Nivedita's English: Journey Into The Divine

We will concentrate now on Kali the Mother, because it shows a bizarre and astonishing combination of narrative methods, something that Nivedita hardly did either before or after. Published in 1900 this small, handy volume is nevertheless a procession of paintings. Words, employed like colours on canvas, reminding one of Lily Brescoe’s painting in Virginia Woolf’s acclaimed work To the Lighthouse, suggest a variety of moods and emotional intensity.

- Tapan Kumar Ghosh

Nivedita quotes from D.G. Rossetti’s sonnet ‘Mary’s Girlhood’, beginning with ‘This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect/ God’s virgin’ in the first section of Kali The Mother. God’s eternal plan to redeem man speaks through this sonnet, and Rossetti places Mary historically in the distant past: ‘Gone is a great while.’ Nivedita quotes this, being fully aware of how Rossetti’s sonnet is a poetical illustration of his first oil painting called The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. William Blake, one of the early Romantics, did like this with many of his poems. Importantly, the second sonnet in ‘Mary’s Girlhood’ opens with the line ‘These are the symbols’ and functions as a programmatic guide to the picture’s iconography, emphasizing that the painting presents a significant moment, a moment that occurs not long before the Annunciation. Importantly, Nivedita’s first chapter in Kali The Mother is also called ‘Concerning Symbols’. It needs little effort now to realise how Nivedita’s rich knowledge of painting enabled her to impress the leading practicing artists in India— Nandalal Bose, Abanindra Nath Tagore, Asit Halder, and others.

The Annunciation by Rossetti offers, by the way, a far more daring picture, although it uses some conventional images associated with this theme, such as the dove, lily, and extinguished candle. The dove and lily images also occur in the chapter ‘A visit to Dakshineswar’ of Kali the Mother. But it abandons any emphasis on iconography, relying instead on emotional intensity. Nivedita must have also intimately known the