“Le Flot fut attentif, et la voix
qui mest chere
“Laissa tomber ces mots:-----
“Laissez – nous savourer les
rapides delices
“Des plus beaux de nos jours.”
–(Lamartine)
(The waves were listening, and the voice which is dear to me, let fall
these words……
Let us savour the rapid pleasures of the most beautiful of our days.)
This attempt to escape the matter for a few seconds in order to better taste the material is experienced by all.
But do we really know what we want? A faint smile on a pavement, a stolen kiss behind the hedge? Mallarmes sweet lines:
“La lune sattristait. Des seraphins en pleure
“Revant, l’archet aux doigt, dans le calme des fleurs-----.”
(Moon was saddened. Seraphims dreaming in tears, bow in hand, in the calm amidst flowers….) Do they calm us or Sadden us? It depends. The literary critic, Cazamian, holds that “Few readers are so familiar with style, and so well-trained in the interpretation of riddles, that their enjoyment is not marred by or ruined by its density and allusiveness.” (A History of French Literature, Oxford Press, 1964, p. 387)
Actually riddles themselves are not an insuperable barrier if they are widely known. The symbols of the garden, the nest and the bird-catcher, which came with the influence of mysticism into our poetry, are now so integral to our ghazal that no one pauses at them e.g.
The story started with the theory of the soul in mysticism. It was of divine nature and felt itself a prisoner in the human body, impatient to return to its origin. On this premise is built the whole theoretical structure of the garden, the season of spring, the nightingale, the bird-hunter, the cage etc. But this reflected material structure is now cut off from the original mystical symbolism, at least in the popular consciousness. For example, here the connection seems to be completely broken.
These symbols are now moving closer to the picture of a society, which not only facilitates exploitation of man but is actually built upon it. The quotation from Hugo and Shehnaz – given at the beginning of this article, reveal themselves fully only in that context.
The writer is a retired ambassador.