-Anup Joshi
Futility
and Hollowness of Modern Life in Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” and Sherchan’s “We”
This
paper makes a comparative thematic study of the poem “The Hollow Men” written
by English Modernist poet T.S. Elliot with the poem “We” composed by Nepalese
Modernist Poet Bhupi Sherchan. Though Sherchan wrote his poem a half century
after Eliot, we can find similar ethos of time in both the poems as modernism
arrived later in case of Nepalese society. As an influence of Western Literary
movements and extravagant city life, many Nepalese poets imported West based
Modernist ideas in their poems during that time. Eliot, being a forefront
English poet of the twentieth century, his poems have widely inspired Nepali
writers. As Hutt observes in Sherchan’s fellow poet Bairagi Kainla’s poem "People Shopping at a Weekly Market",
“The poem's penultimate verse, in
which the line [Oh death went
empty-handed from the market today] is repeated three
times, is surely imitative of Eliot's "The Hollow Men" [This is the
way the world ends]” (101). Alike “The Hollow Men”, “We” also has the plural
first person speakers “We” and in both the poems, “We” are ululating to express
the futility and hollowness of modern life at the same time are searching for a
safer way out.
When Eliot was writing his poem in 1925, World
War I had just ended accompanied by the millions of casualties. Along with the
advent of science and technology, warfare was centered on the use of poison gas
and demonic modern weapons. Due to the gruesomeness of war, humanity was in
peril and the human values, religion, spirituality and tradition was doomed.
Everything was barren and impotent as Eliot best presents in his poem
“Wasteland”. As an effect, Eliot claims “We are the hollow men” (1). The
humanity was devoid of feelings and intuitions. There was cavity inside
people’s heart, brain and they could neither sense nor think. Multitudes of people
were killing each other and there was no morality with them. In the line that
follows, the speakers paradoxically announce “We are the stuffed men” (2) and
these men are stuffed with “straw” (4) which is a dead imagery. They lack
vitality of life and are gorged with arrogance and indifference to each other.
These are pack of fragile and insensitive zombies. As Miller puts it,
The hollow men are walking corpses and their
emptiness is the vacuity of pure mind detached from any reality. They are cut
off from one another. Their voices are whispers, "quiet and
meaningless"...They are detached from nature, and live in a place which is
devoid of any spiritual presence, a "cactus land," a "valley of
dying stars," hollow like the men themselves (par 1).
The poem portrays the fragmented world of hollow men as full of broken
images, “broken glass” (9), “broken column” (23), “broken stone” (51), “broken
jaw” (56). Similarly, everything is dry there; “dried voices” (5), “dry grass”
(8), “dry cellar” (10). The whole
landscape is deserted and only living thing that grows there is “cactus” (40),
which is a plant that sprouts devoid of water and is definitely not a pleasant
plant to have. Cactus plant has borne “prickly pear” (70) but it is also not a
fruit one enjoys. Whenever ideas try to convert into reality or a conception
seeks its way towards creation, there “falls the shadow” (80). This obstructive
shadow which is an emblem for the abyss of modern human heart, is the recurring
imagery in Hollow Men’s world.
The inhabitants of
Sherchan’s world are mostly corrupted by their pride. Throughout the poem, the
speaker leads us to the disillusionment of the futility of their pride, “However much we raise ourselves up/ However much we run here and there/ However
loud we roar/ However, deep within, we
are hollow” (24-27). During
the 1960s, when the poem was published, Nepalese were adopting modern
materialistic life and the intellectuals were blind with eccentricity of their
knowledge. But from within, they were hollow, impotent. So however much they
pretended to have raised up, their “superficial
height is false, it's a delusion” (32). However much they roar and boast they
are the most discerning people, their “roar carries no more
weight than the hiss of an
ember thrown into water.” (28-29). Alike Eliot’s poem, the hollowness of
Nepalese society has also emerged
from the excessive arrogance, pride and abandonment of the inner spirituality.
For Eliot, the main cause of futility and forlornness of
modern life is lack of vision. The fragile hollow-men are stuck in purgatory
and cannot redeem themselves. However much they attempt to supplicate God by
bringing forth Lord’s Prayer, they cannot utter the complete prayer. Their
prayers are also fragmented, “For Thine is/ Life is / For Thine is the”
(91-93). Due to the selfishness and enmity with each other, they have lost
their eyes, heart and mind. They cannot distinct right from wrong. They are
driven by greed and lust. “The eyes are not here/ There are no eyes here/In
this hollow valley/this broken jaw of our lost kingdom” (52-56). The people
have way before lost their kingdom of God which used to shower them with
spirituality and morality. As Stolarek analyses, Eliot depicts “the inhabitants
of modern world as invisible and inaudible, half alive, partly humans and
partly extraterrestrial beings, alienated and estranged” (par 9) in “The Hollow
Men”. Similarly, Sherchan also laments over the ideal past and claims the
modern extravagant life to be the cause of the hollowness. We “Have
lost the memory of our own past/ We have
forgotten the common stature of man/ We have forgotten the stature of the
common man” (46-48). When most of the Nepalese people resided in villages with
their common occupation as farming, they had communal life and sense of
morality was prevalent among them. But with emerging cities, people became
inclined towards individualism and forgot their past. They avoided the
spiritual and moral lessons handed over by their predecessor. Intoxicated with
vanity and smugness, “we” became hollow from inside. Similar to the Eliot’s
hollow men who “whisper together” (6) “quiet and meaningless” (7), Sherchan’s
“we” are also dumb. They pretend to be brave but are dumb inside. They are “never able to be brave without being dumb”
(83).
To plunge out of the
futile and absurd life, both the poems offer certain safe ways out. As
Sherchan’s poem is lucidly ironical, it seems more exquisite in offering solution.
Once people denounce their hypocrisy and find remedy for their vanity, they
might be redeemed. “We are just feet which run, which walk, which stand/Merely
at the direction of someone else”. People have become void because they do
everything on insistence of others and do not think for themselves. They are
mere the “old pieces for the table top game of ‘ricochet’” (75) and require
players to hit them with a 'striker'. “We are less like human beings and more
like pawns” (80). The speakers of the poem cannot do anything on their own
accord, they are just puppets and need someone to order them to do something.
So, the pride they exhibit is fake, unreal. Once people revive their self and
vision, they might revive humanity. At the last section of the poem, the poet
becomes optimistic, “We are
nothing, and perhaps that's why we are something!” (139). People should realize
their hollowness and act for a spiritual or moral renaissance.
On the other hand,
Eliot poem’s is very subtle in implication. The poet does not use radiant
language and manifests his idea in scatters. His bunch of hollow men are
wandering aimlessly around the cactus land by the beach of tumid Styx river,
which is the gateway to heaven. He does not mention the word ‘heaven’
explicitly in poem, but refers it by “death’s dream kingdom” (20) appearing
repetitively in poem. The time is given as “at five o’clock in the morning”
(71) which is the time of resurrection of Jesus in Bible. The hollow men make
it clear that “unless/ the eyes reappear/ As the perpetual star/ Multifoliate
rose…The hope only/ Of empty men” (61-67). So once the vision reappears among
the fragile men enabling them to think and feel with moral and spiritual
realization, they will be resurrected. So, amidst all the fragmented and
cynical imageries, we can find some rays of hope.
Structurally too, we
can find many similarities between the two poems which overall contribute to
the theme of the poem. Both are written in free verse and are divided in many
sections, “We” is divided into seven sections whereas “The Hollow Men” is
written in five parts. Before Eliot, poems were written in verse with meter and
rhyming but he shattered the convention and chose new way of expressing. Both
the poems are known for simplicity and style of free verse. When the classical
poets were deifying the metanarratives of rationality and greatness of God or
human being, they deployed grand epic verses. But Sherchan and Eliot’s poems
embody the futility and hollowness of human life so they have distorted the
conventional style to effectively epitomize the plight of modern hollow life.
As Hutt alludes, “So that
Sherchan’s poems could be readily understood, he developed a style of Nepali
almost totally devoid of the Sanskrit-derived vocabulary that filled the poetry
of earlier writers, such as Lekhnath and Devkota. Sherchan also rejected the
idea of metrical verse out of hand” (122). Furthermore, Alike Eliot who brings allusions
from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and
many biblical references, Sherchan also drags references from Mahabharata and
Gulliver’s Travel. The poems come to overlap with each other in verities of
ways.
To conclude, both the
poems of Eliot and Sherchan exhibit the futility and hollowness of modern life.
Like Sherchan proclaims, “We are the men of Lilliput” (67). Our assumed height
is apparent and is mere delusion of our vanity. Due to backwardness in science
and technology, Nepalese society leaped towards the age of modernity later than
that of English society. Eliot is pioneer of Modernism in English Literature
and Sherchan holds similar position in Modern Nepali Literature. In a way, we
can note Eliot’s influence on Sherchan while writing the poem “We” as during
the advent of Modernism, Nepalese poets were highly influenced by Western
Literature and T.S Eliot was one of their favorite. However, both the poems
were the product of the materialistic degenerated time where the values of the
society were in ruins. Though overall themes of the poems resemble each other,
they vary in approach. Sherchan’s poem is ironic and satirizes the assumed
pride of human beings. In his poem, there is a great difference between the
appearance and reality of modern human beings. The “We”s show themselves as
stuffed being, but are hollow from inside. Whereas Eliot’s imagist poem is much
subtle and traces the complete picture of modern life with particular settings
and vivid details. He furthermore urges for the revival of religion, church and
spirituality in a suggestive way. His representation is more bizarre and
terrifying in comparison to Sherchan’s sarcastic tone.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men”. All Poetry. 14 Aug. Web.
<https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men>
Hutt, Michael James. Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to
Modern Nepali
Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991. Print.
Miller, J. Hillis. “On “The Hollow Men”. University of Illinois. 14
Aug. Web.
<http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/hollow.htm>
Sharma, Tara Nath. “We/Bhupi Sherchan”. Online Sahitya. 14 Aug.
Web.
<http://www.onlinesahitya.com/we-nepali-poem-bhupi-traranath-sharma-translation>
Stolarek, Joanna. “Quest for values in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’
and ‘Ash Wednesday”.
Academia. 14 Aug. Web.
<https://www.academia.edu/8101912/Quest_for_values_in_T._S._Eliot_s_The_Hollo
w_Men_and_Ash_Wednesday>
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