Abstract:
S.H. Vatsyayan (who is more known by his pen name ‘Agyeya’), one of the renowned poets of Hindi literature, has penned a collection of poems titled Prison Days and Other Poems based on his experiences in prison during the pre-Independence period in India. The paper attempts to analyse a few poems from this collection to see how the poet reconstructs himself through a powerful attitude of Stoic endurance, tolerance, and resilience. The oppression and sufferings of prison life get well explicated through these poems, but, through a Stoic mindset the speaking persona nurtures, an attitude of resilience, regeneration, and rejuvenation is posed throughout the text. The poems “I Who Am Bound”, “Arrival”, “Bars Facing Bars'', “The Clod”, “Will”, “Resurrection”, and “The Breakers” are analysed in this regard, in order to trace how the speaking persona (the poet himself) redefines himself, identity, and individuality through an affirmation of his anti-hegemonic and anti-establishment stances, which serve as a powerful counter-cultural voice.
Key Words: Stoicism, endurance, toleration, reconstruction, self, resilience
A unique and dynamic expression by the downtrodden, the underprivileged, and heroic martyrs from the insides of dark prison walls, Prison literature captivates us with its extremely naturalistic, true-to-life, and audacious articulations in the form of memoirs, autobiographies, poetry, and fiction. These writings spring from the depths of dungeons or any other kind of confinement and offer first-hand experiences of the prisoners. The deep-seated feelings of the writer – intense grief, boiling anger, or extreme dejection – are poured out as social realistic sagas of suffering, as explorations of one’s soul in the form of an existential search, or as larger philosophical/spiritual reflections on life and death. One of the major strains of this genre is also in tune with resistance-writing, where the prisoners register their dissent and protest against the unjust rule of the State, the bourgeoisie, and the dominant/ suppressing ideology of the establishment in prevalence.
In India, Prison writing has been quite a flowering genre beginning from the mid-1890s to the mid-1940s, as a lot of middle-class educated people began to be imprisoned under the British administration. Lala Lajpat Rai, Sri Aurobindo, Subhas Chandra Bose, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Bhagat Singh are some of the major figures from pre-independent India in this regard. According to S.S. Patil, “Prisoners write to restore a sense of self and world, to reclaim the ‘truth’ from the apartheid lie, to seek empowerment in an oppositional ‘power of writing’ by writing against the official text of imprisonment” (49). Born out of the stark experiences of life, therefore, prison writing holds language as the foremost weapon as in the case of all anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, resistance-writings.
The works of Sachidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan, the acclaimed Hindi poet, critic, and novelist of the twentieth century, popularly known as Agyeya, form a significant part of Prison literature of India. Being one of the strong proponents of New Poetry and Experimentalism, he could create a remarkably unique sphere in Modern Hindi poetry which flowered in the twentieth century. Among his prolific writings, the novel titled Shekhar: A Life has won the most critical acclaim for its true portrayal of life experiences inside the prison as it was penned when he was under arrest for more than two years. Prison Days and Other Poems, his popular anthology which contains poems written between 1933 and 1938, was first published in 1946. The anthology is a testimony not just to the emotional turbulence the writer had to experience during his prison-life, but also to the immense sense of endurance, hope, and survival he carries along.
Before analysing the poems, the philosophy of Stoicism needs to be explicated in brief. Stoicism is a school of thought which was founded by Zeno of Citium under the influence of the philosophies of Socrates and the school of Cynicism around c. 300 B.C.E. and it lasted until the second century A.D. Various intersections with Epicureans, Academics, and Skeptics had taken place in course of time, but its primary focus has always been on the notion of virtue and its central role in governing one’s happiness. Spanning over three arenas – ethics, logic, and physics (theory of nature) – the philosophy engages with the concepts of God, Destiny, reason, emotion, virtue, vice, and curiously clubs the ‘material’ (body) and the ‘spiritual’ (soul), intensely favouring an opposition of any kind of dualism between them.
According to A.R.C. Duncan, “The key to the Stoic ethics lies in the doctrine that the whole universe, every event in it, is controlled and directed by Destiny, Reason, or Providence, and further doctrine that the soul of man is a spark of that superfine fiery reason which is God” (133). Acceptance of this active principle or destiny through the employment of one’s will is the core concern of the Stoic ethical thought. Duncan further elaborates:
In the Stoic universe, however, one thing and one thing only is within our power- our will. True happiness therefore will consist in making our will conform to the course of events, in accepting by a basic act of choice what Destiny has in store for us. If a man does that, then nothing can possibly disturb him, for he will have reached a state of inner tranquillity…. such a doctrine, endeavouring to lift men above the insecurities of ordinary human life, …did have a powerful appeal.” (133-134)
This paradox of power granted to Destiny along with immense belief in human will lies at the heart of Stoic philosophy. It is the virtue of self-control and endurance obtained through one’s choice or will of accepting the Destiny that drives the philosophy; for, according to the Stoics, feelings or emotions – which they called “irrational disturbance of the soul” and as “desire or impulse in excess” (Duncan 135) - should not be allowed to overpower one’s reason or course of action. Despite the acceptance of fate or destiny, appropriate action or performance of one’s duty is a significant point of concern in the Stoic line of thought.
What also forms a pivotal subject of discussion in Stoicism is the concept of toleration. In his discussion of the use of the term tolerantia, Rainer Forst finds out that Cicero employs it to refer to “the endurance of what befalls one” and Seneca in his Epistulae Morales uses it to mark its virtuous characteristic (qtd in Lombardini 643). As John Lombardini puts it, the term indicates the quality of endurance which the Stoics possess and “is connected with the virtue of courage” (644). The Roman Stoics, especially Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius speak of the virtue of endurance this way. The concept of endurance of adversities or catastrophes is underscored as a fine aspect of a morally virtuous man and Seneca lists out various examples from history, like that of Cato, Marcus Antonius, Epicurus and so on (qtd in Lombardini 650-651) to explicate his idea of the same. It is the judgments of the living circumstances that serve as the fundamental act of determining one’s virtue and happiness. Lombardini also makes a valid observation about the presence of an acceptance component and an objection component in the virtue of toleration (659). He states that both Cicero and Seneca value tolerantia in this way.
In analysing the selected poems from Agyeya’s collection, this paper attempts at exploring the operation of the above-stated Stoic philosophy, with specific reference to the aspects of toleration or endurance, virtue, and happiness. Seven poems from this collection are studied to find out how they serve as expressions of individualism, Stoicism, and resilience by forming a trajectory, where, from a state of acceptance of the destiny or fate or available circumstances, a movement through endurance results in a renewal, rejuvenation, and reconstruction of the speaker’s identity and selfhood. It would also focus on the way these poems become powerful counter-cultural expressions – the individual against the bourgeois, colonial, capitalist powers; the man against the colonial, oppressive regime of the ‘State’.
“I Who Am Bound”, a short poem of ten lines, strikes the readers with its incomparable sense of survivalism, boundless potency, and positive outlook amidst adversities. The tension of the poem lies in the collusion of the antithetical ideas of liberation and imprisonment. It opens with the speaker singing, “I who am bound/ Sing joyously of freedom” and takes along the ideals of endurance and fortitude. The first part of the poem is in tune with the above-mentioned Stoic attitude of acceptance of the present situation, embracing the time as it is, and it later moves to encompass the virtue of toleration or endurance, which gradually turns out to be the defining factor of the man’s happiness. The speaker musters up courage by conceiving the shackles that bind him as “only symbols of your [his] brothers’ freedom.” The laudable traits of sacrifice, compassion, and pure humanity are evident here. This line marks the voice of a patriot, a martyr, who had relentlessly fought against the exploitative, oppressive forces to salvage a larger suffering community. This evidently marks his transformation from a state of acceptance or submission to destiny to a conscious and deliberate act of redefining the self by imbibing immense positivity through self-will. The Stoic virtue of tolerance characterises this line.
The poet then addresses the oppressors – the imperial, bourgeoise, dictatorial powers/rulers – who victimise and silence dissenting voices and anti-authoritarian forces. The man addresses the dominant powers as ‘you’ who stand outside the prison and who keep roaring, “We must hold him/ Captive.” According to the speaking persona, it is the fear that the tyrannical authorities breed – fear of sabotage or disruption of power - that leads them to the violent suppression and forceful imprisonment of fighters and patriots like him. The poem ends with this call of retaliation against his oppressors.
One can note that amidst unfavourable circumstances, the man, with sturdiness of mind and self-will, casts his opponents as fearful, weak, and powerless, and reinstates his lost confidence and courage. How the man moulds and builds a selfhood rooted in resilience and resurrection through endurance/tolerance is conspicuous in the poem and is truly a paragon of the Stoic philosophy.
“Arrival” is the second poem in the collection that portrays the zest and vigour of the speaking persona who strives to break the fetters of power that engirdle, oppress, and destruct his soul. The writer projects the suffering and agony that he experienced inside the prison through the metaphor of iron gates. But instead of the usual wailing, helpless face of a prisoner, what one could see in the poem is the spirit of resilience and survival. The person amasses strength and looks forward to a bright future, where he will be free from all forces of tyranny and power.
It begins with the stifling and subduing image of the iron gates that stand as great blockades of humanity and human values:
Iron gates swung to, unseen,
Invisible manacles clanged and grated,
I did not see your face –
But the tears in my eyes knew you
For a brother.
Here, the iron gates symbolically stand for the suppressive, colonial forces around, that destroy and destruct the self of the speaker. The person who is addressed here is a fellow prisoner, who might also have got arrested for the same reason as that of the speaker. The brotherhood and camaraderie get established through the image of ‘tears’ that stands for the recognition and happiness-in-pain situation shared by them. Inside the horrifying prison walls, “There were men there who had been involved in killing, men known as dacoits and thieves, but all of us were bound together in that sorrow-laden world of prison, between us there existed a kinship of spirit” (Nehru). The initial image has a negative force that brings the hurdles the persona has before him – the terror of the state that beats down individual freedom, the right to voice resistance, and the right or freedom to ‘see’ (the persona is bound by sole darkness) – but later, these images give way for a strain of positivity and potency. Thus, from the initial image of a shattered self, an acceptance of fate, the poem gradually surges towards a reconstruction of the self.
It is the Stoic acceptance of destiny that gets reflected when the speaker sings out loud, “We have no power”. The reality of his inability to resist or protest against the colonial powers who exploit the natives by the use of military and political strength, is underscored here. The transition from the individual ‘I’ to ‘We’ that follows this admission is quite notable. The poem that begins with the voice of the individual speaker shifts to a voice of togetherness, communality, and oneness. This is a strong element in the path towards self-realisation and a building up of the destructed self. The speaker gains immense positive strength from this perception. Just after stating that they are powerless, the Stoic strength is invoked through the lines, “Our strength is in our uplifted hands-/ Hands seeking, not beseeching”, which testifies to the operation of absolute self-will. The hands, as a synecdoche, are imagined as ‘seeking’ a new future (and not ‘beseeching’ or begging for help from the superior powers which would be a mark of submission and subordination) that shows the power of endurance and resilience.
The reality but dawns on the speaker again as is seen in the line that follows – “Hands on which they have put iron shackles” – which once again underscores the attitude of Stoicism, where, instead of foregoing the harshness of reality and blindly following a dream, there is a brave acceptance of it. The real strength and spirit of endurance, thus, peaks in the closing lines of the poem:
They can shut the gates on us.
But beyond the bars
Remember, stars will always shine.
It is in them that victory
Shall be ours, brother,
Yours and mine.
The same vein of brotherhood and oneness could be seen in these closing lines. The hope, that even if the bars create fetters around one, beyond them there is another door waiting to be opened, another dawn waiting to be broken, sustains throughout the poem.
This potency to preserve the face of audacity and boldness by accepting the harsh reality but without ever displaying it as a weakness, underlies the essence of Stoicism. The persona dreams of achieving triumph– indicated by the image of the stars – and keeps it as a promising aim before the readers. From the slightly subduing image of acceptance of destiny at the beginning, the poem shifts to a spirit of reconstruction by the end, favoured by the Stoic virtues of tolerance, emotional self-control, and resilience.
“Bars Facing Bars” is another poem penned in the same strain as that of “Arrival”. It is presented in the form of addressing a co-prisoner and conveys the apprehension and angst of the speaker about leading a life of subordination and entrapment. The speaker identifies with the prisoner who is in the cell in front of him and knits a kinship with him. Similar to the sense of identification and harmony that is formed between people who suffer alike, here too, a poignant feeling of brotherhood emerges between the prisoners, who are the victims of the oppressive regime of the government:
I do not see your face, stranger.
You are far.
If I sang to you
You would not hear my voice;
If I waved my arms to you
You would not see it for the sun in your eye.
Even the person in the cell nearby is a ‘stranger’ to him indicating the horrifying prison atmosphere that stifles all good sense of humanity and compassion. The person close-by is seen as ‘far’ from him. Singing is what the speaker does that stands for the most powerful form of self-expression. The speaking persona realises that, though he voices his pain and pangs through songs that are the products of his burning soul, they do not reach out to others. He feels that he could not provide any solace to other suffering souls because of the impediments constructed by the prison life. The dreadful and daunting prison life deprives one of all future hopes, desires, and expectations as gradually dejection catches hold of the lives inside. Inability to communicate and inability to feel for or identify with the other, here, mark the broken state of the self. Still, the speaking persona finds a ray of hope that is evident in the way he attempts to build a relationship with his fellow-prisoner. “Yet with every throb of my heart a voice seems to call-/ ‘His heart also beats’” is the recognition that the man gains. Similar to the previous poem, this sense of feeling of oneness, of brotherhood, serves as a fillip to the reconstruction and realisation of the poetic self.
After having brought in a series of images of negativity and uneasiness and accepting the reality of his present condition, the speaker looks forward to building a bright future. The spirit of resilience and survival the speaker displays even when the air around suffocates and strangles his soul is quite noteworthy. The philosophical thought about life presented in the last stanza stays a testament to the Stoic spirit of resurrection in him:
Life is all bars facing bars,
But if every morning with every heartbeat
We could fill with the knowledge
That to the same rhythm
Another’s also beats –
Ah! would the glad red sun not always shine
Into the morning of Eternity?
In this final stanza, one could see the transition from ‘I’ to ‘We’, as in the earlier poem. The state of being ‘human’ in its strict sense of being compassionate and kind is the greatest knowledge of all which the speaker takes as a cure for all his grief. The rejuvenating image of the ‘glad red sun’ shining ‘into the morning of Eternity’ marks the profound optimism, hope, and expectation the speaking persona has gathered.
Similar to the poem “Arrival”, here also, one could see the transition of the self of the speaker in a particular pattern. The Stoic mind is in power here too, where, though initially the stark realities of prison life are iterated, instead of succumbing or surrendering to those adverse circumstances, immense strength is gained through the virtue of endurance. Thus, the poem which began with a destructed poetic self could be seen as gearing up with great zest and vigour towards a reconstruction of the poetic self.
In another poem titled “The Clod”, the persona talks of the brutal exploitation he had to undergo under the clutches of authoritarian, tyrannical colonists and also of his Stoic perseverance to remould and reshape his life, which launches him on the path towards self-realisation. The speaker imagines himself to be ‘clay’- that stands for the utmost rawness, mundanity, and transience or impermanence of life along with the Biblical allusion to the human body as clay – who is “in God’s unformed nakedness”. The clay here also stands for Indianness, the true native soul and self of the speaker, that he wishes to be moulded and shaped into a useful form for serving the poor (that stays close to God), but in reality, gets exploited under the oppressive regime of the British government. Initially, the clay marks the point of origin of life and the speaker views himself in the purest, pristine form of existence, unmoulded or unshaped into any form. The lines that follow this are:
You will mould me into shape
And make of me a vase
White with a deep violet flush and lines of gold:
Of a soft cool curve for the lips of a queen.
Here, the speaker imagines that he will be forced to serve the citadels of power and luxury by the oppressive regime. The queen stands for colonial power, pomp, and pride and the speaker stands as a representative of the native Indians, who were taken advantage of and exploited by the former. The ‘you’ to whom these lines are addressed are the authoritarian, sceptre-holders of the colonial era in India who aimed at making the colonised conform to their dictates. His dissatisfaction is clear from the lines, “For the lips of a queen/ But not for the foot of a cluster of moss”. Here, the protest at not being useful for the real suffering Indian mass by being mere puppets in the hands of the powerful, is emphatically conveyed by juxtaposing the images of the ‘lips of the queen’ and ‘the foot of a cluster of moss’ (that stands for the poor, downtrodden section of the society). The clay (which is his body, his self) moulded to serve the queen’s lips seems to him “Clothed and painted” – that shows artificiality and lack of genuineness – and thus ‘dead’, with the final word indicating the death of the self or the shattered state of the self.
The second and last stanza of the poem brings in a strong sense of resilience and regeneration. The speaker sees himself as full of “living urge” that shows the tireless passion and zest, and this is juxtaposed with the image of a new-born plant. Stating that, “A queen’s lips breathe not life”, he displays his indignation at the pointlessness of serving the rich, bourgeois sects, rather than being useful for the suffering, poor masses of the country. From the realisation that he must stop being a puppet in the hands of the colonial powers, the poem ends on a note of self-pride and a reconstruction of the weakened self. The lines:
I am clay,
I am savage and naked,
But being clay I am all Earth
I am father and mother,
I am the Original
Replete with self-pride, as evident in the repeated assertive use of ‘I’, voice layered meanings. By saying that “I am savage”, he does accept the identity – even though ‘savage’ is a colonial strategy of branding the colonised as ‘uncivilized’ – of his native birth and discards the so-called ‘civilized’ white culture. The ‘savage’ also brings in the native spirit of standing close to nature. He amasses strength by tracing his roots to the prime origins of any birth – father and mother – and by seeing himself as embodying the entire universal spirit, as omnipresent in the cosmos. The speaker sees himself as ‘the Original’, the universal and transcendental spirit, and gathers strength through spirituality. The final lines - “Come not to me with your alien pride, / I have my own”- display the tone of a challenge, protest, and opposition along with a strong self-assertive attitude. This is a remarkable stand of individualism, self-assertion, and self-realisation lashed out at the alien, colonial forces.
Similar to the previous poems, this one also exhibits a spirit of resilience through Stoicism. On the one hand, there is an acceptance of the present state of affairs – his inability to find his real self, to identify with the common people around as he gets subjected to the whims and fancies of those in power – on the other hand, the person gains even more zest and vigour that comes out of his self-will, where, an endurance of all hardships is gratified without any sentimental, outward display of the same. Thus, by the end, there is a reconstruction of the self that takes on from the initial state of shattered individualism.
“Will” is a four-lined poem that holds a powerful sense of survival and sustenance at its heart. It proffers a piece of philosophy, a universalized thought on life throwing light on the immense zest and vigour a man needs to cultivate in his lifetime. It is presented this way:
Fate kills:
But man has the wherewithal to survive and defy it.
You can pass under a boulder,
The boulder cannot pass over you.
Usually, the word ‘fate’ is used when one comes across negative, unpleasing circumstances, and it demands a submission to an uncontrollable, greater force of destiny, where human judgements and actions go vain and pointless. The notion of ‘fate’ always stays as a Damocles’ sword that thwarts our hopes, desires, and expectations as it is taken for granted that certain things are bound to happen in certain ways. Here, instead of succumbing to or surrendering before fate, the speaking persona amasses a great amount of self-will to fight against all adverse energies.
Stoicism, undoubtedly, is the driving force of these couplets. In the first couplet, it begins with the acceptance of nature and the way of life as it is, but poses a fighting face by projecting the man’s capacity of defying or even overpowering it by his will and choice. Like the speaker who wages a war of individualism, where he, the native force, an individual, is in opposition to the larger power of the State or the colonists, here, the image of the man fighting fate by asserting his existential belief that one’s own actions (and not any greater force’s control) determine one’s life is brought in. The second couplet also follows the pattern. The ‘boulder’ stands either for the larger, universal force (like destiny) at whose mercy humans are always placed or for the ‘terror of the State’ (the colonial power-symbol) that suppresses individual forces like the speaker in prison. But the indomitable human spirit and exercise of self-will is what gets reflected in the line, “the boulder cannot pass over you”. The assertive ending thus exemplifies the dauntless, unfaltering, steadfast self of the speaker.
“Will” is truly another powerful example of the resilient spirit of the speaking persona. The way the speaker-self strives to rise up from his crushed state of existence by realising the endless power of the mind is evident throughout the poem. The regeneration of the self through an ardent Stoic view of life thus gets gratified through this poetic expression.
In “Resurrection”, the ninth poem in the collection, as the title itself indicates, the resurrection of the speaker-self is depicted. In the poem, ‘heart’ appears as the symbol of resurrection. The poet, in the beginning, talks about a tradition he has heard about, where, when a person dies, the body will be burned to ashes and the heart will be buried in the hope of resurrection. He then goes on to state that his fate should also be likewise, whereby he demands his heart to be buried:
Let me die
On the cross,
In the fire,
…
Only let the work that was my heart
Lie buried….
The strain of Stoicism that leads to an actualisation of the self is quite evident in the poem. The speaking persona accepts that death is a destroyer of all, and the consciousness about life as a fleeting reality exists throughout. He takes all the essence of his work and metaphorically conceives it to be his heart, that he wishes to bury, which, though forgotten, is expected to resurrect later. Here, one can note that the poem gains a spiritual dimension. By saying that the rest of the body can be burned except the heart, it stresses upon the concepts of the irrelevant transient, fleeting outer body and the deathless soul (which is superior to the body and will be born again in a different body) that form part of the Eastern spirituality. The heart, that stands for the mind, is evoked as a part of gaining resilience through the spiritual power of the inner mind. The heart, “Buried and bleeding”, is imagined as “waiting/…toward what resurrection unconceived.”
The way he envisions his resurrection with a profound positivity is quite notable. Even when he accepts that his heart that is buried will be forgotten, the hope he breeds that strives for a new life, a regeneration, does underscore the spirit of Stoic resilience. Like the previous poems, in “Resurrection”, the reformation of the debilitated poetic self acts out powerfully. By bringing in the image of the heart, the spiritual power of the mind is also evoked that leads the speaker towards self-fulfilment and self-realisation.
“The Breakers” is the final poem for analysis and it offers us a positive and constructive statement on suffering by nullifying and negating the baggage of pity, sympathy, and tales of torment that are usually associated with it. The speaker exalts the ‘myth’ of suffering as the purest, loftiest, and grandest of all other myths associated with love and God. The poem carries the strain of acceptance of reality with regard to wars, revolts, and martyrdom, at the same time proposes the idea that all kinds of suffering have only contributed to the strengthening and reinstatement of certain greater ideals, and fulfilment of certain higher aims for the greater wellbeing of a society.
Even though any rebellion or mutiny or protest aims at a higher reason with a larger society in vision, and each such act marks not just the destruction of an erstwhile, degenerated, and outdated tradition but also the birth of a revolutionary thought and way of living, the speaker admits that, “…behind every tradition broken was a life lost.” “A thousand voices tell me we have failed, / I have not the heart to deny” is how Stoic acceptance goes. The speaker grows pensive about the tragic reality of loss of lives in various rebellions against the establishment or imperial powers, and out of an honest appraisal, opens up that they have not contributed to any noble act of ‘nation-construction’ or ‘renewal of faith’ but only to the rekindling of a ‘myth’, which is the “myth of suffering.” According to him, this myth occupies a central position, exalted even above the other myths of God (“a myth that fired the old martyrs”) and love (through which Buddha could conquer the world) that have been in circulation in the public realm for ages. The myth of suffering, says the man, shall give the world three invaluable ideals: equality, fraternity, and liberty. The poem, thus, ends with the assertion of this belief in the birth of an ideal world through an achievement of these higher values.
Here, one can note that the persona succeeds in transforming the adverse circumstances – the stark reality of loss of lives and the tragedy of any rebellion resulting in ceaseless suffering – into a favourable, beneficial framework of idealism, nobility, and humanitarianism by uplifting himself through self-will and toleration. Similar to all the discussed poems, “The Breakers” also exemplifies the Stoic ideals and beliefs. The poem marks a passage from a pure acceptance of reality to a blissful, composed state of mind, where the speaker remoulds and rejuvenates himself through the virtue of endurance.
The selected poems from the collection Prison Days and Other Poems exemplify the way the speaker reconstructs himself through a spirit of resilience amidst the negative and adverse prison ambience. The poems encompass the ideals of endurance/toleration (with its dualistic components of acceptance and objection) and emotional-control through the employment of self-will in coping with the circumstances, which leads the speaking persona to achieve a state of composure, poise, and unparalleled happiness. It was also found out that, in some of the poems, the individualistic ‘I’ projected forth gradually becomes a communal ‘we’, which denotes the togetherness, unity, and camaraderie of the suppressed sect rising against the ‘terror of the state’. The Stoicism, the spirit of survival, and resilience that the speaking persona breeds by identifying himself with the larger, universal power of nature or realising the inner, spiritual power of the mind, along with the ability to build a sense of communality, could be seen as the essence of the poems. According to Patil, “The best writings are those which expose the inner journey of the self and depict the inner struggles of the person” (56). In this sense, Prison Days and Other Poems remains one of the excellent pieces of prison literature.
Works Cited
- Agyeya. Prison Days and Other Poems. N.p.: Penguin, n.d. Google Books. Web. 2 Apr. 2021.
- ---. “I Who Am Bound.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “Arrival.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “Bars Facing Bars.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “The Clod.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “Will.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “Resurrection.” Agyeya N.pag.
- ---. “The Breakers.” Agyeya N.pag.
- Duncan, A.R.C. “The Stoic View of Life.” Phoenix 6.4 (Winter 1952):123-138. JSTOR. Web. 20 Apr. 2021.
- Lambordini, John. “Stoicism and the Virtue of Toleration.” History of Political Thought 36.1 (Winter 2015): 643-669. JSTOR. Web. 20 Apr. 2021.
- Nehru, Jawaharlal. Foreword. Agyeya N.pag.
- Patil, S. S. “Socio-Political Perspectives in Indian Prison Writings in English.” Diss. Karnatak University, 2012. Shodhganga. Web. 10 Apr. 2021.