About Author:
Kamala Das (1934 - 2009) was educated in Kerala. She was
born in Malabar and as she herself said, “speaks three languages, write in two,
dream in one”. A bilingual writer, she prefers to write Poetry in English and Fiction
in Malayalam. The literary awards she has won includes the Asian Poetry Award
(1963) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (1984).
Her collections of poems are Summer in Calcutta(1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old
Playhouse and other poems (1973), My Story her autobiography, was
published in 1975.
Kamala Das is essentially known for her bold and frank
expression. The prominent features of Kamala Das’ poetry is use of the confessional mode and acute obsession with love. Against the
frustrating emotional experience, guilt and depression expressed in her
autobiography, there is a section of poetry where she writes about an idealized
childhood and of a nostalgic yearning for her grandmother’s Nalpat House
symbolizing freedom, lobe and protection.
About Poem:
The poem “The Old Playhouse” in 30 lines, was written by
Kamala Das. ‘The
Old Playhouse’ is selected from the book with the same title
that deals with Das’ recurrent theme of failure and frustration in love and
marriage. It clearly reveals the plight of a housewife who bewails that her
egocentric and male chauvinist husband has virtually reduced her full-blooded
and aspiring self to a mere entertaining toy. Consequently, the caged wife,
with her stifled and crippled spirit, is helplessly destined to witness the
pathetic transformation of her mind into ‘an old playhouse with all it’s lights
put out’. The network of concrete and evocative imagery and imaginative
symbols transcends an individual’s suffering and makes it a generic experience.
She writes about an idealized childhood and of a
nostalgic yearning for her grandmother’s Nalpat House symbolizing freedom, love
and protection.
‘The Old Playhouse’
Line by Line Poem Summary and Analysis:
You planned to tame a swallow, to hold
her
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
Pathways of the sky.
In
the poem, The Old Playhouse, Kamala Das expresses her disastrous
married life experiences. This poem has a personal touch thus it is a public
protest against her husband. She blames him because he doesn’t think beyond his
sensual gratification on her. Kamala Das symbolizes herself as a domesticated
“Swallow”, a bird, after her marriage.
Her husband put full-stop to her
dreams, caged life a tamed swallow bird. He didn’t care about her happiness and
interests. She was considered as a mere toy for him to quench his sensual
thirst. The poet does not like this, just as she does not like him or his ways.
Being
a caged wife she was put forth to live like his slave, her all ambitions were
put down. She was forced to live in the summer of his love and she
forgot about other beautiful seasons and suppressed to forget her
urge to fly into the endless pathways of her sky of ambitions.
It was not to gather knowledge
Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn
What I was, and by learning, to learn to grow, but every
Lesson you gave was about yourself.
She had wished to learn more about herself,
for that she came to him. She wanted to learn ‘What is she’, and by learning
that she wanted to learn how to grow into a better future. But when she came to
him, it was merely contradictory. The every lesson he gave her was about
himself.
….. You were pleased
With my body's response, its weather, its usual shallow
Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured
Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices.
The above lines are more personal, the Poetess Kamala Das
turns to express male domination her husband shown her, in a more deep way with
some piercing words.
Her husband treated her as a sex toy. He were pleased by
her body’s response and its shape, and the sensual pleasure.
Kamala Das exposes her husband’s wild sexual
nature through these lines – “You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured
yourself into every nook and cranny,” – Husband treated her in
a wild nature and tried to embalm her poor lust by dribbling spittle to her
mouth and every nook and cranny. Her all expectation was a peaceful romantic
life with freedom to fly high in her own way, but what happened is that was
exactly opposite. Her all urge were put down before her self-centered husband.
The poetess needed love and tenderness, security and permanence, for her strong
man but he could not satisfy her on these scores.
…….
You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
Became a dwarf.
(…)
I
mumbled incoherent replies.
Being a wife, she was taught to serve him food and
vitamins at right time. She was always lived under his monstrous ego. His monstrous
ego totally subjugated and turned her into a dwarf as she fully surrendered
to his demands, performing all wifely duty and functions. She became a dwarf
under the heavy weight of his lustful masculinity and monstrous ego. Falling
into the trap of his hypnotic lust, she lost her former stature. She left her
desires behind, since it has totally reduced her and disappointed her. All her
hopes were dashed into pieces: her cheerful spirits disappeared. As a wife under control she always mumbled his
questions with unclear replies.
The summer
Begins to pall. I remember the rudder breezes
Of the fall and the smoke from the burning leaves.
Under the stifling and ‘mechanical’ surroundings of her
husband’s company she has lost her zest for life and is reduced to a passive,
lifeless individual, Again, note the nature imagery – the summer, the rude
breezes of the fall and burning leaves. This reinforces the suffocation of the
woman, aptly symbolized in the ‘smoke’
The
days of happiness came to a grinding halt in her case. She began of feel the
arrival of the autumn for her and the suffocating atmosphere of the burning leaves
and the rising smoke.
…… Your room is
Always lit by artificial lights, your windows always
Shut. Even the air-conditioner helps so little,
All pervasive is the male scent of your breath. The cut flowers
In the vases have begun to smell of human sweat. There is
No more singing, no more dance, my mind is an old
Playhouse with all its lights put out.
The husband becomes the very source of the
pervasive oppression. The man she loved adopts artificial measures to satisfy
himself – ‘artificial lights’ – and grows indifferent and insolent towards her
by keeping his windows shut. But the artificial measures have not helped him in
any way to override his dominating male impulse. Even the air stinks of his
sweat (strongly masculine). He turns her life into a mere playhouse with its
lights put out. The overall impact of all this on her is dejection and
cheerlessness, with no hope of regeneration. She began to feel a great emotional
vacuum and could not enjoy sexual encounters with him. Her singing is gone, her
dance is forsaken, and her mind becomes ‘an old playhouse with all its lights
put out’.
Note
the urban imagery – artificial lights, air-conditioner, cut flowers in the vase
– these point to the unnatural state of her sapless life.
……..
The strong man's technique is
Always the same, he serves his love in lethal doses,
For, love is Narcissus at the water's edge, haunted
By its own lonely face, and yet it must seek at last
An end, a pure, total freedom, it must will the mirrors
To shatter and the kind night to erase the water.
Love becomes sheer lust and acts like a killer. The man adopts a hard line towards her and
serves his love in deadly doses, whereas for her love is self-obsessed and
unenjoyable and yet it seeks its fulfillment in freedom rather than in bondage.
Love for its healthy growth wants to be pure and emotional, and not lustful and
muddy. The expressions like ‘the water edge’ and ‘to erase the water’ signify
sexual consummation between the man and the woman, which the does not like.
Note the irony: love is supposed to be the spirit of life but is here,
the killer.
Narcissus (According to the Greek legend) was a Greek
youth who fell obsessively in love with his own image reflected in a fountain,
thinking it to be the nymph of the place. His fruitless attempts to approach
this beautiful object drove him to despair and death; Narcissism: sexual
gratification found in one’s own body.
The Greek myth symbolizes the fall (destruction) on
account of excessive and obsessive self-love. The ‘lethal’ love between the
husband and the woman is sure to lead too destructive end. The woman, however,
would like to strive against this self-destructive aspect of love and treat it
as a self-realizing agent, winning over the false (mirrored) image of love.
The lustful advance of her man grew distasteful to her
and she took revenge upon him by carving for freedom from his snares and by
seeking shelter in others’ arms.
The poem is written in the first person point of view. The persona in this poem is a woman, who gives an account of her unsatisfactory and disappointing conjugal life with her husband. She compares herself to a swallow and her husband a captor who wanted to tame her and keep her fully under his control by the power of his love- making.
The husband wanted to make her forget all those comforts which she might have enjoyed in her home before being married; but, in addition to that , he wanted also make her forget her very nature and her innate love of freedom by keeping her in a state of subjection to him.
The speaker says that she had come to her husband with a view to developing her own personality. But all she has had from her husband are lesson about him. Her husband, who is a self-centered person, makes love with her and he feels pleased by her bodily response to his love-making. He approves her state of mind and her mood when he makes love to her and he feels pleased by the tremors of her body during the sexual union.
He, however, fails to understand that her response to his love-making is purely physical and, therefore, superficial because she never experiences any feeling of oneness with him. According to the speaker, the notions of love and affection mean nothing to her husband. To him she is nothing but a plaything, a sexual partner and a housewife. In the course of the sexual union, he kisses her very hard, pressing his lips against hers and letting his saliva flow into her mouth. He presses his whole body against hers with great intensity, satisfying his sexual desire in this process.
In this physical union, her husband is
successful as he is able to penetrate every part of her body and make his
bodily fluids mingle with hers. But he never realizes that she is still
emotionally unsatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense, he
completely fails.
*****
Detail Tamil explanation for this poem is given in this below video:
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