The beetle wheels around
Darkly grave
Nimbus-headed
And dung embedded
Lounging in dirty cowsheds.
The butterfly whirs around
Painted gallant
Lightly clad
And airily made
Hardly cooling his fairy feet.
Day over.
The beetle returns happily with a pea of dung.
The butterfly is pleased to sleep in his flower bunk.
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12 comments:
Dear Sir,
Thanks for the poem.
The characters of'The Tale of a Beetle and a Butterfly'reminds me the characters of a statement in 'bilashi' by Shwarat chattergy.It was-'Otikai hosti lop paiyachhe,kintu telapoka tikiya achhe'.Now let's come to the point.
You are affected by the butterflies(according to your class on the 25th august).Because they fly.They have different types of colours.Colours attracts you.Butterflies are a beauty on the flowers.
To me this is a personal poem as you have preferred butterfly.So far I have understood you have glorified the butterflies.But I don't find beetles any less appreciable than that of butterfly.Because these also have different colours.I cannot help moving by the cripples also.They are like underground guerillas.Aren't they?
I would like to appreciate you as the poem has really romantic elemants. We need you as well as Mr.Murtaja Bashir as butterfly lovers.If all of us go for butterflies-it will be a terrible situation.There will not be any trashman.All will become Psyches.
I regret Coleridge is not here.If he would be here,he must have praised the beetles also as he did praised the sea-serpants.
This is an instance of my point of view.There may be many incomplete expressions.Excuse me for those.
This is a good nursery rhyme, and like many nursery rhymes and most simple ancient folklore, the knowledge it gives is dichotomous in nature. Here, the beetle is ‘darkly grave’ while the butterfly is ‘lightly clad’. The same applies to their respective colour and habitat. Sir, what do you think of the dichotomous nature of human memory?
Doipayon
Zinia,
Thanks for your reaction. Let me take it on.
In the first place you appear to be a beetle apologist, a sympathizer of the marginalized. It's ok. But should we flow and dissolve in tears just for the fact of marginalization? Ironically and unconsciously, you're creating a privileged category just by another round of sympathetic blindness. I ain't a colour snob. I also feel sorry for the poor ugly beetle as a creature. But I hate his beetling habits, poor aesthetic taste and propensity for short-term materialistic gains. For me, he lacks imagination, and is coarsely self-indulgent By contrast, the butterfly is ethereal and aesthetically refined: life is a gift enough to celebrate and delight in. He is grateful for the joy of life itself. There's no question here about whether everybody should be an aesthete or not. But we need to appreciate the difference. Yes, I love butterflies. I envy their lightness and delicacy. For me, they are the height of all refinement: we'll be like them in looks and taste when we are truly refined and civilized. You mentioned Sarat Chatterjee. He's a spoiler of Bengali women with his lachrysmal writings. He has taught our women to idealise suffering, and sacrifice themselves to male appetites. How ironical that his victims should be his votaries! Bilashi is Srikant's victim, yet you cater to the villain! Sarat Babu, sata sata pronam apnake! Our guileless women fall for your teargas writings. So deceitful is your literary cunning! You've got our Zinia,then, as your latest kill.
Abul,
Let me know first, are u the Doipayan of the Mahabharata too? You sound like a sage to me too. Frankly speaking, I've no scientific information about the constitution of our memory, which to my mind should have oppositional entities for structural reasons. But this could be another delusion just we're often wont to think of anything and everything in terms of dichotomies. Can't there be trichotomies, and even multichotomies! Who knows? There we go again! Just see as I'm writing the -tomi words, the computer lexicon is mechanically underlining them in red without the least consideration for chances and possibilities. This is instructive: we tend to be mechanical and narrow when we formulate and, like the computer lexicon, callously put things beyond our knowledge under erasure. Incertitude is safer and wiser. Knowledge is like our expanding universe. We should take everything provisionally, for now.
Zinia,
I cannot forget you! Hence here I come again with my butterflies ! In fact my study is hung with a frame of dead butterflies. I love them so much that I keep them dead like the Duke in "My Last Duchess."
Do you know of a stoical figure in Conrad's LORD JIM who tells Jim of two kinds of insects: butterflies and beetles. The one is the unprotected beauty of nature while the other is not only well-armed and shielded but also transgressive. My heart goes out to the butterflies to rank with them against the beetles.
Beware of my butterflies. They are also undergoing the Darwinian evolution and developing the horns of Achilles' wrath.
Cheers!
Lots have been talked about the meaning of the poem; I won’t proceed any further in that line except the fact that we shouldn’t be busy so much with the literal beetle and the butterfly as with what they symbolize. What do they symbolize? Let it remain a riddle for those who take everything literally.
I’ll now engage myself in the amusing play of words. Let’s look at the first lines of the first two stanzas:
a. The beetle wheels around
b. The butterfly whirs around
There are two parallel verbs: ‘wheel’ and ‘whir’; the first suggesting a heavy movement around the ground, the second with a light flight in the air. Secondly, ‘wheel’ usually implies a circular movement confined to a fixed course while ‘whir’ is free wandering playfully around.
How do the two look? The beetle is ‘darkly clad’ and the butterfly ‘painted gallant’; the first ‘dung embedded’ (heavy) and second ‘airily made’(light). Look at the parallel opposites (and please look at the sequence of lines they are in in each stanza.)
The day is over in the third stanza. Is it the end of two lives(let me remind you once again of the symbolism)? What do these two creatures (or whom they stand for) bring home (achieve) at the end of the day (life)?
Am I asking too many questions? Someone I love told me it’s worth questioning than giving answers—questions prove your intellect while answers dull your sensitivity.
Shourabh Pothobashi
Your critical takes on 'wheel' and 'whir' are brilliant. This is very important to understand the 2 views represented by the butterfly and the beetle. Haven't I already honoured the beetle fellow peraps he deserves by putting his name 1st in the title? I didn't really think of previlege or honour (political words?!) while writing the poem. Zinia should these comments. Thanks.
ERRATUM
Please insert 'MORE THAN' between 'perhaps' and 'he' in the last comment. I'm sorry about the oversight.
MM
Dear Sir,
I just want to express my feelings about your poem. The poem reminds me the true characteristics of human beings. Does it sound harsh? We are just like butterfly or beetle. Some of us live a beetle-life by being grave but they always like to live in cowdung. On the other hand, the man who is like butterfly can transgress himself from caterpillar to butterfly that is a change. The change supports him to be free, to be light and to be a pleasant-haunter. These are the beauty of life. So, butterfly shows us how to transgress our bitter feelings to a pleasant one, and to end up our lives on flower-bed. Excuse me for not to comment on your poem and my errors. Thank you for reading my feelings.
Tanima
Dear Sir,
I apologize for my comments.Yes,I do agree with you.I had been a sympathizer of the marginalized.I regretted my comments just after posting it.It seemed to me what I have written-is not the one which I intended to write.Don't say- I was drugged by Sharat Chatterjee.I was drugged by the colours of the beetles(not the one in the cowdungs).I should not have posted such delirious marginalized comments.
Here,I would like to appreciate Shourav's comment.Yes,the 'light' and 'heavy'theory moved me a lot.
This is worth mention,I am not taken by Sharat Chatterjee.I HATE HIM.When I was a first year student of college,I read'bilashi'.From that period on I hate him.Even I did avoided studying 'bilashi'for the H.S.C.as she committed a suicide for losing her beloved.Till now as a literature student,I cannot read any of Sharat Chaterjee.I don't know whether this is a weakness as a literature student or not.'Bilashi' destroyed the 'tothakothito Sharat bilash'in me.But I like the statement as this seems to be true.But I wish this truth not to be true.Let it be the opposite.
I am not commenting anything on the poem.Just now,I am fired by my own delirious writing-which expressed a bit my fascination to Sharat Chaterjee.
Thanks.
As the admistrators of the site, we would like to have Zinia Ayesha and Tanima as regular visitors. Would you plz encourage ur friends to join us?
You write very well.
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