Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

BY: Bijay Kant Dubey

I

This is about the green miraculous trees,

And old clocks on stone towers,

And playgrounds full of light

And dark blue uniforms.

At eight I'm a Boy Scout and make a tent

By stretching a bedsheet over parallel bars

And a fire by burning rose bushes,

I know half a dozen knots and drink

Tea from enamel mugs.

I wear khaki drill shorts, note down

The number-plates of cars,

Make a perfect about-turn for the first time.

In September I collect my cousins' books

And find out the dates of the six Mughals

To secretly write the history of India.

I see Napoleon crossing the Alps

On a white horse.

II

My first watch is a fat and silver Omega

Grandfather won in a race fifty-nine years ago;

It never works and I've to

Push its hands every few minutes

To get a clearer picture of time.

Somewhere I've kept my autograph book,

The tincture of iodine in homeopathy bottles,

Bright postcards he sent from

Bad Ems, Germany.

At seven-thirty we are sent home

From the Cosmopolitan Club,

My father says, ‘No-bid,'

My mother forgets her hand

In a deck of cards.

I sit reading on the railing till midnight,

Above a worn sign

That advertises a dentist.

III

I go to sleep after I hear him

Snore like the school bell:

I'm standing alone in a back alley

And a face I can never recollect is removing

The hubcaps from our dull brown Ford.

The first words I mumble are the names of roads,

Thornhill, Hastings, Lytton;

We live in a small cottage,

I grow up on a guava tree

Wondering where the servants vanish

After dinner, at the magic of the bearded tailor

Who can change the shape of my ancestors.

I bend down from the swaying bridge

And pick up the river

Which once tried to hide me:

The dance of torn skin

Is for much later.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is first and foremost a surrealist who has learnt his art of poesy from surrealism and has tried to lend a hand to it by dabbling in the verses which seem to be cramming with images, pictures, views and memories inter-crossing each other, so full of observation and personal reflection. While going to the bazaar or reading in the library or in the park, he comes across the different sections of people exchanging their thoughts and ideas, this or that and as thus he gets the materials for his poesy. To him, it does not matter what it is important or unimportant. He is a poet of gossips, chit-chats, tidbits; of time-spirit and is maniac and moody too. The unconscious mind, the litter and play of thought and the juxtaposition, this is the format on which he writes, sometimes rational, sometimes irrationally, which is what, we cannot say it. As a poet he is but a tagger tagging the loose things in his language the experiences of life as seen, come to feel and marked closely. A post-modernist, he is a poet of the disjoint self of man; of disintegration and dismemberment. Just as welder he keeps heating and welding the metal scraps of wayward, trite, common thing poetry. To go down the memory lines and to collect is the poetic habit of his as he can often be seen loitering on the balcony, terraces, the courtyard and into the garden stroking his white beards and talking with the green trees. His love of white beards is excellent. In the younger days he had blackly lovelier beards. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is but a poet of Lahore, Dehradun and Allahabad. The parallel lines running on the conscious and the unconscious levels he improvises them for his poetry.

What does he want to continue with here in this poem? But apart from giving a well-defined start, he starts it abruptly. This is about the green miraculous trees and old clocks on stone towers, the playgrounds full of light and blue uniforms. He remembers what has he as Scout Boy. He marks Napoleon crossing the Alps on a white horse. Here the lines are very striking as this one has to learn from history, from world history. Many fail to remember the dates and many go with learning by rote or some by hook or crook. To remember the names of the Mogul kings too is not easy as one often forgets them; the names are difficult to remember. Sometimes one does it when forgotten taking the tips from others. Such a thing it happens in the examination hall. What to say about the small children? Even the elderly fellows confuse them in taking the names of the Mogul kings chronologically. One who is parrot-like in imitation may be do it, we mean the learners by rote.

The second stanza is all about the wrist watches given, used and re-used, how we used to maneuvered to make it run, adjusting with, running abnormally, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. After that, he takes time in saying about the Omega Swiss watch running into trouble as for some mechanical and technical fault and he trying to adjust by hand. But what to do with the failed watches? The memories of the grandfather and his father hang over. Which home is he describing the Lahore home? The Dehradun home? Or the Allahabad home? Perhaps the second or the third is. But he is so much connected to Allahabad. There is something of family history, genealogy and his personal life in this poem. He sits on the railing till midnight above a worn sign telling of a dentist.

The third stanza tells of how he goes to sleep after his father has slept and started snoring. But before he sleeps he keeps standing in the dark alley and ruminating. There lies the dull brown Ford and the names of the roads come on the lips naturally,Thornhill, Hastings and Lytton as they live in a cottage. He grows on a guava tree as a line is suggestive of his plucking of the guavas frequently or may be it the tree is close to the building. But where do the servants vanish after the dinner is a thing of reckoning.

Mehrotra starts the poem with the green trees, old clocks on stone towers, playgrounds full of light and the blue uniforms doing the rounds:

This is about the green miraculous trees,

And old clocks on stone towers,

And playgrounds full of light

And dark blue uniforms.

His life as a scout boy finding craze in traffic control and others he takes a note of all that:

At eight I'm a Boy Scout and make a tent

By stretching a bedsheet over parallel bars

And a fire by burning rose bushes,

I know half a dozen knots and drink

Tea from enamel mugs.

People often mark it how the Scout boys and girls ask about to walk on the pathways and take to directions:

I wear khaki drill shorts, note down

The number-plates of cars,

Make a perfect about-turn for the first time.

But the routing changes it during the exam-time:

In September I collect my cousins' books

And find out the dates of the six Mughals

To secretly write the history of India.

I see Napoleon crossing the Alps

On a white horse.

At that time the watches used to mean so much for style and time-keeping and so is here the description about the Swiss watch here taking to the memory of his grandfather:

My first watch is a fat and silver Omega

Grandfather won in a race fifty-nine years ago;

It never works and I've to

Push its hands every few minutes

To get a clearer picture of time.

Again, he thinks of the autograph book and thinks of relocating it together with the homeopathy bottles. Bright postcards sent from Bad Ems, Germany engage the mindscape.

Somewhere I've kept my autograph book,

The tincture of iodine in homeopathy bottles,

Bright postcards he sent from

Bad Ems, Germany.

Again they return from the Cosmopolitan Club:

At seven-thirty we are sent home

From the Cosmopolitan Club,

My father says, ‘No-bid,'

My mother forgets her hand

In a deck of cards.

I sit reading on the railing till midnight,

Above a worn sign

That advertises a dentist.

The references to the dull brown Ford and the roads of Allahabad tell of his dormant passion and possession and the outing into those:

And a face I can never recollect is removing

The hubcaps from our dull brown Ford.

The first words I mumble are the names of roads,

Thornhill, Hastings, Lytton;

How the place where he lives, the cottage and the guava tree:

We live in a small cottage,

I grow up on a guava tree

Wondering where the servants vanish

After dinner, at the magic of the bearded tailor

Who can change the shape of my ancestors.

Here there is something difficult to explain so mythical, mystical and symbolical:

I bend down from the swaying bridge

And pick up the river

Which once tried to hide me:

The dance of torn skin

Is for much later.

With the flow of time and memory where does he want to go? The river consciousness it is there in him. The passage of time he seems to charter it, as seen, experienced and understood in life. This is as thus time passes off, memory slips down the lanes. This is as thus life continues it. One is connected with the other, one idea with another idea, one thought with another, one experience with another experience.

The Canonization

Link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/literariness.org/2020/07/06/analysis-of-john-donnes-the-canonization/amp/

By: Nasrullah Mambrol

Critics basically agree to divide John Donne’s writing into two groups related to his life stages, his romantic, or love, poetry in the stage dating prior to 1615, and the spiritual poetry emanating from the time of his ordination in 1615 to the year of his death, 1631. However, most scholars also agree that much of his romantic poetry reflects his grounding since childhood in the Catholic faith, seen often in the figurative language he adopts to write of love and its erotic aspects. This combination proved unseemly to many in cultures that followed Donne’s own, and for that reason his poetry did not gain popularity until the 20th century. That era proved more open to the exaggeration and surprising comparisons of metaphysical poets and poetry that had so scandalized earlier readers. Donne’s focus on the theme of union, both physical and spiritual, dominates his work. Supported by the logical precision in which Donne excelled, his writing emphasizes balance in relationships and between themes. In “The Canonization,” he uses the relationship between the spiritual and the erotic as framework to emphasize the close ties between spiritual and physical love.

By titling his poem The Canonization, (1633) Donne prepares his readers for a religious poem but delivers something entirely different. He often utilized that technique, as in A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning, among others. Canonization in the Catholic Church occurs when individuals have proved themselves practitioners of “heroic virtue.” A person labeled as heroic is believed to have acted in an exceptional manner that ranks him above the common man, while one who practices virtue possesses a soul already redeemed by Christ, enabling him to reject things material in favor of things spiritual. Canonization preceded the granting of sainthood, and those deemed saints could be called upon by humans for intervention with God in important matters. Donne’s choice of canonization as suggesting role models and intercessors proves vital to the meaning of his poem.

Gender Matters: The Women in Donne’s Poems

The speaker begins with a dramatic address suitable to the stage, crying to an unseen provoker, “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love.” In a few words Donne sets a scene in which his audience understands that the “hero” of his poem has been attacked through words, probably gossip, due to the hero’s manner of loving. The speaker is concerned that because of the provoker’s judgment, he will not be allowed to continue his love. He next offers the antagonist substitute targets for his slander, including the obviously aged speaker’s physical attributes, such as his “palsy,” “gout,” and “five gray hairs.” Donne chooses the verb chide to make clear that the speaker’s nemesis seems a nag with so little to do, he must select an innocent person to rebuke. His next lines further allow his speaker to belittle the antagonist. Not only might the antagonist attack him simply for his age, which amounts to petty cruelty, but he might also criticize the speaker’s lack of material goods and social position, saying the attacker might his “ruined fortune flout.” Again Donne’s word choice proves imperative for its connotation. A person who suffers “ruin” is generally reduced by an outside attack of some kind, not by profligate actions of his own. The use of alliteration emphasizes that the attacker does not simply whisper about the speaker’s problems but flaunts them, suggesting he shows contempt for the debt, defying laws of decency. The speaker orders his assailant, “Take you a course, get you a place,” suggesting situations that at first glance seem to have high status, serving “his hounour, or his grace,” or a “King.” But Donne makes clear that these positions of “service” equate to simple toadyism, contemplating, for instance, the king’s “real, or his stamped face,” with “stamped face” probably meaning that which appeared on currency of the realm.

The speaker does not care what other occupations the antagonist chooses, as long as he will “let me love.” He concludes the first of his five nine-line stanzas having established himself as an innocent, set upon by undesirables who have no loves of their own.

The second stanza continues the speaker’s application of logic, as he questions how his love injures or harms others. He contrasts small actions, such as a lover’s sigh or tears shed, with grand events, such as the sinking of a “merchant’s ships” and the floods that caused that sinking. The results escalate to the level of the absurd, with the speaker questioning,

When did my colds a forward spring remove?   
When did the heats which my veins fill     
Add one more to the plaguy bill?

His love has not altered the seasons or killed anyone with infection; nor has it, he adds, affected soldiers or lawyers who will continue with their normal actions even “Though she and I do love.” Having reduced his attacker to the level of fool, the speaker moves into the next stanza inviting others to label him and his lover whatever they wish; labels do not alter the reality of their love:

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;     
Call her one, me another fly,   
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die.

The taper metaphor invokes thoughts of burning candles, which eventually disappear, as he and his lover might eventually die, consumed by their passion.

Donne next compares the lovers to “the eagle and the dove,” alluding to the Renaissance idea of the Ptolemaic theory of the universe as concentric circles. Within those circles various creatures moved. While the eagle flew in the sublunar space, that of the sky above earth, doves ascended and descended to and from the upper heavens, according to biblical passages such as the one in which the Holy Spirit descends from heaven during the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist. Donne extends the metaphor of fire by using the phoenix, a mythological bird that recreated itself every 500 years, and suggesting its constant renewal as a riddle. The speaker proposes that the heat of passion may keep him young, despite his advancing age. The stanza concludes with an allusion to the Platonic notion that two lovers could join to form a perfect whole: “We die and rise the same, and prove / Mysterious by this love.”

Donne carries the idea of love and death into the penultimate stanza, his first line reading, “We can die by it, if not live by love,” suggesting that once dead, the lovers will become the subject of legend and chronicle, their story preserved as an example to others. If their story is not told in history, it will certainly be presented through art:

We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms; 
As well a well wrought urn becomes 
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

His suggestion of the small urn’s equality to the most lavish of tombs was made famous in the title of the 20th-century formalist critic Cleanth Brooks’s seminal book The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. But Donne saves his most dramatic comparison for the final two lines of this stanza, writing, “And by these hymns, all shall approve / Us Canonized for love.” Here he broaches the blasphemous suggestion that his physical love bears an importance equal to that of the canonized saints. Not only do they provide an example, their names may be called upon in order to intercede with requests that their own passion be increased.

This suggestion supports the final stanza, in which the brazen speaker claims that the very antagonists attacking him, and others of his ilk, will call upon the speaker’s love as a model for their own. Those for whom “love was peace that now is rage” once valued a quiet method for romance but now crave a far more passionate approach, signified by rage. Donne incorporates various words suggesting religion, including invoke and reverend, that would have scandalized Victorian readers. The speaker states that the You he addresses made the homes, or “hermitage,” of others their own through their intrusion or spying. Donne writes,

Who did the whole world’s soul extract, and drove,  
Into the glasses of your eyes,  
So made such mirrors, and such spies,     
That they did all to you epitomize,   
Countries, towns, courts; beg from above
A pattern of your love!

The speaker feels that those who spied upon others did so for vicarious needs and internalized what they observed. In the penultimate line, Donne adapts his frequent method for emphasis of an idea, expanding the individual concern or state to universal proportions.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Beatification and Canonization.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2.

Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. “The Meaning of ‘Rage’ in ‘The Canonization.’ ” American Notes and Queries. 14, no. 2 (April 2001): 3.

Flynn, Denis. John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.