Poets and Gita.

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ALLAHABAD: 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 University library.