Stylistics and Structuralism

Analysis of literature cannot be accomplished completely without linguistic analysis.

It is for the reason that both complement each other. As the essential prerequisite in

understanding literature, the foremost step is to be acquainted with the language used

as the means of the literary works. Then again, while studying or scrutinizing

language, one should consider literature as a reference for the way language is used.

Style includes the writer’s way of thinking about his subject and his characteristic

way of presenting it for a particular reader and purpose. It results from linguistic

choices, which effectively express the writer’s unique thought and feeling. Style is a

means of discovery for both writer and reader, which sharpens expressive meaning as

well as referential meaning, intensifies the tone of writing, makes poetry more

persuasive. Stylistics has been defined by different scholars in different ways. Leech

and Short (1981, p.13) remark that:

“Stylistics is simply defined as the (linguistic) study of style, is rarely

undertaken for its own sake, simply as an exercise in describing what use is

made of language.”1

The major aim of studying stylistics is to explore the meanings and understand the

linguistic features of the text. Style is a relational concept, of which the aim of literary

stylistics is to relate the critic’s concern of aesthetic appreciation with the linguist’s

concern of linguistic description. They further articulate that:

“The distinction between what a writer has to say, and how it is presented to

the reader, underlies one of the earliest and most persistent concepts of style:

that of style as the “dress of thought.” 2

1
 Leech (1969) argues that any deviation from expected patterns of linguistic

behavior will bring about a reaction of disorientation and surprise. He elaborates that

rules in poetry are made to be broken. Leech observed that looking back over the span

of English literature since Chaucer; certain freedoms of language have been

traditionally sanctioned in verse, but not in prose. In his words:

“The obvious function of these freedoms is to compensate the poet for his loss

of freedom in submitting himself to the discipline of verse composition; to

furnish him with a wider set of choices than are normally available in English

and thus to give him a better chance of squeezing his language into a

predetermined mould of versification.” 3

Short and Candlin called it a linguistic approach to the study of the literary texts

and the philosophy of combining language and literary study. Widdowson defines it

as:

“A study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation that deals with both

the literary and linguistic factors” 4

The term ‘Stylistics’ comes from French ‘Stylistique’ which means ‘instrument

for writing’. The word ‘style’ has been derived from a Latin word stylus - a stick

made of material for writing - and style is commonly used in literature, linguistics,

behavior and other fields of human activity. Freeman (1971, p.1) remarks,

“Stylistics, is a sub-discipline which started in the second half of the 20th

century.” 5

Stylistics is the application of linguistics to the in-depth study of the unexplored

beauty of the literary style. It is the individual approach of a poet in using language

2
through a scheme of individual plans called stylistic devices. Stylistics is the

description and analysis of the variability of linguistic forms in actual language use.

The theory of ‘style’ and ‘stylistics’ in language rest on the general hypothesis that

within the language system, the same content can be designed in more than one

linguistic forms. Stylisticians work at all linguistic levels (e.g. lexicology, syntax, text

linguistics etc.), and appraise both - the style of particular text and stylistic deviation

across the text. Style may be considered as a choice of linguistic means; as deviation

from a norm; as repetition of linguistic forms; and as comparison. In fact it is an

assortment of the unique linguistic choices organized efficiently in poetry. The

linguistic choices involve sentences, phrases, clauses, tunes, words, images,

metaphors and figurative encoding of thoughts.

There are numerous stylistic features that direct the poets to have a preference for

particular linguistic structures over others. These factors depend on writer’s age;

gender; individual preferences; and social frame of reference. Depending on this

notion, stylistic research has recognized many correlations between definite stylistic

factors and language use. For example, quite often noun phrases have a tendency to be

more intricate in written than in spoken, and passive voice is used more often in

technical communication than in nontechnical discourses.

The perception of style as replication of linguistic forms is associated with a

probabilistic and statistical understanding of style, which absolutely lies beneath the

deviation-from-a-norm perspective. By focusing on actual language use, stylisticians

cannot help describing only distinctive predispositions that are based on inherent

norms and undefined experience in given situations and fields. Stylistic features do

not follow strict rules since style is not a matter of grammaticality, but rather of

3
appropriateness. What is suitable in a given context can be figured out from the

reverberation of linguistic devices in the specific context.

From the whole host of linguistic approaches to style, there have been two

linguistic schools of the twentieth century that have put forth the most decisive

influence on the advancement of stylistics: the Prague School and British

Contextualism.

The Prague School of linguistics was established in 1920s. The school gives

meticulous consideration to situation-bound stylistic variation. A standard language is

supposed to have a communicative and an aesthetic function that result in two

different ‘functional dialects’: prosaic language and poetic language. More specific

functional dialects may, of course, be identified; for example, the scientific dialect as

a subclass of prosaic language, which is characterized by what is called the

‘intellectualization of language’—lexicon, syntax, and reference conform to the

overall communicative function that requires exact and abstract statements. A very

important notion is the distinction between ‘automatization’ and ‘foregrounding’ in

language. Automatization correlates with the usual background pattern, or the norm,

in language use—it encompasses those forms and structures that competent language

users expect to be used in a given context of situation. Foregrounded linguistic

devices, on the other hand, are usually not expected to be used in a specific context

and are thus considered conspicuous—they catch the language decoder’s attention.

A different, although conceptually similar, tradition of linguistic stylistics was

established by British linguists in the 1930s and came to be called British

Contextualism. The most important proponents of British Contextualism include John

Rupert Firth, M.A.K. Halliday, and John Sinclair. Their work is characterized by a

4
clear focus, firstly, on the social context in which language is used and, secondly, on

the in-depth observation of natural language use. From the point of view of British

Contextualists, linguists need to describe authentic language use in context and should

not confine themselves to invented and isolated sentences. Additionally, linguistics is

not considered as an intuition-based study of abstract systems of form as, for example,

in the merely formal description of autonomous syntactic rules (as in Chomsky’s

approach to language), but as the observation-based and empirical analysis of

meaning encoded by form. This approach allows for insights into the immense

variation within language.

Structuralism in linguistics refers to the thought that language is a system of signs

that lie under speech. It is a mode of thought, a way of conceptualizing phenomena.

Structuralism tells us that meaning is constructed, as a product of shared systems of

signification. According to Saussure language comprises two parts – langue, the

abstract system of language developed by a specified speech community, and parole,

the individual act of speech. Since the parole was at great variance over regions and

people, Saussure paid attention on langue. He observed the existence of a linguistic

unit and he named it a ‘sign’. Saussure developed the principles of semiology as they

applied to language.

Ferdinand De Saussure was the first to elaborate the tripartite relationship:

signifier + signified = sign

Saussure said that the linguistic sign connects a sound-image and a concept. The

signifier and signified are interrelated to each other arbitrarily. These entities do not

exist outside the construct we call a sign. We separate them only for ease.

5
 The sign has four characteristics: Arbitrariness of relation between signifier and

signified, Value (the worth of a sign is determined by all other signs in the langue),

Relations (signs relate to one another by similarity, but differ in value) and

Synchronics (the thought that a language can be studied as a complete system at a

given point in time). Saussure said that language is "a system of pure values which are

determined by nothing except the momentary arrangements of its terms."

From the point of view of structuralism all texts, all meaningful events and all

signifying practices can be analyzed for their underlying structures. Such an analysis

would reveal the patterns that characterize the system that makes such texts and

practices possible. We cannot see a structure or a system per se. In fact it would be

very awkward for us if we were aware at all times of the structures that make our

signifying practices possible. Rather they remain unconscious but necessary aspects

of our whole way of being what we are. Structuralism therefore promises to offer

insights into what makes us the way we are.

According to Saussure “Sign” is the basic element of language. Meaning is always

explained in terms of the relationship between signs and their referents. Back in the

19th Century an important figure for semiotics, the pragmatic philosopher Charles

Sanders Peirce (pronounced purse), and isolated three different types of sign: The

symbolic sign is like a word in so far as it refers by symbolizing its referent. It neither

has to look like it nor have any natural relation to it at all. The indexical sign is like a

signpost or a finger pointing in a certain direction. These signs play an indexical

function. The iconic sign refers to its object by actually resembling it and is thus more

likely to be like a picture.

6
 Saussure divides the sign into its two aspects. The signs those are accessible to the

senses or the sensible part of a verbal sign which is called the “signifier” and the

“signified” which is what these visible/audible aspects mean to us. The signified is an

interpretation that is added to the signifier.

7
 A. K. Ramanujan: Life and Formative Influences

A. K. Ramanujan was born into an Iyengar (Brahmin) family in Mysore City on 16

March 1929. His father, Attipat Asuri Krishnaswami, a professor of mathematics at

Mysore University and an astronomer, had a study in English, Kannada and Sanskrit.

His mother was an orthodox Brahmin woman and a typical housewife. Though she

was not an intellectual practitioner, she was neither typical nor limited in her learning

and imagination. She was widely read in Tamil and Kannada, and comfortable in the

world of ideas.

His parents gave Ramanujan a deep affection and understanding of his father

language and mother tongue that enlightens much of the analysis found in the essays

of this book. His father died when Ramanujan was only twenty, but by that time the

he had already helped shape Ramanujan's devotion to an intellectual life.

Ramanujan’s extreme skepticism was an outcome of his teenage experiences. He

was perplexed by his father's seemingly paradoxical belief in both astrology and

astronomy- a blend of rational and irrational together. Curiously, Ramanujan chose

magic as his first artistic endeavor. While in his teens, he had the neighborhood tailor

fashion him a coat fitted with hidden pockets and elastic bands in which he concealed

rabbits and bouquets of flowers. With added accoutrements of top-hat and wand he

performed for local schools, women's groups and social clubs. The desire to be a

magician was perhaps a strange use of the insight he gained from his father's quirky

belief in the irrational.

Ramanujan was educated at Marimallappa's High School and Maharaja College of

Mysore. In college, Ramanujan majored in science in his first year, but his father, who

8
did not believe him to be Mathematical minded, changed his major from science to

English. He received his BA and MA in English language and literature from the

University of Mysore. He then got a graduate diploma in theoretical linguistics from

Deccan University in Poona in 1958. He then was a Fulbright Scholar at Indiana

University in the United States where he got a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1963.

Having been a lecturer in English at Quilon and Belgaum, he taught at The

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda for about eight years. In 1962, he became an

assistant professor of Linguistics and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the

University of Chicago, where he was associated throughout the rest of his career,

teaching in several departments. However, he did teach at several other U.S.

universities at times, including Harvard, University of Wisconsin, University of

Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, and Carlton College. At the

University of Chicago, Ramanujan was instrumental in shaping the South Asian

Studies program. He worked in the departments of South Asian Languages and

Civilizations, Linguistics, and with the Committee on Social Thought. He was

recognized as one of the profoundest scholars of the south Indian languages in the

world. He enjoyed teaching of Linguistic morphology and syntax. Ramanujan writes:

“But because I had always been interested in folklore and in the anthropology

of language-structuralism, semiotics, connection between linguistics and

forms of communication in general-over the years, I have become more and

more involved in South Asian Languages.” 6

In 1976, the government of India awarded him the honorific title "Padma Sri" for

his contributions to Indian literature and linguistics, and in 1983, he was given the

MacArthur Prize Fellowship.

9
 As an Indo-American writer Ramanujan had the experience of the native milieu as

well as of the foreign milieu. His poems reflected his views on the cultures and

conventions of the east and the west. He dwells peacefully on the intersection between

two worlds – his internal and intimate world of his core identity that lies in his Indian

reminiscences and memories i.e. his past, and the outer world of his domicile that

chiefly accounts for his attitude and perspective i.e. his present. He searches for his

roots and finally finds them in the Indian family where he spent his early life. The

closely knit patchwork of relations clothes his fundamental self – his soul that is

purely Indian – emotional and disciplined by its value system. His Indian inner self is

the prime source of inspiration in his poetry. But at times he discards the pompous

and burdensome customs of his native land. This obviously is the impact of his outer

self – his American existence – that shapes his reasoning and discretion. There is an

invisible and perceptive symbiosis of internal and external essence in Ramanujan’s

poetry. He uses poetry as a tool to search his self. All his poems lead to the journey

within. Through the varying themes and treatment, he is searching the meaning of his

existence in his poetry. It is the simultaneity of his twin experiences- the one Indian,

and the other American that forms the variegated world of Ramanujan’s poetry.

It is his inner world of Indian memories that give the poet the raw material for his

poems and it is his mature rational and bold perspective of his outer world that allows

him to treat them with an entirely new angle that other Indian English poets might not

have the courage to bring into light. His poem “looking for a cousin on a swing”, for

instance, presents an altogether different aspect of the sweet innocent intimacy of the

cousins that against the familial possibility of intimacy of cousins, that is considered

an incest, converts into a yearning for romantic experience when the cousins grow up

10
into adolescents and are reminded of the experience – the touch of “innocence” which

no more remains innocent and gives a feel of sensuousness and a desire for romance.

The influence of a religious family where Ramanujan spent his formative

childhood years has endowed him with a rich system that helps him understand the

meaning of life in a wider perspective. He has preserved his faith in the Hindu

philosophy of the Unity Consciousness. His recognition of the oneness of all life is

manifested in his poem “Christmas”:

For a moment, I no

Longer know

Leaf from parrot

Or branch from root

nor, for that matter

that tree

from you or me. (S 30-31)

The poem further emphasizes the dissimilarity between the oriental and occidental

traditions through the tree image in the same poem. The two different cultures are

brought to his mind by the juxtaposition of the two images of the bare leafless tree

standing outside his window in the USA and the lively tree seen out of his window in

India which is more than a mere “stiff geometrical shape”

The poet illustrates this oneness of life through the example of the sap in his poem

‘A Hindu to his Body’ when he expresses his wish to “rise in the sap of trees” and

“feel the weight / of honey - hives in my branching / and the burlap weave of weaver -

birds in my hair.”

11
 A. K. Ramanujan died in Chicago, on July 13, 1993 as result of adverse reaction

to anesthesia during preparation for surgery.

12
 A. K. Ramanujan’s Poetic Works

POET, translator and folklorist, A.K. Ramanujan was a multi-faceted genius. He was

known as the ‘Indo-Anglian Harbinger of Literary Modernism’. He emerges as a

major voice of South-Asian culture and language. He as a writer remains very much

contemporary and a "living" voice in Indian poetry with a rare poetic brilliance — a

brilliance which no contemporary poet of Indian English can match in terms of range

and depth. He made a career of probing the meanings of its language, literature and

culture for an audience that was formally and professionally American but which in

the broadest sense knew no national boundaries. His publications include:

Poetry

 The Striders. London: Oxford University Press, 1966

 Relations. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971

 Selected Poems. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976

 Second Sight. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

 Collected poems, 1995

 The Black Hen, 1995

 Uncollected Poems and Prose: 2005

Translations

 The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, 1967

 Speaking of Siva: 1973

 The Literatures of India. Edited with Edwin Gerow, 1974

 Hymns for the Drowning, 1981

 Poems of Love and War, 1985

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 Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages, 1991

 When God Is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and

Others (with Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman), 1994

 A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India, 1997

Ramanujan’s poetry is largely autobiographical and reminiscent. His memories of

his past and his relatives specially, figure in his poems most prominently. Ramanujan

is basically a poet of memories. He often substantiates his commitment to the native

south Indian experience that he preserves even after his long stay in America:

Letting go

of fairytales

is letting go

of what will not

let go:

mother, grandmother the fat cook

in widow’s white

who fed me rice and ogres (Collected Poems –260)

Ramanujan believes that one can never disconnect himself from the memories.

The reminiscences of the past and history are crucial in deciding upon one’s identity.

The poet rummages around in this world of past memories to find the meaning of his

self. Ramanujan connects his memories with the present life in such a remarkable way

that reading his poetry becomes an exquisite pleasure. Ramanujan is absolutely

engrossed in his past recollections, Indian history, mythology and folklore. His

dealing with the theme of quest for self is mainly rooted in memories of his childhood

located in the culture of South India. “Of Mothers, among other things” is one of the

14
most touching poems bringing out the poet’s enduring relationship with his mother.

The pitiable condition of an aged mother is impressively presented with the deft touch

of an imagistic painter. He recalls his father in ‘Obituary’, his wife and several other

relatives in ‘Love Poems for a Wife I’. He talks of his own ancestral house and brings

to life several of his relatives with sheer perfection in his poem ‘Small Scale

Reflections on a Great House’. Family becomes so prominent in his poetry that critics

point out that the family is one of the central metaphors with which he thinks. Most of

his poems, though intensely personal, have a universal dimension of their own. The

main themes of Ramanujan’s poetry are family, love, despair and death. They are full

of irony, humour, paradox and sudden reversals.

However, the archetypal theme of Ramanujan’s poetry is family and its

relationships viewed from different angles. In these relationships, one finds nostalgia,

pathos, irony, humour and sympathy. His poems reveal an assured identity of the poet

with the family, which he very much needed after he settled down in Chicago. The

linking of familial experience with history and tradition is a feature which runs

through the poetry of Ramanujan.

Ramanujan’s poetry embodies the theme of love as an indispensable part of family

relationship. The various forms of love can be seen in the thematic structure of

Ramanujan’s poetry,; in its various aspects ranging from frustration, infatuation,

alienation to ultimate understanding; daringly portrayed through effective imagery.

“Still Another View of Grace” is regarded as one of his finest love poems, a

passionate poem of intensity combining emotion with reflection. The poet’s severe

angry reprimand to his desire “do not follow a gentle man’s morals” at last ends up

with surrender to love and crossing the barriers of his orthodox tradition and

transforming sensual passion into gentle love. “Love Poem for a Wife - I” enacts the

15
short anecdotes of domestic nature depicting the lack of emotional integration

between the poet and his wife and the hiatus between their attitudes. “Love Poem for

a Wife-2,” on the other hand, shows the mature aspect of love with a compromising

approach. The family relationship is explored up to the root level and the poet finds

himself in a similar state balancing himself between diverse backgrounds of his own

and his wife.

“Ramanujan moves between two lands” says Bhagabat Nayak, “- the land of his

birth and the country of his work and domicile. He accepts both and does not abandon

one for the other….. Ramanujan, the most outstanding Indian English poet of the

sixties is considered as the Indian Ezra Pound for his making India relevant abroad.

He is next to Tagore to convince the western intelligentsia that Indian tradition is not

a single street or a one way street but consists of many connected streets and

neighborhoods. As W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney express their concern for Ireland,

and Black American poets like Ben Okri for Africa, Ramanujan Expresses his deep

concern for India and Hinduism in which he is firmly rooted.” Without A.K

Ramanujan no discussion on Indian English poetry could be complete and

meaningful. Though Ramanujan himself did not like the idea of putting him under

discussion in the light of Indian sensibilities, who himself identified as an Indo-

English poet, it remains yet, incomplete if he is studied and analyzed without it. The

primary essence of his poetry is rooted deep and inseparably in the tradition of Indian

sensibilities. A.K. Ramanujan, the poet and the Anthropologist inherits this tradition

from his family right from his childhood days. The child Ramanujan was influenced

by his father, a famous Professor of Mathematics, S. Krishnaswami, who was known

for his peculiar and deep interest in Sanskrit and Tamil literature. From his educated

mother passed down the knowledge of the Tamil and Kanada novels, while his

16
grandmother enriched him with the Tamil tales. A well known translator of Tamil and

Kanada poems into English, Ramanujan, maintained his touch with Indian culture and

life in spite of his long stay in United States of America as a Professor of linguistics

from 1963 to till his death in 1993. It’s wonderful that his belief and practice in Indian

culture and life had been retained by him unbelievably till his death, even though he

settled permanently in USA.

Ramunajan was alive to the sharp difference between the enriching culture and

tradition of India and the west, and so, his sense of nostalgia got intensified with

passing years. The readers are driven to juxtapose the “Spiritual community-oriented,

tolerant value system of India and the materialistic, individualistic, racist, power-hun-

gry exploitative system of the west” The myth of the white man’s superiority prob-

ably becomes meaningless. And hence, the poet goes back with renewed spirit and

vigour to his people and his country. Therefore, a major theme of Ramanujan’s poetry

has been his obsession with the familial and racial past and memory always plays a

vital and creative role. The formative influence of religion which provided him a

system to know the meaning of life is rich in him because he grew up in a traditional

middle class Southern Hindu Brahmin family. He retained his faith in the Hindu

philosophy of the Unity Consciousness. In his poem ‘Conventions of Despair’

Ramanujan says “I must seek and will find My particular hell in my Hindu Mind”

Ramanujan displays a very sharp and acute historical sensibility in his poems.

Despite his long stay in a foreign country he makes a powerful portrayal of Indian

history. His awareness of the tragic past that he calls the ‘ancient chaos of the

country’, finds expression in his poems like ‘Compensation’ and ‘The Last of the

Princes. He often links his familial experiences with his historical consciousness in

his poems like ‘Conventions of Despair’ and ‘Prayers to Lord Murugan’.

17
Ramanujan’s Historical sensibility in a way portrays the collective nostalgia of the

whole nation, looking back with a mingled attitude of love and hatred, feeling both

attraction and repulsion simultaneously.

Themes of hybridity and transculturation are quite resonating throughout

Ramanujan’s writings. On one hand he brings forth passionately and works for the

reconstruction or retrieval of the fantasies of tradition, and Simultaneously on the

other hand, criticizes the cultural superstitions with an almost jarring realism. These

themes are highlighted most prominently in the poems like "Astronomer" and "Is

There an Indian Way of Thinking?”. "Astronomer" is about his father, Srinivas

Ramanujan, who was a famous mathematician. This poem is an attempt to make sense

of his father's seemingly contradictory image: He was a mathematician, an

astronomer. But he was also a Sanskrit scholar, an expert astrologer. He had two

kinds of visitors: American and English mathematicians who called on him when

they were on a visit to India, and local astrologers, orthodox pundits who wore

splendid gold-embroidered shawls dowered by the Maharaja. The portrayal of this

hibridity becomes even vivid when he says: I (and my generation) was troubled by his

holding together in one brain both astronomy and astrology; I looked for consistency

in him, a consistency he didn't seem to care about, or even think about.

His poem "Chicago Zen," once again exemplifies the theme of transnationalism,

and might be an attempt to imagine himself as another hybrid image. His Self-critical

ironic approach made him juxtapose the Hindu orthodox world with the present day

realities of modern life in his poems.

Ramanujan’s demeanor is truly impressive when he looks at and into things the

way they are without attaching any personal annotations or conclusions to them.

18
Ramanujan’s poetry suggests an entirely novel vision for the expatriate Indian English

poets that their poetry must integrate the necessary verve, augmentation and

continuity. He is able to blend the two cultures together beautifully. He has the

exceptional outlook by virtue of which he is capable of keeping in synergy two

worlds, entirely different in their cultures and dogmas, together in his detached glance

and side by side being completely detached – espousing only the aspects worth taking

and criticizing others those are burdensome in both. His persona is a theatre decked in

occidental backdrops where oriental scenes depicting familial relations in all hues are

staged, and the poet himself is the audience and the critic too, watching and analyzing

with a detached interest. He is a poet who juxtaposes the duality of eastern and

western sensibilities within himself and perfectly arbitrates between the two. Neither

is he an Indian conformist nor a revolutionary modernist advocating westernization-

he is rather an envoy who elucidates the East to the West and vice-versa with perfect

composure.”

There is a vast assortment of themes in his poetry. His gift of portraying

picturesque description is widely reflected in his poems, be it in the simple narration

of the ordinary routine occurrences, or the realistic rendering of unalleviated social

ailments. His poems are abounding in irony, imagery, paradox, assonance and

repetition. Admiring the comprehensive and mature writing style of Ramanujan,

Taqui Ali Mirza writes:

“The terseness of his diction, the consummate skill with which he introduces

rhyme and assonance into his verse, the sharply etched crystallized images and

the disciplined handling of language make Ramanujan one of the most

significant poets in India today.” 7

19
 Ramanujan doesn’t hesitate in criticizing certain superstitious facets of his

religion. For him the Hindu philosophy of non-violence sometimes looks like

cowardice to the poet who has lived in a world known for rationality, dynamism, fast

scientific and technological growth and violence. There is the risk of the standard

degenerating into insensitivity and apathy in real practice. This feeling is portrayed

aptly in the poem “THE HINDOO: he doesn’t hurt a fly or a spider either”. As the

Hindu cannot hurt a fly or a spider, his great grandfather continued to be a helpless

dupe of and quiet witness to the infidelity of his wife.

The spirit

of Great Grandfather, that still man,

untimely witness, timeless eye,

perpetual outsider,

watching as only husbands will

a suspense of nets vibrate

under wife and enemy

In “Obituary” he commemorates the death of his father, and makes satirical

remarks on customs and rituals linked with the cremation of the deceased:

he burned properly

at the cremation

-------------------------

several spinal discs, rough,

some burned to coal, for sons

to pick gingerly

and throw as the priest

20
 said, facing east

where three rivers met

near the railway station; - (Collected Poems 111)

It is often evident in his work that the poet finds his internal world and his roots in

India but he often finds himself uncomfortable in the stereotyped philosophy and

breaks out of these bonds and emerges out as a cosmopolitan. The following lines

very well bring out his internal conflict between his Indian morals and modern

realism that ends up into a revolt:

Her tumbled hair suddenly known

as silk in my angry hand, I shook a little

and took her, behind the laws of my land.

- Still Another View of Grace (CP – P 45)

But Ramanujan is not biased in criticizing Indian ethos only: he equally mocks

and satirizes the western traditions too. He talks about the western motif of modernity

like the advocacy for the freedom to seek out a vent for sexual desires, the medium of

entertainment through the motion pictures and the indifferent pursuit of science like

the protest against nuclear tests. He confesses that he must follow the so-called

modern trends of the west to save himself from being labeled as a foreigner there.

Yes, I know all that. I should be modern.

Marry again. See strippers at the Tease.

Touch Africa. Go to the movies.

Impale a six inch spider

21
 under a lens. Join the test-

ban, or become The Outsider.

Ramanujan’s poetry is often obsessed with physical, mental and emotional

violence, with derangement, and with psychosis. His themes have been fear, anxiety

and despair in quite a large segment of his work. This darkness is prevalent even in

his familial domain. For instance, in ‘Routine Day Sonnet’ the wife cries her heart out

“as if from a crater/ in hell; she hates me. I hate her.” These images of fear and pain

are dominant in his poems like ‘Fear’, ‘pleasure’, ‘A Minor Sacrifice’ ‘Alien’, ‘Zoo

Gardens Revisited’, ‘Son to Father to Son’, ‘At Forty’, ‘Middle Age’ and ‘Looking

and Finding’. His obsession for physical violence is even apparent quite intensely in

his earlier poems like ‘The Opposable Thumb’ that portrays the grandmother having

lost her four fingers during “Her husband’s/ Knifing temper one Sunday morning half

a century ago.”

22
 References

1
Leech, G., Short, M.H. Style in Fiction: A linguistic introduction to English

Fictional prose. London: Longman, 1981. P 13.

2
Ibid. p 15
3
Leech, Geoffrey. A linguistic guide to English Poetry. London: Longman, 1969. p

52
4
Widdowson, H. G. Stylistics and the teaching of literature. London: Longman

Group Ltd., 1975

5
Freeman, D.C. (ed.). Linguistics and literary Style. New York: Holt, Rinehart &

Winston, 1971.
6
Shankarnarayana T. N., Krishnaiah S. A. “Interview with Prof. A. K. Ramanujan”.

Indian English Poetry: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Jaydip singh Dodiya. New

Delhi: Sarup & Sons 2000. P. 87

7
Mirza, Taqi Ali. “A.K. Ramanujan’s Particular Hell.” Indian Poetry in English: A

Critical Assessment. Ed. Vasant A. Shahane and M. Sivaram Krishna. N.p.: The

Macmillan Company of India Ltd., 1980. p 157.

23