Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt (Bengali: তরু দত্ত) (4 March 1856 – 30 August 1877) was a Bengali translator and poet from the Indian subcontinent, who wrote in English and French, in what was then British India.[1] She is seen as one of the founding figures of Indo-Anglian literature, alongside Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–31), Manmohan Ghose (1869–1924), and Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949).[2] Dutt is known for her volumes of poetry in English, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1877) and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882), and for her novel in French, Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers (1879). Her poems revolve around themes of loneliness, longing, patriotism and nostalgia. Dutt died young, at age 21, which has influenced some comparisons of her to poet John Keats.[3]

Aru Dutt and Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt
Born(1856-03-04)4 March 1856
12 Maniktollah Street, Rambagan, Kolkata, Bengal, British India
Died30 August 1877(1877-08-30) (aged 21)
Kolkata, Bengal, British India
Resting placeManiktalla Christian Cemetery, Kolkata
NationalityBritish Indian
OccupationPoet

Biography

Early life and education

Toru Dutt was born in Calcutta on 4 March 1856 to a Bengali family that had converted to Christianity. Her father was Govind Chandra Dutt and her mother was Kshetramoni Dutt (nee Mitter), of the Rambagan Dutt family.[4] The Dutt family was one of the first Calcutta families to be strongly influenced by the presence of Christian missionaries.[4] Toru Dutt's grandfather Rasamay Dutt and her father both held important positions in the colonial government.[4] Her cousin Romesh Chandra Dutt was also a writer and Indian civil servant. Dutt's father converted to Christianity in 1862, when Dutt was six years old.[4] Her mother initially resisted conversion, but eventually became a practicing Christian as well.[4] Both of Dutt's parents published some writing: her father wrote poetry and her mother published a translation into Bengali of a religious monograph.[4]

Toru was the youngest child of three, after sister Aru and brother Abju.[4] She and her siblings spent most of their childhoods in Calcutta, splitting their time between a house in the city and a garden house in the suburb of Baugmaree.[4] Dutt was educated at home by her father, and by the Indian Christian tutor Babu Shib Chunder Bannerjea, learning French and English, and eventually Sanskrit, in addition to her first language of Bengali.[4] During this time, she learned John Milton's epic poem of Christian allegory Paradise Lost by heart.[4] She also learned stories of ancient India from her mother.[4]

Dutt's brother Abju died of consumption in 1865, when he was fourteen.

Life in Europe

In 1869, when Dutt was thirteen, Dutt's family left India, making Dutt and her sister some of the first Bengali girls to travel by sea to Europe.[4] The family spent four years living in Europe, one in France and three in England.[4] They also visited Italy and Germany.

They first lived in France, from 1869 to 1870, in the south of France and in Paris.[4] During this time, Dutt studied French in Nice and was briefly a student at a boarding school.[4] In 1870, the family lived in Onslow Square, Brompton, London, where Dutt studied music.[4] In 1871, they moved to Cambridge, where they remained until 1873.[4]

In 1872, the University of Cambridge offered a lecture series, ‘Higher Lectures for Women,’ which Toru Dutt attended with her sister Aru.[4][5] At the time, women were not entitled to become members of the University of Cambridge, and opportunities for higher education were limited. This was an opportunity for women to access University lectures, set up by a group including philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicent Garrett Fawcett. 'Lectures for Ladies' became Newnham College in 1871, but Toru Dutt did not herself matriculate as a member of the women's college,[6] presumably because she was living in Cambridge and had no need for college accommodation. Her correspondence does refer, however, to 'Merton Hall', then the home of Newnham College, and to Miss Clough, Principal of Newnham College. While not a member of a Cambridge college, Dutt would have had access to the college's stimulating intellectual discussion and critical thinking. At the end of 1872, Toru met and befriended Mary Martin, daughter of Reverend John Martin of Sidney Sussex College.[4] The friendship that developed continued in their correspondence after Toru’s return to India.[7]

The family left Cambridge in 1873, living in St Leonards, Sussex from April to November 1873, and then returning to Calcutta.[4]

Later life
Grave of Toru Dutt at Maniktala Christian Cemetery

When Toru Dutt returned to Calcutta in 1873, at age seventeen, she found it challenging to re-integrate with a culture which now seemed like "an unhealthy place both morally and physically speaking"[8] to her Europeanized and Christianized eyes.[4] Her sister Aru died of consumption in 1872, aged twenty.[4] Three years after returning to Calcutta, she wrote to her friend Mary Martin: "‘I have not been to one dinner party or any party at all since we left Europe,"[9] and "If any friend of my grandmother happens to see me, the first question is, if I am married,"[10] both statements expressing a frustration with what she saw as a restrictive and conservative society.[4] However, she also recognized that Europe could not replace India as her true home.[4] She took consolation in reinvigorating her studies of Sanskrit with her father, and hearing her mother's stories and songs about India.[4]

Like both of her siblings, Toru Dutt died of consumption at a young age (twenty-one), on 30 August 1877.[4]

Writing

Toru Dutt was a natural linguist and in her short life became proficient in Bengali, English, French and, later, Sanskrit. She left behind an impressive collection of prose and poetry. Her two novels, the unfinished Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden written in English and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, written in French, were based outside India with non-Indian protagonists. Her poetry comprises A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields consisting of her translations into English of French poetry, and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan which compiles her translations and adaptations from Sanskrit literature.

A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields was published in 1876 without a preface or introduction. It contains 165 poems, mostly translated from French into English by Dutt, except for one poem composed by Dutt, "A Mon Père," and eight poems translated by her sister.[4] At first, this collection attracted little attention, though it eventually came to the attention of Edmund Gosse in 1877, who reviewed it quite favorably in the Examiner that year. Sheaf would see a second Indian edition in 1878 and a third edition by Kegan Paul of London in 1880, but Dutt lived to see neither of these triumphs. The second edition added forty-four new poems, a portrait of Toru Dutt and her sister, and a preface by their father.[4]

At the time of her death, she left behind two novels, Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, (published posthumously in 1879), the first novel in French by an Indian writer, and Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden, (thought to be the first novel in English by an Indian woman writer) in addition to an unfinished volume of original poems in English and Sanskrit translations, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan. It was after Dutt's death in 1877 that her father discovered manuscripts of her writings, among which was Ancient Ballads.

When Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published posthumously in 1882, Edmund Gosse wrote an introductory memoir for it. In this he wrote of Toru Dutt: "She brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous." The ballads are essentially Indian in genre and outlook and are the poetical attempts to reveal her return to her land. In them are enshrined what she had learnt of her country from books and from her people. She did not anglicize her ideas but kept close to the ethical values of the original tales while her understanding of modern life and dedication to craft helped her to make these ideas of yore relevant to posterity.[11] Some well-remembered poems from this volume include "A Sea of Foliage," "The Lotus," "Sîta," and "Our Casuarina Tree." "Our Casuarina Tree," in particular, is often taught in high schools in India as a part of the English curriculum.

Publications
  • A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, Saptahik Sambad Press, Bhowanipore, 1876.
  • Bianca, or the Spanish Maiden, serialized in Bengal Magazine from January to April 1878 (posthumous).
  • Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, Didier, Paris, 1879 (posthumous).
  • Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, 1882 (posthumous).

Dutt also published translations of French poetry, and literary articles, in Bengal Magazine from March 1874 to March 1877.[4] Notable magazine publications from this time include essays on Leconte de Lisle and Henry Louis Vivian Derozio in December 1874.[4] She also published some translations from Sanskrit in Bengal Magazine (October 1876) and Calcutta Review (January 1877).[4]

In addition, Dutt wrote a great many letters, which were published in 1921 as the Life and Letters of Toru Dutt by Oxford University Press, edited by Harihar Das.

References
  1. Gosse, Edmund (1913). "Toru Dutt." In: Critical Kit-kats. London: William Heinemann, pp. 197–212.
  2. Birch, Dinah, ed. (2009). "Anglo-Indian Literature". The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.). Oxford UP.
  3. Chapman, Alison (September 2014). "Internationalising the Sonnet: Toru Dutts "Sonnet – Baugmaree"". Victorian Literature and Culture. 42 (3): 595–608. doi:10.1017/S1060150314000163. ISSN 1060-1503.
  4. Lokugé, Chandani (12 September 2019). "Dutt, Toru (1856–1877), Indian poet, translator, and novelist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.369160. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. OCLC 56568095.
  5. http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/toru-dutt
  6. Newnham College Register 1871-1971, Vol 1
  7. The Transnational in the History of Education: Concepts and Perspectives, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldan, p. 187
  8. Toru Dutt, in a letter to Mary Martin, 25 Dec 1876. Quoted in Lokugé, p. 321.
  9. Toru Dutt, in a letter to Mary Martin, 24 March 1876. Quoted in Lokugé, p. 271.
  10. Toru Dutt, in a letter to Mary Martin, 3 May 1876. Quoted in Lokugé, p. 276.
  11. Life and Letters of Toru Dutt by Harihar Das, Oxford University Press, 1921, page 320: "Le Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arvers .. was published by a Paris firm, Diclier, in 1879, among the Librairie Academique, with a preface by Mademoiselle Bader, containing some account of the authoress's life and works. It had been begun, apparently, during the visit to Europe, but nothing is known as to the time of its completion."
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