“Decoding Gujarati Poetry: An I.A. Richards Approach”
Most student blogs on Gujarati poetry collapse into paraphrase, moral preaching, or biographical guessing. That is exactly what I.A. Richards warned against in Practical Criticism. His method demands disciplined attention to language itself—especially figurative language—and to the points where readers experience confusion, resistance, or emotional imbalance. This blog therefore analyzes the two Gujarati poems shown in the images through Richards’ framework, focusing not on what the poet meant socially or morally, but on how language produces meaning, feeling, tone, and intention in the reader.
Rather than reducing the poems to symbols or messages, the discussion treats them as linguistic events. The central concern throughout is complexity: where figurative language succeeds in organizing experience and where it risks emotional excess, vagueness, or over-personification. The analysis now deepens each element of Richards’ framework to master’s level, considering nuanced interactions, multiple layers of reader response, and the cognitive-emotional impact of figurative choices.
Here is a brief video of my blog-
I.A. Richards’ Critical Framework
Before analysis, one clarification: Richards is not anti-metaphor or anti-personification. He is anti‑careless figurative excess and anti‑lazy literal reading.
For this blog, four tools are applied repeatedly:
Four Kinds of Meaning – sense, feeling, tone, intention
Emotive vs Scientific Language
Four Types of Misunderstanding
Reader Response as Evidence
Poem 1: “એક એવું એ.ટી.એમ. હોય!”
૪. એક એવું એ.ટી.એમ. હોય !
કોઈ એ.ટી.એમ. ક્યાંક તો બનાવે ડિપોઝીટ કોરુંધાકોર દુ:ખ કરીએ ને કડકડતું સુખ બ્હાર આવે...!
ચાહવાનો પીન ટાઈપ કરવાથી સ્ક્રીન ઉપર ભવભવનો આવે સંબંધ ! ઉપવનની 'ફાસ્ટ કૅશ' મેળવવા કરીએ તો મળી भय એની સુગંધ ભીંજાવું એટલું જો કરીએ ડિમાન્ડ, મૠતુ આખું ચોમાસું અહીં લાવે
દાડપણનો 'પીન' ચેન્જ કરીએ तो ફાગણના દિવસો લ્યો ઓ.કે. થઈ જાય, સ્ટેમેન્ટ માગતાં જ સ્મરણોની ટ્રાન્સફર શમણાંના ખાતામાં था리 લાગણીઓ ક્રેડિટ થઈ જાય એવી માણસાઈ ઇન્ટરેસ્ટ એટલું બચાવે
ધારો કે કાર્ડ ભૂલી જઈએ ને, અણદેખ્યો તોયે દેખાય એ j desh , 'ઓટો સ્વિપ' થાય એનું નામ અને ગામ તોય દેખાડે રસ્તો દરવેશ; એનો એકાઉન્ટ હોય, આપણો ઉપાડ હોય એ 'ડેબિટ કાર્ડ' જો ચલાવે !
Stanza 1
Gujarati: કોઈ એ.ટી.એમ. ક્યાંક તો બનાવે, ડિપોઝીટ કોરુંધાકોર દુઃખ કરીએ ને કડકડતું સુખ બહાર આવે...!
- The poet imagines an ATM that could take away all our heavy, dry sorrows and give back fresh, crisp happiness—like withdrawing brand-new banknotes. This metaphor reflects a deep human longing for an easy, immediate solution to emotional pain, blending humor with wistfulness.
- By entering a “PIN of Love,” the ATM would display the bonds of past lifetimes, and a “Fast Cash” of joy would instantly bring the fragrance of a garden. The stanza exaggerates longing and desire, mixing fantasy with a critique of how we seek instant emotional gratification.
- The poet suggests that requesting emotional experiences could bring a whole monsoon of feelings, and by “changing the PIN of Wisdom,” even dull days could turn into vibrant spring. This illustrates the tension between desire for control over emotions and the reality of life’s unpredictability.
- When asking for a “statement,” memories would be credited to a dream-account, saving the interest of emotional pain. The poet cleverly uses financial metaphors to highlight how humans wish to manage emotions like money, emphasizing both humor and irony.
- Even if we forget our card, the ATM or fate recognizes us. Love, guidance, and emotional support would work like a “Debit Card” that lets us navigate life. The stanza blends whimsy, hope, and critique of mechanized modernity, asking readers to consider how human connection could be more fluid and generous.
The first poem is constructed around a single controlling metaphor: the ATM imagined as an emotional and moral dispenser rather than a financial machine. On the level of sense, the poem appears deceptively simple, but multiple layers of meaning unfold upon closer reading. The ATM represents modern systems, human dependency on mechanical fixes, and the poet’s critique of emotional alienation. The sense is simultaneously literal, metaphorical, and symbolic, demanding careful reader attention to extract nuanced commentary on societal, psychological, and moral dimensions.
1. Sense
The poem articulates a wish for a machine that can perceive and mitigate human suffering. Richards emphasizes that poetic sense extends beyond dictionary definitions, incorporating metaphorical logic, social commentary, and conceptual layering. The complexity arises in reconciling literal absurdity (an ATM cannot empathize) with metaphorical coherence. As a master’s reader, one notes that the ATM operates on multiple semantic levels simultaneously: social critique, technological metaphor, and emotional fantasy. Misalignment of these layers can produce reader confusion if attention is not attuned to figurative intention.
2. Feeling
The poem’s emotional texture is multi-dimensional: longing for care, ironic detachment, frustration with mechanical society, and reflective melancholy. Feelings oscillate between desire, impossibility, and resigned humor. Repetition of metaphor risks flattening affective impact, while subtle linguistic cues like qualifiers and tonal shifts enhance layered emotional resonance. At a master’s level, one can trace how juxtaposition of frustration with whimsical imagery produces cognitive-emotional tension, engaging readers in an evaluative reflection on human reliance on artificial solutions.
3. Tone
The tone combines conversational informality, ironic reflection, and subtle critique. This tonal strategy modulates engagement, guiding readers to empathy while signaling critical distance. However, uniformity in tone may limit rhetorical dynamism. Richards would observe that strategic tonal variation could intensify emotional and cognitive complexity, enhancing reader participation. A master’s reading recognizes the poem’s careful tonal calibration, balancing irony, warmth, and contemplation.
4. Intention
The poem intends to expose the insufficiency of mechanical responses to emotional and social needs. Its aim is primarily psychological and reflective rather than prescriptive. A critical tension exists between intention and figurative deployment: repeated imagery can oversimplify complex societal commentary, potentially constraining interpretive depth. Richards stresses that effective poetic intention requires orchestrating multiple figurative devices to fully realize nuanced mental and emotional states. At master’s level, one observes how intention, metaphor, and emotional modulation interact to produce sophisticated cognitive-emotional effects.
Complexities and Misunderstandings
- Over-personification
- Repetition risks boredom
- Irony can be missed
- Multiple layers demand attention
- Moralizing misleads
- New perspective – absurdity highlights longing
Poem 2: Analysis of the Second Gujarati Poem
“ટી.વી. સિરિયલની જેવી ચાહતનું ગીત” (Love Like a TV Serial)
- Love is compared to a weekly-changing TV serial. The poet questions how one can build lasting dreams with someone so inconsistent, using metaphor to express frustration with unpredictability in relationships.
- The poet notices that emotions are wiped off like makeup, appearing scripted rather than genuine. This highlights artificiality in behavior and how outward expressions may hide true feelings.
- Actions seem staged, as if under constant camera surveillance. Tears are hidden, words sweetened, and laughter hides bitterness. The stanza conveys dissonance between appearance and reality in emotional expression.
- Emotions are likened to “studio rain”—artificial and overdone. Genuine response arrives coldly, like a short text message. The poet critiques the superficiality of modern emotional communication.
- The poet laments a world of masks, where loneliness persists even among crowds chasing illusions. This stanza reflects social commentary on isolation, pretense, and the human craving for authenticity.
- In a relationship with “zero balance” of true feelings, there is nothing real to gain. This metaphor critiques empty or superficial connections, asking readers to evaluate emotional sincerity.
This poem employs a series of shifting images reflecting internal psychological states. The sense is deliberately unstable, demanding that emotional coherence carry the reader. The interplay between figurative freedom, tonal subtlety, and structural discipline forms the core challenge for master’s level analysis.
1. Sense
Literal sense is fluid; images appear and dissolve, creating a dynamic cognitive landscape. Richards highlights that instability is not defective if it contributes to affective coherence. The poem represents mental states such as anxiety, fragmentation, and quiet introspection. At master’s level, readers integrate overlapping impressions into a layered interpretive field, recognizing the interplay between fleeting literal events and sustained emotional resonance.
2. Feeling
Emotional texture includes anxiety, resignation, introspection, and occasional reflective insight. Master-level reading identifies nuanced modulation: contrasts of tension and release, fleeting hope amidst despondency, and oscillations between detachment and affective immersion. These patterns create complex emotional engagement, requiring careful navigation by readers to appreciate the poem’s affective architecture.
3. Tone
The tone is introspective, withdrawn, and meditative, demanding subtle reader attunement. Strategic restraint enhances authenticity but may challenge accessibility. Master-level interpretation discerns tonal layers: the interplay of quiet reflection, internal tension, and contemplative depth, noting how these influence emotional and cognitive response.
4. Intention
The poem seeks affective immersion rather than argumentative or prescriptive discourse. The poet’s intention is to replicate internal psychological processes, allowing readers to recognize and experience similar states. Complexity arises when fragmented imagery threatens coherence; successful interpretation relies on recognizing overarching emotional patterns. Richards would emphasize that intentionality is realized through controlled emotional modulation and subtle figurative structuring.
Complexities and Misunderstandings
Comparative Insight
Poem 1 risks oversimplification of complex emotional and social critique; Poem 2 risks diffusion and fragmentation of affective energy. Richards’ method evaluates both poems on their ability to orchestrate cognitive and emotional impulses, not on factual accuracy or social utility. Each poem demonstrates different strategies and challenges for master’s level reader engagement, demanding nuanced interpretation and critical sophistication.
Conclusion
These Gujarati poems exemplify Richards’ assertion that figurative language is inherently risky but indispensable. Judicious use enriches emotional and cognitive depth; mismanaged figurative structures invite misunderstanding. Readers must resist literalism, moral reduction, and forced symbolism, focusing instead on the state of mind produced by the poem, its coherence, and the sophisticated layering of sense, feeling, tone, and intention. Master’s level analysis reveals both the power and the subtlety of figurative language in organizing complex human experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment