarbamangala,

Kalighat Kali.

 

Somewhere as Chamunda Devi,

Tartarini,

Somewhere as Vimala,

Dakshineswar,

Somewhere as Attahas,

Kripamayi.

 

Somewhere as Kshir Bhavani,

Bhadrakali Devaswom,

Somewhere as Kalkaji,

Hangeswari,

Somewhere as Guhayeswari,

Hingalaj Mata.

 

The goddess Kali,

The dark Divine,

How to worship her,

Worship the Mother Divine,

The Mother Divine?

 

Somewhere as Vindhyavasini,

Jeshoreshwari,

Somewhere as Kalika Mata,

Mundeshwari Devi,

Somewhere as Siddhkali,

Ujjaini Kali.

 

Somewhere as Naina Devi,

Kamaleshwari,

Somewhere as Maa Patal Bhairavi,

Matangi,

Somewhere as Bhuvaneshwari,

Bagalamukhi.

 

Somewhere as Dhumavati,

Tripura Sundari,

Somewhere as Durga,

Annapurna,

Somewhere as Bhairavi,

Kamlatmika.

 

Kali

Mahakali,

Mahalakshmi,

Mahasaraswati,

Maheshwari.

 

Kali

Kalrupa,

Kalyani,

Kalbhairavi,

Shyama.

 

With the tongue out

Of the mouth,

One foot held aloft

Over Shiva lying under

To quell her anger, anger divine.

 

Kali mythical, mystical,

Kali nocturnal, supernatural,

Kali meditational,

Kali, Kali creational,

The dark interpretation.

Kali with the trinetra,

The red bindi spot and the crescent

Over the forehead,

Wearing a forehead of human heads

Cut and wreathed.

 

Kali with the crown over her head

And the snake

And other conventional weapons

Holding a human head into

One of her hands.

 

Kali in anger, her anger divine

With the tongue out

Of the mouth

The blood red tongue

Hanging it out.

 

The face is dark, pitch dark,

The eyes are full of glitter,

As if she were trying to speak,

The hair hanging waist-long

And the hands cut and embedded around.

 

The myth says it,

She took incarnation just for

To annihilate and destroy the asuric forces,

Demons and devils,

Satanic forces.

 

And those things are within us

Which we know it not,

In the forms of tyranny, insult that we subject to,

Lust, greed, moral vice, sin that we commit,

Falsehood, selfishness, ego, pride, jealousy.

 

Kali the Dark Goddess,

Dreadful, horrible and terrible,

Destructive,

The Goddess of terror and horror,

Death, darkness and destruction.

 

But apart from the Goddess of

Death, destruction and darkness,

She is Kalyani too,

She is a fresco vermillioned red,

She is Shyama Kali.

 

Kali

Kalikadevi,

Kalyani,

Kalrupa,

Kaleshwari.

 

Kali, the Dark Goddess,

The Dark Deity,

What to say about,

Say about her,

The Mother Divine?

 

What her ways,

How she is,

How her creation,

Who she is,

I can just guess, guess about her.

 

What is Kali,

I cannot prove it,

What she is,

How her rupa is,

What I can say is she is but some power.

 

Kali is a non-Aryan deity,

Austric, tribal,

Aboriginal,

Kali of the forests and hills,

Kali the same woman.

 

Kali the dark lady,

The black woman,

Kali is Kali,

The nightly beauty

With the stars shining around.

 

Kali is the myth of the night,

The myth of creation,

Kali is the mystery of the world,

Kali the myth of darkness,

Kali not only dreadful, but blissful too.

 

Lighting the candle before

And showing it to her,

Singing the prayers humbly

I want to take leave, leave of her

Seeking for redemption and absolving of sins.

 

I do not know

What sins did I commit knowingly or unknowingly,

I do not know,

You just forgive, forgive them,

Goddess, Mercy divine!

 

A man I too, I too have

The weaknesses and faults of mine,

As  a man, as a man

I too have my shortcomings and lacunae

For which stand I guilty, guilty for.

 

You forgive, forgive them kindly,

Forgive them kindly, Goddess,

My Goddess, the mistakes,

Mistakes that I knowingly,

That I unknowingly, mother!

The Lotus: Naidu

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

O mystic Lotus, sacred and sublime,
In myriad-petalled grace inviolate,
Supreme o’er transient storms of tragic Fate,
Deep-rooted in the waters of all Time,
What legions loosed from many a far-off clime
Of wild-bee hordes with lips insatiate,
And hungry winds with wings of hope or hate,
Have thronged and pressed round thy miraculous prime
To devastate thy loveliness, to drain
The midmost rapture of thy glorious heart
But who could win thy secret, who attain
Thine ageless beauty born of Brahma’s breath,
Or pluck thine immortality, who art
Coeval with the Lords of Life and Death?

What does Sarojini say in The Lotus Dedicated to M.K.Gandhi? The lotus is a lotus, a thing of beauty, purity and goodness, the lotus of thought, idea and sublimity, so the man towering above with a saga beyond the touch of mortality, serene, sacrosanct, indelible and sublime. The poem is actually a tribute to a great personality, a great man as Gandhi was frail in appearance, but simple in bearing, but so much austere in morality. Without describing Gandhi, the poetess just through the symbol of a lotus which is so much sacrosanct in Hinduism discusses it all the intrinsic qualities of the great fellow. The Lotus Dedicated To M.K.Gandhi is one of those Gandhi poems which were written years and years before just as a mythical text, just as a tribute to the great soul in sublimity of thought and expression, is one of those Gandhi poems which remind us of the poems about him and if we make a comparative study of that it will be interesting to discuss.

What does a lotus symbolize? The red lotus symbolizes passion whereas the blue wisdom and logic, as the saying goes on, the hearsay. A symbol of serenity, purity, freshness, verve and enlightenment it is really a thing of satyam, shivam, sundaram and so the things to make a soul a great soul, a man a great man and these naturally inherent in the great soul. As the lotus grows, blooms over the waters, bearing the gusts of the wind, rough weather and soft weather so the times and testings of life; the hardships and troubles, tribulations and sufferings, struggles and sacrifices made, undergone and borne by a great man. The mystic lotus is really a mystic, a great soul, a great man of the world so simple and beautiful, so calm, serene, pure, confessional, good and great just like a lotus, a lotus blooming, an aquatic freshwater plant. The storms of Tragic Fate, Hungry Winds and Wild Bees with their hordes and raids keep hovering around to malign the spirit, but the lotus remains still and unaffected, with the petals and the layers of it opening one by one, the dew drops sliding over or scattered upon looking as pearls. The roots lie in lain into the deep waters of Time. 

There is nothing as that to question about its loveliness. There is nothing to say about its calm composure. It is ever calm, ever lovely, ever tranquil. As the lotus stands in with the midmost raptures of its own so the things of the great heart and soul. The secrets of it which none but the lotus-born Brahma knows it well.

The lotus has but been referred to as a symbol, the lotus of the mind, the lotus of the heart and the soul and the inner self in salutation to the larger heart seen in Gandhi the great man and soul. What it is true  is good and what it good is beautiful. Whatever say we, the lotus will remain a lotus unto the end. The poem speaks of the reverence implied within and is in other words a great tribute to a great soul ever written, ever composed, so full of regards and homage to the Father of the Nation. Whatever be the criticism of his, he is above it all.

The title is as such that it speaks in volumes rather than annotating the text in full. The word, The Lotus silences it all. Whose lotus? What lotus? How the lotus born? What it about Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara? How truth entwined? How beauty and goodness? And with the lotus the vision of Gandhi conjuring up upon the mind’s plane, so noble, virtuous and pure. The first two lines tell about his address:

O mystic Lotus, sacred and sublime,
In myriad-petalled grace inviolate, 

The next two lines tell of the faring of the rough weather:

Supreme o’er transient storms of tragic Fate,
Deep-rooted in the waters of all Time,

The last four lines of the poem also speak of the same Grace Divine: 

But who could win thy secret, who attain
Thine ageless beauty born of Brahma’s breath,
Or pluck thine immortality, who art
Coeval with the Lords of Life and Death?  

In the lotus image lies the image of something sublime, extraterrestrial and divine. The Image here too in the context of Gandhi is that of a super human being, the Divine Being in a mortal frame. The poetess means to say it that the sacred things will sacred forever, the things of reverence will always be upheld with reverence. Truth can never be smudged. Beauty can never be stained. Goodness can never be blotted.

The poem is itself a lotus paid in reverence to Gandhi. If the heart is pure, why to be afraid of, if the heart is good? A good soul can stand it all. Immortality is beyond the question of common understanding. So, make your heart just like a lotus, let you not defile it by the mud of the bad feeling. The good will always remain good which but the bad cannot smudge with however be its implications and intricacies to trap and make fall it within. The lotus of meditation, how to share with? It is a thing to be felt within; not to be shared with. The lotus is for to see and feel.

The poem draws the pictures of the bodily frame and personality, principle and philosophy, spirituality and beliefs of Gandhi as well as conjures upon the pictures and images of the lotus blooming into waters.

  The heart is purer, the heart is a temple of God and you will be as your feelings will be. Try to make it lotus-like and as such was Mahatma Gandhi, the Divine Spirit in a mortal frame, as such was his simplicity, purity and goodness, a votary of satya, ahimsa and shantih, an apostle of; a world class humanist unfazed by vile criticism, rising above of petty considerations of man which are doing the rounds now.

 Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at.—Better so! 

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.
      -----Matthew Arnold in Shakespeare