THE CAT: A STUDY OF POETIC CREATION

Nirmaldasan

1. PRELUDE

One night as I lay sleepless on the mat, I had a vision-like experience. Perhaps it was my imagination that visualised vividly the scene of a gypsy seated before a makeshift stove and a large cooking pot. And before I dropped off, I knew I had all the ingredients for writing a parody of William Blake's The Tyger.

I had only recently read K.D. Sethna's christological interpretation of this symbolic poem. Thus The Tyger had been on my mind. And ever since I read Lewis Carroll's popular parody of Robert Southey's not so well known Father William, I had been wanting to write one myself.

Contrast the creation of the ferocious tiger with the cooking of a pusillanimous cat. The parody is unmistakeable. Since it is life to the tiger in Blake's poem, it shall be death to the cat in the parody. The theme was fixed. All I had to do was to merely imitate The Tyger's rhyme scheme and metrical pattern.

And so The Cat was written. I now invite you to read Blake's poem and the parody before we go into the poetic process.

2. THE TEXTS

The Tyger

The Cat

3. THE POETIC PROCESS

Critics have studied the poet's craft in detail. Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Philosophy Of Composition with specific reference to his haunting poem The Raven. I also wish to contribute my mite to this genre. The first two lines of The Cat came to me, as a matter of fact, a moment before I had the vision-like experience.

I wondered whether I should replace the word `hollow' with `confines'. But then I waived the idea since `hollow' could suggest a lot more than the other word. The next two lines that I wrote had to undergo a string of revisions. Which of the following was better?

Or,

I did not mind the imperfect rhyming of halt with catapult since Blake himself had chosen to rhyme symmetry with eye. But I was not wholly satisfied with the lines. And as I pondered on the fearful symmetry of the tiger, the pot being the fearful cemet'ry of the cat suggested itself.

I do not know why, but I felt a need to revise this couplet and reserve the dagger and sling for later use.

But there seemed to be a small flaw. Do not all gypsies wander? So `wandering gypsy' would seem to be a metrical necessity. "Transpose the words and there will be no problem," I told myself. Thus the opening stanza became:

Since the opening and concluding stanzas of The Tyger are one and the same except for one small word, I decided to write next the last stanza of The Cat. K.D. Sethna considers the final stanza of Blake's poem an artistic necessity. But I beg to disagree. The replacement of `could' with `dare' in the refrain is significant. The immortal hand or eye not only `could' but also `dare' to frame the tiger's fearful symmetry. That is a point we cannot easily ignore.

But to return to The Cat. I reeled off the lines of the last stanza. Except for the correction of a prepositional error, no revision was required. I had written `in the platter' instead of `on the platter'. So the corrected version of the stanza reads:

I did not write The Cat in the order of its stanzas, not even in the order of its couplets. Satisfied with my performance so far, I focussed on the climactic couplet of Blake’s poem and wrote what I considered to be its mock equivalent.

I have labelled this couplet as though it were an algebraic equation. The following couplets have also been tagged for ready reference.

I revised C and D and wrote the second stanza of the parody:

For the third stanza, I revised B and filled in the blanks:

I then replaced the hammer and the chain of Blake’s poem with pepper and salt and cooked the fourth stanza.

I found it necessary to revise this stanza. I replaced `what’ with `how’.

I then revised the climactic couplet A and filled in the blanks.

The mock poem is complete. We may now proceed to unearth those subconsious factors that shaped the poem during the poetic process.

4. SUBCONSCIOUS FACTORS

I was conscious of two things: first, I was writing a parody and had nothing specific to communicate; and last, the content of the mock poem cannot but obviously have a Blakean basis.

And what does The Cat communicate? A simple and straight reading of the poem with reference to The Tyger would bring out the equations of only a mild parody. The poem fails to produce that ludicrous effect which is the characteristic of all great parodies. And a person who has not read The Tyger may even construct a serious reading into The Cat. The reasons are not far to seek. When I first visualised the gypsy and the large cooking pot, I had a strong feeling that the theme merited a serious treatment in sprung rhythm. But it was a parody that I wished to write. However, I am sure I was not in the horns of a dilemma. But who can say what conflict arose in the subconscious while I was fast asleep? Should it be a parody or a symbolic poem? Should it be inspired by Thomas Gray’s mock poem On The Death Of A Favourite Cat or be charged with Blakean symbolism? Perhaps The Cat is a synthesis.

So what does the poem communicate? The way some of my friends read the opening couplet gave me the feeling that they construed it as lewd. They themselves confirmed my fears. Though they found nothing in the rest of the poem to substantiate that interpretation, I find it rather difficult to refute their view regarding the opening couplet. I may with a clear conscience say that metrical necessity made me choose `pussy’ (a two syllable word) instead of `cat’. But all the same I cannot lay my hand upon my heart and swear that I had never in my life wanted to write a lewd lyric.

My reading of The Cat, however, has been fortunately different. It did not take me long to recognize the Miltonic basis of the poem. The cat initially `burning hot’ and then `growing cold’ undoubtedly appears to be an exposition of one of my favourite lines in Paradise Lost. Milton says in Book II that the fallen angels are punished with fierce extremes. All the damned are brought

  From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

and later hurried back to fire.

Something akin to the `beds of raging fire’ is described in the first two stanzas of The Cat. The pussy is `burning hot’ and stirring in the `seething deep’ -- a fearful cemet’ry.

Now consider the phrase `starve in ice’. The pussy is `growing cold’ on the platter and may with some imagination be seen to be starving in ice. The gypsy is starved, too. His tummy is `hollow’ and mouth waters to taste the cat.

This brings into focus the cat-gypsy equation. The poem is not only about a pussy subjected to fierce extremes but also about a gypsy who dared to fix the `fearful cemet’ry’.

I have read a number of poems on gypsies. However, not all of them can be said to have exercised their influence in the composition of The Cat. There is an anonymous ballad titled The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies which, if not for that grand Miltonic line, could have provided a basis for the poem. A lord goes in search of his new-wedded lady and finds her among the wraggle-taggle gypsies. The concluding stanzas would serve our purpose. The lord tells his lady,

And she replies:

If I may paraphrase, the lord tells his lady: "Last night you slept warm and tonight you’ll sleep cold." There you have a similar transition of `burning hot’ to `growing cold’.

The lady (so she tells her lord) prefers to sleep in the cold. But why? I think she is speaking in Cleanth Brooke’s language of the paradox. Perhaps she preferred a Freaudian `warmth’ in the company of the wraggle-taggle gypsies, though in the cold open field, which her lord had failed to provide in the warm goose-feather bed.

If this interpretation be plausible, then it explains to a certain degree why some of my friends should read a lewd construction in the opening couplet of The Cat.

Here let us cry halt. By exploring the subconscious, we have unearthed some of the factors that may have shaped the poem.

But what does the poem communicate? Honestly I do not know.