Raghuveer Narayan
Indo-Anglian Poet
from Bihar
“Creative writing”, according to Professor
lyengar “Whether in one's own or in an
adopted language - calls for a truly dedicated spirit.” This simple axiomatic
assertion holds doubly true in the case of a poet from Bihar who possessed this
‘truly dedicated spirit’ as fully as any other of his peers. Raghuveer Narayana
was the name of this poet whose creative period coincides closely with that of
the great Tamil poet, Subramania Bharati. Barring a few exceptions, Raghuveer’s
best poetry in his own language is as sublimely patriotic as Bharati's, and as
deeply philosophical. On the other hand, Raghuveer’s poetic creations in
English - and here the comparison with Bharati necessarily ceases - are
of an equally high standard. And there is a third dimension also, to his poetic
genius: besides writing excellent poetry in English and Hindi, Raghuveer has
written at least one poem in his native dialect Bhojpuri which has already
immortalized him among the speakers of that dialect, now scattered practically
all over the globe.
Raghuveer Narayana's creative life is very
nearly contemporaneous with Sarojini Naidu's. In fact, both in birth and death,
Sarojini preceded him by exactly five years. Though Sarojini's creativity was
for more prolific than Raghuveer's and far more kaleidoscopic, and richer both
in reach and in intensity, Raghuveer shows ample evidence, within his own
limited ambit of themes and moods, of a ‘truly dedicated spirit’ of creativity.
His total volume of published poetry consists of just a little more than a couple
of thousand lines of verse - approximately the length of the unfinished
'Hyperion' by Keats - and that includes his two longer narrative poems 'A Tale
Of Behar' and 'Sita Haran' as well as an assorted collection of shorter poems,
about thirty in number, called 'Way-side Blossoms'. The best of all these long
and short poems were composed in the first five years of the present century.
Raghuveer Narayana was born at Chhapra in
Bihar, on October 30, 1884. His father, Jaidev Narayana, was prominent lawyer
of the town, and belonged to a land-owning kayastha family of the nearby
village, Nayagaon. Many among his forefathers had been worthy poets in Persian
and Hindi, Even his mother was well-versed in Sanskrit and Persian. He was
admitted to the Chhapra Zila School at the early age of seven, and passed the
entrance examination at fourteen. In the dedicatoiy verse (addressed to the
then Commissioner of Bhagalpur, Mr. J.A. Hubback) prefacing his last collection
of poems, Way-side Blossoms, he wrote –
When, a dreamer-boy,I wander'd
By fair saryu's lovely braes
And, besides my school companions,
Piped my earliest childish lays!
Raghuveer, indeed, had precocious talent, and
could compose verses effortlessly from early childhood.
When, a child, I loved to ‘lisp
in Numbers, for the numbers came.’
He was admitted to Patna College in 1899. It
was one of the premier institutions of
higher education in the country at that time. Great professors like Dr.
C.R. Wilson, Jadunath Sarkar and
H.R. James taught him to love English poetry and encouraged him to write it.
Happy days :- when Doctor Wilson
Taught me Milton's Epic grand
And Sarkar, through honey'd lectures,
Led me through the Border Land
To enjoy the magic
harping
In Sir Walter's
chanted hall,
Bright with
warriors, maids and merlins:-
And we talked with
Burke and ‘Noll’*
And Sarkar did lead
me on to
Witness Arthur's
passing scene !
And we lived in
Aylmer's mansion,
And with Spenser's
Faerie Queen !
Feather-like he
smooth'd her tresses,
And in Avon's
golden stream
Made her freely
bathe, and revel
'Neath Hyperion's
gorgeous beam.
From bis pregnant words she learnt to
Long for the celestial fire,
Charged in Wordsworth's songs ot
Nature and in Shelley's wondrous lyre.
Most of the poems of Raghuveer were written
while he was still at Patna College, between 1902 and 1905. Due to his fragile
health, he could not earn his F.A. in 1903 and, though he took the Honours
course in English literature, he could not pass it in 1905. All his teachers,
who loved him so much,were rudely shocked by his failure. He had to
abandon his studies due to precarious health, and could only join as a teacher
of English at Monghyr Zila School in 1909. He joined the Chhapra Zila School in
1911, but went to Bhagalpur, for a degree in Law, in 1912. Soon, next year, he
joined the Banaili State as the Private Secretary of Raja Krityanand Singh, and
served in that capacity almost till the end of his life. He died in January,
1955. Though Raghuveer Narayan had an almost normal span of life of about 70
vears, he had practically abandoned writing poetry in English much before 1930.
In fact, almost all his poetic output in
English in the first decade of the present century, was completed by 1905. Of
course, some of his poems published in the three small booklets in 1929, were
composed off and on till 1929, but practically all his significant poetry was
composed by 1905. He did, however, compose some verses in English eulogising
the reigning British monarch or praising the Indian effort towards the First
World War, but surely his heart was not in them. Also, some of his other teachers and
well-wishers were inspiring him to write in his own tongue. So he had decided
to switch over to poetry-making in Hindi and Bhojpuri, the dialect of his
native area. He had written two patriotic poems, one each in Hindi and in
Bhojpuri, which were widely acclaimed.
His Hindi song 'Bharat Bhawani' become so popular that it was sung not
only as a welcome song at almost every political meeting in the Hindi belt just
before the civil disobedience movement, but was even sung by the prisoners in
jails to the rhythm of their ringing shackles.
You have sons chanting Vedas,
Driving their chariots across the heavens,
Why now your strength dwindles, O my Mother!...
The Bhojpuri song 'Batohiya'(Traveller)
become even more popular, and has been sung by the Bhojpuri speaking Indians in
Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa, It is
undoubtedly the best poem written in Bhojpuri.
Lovely and auspicious is the land of Bharat,
O Brother!
In its icy caverns, O Traveller, dwells my
soul.
Go, go and see my Hind, O Brother Traveller!
Where the koel coos and sings her song ....
Where groves of peepal, kadamb, neem and
mangoes
Lie amid the flowering ketaki and rose, O
Traveller ...
Where the sages, Valmiki, Gautam and Kapil
Awaken the eternal soul, O Traveller
...."
These two patriotic songs, which remind us
here of the nationalistic songs of Subramania Bharati's Swadesh Geelangal,
will immortalise Raghuveer more than anything else that he has written.
Raghuveer Narayana had been writing poetry
since his early childhood, but the great upsurge of creativity came during his
college days. It is indeed remarkable that Raghuveer, like Bharati, had gained
his inspiration for writing patriotic poetry from the great theosophist Dr.
Annie Besant. He had been invited by Dr. Besant to contribute to the Central
Hindu College Magazine, edited by her and published from Benares. He had
published a couple of prose articles in that journal under the serial 'Folk
Tales of Behar'. These had led him to write his first full scale long poem 'A
Tale of Behar', which was first published in 1905. The poem contained 500
lines, and had nineteen sections, followed by a concluding 'Bard's Song'. 'A
Tale of Behar' is modeled on Scott's famous narrative poem 'Marmion' and has
its lines as epigraph. There are external similarities in the plot, and even
the verse-pattern has striking resemblance. It describes a fight between two
Rajput chiefs, near a village in the Saran district in North Bihar.
Bhim Sen is marrying his daughter to a
bridegroom of his choice, against her wishes. But his daughter is in love with
another valiant Rajput chief, Tej Singh. On the very night of the wedding Tej
Singh attacks Bhim Sen's palace, and after fierce fighting, defeats him in
battle. Finally, Bhim Sen gives the hand of his daughter in marriage to Tej
Singh, willingly. The poem had all the verve of heroic poetry, and the
versification was remarkably supple and
agile.
In gaudy dress apparell'd fair,
With weary eyes and braided hair,
She sits within her lonely bower,
The angel of King Bhim Sen's tower ....
But though she feigns to look so gay,
The mad'ning thoughts her mind's a prey;
For yet not distant trumpet blast
Proclaims that Tej Singh's coming fast.
To save her from becoming bride
Of one she loathes to stand beside.
The
battle-scene has an unmistakable stamp of Scott:
Then, rattling arrows rush'd like
hail,
As if propell'd by stormy gale;
And horsemen prick'd their chargers
proud
That, dashing wildly, neigh'd aloud;
And underneath a cloud of dust,
So fiercely went the blow and thrust;
And mix'd-up cries of joy and pain,
And shrieks from comrades who lay slain,…
The nature-painting is equally exquisite, and
the sonorous music of the verse creates a magic spell reminiscent of Keats and
Tennyson.
The bright-hair'd sun, in splendour born,
In lustre bathed the laughing morn;
The rooks with wings as black as jet
Were in their noisy councils met;
And here and there, the clus'ring trees
Had form'd dim groves and shady bowers,
Where thousand gaily buzzing bees
Were feasting on the sweets of flowers;
And there, again, a champac crown'd
With many a creeper clinging round,
Rear'd, in the air, its leafy head .....
When morning, with his rosy tint,
Vermilllions airy domes of flint;
When tinged is ev'ry rushing stream
With infant Phoebus' morning gleam;
And his mild rays gild buildings royal,
And beam on plains and farmer's soil;
When insects shake their tiny wings
And dance around in countless rings;
When blushes every rose-bud coy –
Then, then, is Nature's hour of joy ! ..
The poem had been praised by contemporary
English poet like the then poet laureate, Alfred Austin, and Lewis Morris.
Austin wrote - "I receive many volumes of verse from my countrymen at home
that cannot compare in execution with yours". Lewis Morris went further
and said: "it seems to me that not only must there be a closer tie of
national feeling binding England and her Indian subjects than exists between
her and the continental nations of Europe, but that English literature is more
easily and thoroughly assimilated by them than by our French and German or
other neighbours". The poem was favourably reviewed in The Indian
Education published from Madras. It wrote: "This is an Eastern tale,
told in a style and verse reminiscent of Scott.... The versification is
remarkably correct, the poetic feeling true and refined."
'Sita Haran', originally written in 1905, was
recast during 1909-10 and was first published in a journal Young Behar published
from Bhagalpur in eastern Bihar. Like his other two works, it was finally
published in 1929. It was a part of the poet's proposed fuller work 'Scenes
from Ramayan', which could not be completed for some reason. In the canto
entitled ‘In the Gloomy
Dandak', the poet describes the chase of the golden deer, Ravana's abduction of
Sita, Jatayu's fight with Ravan, and Rama's lament. The most poetic and lyrical part of the poem
is ‘Rama’s lament' which consists of five songs.
"O ye Nature's sweet-toned singers'
Blossoms woo'd by you black bee,
Have ye seen My consort passing
O'er the verdant forest lea ?"
But the bee
Danced in glee;
And the careless birds, rejoicing,
chirp'd and flew from tree to tree ....
“Spring has brought its joys and pleasures;
All are happy, all are gay;
But I've lost My sweet-eyed charmer -
Who will charm My grief away ?
Glades and murky thickets answer
To the joyous cuckoo's note;
Many a bird of gleaming plumage
Pours around its quavering throat.
Peacocks cry and dance in sunshine,
Noisy parrots perch and talk
Pigeons coo and flap their white wings;
And the swans they proudly walk.
Mountain waters, tumbling downwards,
Greet us with their thund'ring tone;
And, so sweeten'd by the distance,
Comes Papiha's soothing moan ...."
Raghuveer's rendering was a free and
imaginative transcreation, rather than a faithful translation of the episodes
from the Ramayana, as was done by his elder poet, Romesh C. Dutta, whose
renderings of the two great Indian epics had been published only a decade
before, in 1898-99. In its review of the poem, The Beharee wrote:
“We have been keenly interested in the poet's achievements and progress,
and we have been all along struck with the spontaneity, harmony of rhythm, and
majestic flow of his poems ... We are particularly glad to find our poet has
been rendering into English verse scenes from Shri Tulsi Das's Ramayana,
keeping the spirit of the monumental work in a preeminent degree. We are firmly
convinced from the specimens that with unabated energy in his sacred and
patriotic work of presenting the lofty thoughts and holy reflections in the Ramayana
... our country will boast of a production which ‘posterity will not willingly
let die’ and which may well be linked with the existence of English poetry
itself.”
In the Preface to his last-published book Wayside
Blossoms, the poet said: “This work is a collection of my miscellaneous
poems which were written from time to time to suit particular occasions or were
inspired by particular scenes and surroundings. It includes my earliest poems
some of which date so far back as the year
1902. In the long dedicatory verse passage, he said:
But to-day my themes are varied,
Varied are the songs I raise,
Like the prattling of a brook that
Babbles on the thousand ways.
Intermingled with these, rise up
Many a strain of early years –
Half-forgotten precious relics
Of the past that lives in tears .....
The book contains 32 poems, including the
Dedication, which is lyrically autobiographical. In the other poems also the
autobiographical element is quite palpable, by and large. Some of the titles
make it obvious: The School Boy and the Warbler', 'At my Village Home', To the
Village of My Fathers', etc. Quite a few of the poems have been inspired by the
School and the College he attended. A fifth of the poems are panegyrics
addressed to the reigning British Monarch or the war-effort and are obviously
uninteresting from the literary point of view. There is one poem on ‘The Loss
Of The Titanic', and the last two are enchanting transcreations of Bihari
lullabies or nursery songs. One fourth of the total poems have nature or spiritual
meditation as their themes. The dominant metrical pattern in a majority of the
poems is the four-stress iambic line with a generous sprinkling of the
trochaics. But the poet gives ample evidence of his technical virtuosity and
mastery of the art of versification, particularly in the panegyrics.
Edmund Gosse had advised Sarojini Naidu not
to be 'falsely English' and 'to be a genuine Indian poet', in his Introduction
to her first volume of poetry The Bird of Time(1912). Raghuveer's poetry
is fully and and genuinely Indian in spirit right from the beginning. One could
go on quoting from his exquisite poetry in support of the observations made so
far:
But bonny flower, why dost thou rear
thy head,
So meekly bright, when all around is
still ?
Dost thou expect a lover's hasty tread,
Or wait the waking of the sleeping
rill ?
Thy bonny face ! - Oh! let me tell
thee, fair,
That beauty has its thief as any gem
-;
Some ruder hand may touch thy golden
hair,
Or pluck the bloom from off thy
slender stem.
(‘To a Marigold’, 1902)
“On thy breast the sunbeams quiver
Why so hasty, foaming river?
Rushing on with headlong motion,
Art thou making for the oceans?"
"Stranger, wouldn't thou hear my plight?
–
I was born on mountain height;
Meand'ring sadly, shedding tears,
There I spent my early years.
"Tempests came and made me leap
Made
me cry and made me weep;
Driven by their tyrant force,
Fled I moaning, groaning hoarse ....
"Yet I did not curb my speed,
But went on like frighten'd steed;
Fragrant breezes fann'd my face,
As I swept from place to place.
"Having reach'd this fertile plain,
Now I flow to join the main,
'Neath whose troubled, seething breast,
I shall find eternal rest."
(‘The Man and the River', 1902)
Raghuveer's poetry was full of great promise.
The versification was near perfect. The ethos was completely Indian. The
imagery was delicate and vibrant. The themes were homely. The treatment was
utterly simple. The spirit was exquisitely lyrical. Hear the music of these
stanzas from 'At My Village Home' (1905):
Afar, the gorgeous garden glooms; -
A touch of sadd'ning joy I feel,
As gliding glow-worms glance and wheel
Their dances round the breathing blooms.
I chased them in my infant days,
When, borne on gusts of evening air,
They sparkled here, they sparkled there,
Along the thousand zigzag ways.
Raghuveer Narayana's name is not to be found
in any critical account of the development of Indo-Anglian poetry. Even among
academics in Bihar specializing in the field of Indo-Anglian literature,
Raghuveer's remains an obscure name. His poems are not to be seen in any
anthology of Indo-Anglian poetry. He has been consigned to total oblivion, and,
perhaps, some others like him, too. One is grimly reminded of Professor
lyengar's story of how Professor Walsh of the University of Leeds had once
Jocularly asked him whether he had not actually invented many of the Indo-Auglian
authors! Raghuveer Narayan’s name is only the latest to be added to that list.
But he is only like distant star- a new planet which swims into our ken. And we
are at once reminded of Eliot's admonition about the supervention of the new
work, altering the whole existing order. If ever so slightly'.
Raghuveer Narayanan abandoned writing English poetry almost midway in his life,
turning towards his own mother tongue, amid deeper spiritual compulsions, including
patriotism, but the brief and intense consort, that he had with the English
Muse, should provide him a secure niche in the pantheon of what has come to be
critically accepted as Indo-Anglian poetry.
(C) Dr BSM Murty
[This article was
presented in a session on Indian English Poetry at the All India English
Teachers’ Conference, University of Madras (Dec., 1990). All
quotations of verses are from Raghuveer Narayana's three booklets of verse - 'A
Tale of Behar', ‘Sita-Haran' and
'Way-side Blossoms', published by The United Press, Bhagalpur, in 1929. He is said to have written
some more poems also like TheVictor’s Return', 'Champa', The Rose of the
Child', The Battle of Kuru', ‘The Wheel of Time', etc., but these remained
unpublished and are not available now. The extracts from the reviews and
opinions of contemporary journals, poets and persons are also quoted from the
appendix to these booklets. Extracts from his Bhojpuri poems are translated by
the author. *Noll= Goldsmith’s nickname.]
A Hindi article on Raghuveer Narayan can be read on my complementary blog : vagishwari.blogspot.com shortly.
