He modelled his sangeetkavyas on the British romantic lyrics and thus attempted to foster a taste for British romanticism in Gujarati readership through the example of Kusummala. All his poems and translations use meters. The poems like “Prem sindhu,” (“The ocean of love”), “Bahurup anupam prem dhare” (“Incomparable love assumes various forms”), or “Gan sarit” (“The river of singing”), treat the theme of love with tenderness and largely in a sacred context in meditative tone. “Suryoday” (“The sunrise”), “Sandhya” (“Evening”) and “Ratri” (“Night”) treat Nature as a valid poetic subject. A number of poems address the cloud and the koel, reminding Wordsworth’s “To the Cuckoo,” “To the Skylark” and Shelley’s “To a Skylark.”

           Further, “Phoolni sathe ramat” (“Playing with a flower”) anticipates T.E. Hulme’s idea of romanticism as a belief in man being “intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstances,” “a reservoir full of possibilities” (Hulme 1972:94-95). “Kavinun sukh” (“The poet’s happiness”) points out the tragic alienation of a romantic poet and the consequent creation of a romantic image, an idea well discussed in Frank Kermode’s Romantic Image. “Karena” reasserts the romantic theme of hope.

Kusummala and other anthologies carry the poet’s teeka or commentary at the end of the anthology in the form of a linguistic, genetic or critical analysis of a poem. In view of Divetiya’s romantic project to use poems as examples to cultivate romantic taste, teeka on the poems also functions the same way, and becomes polemical. Further, teeka also becomes an extension of a poem itself, and acquires a textual status. In a way, teeka is a retranslation of a poem which is already a translation of a British romantic lyric.

           A translation seems to enjoy the same status with an original poem from a pragmatic viewpoint as Kusummala and later anthologies carry translated versions along with the original poems. This substantiates further that all poetic texts are translations in different forms. The first two four-line stanzas of “Asthir ane sthir prem” (“Unsteady and steady love”) are a translation of the first six lines of Wordsworth’s “The Primrose of the rock” (Divetiya 1953:114-15). Further, “Prabhat” (“Dawn”) is a translation of Shelley’s “Dawn” (ibid. 134). Further, “Megh” (“The Cloud”) is a “bhashantar” of Shelley’s “Cloud” and “Chanda” (“The Moon”) is a “nakal” (“a copy”) of that poem by Shelley (ibid. 135). “Chanda” presents translation as “nakal” as its subjectmatter (chanda or the moon) is different from that of the source text (megh or the cloud), but the target language text shares the form with the source language text. “Avasan,” the last poem of the anthology, sustains “bhavarth” or essence of Shelley’s “Music, when soft voices die,” the last poem of the fourth part of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (ibid. 136). It is a transcreation of Shelley’s poem.

            Translation of romanticism acquires a different poetic form in Divetiya’s next anthology Hradayveena (1896). Its poems are more dramatic, often with dialogues, and show an intense social awareness. In its preface, Divetiya defines his earlier poetry, barring a few descriptive ones at its end, as “atmalakshi (subjective)” and mainly that of Hradayveena as “parlakshi (objective)” (ibid: 8). British romanticism seems to naturalize itself, reflecting native contemporary reality. Vishnuprasad Trivedi aptly remarks that Gujarati romanticism is hardly “revolutionary” (1961: 43). Hradayveena expresses, at least, an acute awareness of the contemporary problems. “Phasi padeli vidhava” (“A widow trapped”) presents a widow deceived into a marriage, resulting into her suicide. “Phulmani dasino shap” (“The curse of Phulmani dasi”) is based on a real court case of Harimohan Maithi, an elderly husband, who forcibly had consummation with the eleven-year old wife, which was against even the prevalent social custom at that time. The poem, critical of patriarchy, ends with Phulmani’s death. Besides, poems like “Matsyagandha ane Shantanu” (“Matsyagandha and Shantanu”) and “Uttara ane Abhimanyu” (“Uttara and Abhimanyu”) embody myths from the Mahabharata. Along with such “objective” poems, “Jagatna vishno utar” (“Curing the worldly poisoning”) expresses the romantic idea of Nature as a beneficent agency. Moreover, teeka at the end mentions that “Phasi padeli vidhava” (“A childwidow trapped”) was inspired (“prerit”) by Tennyson’s “Forlorn” and became an independent poem. Here translation means as an inspired version of the original—a transcreation. The anthology does not mention any other source language text.

           Noopurjhankar (Divetiya 1914) carries many translations, and with an extensive teeka, occupying almost half of the volume. “Chhoopa ansun” (“Hidden tears”) presents the romantic notion of the value of tears or passions. Further, it seems to combine the subjective and the objective nature of earlier anthologies, respectively, of Kusummala (ibid. 1887) and Hradayveena (ibid. 1934) in terms of, respectively, the recognition of personal sorrow and that of sorrow of the other. It contains translations of certain parts of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia like “Kisa Gotami,” “Mahabhinishkraman” and “Viyogini Yashodhara.” Further, the last four-line stanza of “Viraginini Veena” is an unconscious translation of eight lines of Book VI of Light of Asia (ibid. 1914:172). Here translation is rememoration of sanskara. “Mrutyune prarthana” (“A prayer to death”) is a translation of Sarojini Naidu’s “Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die” (ibid: 178-79). “Maranno bhaya” (“Fear of death”) translates Keats’s sonnet “When I have fear that I may cease to be,” which is entitled as “Terror of Death” in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (ibid: 179-80). Curiously, “Mrutyunun maran” (“The death of death”) is inspired by a different literary form, the novel Life Everlasting by Marie Corelli (ibid: 181). “Ghuvad” (“The owl”) is a transcreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (ibid: 199). Divetiya’s teeka on “Joona dhwani” (“The old voices”) introduces certain terms about translation. The poem carries vague impressions of a song read years back—“Songs my mother taught me” (ibid: 218). Divetiya uses the term “chhaya” for this kind of translation, which mediates the process of translation between its forms of “bhashantar” and “anukaran.” Further, “Sandhyani devine” (“To the goddess of beauty”) is an inspired version of Shelley’s “Hymn toAsia” (ibid: 223-24). It is notable that “Shunyahraday mughdha” and “Gopinun sammelan” are the translations of Ravindranath Tagore’s Bengali songs in the play Ashrumati natak by Jyotindranath.

 

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