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V SUNDARAM
These are all days of blatant materialism let loose by the ruthless march of the forces of privatization, commercialization and globalization enveloping the whole world. When the Industrial Revolution was swaying the minds and hearts of his countrymen in the last quarter of the 18th century, the great English statesman Edmund Burke ( 1729 - 1797 ) bemoaned the cultural fall of his countrymen in these very well known words : 'The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded'. All of us in India seem to be passing through one such period today. All of us need something to poetize and idealise our life a little - something which we value for more than its use and which is a symbol of our emancipation from the mere materialism and deathly drudgery of daily life. It is in this context that the world-famous poem called The Desiderata by the American poet MAX EHRMANN (1872 - 1945) assumes a great significance.
The Desiderata begins, 'Go placidly amid the noise and haste', is one of the best loved poems in the English language, revered by millions as the ideal philosophy of life. Few people realize that it was written, not on a gravestone in an old churchyard, but in 1927, by the American (Indiana State) poet Max Ehrmann who died in 1945 and whose work, until the 1960s was largely unknown and perhaps even forgotten.
Max Ehrmann was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and graduated from De Pauw University, going on to do postgraduate studies in law and philosophy at Harvard University. After practicing law for several years he joined the family business, but retired ten years later to concentrate on writing. It was only in the late 1960s when Desiderata became a cult poem of the new generation, that Max Ehrmann's work began to be better known, particularly following the publication of his poems under the title The Desiderata of Happiness which were selected by Susan Polis Schutz.
The Desiderata ( Latin word for 'desired things', plural of desideratum) is an inspirational prose poem about attaining happiness in life. It was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann. In the 1960s it was widely circulated throughout the world without attribution to Ehrmann, and in many places with the wrong claim that it was found in a church and was written in 1692. This is one of my most favourite poems which I read and chant almost everyday. Here is this beautiful poem of Desiderata:
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.
Avoid loud and agressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
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If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. |
(1872 - 1945) |
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy
Great men and women in history have left behind interesting accounts of the powerful impact of a great poem upon their life and work. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru were all lovers of poetry. A good poem enlarges our consciousness and refines our sensibility. Poetry has primarily to do with expression of feeling and emotion. Poetry is the fusion of sound and imagery, of expression and intuition. If poetry is intuition and expression, what is the material or stuff of life which takes on the form of sound and imagery ? The answer is the man, the whole man, who loves and hates and thinks and wills, who is strong and weak ; sublime and petty, lofty and pathetic; good and wicked; man in the ecstasy and agony of living. Since man cannot be divorced from his environment, Mother Nature also comes in, in all her beautiful and multifarious manifestations.
T S Eliot was absolutely right when he said that no art is more stubbornly national than poetry. For example, prose or scientific writing in any language can be more or less translated without any difficulty into any other language, without any loss of effect. But this cannot be said of poetry. When Tagore is translated from Bengali into Tamil, something is lost. When Mahakavi Bharathi is translated from Tamil into Bengali, sometning vital is lost. Feeling and emotion are particular, whereas thought is general. It is easier to think in a foreign language than to feel in it.
Poetry begins in the sparkle of light; in finding a durable, repeatable equivalence in words for the evanescent sparkling of light from some object, perhaps from rock crystal, more likely from drops of rain hanging on stem or held in leaves of flowers. Every great poet tries to achieve through his poem a fullness and sharpness of the exceptional, to make crystal out of daily trifles, poetical diamonds out of the daily carbon of life. The ordinary is inexhaustible and sufficiently surprising, exciting and bizarre when extraordinarily seen. All the poems of Max Ehrmann have this divine quality. When I read or re-read a great poem by him, I often feel that I am under a spell — involuntarily getting uplifted in a motionless vehicle of his great language. I feel that I am released from the weight of gravity, though not raised to any inconvenient height or uncomfortable or strange posture. Released from my body, I feel in the graceful grip of a melodious sequence of sound and meaning, moving forwards and backwards with a lilt of the poem. Oblivious to my environs and indifferent to everything else around me, I feel encased in the capsule of a motionless bubble. Max Ehrmann produces this sublime effect most of the time.
Max Ehrmann in his poem eheu! spoke for all of us :
I was not called for greater tasks than these brief half-born songs;
I was not called to smite the lyre and right a nation's wrongs.
Not even was I bidden touch the fingerstrips of fame;
But in the eddies of a stream
I scrolled my name.
Yet you who read perchance in after years by glow of light
In evening still, or by the music of some lonely stream,
Or on some silent, God-lit hill above the noisy world—-
To you I whisper love, not fame, was my one dream.
One of my another favourite poems by Max Ehrmann is titled 'to-morrow'. Here are a few lovely extracts from this poem:
How oft you've set to-morrow.
When age has come, to-morrow
You'll speak with God to leave some kindly deeds
Writ by your name that softened selfish creeds
Of man's slow moving love of brotherhood,
That brought new hope to them who near you stood
In life's dark streets or sunlit meads.
To-morrow you'll ask God
for better deeds.
To-morrow, O to-morrow !
Fast fall the fading years. A thought, a dream
Of gentle words, of faith and love a theme ;
A smile, a step or two, and then 'tis done.
Quick is the veering stream of life full run ;
Yet in the crimson west still gleam
To-morrow and to-morrow's endless dream.
Thanks to our barbarous politicians and men in authority from the highest level downwards, we in India are condemned to live in an age where all feeling and sensitivity for poetry seems to have been lost. We can agree with Walt Whitman, the great poet of American democracy, that to have great poets, there must be great audiences too. Referring to out un-poetical age, Don Marquis has lamented ; 'Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo'.
Let me conclude with Max Ehrmann's truly sublime lines :
To be loved in life is life's greatest gifts.
To be loved in death for some bit of beauty one has given the world, is to take from death some of itssting
Life has need of all the charm of word and sound, of colour and carven stone that love can give it.
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. the loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature
- Charles Darwin
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)