Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: April 21, 2003
URL: http://sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=307870
Romantic poets like Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Blake, Southey and Walter Scott were
influenced by the philosophy of the Bhagwad Gita, according to an exhaustive,
20 year study, undertaken by a scholar of English Literature. It also successfully
explores the hidden strains of Indian thought in their verse.
Bhagwad Gita and the English romantic
movement, a study in influence, authored by Dr Krishan Gopal Srivastava
and published by Macmillan India, is receiving rave reviews in the country
and abroad. It has already sold more than 500 copies following its release
last year.
Recently, the BBC World Today Radio
service also telecast live interview with Srivastava, in a bid to get first
hand account of his work.
Comprising nine chapters, the book
presents evidence linking romantic poetry with the Gita. Many obscure passages
of romantic poets become clear when understood in the light of the Gita.
The concept of rebirth, ‘karma’, universal soul, immortality and incarnation
make the fascination of romantic poets with the Gita quite apparent.
The study thus seeks to highlight
the contribution of India to the growth and enrichment of the English romantic
movement. “La renaissance Orientale,” which supplemented the movement,
grew out of the research conducted by English orientalists like Charles
Wilkins, Sir William Jones and others at the end of the XVIIIth century.
Prose translation of the Gita by Charles Wilkins, published in London in
1785 under the aegis of the British East India Company, best conveyed this
spirit.
The book establishes that all the
great romantics like Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats had
not only read Wilkins Gita, but imbibed its spirit, which found creative
expression in their great poems.
Srivastava, a visiting professor
at the University of Glasgow, has published several books and articles
in India, England and America. His articles in the British Journal of Aesthetics
and Explicator has earned him international fame. His rendering of ‘Ode
to a Nightingale’ is displayed in the reading room of the Oriental section
of the Cambridge Universitylibrary.
