'Myths' are commonly viewed as the stories of the acts o supernatural beings and the manifestations of their sacred

powers. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines myth " as a story that originated in ancient times, especially one dealing with ideas or beliefs about the early history of a race, or giving explanation of natural events, things, person, etc. that is imaginary, fictitious or impossible"."'" Myths are a common feature of all human traditions and communities and are a basic constituent of human culture. "Myth is a collective term used for the kind of symbolic communication and specifically, indicates one basic form of religious symbolism, as distinguished from symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or 2 objects (such as temples and icons)." Myths are specific accounts of concerning gods or super human beings and extra-ordinary events or circumstances in a time that is altogether different from that of ordinary human experience. Every myth presents itself as authoritative and always as an account of facts, no matter how completely different they may be from the ordinary world. Myth occurs in the history of all human traditions and communities and is a basic constituent of human culture. People in every culture or tradition have developed a stock of myths in addition to other early forms of literature (such an legends and fairy tales). Because the variety of mythical themes, characters, and styles of narration is so great, it is difficult to make general statements about the nature of myths, which in their details indicate what the self-image of people in a given civilization is. "Myth is a means of symbolic communication. It is a means of various explanations of nature, society, culture and biological facts. A North American Indian (Abnaki ! Wabnaki) myth, for example explains the origin of corn : a lonesome man meets a beautiful woman with light hair; She

promises to remain with him if he does what she tells to him; she tells him in detail how to make fire and drag her over the burned ground; as a result of these acts, he will see her silken hair (viz. of the corn stalk) pppear and have corn seeds for his use. Henceforth, whenever the Indians see her hair, they know that she has not for- gotten them."3 "There are some myths which answers questions about the nature and foundation of ritual and cultic customs. According to myths from the island of Ceram (Indonesia), in the beginning human life was not complete, or not yet 'human'.. Vegetation and animals did not exist, and there was neither death nor sexuality. In a mysterious manner Hainuwele, a girl with extraordinary gift-bestowing powers, appears. The people kill her at the end of their great annual celebration and, as a result of this first killing, lite as man knows it comes into being. With a certain circularity that often occurs in mythology, the myth validates the cultic celebration that itself occurs in the myth. The mystical account has an optimistic tone, since its events make life 'livable.' The cult can be understood as a commemoration of these first events. So, the myths can be said to validate life itself together with cultic celebration".4

Dynasties and ruling families in several ancient civilizations found justification of their positions in myths, which state that they originated in the world of the gods or in heaven or from the sun or the moon. Social classes also can be validated by myths; the best known are the mythologically established classes of ancient Indo-European traditions : the sacredotal, warior, and producing classes. No cultural tradition exists without some mythological foundation for marriage and for funerary customs. Also many myths account for specific groups of a social or socio-religious nature, such as medicine, men, shamans, and priests.

Myths can describe the origin of the world, the end of the world, or a paradisiacal state. Myth is capable of describing what persons, using reason and observation, can never "see for themselves".

My ths in ancient civilizations are known only by virtue of the fact that they became the part of a written tradition. In the case of Greece, virtually all myths are "literature" in the form in which they survived, the oldest source being the epics of Homer, a Greek poet of the 18th century B.C. Though it is difficult to speak in detail about the original function of many myths when they were alive in oral tradition, scholars are in better position to understand the importance that myths had for literary artists and the mythological function that -literature inherited. The heroes and heroins of epic literature are in many instances narrative rejuvenations of gods and goddesses in myths. The epic itself can take on certain mythological functions. The Homeric epic such as 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' became the basis of education in classical Greece. The great epics of India (Mahabharata and Ramayana) came to function as encyclopaedias of knowledge and provided models for all human existence. Generally, whether literature makes use of mythical motifs or not , the power of the literary world, the sheer felicitous formulation of political, aesthetic, or other certainties, has a spell that is akin to that of myth. We may distinguish several different approaches to the anthropological study of myth. One approach is to trace the historical relationship between myths or bodies of myths, using mythological data as evidence of historical and geographical relationships between cultures and culture areas. But Malinowsky proposed that "myth should be interpreted instead as a kind of 'Social Charter' : that is to say, as a rationalization of the customs and

behaviour of the group." 5 At the same time, he insisted that "myths were to be understood in their present day social context, not as evidence of evolutionary or diffusionist hypotheses nor as abstract texts for psychological psychoanalytic interpretation."6 or

Another approach to myth is the psychoanalytic one. Freud himself employed mythical data as part of his theory of human history and of the

basic characteristics of the human personality. Untill Freud, all study of myth had assumed the historical analysis and an understanding of staged of development of human consciousness were absolutely necessary. Freud's analysis of the psyche created an independent, transhistorical mechanism, based not on cultural history but on histological conception of man. The fact that he made use of anthropological views that have since been refuted (e.g., totenic [symbolic animal] sacrifice as the earliest ritual custom, which he related to the first parricide) does not change this. Symbolization of quilt feeliny or symbolic expressions of wish fulfillment are not limited to specific times on history and occur in myths as dreams. In Switzerland, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, like Freud, was stimulated by a theory that no longer has much support; i.e. the theory of Luciln Levy Bruhal, a French Philosopher, associating myth with prelogical mentality. According to him this was a type of thought that supposedly would have been common to archaic mankind, that was still common to primitives, and in which people supposedly experienced a "mystical participation" with the objects of thought, rather than a separation of subject and object. However, Freudian theories have been profoundly influential in the study of myth and symbolism. An important and influential approach to myth has been that of the French structuralist onthropologist Levi-stranses, Levi-stranses was concerned with myth as a type of thought, and also as an example of the working out of the universal structural principles which undertie all human cultural and social systems. He analysed "myth as an intellectual tool which is used to reflect upon (and at a symbolic level to mediate or resolve) both universal and culturally specific contradictions. The universal contradictions or oppositions such as the problem of death, of creation (creation from a single first ancestor or from a pair), the opposition of nature and culture and of maternal and paternal relations are expressed and worked upon in mythology, which

endlessly combines and recombines the different symbolic elements. An important feature of Levi-Stranses approach is that it regards the myth not as an original version with a series of derivations or distortions but rather as all the existing and potential versions. He thus, moves away from the search for an original or authentic version of myth and towards a vision of the constant creation and modification of mythical knowledge and thought. Thus, the social charter theory may be enriched both by LesiStraussian techniques of myth analysis which help to elucidate the underlying symbolic structure and also for example by Marxist theory of ideology which enables us to develop a more sophisticated view of how takes of the past and the creation of things may serve as justifications and mystifications of the present state of affairs, making this seem eternal and sacred of natural.

Literature grows out of a particular culture, religion and society. The socio-cultural environment influences and colours literatures. Because the poet's mind is a part of the socio-cultural and environment. In an ancient civilization like India with a vast, varied and long cultural history myths and legends for an important part of social life and creative writers take recourse to the easy availability of the vast body of myths and legends. They not only facilitate symbolic communications but they have become such an inalienable part of the human psychy or even the collective conscious that Indian poet would find it difficult to use his skills or communications and expression effectively without using them. Jayanta Mahapatra, as such, has made use of the myths and legends many of which are a part of general national circulation but poets few of which are deeply rooted in Orissa.

Works cited :
1.

A.S. Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1993, p. 820.

2.

The new Encyclopaedia Britannica Macrophedia Vol. -12, London William Benton, 1943- 1973., P - 793

3. 4. 5.

Ibid, p- 795 Ibid, p - 802 Charlotte Seymour - Smith, Macmilian Dictionary of Anthropology, the Macmillon Press Ltd., London, 1994, p - 203.

6.

Ibid, p - 204 Ibid, p- 205

7.

CHAPTER-2 JAYANTA MAHAPATRA AND POST- INDEPENDENCE INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY

Independence in India brings a change not only in the socio-economic and political fields, but in the field of literature as well. New movements in literature are the new uses of language. The new mind requires the new voice and the new voice is discovered by the writer's genius for intimately registering the idioms of his own world. Poets like Dom Moraes, Nissim Ezekiel, P. Lai, R.Parthasarathi, A.K.Ramanujan, Shiv K. Kumar, Kamala Das, Pritis Nandy and Jayanta Mahapatra have won recognition both in our country and abroad. They speak a new voice, although they retain some of the themes consciously or otherwise, of the earlier poets. Their idioms, style, syntax speak of their freedom in handling the themes. Nineteen-sixties and seventies, witness the birth and the development of new poetry in India. R. Parthasarathy visualising the direction of Indian poetry in English in future, talks of Indian reality' as the major preoccupation of our poets. "Poems like 'Night of the Scorpion' and 'A River' by their visions of an everyday Indian reality is an unobtrusive personal voice stood out in the reader's mind as Signposts indicating the directions of poetry in English was likely to take in future.""1" The realities of life and being are stressed with definite accents by the modern poets. Nissim Ezekiel who has the advantage of viewing Indian poetry in English both as a native and a foreigner looks inward and detached - a combination making for a peculiar strength and validity. Ezekiel says ! The Indian landscape sears my eyes I have become a part of it . .. To be observed by foreigners. I have made my commitments now This is one : To stay where I am. ( Background Casually )

The incipient romanticism and rapid narcissicism of the early Indian poetry in English are now discarded in favour of poetry as ' a criticism of life1. Recent Indian poetry in English tries hard to set its roots and develop its own artistic credo. It has successfully risen above 'decadent romanticism' and in the hands such brilliant poets as Nissim Ezekiel, R. Parthasarathy, Mahapatra and A.K. Ramanujan, it is acquiring new dimensions.

Modern hypocrisy has been satirized in their poems. Shiv K. Kumar in his poems, 'Epitaph on an Indian Politician' has given us a daring portrayal of the Indian Politician :

Vasectomized of all genital urges for love and beauty he often crossed floors as his wife leaped accross beds.

In ' An Introduction ', Kamala Das concerns herself with the question of human dignity and identity. 'Fit in1 they said to all circmstance. Mrs Das reserts this. She is also critical of the society, which demands of her to put on sarees as an Indian girl and be a wife, so that she was married before she could understand love and sex. Indian Institutions form a vital part of their poetry. S.K.Kumar's 'Karma', 'Renunciation' and Nissim Ezekiel's 'Night of the Scorpion' are cases in point. Ezekiel also concern himself with the dichotomy of man and his mind. In his poem 'On Meeting a Pedant', he says: "Words, looks, gestures, everything betrays The Unquiet mind, the emptiness within." It is this 'emptiness within' of the hollowmen, inhabiting the Waste Land, that catches the attention not only Ezekiel but also of all contemporary Indian

English Poets. They are aware of the failure, the shallowness, the doublethink and double-talk of the urban man. No longer do these poets sing the glory of nature, but they now fathom its darkness. A very different kind of treatment is given to the river in A.K. Ramanujan's 'A River'. Instead of a traditional song of praise for the full river, Ramanujan gives us what he sees as the villagers' real experience. The river is beautiful when quiet in summer, but when it floods, it causes suffering that is not at all poetic. His visitor to the village reports what really happens, in extremely simple language as the villagers would use. The poem ends with details about the twins which the woman would have given birth, bringing the experience down to its simple and painful humanity. Similarly, rituals invoke criticism from these poets. In his poem 'Jewish Wedding in Bombay', Nissim Ezekiel asks when the ntual is performed mechanically, "who Knows how much belief we had ? u His peum, -Night uf the Scorpion' evokes superstitious practices we haven' 11 still outgrown . As R. Parthasarathy has rightly suggested that 'It enacts an impressive ritual in which the mother's reaction towards the end, to her own suffering ironically cancells out earlier responses both primitive and sophisticated. The inter-relationship between the domestic tragedy and the surrounding community is unobtrusively established." The awareness of the contemporary situation is a keynote of modern poetry. Prof. Shiv K. Kumar's 'Cambridge Revisited', takes stock of the situation at the present time, and describes the new generation there not as 'hollow men', but pre-occupied with their external looks and dresses rather than with creative or critical concerns. Love is one of the three permanent themes (the other two being life and death) of poetry and for that matter, of literature. Love occupies a central position in the realms of Indian English Poetry of recent times. What is important is the daring portrayal of love and sex in their proper perspective.

With frankness and openness unusual in the Indian context. Kamala Das expresses her need for love. There is hot bloded sincerity of feeling in her poems which reveal on a closer study, a greater complexity of moods, a wider dramatic range than the first impression suggests. What is overpowering about them is their sense of urgency. In 'Substitute', she tells cynically what her experience of love turned out to be : " After that love became a swivell door, when one went out, another came in, The despair is infectious." ('Substitute') Nissim Ezekiel's 'Passion Poems' highlights his views on love and sex. He refers to Sanskrit poets and mythology and holds them as his models. But Shiv K. Kumar uses sex as " a possibility for transcending the limitations of existence as D.H. Lawrence does in fiction, and Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee do in 3 drama". In fact, his sex attitudes lead him to the cosmic attitude as in 'A Dark Mood': "How can we exchange nudities to night when the shells on the ocean's bed are wailing for the dead ? The corpse this morning slumped at the cross road crying after a speeding car and the wook peckers hammering away at the phantasms." (' A Dark Mood ' )

The parody of Indian English has become a mode of modern poetry. Two poets Ezekiel and R. Parthasarathy excel in this mode. Ezekiel's "Goodbye Party for Miss Puspa, T.S " is a well known example. There is nothing 'English' in the poem - excepting the pidigin. We may as well call it 'Indish'.

Parthasarathy's poem 'Incident at Ahmedpore Station : A Letter' (JIWE. Vol.6, No.l, 1978), based on a newspaper report, is another example of parodying Indian English. Indian Landscape is described in the modern Indian English Poetry. In Keki N. Daruwalla's poetry, the landscape of Northern Indian hills, plains and rivers is evoked in many poems, notably in 'The Ghaghra in Spate', where the "terror of the villages at night as they fought the river" is recorded with compassion and understanding. Shiv K. Kumar's specifically Indian poems 'Indian women', 'An Indian Mango Vendor', 'Kovalam Beach', 'Transcendental Meditation', and 'A Hindu to His Cow' are some of the popular poems which describe in the Indian landscape. The quest for cultural moorings is a pre-occupation which the Indian poet in English writing to-day shares with Madhusudan Dutta. In fact, the pervasive presence of this conscious 'Indianness' without any trace of romantic nostalgia or exotic quintness sets contemporary Indo-English Poetry apart from the imitative mediocrity of much of this poetry in the nineteenth century : I must seek and will find my particular hell only in my hindu mind : must translate and turn till I blister and roast for certain lives to come, 'Eye-deep', in those Boiling creates of Oil, weep iron tears for winning what I should have lost.

( Ramanujan's "Conventions of Despair" ) I have made my commitments now This is one : to stay where I am.

( Nissim Ezeviel's "Background Casually" )

" Then why should I tread the Kafka beat or the Waste Land when Mother you are near at hand one vast, sprawling defeat ?"

( K.N.Daruwalla's "College II : Mother " )

14

" - I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two , dream in one. " '

( Kamala Das's "An Introduction ")

These poets do not seem to find their bilingual context odd. But it is important to note that R.Parthasarathy's 'Rought Passage', is a departure. In a different way, it does embody the basic quest for roots, for as Parthasarathy puts it unequivocally : " How long can foreign poets provide the staple of your lines ?
( " Rough Passage " )

(Rough Passage)

The reflection is, however, that the alternative of choosing one's own language for poetic creation is a course fraught with its own disenhancement.

The search for 'self* is a major concern for some of the competent poets of our time. Ramanujan's 'Self- Portrait1 not only illustrates a concern with self but also provides the matrix within which a discussion of the self in

Ramanujan's poetry becomes relevant. The poem dramatises a self whose essential passivity allows it to resemble others over an indeterminate stretch of time. The poet says " I resemble everyone but myself and sometimes see in shop window, despite the well-known laws of optics, the portrait of a stranger, date unknown, Often signed in a corner by my father".

( 'Self Portrait ')

Being phenomenal the self assumes a number of identities in time. Not only Ramanujan, but also quite a few talented poets like Parthasarathy and Ezekiel in their way seek the 'self'. Parthasarathy1s 'Rough Passage', in a way search for the 'self'. Similarly using his poems as experiments, Ezekiel seeks to dive deep into the psyche, into his own psyche :

" I have seen the mask And the secret behind the mask. "

( What Frightens Me')

Ezekiel and Shiv K. Kumar, like Robert Frost, have special fondness for metaphor. Ezekiel' s 'Poet, Lover, Bird Watcher', and Shiv K. Kumar's 'To a Prostitute' work on metaphor at Length, until it becomes part of the whole idea. In Ezekiel's poem, lovers, poets, bird watchers, gain by waiting. In fact,

the waiting itself becomes a form of pursuit, a strategy. It is only then that the revelation occurs. Indian myth, which was ^mply played upon in the poetry of Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, seems to be lacking in the poetry of contemporary poets. Kamala Das's attempt to mythisize Radha-Krishna legend, appears to have been unsuccessful. Some of the modern poets fail to realize the powerful impact of myth. Among the poets of the Post Independence Indian English poetry, Jayanta Mahapatra has ascended to a great height. The unique greatness of Jayanta Mahapatra is that his efforts as a poet springs from a surer ground. Jayanta Mahapatra is the most celebrated and widely known Indian English poet of our time. Though he started writing his poems very late in life (after he was forty) he has ben one of the most prolific writers of contemporary Indian poetry in English. He published his first two books of verse, "Close the Sky Ten by Ten" and " Svayamvara and other Poems ", simultaneously in 1971. Beginning his career as a poet in his forties, he went on publishing his poems in many Indian and foreign journals. The anthologies of his poems were steadily published from India and abroad : " A Father's Hours" in 1976, " A Rain of Rites " in 1976, " Waiting " in 1979, "The False Start" in 1980, "Relationship" in 1982, "Life Signs " in 1983, " Dispossessed Nests" in 1986, "Burden of Waves and Fruit" in 1988, "Temple" in 1989, " A Whiteness of Bone " in 1992, 'The Best of Jayanta Mahapatra', 1995, 'Shadow Space', 1997 and 'Bare Face', in 2000. His poetry shows a continuous development both in theme and technique. Mahapatra is a conscious poet who looks before and after and endlessly revises his poems in order to make them more effective and meaningful. Though he had started writing late, but he became the first Indian poet writing in English to win the Central Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981 for his

poem 'Relationship1. Earlier he had also won second prize International Who's who in poetry, London in 1970 and Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award from Poetry, Chicago in 1975. He has been anthologised in many prestigious Indian and Foreign Anthologies. He has held many poetry reading sessions in India and abroad. The range of theme and experiments in the modes of expression in Mahapatra1s poetry is simply astounding. He holds the mirror to the entire. Indian past and tradition recording its presence in relation to the present day activities and setting the tunes for future poetic rhythms. The polarities of the personal and general, social and individual, action and rate are balanced to render a complex meaning to his poems. He fulxy inherits the entire tradition of which he is a pari, Snares tne expedience and expression of his contemporary poets, yet asserts his unique individuality as a distinct voice. The achievement of Jayanta Mahapatra1s poetry can be seen in terms of successive stages of development - not linear development but heightening of awareness in centrifugal and centripetal modes of discovery. Primarily, there is the awareness of self and its longings, creating a sense of apprehension, doubt and uncertainty. The enlightenment he finds is imbedded in the past and a shock-absorbing culture. His poems often complete the circle and turn in on themselves in such a manner that their form becomes meaning with which they are haunted. 11 His poetry centres round silence, and round absence : absence of Time in myth, of , myth in history, of history in rites, of rites in living, of living in the ruins, of the ruins in Time. The circularity of Mahapatra's poems mirrors, it seems, the confines of our 'Post-Cultural' existance in which
1

nothing

happens than can outshine the past, nothing that can free us from the dark shadows of the past that secretly conspire against us." Jayanta Mahapatra is a conscious poet who looks 'before and after ' and endlessly revises his poems in order to make them more effective and

meaningful. Bijay Kumar Das in his 'The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra', says that " Jayanta Mahapatra puts down not shutters and puts on no blinkers. He has an open mind and perhaps a willing ear in choosing the themes for his poetry. In his effort to acclimatize English language to an Indegenous tradition, Mahapatra has chosen for his themes various subjects beginning from landscape of the country to international problems.""5

A poet's response to the landscape of his country, his sense of tradition and culture of the land of his birth and many factors go together to make his own identity. What Judith Wright observes in this context is " Before one's country can become an accepted background against which the poet's and novelist's imagination can move unhindered, it must first be observed , understood, described as it were, absorbed. The writer must be at peace with his landscape before he can confidently turn to its human figures."6

Jayanta Mahapatra is firmly rooted in the Orissa soil. Puri, Konark, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar form as it were, a quadrangle in associated with these places immensely interested Mahapatra and form the nerve centre of his poetry. In his poems like "Dawn at Puri" and "Main Temple Road, Puri", Mahapatra underlines the importance of Puri and what it means to Hindu in our country. The poet says :

" her last wish to be cremated here twisting uncertainly like light on the shifting sands."

( ' Dawn at Puri ' )

" Later , as the shrine's skeins of light slowly close their eyes, something reaching into them from that place they learn to bear the lame lamp post to the huge temple door, the sacred beads in their hands gapping at the human ground."

( 'The Temple Road, Puri )

Jayanta Mahapatra has a typical Indian sensibility which is proved in his poems like 'Indian Summer Poem', 'Evening in an Orissa Village', 'The Orissa Poems', 'The Indian Poems', 'The Indian Way' etc. Mahapatra himself says that 'To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past and in which lies my beginning and my end, where the wind knees over the grief of the river Daya and where the waves of Bay of Bengal fail to reach out today to the twilight soul to Konark, I acknowledge my debt and my relationship."7

The search for roots is a trend in Modern Indian English Poetry which Mahapatra shares with A.K.Ramanujan and R.Parthasarathy. Mahapatra's best creation "Relationship" for which he has been awarded with Central Sahitya Academy Award, is in a way of quest for Mahapatra's roots. "This poem is no collection of mere observation, a place here, a character there, an unstrenous meditation or two, inevitable landscape, but a determined integrated set of selections built into the theme. For the poet the Orissan landscape is the objective setting of his mental evolution, the phases of which get mixed up

with the lyrical vocabulary of a humanist creed. The poem being set in Orissa embodies the myth and history of the land. As the conflicting principles of man and nature, history and autobiography and faith and suffering interact against the vast panorama of Orissa landscape, the poem shows a dialectical progression where every synthesis in further analysis turns into a thesis". 8 V.A. Shahane has observed that "the main focus of Jayanta Mahapatra's poetic creativity seems to be centered on the 'naked earth' and the mythological, symbolistic or aesthetic structures firmly rooted in that 'naked earth' of which Orissa and India form a significant part. The past, in Jayanta Mahapatras poetry is located in a* time sequence which is not always linear. Its cultural and historical significance is relevant today, and may be, is projected into the future. That is why, in a panoramic vision, the poet depicts, the ruins, the religions, the legends, the rites, folk-tales and personal past as meaningful experiences. The typical Oriya in heriten^e can be traceu from a poem 'Orissa' m "Waiting" : "The girl woman, like Topoi, on which the long heroic song plucks the everlasting stars". ( "Waiting", P.19 )

The local legend, through the personal tragedy of Topic reminds the Oriyas of a glorious past linked with its maritime activities and colonial power. The evocation of the legend is a fitting tribute to a people who watch in awe and reverence towards their past and have the habit of ascribing divinity to things extraordinary. The popular legend of 'Dharama' who after fixing the crowning slab of the temple Konark, embraced death in order to save his father and his

colleagues1 honour becomes a source of inspiration for the poet in Konark (Waiting) : " Cold beacon of my silent land, Messenger of death."

The trend of recreating past grandeur through ruins has, in fact, been established from such poems like 'Old Palaces', 'Ruins' which occur in " A Rain of Rites". To fulfill this need Jayanta Mahapatra starts by exploring the possibilities of past religious and cultural modes in "A Rain of Rites". The General Hindu tradition of the past comes under the scruitiny of his personal dislocation in the present, a fragmentation in the time-scheme which can be easily blurred. But his Christian and Scientific upbringing lends him the objectivity of great poetry. Another thing which attracts the poet's attention is the status of women. From the days of law-giver 'Manu', the women in Hindu Society have been relegated to the interior courtyard of the house, but at the same time they have also been made an object of reverence. Through the ages, only their subjugation at the hands of men has been the prevalent social practice. In a peculiar victimisation, they have become helpless in a male-dominated society though their role as a repository of good values is undeniable. Madhusudan Prasad observes : "Mahapatra's deep concern for the poor, the downtrodden and the suffering masses is patent in some of the significant images of women. His poetry abounds with such images of women as dimensionalise his humanist attitude and sympathy for the weaker section of the society .,10

Quite often, Mahapatra's women embody the stoic virtue of Hindu social living accepting their fate with equanimity without much struggle like the 15 year old girl in 'Hunger', opening her theighs to assuage the family's hunger. This acceptance saves them from all restless enquiries, frets, worries and struggl9s , to which men are generally subjected to. Like nature they operate dying and regenerating in successive phases. They represent the human species. Their lack of individuality is quite in conformity with the general Hindu religious practice which aims at negating all individuation. Characteristically enough , these women match the scepticism, rationalism and religious doubt of the men with devout piousness. 'Dawn at Puri is one such representative poem : "White-clad widowed women past the centres of their lives are waiting to enter the Great Temple. Their auster eyes stare like those caught in a net, hanging by the dawn's shining strands of faith."

( "A Rain of Rites", P.28 ) Jayanta Mahapatra1s unique contribution to poetry is that he has broadened the scope of Indian Poetry in English to a considerable extent by bringing Indian tradition to the close proximity of Amero-British literary tradition. The English language is also all the more benefited, because, he has been able to invest it with the whole semantic possibilities of an abiding Indian culture. Distencing and involvement in his poetry can occur at will and at times simultaneously. His open- endedness has been described in following terms :

"Mahapatra"s status as an Indian poet writing in English obviously facilitates the attempt to distance himself from his mythos. As the commonality of

English Speaking people finds its centre beyond the boundaries of England , America, India, Canada, etc., the result is a self-conscious rhetoric which must attempt to subsume (at least in theory) the various cultural streams which enter into its cultural monism is superseded by a sort of international linguistic incluvism. English, within much of the world and within the Indian subcontinent itself, has become a varitable lingua franca. With this in my mind one can say that Mahapatra is not 'Indian Poet', strictly speaking, any more than he is an 'English Poet'. He is a poet who writes in English as the best neutral medium for his pronounced philosophical concerns. 11

Works Cited
1.

R. Parthosarathy, How it strikes a contemporary: The Poetry ofA.K. Ramajujan, The literacy criterion (Special Number on Indian Writing in English), vo. XII, Nos. 2-3 (1976), p. 28.

2. 3.

R. Parthosarathy, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, O.U.P, 1976, p. 28. R.N. Srivastava, Articulating the silent: The Poetry of Shiv Kumar, JIWE, vol. 6, No. 2, 1978, p. 2.

4.

G.N. Devy, The Landscape of Return, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, A critical study, ed. Madhusudan Praswad, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1986, p. 14.

5.

Bijaya Kumar Das, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1995.

6.

Quoted by Devindra Kohli, Landscape and Poetry, the Journal of common wealth Literature, 1 3 : 3 , April 1979 : 54.

7.

Bijay Kumar Das, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi, 1995.

8.

Bijay Kumar Das, Critical Perspectives on "Relationship"and"Laterday-Psalms" PBD, Bareilly, 1986, p. 40.

9.

V.A. Shahane, The Naked Earth and Beyond : The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra Perspectives on Indian Poetry in English, Abhinab Publication, New Delhi, 1984, p. 144.

10.

Madhusudan Prasad, The Image of Woman in Poetry, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, ed. Madhusudan Prasad, Sterling Publisers & Distributors, New Delhi, 1986, p. 228.

11.

Daniel Mc Bride, Review of Life Signs, The Toronto South Asian Review, Toronto, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall winter, 1986, p. 90.

( ' A Rain' :

CHAPTER-3 USE OF MYTH IN THE POETRY OF JAYANTA MAHAPATRA

Among the Post-Independence Indian E nglish poets Jayanta Mahapatra has made extensive use of Orissan and Indian Mytns in order to posit the eternal existential dilemmas. In 'Relationship' Mahapatra attempts to build a fugue-like structure aimed at evoking the myths and traditions of Orissa. The opening lines of 'Relationship' expresses the poet's encounter with the earth of Orissa, its complex mythical lore embodied in the enormous phallus of the Shiva temple : "Once again one must sit back and bury the face in this earth of the forbidding myth, the phallus of the enormous stone, when the lengthened shadow of a restless vulture caresses the strong and silent deodars in the valley, and when the time of the butterfly moves inside the fierce body of the forest bear, and feel the tensed muscles of rock yield to the virtuous water of the hidden springs of the Mahanadi, the mystery of secret rights that make up destiny;" (Relationship 9 )

Mahapatra invokes the essential spirit of this land of Orissa 'the earth or the forbiding myth' which contains explicit and elaborate phalic display in the erotic sculpture of the Sun Temple at Konark. Mahapatra is trying to confront the human destiny. The intimation about it comes only after a journey to its roots for which one must sit back and 'bury the face'. The earth, rock, the flow of the river, beneath their apparent endurability also suggest the modes of

extinction supremely manifested in the ruins. The Shiva Linga itself has a complex generative-destructive significance. Thus, the myth , that sustains, also point out the ultimate truth about human destiney-death. Death is the incritable termination of all activity and movement of life, the destruction of youth and beauty ('butterfly') and strength ('deodars'). But it is also associated with 'the virtuous water' of the river Mahanadi, and may be a source of Solace. For "the slow slope of stone" ascending "to the realm of the dead ... / stroke the mind / with their quiet faces of sorrow / like that of old men" seeking the 'warmth' of the winter Sun, and of young ascetics dreaming of the 'silent fulfilment of tomorrow'. (Relationship 9 )

Mahapatra recreates in his mind the scene ot the building of the Sun Temple in the eleventh century A.D. when about twelve hundred artisans and sculptors began work on that massive artistically designed and beautiful structure. These artisans of stone were dreamers of dreams and torch bearers of tradition, lovers of legends and seekers of souls in stones : "We have come as dreams disguised that pinned us down, artisans of1stone, messengers of spirit, twelve hundred artless brown flowers in passion to the night in humble brotherhood, aeriel roots of a centuries - old banyan tree;"

( " Relationship " : 10 )

The myth here expresses the twelve hundred artisans who had made the Konark Temple. They are involved with the history they all share, the history of the "cruelties / of ruthless emperors, " of " groans and cries ... / the smells of gunsmoke and smouldering flesh", and of " the tactics and strategy / that led to the founding of infinite distance in our watery skulls."

( " Relationship " : 10 )

This is the story ot both time and eternity, of history and truth : " Time and the boat, and the initiation into the mystery of peace ; the sailing ships of those maritime ancestors who have vanished in the Black Bay without a trace that only live in the sound of the waves flinging themselves onto the dark fringes of this land from Chilika to Chandipur."

( " Relationship " : 10 )

Again there is the glory of Orissa history, the activities that helped to create the first empirical power. Contrasted with it, is the inanity of the present and present generation, whose representative the poet is : " Now caught in the currents of time I watch the blue of the sky seep out slowly, hear the various of old waves drift into silence, and yet my existence lies in the stones which carry my footsteps from one day into another down to the infinite distances... "

( " Relationship " : 10 )

However, the contrast between past glory and present inanity is only arbitrary. In the dimension of time, past, present and future have the same destiny. The poet questions whether it will be possible for him to find the dimmension beyond time, "Whether the earth/ would let me find finally its mouth;" (P-ll). The poet's journey in time results in his awareness that his "existance lies in the stones" which provide no spiritual sustenance", as my birth feeds on them/as though on the empty dugs of sorcerous thought" (P-ll). The stones obviously stand for his physical existence and relate him to the Konark Temple, and both as stones are subject to the destruction wrought by time. Jayanta Mahapatra watches through the window - his mother's grave which evokes the memories of the white terraces of his childhood. The poet becomes part of a kind of magicians audience matching the tricks of a white rabbit on the stage. His memory walks down an indistinct lane of loneliness and hunts in his effort to respond to the past. His attachment to the memory and worldly experience reminds him of the 'curse' of the father, his old age, mother's death and the diseased suffering latent in human life : " and the suffing of the world returns like winter's persistent asthma year after year." ( P-13)

These are the existential problems which led Buddha to renounce. Mahapatra also endeavours to free himself from the Karmic desire "Oozing out of the hewn stones of Konarka". (P-13) Then only, the fire of death that reduces life into ash, will not merely be a mode of extinction but also a renewal of life in a different realm : " The tranquil hills in the rain". (P.13)

Mahapatra remembers "the tapestry of the year's first rain / like an army, uniformedt in gray, / but penitents, down on their knees." (P-14) which reminds of the guilt of our ancestors. Mahapatra also recollect the blood-red

water of the Daya river near Dhauli where Emperor Ashoka had waged a furious war in 261 B.C. Ashoka vanquished the Kalinga Kingdom in battle. The river turned red with the blood of those killed in war, and when he saw this awful scene his heart was filled with remorse. He then renounced war and violence, and began to preach the gospel of peace and carved the famous rock edicts for prosperity to learn the lessons of peace and the message of nonviolence : " It is hard to tell now what opened, the anxious skies, how the age-old proud stones lost their strength and fell, and how the waters of the Daya Stank with the bodies of my ancestors; my eyes close now because of the fear that moves my skin : the invaders walk along the only road they know that leads to their bloody victories". (P-14)

Along with the myth prevalent in the state of his birth, the poet gives a beautiful description of the landscape of Orissa. Birds coming from far distant places at the advent of the winter to Chilika attracts the attention of the people. The poet regrets that while the migrating birds react naturally to the seasons of the year, he is cut off as it were from the heroic traditions of his ancestors. Thus the poet says : " I know I can never come alive if I refuse to consecrate at the alter of my origins". (P-18)

This realization helps the poet to explore the myth of the land particularly the 'golden deer' which deluded Rama and Sita the epic hero and the heroine of the 'Ramayana' who have passed into the Hindu consciousness as god and goddess to seek the meaning in life".

Temple of Konarka, the Sun god, the 'frightened virgins' are all recalled to give a kind of meaning to life. Hence, 'sleep', a metaphor for death is taken as a 'song' that is heard from all sides continually1. This makes the poet wonder " What can save us now but the miracle we have been waiting for ?" (P - 22 )

The plight of modern man, his loneliness and the helplessness has been presented here : " How long does it take one to know that it is he who is standing there, alone by himself in the witness-box of shackled pink muscles ?" (P-24)

The legend of six blindmen leading to see an elephant is recalled in an attempt to show how inaccurate and incompetent judges of our lives we are. The sense of 'empty sadness' turning into 'the mangled skeleton of sleep' dissappoints the poet and the purpose of life seems to be meaningless and burden,which makes him realise the futility of such an existence. The poet broads over the problem and there is an element of introspection when he says : " It is my own life that has cornered me beneath the stones of this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun", ( P - 26 )

"This is obviously a reference to the Sun Temple of Konarka, one of the most magnificent pieces of sculpture and architecture in the world. The poet questions the Sun the sun-lions standing near the steps, 'whose return to life are you waiting for ?'. The poet looks through and beyond these 'granite peack of dream'. The door to understanding the essence of this great monument lies through the knowledge of the mineral, vegetable and animal world, through realising the insanity of love and the deeper meaning of earth. The earth is at the centre of the poets cosmic vision. Now, the poet is confronted with the question of meaning, the meaning of man's existence as well as the message of the Sun Temple at Konarka" 1

" The temple is seen not merely as " these things" hewn out of stone, for as an object standing out there it can only remind him of his physical existence in time. Even as an object of art it is a mere imitation "we have made" of temporal life" not having had enough of the Sun's flight/accross the purple hills of our guilt" and makes the speaker aware of "an absent dimension" of his blood. He can thus experience love only in its sexual aspect. His body is " the lusting god of the blackest Shiva night : / thus it is that it can hardly contain ourselves". So when he touches the "embarrassed yoni", of his " ancient love", the "sulking years of dreams, / the stricken purposes of the muscles" still lie before him unrealised. His problem is now to separate the temple from "the centuries of fallen stone", that is to discover its timeless dimension." 2

The poet recalls how temple myths in Orissa have shaped the lives of people and influenced them over the years. The poet feels that "those who survive the myth / have slipped past their lives and can not define their reason". (P-29) He talks of the myth of Sun god and Konark Temple. He has a purpose behind the recountings of the myth of 'sleep' and 'action' and is fully

aware of the anguish 'passing from man to man'. One should love one's neighbour like a mother who gives her breast to her dry neighbour's bawling child. The attempt to define myth seems to be far from eassy and the poet moves from myth to everyday happenings like meeting friends "whose eyes are black and bitter with malice" and prostitutes " with white hair / who are excited simply by having stared at their inaccessible sons". (P-32) Newspapers which shape our ideas and inform us , and violence that presages bloodshed and fevers, "whose viruses tear the skin like paper " (p-32) seem to cast shadows over the body and mind of the poet. A sense of reality opposed to myth seems to overtake the poet and he is overwhelmed with contemporary anguish and predicament of modern man. The poet wonders have the myth can in any way alleviate modern suffering and asks :

" What was the myth, a journey in which one feared one could loose oneself at any moment ? or was it merely a time which lay in the dust and stone of the languide water, which moved sadly about the absent jasmines only to be heaped against those unreachable shores ?" (p-31)

The myth of the colossal temple having crumbled in the distant past seems to cast a spell on the poet's imagination and he is engulfed in its enmeshed environs. "The poet feels that the myth was perhaps like a journey of the spirit in which he might loose himself altogether. The world of myth is peopled by all kinds of beings and things - friends, relations, prostitutes, newspapers,which leave a rather strange and sad impression on the poet's sensibility." 3 An awareness of contemporary situation brings the poet to the realm of hictory of our land right from the time Lord Buddha sat in meditation 'under the Peepal tree. ' (P-33) Then he traces his own birth at Cuttack where numerous gods and goddesses are worshipped. Cuttack, a city of historical

importance which had the great Barabati Fort is now a simple of 'vanquished dynasties'. The past is brought alive for a moment, "of broken empires and of vanquished to dynasties / and of ahimsa whimpers". (P-34) 'Ahimsa whimpers' are obviously an allusion to king Ashoka and the Kalinga war and the subsequent 'stupas' stand for universal peace. The poet stands among the ruins, waiting for the cry of hope, of a night bird and the voices of friends, creative artists, poets who , while being confronted with the past, express their creative response to their intense appeal. These poems sometimes seem 'abject and anxious' giving a feeling of stall cupboards turning black with the colour of their past. The poet says : " Now I stand among these ruins, waiting for the cry of a night-bird from the river's far side to drift through my weariness, listening to the voice of my friends who have become the friends of others, writing poems, object and anxious, in rooms which reek of old folk, of their cloth and arthritis and neglect like stale cupboards which are going black with the smells of the rancid fat of the past'. ( P - 35 ) Mahapatra is basically concerned with what is 'enduring' in the past and the relationship btween past and present . " The present would be better understood, appreciated and endured in the light of the past and one would learn how to live from other people's lives ".4

The poet says that : " What one endures and one will continue to endiure, a kind of world that comes up of all the love he has known". ( P - 36 )

If a man can rise from the surrounding gloom and darkness and spot out the beauty that soars into the sky in the midst of cloud and rain and respond to voices of kindred souls. The poet says : " For lofty as they are on their twenty-four blue spells, my walk along the tremblings of the stone seems loftier still". (P-36) Mahapatra's conception of man's relation to what he perceives brings him face to face with history and myth when his self is discovered in the 'act of attention'. Poetry for him is the explorations of the myth and it is linked with the world of art and sculpture. Hence, he continues his quest for 'an essence divine' and for 'grace' in relationship between man and man, man and god, man and sculptured art. In the final section of the poem, the poet attempts to secure release from 'fear of my quilt, I bid you farewell'. (P-38) He then, invokes the 'dark daughters' of 'spaces' to tell him their names and wonders if there is anything "beyond me which I can not catch up ?" The myth of the Oriya princess who are turned into a flowering tree by an evil charm has been recalled in the line " the banished princess and the magnolia tree as well, to show an awareness of a pervading myth. Thus, memory becomes a pervassive mode of comprehending relationships - between personal self and society, the creative self and the arts, sculpture and architecture, which in turn embody the meeting point between

life-giving impulses and the poet's quest for comprehending different levels of relationship between art and life". 5 "Temple" like 'Relationship' is another very important poem of Jayanta Mahapatra which is built on several myths. It begins with an octogenerian couple Ramanujam and Chelammal belonging to the weaver's community having committed suicide because of poverty and loneliness. The poem ends with another event of a twelve year old girl being gangraped and murdered. These two incidents suggest the endless suffering of Indian woman which is the basic concern of this epic poem. The poet makes chelammal the protanonist and through her voice the poet throws light on the sorry plight of the ordinary Indian woman. He makes her the symbol of 'Shakti'. In the note to this poem it thas been said that : " Hindu mythology states that the ultimate consciousness and the divine force are one and the same. A woman represents this divine force,
1

Shakti1 and the ultimate consciousness. Man is only able to forge ahead

through this force accomplishing whatever he sets out to achieve. The Shakti cult has been prevalent in India from ancient times. Chandi and Kali are manifestations of Durga. The fierce and all destroying aspect of goddess make her a total woman, Shakti - the divine force which emerges in times of need."1

The poem suggests that an ordinary woman like Chelammal can enter into the body of a giant like Putana and assume another self whenever she wants to as the Putana myth states. The note to the poem explains the myth that "According to legend, Kamsa, afraid of the prophecy that the eighth child of his uncle's daughter would oneday kill him, confind his causin and her husband in prison and killed all their offsprings as soon as they were born. But Krishna, the eighth child was smuggled out of prison and taken to live with his foster parents elsewhere. Kamsa ordered the ogress Putana to kill all the boys born in

his kingdom during the month in which his cousin had expected the birth of her child, because he was unaware of her where aboves. Putana, transformed into a beautiful women, with a deadly poison smeared over her nipples, finally arrived at the house where the child-krishna lived. There she took Krishna from his foster mother's arm with a show of maternal love and gave him her poisoned breast to suckle. Krishna sucked so hard that he not only drank all Putana's milk, but he sucked her life away. The Ogress swooned, with Krishna's mouth at her breast, as she fell dead, she regained her original hideous form. The legend concludes that Putana nevertheless attained 'Moksha' since she had acted as mother, even though an evil one, to the child god".2

Putana's solvation, as such, is attained by the corelation of her assuming another "self" which only empowers her to attain Martyrdom. When the poets suggests is the possibility of such a course of assuming another 'self' available to Chelammal. Mahapatra uses the myth of ' Laxman Rekha' to show the limit beyond which one should not go lest the devil should take her. In the 'Ramayana' Laxman has drawn three lines warning his sister in-law, Sita, not to cross them lest the evil should overcome her. Even today every woman is made aware of her 'Laxman Rekha', the male defined Protective environment crossing which she has to suffer from loss of chastity, she is thus, forced to perennially droop under the burden of chastity and attaining sexual maturity becomes a curse for her. She is in constant terror of being consumed by the flames of aggressive male sexuality : " a shame for her new-born breasts' slow rise; was there any artifice in this veil that guarded the body she did not know ?... when the curse came, everyone could tell it by the way she shrank into herself,

the mask settling on her face, her body seeming heavier than what it was, the world passing into flames under her feet., to a sense of tears ." ( 'Temple : 16 )

Every woman has to pass again and again through aagni pariksha "wistful glow of funeral pyres". This sacrificial offer has charred her self-respect and lurched her into a hellish state of death-in-life : " and she forgot who she was she was already a stranger, waking to the rhapsodic incantation of memory, disturbed in the silences of mythic streams, in a selfpossessed past of safe voices and lipless noises through a wind plucking the peaceful rests from her breast through chains of history shining between the eyes the eyes of karma through those three hideous gods arching their long desire over her fear and her story took possession of her". ( P : 47 ) Mahapatra also uses the Indian myth of Draupadi and the Australian aborigin myth of Mother's milk settling into the milky way : " Probably the tale of the woman who could not be disrobed was a myth, another one like the spurt of a mother's milk settling into the milky way :" ( P - 48 )

" By puting this old myth in the context of contemporary society , by inverting it and investing it with a new significance , Mahapatra has beeen able to reflect upon the complexity of modern woman's predicament. This is how he has used myth to reveal the collective unconsciousness of Indian woman's psyche".3

The Indian woman inherits this myth in addition to her inheritance of the ideas of chastity and goodness through that of Sita. Her identity will be complete if we take into account both Putana and Sita, combining the mother, the witch and the goddess. Apart from this she may be lost as " a faceless shell on a beach" (p-31). But that is not the reality of woman in general. Her reality is in her dreams. " For only when you dream, reality begins ". (p-52) Dreams for the poet may be an attempt at re-interpretation of the world and an escape from one's entanglement with myths. The very title of the poem 'Temple' modelled in the pattern of an Orissan Temple like Konark the sections are named as 'Prologue', 'The Hall of Dancing', 'The Hall of Offerings', and , 'Sanctum sanctorum' : The Shrine'. The halls and the shrine not only describe the plight of the Indian woman but also depicts the myths that have over shadowed her Identity through ages to the present time. Jayanta Mahapatra's poety is significant because of the myths, symbols and imagery which make it different from the poetry of other contemporary poets. 'Rain' is a recurrent symbol in Mahapatra's poetry. K.Ayappa Paniker underlines the importance of the rain symbol in the following words : " In the Mahapatra's 'scheme of expiation', it is rain that seems to work out the hope of expiation. The process of purification is also a rain of rites".1

The title poem in 'A Rain of Rites' contains the question, what holds my rain so hard to overcome ? It reminds of the tradition which binds the poet with his past. Rain here is a symbol of wisdom is an eye opener for us to apprehend reality. Rain is an all pervasive metaphor in Mahapatra's Poetry. It not only links man with the universe as a symbol of fertility, it also evokes his past and reminds him of the suffering he had undergone in life. The poet writes : "The rain I have known and traded all this life is thrown like kelp on the beach." ( 'A Rain of Rites' : P-10 ) This is rain has an impact on the minds of people. It evokes both the memory and the desire and therefore, represents both the past and the future. Since both the past and the future, paradoxically meet in the present, the rain also represents the present. As Mahapatra rightly says : " I see it play over people, piled up to their silences It creates an impression of vastness It quietly opens a door."
(A rain of Rites ; P-10)

In the words of V.A. Shahane, "Rain for Mahapatra, is thus both a ritual and reality - ritual of purifying oneself as well as the reality of seasons, the cyclical change in the Indian year, in Orissa's wet and fertile landscape - the naked earth covered by the waters of the Mahanadi and its tributaries which in fact, surround the town of Cuttack from three sides making it virtually an island."2

Symbols and myths play a vital role in Mahapatra' poetry particularly when he tries to come to terms with Hindu mythology. Mahapatra seems to subscribe to the Hindu belief that the universe is boundless and everything occurs simultaneously and all possibilities may exist without excluding each other. In the poem entitled ' Ikons', the poet says : " Black ikons : a museum of symbols silence the land .... Among them a father stands, looking around, like a hill. Then mumbling to himself, he touches the linga with his forehead, divine earths closing his eyes, a sightless-gods, his charred silence left from an enormous fire no one can remember." ( "A Rain of Rites" : 40 ) 'Ikons' : The 'Linga' is the phallic symbol of black, polished stone, it is the object of worship in temples dedicated to Siva, the destroyer, the most powerful god of the Hindu Trinity. In a poem like
1

Samsara' , Mahapatra analyses the continuance of

intricate Hindu philosophical beliefs about 'reincarnation* and 'Karma'. The poet says : " Some-where a fair Brahman priets waits haughtily by the temple doors .... And a man begins to begin again in the centre of this past,

and sees no end of it. " ( 'A Rain of Rites ' : 8) In the poem 'myth', Mahapatra says about the myths of Annapurna and Dhauligiri which are two of the many snow-capped peaks in the Himalayan range. Supposed to be the abode of the gods, the awe-inspiring mountains of the Himalayas also contain the source of the holy river, Ganga. The poet says : " The stairs seem endless lifelong and those peaks too, annapurna, Dhauligiri; uncertain, impressive as gods. I dare not go into the dark, dark sanctum where the myth shifts swiftly from hand to hand, eye to eye." ( " A Rain of Rites " : 22 ) The poet is aggrieved at being alienated from Hindu religion. So he says in the concluding lines of the poems 'Myth' : " Vague grieving years pit against the distant peaks like a dying butterfly as a bearded, saffron-robed man asks me, firmly : Are you a Hindoo ? " ( Ibiden : 22 ) In another poem, 'Appearance' the poet uses the myth of Ahalya. The poet says : " The lonely drone of a stupid fairy tale, where once some holy curse changed a woman to stone", ( ' A Rain of Rites' : 21 )

The metamorphosis refers to the myth of Ahalya which has become a stupid tale now.

In the poem ' Dawn at Puri , Mahapatra speaks of the Hindu religious belief. The Hindu widowed women who have no other connection with life except God, find the great alternative in the huge Jagannath Temple and they wish to be cremated on the vast sands of 1 Swargadwara' (Gateway of Heaven). The poet says : " Endless crow noises. A skull on the holy sands "its its empty country towards hunger, white clad widowed women past the centres of their lives are waiting to enter the great temple .... her last wish to be cremated here twisting uncertainly like light on the shifting sands."

( " A Rain of Rites " : 28 )

In Hindu religious parlance, even death is a continuation of further life. In the poem 'On the Bank of the Ganges', the poet says : " Is it death which moves the earth ? Or birth ? " ( P - 32 ) Throughout the ages of the Ganges has been considered to be India's most sacred and venerated river. A batch in its waters is supposed to cleanse and purify the bather from his or her sims. Ganga is the mother, the life blood of Indian Civilization and Culture. In "Waiting", Jayanta Mahapatra has used myth to invoke the post culture of Orissa. In the poem 'Dhauligiri1, Mahapatra says : " Afterwards when the wars of Kalinga were over the fallow fields of Dhauli

hid the red-smeared voiceless bodies The place of his pain peers tormentably from among the pains of the dead." ( " Waiting " : 24 ) In another poem 'Orissa', the typical Oriya inheritence can be traced. The poet says : " The girl woman, like Topoi, on which the long heroic song plucks the everlasting stars". ( "Waiting" : 19 )

The local legend through the personal tragedy of Topoi reminds the Oriyas of a glorious past linked with its maritime activities and colonial power. The evocation of the legend is a fiting tribute to a people who watch in awe and reverence towards their past and have the habit of ascribing divinity to things extra-ordinary. The popular legend of 'Dharama' who after fixing the crowing slab of the Temple Konark, embraced death in order to save his father and his colleagues' honour becomes a source of inspiration for the poet in 'Konarka' ( " Waiting " ) : " Cold beacon of my silent land, messenger of death : In the poem "Dispossessed Nest", Mahapatra has used the myth of blind faith in the heroic heridity. The poet says : " Pray them to those fanatics who love their God .as they love themselves to the veins filthy with blood and to the belly fattened with the brackish fluid or seeding when eyes grow misty with light one has never seen". ( " Dispossessed Nests " : 28 )

The poet laments such a sorry state which has crippled us when he remembers India's ancient heroism and glory and saints like Mahatma Gandhi. The poet says : "This country urges us to seek the stars at night too full as we are of mythic battles, angry gods and the heroism of Hanuman. Upon those distant pin-points of light we might reconstruct some other world, denying memory, journeying no more, no more. Ah love, we had read so much about you, about freedom, was everything you did, Gandhiji, only an act you put on for posterity ?" ( " Dispossessed Nests" : 44 ) Mahapatra has used some imagery to describe the mythi He describes the predicament of human lives in our country and the ominous signs for the future in the following lines : " The leaves of the dark tree of India are gasping for breath across the green air. An awe circles and chases a tale through the leaves, a star looks fixed in space's old embrace." ( " Dispossessed Nests " : 48 ) Jayanta Mahapatra, in his recent poetry with one of his latest poems, titled " A Pastoral Perhaps" (Published in Poetry Review Vol.89, No.3, Autumn 1999, London), says about the nation. The opening stanza of the poem depicts a village scene, which is evocative of the spirit of true India. " By the scummy pond, in the thin rain, a woman shakes her hair loose, before entering the water. Through the grove of bamboos dripping bright raindrops, a long abandoned thought appears to push a smile

at her lips. Audacious shadows open to take her in; ohc ohrugo/ otrong, unaware." The image of a village woman entering into a pond, shaking her hair loose to have her bathe and the raindrops dripping through the bamboo grove, brings the rural India alive in the minds of the readers. The second stanza further reinforces the idea of true India lying in her villages, when the landscape of the place is intergrated with history of the country - the past is dovetailed into the present and merges with it. Mahapatra writes : Leaves green, sway under the cloudy sky and only the woman's sunbronzed face looks out\ above water. The air drops quietly back into the past, a part of the present seems to break away. The destiny of India heaves in darkness, in the memory of ancient waters." Jayanta Mahapatra tries to bring alive the past of his own country in a new Indian English idiom. He rightly says in a poem called, 1992 : You say you are a poet; you sit next to me and talk to me from a distant country, yet your own past is too large for you to talk sensibly about it. ( Shadow Space 1997 : 14 ) v Jayanta Mahapatra has used some national myths to describe the contemporary situation of our country. In 'Red Rose for Gandhi', Mahapatra describes how the country has forgotten Gandhiji's ideals and relegated him to the background by observing his birth day as a mere ritual. The poem is occasioned by the immolation of eight students on October 2, 1990, the day

of Mahatma Gandhiji's birth anniversary. Times have changed and there is mechanical performance of rituals on his birth day without practising his ideals. The poet says : " Those roses tremble in the prime minister's hands now as he steps carefully toward the bitten marble of silent years. And here the day has begun, coming through dreams of coagulated blood, through a history the colour of bones long exposed to a myth of sun and rain, the agonising screams of boys and girls that beat the motionless sunlight into the face of the desolate country of black sorrow .............. Ah day, how your lean and naked face leans on the country where son and daughter burn in tongues of fire". ( " A Whiteness of Bone " : 65 ) In some of his recent poems Mahapatra tries to create a contemporary myth out of Gandhi. Gandhi has become a living myth suggesting non-violence truth and righteousness. Further more, Gandhi has also been presented as a Synonym for justice and honesty, and as one who has passed into Indian mind as an apostle of of peace. In his poem "Excerpts for Requiem", the poet says : " You became the red earth that a perfect, constant gravity achieved through the aeons." ( " JIWE 2000 " : 7 )

While trying to mythicize Gandhi, Mahapatra realises that one can be authentic as a writer or poet by going back to his/her roots. In trying 'to be himself', he found his poetry. So, he writes : " And the poem I found at last, already lost in the small of the heart, Just to push the deep, nameless breath into the hysterics of history." ( " JIWE 2000 " : 8 ) Gandhi has become a living legend for us. Even when people disagree with him or his principles, they are conscious of his prcscncc. he has bccome a part of the Indian psyche. In a fitting tribute to Gandhi, the poet acknowledges Gandhi's unseen presence amongst us. Thus, he writes : " In me Your body opens slowly as if you have been bound tight all your life, as if flesh could see what the mind believes is true." ( " JIWE 2000 " : 10 )

Works Cited :
1.

V.A. Shahane : The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra : A critical study ed. Modhusudan Prasad, starling publishing & Distributors, New Delhi, 1986.

2.

S.K. Mishra, The largest circle : A reading of Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship", Journal of Literacy studies, Deptt. of English, U.U., BBSR, Vol. 8, No. 182, June - Dec., 1986.

3.

V.A. Shahane, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, A critical study, ed. Madhusudan Prasad, Sterling Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1986.

4. 5.

D.S. Rao, Relationship,. Indian Literature, Vol. XX, No. 3, 1982. V.A. Shahane, he Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra - A critical stud, ed. Madhusudan Prasad Sterling Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1986.

6. 7. 8.

Jayanta Mahapatra, Notes to Temple, Dangarao Press, Sydney, 1989. Ibid S.K. Padhi, Jayanta Mahapatra's Temple :A study in Myth . The Ravenshaw Journal of English studiesw, vol. x, Nos. 1-2, Jan-Dec 2000.

9.

K. Ayappa Panjker, The poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, OJES, vol. XIII, No.1, 1977.

10.

V.A. Shahane The naked Earth and Beyond : The poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra:, perspectives on Indian poetry in English, ed. M.K. Naik, Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1984.

CHAPTER-4 CONCLUSION

Awards and honours apart, Jayanta Mahapatra has earned for himself a place among the very best of contemporary Indo-Anglian poets sheerly by virtue of the quality of his poetry. He has developed a style of his own full of evocative details, vivid images, authenticity of settings, background and environment, presentation of illustrative and effective use of myths and legends and a special ear for rhythm and musicality which leled a special individual touch to his poetry and endeared him to his readers.

As a contemporary poet Jayanta Mahapatra tries to connect man to his contemporary world and searches for an identity that tis both lovable and enduring. Like A.K.Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Arun Kolatkar and Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra turns inword to get into his roots. He feels the need for acclimatizing English language to an indegenous tradition in order to write poetry." It seems natural that a poet with a strong and vast cultural past behind him, aware of his roots and perhaps prejudiced by those roots, has greater probability of writing significantly than one who has not knowledge of any Indian language other than English. He is 'caught in the currents of time' and in his attempt to 'go into the unknown in me', tries 'to speak of the myth of sleep and action', in order to soothe himself and others who suffers a similar fate". 1

Mahapatras poetry gets its strength from the juxtaposition of the concrete and the abstract and of the expected and the unexpected in the manner of the English Metaphysicals. One gets an example of 'a unified sensibility' in his poetry. His is an authentic voice whose mastery over the medium commensurate with the vision behind it. He has come to terms with himself and discovered his own voice. Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry is a dialectic of the personal and the impersonal. As S.K. Desai observes on Mahapatra's poetry :

" His poetry is essentially poetry of exploration, but what he explores is often not very important mood in the context of some object or a natural phenomenon or a historical religious place. Although there is a certain maturity of perception, what is certainly admirable is his Keatsian readiness to live with uncertainties. There is no Eliotian or Yeatsian movement towards a vision or a revision. There is only an intersting flow of poetic consciousness which is all inclusive and apparently pointless in its ethical and philosophical openness"2 . An introspective study of 'self' gives Mahapatra a new direction and a kind of authenticity that immediately sets him apart from many other contemporary Indian English poets and brings him to the company of Nissim Ezekiel, and R. Parthasarathy. As he says : " You say my poems are a sort of private ritual of discovery, relationship and reachingg out to others, if there is a cathersis in my writing, it comes about voluntarily if there is a spiralling as I try to get into the centre of myself, I feel I am somehow [afraid of this closeness too, and I try to move out from the centre of my life. Yes, my poetry may be ritual of finding myself first, feeling the beat of the blood in my hand which feeds only myself."3 Mahapatra is aware of the changing contour of his poetry with the passege of time. Being a conscious artist, he ' looks before and after ' and pines for what it is not. He says : "Today, I would say that my poetry suffers from such endless questioning, and also from the cliched subjects of time, death and the quest which man is after, but such thoughts come out from the meditation on the immediate landscape of my land".4

Jayanta Mahapatra has projected , his self onto the larger screens of history and of myth. He has depicted the contemporary life with deep insight. He has evoked the myth of the land and tried to acclimatize the indegenous tradition to English language. His two long poems 'Relationship' and 'Temple' are the best example of the use of myths.

To know one's self is not egoism but the gateway to all virtue. The use of Putana myth in 'Temple' makes us aware of the transformation of the 'self' and paradoxically, this ancient myth explain the multiface- tedness of 'self' in the modern world. It is in this sense that one woman is not one but many and all women are at last one woman. Jayanta Mahapatra's poems have a dialectical approach to the varied myths of mankind. One feels from his lines that the significance of human experience, current and ancient , is perceived in its integration into the structure of a myth of which it forms a past. But at the same time there is an attempt at breaking away from the anaesthetic grip of the myths in Mahapatra1s apprehension and approhepriation of the world. "The very title 'Relationship' emphasizes the twentieth centrury structuralist method of perception which believes that 'the world is made up of relationships rather than things' . For that matter he enlarges the perspective by unearthing the foundations of the unconscious of the collective life. Set in Orissa and having Konark, the Sun Temples as the major backdrop, the poem through twelve sections, gives a picture of ruins and the estrangement of the people from their inheritence. On the other hand, the identity of man is shown as incomplete without the myth he inherits from the ancestors. The stones of Konarka that tare sculptured with the ancient myths of gods, gode^esses and kings are a part of the poet's being. But on the other, the myths have a restrictive aspect. The case of myths keeps the reason and the original mind captive. Like daggers returning to the naked flesh and like asthma attacking

each winter, myths over shadow the human mind before he is able to slip away into infinite distances and silence."5 Mahapatra's conception of man's relation to what he perceives brings him face to face with history and myth when his self is discovered in the act of attention. The interaction between 'self' and reality - the reality that eludes but includes man from the bedrock of Mahapatra's poetry. Poetry for him is the exploration of the myths and it is linked with the world of art and sculpture. Hence, he continues his quest for 'an essence divine' and for 'grace' in relationship between'man and man, man and god, and man and sculptured art.

Mahapatra is a keen observer of contemporary life and situation and does not mince words in describing socio-political scene that diminishes humanity. Irony becomes his forte. Like Nissim Ezikiel and Derek Walcott, Mahapatra tries to come to terms with reality. He reminds us of T.S. Eliot in his the wasteland days when the latter spoke of 'the horror and boredom of life, devoid of glory'. Mahapatra is frank and candid in describing the country and the world- arround him in realistic terms. He 'sees life steadily and sees it whole'. Like Raja Rao doing in Indian English fiction (in Kanthapura, to be precise), Mahapatra also tries to create a contemporary myth out of Candhi in his recent poetry Gandhi has become living myth cuggoeting non-violence, truth and righteousness. He has also become a synonym for justice and honesty and passed into Indian mind as an apostle of peace. If creating new national myths is part of post- colonial writing, Jayanta Mahapatra can truely be called a post-colonial poet. He is in the long line of Indian English writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, R.K.Narayan, Chaman Nahal and Nissim Ezekiel who have written eloquently about Gandhi.

However, Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry takes the past into its orbit, infuses it with the present and looks forward to the future. It at once encompasses the history and the myths and embodies a vision for the future.

__________________________

Work Cited
1.

Bijay Kumar Das, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, Atlantic Publishers & distributors, New Delhi, 1995.

2.

S.K. Desai, The Poetic Craft the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra : A critical study, p. 127.

3.

Quoted by Norman Simms, A Poet of Many Worlds, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra : A Critical Study, p.p. 33 - 34.

4. 5.

Jayanta Mahapatra, The Illustrated Weekly of India, April 1, 1990, p. 30. Chittaranjan Mishra, Myth and Inheritence : A comparative note on 'Relationship' and 'Temple', The Mahanadi Review, Vol. IV, No. 3, Oct Dec, 1993.