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The Expression of Self-consciousness in Kamla Das's “An Introduction”[1]

The philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel emphasises the importance of understanding consciousness and, even more so, self-consciousness. His lectures on aesthetics contain aesthetic theories for all forms of art (viz. architecture, painting, music or poetry), but critics use them only in significantly altered versions. The present paper attempts to give an in-depth analysis of a poem following one interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of self-consciousness. The poem analysed is not a German Romantic poem, but an Indian poem from the mid-20^th century. The explanatory force of Hegel's aesthetics is thus assessed with the needs of a global culture studies in mind.

Kamala Das is a popular poet in India. Her popularity stems from how she presents herself in her poems or, as Vrinda Nabar expresses it: [2] [...] whatever her deficiencies, they cease to matter when we hear her real voice and respond to her autobiographical authenticity. How Das expresses her self in her poems seems to have an intuitively appealing quality for most readers or hearers of her poems.[3] Her poetry is an expression of self-consciousness[4] and especially analysing “An Introduction”[5] seems to be promising in order to find out how such an expression of self-consciousness could look like in detail.[6]

G.W.F. Hegel has based his whole philosophy on self-consciousness, in his aesthetics he gives a detailed description of how poems are expressions of self-consciousness.[7] The problems with Hegel are: he is very difficult to read, he lived about 200 years ago and he did not know Indian art as he knew e.g. the works of Goethe. He nevertheless said that it was of immense importance to examine Indian art as well.[8]

In this paper, the expression of self-consciousness in Kamala Das's “An Introduction” will be compared with the role of expressions of self-consciousness in poetry as Hegel described it in his lectures on aesthetics. The central thesis is that both notions of self-consciousness are compatible. In order to motivate this view sufficiently, some considerations on how to do it have to be made explicit beforehand: First, a notion of self-consciousness should be developed through a detailed analysis of the form and the content of “An Introduction” and the findings will be compared with Hegel's lectures on aesthetics. As Hegel tackles the topic with a bottom-down approach, a bottom-up approach (from details in form to more obvious cases of expressing self-consciousness) seems to be the best way to come up with a complementing analysis. The present paper's number of words is limited and most of it will consist in the detailed analysis. This has the advantage that, if the analysis suggests comparability, a comparison with Hegel will be very short and evident from the vast details of the analysis, and that, if discrepancies between the two notions of self-consciousness are substantial, a comparison with Hegel can straightaway point out, where and how Das differs with Hegel's aesthetics.

Kamala Das's “An Introduction” is in free verse but tends, as will be shown, to metric regularity and a mostly conscious use of rhythm. Utilising free verse makes it possible for a poet to use all formal aspects to shape the content in the best way. Especially in Confessional Poetry, this can be used to express deep and powerful emotions also on the level of formal structure and not only on the level of images and sounds. The free distribution of stresses and other means of highlighting is not used in a conscious way only; through a formal analysis of such a poem, the critic can thus detect an unconscious influence on certain patterns as well. Having the poet writing about herself, every detail in the formal presentation of the poem and not only the meaning gained through interpretation must be considered.

In order to describe the rhythmic quality of the lines, traditional terms like “meter”, “iambic”, “trochaic”, “anapestic”, “tetrameter”, “pentameter” and “hexameter” will be used; this is not meant to suggest that Das's use of free verse should be compared with classical verse or that only critics who are experienced readers of classical verse can accurately detect rhythmic qualities.

The iambic start of the line is interrupted by “politics but” and “I know the names” sounds like taking that regular metric feel up again. The frequent vowel “o” adds a timbre reminiscent of boredom to the lines which might reflect the speaker's attitude towards politics, but the the two bright “i” and the subsequent change of vowels prevent the line from being too much dominated by the timbre of the “o”s.

This line starts with a iambic feel again and the three unstressed syllables “-er, and can” sound like an intrusion into a iambic tetrameter. The vowel sounds contribute to the monotonic timbre of the line.

Here, the meter changes completely and sounds like a trochaic hexameter with a masculine ending. Although, to expect an ictus on “with” is only probable when the hearer is used to classical meter. Nevertheless, the change in the metric feel is obvious and it speeds the whole poem up. Also, the timbre lightens up through the “i” and “a” sounds at the beginning and the striking sequence of three “i” sounds at the end.

“Nehru” still retains the trochaic feeling of the previous line, but six unstressed syllables versus the three stressed syllables in the rest of the line mark another abrupt change in the metric feel. The vowel sounds in combination with the voiced consonants set a rather soft tone.

Again, the unstressed syllables predominate, but the two stressed syllables of “three lan-” and the bright vowels in them highlight the topic and make it impossible for the listener to miss it.

As, together with the last two syllables from line five, the meter starts sounding anapestic, the stressed syllables in “write”, “English”, “they” and “said” are like hits on a timpani and form a contrast to the unstressed feel.

The predominance of stressed syllables and the irregular interspersions with unstressed ones make this line sound very emotional and not much controlled; just as if “their” reaction on the poet writing in English was not thoroughly reflected and thus unduly charged.

The stresses on the syllables with “i” sounds and the two velar consonants make the speaker's response sound even more harsh and charged. It gives it a feeling of an overreaction, as if a vulnerable point had been touched in lines 6 and 7.

Until “you” the strong feel is retained, but the unstressed “not let me” pulls the brake, slowing the pace down considerably.

The meter comes back to an almost anapestic feel. The repetition of “speak” and “language” in a different order marks a pause from the metric (and thematic) turbulences in the lines before.

The anapestic feel continues until “queernesses” breaks it, but the line still sounds charged because of the bright vowels in stressed positions.

The stresses and the bright vowels of “All mine, mine alone” makes it sound like an exclamation, which “It is” cools down with the two unstressed syllables and thus prepares the listener for the reasons the poet has for her choice.

The irregular mix of different vowels and stresses make the statement of this line sound unbalanced and rough in its form and if “honesty” was Kamala Das's main point, as some people held, then her ear has missed to give this word a highlighted position in the line.[9] On the other hand, the lack of artistic balance and the roughness in the form of the line may be understood as manifestations of Mrs. Das's will for honesty, of her will to present herself without any make-up.

A iambic feel finds its way back into the poem and the repetition of “human” with dark vowels in a stressed position gives this line a decent deepness and thus underlines the emotional roots of her choice of English. The timbre of “human” justifies its repetition to a considerable degree.

The iambic feel is continued and the two occurrences of the unstressed “my” is not strong enough to break it. The shift from “u” to “o” in the stressed places lightens the mood a bit, but still retains gravity.

The unstressed sequences of “and it is” and “-ful to me as” break the iambic feel and add gravity from the metric side, whereas the stressed “u” in “useful” does the same for the sound. The “a” of “cawing” has not enough force to lighten the mood, because the established sounds in combination with the heavier meter are too strong.

The almost anapestic line is dominated by the onomatopoeic “cawing” from the previous line which adds a certain harshness to the stressed “crows”. The onomatopoeic “roaring” of the lions sounds negligible, the naturalness of the cawing crows already made the point in a stronger way.

Again, a iambic feel takes over and, being the most natural meter in English, convinces the listener with three stressed “i” that English is in fact a natural way of articulation for the poet.

Although the “Here and not there” breaks the iambic feel, the following consequence of three iambic feet (plus the “and” which can be heard as a female ending) establishes the metric feel again. The timbre is still quite bright.

Beginning with two anapestic feet, “-blind speech” breaks the feel, especially if read with a secondary stress on “-blind”, and the reader gets prepared for the exemplification of a use of language which is not a human speech. But the “aware”, rhyming with “there” in the previous line, almost spoils the metric effect, because modern listeners react to rhymes in a more direct way, than to meter.

Two iambic feet start the line and create credibility for the image of trees in a storm, but the addition of unstressed syllables in the rest of the line make the other two images sound like mere associations which are not well developed. The “o” sounds prepare the “u” of “monsoon” and the diphthong in “clouds” in a way which gives this part of the line the timbre of a tempest.

The incoherence of the mutterings is underlined by the incoherent meter and incoherent assemblage of vowels and sounds. The line's sound and rhythm mimics the movement of a flame.

While “Funeral pyre” retains the the mimicry, the following two anapestic feet mark a change of topic again.

The meter is unsteady and the unstressed “for I be-” slows the line down. The neutral vowel sounds of the first four stresses establishes, together with the slowed pace, a sound reminiscent of not very enthusiastic storytelling.

The unsteady meter is continued and the slowing down of “and one or two” is even stronger. Together with the neutral vowel sounds, a sense of Das being bored with telling this is retained; it sounds just as if the new hair and the other changes were something completely uninteresting.

Despite the “what”, which spoils the jambic pentameter, the uplifting iambic feel brings back the drive to this point of the poem. The hearer wakes up and gets confronted with the driving force of the speaker: love.

The iambic feel is sustained and the “For” even adds momentum; it sounds as if the speaker paused to gather the strength for what follows.

“Bedroom” is an unfortunate beginning, Kamala Das should rather have moved the “the” from the previous line to the beginning of this line. The “and” should also be omitted.

“But” also weakens the straight iambic feel. The irregular meter unduly weakens the points which are made in these lines (27 - 31), because they contain a central point of the introduction to Kamala Das: the influence of her husband on how she sees herself as a woman. A regular meter is even more important since no strong consonants or vowel-patterns are used in stressed syllables to highlight the content.

Retaining the general iambic feel of the previous lines, the succession of two stressed syllables in “womb crushed” highlight these words and the dark vowels add deepness and sadness.

“Pitifully” is a very strong word and it forms the climax of the lines 27-31. It has three stresses, two of them with “i” and “u” and thus embodies extremes on the level of sound. The “...” must be read as a pause which is needed after the excited beginning of the line, but it is also, on the semantic side, a marker of the discrepancy between how she experiences her womanhood and how her husband treats her. Many critics are wrong if they just miss noting this feature or if they underestimate it.[10] The rest of the line comes back to a iambic feel.

The almost iambic feel is retained until “hair short”, which forms a break and the rhyme of “short” and “ignored” makes perfectly clear how she reacts to her experience as a woman: with denial.

“My womanliness” slows the metric pace through its unstressed syllables, but the rhyme with the stressed “Dress” has a strong uplifting effect. The listener is thus prepared to meet the image the speaker's environment has of womanliness, which starts with a iambic feel through “sarees, be girl”.

The iambic feel is continued until “embroidered” breaks the flow in a quite uncomfortable way, because of its neutral vowels which make the transition from the “Be” and the transition to the “be cook” difficult for the hearer.

“Belong” is still in the metric mood of the previous lines, but the “cried the categorizers” with its cluster of strong consonants, the stress on “cried” and the neutral vowels gives this line a feel of walking over rocks and stones. It thus gives the rigorous schemes of the categorisers an aural quality.

As often in this poem, the line begins with two iambic feet, but the feel is not retained until the end. It almost sounds like a sudden shift to trochaic feet, but “lace-” prevents that. Having two subsequent stressed syllables in “peep through” and “lace-draped” considerably speeds up the poem at this point.

If the “or” is heard with a stress, then this line forms a iambic hexameter with an imperfect foot at the end. The diphthong in “Amy” and the bright “a” in “Kamala” together with the straight meter make the whole line sound like a declaration.

The trochaic foot in the beginning of the line cannot really establish a straight metric mood as the previous line did. Thus, the bright vowels do not sound as declarative as before.

The trochaic hexameter with a masculine ending gives the whole line more drive and underlines the demands of society.

This line is a iambic pentameter with a female ending and it sounds less demanding than the previous line.

The line starts with a trochaic foot, but switches to a iambic feel again and thus the “when” can be heard as a female ending.

No metric pattern can be detected in this line and since the previous lines (38-42) all had a metric pattern, the shift strikes the reader. The three dots have the same function as in line 31.

The meter is iambic until “he is” and the vowel sounds are very neutral. There are no highlights.

“Woman” breaks the iambic feel and “seeks love” speeds up the line. Unfortunately, “hungry haste” has a timbre which is completely opposite of what the words mean and thus, form and content differ in a way which should have been avoided.

“Of rivers, in me” with the two “r” mimics flowing water in a river, but it is too short to be convincing. The three dots suddenly destroy the reminiscence.

The meter and the sounds do not underline the meaning of this line, they are uncontrolled and shallow.

Again, the “I” is an essential concept in the poem, but the sole repetition of “is” and the bright “i” sounds are not strong enough to create tension.

The metric feel is iambic and the timbre is neutral, as if a banal point was made.

The “I” must be stressed in this case and that makes the transition to the following “in” rather awkward. This doesn't really highlight the “I”, but while proceeding to “in” the listener notices that there has been something important before. Taking up an anapestic meter with “in this world, he is tigh-” and breaking the feel with “packed” before it could be well establish is also awkward without any obvious reason.

Having line 51 end with “like the” gives this line an anapestic feel right away, until a natural reading of “drink” may break it for a hearer who is not used to meter.

The meter of this line is completely irregular again. The stressed “midnight” with its bright “i” sounds is highlighted.

The repetition of “It is I” and the imperfect rhyme of “laugh” and “love” shape the first line since line 38 wherein the form effectively underlines the meaning.

If “feel shame” is read with two stresses, the repetition of “it is I” is not marked enough to be interesting and if “feel shame” is not read emphatically, it disturbs the repetition of “it is I” which would otherwise effectively prepare the bright “lie dying”. Nevertheless, the combination of the “i” sounds in the end of the line is thrilling.

The onomatopoeic “rattle” gives the dying an unpleasant sound and together with “throat” the listener might be reminded of a painful death. The trochaic feel of the meter until “I am” helps to paint the death scenario. Having an ictus on “I”, the transition from the stressed “throat” becomes a little difficult and the listener notices that the death theme is over.

The repetition of “I am” and a similar timbre of “sinner” and “saint”, makes the beginning of this line pleasant to the ear. The added “the” before “beloved” prevents the repetition from sounding boring.

The imperfect rhyme of “saint” and “Betrayed” establishes a feeling of closure, before “I have no joys” starts a new idea, the unstressed syllables in this line before “joys” and “yours” seem to establish a relaxed rhythm, preparing the finale.

The repetition of “which are not yours” sounds unbalanced, because “no / Aches” is shorter than “I have no joys”. This could be used to give the last few words a balancing function and thus a stronger sense of closure. Unfortunately, “I too call myself I” sounds completely different and out of sync with the general timbre since line 56.

Generally, Kamala Das's use of form is rudimentary, but mostly effective. Especially the simple but well dosed “i” in stressed syllables combined with a change of metric feel often accounts for Das's skills. Only in the section after line 43, when she tries to generalise from her perspective, a divergence between form and content appears and the timbre as well as the rhythm of the section becomes shallow and unspectacular. It sounds as if these lines contained nothing more than banal truisms, as if it was highly boring for Das even to mention them. Furthermore, the way she brings the poem to an end sounds unfit and careless. This formal finding also governs the overall impression Vrinda Nabar has of this part, when she writes: “The last section of the poem is its weakest.”[11] K.R. Ramachandran Nair, on the other hand, finds that :[12]

[t]he last thirtyseven lines constitute a more important part of the poem where the poet presents a picture of her growing up into a woman

[a] Whitman-like ascendancy of the ego is attained step by step. A part of the incommunicability that exists between a poet and the reader is here shattered and the other part is closely hidden in the flavour of an esoteric flight of ego at the end.

Nair seems to be totally unaffected by the aural quality of the last section which does by no means suggest any kind of ascendancy. Having much evidence for Das's consciously shaping the aural quality of the poem in the first sections, the last section poses a problem for critics. The account of the images used in the poem must enable a satisfactory interpretation of the function that last section has in the poem. It would be too easy just to ascribe a lack of skill to it; the seeming carelessness towards the points made in these lines could have a deeper meaning.

Kamala Das's writing is full of sensuous phenomena which always retain a sensory quality, are realistic and direct. It is connected to the empirical reality of the situation described, as it presents emotions and subjective reactions with descriptions which seem to come from a distant third-person view; that is why emotions seem to be an inherent part of that reality–they are as real and concrete as any physical object can be. Reality embraces emotions and medium-sized dry objects alike. Das often manages to form this sort of unity of inner and outer events and these moments are the best in her poetry. This is also apparent from Das's response to a questionnaire by Vrinda Nabar and Nabar's comment on it:[13]

'I felt as if nothing of what I saw or heard were to be wasted. It was as if someone had asked me to be a chronicler for the times I lived in. I walked around hungry for sights and sensations.' This passion for taking in the world of senses is evident in Kamala's poetry, and constitutes one of its most appealing qualities.

Anisur Rahman also proposes to understand Kamala Das's imagery in a phenomenological way:[14]

Kamala Das is one such poet who recognises her orbit especially in regard to creating emotional analogues and drawing her imagery from the vast reservoir of personal memories. She uses them as exclusive medium of transcendence, as means of creating experiential credibility. Poetry in so far as it records the internal tremors, is like a seismograph but much more than this, it objectifies the passions and confers meaning on experience which tends to become universal.

Thus, a phenomenological approach is the best way to tackle Das's imagery in order to respect the unity of apperception, the unity of inner and outer events in Das's images. The results from the formal analysis made in the previous section are important in order to determine the weight of each image in its context. Although all images in Das's poem are interesting, only those which directly articulate traits of her personal identity will be considered here.

As was mentioned before, the lines 1 and 2 have a monotonic pace and timbre and this reflects the speaker's attitude towards politics. But there is still a distinction made between politics and power: power has faces and these faces have names; it does not matter what policy they stand for, but it is useful to know their names, as it is useful to be able to name the days and months. This feeling about politics has its root in the importance of Gandhi for Kamala Das's father:[15]

The Gandhian message, a strong influence on her father, was equally important to those who lived in Nalapat House. [...] Kamala, reacting as a child, found the Gandhian principles too spartan to be attractive. She was convinced that Gandhiji was a kill-joy! It was only many years later that she was able to assess him more objectively and realistically.

That feeling about Gandhi might have tainted Das's attitude towards Nehru too and that's why he seems to be nothing more than the first name in a series of names, as “Monday” is the first in the series of weekdays. Having mentioned Nehru, as stated in the previous section, the tone of the poem changes and “Nehru” functions as a pars pro toto expression; all the names which are important in politics belong into one single basket which can be labelled with “Nehru” and that has nothing to do with the person to be introduced in the poem. Denying that politics has anything to do with how Kamala Das, an Indian poet, writing at a time when political turbulences in India were of utmost importance, sees herself, is a very strong statement! It can only be understood as an act of rebellion and it is astonishing that neither Rahman nor Nair or Nabar were able to trace the importance of these first lines for the theme of the whole poem.

This suggests that dreaming is a kind of speech, it is a language of thought, as Jerry Fordor calls it.[16] Just as Kamala the poet, seeing herself as a chronicler of the times when writing poetry, articulates sights and sensations, the phenomena of the world, using English and Malayalam, Kamala's dreams seem to be an articulation too. But an articulation of what? If they were an articulation of her emotions or of her “mind”, why is a dream something else than a poem? Why do the other two languages not suffice? The reason is simple: dreaming is closer to sights and sensations than written language, it contains epistemically private meaning, which can't be communicated straightaway. A dream can be understood, but not in the same way as a sentence in English can be understood and both are different from understanding a sentence in Malayalam. Dreaming is subjective, Malayalam and English are intersubjective, that is why only the last two can be written.

English is useful, it is an instrument. As cawing is an expression of the inner nature of a cow or as roaring signifies being a lion, English is a means of disclosing 'metalese' to other people. But the language of thought which is made public through writing poetry in English is something special: it is locatable in the world, it has an anchor in empirical reality. The meaning of the poetic language is not just somewhere in the world, it is exactly “here and there”. This is impossible, if the poet was not completely aware of the phenomena surrounding her, especially the visual and aural ones. It is interesting to see that no olfactory sensations or qualities of touch and taste have found their way into the poem; it is as if Kamala Das only knew visual, aural and mental objects.

Another kind of speech is introduced in these lines: the sound and vision of trees in a storm and of the blazing funeral pyre. This speech is “deaf” and “blind”, it does not seem to bear meaning, all the poet encounters in these natural phenomena are “incoherent mutterings”. The lines suggest that Das draws a distinction between cultural and natural phenomena, the latter do not convey any sense for the aware human, they transcend human categories. There seem to be three spheres in Das's world, the inner sphere of the dreams, the outer sphere of society and the sphere of natural phenomena, the cosmic sphere, which transcends human understanding.

Weather and death are forces which can be experienced by every human, they have a certain familiarity, which words in a known language also have. At the same time, they can't be understood as words or other cultural objects, they seem to signify, but they do not. This explains why these phenomena speak without saying anything, why their speech is deaf, blind and nothing more than incoherent mutterings.

These lines contain sensations which may have a quality which is completely clear to any woman, but completely alien to any man. It makes no sense if I try to discuss phenomena which are, for biological reasons, inaccessible to me. But similar experiences can be made in different situations; the general form is this : a person A does something to a person B which she considers to be totally normal. B feels abused through that action but knows that A did not injure her intentionally and that, furthermore, she is also completely unaware that that action injured person B. If person B also thinks that A's action is normal and that A is more powerful anyway, she will be frustrated by the part of her personal identity which (in her eyes) gave A the right reasons to act how she did. This may lead to a partial rejection of what B sees as her self. In the case of the speaker in the poem: to a rejection of womanhood. Although such problems particularly occur in situations which have something to do with sex; they generally occur, when different standards of taste or of judgement clash without any party involved noticing that difference and with one party completely acting out its will, just because it has more power. Political discussions, situations at work or at school can thus cause self-denial because of established power-relations and a misconceived notion of normality in the situation at hand.

A discussion of power-relations and their possible effects on how the speaker sees herself may clarify these lines for an approach which focuses on social relationships, but such an approach is obviously different from a phenomenological one. It applies a general idea of how power works in society to the poem, it does not arrive at an interpretation which stems from understanding the unity of inner and outer events which are articulated. This fact will considerably weaken what can be said about how the poet articulates her awareness of herself as a woman, because it does not centralise the poet's self-consciousness. Hegel analysed the interaction of two self-conscious individuals and how dominance rules this relationship; it must be questioned below if his general view can yield results for the self-consciousness Das expresses in the lines about her relationship with men.[17]

Here, the expectations of her social environment are described. The missing articles point out that neither a particular girl is meant (as in “be like the girl from the neighbour family”) nor that being any kind of girl is meant (as in “be like a girl”); there seem to be rigid and static ideas of “girl”, “wife” and “cook” to which the speaker is expected to adapt to after her marriage.[18]

This image alters the image created through the categories without articles from above (viz. “girl”, “wife”, “cook”) and makes it more clear: the speaker's social environment classifies women using a rigid scheme and they are so used to it and inflexible that any deviation causes an outburst of intolerance. This goes well together with the image from the first few lines and Das's dislike of Gandhian virtues at an earlier age. It also gives us reasons to doubt the usefulness of pure socio-cultural or socio-political considerations and to emphasise the view that a detailed analysis of form and content will tell us more about the poem as an expression of self-consciousness.

Madhavikutty is the pseudonym Das used when she wrote in Malayalam. It is a constructed and, due to being a mere label, a superficial identity. “It is time to / Choose a name, a role” might be the speaker's reaction to society's expectations, although this is not unambiguously said. It is as if the speaker intended to invent an official identity which does not really match the individual that reacts so intensely to the world and expresses these reactions in poems, but serves to calm the social environment a bit. “Don't play pretending games” is then an inner voice which expresses the categorisers' attitude towards such an invented identity, it's the alter ego. It might be contestable to hear two voices speak in these two lines, but if the previous images are considered, a coherent interpretation will need this division, if one is not willing to ascribe a lack of skill or of conceptual coherence to the poet, which is based on even less evidence.

Although, the speaker has finally met a man she loved, a person of whom she thinks that he might be able and interested in really understanding and acknowledging her innermost self, the social environment's rule that the pain of a break-up should never be expressed suggests that even in a relationship there will be expectations which burden the speaker.

The lover is unable to acknowledge the speaker's innermost self, he is spiritually impotent and lacking deepness. As every river comes to the sea once and is absorbed, the speaker has to absorb his hungry haste in her tireless waiting. If power-relations would be important here, the speaker would not be so utterly passive. In Hegel's analysis of how two self-conscious individuals interact in the socio-cultural reality, the two individuals start fighting and the winner oppresses the loser. In these lines we find neither fighting nor oppression; the great, deep ocean does not really care for the shallow hunger of one single river. These images can be seen as expressing a deep sadness about the lover's spiritual impotence, it could even be seen as conveying a hint of compassion for the lover's shallowness.

The speaker starts to make general statements about everybody having a certain grasp of oneself. This grasp of oneself remains unexpressed, it is tightly packed like the sword in its sheath. The idea of spiritual impotence is found in other people too: they seem to know that they also are self-conscious individuals, but they do not manage to express this consciousness or even to notice that its sharp blade could threat categories in this world. The shallowness and impotence are expressed by the form of these lines too, the meter and the sounds used in these lines do underline the content and display Das's poetic skills.

The speaker contrasts the shallowness of the other people with her self-conscious view: she does the same thing as some other people do, but she experience them more intensely. She points out that she not only knows the emotions these other people experience in their shallowness, but that she also knows most of the opposite emotions as well–her self-consciousness makes it possible for her to embrace opposites. She calls herself “I” too, but in her case, because she is aware of what “I” stands for in a much deeper way, this “I” is not spiritually impotent: it can express itself in poetry.

The language of thought and dreams gets its meaning from the phenomena, from the spontaneous reactions of the poet to the world. This is Das's starting point; socio-cultural influences are not tangible or meaningful apart from her reacting to the world, they are not part of a reality which can be described and then, in a second step, applied to a description of Das's self. Das intuitively presupposes a unity of her self and the world in every moment of apperception, the world and her self get their quality from the tensions which arise inside of this unity of experience, but the subjective and the objective remain interdependent. Theories and influences which do not spring from this interdependence are rejected as not being important for the introduction of the speaker: history and politics, the choice of language and the schemes of the categorisers. The true self which is introduced in the poem has three central needs: the need for an adequate expression of the interdependence of the subjective and the objective, the need for love which is not satisfied through sex, but foremost through the acknowledgement of the self which is about to express itself in the poem and the need to express the richness of the world which she experiences from her point of viewing it in interdependence with her self. The interdependence of the subjective and the objective shines through in all these three needs, but there is always a strong emphasis on the subjective. Hegel's analysis of acknowledgement is a statement about self-conscious individuals in the socio-cultural reality, it is an expression of historical and objective events. Das's poem is not a description of the socio-cultural reality, it is a description of subjective events in which the interdependence of world and self is uncovered; power-relations and general descriptions of how acknowledgement work do not really help in understanding the poem as an expression of the self.

A poem is not only a socio-cultural object, it is first and foremost a way of gaining distance to the strong emotions the poet has in particular situations. The poet tries to express the interdependence of the particular situation and her emotions after a phase of deliberation in order to be able to break the spell of heavily charged images she has in her head and thus to come back to experiencing herself as a “mind that speaks and hears and / Is aware”. The important point in writing poetry is coming back to the freedom of just being oneself as one is. That is, according to Hegel's aesthetics, the true meaning of a poets work:[19]

Das blinde Walten der Leidenschaft liegt in der bewußtseinslosen dumpfen Einheit derselben mit dem ganzen Gemüt, das nicht aus sich heraus zur Vorstellung und zum Aussprechen seiner gelangen kann. Die Poesie erlöst nun das Herz zwar von dieser Befangenheit, insofern sie dasselbe sich gegenständlich werden läßt, aber sie bleibt nicht bei dem bloßen Hinauswerfen des Inhalts aus seiner unmittelbaren Einigung mit dem Subjekte stehen, sondern macht daraus ein von jeder Zufälligkeit der Stimmungen gereinigtes Objekt, in welchem das befreite Innere zugleich in befriedigtem Selbstbewußtsein frei zu sich zurückkehrt und bei sich selber ist.[20]

In this paper, a notion of self-conscious has been developed from the close-reading of a poem and only after that has it been compared to the author's favourite theory of the role of self-consciousness in poetry. This does not rule out that having a favourite theory did not influence the way in which the poem was interpreted, but it allows for having good reasons for claiming the applicability of the theory in this case.

There is also a more general point which can be concluded from the interpretation offered in this paper: seeing a piece of poetry as an expression of self-consciousness brings the task of interpretation to a level which renders it possible for critics who are not from the same socio-cultural context as the poet. The difference between self and world is something every human being seems to experience and an interpretation of the interdependence of world and self in a poem should thus become possible in any case. It might even be possible that a globally relevant culture studies can be based on the idea that self-consciousness is expressed in every cultural object. But many more poems, films, sculptures, paintings and photographies from different cultures must be analysed in a similar way to found strong grounds on which such a foundation of culture studies can be claimed.

Hegel, Georg W.F. 1988 Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.

Hegel, Georg W.F. 1970. Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik 3. Werke in zwanzig Bänden 13. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

Nabar, Vrinda 1994. The Endless Female Hungers. A study of Kamala Das. New Dehli: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

Nair, K.R. Ramachandran 1993. The Poetry of Kamala Das. New Dehli: Reliance Publishing House.

Rahman, Anisur 1981. Expressive Form in the Poetry of Kamala Das. New Dehli: abhinav publications.

Rödl, Sebastian 2007. Self-Consciousness. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Weithofer, Pirmin S 2005. Philosophie des Selbstbewßtseins. Hegels System als Formanalyse von Wissen und Autonomie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

[1] This paper is based on the author's BA thesis at the University of Basel. I am indebted to Prof. Therese Steffen for comments on the ideas in the old version and to Prof. Sebastian Rödl for inspiration.

[2] Nabar (1994, p. 107)

[3] In the rest of the paper “the readers and hearers” shall be substituted by “hearers” only, because the sound of poetry plays an important role and also for reasons of economy.

[4] In this paper, “self-consciousness” will not be used in a disapproving way, it just expresses the awareness of the reasons and effects related to one's own actions and convictions.

[5] First published in Das (1965)

[6] Because of the limited space in this paper, a biography and a general view on Das's work cannot be offered. However the interested reader will find a thorough presentation of these points in Vrinda Nabar's study. Nabar (1994)

[7] My favourite interpretation of Hegel's general view of self-consciousness can be found in Weithofer (2005, pp. 182-4). A related philosophical analysis of self-consciousness from which the present paper draws much is Rödl (2007).

[8] Hegel (1970, p. 247)

[9] cf. Nabar (1994, p. 18)

[10] Vrinda Nabar (1994, S.32) underestimates it, while Anisur Rahman (1981) and K.R. Ramachandran Nair (1993) don't even note it.

[11] Nabar (1994, p.32)

[12] Nair (1993, p.17-8)

[13] Nabar (1994, p.10)

[14] Rahman (1981, p.37)

[15] Nabar (1994, p.10)

[16] cf. Fodor (1975)

[17] cf. Hegel (1988, pp. 120-136)

[18] cf. Nabar (1994, p.32)

[19] Hegel (1970, p.417)

[20] The paraphrase given retains this passage.