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allahabad India
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Aug 24, 2010 06:24 PM 7767 Views
(Updated Aug 24, 2010 06:26 PM)

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Book Review(from Meerut


Journal of Comparative Literature and Language, II, 2(1989), pp. 60-66.


Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate*,


Delhi: Oxford University


Press, 1989, pp. 307, Rs. 75/-


Vikram Seth(b. 1952) the Sahitya Akademi award winner for his The Golden Gate* was studying economics


at Stanford University, California when he composed this novel in


verse. His mother is a judge in Delhi High Court and the father is a leather


technologist in Calcutta.


Vikram Seth had his earlier education at Doon School.


He also studied at Corpus Christi College in Oxford


and after that he has selected Stanford in preference to Harvard and Yale for


his higher studies. He enrolled himself for doctoral degree on the demographics


of seven villages in China,


where he lived for two years. Thus, the novelist is well conversant with four


prominent civilizations of the world viz. Indian, Chinese, English and


American. Seth has published one travelogue entitled From Heaven Lake*(Chatto and Windus, 1983) about his experiences of


hitchhiking through Sin Kiang and Tibet


and a collection of verse The Humble


Administrator’s Garden*(now available in Three Crown series of Oxford


University Press, Delhi).


Seth says that he did not choose to study literature because a student of


literature has to read even if he does not enjoy reading a particular book


while as a general reader he has a freedom to put down any book he doesn’t


like.


The genesis(in the


limited sense of the term) of The Golden


Gate* according to Seth took place in a book-shop where he came across two


translations of Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin*(1823-31). Out of curiosity, Seth says, he wanted to


compare both the translations. But, he could not continue with it for long


because the translation by Charles Johnston was quite fascinating and Seth went


on reading page after page without doing any comparison. Within a month Seth


read it five times and then said to himself, “Let me try using this stanzaic


form”. Thus, Pushkin has influenced him in the first place. Another formative


influence on Seth is that of Timothy Steele to whom the book under review has


been dedicated. Seth wanted to join a course in Creative Writing at Stanford


but because of a conflict in schedule could not. Therefore, he needed an


informal teacher. Of this need he came across Timothy Steele who is different


from many of his contemporaries in his use of traditional meter and rhyme. Both


Timothy and Seth are voracious readers of literatures and have memorized a


great deal of poetry so much so that when one falters the other can supply the


missing word. “Both men believe that modern poetry has foundered because it is


no longer accessible to the common reader: it has become, they say, too arcane,


too remote from everyday experience.”


The Golden Gate* has five hundred ninety three(including Acknowledgements.


Dedication and Contents) contiguous sonnets with a complex rhyming scheme of


a-b-a-b, c-c-d-d. e-f-f-e, g-g. Each sonnet like a Shakespearean one can be


divided into three quatrains and one couplet but unlike his predecessors he


uses the sonnet form for narration and not for expressing one single emotion(a


sonnet is basically a lyric) and also the couplet in Seth’s sonnet does not do


the summing up as it does in a Shakespearean sonnet. Unlike Shakespeare, Seth


does not employ iambic pentameter in his stanza but uses iambic tetrameter. To


maintain the rhyme and meter consistently for more than three hundred pages is


an arduous task indeed. Nowhere has the poet used prose narrative in the book.


Even the dedication, acknowledgements and contents have been given the sonnet


from. The following is the sonnet enumerating the contents of the novel:


1.


The world’s discussed while


friends are eating.


2.


A cache of billets-doux arrive.


3.


A concert generates a meeting.


4.


A house is warmed. Sheep come


alive.


5.


Olives are plucked in prime


condition.


6.


A cat reacts to competition.


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