To a Hero-Worshipper.pptx
- 1. To a Hero-Worshipper By Sri Aurobindo
- 2. ● Prepared by: Nilay Rathod ● MA Sem: 3 ● 22406 Paper 201: Indian English Literature pre-Independence ● Roll No: 17 ● Enrolment No: 4069206420210030 ● Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
- 3. Sri Aurobindo ● Sri Aurobindo (15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, seer, poet, and nationalist who propounded a philosophy of divine life on earth through spiritual evolution. ● Aurobindo’s education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling he was sent to England for further schooling. He entered the University of Cambridge.
- 4. ● After returning to India in 1892, he held various administrative and professorial posts in Baroda (Vadodara) and Calcutta (Kolkata). Turning to his native culture, he began the serious study of Yoga and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit. ● K. R. S. Iyengar has made a substantial and balanced contribution to Aurobindonian criticism. He realises that a new kind of poetry like Sri Aurobindo’s “demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.”
- 5. His main literary works are 1. The Life Divine, (1939 - 40) 2. The Synthesis of Yoga (1948), 3. Essays on the Gita (1922) 4. On the Veda (1956) 5. The ideal of Human Unity (1919) 6. The Human Cycle (1949) 7. The Future Poetry (1953) 8. The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953) 9. The Renaissance in India (1920)
- 6. Nature and Romanticism ● Sri Aurobindo Spent his early life in England during Victorian era. ● “As he was studying at home he got plenty of time to read books according to his own taste. He read the Bible, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats among other writers. He was not only reading poetry but writing verses for the Fox Family Magazine even at that early age.”(Purani) ● We recognize impacts of Keats in his arousing inspiration of nature and Shelley in his utilization of natural objects as sources of inspiration. ● The First stanza is full of imagery and we find it somewhat similar to romantic style of writing.
- 7. To a Hero-Worshipper My life is then a wasted ereme, My song but idle wind Because you merely find In all this woven wealth of rhyme Harsh figures with harsh music wound, The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds, A ruby carcanet of sound, A cloud of lovely words? ● The speaker responds to someone in a sad tone in the first stanza, which continues throughout the poem. This voice could be a criticism of Romanticism. ❖ Song-Idle wind ❖ Woven wealth of rhyme ❖ Harsh figure- Harsh music ❖ Uncouth Voice
- 8. Mysticism ● Mysticism is popularly known as any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning, but may refer to becoming one with God or the Absolute. ● In Hinduism, various sadhanas (spiritual disciplines) aim at overcoming ignorance (avidya) and transcending one's identification with body, mind and ego to attain moksha, liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Hinduism has a number of interlinked ascetic traditions and philosophical schools which aim at moksha and the acquisition of higher powers. With the onset of the British colonisation of India, those traditions came to be interpreted in Western terms such as "mysticism", resulting in comparisons with Western terms and practices.(King)
- 9. ● Intrigued, he later turned to Friedrich Max Müller' s classic work, Sacred Books of the East, to read the Isa Upanisad (Heehs). ● "He made a strong and very crude mental attempt to realise what this Self or Atman might be, to convert the abstract idea into a concrete and living reality in his own consciousness, but conceiving it as something beyond or behind this material word" (Ghose). I am, you say, no magic rod, No cry oracular, No swart and ominous star, No Sinai thunder voicing God. I have no burden to my song, No smouldering word instinct with fire, No spell to chase triumphant wrong, No spirit-sweet desire. .
- 10. Sinai thunder voicing God. When morning dawned on the third day, there was thunder, lightning, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud blast of a horn. All the people in the camp shook with fear. Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their place at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD had come down on it with lightning. The smoke went up like the smoke of a hot furnace, while the whole mountain shook violently. The blasts of the horn grew louder and louder. Moses would speak, and God would answer him with thunder.
- 11. Indian Romanticism Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear, Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain Nor Shelley’s lyric pain, Nor Keats’, the poet without peer. I by the Indian waters vast Did glimpse the magic of the past, And on the oaten pipe I play Warped echoes of an earlier day. Byron- Satire Wordsworth- Nature and man Shelley-atheism, nature, sorrow ● The trend of Indian romanticism ushered in by three great forces influenced the destiny of modern Indian literature. These forces were Sri Aurobindo's search for The Divine Man, Tagore's quest for the beautiful in nature and man, and Mahatma Gandhi's experiments with truth and non-violence.
- 12. The Revolt of Islam By Shelley ● The Revolt of Islam had a decisive impact on Aurobindo. It inspired revolutionary aims in a boy who was withdrawn, a dreamer, a sheltered younger brother, and helpless in a foreign country, In his words: ● “The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young and I used to read it again and again - of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being. There was no other effect of reading it except this that I had a thought that I would dedicate my life to a similar World- change and take part in it” (Purani)
- 13. Part II My friend, when first my spirit woke, I trod the scented maze Of Fancy’s myriad ways, I studied Nature like a book Men rack for meanings: yet I find No rubric in the scarlet rose, No moral in the murmuring wind, No message in the snows. ● In this stana speaker is leaning more towards spirituality. ● He claims to have studied nature where human crave for meaning but he couldn’t find meaning in the nature.
- 14. For me the daisy shines a star, The crocus flames a spire, A horn of golden fire, Narcissus glows a silver bar: Cowslips, the golden breath of God, I deem the poet’s heritage, And lilies silvering the sod Breathe fragrance from his page. crocus Narcissus Cowslips
- 15. No herald of the sun am I But in a moonlit vale A russet nightingale Who pours sweet song, he knows not why, Who pours like wine a gurgling note Paining with sound his swarthy throat, Who pours sweet song he recks not why Nor hushes ever lest he die.
- 16. Conclusion We get examples of a departure from the strictly sensuous treatment of nature and man in the poem To a Hero-Worshipper, where there is a powerfully moving first person account of a depressed man. Whether the poem was actually inspired by a personal tragedy is unclear, but in the poem we have Sri Aurobindo evokes the aspects of nature to build up a series of powerful contrasts between everything that is ideal and enjoyable and his own inability to come to terms with life. Imagery in the poem is all sourced from physical nature, and the poet highlights his suffering and despondency through his inability to adequately respond to the beauties of nature.
- 17. Works Cited ● Ghose, Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo on Himself. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972. ● Heehs, Peter. The lives of Sri Aurobindo. Columbia University Press, 2008. ● Iyengar, K. R. S Indian Writing in English. Sterling Publishers, 1987. ● King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East". Taylor & Francis, 1999. ● Purani, Ambalal Balkrishna. The Life of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1978.