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DELVING DEEP WITH

DEROZIO
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF HIS VERSES
TAMOGHNA CHATTOPADHYAY
4/25/2012

The Author’s Short Biography: The author of this paper has done graduation with honours in the English
literature from Visva-Bharati. After completing MA in English he is now pursuing Ph.D. from the same
institute. He has been a teacher of English in Siromoni Birsa Munda High School (H.S.) for five years.
 DELVING DEEP WITH DEROZIO

Tamoghna Chattopadhyay

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio has remained an enigmatic figure in Indian socio-cultural
and literary history since the onset of his ironically brief career and much later even after the end
of it. No discussion regarding his role in the Indian society will be effective unless it begins with
a fresh outlook on the contemporary zeitgeist. We have shifted a great distance from the critical
perspective that used to define a poet as a universal and eternal figure. Derozio’s instance,
therefore, will not be an exception.

The historiography of nineteenth-century India is inevitably Calcutta-centric. Calcutta

was the seat of governance of British-India and undivided Bengal province the most significant
place of intellectual activity for nearly one and a half centuries. Almost all the subsequent socio-
political, religio-cultural and economic developments, therefore, owe their origin from here.
Hence, there is a widespread debate among the historians concerning the validity of the claim of
the notion called the “19th century Bengal Renaissance”. We are not, however, going to embark
on that discussion here as that needs a far wider scope than the present one. But contextualizing
Derozio necessitates a brief description of the cultural scenario of that period and I intend to do
so in the next paragraph.

The beginning of nineteenth century in India brought about with it economic changes that
in turn started gradually a process of transforming the existing feudal social structure into a
capitalist one. Origin and spread of liberal humanism had been an integral part of this process as
were breaking free from traditionalism and adopting rationalism and individualism. Calcutta
(now Kolkata) was in real sense the cosmopolitan hub of British-India with its multiplying
European, Eurasian and Asian as well as provincial population. The age-old orthodoxy was
gradually proving itself incapable of holding them within a common parameter of values. Influx
of European ideas like Utilitarianism, Romantic Humanism, Liberal Democracy, Socialism, etc.
made the situation more complex. The consequence was, therefore, a hybrid and uneven growth
of nationalism, fundamentalism, liberal westernism and parochialism with tinges of indigenous
conventionalism. Almost all the socio-economic and political ventures of that period, like---
revenue system, legal system, education, social reform, women’s question, etc. were influenced
by these ideas. We, therefore, have to situate Derozio and his activities within this paradigm to
make sense of his literary works.

Biography and criticism have variable relationship with each-other. Cultural-Materialism

and Neo-Historicism, however, have secured some relevance of biography of an author while
interpreting her/his works. We shall, therefore, see here very briefly the outline of Derozio’s life.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio came of a well-off Eurasian family on 18 April in 1809. His father
belonged to a Portuguese lineage while his mother an Indian one. His mother, however, passed
by when he was merely six year old. From 1815 to 1822 A.D. he received liberal education
under David Drummond, a learned and experienced teacher, humanist as well as a poet, in
Dharmatala Academy. He was a brilliant student there and was profusely influenced by
Drummond’s philosophical ideas. In 1817, 1818 and 1822 as well his name was mentioned in
contemporary print-media and his literary, histrionic and oratorical genius was recognized as
well as appropriately rewarded. He left the job he took in 1823 at his father’s office and after one
year he set out for Bhagalpur situated on the bank of the river Ganges for the recovery of his
health. There, besides working in the indigo plantation he enthusiastically started his literary
career being inspired by the natural beauty there. From there he sent by letter nineteen poems
written under the pen-name-Juvenis to John Grant, the Editor of The India Gazette, in 1825. Near
the end of that year he was settled down in Calcutta. Around 1926 he was offered two jobs
consecutively---one was the assistant editorship of The India Gazette and another was the
lectureship of the Hindu College (now Presidency College) which was set up in 1817. Four of his
poems were published under the pen-name of East Indian in 1926. He, however, continued
exercising his literary talent under the pseudonym---Juvenis simultaneously. In the meantime
there was a tragic family incident as his elder brother, Francis, a musical genius, committed
suicide only at the age of twenty.

His pedagogical career that started in the Hindu College in 1826, however, changed the
future course of the urban society of Calcutta and its surroundings. His revolutionarily
iconoclastic outlook and befitting oratory, unorthodox pedagogy and rationalistic approach
instantaneously attracted like a magnet the very best youthful brains surrounding him. This group
was both approvingly and derogatorily called the Young Bengal as the orthodox members of the
society felt threatened with the growing popularity of their heretical and blasphemous attitude
among most of the urban youths. In 1827 his first compilation of poetry, called Poems, was
published under his own signature, H. L. V. Derozio from the Baptist Mission Press. His second
book of verse called The Fakeer of Jungeera: A Metrical Tale and Other Poems was brought out
the very next year. The year of 1828 saw a very significant development in the cultural milieu of
Bengal as in that year Rammohun Roy set up the Brahmasamaj. Many kinds of organizations
followed. But Derozio’s initiative in establishing the Academic Association to popularize free
thinking and reasoning among the youths was different from them all. It is hailed by most of the
historians as the first debating society of Bengal as well as the first students’ union of India.
Many of the contemporary issues like patriotism; theism; idolatry; religious bigotry; Western
philosophy; metaphysics; literature; women’s question; philanthropism; etc. were discussed there
among the student-members in front of dignitaries of varying scales. In the meantime in 1829
Derozio earned critical acclaim for this poetical works from the Oriental Herald which was
edited by James C. Buckingham. He revealed his journalistic sensibility in the prose writings
published in The Kaleidoscope where he expounded on the Company-governance, legal system,
state of rural farmers, status of Anglo-Indians and Eurasians, colonization, free-trade, excesses of
indigo plantation, etc. in detail from 1829 to 1830. On 15 Dec. 1829 in a debate held in Calcutta
Town Hall he expressed his reservation against full-scale colonization in India but he denounced
the corruption of the company administration also, which he regarded as excessively dependent
on the military rather than on the willful subordination of the indigenous population. In 1830 the
abolition of the Suttee created awareness among the progressive youths and the members of the
Academic Association took initiative to spread their view under the approval of Derozio through
the Parthenon, an English weekly that served as the mouthpiece of their organization.
Meanwhile Alexander Duff’s conversion project and his growing influence on the Western-
educated youths of Bengal created serious furor among the orthodox Hindu society.

Derozio’s influence among the students as well as on the society and his synthetic
pedagogy where he freely shifted among literature, philosophy and history divided the authority
of the Hindu College in their opinion about his legitimacy as an ideal and skilled teacher. He
was, therefore, forced to resign lectureship in 1831. Even after that he actively participated in the
activities of newly founded journals and newspapers like The Enquirer, Gyananeswan and The
East Indian respectively. On 26 Dec. 1831 he died of cholera. But the Young Indians continued
his legacy for a long time till it got combined with other socio-cultural movements.

Let us now see the philosophical and literary works that were central in the making of
Derozio’s intellectual and ideological set-up during his student life as well as his teaching career.
He was deeply influenced by the philosophical ideas came into being since the European
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century as well as by the romantic ideals of the early nineteenth
century. He studied Tom Pain’s writings imbued with skepticism, especially, the Rights of Men,
Hume’s empirical philosophy, Thomas Reid’s common-sense realism, James Mill’s The History
of British India, etc. at a very early age. We have also come to know that he had grown a taste
for the works of William Shakespeare as he would freely read as well as often participate in the
enactment of his plays. In 1822 he played the role of Shylock in the staging of The Merchant of
Venice. When he joined the Hindu College at an age of merely seventeen, he was offered to
teach the students whom he influenced greatly with his pedagogy the following subjects---
Goldsmith’s History of Greece, Rome and England: Russell’s Modern Europe; Robertson’s
Charles the Fifth; Gay’s Fables; Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Dryden’s Virgil; Milton’s Paradise
Lost; and Shakespeare’s one of the tragedies. We must not also forget that he had seen the best of
the Romantic age and the beginning of the Victorian one in the sphere of European literature.
Besides Shakespeare and Milton, representative of the Renaissance literature, classical and
satirical motif of Enlightenment littérateur represented by Dryden and Pope also inspired him in
his poetical career. Again, he was deeply moved by the simplicity, sensuousness and sensibility
of the Romantic poets like Burns, Scott, Moore, Keats, Shelley and Byron as well as the
neoclassicism of Victorian poets like Tennyson. All those influences were synthesized in his
creative imagination and poetic style as well.

It is also relevant in this context to have an idea about the concept of a poet’s social and
cultural role as it had been held in the popular imagination of the eighteenth and nineteenth
century Europe. In The lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge legitimized the
simple language as well as theme of common folk as the appropriate medium and subject of
poetic composition. According to their theory the poet should be one among the mass, a
sympathetic being sensible enough to document his/her experiences in poetry. To Keats,
however, “beauty is truth, truth beauty”. But his Ode to the Nightingale, again, reveals his belief
in the essential bond between a poet and the painful, earthly life even when he worships the
sublime beauty. Shelley, on the other hand, in his A Defence of Poetry consciously sets a poet’s
duty apart from that of the common mass and prophesies---“Poets are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the
present, the words which express what they understand not, the trumpets which sing to battle and
feel not what they inspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the World”. The reflection of his revolutionary ideas are found in
many a poems composed by him like--- Ode to the West Wind, To a Sky-Lark, Prometheus
Unbound; etc. The Victorian age will again see the rise of the “Vates” or the Poet/Prophet as a
heroic figure in the writings of Carlyle. Although some of these works were not published in
Derozio’s lifetime, it would be unusual for such an avid reader like him not to be influenced by
the variegated ideas spreading over the cultural space all over the West and its most distinctive
colony, India. So, all those ideas could not but impress Derozio’s poetic vein.

So, now as we have briefly discussed about the spirit of the age having influence over
Derozio as well as the incidents affecting his very private or familial life, we should appreciate
some of his most well-known poems as products of the synthesis of all those factors. The poems
that will be discussed upon hereafter are the following: The Harp of India; My Country! In Thy
Day of Glory Past; To the Pupils of Hindu College; To My Brother in Scotland; Forget Not the
Moment We Parted; Romeo and Juliet; Fair Lady! I Was but a Minstrel Boy; An Invitation;
Chorus of Brahmins; Song of the Hindustanee Minstrel; To a Young Hindu Widow; Ada; The
Fakeer of Jungheera; Morn Advances from Her Bowers (translated from Hafez’s Persian poem);
I Would I Were a Ray of Light; Night; A Walk by Moonlight; leaves; The Ruins of Rajmahal; On
the Abolition of Sattee; The Orphan Girl; The Golden Vase; Greece; The Greeks at Marathon;
Freedom to the Slave; The Poet’s Grave; Sister-in-law; Don Juanics; etc. If we broadly
categorize these poems we shall find that there are nature poems, love poems, patriotic poems,
personal poems, satires, sonnets, odes, ballads, lyrics, etc.

To India---My Native Land is a poem that is also anthologized in many volumes with its
first line as the title of the poem, i.e., ‘My Country! In thy Day of Glory Past’. Both the titles are
significant in their use of the personal pronoun: “my”. Equally distinct is the use of the adjectival
expression---“native”. The entrée of ‘native’ in the Online Etymological Dictionary is as follows:
native (adj.) late 14c., from O.Fr. natif (fem. native), from L. nativus "innate, produced by
birth," from natus, pp. of nasci (Old L. gnasci) "be born," related to gignere "beget," from PIE
root *gen-/*gn- "produce" (see genus). The noun is mid-15c., originally meaning "person born in
bondage," later (1530s) "person who has always lived in a place." Applied from 1650s to original
inhabitants of non-European nations where Europeans hold political power; hence, used
contemptuously of "the locals" from 1800. Thus, we can see that there is a conscious approach
from the part of Derozio himself to claim the Indian identity. Even the derogatory connotation of
associated with the expression “native” cannot deter him. There is a mood of rather celebration
in the glorious past of India in this poem: ‘My country! in thy day of glory past/A beauteous halo
circled round thy brow,/And worshipped as a deity thou wast’. But the crux of the poem is
reached when the poet despairs in his attempt of comparison between the “golden past” of pre-
British India and The “brazen present” of British-India:

Where is that glory, where that reverence now?

Thy eagle pinion is chained at last,

And grovelling in the lowly dust art thou:

Thy minstrel hath no wreath to weave for thee

Save the sad story of thy misery!

The occidental myth of Prometheus is adapted skillfully into an oriental theme by the
poet here. This poem can be called a pioneer in the tradition of composing patriotic poetry and
songs in colonial Bengal. The immediate effect is visible in the patriotic verses of Michael
Madhusudan Dutt.

Composed in the same nationalistic vein is another poem called The Harp of India that is
written in the same mournful strains as Moore’s The Harp of Erin. Here is also presented the
great disparity between the “shining old” and “shadowed present” of India. This is highly
probable that he had been highly influenced in this regard by the writings of the Western
Orientalists like William Jones, H. H. Wilson, et al. theis poem is particularly significant due to
the apt use of the metaphor “harp” to imply the angst of the poet in his discovery of the
degeneration of his “motherland/native land”, India, into a baser state under the British
colonization:
 Why hang’st thou lonely on yon withered bough?

Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;

Thy music once was sweet—who hears it now?

Why doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain?

This sonnet is written in Shakespearean mode, but the poet has fused romanticism with
the classical medium. In the very first line a harp is seen hanging “lonely on yon withered
bough”. We can notice that the use of the vowel “o” and diphthongs “yo” and “ou” express
distance of time and space as well. Similarly the diphthongs in other rhyming words like “vain”;
“chain”; “plain”; “now”; “thou”; “mine”; “entwine”; “divine”; “again”; “strain” harps on the
same idea of void or vastness or expanse between the past and the present. The principal
metaphor of the poem is “Harp” and keeping it in the centre there are other metaphors like
“withered bough”; “breeze” shying “in vain”; “ruined monument on desert plain”; “cold hands”;
etc. there are word-pictures that complement the metaphors. For example:

Line no: 1—yon withered bough

2—harp: unstrung for ever

3—music once was sweet

4—the breeze sigh over

5—silence: fatal chain

6—Neglected mute and desolate

7—ruined monument on desert plain

The poet cannot forget the glorious days of the ancient minstrels. But all of them are now in
“grave”, their hands are “cold”. At last, however, we can find that the discrepancy between the
thesis and antithesis—“golden past” and “brazen present” is reconciled into a synthesis when the
poet himself in an invocative mood promises to bring back the some lost glory of India with the
deserted “harp” through his poetry. The poet’s personal loss of his mother at a tender age might
have expressed itself through his desperate attempt to associate himself with India, his
motherland.

The Golden Vase is also a predominantly patriotic verse where Derozio not only regards
himself a native Indian but also claims the cultural inheritance of his motherland, i.e. India.
Probably being influenced by Oriental historiography of James Mill’s History of India he deems
the Muslim rulers of India as invaders and exploiters initiating bondage upon India:

The Moslem is come down to spoil the land

Which every god hath blest. For such a soil,

So rich so clad with beauty, who would not

Unlock his veins, and pour their treasure forth?

The Hindoo hath marched forward to repel

The lawless plunder of his holy-shrines,

The savage, rude disturber of his peace;

We must not mistake it for a fundamentalist Hindu manifesto, however. We should rather read it
as an emotional endeavour of a young and inexperienced poet to appropriate himself in the
conventional national tradition, which was mainly hegemonized by discourses of Hinduism at
that time.

The poem written by Derozio in 1827 called Freedom to the Slave can claim to be the
one of the earliest socialist verses in this country. At the beginning of the poem there is a
quotation from Scottish poet Thomas Campbell: ‘And as the slave departs, the man returns’. This
quote imforms us about the regeneration of the “Man” from the state of a slave. The first four
lines concerns about the topic—“The slave departs”, while the next twelve lines is consists of the
theme—“The man returns”. Although there is no direct reference regarding the deplorable state
of the slave in this poem, this very silence about it makes it more distinctive. A comparison
between the conditions of the slave and the man is evident here:
SLAVE + dysphoria [reality] Man + euphoria [idealized reality]

Slave – freedom Man + freedom

Slave + kneeling Man – kneeling

Slave – high-thinking Man + high-thinking

Slave – winds and birds and floods Man + winds and birds and floods

State 1: diysphoric slave State 2: euphoric man

From the above column it is quite evident that the relations between the slave and the man are
counter-contradictory. Here also like the previously discussed poem the synthesis comes out of
the thesis and the antithesis in the form of transformation of the slave into the man; hence the
revelation and subsequent exultation: ‘I’m free as they!’….We also come to know that the poet’s
sympathy lies with the entire exploited, downtrodden humanity when he utters:

Blest be the generous hand that breaks

The chain a tyrant gave,

And, feeling for degraded man,

Gives freedom to the slave.

During the time of height of European colonialism this kind of bold verse and transnationalism
fused with patriotism undoubtedly makes this one of Derozio’s best poems—both thematically
and formally.

Derozio was a champion of liberty throughout his life. Although the French Revolution
had been about two decades old when he was born, the motto of that epoch—liberty, equality
and fraternity was still fresh in public memory. During his avid reading even at an early age he
became acquainted with those ideals. So, the liberation movement of the Greeks against Turkish
exploiters got a natural supporter in Derozio. The poet here reminds the readers of the ancient
glory of the Greek civilization. The theme of the poem is, however, the hypocritical silence of
the other civilized European nations over the excesses of the Turkish invaders over innocent
Greek citizens including women and children. He prophesies that Greece will surely be a free
nation one day by its own effort and the entire world would hail it that day:

Will Europe hear? Ah! no—ah! no—

She coldly turns from the;

Thine own right arm, and battle-blade

Must win the victory.—

Derozio must have been inspired by Lord Byron in writing verses on the Greek theme. He wrote
the poem called The Greeks at Marathon on the occasion of Greek victory at the battle of
Marathon. He declares that the pace of Greek victory has set in—the Spartan never give in—they
would rather prefer to reach the Elysium being killed in the battlefield:

Thine is Freedom’s hallowed earth,

Hallowed by a deed of worth;

Let another such be done

On this field of Marathon,

Seek we freedom? —Grecians, on!

Freedom’s field is Marathon.

Derozio was deeply moved by the pathetic condition of Indian womenfolk and his poems
are concerned with women’s life and rights also. In this respect four poems are worth mention—
On the Abolition of Sattee; The Orphan Girl; To a Young Hindu Widow; and The Fakeer of
Jungheera. Lord William Bentinck formally banned the practice of burning suttee in 1829. On
that occasion Derozio composed the poem: On the Abolition of Sattee. Here he depicts
poignantly the woes of the life of an Indian woman, right from the beginning to the end on her
husband’s burning pyre, in the following lines:

Nurtured in darkness, born to many woes,

 Words, the mind’s instrument but ill supplied,

Delight, even as a name she scarcely knows,

And while an infant sold to be a bride,

To be a mother her exalted pride,

And yet not her’s a mother’s sigh or smile;

Oft doomed in youth, to stern the icy tide

Of rude neglect, caused by some wanton’s wile

And forced at last to grace her lord’s funeral pile.

But the morning sun is pleased now at the end of the day as the bloodbath of the widows at the
bank of the river Ganges has at last stopped for good and for that reason the contribution of Lord
William Bentinck would be remembered for ages:

The widow’s wail is over;

No more the flames from impious pyres ascend,

See Mercy, now primeval peace restore,

While pagans glad the arch ethereal rend,

For India hails at last, her father and her friend.

In the poem called The Orphan Girl the poet portrays the disgraceful life of an orphan
girl. The entire society turns against her when being desolate and helpless she is forced into a life
of disrespect. But such is the hypocrisy of the civilized society that nobody is ready to help her
by any means:

And blest be for ever his honored name

Who shelters an orphan from sorrow and shame!

In To a Young Hindu Widow Derozio movingly depicts the distressful lot of alive young
Hindu widows:

What is the world to thee forlorn!

 Thine every path is desolate;

From all enjoyments rudely torn,

How drear and comfortless thy fate!

What pity, friendless, helpless, poor!

The Fakeer of Jungheera is a narraive poem consisting of rich scenic description of the region
around Bhagalpur. Derozio spent there a short period while working for for his uncle before
joining lectureship at the Hindu College. In his own words: ‘It struck me as a place where
achievements in love and war might well take place and the double character I had heard of the
Fakeer together with some acquaintance with the scenery induced me to form a tale upon both
these circumstances.’ Like Keats’s The Eve of St. Agnes, this poem in a rich metrical form
vividly describes the natural setting, its visuals, sounds, fragrances and human warmth. The
central tale of a suttee who is rescued by her former lover now turned “Fakeer” is a tragic one.
Nuleeni, in spite of the rescue, is soon to become a widow again when her lover is killed in the
battle that ensues with her paternal authorities. She died of the shock and her body is found lying
by the dead body of her husband. Byronic melancholy is found in abundance throughout the
poem. In fact in The Fakeer of Jungheera one can notice the impression of Byron’s narrative
poem on the Turkish theme, The Giaour.

In The Fakeer of Jungheera Derozio has shown us that human life is more precious than
either religious doctrines or social tenets. According to the protagonist achievement of human
love is a nobler and greater accomplishment than securing a place in the heaven.

No more to Mecca’s hallowed shrine

Shall wafted be a prayer of mine

Henceforth I turn my willing knee

From Alla, Prophet, heaven to thee!

Premarital love affair between an upper caste Hindu girl and a Muslim youth, their union after
the girl is rescued from her husband’s funeral pyre from being a suttee, and consequently their
bonding in death after Fakeer, the Muslim outlaw is killed and Nuleeni, the Hindu girl dies by
her side—all of those incidents give the narrative a distinctiveness and epic-like expansion
imbued with pure humanism. This verse is a perfect combination of classical fatalism and
romantic optimism.

The nostalgia for history and legend that has been one of the most favourite themes of the
Romantic poetry also catches the imagination of Derozio. In The Ruins of Rajmahal in a
melancholic tone he maintains that the accomplishments of the mighty king, Suja, are now
destroyed; but the ambience around the ruins still reverberate the history of that once prosperous
era:

Of glory that has long gone by—

And while her fields shall flourish green,

Some trace shall be of what has been—

Its image, though in darkness cast,

A holy relic of the past;

Among the poems composed on the subjective theme of immortality the one poem worth
mention is undoubtedly the sonnet titled—To the Pupils of the Hindu College. Through the use
of some exquisitely beautiful similes the poet is here elated that his students will immortalize
him through their growing wisdom and skill. They will ward off the superstitions and dogmas
binding the progress of the society. They will worship none but the omnipotent truth. Their
growing up is compared with the expanding of young flowers and also with the young birds
stretching their wings to try their strength:

Expanding like the petals of young flowers

I watch the gentle opening of your minds

And sweet loosening of the spell that binds

Your intellectual energies and powers

That stretch (like young birds in soft summer hours)

Their wings to try their strength….

The poet’s prophetic wish is expressed in the last four lines:

 What joyance rains upon me, when I see

Fame in the mirror of futurity,

Weaving the chaplets you have yet to gain,

And then I feel I have not lived in vain.

Apart from the patriotic, nationalistic, humanistic and idealistic verses we can find the
other side of Derozio’s personality—romantic love interest. He composed a number of love
poems under the pen-name Juvenis when he had been staying in Bhagalpur. It is often guessed
that he had fallen in love with a young woman there. But neither her name nor the reason behind
the failure of their love is known. The anguish of separation as well as the urgency to be reunited
feature in the following poem written by him:

Forget not, forget not the moment we parted,

With tear-streaming eyes, fallen looks broken-hearted—

Forget not thy vows that were made at the shrine,

And when would’st soothe thee, O! think upon mine.

…………………………………………………………..

Tho’ prospects are dear, and tho’ pleasure is fleeting,

Look forward with hope to a rapturous meeting.

In his love poems we can trace the free emotions and impulses generally associated with love. In
this respect he is a follower of Burns and Byron who do not analyze any inner philosophy in
love. They rather explores the bodily responses towards love. In Derozio’s poetry there is the
intensity of the emotion like that of Burns’s ‘My love is a red red rose’; for example we can
quote the following lines from his Romeo and Juliet:

I thought upon their fate, and wept; and then

Came to my mind the silent hour of night,

The hour which lovers love and long for,…

We can also cite from his Fair lady! I Was but a Minstrel Boy where the poet affirms the beatific
quality of love:
 Fair lady! I Was but a Minstrel Boy

When first thy dark glance told my soul, that joy

Might be, perchance by heaven bestowed on me

If thy soft heart heaven’s almoner would be

Why should my spirit deems its lot unblest?

In Ada, a longer narrative poem with a tragic theme similar to The Fakeer of Jungheera,
Derozio expresses his view on love:

A history of passion—and like all

That Love has part in, full of hope, and fear,

And cold despair, and madness, which at last

Destroy the heart and brain that once they seize.

There are other verses also written on other intimate themes like brotherly love and
anxiety over separation. The following lines taken from To My Brother in Scotland we become
familiar to this kind of emotion:

Then o’er the boundless, watery waste

To that far land where thou art,

Be many a blessing borne to thee

By guardian seraphs of the heart!

Yes—o’er the blue eternal sea

Be many a blessing born to thee!

Another kind of poetry written in a humorous vein are Derozio’s potrait verses, for example:
Chorus of Brahmins and Song of the Hindustanee Minstrel. In both of them the influence of
European Orientalist painters are quite evident. Derozio is a master of using sound-words and
corresponding metrical forms in Chorus of Brahmins:

Scatter, scatter flowerets round,

 Let the tinkling cymbal sound;

Strew the scented orient spice,

Prelude to the sacrifice;

Derozio’s keen observation makes the poem titled Song of the Hindustanee Minstrel lively:

With surmah tinge the black eye’s fringe,

‘Twill sparkle like a star;

With roses dress each raven tress,

My only loved dildar!

Derozio’s interest in local color was very keen. Similarly his love for natural beauty in all
its variety has implanted its tress in almost all of his poetry. Still one cannot help quoting the
folloing lines from one of his poems titled Night:

For loneliness and thought this is the hour:—

Now that thou smil’st, so beautiful and bright,

Oh! how I feel thy soul-subduing power,

And gaze upon thy loveliness, sweet Night!

In this respect we must also quote from Derozio’s brilliant translation of the Persian bard Hafez:

Morn advances from her bowers,

Dacked with blushing vernal flowers,

Bring the morning draught divine,

………………………………………

Dew-drops trickle from the cheek

Of the tulip fair and sleek;

Another translation from Hafez by Derozio captures the sensuality and liveliness of the poet:

Say, what’s the rose without the smile

 Of her I deem more fair,

And what are all the sweets of spring

If wine be wanting there.

Derozio’s humorous vein is also discernible in the following intimate quotes that he
writes to his sister when she repeatedly urges him to marry immediately:

For thou art as pure as the lights that burn

In the palace of bliss eternally

And thy Sister-in-Law must be like an urn,

Containing the essence of purity.

The Don Juanics that are modelled on his favourite Byron are also in a delightful comic-satiric
vein. Here is a quote from verse number—xlviii:

E’en hearing scandal is a cruel way

Of killing time—some ladies think not so—

With them ‘tis ‘chit-chat, rumour, trifling play’—

O’er cups of tea they’ll tell a tale of woe,

Defaming others, and then smiling say,

‘O dear! Indeed ‘tis what all people know;’—

So tea by folksaspersed is called, in wrath,

By a most fitting title—‘Scandal broth!’

Derozio’s perspective on poetr is best conveyed through the following lines of his poetry called
The Poetry of Human Life:

Is human life not full of poetry?

The common sounds we hear, the sights we see,

Are they not born of human hopes and fears

 Are not their offspring thoughts and smiles and tears?

These are the mystic elements of life,

And these with holiest poetry are rife.

The influence of the Romantic poetical theory of the Lyrical Ballads composed by Wordsworth
and Coleridge is clearly visible here upon Derozio. His poetic imagination has always been
rooted deep inside the elements of this lively earth.

In some of Derozio’s poetry there is a saddened note concerning the ultimate

consequence of one’s life. In this context we can name two of his poems titled The Neglected
Minstrel and Dust respectively. The flight of the once free bard (homonym of bird) will be
restricted at last for good and then ‘Darkness without, within, consuming flame’ will prevail. But
the poet is still determined to remain a worshipper of liberty till the end of his life even if the
ultimate prospect of his life is to be turned into dust.

The critics usually weigh the merits of a poet by three standards: firstly, her/his skill in
combining theme, diction and form; secondly, her/his deep knowledge about the spirit of the
existing age; and lastly, her/his identification or activism with the progressive humanistic
movement of that time. We have in more than once noticed Derozio’s craftsmanship in
maintaining propriety in every literary respect. He has also deeply sympathized with the freedom
movement of Greece and America and the French Revolution. He has also spreaded all those
ideas among his numerous students. He has written verses in support of the distressed
womenfolk and supported the ban on Suttee. He has protested against all kinds religious and
social dogmas and championed the cause of rationalism. He has also morally supported the
emerging Indian nationalism in the backdrop of British colonization. His personal history is in
true sense the history of his age. In respect of poetic spontaneity he might not equal Keats,
Shelley or Byron, but he is a great poet nonetheless, the pioneer of the tradition of Indian English
poetry.
 Bibliography

De, Ramaprasad. “Derozio, Tnar Kobitai Tnar Godye”. Paschimbanga: Henry Louis Vivian

Derozio Sept.— Oct. 2008: 44-58. Kolkata: Dept. of Information and Culture. Govt. of
West Bengal. Print.

Dutta, Amar. Derozio o Derozians. Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2002. Print.

Gokak, Vinayak Krishna, ed. The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry. New Delhi: Sahitya

Akademy, 2006. Print.

Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling, 2003. Print.

Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna, ed. An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. New Delhi:

Permanent Black, 2003. Print.

Paranjape, Makarand, ed. Indian Poetry in English. Chennai: Macmillan, 2007. Print.
 FORMAL DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this paper that is written by me, Tamoghna Chattopadhyay, has been
published neither in any book nor in any journal before.