'At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.'

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”

From the concept of the Self, that we’ve been discussing for quite some time now, let’s move ahead gently, to make further inroads into the concept of the ‘Individual’ in relation to his/her society! This let’s do, dishing out the dough on a set frame of texts from yonder worlds and wonderlands of all hues, hoping for some real insightful case study of sorts!

Bella Akhmadulina would then be our first anchorage on this sojourn! And as always, quotes and citations are in italics.

Well, Bella’s been part of the Russian New Wave literary creed of the 1960s, that waved a vigorous banner of support to Western ideology and all that it stood for! The Beats [or the Beatniks] who come from the same time period, make a very interesting parallel reading of sorts in sync with the New Wavists!

Google's doodle tribute to Bella on her 80th birthday, 10 April 2017

The renowned Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky famously christened Bella Akhmadulina, as the ‘lone heiress proper to the Pasternak school of thought in Russian poetry, and the crowning treasure of Russian poetry’.

The Hopkinian streak abounds in her tryst with poetry, in her inventive ways and pioneering styles in rhyme, diction, syntax, etc. Human relationships, the individual in relation to society, love, and friendship are some of the predominant themes in her poetry.

In one of her oft-quoted poems, “Fever,” the speaker’s soaring poetic inspiration is compared to a quaint sickness that in turn results in making her a social outcast of sorts! So much for the artist and her place in society! 

[Well, again, this holds true for a host of writers from the erstwhile Soviet Union, including the likes of Joseph Brodsky, her contemporary, who had to make the decision of crossing over to America because of the soaring hostilities on his artistic sensibilities back home, and who eventually went on to become the Poet Laureate of the US!]

However, Bella's feelings are assuaged, and her artistic sensibilities get the much needed ‘shot in the arm’ even as she is coaxed into a cuddle in her next poem, “Fairytale about the Rain!” wherein, the narrator depicts the Rain as following her wherever she goes, alluding much to the muse within her, or the poet’s creativity that’s been welling up within her, and that’s been sincerely and passionately following her 24 x 7!

The 'Rain' here, metaphorically, acts a naughty child to her, and so she says, “It tickled my ear with a child's finger”!

“It was dry all around. Only I was drenched to the bone”

“The passers-by were frightened by the look of my misfortune.”

In her descriptive passages on how inspiration works, which are so akin to Ben Okri’s, she says,

And further—you fly above and below,

Smashing your elbows and knees until they are

bloody,

On snow, on air, on the corners of Kvarengi,

On bedsheets of hotels and hospitals.

Do you remember that sharp cupola

of St. Basil's, with jagged edges? Imagine—

Against it with all of your body!

Poems keep coming to her in myriad forms – like in the form of dreams, in the form of airplanes, and nip at her nose the way that ‘fish tickle the toes of children’!

Although the narrator yields to an impulsive desperate voice, when she finds herself singled out as an artistic individual, she soon regains her composure and cool when she finds a group of her friends striving and working hard to get rid of the rain! This makes the speaker joyfully embrace her artistic identity in society. However, the fact remains for Bella that, although artistic creativity has a transformative power and a liberating effect on society, still, the artist is the receiving end most of the time, by the same society, especially in dictatorial regimes!

Let’s now move over from Akhmadulina to Arnold!

Well, to John Donne, the famed Metaphysical poet, human beings are essentially gregarious beings and social beings by nature! And hence in his prose piece, “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions” he reasons out on his much-renowned dictum – ‘No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.’

But but but, with Arnold, it’s almost and always and altogether the other way round! In his poem, “To Marguerite—Continued,” he alludes to life as a boundless sea where people are all separate islands contained within it!

“We mortal millions live alone.”

How much this dictum holds true in today’s technological era!

At the same time, he also seems to highlight the fact that we as human beings must have once been ‘a single continent,’ living together in such harmony and unison, before the waters could have their sway and make islands of our harmonious lives! There is hence an ardent longing and a sincere wish on the part of the poet that this ‘waters’ that have come in between, and made us all islands would somehow recede, so that, the land meets up all over again, and we could start living the harmonious lives we once lived!

Although it is a highly symbolic poem with layers of interpretations beneath its structure, Arnold seems to be basically focusing on the religious skepticism and the dwindling faith that had by now gripped the English psyche very very much! Hence, it is against this backdrop, that Arnold expresses his anguished note that, every human being suffers from some isolation of sorts!

I quote furthermore from the poem –

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,

Across the sounds and channels pour—

Oh! then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent;

For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent!

Now round us spreads the watery plain—

Oh might our marges meet again!

Added, this feeling of isolation of humans from each other, and their earnest longing for solace is further explored in his poems like “Dover Beach” and “Rugby Chapel!”

His dramatic poem, “Empedocles on Etna,” depicts yet again the feeling of human isolation, through the character of Empedocles, a man who can no longer feel joy, as he feels quite much about his predicament!

Well, from Etna let’s now move on to Edna, or Edna Pontellier the protagonist in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening who also experiences a similar feeling of intense isolation.

In fact, she experiences a deep identity crisis, as she’s been enslaved and bogged down heavily by her societal roles and familial roles, that act a burden on her free spirit as such! In short, this short novel is a powerful depiction of an individual’s fight against societal normatives that fetter the free spirit within an individual!

As explosive as Ibsen’s The Doll’s House that had shocked audiences just two decades ago, [in the year 1879,] The Awakening, published in 1899, proved yet another shocker of sorts to a patriarchally-conditioned or a patriarchally-benumbed audience! The novel was heavily condemned, and banned from bookstores and from libraries as well, and the novelist passed into complete oblivion soon! But thanks to a host of feminists who have resurrected this text, and made it a hugely acclaimed feminist text today!

The novel’s opening lines are so symbolic! And I quote –

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over:

        “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!”

He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.

Snippets from this short novel that have enthused, motivated and energized people all over! These quotes are such high-octane energy for every soul, I bet!

Here goes –

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

“There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

“Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”

“Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace. They are fortunate beings. They do not need to apprehend the significance of things. They do not grow weary nor miss step, nor do they fall out of rank and sink by the wayside to be left contemplating the moving procession.

Ah! that moving procession that has left me by the road-side! Its fantastic colors are more brilliant and beautiful than the sun on the undulating waters. What matter if souls and bodies are failing beneath the feet of the ever-pressing multitude! It moves with the majestic rhythm of the spheres. Its discordant clashes sweep upward in one harmonious tone that blends with the music of other worlds - to complete God's orchestra.

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gift - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

I don't mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much -so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.

“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage.

That proves a real feminist 'awakening' of sorts from Mary Poppins, oops... Kate Chopins!

To be continued…

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