09: Notes — Not always too explicit
Amal Kiran often said that the words and phrases in poetry should always be precise, true, exact, to the point. But there should also be an element of ‘ambivalence’, a puzzling sense of variation, of alternatives, with a word-play, open to interpretations, double entendres not for fun or pun but for bringing out crowded suggestions and varying nuances, subtle echoes heard or unheard, the silent dhwani. The genuine valid creative aspect is in the double sounding or sensing, amply rich with tones and grades that effect refinement and artistry in their nobility. Art becomes more than Art for the sake of Art.
Let us see a few quick examples from Savitri.
The fixity of the cosmic sequences
Fastened with hidden inevitable links
She must disrupt, dislodge by her soul’s force
Her past, a block on the immortal’s road,
Make a rased ground and shape anew her fate. ||3.11||
There is the opposing double play of thought in the working of the past and the future that is to come, the fixity in its inevitability getting rased or torn down and the newness shaped.
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Already God is near, the Truth is close:
Because the dark atheist body knows him not,
Must the sage deny the Light, the seer his soul? ||144.50|
“atheist” can be here a noun or an adjective for the “body”.
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Of such fierce stuff was made up life’s long hell:
These were the threads of the dark spider’s web
In which the soul was caught, quivering and wrapt;
This was religion, this was Nature’s rule. ||64.11||
Is it the dark web of the spider or web of the dark spider? In the context perhaps it is the web of the dark spider
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He meets an ancient adversary Force,
He is lashed with the whips that tear the world’s worn heart;
The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes:
He wears the blood-glued fiery Centaur’s shirt,
The poison of the world has stained his throat. ||108.49||
It could be the shirt of a fiery Centaur or the fiery shirt of the Centaur. But the adjective “fiery” is more connected with “shirt”, the poisoned shirt of Nessus that became the cause of death of Heracles.
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Death and his hunters stop a victim earth;
The terrible Angel smites at every door:
An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
All is the prey of the destroying force;
Creation rocks and tremble top and base. ||117.42||
This evil Nature housed in human hearts
A foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
Expel the householder, possess the house. ||117.43||
An opposite potency contradicting God,
A momentary Evil’s almightiness
Has straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts. ||117.44||
Let us look into the following line:
This evil Nature housed in human hearts.
This e|vil Na|ture housed| in hu|man hearts|
— all five iambs.
But in the context “This” can have an accent. With it the line scans as follows:
This| evil Na|ture housed| in hu|man hearts|
— iamb-cretic-iamb-iamb-iamb.
But the question is whether “evil” is a noun or an adjective. Is it the “evil Nature” that is housed in human heart or “Nature” housed in human hearts this “evil”? The second scansion brings out better the aspect of “evil Nature”.
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Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless night.
Tu doutes de ton pouvoir et crains ton ignorance? c’est cela justement qui enveloppe ta puissance de ce sombre manteau de nuit sans étoiles.
In “that dark mantle of starless night, ce sombre manteau de nuit sans étoiles” — surely it is the dark mantle, the veil, the shroud of the night being described, and not the mantle, the veil, the shroud of the dark night. But in the “dark starless night mantle” there is a little double play possible, the “dark” could be for the “night” or for the “mantle”.
The featured image is an adaptation of a painting by Huta.
The Winds of Wonder 
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