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A Cultural Memory
“An exhilaration and enjoyment that is more like spiritual
realization.”
The relationship among the various languages in India has been
the subject of a long-winding debate among scholars, historians
and politicians over centuries now. The aesthetic milieu of
Indian literature continues to inspire a fine arts person and
ethnopoetics. The existence of a rich linguistic connection,
however varied, is undeniable present in Indian literature,
regardless of the similarities, divergences and mutually
complementary differences among different languages in poetry.
The greater the number of poems one reads, the more one dwells
in the work of art and experiences the rasa. Rasa is the
reader’s complete emotional response to a piece of text; it is
also the dominant emotion of a literary work and the abstract
enjoyment of such an emotion. Indian poetry offers to the
readers, an affinity to several emotions: some of them having no
independent existence some get swallowed by other emotions,
while others are rather more resilient and long-standing.
Some poems have a metrical structure, which provides the poet
and the reader in turn, with numerous opportunities for
developing elegant imagery and pleasing alliteration.
In order to savor poetry of highly acclaimed Indian poets, one
must understand the poem’s governing assumptions and overall
framework. Some poems also come complete with the poem’s
footnotes and explanations, and the poet’s own systematic gloss
of the verses of the poem.
Extrapolating from the poem is nothing but the reader’s attempt
to envision the subject matter as an experience, more than just
a mandatory piece of text.
In some poems, the poets highlight several incidents and values,
which to them constitute the essence of Indian culture, an
essence characterized by refinement and actions of the highest
bonds of kinship.
In Ancient India, poets dependent for their livelihood upon the
largesse of royal donors, moved from court to court, reciting
poetry. In an good realm, if the gifted poets wrote pleasing and
creative verses, the king would bestow a large gift upon them.
There is also the Indian classical poetry, that encompasses the
many religious communities in India. Although some of the
construction of identity in a poem focuses on belonging to a
religious community, the poetry emphasizes the work as analogous
with the spirit of writing and fosters a pattern of
appropriating Indian culture as symbol of identity.
Over the years, however, Indian poetry has attracted many
writers, poets and literary connoisseurs, The process of writing
poetry in Indian languages makes the poet feel like a
connoisseur fairly soon, facilitating crossing boundaries of
audience and language.
Many Indian literati have credited the long popularity of
varying languages of Indian poetry to a fondness in Indian
culture for poetry. Those who have read Indian poetry would
probably agree that at a very young age, an admirer of poetry
celebrates the culture of the poem not only as an Indian, but
also as a symbol of psychological projections of a long-standing
tradition.
By maintaining these sentiments over the years, as a poet, I
gain a kind of imaginative freedom, one that shapes no
perception to events but dwells in the poetry that has remained
lively, flourishing for more than seven centuries.
As I engross in deep contemplation, a quote of T.S. Eliot rings
in my mind:
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by
finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the
formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external
facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given,
the emotion is immediately evoked”.
by Suma
V S
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