A Fragile Blossom that Withered Fast

Toru Dutt’s verse captures this essence – it reconciles the personal with the universal, it searches for musicality in discord, permanence and hope in a temporal, despair-stricken world, it is redemptive like “sunlight after rain.”

Those whom God’s love die young, lamented Shelley for the premature death of Keats in Adonais. Keats died at the age of 26.But, Toru Dutta died at anevenmore young age of 21. Her life was like a temporal spring that came to an end at the time when it started blooming.It is incredible that in this short life span she pioneered Indian poetry writing in English and showed remarkable mastery of the sonnet form. Toru Dutt’s verse captures this essence – it reconciles the personal with the universal, it searches for musicality in discord, permanence and hope in a temporal, despair-stricken world, it is redemptive like “sunlight after rain.” Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) assimilates Dutt’s diverse knowledge of French literature with her own independent style of writing, Ancient Ballads of Hindustan (1882), a posthumous publication, traces the poet’s deep association with the mythical tales of the canonical Indian classics. She talks about characters like Sita, Savitri, Prahlad and others – from Indian mythology – and presents them in a light which blends her reverence for tradition and love for modernity. Dutt’s poetic craftsmanship reflects a remarkable cross-cultural and trans-discursive dialogue which was being generated as a part of the transmogrification of intellectual paradigms during the nineteenth century. Dutt’s poetry, with its eloquence of diction and clarity of rhetoric, reflects her prowess as a retentive reader too. In “Our Casuarina Tree” – one of those poems in the pantheon of world literature that surpass the boundaries of time, space and context:When earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon:/And every time the music rose,- before/Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,/Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime/I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.There are nearly forty sonnets in the Sheaf and two in Ancient Ballads. Harihar Das, Toru's biographer also speaks of her preference for sonnets. Her remarkably articulate poetry captures a seamless blending of not only ancient Indian classical and European musings, but also a wider assimilation of modernity and tradition. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882), a posthumous publication, may be seen as a brilliant testament to a distinctive aspect of Dutt’s creative oeuvre. Toru Dutt was the first Indian writer in French. She was well versed not only in English but also in French, German and Sanskrit. She was a bold young woman, who never accepted the punishment meted out to an Indian, who had defended himself when attacked by some dogs owned by an Englishman. Enraged, Toru wrote: "You see how cheap the life of an Indian is in the eyes of an English judge." She protested against the brutality when soldiers had killed nine Bengalis and wounded seven. She was against the extravagance of the people during the visit of the Prince of Wales, and critical of the grand fireworks displayed in his honour in Calcutta Maidan.

In her ode, ‘A Shadow of a Magnitude’ we find nineteenth century cross cultural dialogue.She constantly strived for excellence.Toru Dutt’s literary sensibility was informed by her vast and encyclopedic erudition of European classics which she was able to read from her family library, along with the intellectually enriching atmosphere of her home, which reflected thoroughly the larger reformist discourse produced as a part of the nineteenth-century Renaissance in Bengal, nay India. In her creativity she captured and immortalised the everlasting magnanimity of the natural world, in the spirit of the Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, Like them she celebrated the bountiful abundance of the skies, the streams, the hills and the lakes. She sought for an archival of remembrance in casuarinas of a family garden, she searched for individual strength and hope in an otherwise socially turbulent world, like the poets and sages who have eternally glorified the harmony of the primordial.

Dutt’s initial published works include introspective essays in the Bengal Magazine on Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Leconte de Lisle, and her involvement with poetry and fiction – in English as well as French – grew mature and deep. It is significant to note that this element of aesthetic appreciation deeply informed her writing too. M K Naik opines, “Her diction is naturally of the Victorian romantic school, and true to the Ballad motif, she employs archaisms like ‘hight’ and ‘dight’.” Graphic and visual synesthetic imagery profoundly inform her detailed and neatly crafted depictions of natural harmony and the musicality of a divinely maintained cosmos. References to music too abound in her letters and writings.Therefore, Dutt’s work resonates with a profound intellectual sublimity which can be traced back to the poet’s varied interests in the diversified field of the humanities. When the discourse of colonialism was intensifying, her poems seem to be densely symbolic as they voice the freedom of indigenous thought at a time when debates about independence and nationhood were gaining prominence. Her poetry embodies power, her poetry bespeaks diversity – her poetry becomes one with that continuing tradition of literary history which celebrates the minute workings of the natural world, the sound of spring, the delights of summer, the hope after winter, the sorrows which time encapsulates and treasures in “the deathless trees of Borrowdale” or Casuarinas in the poet’s “own loved native clime” as in the phenomenal writing of Rabindranath Tagore. Her ‘Ancient Ballads’ and ‘Legends of India’ were the beginning of a new dawn in Indo-Anglican writing. She was a devout Christian and translated ‘The Blood of Jesus’ into Bengali. She felt the first staggering blow of fate at nine when her only brother Abju died. The shock was tremendous and the two sisters, Toru and Aru, turned to literature for consolation, trying to drown their grief in the repeated readings of Milton's Paradise Lost. Her letters, primarily those written to her friend Mary Martin, shed light on her reading habits, her knowledge of the literary and cultural journals in circulation at that time – the most notable one being the Revue des deux Mondes, the renowned French literary journal – as well as her opinion on contemporary writings. Her letters reflect the rich cultural atmosphere of her home, where significant literary works, contemporary and classical, were read and discussed, as in these lines:“We are now reading with papa Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. We have finished Waverley.” No wonder she is the pioneer of fiction writing in Anglo Indian literature and also left her English novel, Bianca, or The Young Spanish Maiden, unfinished. Bianca which was published in ‘Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers’.

TorulataDutt was born on March4, 1856 into the illustrious Dutt family of Rambagan, Calcutta. It was a well-educated family. She was the daughter of Gobinda Chandra Dutt and Kshetramoni. Her father was a linguist and a versifier and he gave the best possible English education to his children. Eminent historian Ramesh Ch Dutt was her cousin.. She, along with her brother named Abju and a sister named Aru were educated in France and England.. She continued her higher French studies in England and she attended the Higher Lectures for Women at the University while living in Cambridge 1871-1873. Critics describe her as the "fragile blossom" that withered so fast. Her last poem "A Mon Pere" is praised worldwide and is considered "faultless". She was in a hurry to put in as much work as possible, to project and interpret India's past and glorious tradition to the English-speaking world.

Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee is an International Visiting Professor, USA and a trilingual writer. He may be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com

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