-24_Robert Graves

Robert Graves

ROBERT GRAVES is not a major poet, and certainly not a great poet. He is a minor poet. But in spite of his minor rank he is a good poet: here he presents up a jewel, a beautiful poem¹ both in form and substance. He has indeed succeeded, as we shall see, in removing the veil, the mystic golden lid, partially at least and revealed to our mortal vision a glimpse of light and beauty and truth, made them delightfully sink into and seep through our aesthetic sense.

Like the poet his idol also is of a lower rank or of a plebeian status. He keeps away from such high gods as Indra and Agni and Varuna and Mitra: great poets will sing their praises. He will take care of the lesser ones, those who are moving in the shadow of the great ones and are hardly noticed. Even in these modern days, goddess Shitala, the healing goddess of epidemics, lives side by side with Durga.

But really it does not matter if the deity is small. For, if the worship is sincere and the offering pure, they ultimately reach the Divine. Did not Sri Krishna say in the Gita that whom-soever you may worship and in whatever way, that in the end' reaches him? The importance and significance of worship do not depend upon their size and scale: a little water, a leaf, a flower may more than do.

The small gods are small, but do not slight them – they are powerful. They are powerful because they are deities of the earth. In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and goddesses on earth also. The gods in heaven are high and far away, but these unobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the Olympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were, – like Jupiter and Apollo –

¹ "The Ambrosia of Dionysus and Semele" in New Poems 1962 (Cassel-London).

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and to those others who dwelt on the lowly earth and embraced its water and land, its rivers and trees and fields – the nymph, the satyr, and Pan and dryad and naiad. What are the powers and functions of these unearthly beings? They on their part are guarding the gate to heaven, questioning the pilgrim of their divine destination. Well, the sentinels have to be appeased first, satisfied and convinced. Surely the sands burn hotter than the sun!

We may ask in this connection which deity does our poet invoke here, to whom does he raise his offerings, to whom– kasmai devāya? One need not be startled at the answer: it is the toadstool. But the mushroom growth assumes a respectable figure in the guise of its Sanskrit name, chatraka. Kalidasa did one better. His magic touch gave the insignificant flora a luminous robe – śilīndhra, a charming name. The great poet tells us that the earth is not barren or sterile – kartum yat ca mahīmucchilīndhrāmabandhyām. The next pertinent question is: why does the poet worship a toadstool? What is his purpose? Does a toadstool possess any special power? This leads us to a hidden world, to the 'mysteries' spoken of by the poet himself.

In ancient days and in some spiritual practice and discipline this fungus had a special use for a definite purpose. Its use produces on one a drowsy effect, perhaps a strong and poisonous intoxicating effect. What is the final result of this drugging? We know that in our country among the sadhus and some sects practising occult science, taking of certain herbal drugs is recommended, even obligatory. Today Aldous Huxley has taken up the cue, in the most modern fashion indeed, and prescribed mescalin in the process of Yoga and spiritual practice. Did the Vedic Rishis see in the same way a usefulness of Soma, the proverbial creeper secreting the immortal drink of delight? However, the Tantrik sadhaks hold that particular soporifics possess the virtue of quieting the external senses and dulling and deadening the sense organs, and thereby freeing the inner and subtler consciousness in its play and manifestation.

Our poet too is saying something in the same line. He is appealing to the toadstool god to give him the right vision, to take him to the other shore, to lead him to the presence of the gods in heaven. Because he is the divine food, its self, the ambrosia. Not only that: by taking this ambrosia one enjoys, even

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while in the physical body, existence in heaven, ihaiva tairjitam, as the Upanishad said.

That he may pass me through when my star falls

Who have ambrosia eaten, and yet live.

Life extinguishes when the star falls, yet the truer, and another life awaits to be lived.

How does Graves invoke his god? Let us have a complete view of his mantra.

He begins by speaking of the birth of the gods. Well, a small truth needs to be revealed at this point. We have spoken of he lesser and smaller gods. These small gods are shielded and supported, in fact, by the big gods. This Shilindhra or toadstool has behind him Dionysus, the delight and loveliness and enjoyment and youth – a veritable symbol of ecstasy, of earthly ecstasy. That which is nectar in heaven is presented on earth in drugs and herbal juices. Shilindhra and ambrosia pertain to the same class.

The birth of Shilindhra resembles the birth of Dionysus. When King Zeus took the form of thunder and lightning and entered the womb of Semele, Dionysus was born. Similar is the story of the appearance of the toadstool, in the midst of rain and thunder and lightning and on the lap of mother earth. We have already said that there are two categories of gods or two types of them – one belongs to heaven and the other to earth. The Vedic Rishis announced that heaven was our father and earth the mother – daurme pitā mātā prthvimahīyam. The Vedantins usually and mainly worship the father, and Tantriks, the mother. Svarga, Dyaus, is the world of light, and earth or bhu is that of delight and enjoyment. We have already said that high above, up there, dwell Apollo and Zeus and Juno, and below here on earth, Dionysus and Bacchus and Semele and Aphrodite.

However the poet says that as the toadstool is born in the midst of thunder and lightning, his strength and capacity are of the nature of thunder – enduring and hard and powerful. Born thus it spreads everywhere and lasts through all time. From the beginning of creation this god has sprouted up everywhere, as giver of pleasure and ecstasy and intoxication. To

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worship him is to worship earth, to worship Dionysus himself. But one needs to worship this god in the right way, to give oneself away wholly to him. Once upon a time the demons for some selfish interest wanted to capture and imprison him. The result was disastrous – he thought of depriving them of their power of movement and drowning them into the ocean. On the contrary, to the devoted which world does he reveal, which delight bring? Let us listen to the poet:

Lead us with your song, tall Queen of earth!

Twinned to the god, I follow comradely

Through a first rainbow-limbo, webbed in white,

Through chill Tyrrhenian grottoes, under water,

Where dolphins wallow between marble rocks,

Through sword-bright jungles, tangles of unease, Through halls of fear ceilinged with incubi,

Through blazing treasure-chambers walled with garnet,

Through domes pillared with naked Caryatids

Then mount at last on wings into pure air,

Peering down with regal eye upon

Five-fruited orchards of Elysium,¹

Let us not be too curious to know the name of the five fruits whose taste brings an immortal delight, but do we not relish already a foretaste of its sweetness in these lines:

And still she drowsily chants

Gentle her voice, her notes come linked together

In intricate golden chains paid out

Slowly across brocaded cramoisy,

Or unfold like leaves from the jade-green shoot

Of a rising bush whose blossoms are her tears. . .

O, whenever she pauses, my heart quails

Until the sound renews.²

Here in this connection one is naturally reminded of Sri Aurobindo's The Other Earths. The poem reveals other earths

¹ "The Ambrosia of Dionysus and Semele".

² Ibid.

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like this earth of ours as reflections or projections or prototypes: like the concretely visible earth here, they too are equally beautiful, with million colours and shades. We are blind and cannot see them. But when we learn to see with the eye of our eye there appear clear before us

Calm faces of the Gods on background vast

Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes,

Through glimmering veils of wonder and delight

World after world bursts on the awakened sight.

Of course, in Sri Aurobindo we reach the inner and higher world through a luminous path, through worlds of light, ranging one upon another. It is a journey through pure air and clear light. Conversely the poet of the toadstool leads one by the passage of an acid drunkenness and a half-conscious drowse. If the goal here is a delight and a freedom they are arrived at after traversing a purgatory or undergoing a troubled purification. But this too leads verily to a world of the gods.

This "little slender lad, whose flesh is bitter, lightning engendered, born from dungs of mares" is perhaps a symbol of our human receptacle. We have to carry this mortal frame with its clay feet and make the effort towards self-transcendence: the alchemy's other name is self-purification and self-perfection. This tender shoot is a mysterious chemical storehouse, its fermentation and purification and use awaken in us the sleeping divine will, give a clear vision, guide us through the secret worlds and ultimately to the home of Immortality. The Vedic Rishis sang to the Soma creeper or god Soma, Tatra mām. amrtam krdhi, 0 Somadeva, carry us where thou flowest down and there make us immortal. For there abound all delight, all ecstasy, all enjoyment, all lure and the supreme Desire of desire – ānanda, moda, mud, pramud, kāma¹ – are these not the five fruits of heaven the poet of the West mentions?

¹ Yatrānandāśca modāśca mudah pramuda āsate kāmasya yatrāptāh kāmā – Rig Veda, IX. 113.11.

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