JAYANT MAHAPATRA

JAYANT MAHAPATRA
The Use of Images and Symbols in the poetry of Jayant Mahapatra

Dr. Ram Sharma AND DR. S.G.PURI



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 How would he feel baffled at the density of images, symbols and the meanings they carried within, be withdrawn and silent because he could not share those structures of meaning ?2 Mahapatra's Poem, 'Dawn at Puri' Clears :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 Iowa City". The following lines of "Snow in Iowa City" are worth citing in this context :



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 : Iowa City, Adelaide, Sewanee, Hawaii, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo.

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 Calcutta Street", he writes thus :



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 Puri with its ' endless crow noises; 'a skull lying on holy sands', he writes thus :



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 India as a whole.

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. (Hyderabad : CIEFL, 2005) 61.

7. H.M. Prasad. Ed. Indian Poetry in English. (New Delhi : Sterling, 1985)

8. Satish Kumar, Indo-Anglian Poetry. (Agra : Laxmi Narain Agarwal, 2006) 183 .