“Our
Casuarina Tree is more than the poetic evocation of a tree; it is recapturing
the past, and immortalizing the moments of time so recaptured. The tree is both
tree and symbol, and in it implicated both time and eternity.”
-K. R. Srinivasa
Iyenger, Indian Writing in English
Toru Dutt has
left behind such a glorious legacy that even today we think
of her as a marvellous young girl who died before
her prime after blazing a trail of brilliance in early Indo-Anglian poetry. She
was the first woman writer in the history of Indo-Anglian literature. She was
also among the first to realize and affect the much needed rapprochement between
the Eastern and the Western knowledge. Toru Dutt was undeniably the finest flower
of Indian Renaissance that began with Raja Rammohun Roy- the tireless crusader
for English education in India.
The poem “Our Casuarina Tree” is a beautiful symbolic poem harmonizing both
matter and manner in accurate proportion. The tree stands for a symbolic representation
of Toru’s past memory. Apparently it symbolizes the rich tradition of Indian
culture and philosophy which played an important role in shaping the poetic and
aesthetic sensibility of the poets. In Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”, the bird symbolizes the world of art and
beauty. In Shelley’s “To a Skylark”,
the bird is the symbol of freedom and liberty. Similarly, in Toru Dutt’s “Our Casuarina Tree”, the tree connotes
the nostalgic feelings and memory of Toru Dutt. This is the tree under which
she played with his brother and sister- Abju and Aru. So the very thought of
the tree transported her to her golden past days.
In
the first stanza she imagined the rugged trunk of the tree to a huge python
winding round and round. The creeper has indented deep with scars up to the top
of the tree. One may also sense a similarity between the tree in the clutches
of a creeper attempting to sap its strength and the three young Dutts in the
grip of a killer disease – tuberculosis. Toru says the flowers of the tree are
hung in crimson clusters. Toru tells
us that her Casuarina Tree, a haven for the winged, birds and insects, is
almost visibly alive, alive with the buzz of bees and with the chirping of birds.
This song sung from the tree soothes its listeners and has a tranquilizing
effect on men who relax and rest as the bird sings.
The
second stanza is replete with the pictorial and visual imagery of the tree and
the gray baboon and his offspring. In winter a gray baboon used to sit on one
of the branches of the tree watching the sunrise. On the lower branches, the
offspring of the baboon used to leap about and pay. Gradually, as the sun
rises, the “kokilas” begin to greet the day with their song and a mesmerized
Toru Dutt watches “sleepy” cows that have not yet shaken off their lethargy, on
their way to the pastures.
While
in the third stanza, Dutt establishes that it is neither the stateliness of the
tree nor its external beauty that endears to her. She writes:
“But
not because of its magnificence
Dear
is the Casuarina to my soul:”
The
beauty of the tree is no more than an added gift. Its actual importance lies in
the fact that it is a part of the Dutts’ existence, a reminder of family ties,
of the warmth shared by three siblings. The Abju-Aru-Toru bonding was indeed
strong and in Sita Toru
mentions, “Three happy children…” sitting in a dark room listening to a
story and then sighs because she knows that they will never again “by their
mother’s side/Gather”. Like Keats, she had to suffer a lot. She had seen bitter
struggle for life and death, untold miseries after the death of her beloved
brother and sister.
The
fourth stanza is highly philosophical. The poet observes “Unknown yet well-known to the
eyes of faith”. Here the term ‘unknown’ denotes not simply the native
home of the poet but also the world of the departed soul. A man who has the eye
of faith can see the unknown as well-known. Yoga also says that when a man has
an unwavering faith in the existence of the divinity through the art of
meditation and poetry, nothing remains unknown to him in the universe, because
he lives on the plain of consciousness, usually felt as vacuum of the transcendental
stage of smadhi. This is what exactly Toru Dutt feels here.
Interestingly Toru’s mystical and spiritual approach to poetry is centered to
her profound knowledge of great Sanskrit epics and scriptures. The music which
Toru refers here is not an ordinary music which we hear in our day to day life;
it is music of the soul, which once it is attained, never dies and continues to
vibrate with the highest percipience in the mind of the seeker. Toru Dutt is
not like the “Skylark” of Shelley, “the scorner of the ground” but she
is the “Skylark” of Wordsworth “a pilgrim of the sky” and does not
despise the earth where cares abound.
At
the end of the poem she absolutely transcends the mortal, materialistic and
mundane frame of mind and attains the power of love to overcome the negative
forces of life like death and darkness, terror and fear. In this stanza, the
words and the phrases like ‘trembling hope’, ‘love’, ‘death’, ‘the skeleton’, ‘and
oblivion’ are very suggestive. She means to say that a man of unflinching love
and devotion never fears the blows of death. Toru does not express any desire
to fade “far away” and “dissolve”. Their Casuarina tree
does not make her long for “easeful” death. Instead, even
though its “timelessness” mocks the transience of the human world, the
tree is to her a support, a reminder of the joy she once experienced with Abju
and Aru. So, in the final stanza, Toru
Dutt, aware both of Druidism and the
customary tree-worship in India, wishes to “consecrate a lay” in the Casuarina
Tree’s honour.
To
sum up, the poem “Our Casuarina Tree” shows a perfect blending of feelings and
forms, matter and manner. It contains what Eliot means by his phrase “unified
sensibility”. It is a combination of both the East and the West. In
form, it is very near to the Romantic and the Victorian poems. In theme it
dives deep into the unfathomable ocean of the Vedanta and the Upanishad
of body and soul, life and death.
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