STEPHEN GILL AS AN
ICONOCLAST
Professor Dr. Brahma Dutta Sharma
In his poetry Stephen Gill appears before us as an
iconoclast who rejects much of what the supporters of the present day
civilization, .which Stephen Leacock Calls the
Caucasian civi1ization1 pride themselves on. In his poem ‘Unfair
Ophelia’ Gill resolves to “uncover [the world’s] ugliness/ at the shrine of law
and liberty’ (Songs for Harmony, 39).
The upholders of the present-day civilization are proud of the machines which
it as given to man and which have made human life much less toilsome. For
instance, J.B.S. Haldane writes in his essay ‘Science
and Human life’: “Science affects the average man and woman in two ways
already. He or she benefits by its applications, driving a motor car or omnibus
instead of a horse-drawn vehicle, being treated for disease by a doctor or
surgeon, rather than a priest or a witch. . . . .”2 Instead of
feeling triumphant at the achievements of science and technology Stephen Gill
finds the modern man to have become a victim of these achievements as he says
in his poem ‘Contemporary Humans’
For them
no Moses no star
patience and courage
no real thirst to quench
Desireless of the morn
they are raped
in desert solitude
by technology and science. (Songs for Harmony, 32)
No
doubt, Gill admits that the modern civilization has given man very efficient
machines like robots but he believes that such machines are intensifying
tensions and, hereby, endangering peace and harmony, as in his poem ‘Divided
Humanity’ he writes:
... the negation
of the pastures for harmony
raises armies of spiteful robots
who isolate further
the suffocative islands
of tensions. (Shrine, 84)
Another phenomenon that the upholders
of the present-day civilization are proud of is the security that it has
provided to people. For instance C.E.M. Joad writes
in his essay ‘The Civilization of Today’: “... it is a great achievement of our
civilization that today civilized men should in their ordinary daily lives be
practically free from the fear of violence.” But Gill finds violence rampant in
the world and asserts that preparations for war have been made on a large scale
and peace is being threatened very seriously as in his poem ‘Talking of Peace’
he says:
. . . nuclear-powered marines
sail over breasts of the oceans;
missiles look down like hawks
and neutrons
make fun of every life. (Shrine, 46)
And in his poem ‘Light of Truth’ he tells us how war-mongers have
made the world a very unsafe place:
War-mongers are drinking
from the land of darkness.
The land of
devils is empty
because its occupants
extend desert of savagery.
across the globe.
(Divergent Shades, 47)
For the solutions of their problems
societies turn to their rulers and leaders with the hope of getting remedies
from them. But Gill has no hopes from them as the leaders according to him are
blind to the “maddening clouds of dangers” and rulers are deaf to the
distressing cries of the innocent.” This signifies that according to Gill
rulers and leaders are not going to do anything to stop wars.
When
a war is fought they claim it is being fought to defend the land from an
aggression or to end misrule and stop corruption, to advance the country and
stop regression, to bring money, create jobs and stop recession, to kill
enemies and to stop disruption. For instance in his essay ‘The Civilization of
Today’ C.E.M. Joad maintains that the power of
destruction which civilized communities have gained from science can enable
them to defend themselves from the uncivilized peoples, as he observes: “…owing
to powers of destruction with which science has armed [the civilized world], it is exceedingly unlikely that such
savages or uncivilized peoples as are left in the world could prevail against
it.”4 ‘But in his poem ‘About War’ Gill rejects all such claims when
he writes:
`Don’t tell me
war is winning glory
.it is to defend the land
and stop regression.
Don’t tell me
war is boosting pride
it is to end misrule
and to end corruption.
Don’t tell me
war is settling disputes
it is to advance a country
and to stop regression. (Songs
for Harmony, 21)
This poet rejects wars in unambiguous
terms and in one of his ‘Trilliums’ he defines war in the following words:
War:
to buy the blossom of a mother
for slaughtering of another. (Songs
for Harmony, 56)
Weapons, according to Gill, are not the instruments of defence but the instruments of death. For instance, while
writing about the tanks he says:
Tanks
fill the ditches with dead ...
Windy autumn! (Songs for Harmony, 56)
Wars,
according to Gill, causes women to become widows, deprive children of their
fathers and make happy homes gloomy, as he writes:
War creates more widows
renders infants fatherless
sets homes in darkness
and loses human affection
War pollutes the air
making life very hard
it produces untold terrors
and stocks tearing tension (Songs
for Harmony, 22)
It
is in his poem ‘The Gulf Crisis on TV’ that Gill gives us a peep into what a
war causes to happen. Here are a few of the scenes of the battlefield he paints
in this poem:
Women crying
around debris,
men hurling abuses
children confused and despaired
the Patriots intercepting the Scuds
the showers of the bullets
downing the planes and
the bombs piercing through homes, . . . (Shrine,
55)
In his poem ‘A Familiar Scene’ he
gives us a pen-picture of what one sees in a battlefield at the end of the battle, and presents a scene in
which dead bodies are lying scattered forming a horrible sight:
Bodies rotting
in ditches
or dumped with the garbage.
Bodies washing up
onto the beaches
like bundles of clothes
or lying discarded
in open mass graves
heaped together
in grotesque piles (Shrine, 68)
These bodies are now
corpses but there was a time when they were human beings with dreams and aspirations, ambitions and
ideals. The poet is sad to feel that
In half-shut eyes
their dreams are now stones.
Bodies wrapped with red
lie in the lap of dust. (Shrine, 69)
The deaths of these soldiers have deprived old
fathers of their sons and wives of their husbands. The poet draws his readers'
attention to the miseries of such wives and fathers he says:
Here is a mother
who moves the corpses
to find her son;
here is the cry of an old man
buried in the cries of the wounded. (Shrine, 69)
Gill also suggests that wars, whether
those fought between nations or the civil ones, are not rare, but frequent, and
the waste they cause is heavy, as he says:
It is a familiar scene
from
at the time of freedom;
or a place in the middle-east
It may be any
country in
In his poem 'Bride is Watching' he gives a picture of the
violence-rid
Her lap has become
a slaughtering spot
with the same swords
which had sheltered her home.
Some deranged beings
release their beasts with bullets
any time on any crowd. (Divergent
Shades, 43)
Such civil wars and internal conflicts in different countries are a
testimony of the fact, according to Gill, that disharmony is rampant in the
world and there is severe paucity of bridges. Gill says so in his poem 'Divided
Humanity' when he writes:
Paucity of bridges
thickens the darkness of doubts.... (Shrine,
84)
The poet fears that if another World War breaks out, nuclear bombs will
be used in it and they will cause global devastation. He embodies this view in
his poem 'If There Be a Third World War' when he writes:
If another war
breaks out
no one may survive
to see beauty
and to bask in the sunshine.
The stars will gleam
seasons may come and go,
but no singer shall praise them
nor poet write of love.
Mother shall be
alone
gases hover on her
the hounds of disease wander
living worse than dying
it will be doomsday. (Songs
for Harmony, 23)
The problem to which Gill draws the readers' attention has
been drawn attention to by a number of other writers too. For instance, C.E.M. Joad does so when in his essay 'The Civilization of Today'
he observes: " ... in the conditions of the present day when any war that
starts anywhere is more and more likely to spread everywhere. A single match
will set a hay-rick ablaze, and with all this war
material lying about, the world is again like a hay-rick
waiting for that match. As somebody has jokingly remarked, in the next war men
will fight with atom bombs and in the war after that with bows and
arrows." 5
The
poet wants a break from the past and wishes for a future which is free from
wars and miseries which accompany them as in his poem 'Prayer for the Coming
Years' he prays:
Strengthen me with Thy Manna
to weed out
the war
the misery
and the hard days of the past
and to help
good to emerge
in the coming years. (Divergent Shades, 9)
The implication is that what is being
regarded as progress is, according to Gill, regress, and what is needed is putting
things in the reverse gear, as he maintains: "How to reverse the gear/ is
a question now" (Shrine, 84).
Such opinions have been expressed by some other thinkers too, and the fact is
evident from R. Rajaraman's recording in his
editorial 'Get Rid of Nuclear Arms': "In January 2007, four veterans of
the U.S. strategic community - George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger
and Sam Nunn -- coauthored an essay, which called for 'reversing reliance on
nuclear weapons globally ... and ultimately ending them as a threat to the
world.' They repeated their call in a second article in 2008, along with a list
of key steps for achieving a nuclear weapon-free world.6
When in the second half of the poem 'Prayer for the Coming Years' Gill
prays:
Strengthen me with Thy Manna
to weed out
the spite
the dark
and the frowning evil of the past
and to help
love to rule
in the coming years. (Divergent
Shades, 9)
Poet brings to light the fact that it is the feeling of spite that lies
at the root of disharmony and conflicts and that it is essential to get rid of
the feeling of spite if we want to have a world free from the threats of war
and the misery that accompanies it. In his poem 'Reptiles' too Stephen Gill
tries to identify the feelings which are inimical to peace and harmony. Here he
mentions two other feelings, namely, fanaticism and racism, as he observes,
first, that "a fanatic reptile/ ... hides among the shrubs/ where the
flowers of peace/ cannot bloom" (Songs
a/Harmony, 47), and, secondly:
In those sunless lands-
cold dungeons of racism-
birds cannot fly.
even wisdom forms images there
in the mist of fancy. (Songs
for Harmony, 47)
Another feeling very close to the feeling of racism is the feeling of
racial prejudice. Gill takes up that feeling in his poem 'Evening of
Harmony" and describes it as a feeling causing disharmony when he says:
... the night of racial prejudice
chews peace
in the jaws of endless depth. (Songs for Harmony, 48).
Another achievement the present-day
civilization can pride itself on is its system of education, which enables the
world to have scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors, professors and the
like. But Stephen Gill considers modern education dangerous as he regards it to
be the root of violence and disharmony in the world, as he says in his poem 'Disappointments’ :
Why
days advance
moon changes
buds open flowers blossom
and mothers raise their infants
under the sun of tomorrow
while
the tiger of violence emerges
from the bushes
of the education of today.
(Divergent Shades, 24)
The present day education which enables a
person to get degrees is, for Stephen Gill, at best a "bowl" of
"stale crumbs" which are of little value for one who wants to"
pour his soul into his works." Gill says so in his poem 'Stale Crumbs' in
which a man "[a]rmed with degrees" (Divergent Shades, 40) fails to get
any favorable response from Apollo, Saraswati, Greek
philosophers, Latin Punditsi Shakespeare
and Milton:
He carried his bowl
to Apollo
who saw it with scorn.
He knocked at the doors of Saraswati
and a host of Eastern sages;
they ignored his presence.
He approached the Greek philosophers
and the Latin pundits;
they shrugged him off.
He went to
Shakespeare and Milton;
for them, the bowl carried trash. (Divergent Shades, 41)
The democratic
institutions, which the modem man has set up, are another thing the upholders
of the modern civilization are proud of, as they claim that by availing himself
of the right to vote a common man enjoys the power of electing the rulers of
his country. But Stephen Gill regards the elections as a hoax as these
elections, according to him, give to the common man nothing, though to the
leaders they give powers, as in his poem 'Election Result' he says:
result is out---
leaders have won--
the people smashed; they have received
all his trash. (Songs
for Harmony, 17)
According to Gill,
the Parliament is a place from where flow to people only promises
but neither security, nor bread, nor education, nor order, nor well-being as he
says that the Parliament is the house
from where
the dust of promises is pelted
against the eyes of those
who look up (Shrine: Poems of Social Concern,
152)
Nay, Gill is disturbed to find democracy
being threatened from several sides as in his poem 'The Voice of Democracy' he
writes:
Every storm of this age
Seems to overpower me;
All the tornadoes of today
Arise to destroy my ship;
The rage of the rising tides
Holds its grudge against me;
The babIes of all the noises
Seduces me into the stream of chaos. (Shrine,
57)
Stephen Gill also rejects the values of
patriotism and nationalism, as in one of his 'Trilliums' he says:
In the pots of patriotism
poisons are often prepared
to kill the lily of peace. (Songs for Harmony, 55)
And in another, he says:
The hawks of nationalism
hover on the world
horizon;
peace whimpers. (Songs
for Harmony, 56 )
The world, according to Gill, is a place where everybody is proud, as in
his poem 'Clumsy Bar' he describes the world as a bar where all get drunk:
"some with money" and some "with the lust for power" (Songs for Harmony, 43). He adds that
in this world people's hearts are unclean and they love beasts rather than
meek-hearted people, as he writes:
Here
beasts are loved
not the people
who are meek and
tolerant.
Humans keep their apparel clean,
unlike their hearts. (Songs
for Harmony, 43)
And when in his poem 'The United States'
he writes:
Evil and deceit -
the abortive assassins
of reforms-
plague your planet
like dogs deranged. (Songs for Harmony, 37)
Poet asserts that the two chief
problems in this world are evil and deceit, which are behaving like mad dogs.
Others may find the world to be full of happiness; Gill cannot forget the
miseries he has seen in the world, as he writes in his poem 'I Have Seen':
1 have seen]
Famished walking skeletons
bodies resting unshrouded
forlorn infants and old
sad sights of the
sisters
mute messages of the
eyes
dealings with the dears
atrocities never told
flood in emotions crushed
souls of the wounded
the surge of the
wishes. (Songs for Harmony, 14)
Here he draws attention to the facts
that the world is not yet free from hunger, poverty and deprivation, and that
people are still subjected to atrocities. Gill feels that life has more miseries
than happiness, as he says in his poem' Disappointments': "We trade two or
three smiles/ for countless tears" (Divergent
Shades, 25). Gill is not able to understand as to why there is so much
misery in society, but he is painfully aware of the fact that there exists
sorrow in the society as he says:
Why
We have to drink
Tears of loneliness
Marching in the valley of society
While
Destination fools us
Under the star of distress
Where hope
Breaks like a weed. (Divergent Shades, 24)
These words
of Gill make it evident that this poet is aware of the fact that in this world
there are many people who have to undergo the pangs of loneliness and are not
able to reach their destinations with the result that they get nothing but
frustration.
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
1. Stephen Leacock,
"Who Knows It?" A Mirror of
Modem Life, eds. M. Manuel and M.S. Samuel (Delhi: Macmillan, 1965),
p.111.
2. An Anthology qf English Essays ed. R.P.Singh (
3. Ibid, p.37.
4. Ibid, p. 37.
5. Ibid, p.39.
6. The Times of India (
WORK CITED
Gill, Stephen Divergent Shades.
------------- Shrine:
Poems of Social Concern
Songs for Harmony,
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Professor and Head (Retd) Dept. of English, Dr. Brahma Dutta Sharma, taught English Literature
at
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