V – Sem, English – III year

 

The Lotus – Toru Dutt

Summary: 

The Poem ‘The lotus’ was written by Toru Dutt. She was one of the founding figures of Anglo Indian Literature. She was born in a well educated and wealthy family. She got an education in French, Literature and Music. She published her first anthology of Poems ‘A sheaf gleaned in French fields’ in 1876. She translated many French poems into English in this anthology. She was considered a famous writer & translator of English, French and Bengali Poems. The present poem “the Lotus” was taken from “Ancient ballads and legends of Hindustan”. 

According to the Poem, the Poet personified Love. Personified love went to flora, the Roman Goddess of flowering plants and requested her to create the most beautiful flower in the world. Love asked Flora to create the Flower in such a manner that it should be considered as the queen of flowers in an undeniable manner because by then, among the flowers like rose and Lily a long standing  rivalry broke out to state themselves as the prettiest queen of flowers.

Popular Poets compared Lily flower qualities with that of Juno Mein and praised its majestic Qualities and some more writers praised the beauty of Rose in an outstanding manner. Onlookers in the garden also appreciated Rose and Lily based on their charms individually, most probably, the claims of the powerful poets, etc sparked fire and gave a chance for the rivalry to erupt. 

Hence, personified Love requested Love requested Flora to create a flower which appears Rose red and lily White in colour to look at, so that the rivalry might not be there and the newly created Flower should be considered Queen of Flowers. Flora considered the plea of Love and gave a Flower which has the qualities of both rose and Lily in it. Flora gave love beautiful, elegant, Rose-red, lily-white coloured queenliest of all flowers called lotus.

The present poem ‘The lotus’ is a Petrarchan Sonnet. It has 14 lines. The first eight lines are called octave and the last six lines are called Sestet. The poet posed questions in the octave and answered those questions in the sestet. The Rhyme Scheme of the poem is ABBA ABBA CDC DDC. The Poet mentioned red Rose to state the ideology or the knowledge of Asians and lily-White to indicate the ideology, etc of the Europeans or westerners. With the introduction of “The Lotus”, the Poet stated that the flower represents the combined ideology or knowledge of both Asians and Westerners. The flower lotus indicates transitional classical Indian symbol of Beauty, Youth and Divinity in the poem