A Comparative Study of Nature and Transience in the Poetry of Toru Dutt and John Keats

Author(s)

Jyoti

Keywords

Toru Dutt, John Keats, Romanticism, Nature and Beauty, Memory and Mortality

Abstract

This paper treats of the poetic connection between Toru Dutt and John Keats, in the light of the comparison of nature, beauty, memory and mortality. Keats was an English Romantic poet in the early 1800s, while Dutt was a late 1800s colonial poet in India; yet both poets employ natural images to examine the fragility of the human condition. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats' song is an imaginative freedom and artistic immortality, whereas in “Our Casuaria Tree,” Dutt's familiar garden tree becomes a memorial for lost loves and a defense against oblivion. The study suggests that both poets are dealing with the transient through an appreciation of beauty and art, and that their approaches to consolation are contrasted. Keats finds his solution to the pain and agony of life in the imagination, music, and sensuous experience. Dutt, on the other hand, is searching for emotional survival in memory, in personal attachment, in the poetic remembrance. The paper also demonstrates the fact that Dutt uses the Romanticism of Keats and projects it onto an Indian cultural and emotional context, giving rise to an original and also indebted towards English Romanticism. The school features a portrait of Toru Dutt, who was the first woman poet in India. There is a portrait of Toru Dutt, the first woman poet of India in the school.