Chhayavaad
Chhayavaad refers to neo-romantic Hindi poetry. This period was marked from about 1917 to 1937. Chhayavaad poetry generally leans toward themes of love and nature and a subjective voice expressing an individualistic reappropriation of the Indian tradition in a new form of mysticism. There were many critics of this type of poetry. Scholars criticized the use of excessive decorative language such as rhyme. When some of the later poets of this era took nationalist and social critiquing in their poetry, the golden era of modern Hindi poetry was gradually replaced by social didacticism starting the Contemporary period from 1937 on.
Amrita Bharati is a poet from India that writes in Hindi. She is one of the most gifted and prolific female poets of her generation. She has written seven books of poetry and a volume of prose. Her poetry is a mixture of anger, serenity, and intensity. She is considered a very unique poet that goes deeper than feelings you see from the outside looking in.
Poem: Deep in the Stillness
By: Amrita Bharati
http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/120/Deep_in_the_Stillness
Poem Summary:
The poem Deep in the Stillness by Amrita Bharati is translated from Hindi to English. This poem is about a woman's relationship with a man where he treats her wrong but she continues to come back in search of a life of happiness. The poem says this man threw her like dirt, like she was nothing, as if she were not a human and didn't have a soul. She realizes the thought and gift for possible love is wasted on man and it is her time to do what she wants to become happy and significant. She picks herself up in the end and makes her own way of becoming whole again by patching her emotional wounds putting herself back together piece by piece and doing what she wants with herself.
Poem: Deep in the Stillness
By: Amrita Bharati
http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/120/Deep_in_the_Stillness
Poem Summary:
The poem Deep in the Stillness by Amrita Bharati is translated from Hindi to English. This poem is about a woman's relationship with a man where he treats her wrong but she continues to come back in search of a life of happiness. The poem says this man threw her like dirt, like she was nothing, as if she were not a human and didn't have a soul. She realizes the thought and gift for possible love is wasted on man and it is her time to do what she wants to become happy and significant. She picks herself up in the end and makes her own way of becoming whole again by patching her emotional wounds putting herself back together piece by piece and doing what she wants with herself.
Literary Devices
In this poem the use of similes are to express a comparison to the woman's feelings of the world being torn apart and destroyed by natural disasters. She says "The world was already left behind, like a desert in a sandstorm, like an ocean in a hurricane, like a desolate city. Man, step by step descending, was already left behind." These are similes and her feelings all at once which is another reason this poem has so many deeper meanings because it can be connected to many different things in many different way by many different people. Also at the end of the poem, there is a sort of literary device called a euphemism. "Now the world was either a dream or a sea-flower imagined at the end of the ocean. Deep in the stillness." This is using language that does not out right say what it means. The world was either non existant and dead because she was done with it and dreain she was happy. The stillness throughout the poem is use as a phrase for the calm and the silence in such moments when everything seems to stop and freeze. Therefore giving the experiencer a realizaton of what is happening. Earlier in the poem Bharati says that each time she was thrown as if she were nothing fragments f herself broke of. This is meaning she was hurt and emotionally injured not that literally a piece of her came off of her body. But this is a way of showing how someone can be figuratively broken if they have had enough of abuse and ungreatfullness.