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<p class="paracenter">
<b>HYMN TO DARKNESS </b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> 
Here is a modem poem in Bengali. It is characteristically modern, though perhaps 
not quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">That darkness is not more,
</p>
<p class="para">The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came,
</p>
<p class="para">It is no more there.
</p>
<p class="para">Many are the lights now around the heart
</p>
<p class="para">Arrayed as in a festive illumination. 
Ceaseless now </p>
<p class="para">There is the earth's merry-go-round all the time. 
</p>
<p class="para">But beyond still,
</p>
<p class="para">Outside Time, the mind, even this mind stands
</p>
<p class="para">And sends its call to Thee alone. 
</p>
<p class="para">Yes, the Darkness is there no longer; 
</p>
<p class="para">And yet stretching out both the arms
</p>
<p class="para">My 
mind yearns to reach the Darkness </p>
<p class="para">And itself becomes the Darkness.
</p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Invocation to Darkness has, it appears, become quite fashionable among a certain 
group of modern poets. It is a favourite theme on which many a poet, many a good 
poet has played each in his way, a characteristic variation. Curiously enough, I 
came across about the same time the work of another poet, a French poet, also 
modern and almost modernist and, curiouser still, in the same manner,
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-75</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">a worshipper of Darkness. He is Yves Bonnefoy, originally belonging to the 
school of Jouve, an earlier modem. He speaks of two kinds of Night, one darker 
than the other—the less dark one is our common day with its grey light. The 
other is on the other shore:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Vers l'autre rive encore plus nocturne<sup>1</sup>
	</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
This darker night on the other shore is not illuminated by any light, but there 
is fire there, fire and its flame and the transparency of that flame: here is 
his description of how they stand to each other, that Night and our familiar 
day:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Une torche est portée dans le jour gris, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Le feu déchire le jour. 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Il y a que la 
transparence de la flame </p>
	<p class="para">Amèrement nie le jour.<sup>2</sup>
	</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
But why bitterly? Perhaps the day (the common day) tasted bitter in the mouth of 
the poet.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
The poet has not perhaps the spiritual sense as we in India understand it. He 
speaks in effect of a dark goddess, he calls her
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">
<sup>1</sup> &quot;Towards the other bank in a still darker night.&quot;
</p>
<p class="para">
<sup>2</sup> 
&quot;A torch is held up in the day's grey. 
</p>
<p class="para">
The fire tears rifts in the day. 
</p>
<p class="para">
There's this: the flame's transparence 
</p>
<p class="para">
Bitterly denies the day.&quot; 
</p><p class="para">
</p>
<p class="para">
Page-76</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>Douve profonde et noire<sup>1</sup>
</b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> 
He names her Douve, perhaps in memory of his first master Jouve, and addresses 
her as Sombre Lumière (Dark Light). He evidentiy means his poetic inspiration; 
his vision of the other shore is that of the world of his poetic experiences and 
realisations. But the nature of the contents of that world is very 
characteristic. They are apparendy qualities and objects fundamentally 
spiritual— transparent fire and even motionless silence. Yes, that world is of 
wind and fire (compare our world of Tapas) and yet calm and tranquil. So the 
poet sings:
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Douve sera ton nom au loin parmi les pierres,
</p>
<p class="para"> 
Douve profonde et noire,
</p>
<p class="para"> 
Eau basse irréductible où l'effort se perdra.<sup>2</sup>
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Inspiration, according to the poet, is not the high swell of garrulousness and 
anxious effort. It is the solid bedrock underground when all the surface 
effusions have ebbed away—a shadowy dark strong tranquil repose.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
A modern English poet—Robert Graves—worships a White Goddess. But from the 
description he gives of the lady, she would appear to be more black than white; 
for she seems to be intimately connected with the affairs— that is to say—the 
mysteries—of Hades and Hecate,
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">
<sup>1</sup>&quot;Douve dark and black.&quot; 
</p>
<p class="para">
<sup>2</sup>&quot;Douve shall be your name far off among the stones, Douve dark 
and black, 
</p>
<p class="para">
Irreducible low water where effort shall spend itself.&quot; 
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-77</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">underground worlds and midnight rites. She incarnates as the sow, although a white 
sow, she flows as the sap within plants and rises as passion and lust in man.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
We in India have a dark god and a dark goddess— Krishna and Kali. Krishna is 
dark, his is the deep blue of the sky. Kali is dark, hers is the blackness of 
the earthly night. The Vaishnava poet and saint sang:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Oh, I love black,
	</p>
	<p class="para">For black is the tamal tree, black is Krishna, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Oh, how I love black.
	</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Ramprasad the Bhakta thus speaks of Kali, his dark Mother: the poem itself is 
very dark, that is to say, the meaning is dark, and the style, the phrasing is 
darker still. A literal translation is out of question. A very free rendering is 
only possible:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">I have brooded over it and I am utterly confused;
	</p>
	<p class="para">She in whose name one defies 
dark time, </p>
	<p class="para">She at whose feet lies low the Supreme in his pure 
whiteness </p>
	<p class="para">Why should she herself be black?
	</p>
	<p class="para">Many are the forms of blackness,
	</p>
	<p class="para">But here is a 
very marvel of blackness. </p>
	<p class="para">If you hold it in your heart,
	</p>
	<p class="para"> 
the lotus there shall bloom and burn bright— </p>
	<p class="para">Oh, she is dark and her name is 
Mother Darkness: </p>
	<p class="para">She is blacker than blackness.
	</p>
</blockquote>
<br><p class="para">
Page-78</p>
<hr>
<br>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">But one who has seen that beauty is lost for good, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">He will have no eye for any 
other beauty. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Are the moderns on the same track as these older mystics?
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
But why this panegyric in worship of darkness ? Whence this fascination for 
blackness?
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Our ancient Rishis speak of the supreme Light of lights, the Source of all the 
lights that bum here, the Light that is beyond darkness, on the other shore. 
Darkness is this world, the world of ignorance, our earthly consciousness; this 
is a perception easily understandable. But in the mystic consciousness of a 
kind, darkness and light seem to be interchangeable. Darkness seems to be a form 
of light, nay even of a greater light.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
It is said, the occultists say, that between the light of the day, that is to 
say, the light, of the ordinary consciousness and the higher spiritual light, 
there is an interim world, an intermediate zone of consciousness. When one 
leaves the earthly day, the normal consciousness and goes within and to the 
heights, towards the other Light, one enters at first into a dark region (cf. 
the <i>selva oscura </i>of 
Dante). Physically also, the scientists say today that when you leave the 
earth's atmosphere, from
a certain height you no 
longer see 
the earthly light but you dive 
into a darkness where the sun does not shine in its glory as on earth. You see 
and feel the sunlight again when you approach the sun and are about to be 
consumed in its fires. In the same way, we are told that on the spiritual path 
too, the path of the inner consciousness, when you leave the ordinary</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-79</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">consciousness, when you lose that normal light and yet have not arrived at the 
other higher light you grope in an intermediary region of darkness. You have 
lost the lower knowledge and have not yet gained the higher knowledge, then you 
are in that uncertain world of greyness or darkness. Or it happens also that 
while in the comparatively faint light of the ordinary consciousness, you are 
suddenly confronted with the Superior Light—through some grace perhaps—you 
cannot stand the light and get blinded and see sheer darkness. Again, the 
infinite sky in its fathomless depth appears to the naked eye blue, deep blue, 
blue-black. Light concentrated, solidified, materialised becomes a speck of 
darkness to the human eye. Do we not say today that a particle of matter 
(consolidated darkness) is only a quantum of concentrated light-energy?
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Something of these supraphysical experiences must have entered into the 
consciousness of the modem poets who have also fallen in love with darkness and 
blackness—have become adorers, although they do not know, of <i>Shy&#257;m&#257;</i> 
and <i>Shy&#257;m&#257;.</i></p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Here, for example, is a hymn from the Rig Veda, a whole hymn addressed by Rishi 
Kushika to Night. Listen how the Rishi invokes his black goddess: Night and 
Light are unified—almost one—in his consciousness. The Vedic Rishis considered 
Night as only another form or function of Day—<i>nakto&#7779;asa saman&#257;s&#257; vir&#363;pe</i> — 
Night and Dawn have the same mind although the forms are different.</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-80</p>
<hr>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>Ode to Darkness </b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>Rigveda: X. 127 </b>
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">Night spreads wide, she comes everywhere, a Goddess with shining eyes—she looms 
over these glories as their overlord.(1) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">The Immortal Goddess fills up the Vast, above and below. She compels the 
darkness with her light.(2) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">The Goddess comes and veils her sister, the Dawn and glows through the 
blackness.(3) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">She is now that to us wherein we shall rest even as birds do on a tree.(4)
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">In her repose all habitations, all the footed and winged creatures, even the 
fast racing eagle.(5) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">O Ocean-born Goddess! Smite the wolf, he or she, smite the robber! Garry us 
safely through.(6) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">Black darkness clings to me all around; it stands here firm. O Dawn! clear it 
even as you do my debts. (7) </p>
<br>
<p class="para">
Daughter of Heaven! A Herd of light is this hymn of victory that moves towards 
you. I have made it for your sake. Do thou accept it, O Night.(8) </p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-81</p>
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