文档介绍：THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD
THE GOLDEN
THRESHOLD
By Sarojini Naidu
1
THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD
INTRODUCTION
It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. The
earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the writer was
seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India in 1904, when she
was twenty-five; and they belong, I think, almost wholly to those two
periods. As they seemed to me to have an individual beauty of their own,
I thought they ought to be published. The writer hesitated. "Your letter
made me very proud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it possible that I have
written verses that are 'filled with beauty,' and is it possible that you really
think them worthy of being given to the world? You know how high my
ideal of Art is; and to me my poor casual little poems seem to be less than
beautiful--I mean with that final enduring beauty that I desire." And, in
another letter, she writes: "I am not a poet really. I have the vision and
the desire, but not the voice. If I could write just one poem full of beauty
and the spirit of greatness, I should be exultantly silent for ever; but I sing
just as the birds do, and my songs are as ephemeral." It is for this bird-
like quality of song, it seems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint,
in a sort of delicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament
of a woman of the East, finding expression through a Western language
and under partly Western influences. They do not express the whole of
that temperament; but they express, I think, its essence; and there is an
Eastern magic in them.
Sarojini Chattopadhyay was born at Hyderabad on February 13, 1879.
Her father, Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, is descended from the ancient
family of Chattorajes of Bhramangram, who were noted throughout
Eastern Bengal as patrons of Sanskrit learning, and for their practice of
Yoga. He took his degree of Doctor of Science at the University of
Edinburgh in 1877, and afterwar