(1856-1877)
In 1874 there appeared in the Bengal Magazine an essay upon Leconte
de Lisle, which showed not only an unusual knowledge of French
literature, but also decided literary qualities. The essayist was Toru
Dutt, a Hindu girl of eighteen, daughter of Govin Chunder Dutt, for
many years a justice of the peace at Calcutta. The family belonged to
the high-caste cultivated Hindus, and Toru's education was conducted
on broad lines. Her work frequently discloses charming pictures of the
home life that filled the old garden house at Calcutta. Here it is
easy to see the studious child poring over French, German, and English
lexicons, reading every book she could lay hold of, hearing from her
mother's lips those old legends of her race which had been woven into
the poetry of native bards long before the civilization of modern
Europe existed. In her thirteenth year Toru and her younger sister
were sent to study for a few months in France, and thence to attend
lectures at Cambridge and to travel in England. A memory of this visit
appears in Toru's little poem, 'Near Hastings,' which shows the
impressionable nature of the Indian girl, so sensitive to the romance
of an alien race, and so appreciative of her friendly welcome to
English soil.
After four years' travel in Europe the Dutts returned to India to
resume their student life, and Toru began to learn Sanskrit. She
showed great aptitude for the French language and a strong liking for
the French character, and she made a special study of French romantic
poetry. Her essays on Leconte de Lisle and Josephin Soulary, and a
series of English translations of poetry, were the fruit of her labor.
The translations, including specimens from Beranger, Theophile
Gautier, Francois Coppee, Sully-Prud'homme, and other popular writers,
were collected in 1876 under the title 'A Sheaf Gleaned in French
Fields.' A few copies found their way into Europe, and both French and
English reviewers recognized the value of the harvest of this
clear-sighted gleaner. One critic called these poems, in which Toru so
faithfully reproduced the spirit of one alien tongue in the forms of
another, transmutations rather than translations.
But marvelous as is the mastery shown over the subtleties of thought
and the difficulties of translation, the achievement remains that of
acquirement rather than of inspiration. But Toru's English renditions
of the native Indian legends, called 'Ancient Ballads of Hindustan,'
give a sense of great original power. Selected from much completed
work left unpublished at her too early death, these poems are
revelations of the Eastern religious thought, which loves to clothe
itself in such forms of mystical beauty as haunt the memory and charm
the fancy. But in these translations it is touched by the spirit of
the new faith which Toru had adopted. The poems remain, however,
essentially Indian. The glimpses of lovely landscape, the shining
temples, the greening gloom of the jungle, the pink flush of the
dreamy atmosphere, are all of the East, as is the philosophic calm
that breathes through the verses. The most beautiful of the ballads is
perhaps that of 'Savitri,' the king's daughter who by love wins back
her husband after he has passed the gates of death. Another,
'Sindher,' re-tells the old story of that king whose great power is
unavailing to avert the penalty which follows the breaking of the
Vedic law, even though it was broken in ignorance. Still another,
'Prehlad,' reveals that insight into things spiritual which
characterizes the true seer or "called of God." Two charming legends,
'Jogadhya Uma,' and 'Buttoo,' full of the pastoral simplicity of the
early Aryan life, and a few miscellaneous poems, complete this volume
upon which Toru's fame will rest.
A posthumous novel written in French makes up the sum of her
contribution to letters. 'Le Journal de Mlle. D'Arvers' was found
completed among her posthumous papers. It is a romance of modern
French life, whose motive is the love of two brothers for the same
girl. The tragic element dominates the story, and the author has
managed the details with extraordinary ease without sacrificing either
dignity or dramatic effect. The story was edited by Mademoiselle
Bader, a correspondent of Toru, and her sole acquaintance among
European authors. In 1878, the year after the poet's death, appeared a
second edition of 'A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields' containing
forty-three additional poems, with a brief biographical sketch written
by her father. The many translators of the 'Sakoontala' and of other
Indian dramas show how difficult it is for the Western mind to express
the indefinable spirituality of temper that fills ancient Hindu
poetry. This remarkable quality Toru wove unconsciously into her
English verse, making it seem not exotic but complementary, an echo of
that far-off age when the genius of the two races was one.