Whose Version Shall it be?

Itwas T. S. Eliot who said, “The poet should say very little in propria persona, for he is no imitator when doing that.” Episodes narrated by a participant-character take on a new authenticity, a verisimilitude to life itself that is not to be found in the author’s version. Narratives gush forth like frothy hot water from a warm spring in the version of an involved character: the warmth of emotion cools off considerably when the narrator is a third party like the poet. For a vivid comparison, imagine the version of the pedestrian from his hospital bed of the automobile accident in which he was involved and the version of the newspaper correspondent reporting the accident to his city editor: you then will have a good measure of the essential difference between the two versions.

The version of an involved character may not be a very true account: it is, in fact, likely to be highly prejudiced: while in banks, offices and courts of law such a prejudiced document will be summarily rejected, it is highly regarded in poetry for the excellent reason that poetry subsists on highly subjective views and has little use for cold, objective ones. The study of the literary advantages of a character’s version over the poet’s should cover a vast field and the results will form the subject-matter of a major tone. In the course of a brief article like this it would be possible to present only a few of the significant literary advantages: it is proposed to discuss them with reference to Tamil Sangam literature which I know and love best.

It is very refreshing to note that all the poems in the love or akampart of Sangam literature are presented in the version of an involved character; this cannot be through an accident: it was meant, it must be the unwritten tradition. Why should people get so fussy about this–what are the advantages accruing out of this wholesale dispensation? What additional impact is gained or graces added by making a character speak rather than the poet himself presenting the episode?

A girl and a boy were in love; the boy had to leave for a distant city to acquire wealth; this meant parting from the girl which distressed both; but after long adieux he left promising to return on a filed day, not very distant. He did not return, as promised but the girl did not worry at all; she was radiantly happy still. Her friend and playmate asked her how she could keep herself up like this while others in love would pine away. The girl’s reply is presented, in her own words, in a poem in an anthology called Kurunthogai:

You ask me how, with him away
And no signs of his returning
I can keep my cheer, I can
Keep out the blues so long
The chief of the hills, where, on the slopes
In the shallow pool, the toads
Set up a roar like the beat of drums­–
He came on a moonlit night
Decked, my dear, with mullai blossom
And time stood still for us.
He left me, true, for distant climes;
But look, my shoulders still
Give off the bouquet of the mullai wreath
The bloom from his native hill!

This is a very remarkable poem, one that reaches great heights of subtlety without conspicuous effort. The mullaiblossom and its smell are treated as a symbol of the lover and the girl does not feel he is away in view of these reminders of his affection. This is not all; in fact this is not the heart of this exquisite poem. There is a definite statement in the original that the parting took place quite sometime before, probably several months before, brought out in the English version by the words “so long” and “still” How is it physically possible for the bouquet of these flowers to persevere on her shoulders over all this period? Clearly therefore she does not physically smell their scent; her deep love for him and implicit trust in his constancy create for her the illusion that the perfume still persists. It is not a case of ordinary symbolism; her illusion that the smell persists sustains her in the period of separation. Now if the poem had been presented in the poet’s version, it would be most unnatural for him to suggest and sustain this illusion in the girls mind, as a third party; and the poem falls to the ground without this illusion which provides the heart-beat to it. The illusion is sustainable only in the words of the girl; the poem achieves immortality only in her version.

A girl was in love with a boy and anticipating opposition from the elders of their wedding, they eloped one night. The parents of the girl were angry and loth to forgive the young lovers; but her foster-mother was grief-stricken and spent her time lamenting. When her neighbours came to offer solace she gave them a spirited reply pointing to the various fixtures in the house which the girl had used in the happier days gone by and which now starkly reminded her of the daughter that had left with her lover; her reply is straight from the heart, authentic, uncontrived; you can hear the wail and sense the tear-filled face when you read the lines –

You full well know I’ve neither chick nor child but this
You know, too, she left the house, led on
In simple trust by the boy we know, the one who lived
Across the way, who wields a fearless javelin
In the field of battle. Even now they must be treading
The pathless tracts of burning rocky wasteland
And yet you say in all your wisdom ripe
“Rein your tears!” How rein my welling tears?
She’s gone, my heart’s delight; at every turn
I miss the child – the prettiest picture come to life!
How silent are the rooms that once echoed
To her playful prancing! Now I dread to walk them.
The house resounded in those happy bygone days.
To peals of girlish laughter; now it’s sombre, still,
The frontal porch where through the afternoon
She churned up all her gusty games, the garden swing
She loved to ride – they mock my eager Eyes,
And turn to dust the yeasty hopes that sprout
In my aged breast.                                                        (Natrinai 184)

The poem sounds as the authentic wail of an aging woman who is not sure if she would be able to see her foster daughter again. The spontaneity, the authenticity we feel when the lines are read are directly the result of the fact that the episode is being presented in the sufferer’s own words. If any reader has doubts in the matter, I would only request him to cast this poem in the poet’s version and judge the result.

The poet gets under the skin of the character and imitates all its feelings; otherwise there is no poetry. But once he enters into a character’s personality and takes on its feelings and mood and even its idiosyncracies, is it not more natural for him to speak from where he is, in the voice of the character in which he is absorbed? Why should he come out and speak in his own voice, with the contact getting colder every minute, losing authenticity, sounding neutral, objective? Eliot is right, as most often; the poet ceases to be an imitator (and therefore a poet) when he begins to speak in his own voice.

(Note! The transcompositions of Sangam poems are by the author of this essay.)