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ISSN 2278-9529 Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

The Beauty of Diction in Exploring the Nuances of Crisis in Some Poems of Kamala Das

Abhishek Sarkar Assistant Professor,

Department of Basic Science & Humanities (English) Murshidabad College of Engineering & Technology

Berhampore, Murshidabad Abstract:

A bilingual poet, Kamala Das is an iconoclast in the history of Indian writing in English. She is naturally gifted with an exceptional quality to choose appropriate words to drive home the idea intended. Her confessional mode of writing makes her exercise more of a private and intense kind of diction in her poetry as she unfurls the agonizing and complex realm of so far unearthed feminine consciousness. Hers is an altogether different world of exploration and the diction of her poetry aptly enlightens all the nuances of that expression. Feminine privacy, frustration, dream, loneliness, sensuality, nostalgic aspiration and all such wide array of emotions find room in her diction. Definitely, words (and phrases) tell their own story in her poems but what is more fascinating is that the words carry intense emotional connotation besides their literal meaning. In fact, it is this capacity that makes her diction more moving and effective than many other poets do.

Keywords: pithy expression, passionate elocution, sincere submission, soulful delineation.

Introduction:

“All round me are words, and words and words,

They grow on me like leaves, they never

Seem to stop their slow growing

From within…” these are the opening lines of Kamala Das’ poem Words and indeed, in her poetic parlance she never runs short of apposite diction to make her ideas or emotion vibrant and vocal. In her poetry, she makes unequivocal revealing of her woman persona, entangled with her insatiable search for true love and her recurring realization of failure of that ideal search. Hence, frustration, loneliness, depression, humiliation and fragmentation of being all such emotional crisis girdle her poetic expression. However, when she indulges in occasional retreat to her emotional sanctuary i.e. her grandmother and the native Malabar with its characteristic rural rhythm she could only fathom the fullness of being and relish the love for life. Whatever be the mood of her presentation, the most fascinating quality is her innate deftness in culling apposite words that furnish intrinsic connectivity with the emotion or the idea she seeks to unlock. Her words are neither pedantic nor allusive to some classical or scholastic doctrine. They are simple and household but pregnant with depth, gravity and universality.

Kamala Das is a poet of confessional mode, a mode that has already become well known to the western readers in the works of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and W.D Snodgrass. However, in India the credit goes to her in making this genre an effective tool to poetic expression. Confessional poetry has been characteristically radical, bold and honest. Hence, the exploration of the privacy, deep-rooted

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discontent and intense longing for the unattained are the driving forces of such poetry. Das too with utmost honesty opens the floodgate of her psyche and tables the frustration and aspiration of female world and in her venture; it is the diction that makes her objective meaningful, effective and distinctive. The uniqueness of her diction is definitely the successful rendering of the angst and aspiration of the woman persona in simple and household words and images. In fact, the precision of her arrangement of words and phrases has been so impeccable that we wonder at her efficiency in evoking poignant and grave thought by means of such simple diction. The simplicity of her expression addresses the complexity of the woman persona in her poems and herein lies the craftsmanship of her creativity.

The Dance of the Eunuchs, the opening poem of her first collection Summer in Calcutta (1963) is suggestive of her deft handling of diction to drive home the ideas she intended to express. The whole poem resonates with a sense of void and futility that bridges the eunuchs and the poet. The dance of the eunuchs with “wide skirts going round and round,” and “with / Long braids flying, dark eyes flashing, they danced and / They dance, oh, they danced till they bled…” is reflective of their passionate involvement with the dance and the intensity somehow corresponds to the vacuity within them. The life of the eunuchs is that of barrenness and dejection; they do lack rhythm of normalcy in life. Hence, the repetition of the word ‘dance’ or ‘danced’ might suggest an attempt to trace some rhythm in life on the part of the eunuchs as dance involves rhythm for sure. Therefore, it might be that to the eunuchs this dance is not only a part of their professional identity but also an escape route to their much-desired liberated identity. However, the climax of pathos is reached when the beholders assess their passionate dance as ‘poor creatures ‘convulsions’; even though the dance causes bleeding. The bleeding metaphorically implies at an internal bleeding – a wound to their consciousness and sensibility. Thus, there is a suggestion of a sharp decline of worth in the use of the words where dance becomes ‘convulsions’ and they (the eunuchs) become ‘poor creature’. The depreciation of value of the eunuchs is well wrought in these lines.

When the poet says “Their voices/ Were harsh, their songs melancholy; they sang of / Lovers dying and of children unborn…” a sequence of pessimistic snaps is created that as a whole compose a collage of the same tale of crisis, struggle, depression and negativity. The harshness of their voice is not only characteristic of their identity but also indicative of the harshness or crisis that befalls their life. This harshness is more of an obligatory social learning than that of their choice. In fact, the oblique eyes and response of society, even that of children dissect them so critically that they only go through cruel experiences and the same, in turn, make them sing only melancholy songs. There always works an impression of dissociation of sensibility between the eunuchs and society. Hence, they can only sing songs of death of lovers or children unborn. Notable is the choice of subjects of the songs- ‘lovers dying’ and ‘children unborn’ as both allude to more than what meets our naked eyes. The lovers stand for love and the children for innocence, which remains unborn in their life. Therefore, these phrases clearly evoke the idea that the eunuchs live a life lacking both love and innocence- two prime virtues of human existence. The word ‘unborn’ intensifies the same want in their life that in next line culminates in the expression ‘writhed in vacant ecstasy’.

Further, the use of phrases like ‘half burnt logs’ intensifies the appalling condition of their life. Perhaps this is one of best uses of objective correlative in Kamala Das. The existence of the eunuchs is that of dubious gender identity- lacking any sole identity in full. They are neither completely male nor female and thus caught in the dilemma of hybrid identity. The eunuchs are doomed to this ‘half’ identity. The wooden logs that remain ‘half burnt’ on funeral pyres ultimately become useless and desolated as the ‘half burnt’ state of the logs renders the logs incapable of being used as fuel. The eunuchs can further be interpreted as ‘half burnt’ in the sense that due to their dubious identity they are incapable of enjoying the burning desire

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of physical love. They themselves have the burning passion within, which burn them; but none to fulfill the urge with the shower of love and thereby it is their own passion that renders them ‘half burnt’ and incomplete in life. Similarly, the life of the poet is reduced to such an incomplete (or half) state of being. In fact, Kamala Das is one more eunuch who also sings of dying love in her verses and of loss of innocence through her adventurous expeditions in search of true love. If dance is the mode of purgation to the eunuchs, writing poetry is that to the poet. Therefore, when she speaks of their bleeding in course of the dance, she might have felt the Shellyean anguish “I fall on the thorns of life and I bleed…” Though the nature and context of their anguish differ, the poignancy of realization remains the same.

In the poem, My Grandmother’s House the angst of her existence after the death of her grandmother is presented with emotional sincerity and passionate nostalgia. The emotion of some vital loss and the reminiscence of clinging memories endow the poem a kind of universality. In this poem also the diction is simple and explicit; however, the simplicity of the diction has far reaching connotation that definitely adds to the grace and charm of the poem. In the very first line the phrase ‘not far away’ is an interesting example where the phrase doesn’t merely stand for geographical or physical distance; rather it is concerned with the distance between her joy and sorrow, freedom and dwarfish life in her husband’s house and between what she happened to be once and what is remained of her. Her fond memories are so persistent with her being that they are indeed ‘not far away’, though there exists an unbridgeable gap between reality and reminiscence.

The use of the phrase “That woman died” is another attention-grabbing example. The house is the dear nest to her winged self; it’s a place where she received love once. However, as soon as “That woman died” everything sinks into silence. Therefore, it is not the death of an individual only; rather it is the death of all possibilities of being happy, carefree and joyous to the poet. Nevertheless, how calmly she expresses the death of the most precious person in her life- without emotional outburst or melodramatic sighs and how she detaches herself with her grandmother in the address ‘That woman’! It is suggestive of her unique capacity to harness emotional outburst and yet echo the loneliness of her heart. In fact, a remarkable quality of her presentation is this balanced and sedate portrayal of her acute pain and suffering. However, it is because of such presentation she appears to be a seasoned victim and not a victim by chance.

Another phrase that has caught my attention among others is “an armful of Darkness”. The expression explicitly expresses the proximity and spiritual integrity of the poet with her grandmother. The beauty of the phrase is its synthesis of disparate words ‘armful’ and ’Darkness’ that accentuates the overall emotional spirit of the poem. In fact, such arrangement of words heightens the emotional poignancy that attunes the poet with the audience. Darkness is something we generally dread of, but here the poet welcomes the darkness in her life and this is simply because of the fact this darkness lingers with the fond memories of her grandmother. Hence, it is not fearful but frolicsome to her. It is ironic enough that she seeks to embrace darkness to dispel the darkness of her life and yet the very fact of her life.

The expression grows more emotive when the word ‘armful’ adds further warmth to ‘Darkness’. It might suggest the memories of the poet when her grandmother used to hold her with the warmth of her embracing at dark. Therefore, in her memory darkness must not have lingered as a source of fear but an opportunity to be in the arms of her grandmother and thus it elevates to the realm of ‘embalming darkness’ of Keats. Thereby in the din and bustle of her city life and in the midst of wild despair, she only remembers the affectionate and warm touch of her grandmother that can revive her sense of being loved or alive. The impression of haptic communication in this context is irresistibly arresting and coordinates well the darkness and armful with her grandmother.

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Conclusion:

Indeed, Kamala Das is gifted with the excellence of expressing the crisis of longing and languishment with flawless precision. Her apparently simple diction is enriched with wider connotations. She has never tried to make use of obscure or obtrusive words to cater to her ideas and this is perhaps because of the fact that she sought to unlock her heart with honesty and sincerity of expression. At the same time, she must have wanted to reach out the wider audience of India and naturally, she did not seek to make her diction alien to her readers by loading her poems with verbose, pedantic and typically English expressions. She must have been aware of the fact in that case there might have taken place a sort of dissociation of sensibility between her poems and the readers. In short, her diction is soulful as well as meaningful.

Works Cited:

[1] Dwivedi. A.N, Kamala Das and Her Poetry. Second Revised and Enlarged Version. ATLNTIC PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS. [2] Mitapalli Rajeswar et. al. Kamala Das: A Critical Spectrum. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2001 [3] My Story. Harper Collins Publications India. [4] Dwivedi, A.N. Kamala Das and Her Poetry. New Delhi; Doaba Home, 1983. [5] Iyenger, K.R. S. Indian Writing in English. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962; 2nd ed.1973.

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