The Use of Images and
Symbols in the poetry of Jayant
Mahapatra
Dr.
Ram Sharma
Jayant Mahapatra made his debut
as an Indian poet writing in English about two decades ago with the publication
of his first anthology Close the Sky, Ten By Ten, and Second Svayamwara and Other
Poems, both published in 1971. The third anthology
A Rain of Rites was published in 1976.
His many poems have been universally recognized. He has matured rapidly, and
both the quality and quantity of his poetic output indicate that with the
passing of time his poetry would come to be recognized as the best in Indian
English. In his poetry, we would see that he has maintained a rigid and strict
Christian upbringing within the house, but the outside world was a vast stage
of religion rites and rituals, myth and images that the people practised. The pull between these two worlds, therefore,
was very obvious, and Mahapatra experiences the
tension severely as he has expressed in his poem, “Fear of my Guilt, I Bid you
Farewell".
When the waves come, following one another,
the science and Noise,
the banished Princess and the Magnolia tree is well,
a song rises from the honeycomb
Latticework of stone
to grip these bones where
a grey water of blood stretches
out to the future.1
On the one hand, he had to live
in a house that was rigidly Christian. On the other, the vast landscape of
Hindu rituals and myths encircled him on all sides. How would he feel baffled
at the density of images, symbols and the meanings they carried within, be
withdrawn and silent because he could not share those structures of meaning ?2 Mahapatra's
Poem, 'Dawn at Puri' Clears :
Endless crow noises
A skull on the holy sands
tilts it empty country towards hunger.
White- clad widowed women.
Past the centres of their
lives
are waiting to enter the Great Temple.3
An ample Indianness is seen
at its best in his poems about Orissa, where the
local and the regional is raised to the level of the
universal. "Orissa Landscape", "
Evening in an Orissa village",
" The Orissa Poems", " Dawn at Puri", etc. are Oriya first, and therefore , Indian
too. K.A. Panikar writes that an examination of the
recurring images in Mahapatra's poems reveals that he
is Oriya to the care.
Some of Mahapatra's images,
though they are not many , assume the
shape of symbols in his poetry of such recurring images, mention may be made of
human failures, nature, a process of disillusionment, and the majestic height.
While discussing the poem "Mountain", we have seen the application of
the image of disillusionment, which usually denotes the eternity, facing the
process of growth and decay.
The frequently used image of Nature in Mahapatra's poetry denotes the "
Subjective response" as distinct from the image of the universal
ethos. Mahapatra offers fresh images of mountain, city,
sun and factory in his verse. In his "The Mountain", he writes thus :
In the darkness of evening
silence and pressure only,
Multiplying, adding, subtracting,
In the abyssal heart.4
The city occupies, a central
place in Mahapatra's poetry. Like the image of
darkness, the image of city is linked with corruption and industrialization in
modern human life (especially as found in metropolitan cities). The city image
is predominant in poem like "Snow in
Here the anguish of the old is hidden
under the gentle slopes of bearded corn fields.
But you can hear it in the footsteps.5
Mahapatra occupies a prominent place in contemporary Indian
English poetry . Artistically too, he is a highly
talented poet who knows well how to handle his poetic tool. His use of images
and symbols in poetry speaks volumes of his trained mind and disciplined art.
The images he uses acquire the symbolic overtones. Mahapatra's
enchanting expression of quite meditativeness,
slightly tinged with sorrow and nostalgia the ubiquitous religious and cultural
ambience of Orissa bestows a distinctive quality upon
his verse. He has spread the fragrance of his poetic leaves abroad that spans
the entire globe :
The woman is yet another image in Mahapatra's
poetry. As a symbol, she is usually identified with the 'discarded things'. She
is often portrayed as a sexually oppressed by the so called patriarchal system
and poverty. The image of the woman has been vividly presented here in the
poem, "The whorehouse in a
Dream Children, dark, superflows;
You miss them in the house's dark
spaces, how can't you?
Even the woman don't wear them –
Like jewels or
precious stones at the throat;
the faint feeling deep at a woman's centre
that brings back the discarded things:
the little turning of blood
at the far edge of the rainbow6
Here simile and metaphore
are beautifully yoked together. The dream children are depicted as a matter of
destroying the emotion of human kindness. The same kind of images have been
drawn in Ezekiel's poetry in 'The Railway Clerk' . The
tension and the pain of being out of tunes is apparent in the poems like "
Lost", " The Mountain" and we would feel very fragmentary
quality of the images they are discreet entities that explore the reality of
the world. In 'Dawn at Puri', Mahapatra
depicts with vivid images and symbols of the temple town of
At Puri, the crows
The one wide street
lolls out like a giant tongue
Five faceless lepers move aside
as a Priest passed by . 7
Mahapatra expresses man's loneliness, his search for roots and
identity through images and symbols. ' Shattered
faith', 'moments of sexual desire', 'the pregnancy of silence', dreams and
imaginations are articulated with images and symbols. In 'Sanctuary', Mahapatra suggests the images of sky, shape, home and
absence, thus he expresses :
now I close the sky
with a square ten by ten
the roof essential
hides the apocalyptic ideal
the space sings
where I live at home,
to hyperbola to sky- tasted love
for the blessing of absence
is its essence.8
To conclude, Mahapatra is a
skilled and conscious craftsman who churns out his images and symbols
thoughtfully. In such poems he is an Oriyan poet first, but he is Indian too, because by a
careful selection of images and symbols, the local becomes symbolic of
R. Parthasarathy observes : " The economy of phrasing and starling
images recall the subhasitas (literally, that which
is well said) of classical Sanskrit." 9 ' Events the exile, '
the moon moments', ' total solar eclipse' are conspicuous for the use of
imagery, which is realistic suggestive and symbolic.
Reference
1. H.M. Prasad. Ed. Indian Poetry in English. (New Delhi :
Sterling Press, 1985) 82.
2. PGDTE Course Materials. (Hydrabad :
CIEFL, 2005) 38-39.
3. H.M. Prasad. Ed. Indian Poetry in English. (New Delhi :
Sterling Press, 1985 ) 79.
4. Ibid, 80.
5. Ibid, 81.
6. PGDTE Course Materials. (
7. H.M. Prasad. Ed. Indian Poetry in English. (New Delhi :
Sterling, 1985)
8. Satish
Kumar, Indo-Anglian Poetry. (
Ibid
Dr.
Ram Sharma is a Senior Lecturer In English at