(Continued from August 1 issue)

(b): His Elegies:

1). Human life is an irony. Man is born; he lives; and then he dies. And so, many poets muse on Death. ‘Death most resembles a prophet who is without honour in his own land’-says Khalil Gibran; ‘Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so’- says John Donne; ‘Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold’-says Ralph Waldo Emerson; ‘Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire’s rewards’- says Leopardi; ‘Death is the King of this world’-says George Eliot; and thus, Death being inevitable, poets are naturally inclined to muse on Death. And Kalaignar is no exception to it.

2). And, an elegy is a form of lyric poetry; it is a poem of mourning or lament for the dead; it is a reflection on death, on sorrow more generally, or on something that seems to the author to be strange or mysterious; it harks back to ancient poetic traditions, usually of a sad or sombre nature. And, the concept of Death is to Kalaignar is unique; he has no fear of death, as he lives life fully and deeply; it is to him the only pure, beautiful goal of a great passion, as D. H. Lawrence says; And, as such, Kalaignar has also penned a few elegies such as- ‘O Panneerselvam’, ‘The Great Hero Dead’, ‘O The First-Born Of Mother Art’, ‘Long Live Jeeva’, ‘Lend Me Your Heart, O Anna’, ‘Today Is Your Birthday’, ‘My Dear Friend, Why Parted?’, ‘Pandiyanar of Reason’, ‘Elegy On Poet Meera’, ‘Iran’s Sorrow’, etc.

3) And Kalaignar’s elegies are in no way inferior to them that were written by the poets of the past, because, by the literary allusions that are used by Kalaignar in his elegies, they are to him a fine retort to Dr. Johnson’s criticism that ‘where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief’. Moreover, Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, and love leaves a memory no one can steal. This is true of his elegies because, when someone he loves becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure to him, as his elegies claim.

4) And, in English literature, since the 16th century, an elegy is poem of mourning in any metre, sharing certain themes and concerns, like the passage of time and the transience of earthly things, the pain of separation, the ache of absence and longing, as well as certain images and scenes such as ruined or abandoned buildings, desolate landscapes, storms at sea, darkness, night and the chill of winter; and Kalaignar, more than following them, infuses his elegies with sparks of intellect and reason in line with Self-Respect Movement and darts of Tamil Feeling that embraces humanity, with the recognition that the world under the sky is a place of tragic impermanence, as based on the Germanic and Christian doctrines and pagan wisdom.

5). His first elegy ‘O Panneerselvam’ is about the Dravidian General A.T.Panneerselvam who was drowned into the sea of Oman, while he travelled by air to London to serve as the Adviser to the Indian Minister at London in the year 1940; and young Kalaignar himself, in his 16, calls it ‘the portrait of tears’. We may also dub it as similar in occasion of the poem and equal in intensity of emotions to Milton’s ‘Lycidas’, which mourns over the death of his friend Edward King who was drowned into the ocean. A.T.Panneerselvam, blowing the trumpet of Periyar, is the follower and soldier of Wisdom Movement in the golden sunlight of lustre, but, ‘the dawn moves away as its time is over’, and hence the ‘sudden fall’ of ‘the morning sun’; that is why Kalaignar universalises the act of weeping thus:

“If the morning sun that rises in the east
falls suddenly into the ocean vast,
won’t the world weep? Won’t it wither and wilt?”
And, when this Land aspires to drop darkness of old rotten traditions and get the Light of Wisdom-
“the cloud of fierce Death has hidden young Ray of might!”

And the Lion-Jackal image is contrastive in effect, bringing to light the Lion of Wisdom using the ‘cruel sword of intellect’ and ‘drawing out the intestine’, not of one jackal, but of ‘the gang of jackals’, the jackal symbolising cunningness, and the ‘intestine’ is symbolic of ‘all aspects of digestion, absorption and transportation of food’; And, when the intestine of the ‘black-backed jackal’, which is more aggressive than the ‘golden jackal’ and the ‘side-striped jackal’, is drawn out, its long legs and curved canine teeth are made incapable of hunting small mammals, birds and reptiles, and its big feet and fused leg bones can no longer enjoy a long-distance runner’s physique that is capable of maintaining speeds of 16 km/h for extended periods of time.

Hence the apt lines:- “O the Lion that came out of the cave to draw out the intestine of the gang of jackals by your cruel sword of intellect!” Since gang of jackals are three times more likely to be successful than individuals in hunting, the Lion kills ‘gang’ of them, Lion representing Dravidian and jackal representing Aryans.

6) But, when this Lion ‘falls’, the feelings of intense sorrow of the poet gush forth from the sluice-gates of his heart thus:-

“O You with shoulders of mountain! O you, the Hill of rubies!
Pulp of fruit is your speech! The throw of dew is in your looks!
You are gone...ho!”

And then, the pangs of separation make the poet yearn to see his ‘face that spills milk’, his face being better than the milk that is symbolic of leaning, knowledge, plenty, fertility, sustenance, self sacrifice, and, above all, immortality, as found in different cultures and literatures, including Greek mythology, Celtic writings, Islam and Christianity, as well as his ‘moustache’ which is a symbol of greater masculinity, courage and action, pride and prestige among men:

“O Panneerselvam! Where is your face that spills milk?
Where is your moustache of Pandya the King of Action?”
And then, the poet makes a deep inquiry, with his eyes of imagination, as to whether the waves have eaten of his body that lies immersed, and then reveals his contempt by calling the waves as ‘cursed’ and the ocean as ‘hunger-driven’ thus:

“Have the cursed waves of hunger-driven ocean
become exhausted by eating of your body in immersion?”
The poet also feels that that the dead General might have thought of allowing the waves to eat of his body ‘gladly’ provided that they should think of him as a Dravidian-as he is the ‘Champion’ in the struggle between the Dravidians and Aryans:

‘Let them eat…eat gladly... think of me as a Dravidian!’
- so thinking, where did you hide as a Champion?
And the loss of this ‘Champion’ is so heavy to the poet that it can never be compensated, nor can the quantity of his tears be measured by any means, and this makes him utter these lines that are pregnant with intense grief:
“O King! The tears that we do now shed by weeping
will defeat even thousands of Oman oceans roaring!”

7) Even at this moment, Kalaignar the poet, by making a digression, as Milton does on Fame and Christian Reformation in ‘Lycidas’, feels proud of his native ‘Land of Dravidians’ and enhances it by calling it as ‘flawless’ and ‘ golden’ : “This is the flawless golden Land of Dravidians!” And, further, as Robert Ingersoll says, the hope of Kalaignar the poet sees a star in the night of death, and his selfless love can offer ‘the only true reward to his service’ :

“To awaken the men that drank the wine of old traditions is the only true reward we can offer to your service!” The reward is ‘the only true’, because the whole of Dravidian race, and, in particular, the Tamil race was then said to have drunk ‘the wine of old traditions’, this ‘wine’ being ‘a traditionally alcoholic’ beverage, typically made of old traditions, inducing not only a mind-altering state, but also causing adverse ‘social’ effects, common symptoms of it in the humans being slavery speech, poor coordination of head and heart, shameful flushed face, angry reddened eyes, and foolish behaviour, and in severe cases, causing loss of coordination between balance and judgment, and even coma of feelings and death of Tamil race. And therefore, to awaken the men that drank the wine of old traditions is not an easy task, because this ‘wine’ is fed by Aryanism to degrade the tongue and culture of Tamil Race; and, though Kalaignar the poet knows of it, he has unshakable faith in him to say that ‘Victory is ours’:

“If foes growl like whirlwind all around with malice, we think Victory is ours, and so we step out fearless!” And it is true that the foes may ‘growl’ at the Tamil race, with ill-will or harmful intent, just as whirlwind does, and Kalaignar the poet wants us to fight with Hope and drive the foes away, by exhorting us thus: ‘step out fearless’; Of course, the Aryan whirlwind, is an evil social phenomenon that exists in Tamil Race due to instabilities and heavy turbulence created by the heating and flow gradients of cruel Aryanism that is adamant and arrogant; and Kalaignar the poet, is ever bold of fighting his battle with his foes, but never minding himself, even at the moment of death if it were so, except with his only aim of ‘praising the services’ of the dear dead Champion:

“If we happen to die under the sky,
we’ll praise your services and then die!” And, in this context, Kalaignar the poet echoes what Thomas Campbell says in his poem “Hallowed Ground”:
“To live in hearts we leave behind
is not to die”

And the elegy, ending with the poet’s finding consolation in the contemplation of fighting with ‘the foes’ to be more important than the death of the Champion, endures because of its directness and the literary fidelity of his description of nature, imbued with a kind of majestic sadness and humanist aspirations; and thus Kalaignar registers, in this elegy, his stamp of a World Poet, so neat, so wise.