The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

Ananda Acharya is a less popular but great Indian English poet with a difference. He was the first Indo- Anglian poet to utter humanitarian tenets in poetry. As a humanitarian poet or a poet of man, he gave emphasis on human brotherhood irrespective of caste and creed and on the understanding of the inner soul of man than the material world. As a poet, he thought that understanding the greatness of human soul and love for man should be the main motto of an artist. And in doing so, his poems become spiritual, religious, mystic and moral.

In the poem, ‘The True Immensity’ he says that human soul is the greatest subject to be perceived and understood by the Divine Soul; because he believes that God expresses Himself through human beings. He says:

”True immensity

Is in the grass-star-blossom of my soul

Not in this vastness

Of land and air and sea

Which is so narrow.”

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

In the poem  ‘A Tear’ he experiences that human love is bestowed by God.  A meditative heart can experience it. So he demands to have divine love in the poem. He says, in a dream, he saw a woman’s image whose face was as sweet as the morning. She gazed at the poet’s eyes but spoke nothing. Then the poet felt that all the love of heaven has entered into his soul. In the poet’s words:

”….. I felt all the love of the heavens

Entering into my soul

As I fell into trance- it was a sleep 

Within rings of sleep.”

The above-quoted lines are truly mystic in tenet.

The poet loves man. Love to man is his main motto. Wherever he goes, he embraces everybody and receives love from everybody. He is willing to share international brotherhood. So in the poem Hail, Norway he says:

”I walk among the towns and

Villages, the hills and valleys, as

Thy friend: and over thy holy

Name, o Norway, I have built a

Perfumed rainbow-arch of love.”

In the poem ‘The Youthful Prophet’ he shows that love for man is the only means to build human brotherhood. And it is love only by means of which human beings can be one or united. In his poem, the poet says that fraternity cannot be built by gold and riches, by sword or gun or by menace or tyranny. The poet expresses through the mouth of the youthful prophet:

”Let me go to each man’s door, o king,

And bid him search his heart and

Find the One.’‘

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features

The message of brotherhood and love can never remain confined to a fixed place. It flies swifter and embraces everybody. Guru Nanak was among some who preached human love and brotherhood. Preaching the messages of love and brotherhood, he went to Baghdad where he found a true disciple of him named Balol. He was so much inspired by the words of Guru Nanak that in far off Baghdad there was built an engraved inscription with the teaching of Guru Nanak. Besides India, Guru Nanak is loved and honoured in Iran also only for his words of love and brotherhood.

The style and language of Ananda Acharya are simple, easy and prosaic. He uses a few figures of speech except similes. But the use of simile is charming, as-

(I) A tear rose to my eye and fell on my

Palm like a frozen pearl.

(ii) Balol has rested on the master’s word-

Like a bee-poised on a down-lit

Honey- rose.

(iii) …… innocent as the smile

Of a dreaming babe.

To conclude it can be said that Sri Ananda Acharya, as a poet, is single-sided- only humanitarian. His only fault is that he lacked a diversity of theme and style. 0 0 0

The Poetry of Ananda Acharya-Chief Features