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Hymn to Darkness
HERE is a modern poem in Bengali. It is characteristically modern, though perhaps not quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness:
That darkness is no more, The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came, It is no more there. Many are the lights now around the heart Arrayed as in a festive illumination. Ceaseless now There is the earth's merry-go-round all the time. But beyond still, Outside Time, the mind, even this mind stands And sends its call to Thee alone. Yes, the Darkness is there no longer; And yet stretching out both the arms My mind yearns to reach the Darkness And itself becomes the Darkness.
Invocation to Darkness has, it appears, become quite
fashionable among a certain group of modern poets. It is a favourite
theme on which many a poet, many a good poet has played each in his
way, a characteristic variation. Curiously enough, I came across
about the same time the work of another poet, a French poet, also
modern and almost modernist and, curio user still, in the same
manner, a worshipper of Darkness. He is Yves Bonnefoy, originally
belonging to the school of Jouve, an earlier modern. He speaks of two
kinds of Night, one darker than the other - the less dark one is our
common day with its grey light. The other is on the other shore:
Page - 216 Vers l' autre rive encore plus nocturne¹
This darker night on the other shore is not illuminated by any light, but there is fire there, fire and its flame and the transparency of that flame: here is his description of how they stand to each other, that Night and our familiar day:
Une torche est portée dans le jour gris, Le feu déchire le jour. Il y a que la transparence de la flamme Amèrement nie le jour.²
But why bitterly? Perhaps the day (the common day) tasted bitter in the mouth of the poet. The poet has not perhaps the spiritual sense as we in India understand it. He speaks in effect of a dark goddess, he calls her
Douve profonde et noire³
He names her Douve, perhaps in memory of his first master Jouve, and addresses her as Sombre Lumière (Dark Light). He evidently means his poetic inspiration; his vision of the other shore is that of the world of his poetic experiences and realisations. But the nature of the contents of that world is very characteristic. They are apparently qualities and objects fundamentally spiritual - transparent fire and even motionless silence. Yes, that world is of wind and fire (compare our world of Tapas) and yet calm and tranquil. So the poet sings:
Douve sera ton nom au l oin parmi les pierres, Douve profonde et noire,
Eau basse irréductible
où l'effort se perdra.4
¹ "Towards the other bank in a still darker night." ² A torch is held up in the day's grey, The fire tears rifts in the day. There's this: the flame's transparence Bitterly denies the day." ³ "Douve dark and black." 4 "Douve shall be your name far off among the stones, Douve dark and black,
Irreducible low water where effort shall spend itself."
Page - 217 Inspiration, according to the poet, is not the high swell of garrulousness and anxious effort. It is the solid bedrock underground when all the surface effusions have ebbed away - a shadowy dark strong tranquil repose. A modern English poet -Robert Graves -worships a White Goddess. But from the description he gives of the lady, she would appear to be more black than white; for she seems to be intimately connected with the affairs -that is to say -the mysteries -of Hades and Hecate, underground worlds and midnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white sow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and lust in man. We in India have a dark god and a dark goddess - Krishna and Kali. Krishna is dark, his is the deep blue of the sky. Kali is dark, hers is the blackness ofthe earthly night. The Vaishnava poet and saint sang:
Oh, I love black, For black is the tamal tree, black is Krishna, Oh, how I love black.
Ramprasad the Bhakta thus speaks of Kali, his dark Mother: the poem itself is very dark, that is to say, the meaning is dark, and the style, the phrasing is darker still. A literal translation is out of question. A very free rendering is only possible:
I have brooded over it and I am utterly confused; She in whose name one defies dark time, She at whose feet lies low the Supreme in his pure whiteness. Why should she herself be black? Many are the forms of blackness, But here is a very marvel of blackness. If you hold it in your heart, the lotus there shall bloom and burn bright - Oh, she is dark and her name is Mother Darkness: She is blacker than blackness. But one who has seen that beauty is lost for good, He will have no eye for any other beauty.
Are
the moderns on the same track as these older mystics?
Page - 218 But why this panegyric in worship of darkness? Whence this fascination for blackness? Our ancient Rishis speak of the supreme Light of lights, the Source of all the lights that burn here, the Light that is beyond darkness, on the other shore. Darkness is this world, the world of ignorance, our earthly consciousness; this is a perception easily understandable. But in the mystic consciousness of a kind, darkness and light seem to be interchangeable. Darkness seems to be a form of light, nay even of a greater light. It is said, the occultists say, that between the light of the day, that is to say, the light of the ordinary consciousness and the higher spiritual light, there is an interim world, an intermediate zone of consciousness. When one leaves the earthly day, the normal consciousness and goes within and to the heights, towards the other Light, one enters at first into a dark region (the selva oscura of Dante). Physically also, the scientists say today that when you leave the earth's atmosphere, from a certain height you no longer see the earthly light but you dive into a darkness where the sun does not shine in its glory as on earth. You see and feel the sunlight again when you approach the sun and are about to be consumed in its fires. In the same way, we are told that on the spiritual path too, the path of inner consciousness, when you leave the ordinary consciousness, when you lose that normal light and yet have not arrived at the other higher light you grope in an intermediary region of darkness. You have lost the lower knowledge and have not yet gained the higher knowledge, then you are in that uncertain world of greyness or darkness. Or it happens also that while in the comparatively faint light of the ordinary consciousness, you are suddenly confronted with the Superior Light -through some grace perhaps -you cannot stand the light and get blinded and see sheer darkness. Again, the infinite sky in its fathomless depth appears to the naked eye blue, deep blue, blue-black. Light concentrated, solidified, materialised becomes a speck of darkness to the human eye. Do we not say today that a particle of matter (consolidated darkness) is only a quantum of concentrated light-energy?
Something of these supraphysical experiences must have
entered into the consciousness of the modern poets who have
Page - 219 also fallen in love with darkness and blackness -have become adorers, although they do not know, of Shyama and Shyama. Here, for example, is a hymn from the Rig Veda, a whole hymn addressed by Rishi Kushika to Night. Listen how the Rishi invokes his black goddess: Night and Light are unified - almost one -in his consciousness. The Vedic Rishis considered Night as only another form or function of Day - naktoasa samanasa viruPe-Night and Dawn have the same mind although the forms are different.
ODE TO DARKNESS
(Rigveda-X. 127.)
NIGHT spreads wide, she comes everywhere, a Goddess with shining eyes-she looms over these glories as their overlord. (1)
The Immortal Goddess fills up the Vast, above and below. She compels the darkness with her light (2)
The Goddess comes and veils her sister, the Dawn and glows through the blackness.(3)
She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on a tree. (4)
In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the fast racing eagle. (5)
0 Ocean-born Goddess! Smite the wolf, he or she, smite the robber! Carry us safely through. (6)
Black darkness clings to me all around; it stands here firm. Dawn! clear it even as you do my debts. (7)
Daughter of Heaven! A Herd of light is this hymn of victory that moves towards you. I have made it for your sake. Do thou accept it, 0 Night. (8) Page - 220
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