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Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt (March 4, 1856 - August 30, 1877) was an English and French poet and author, who made a mark in literature in spite of her premature death.

Early life
She was daughter of Kshetramoni and Gobinda Chandra Dutt, of the Rambagan Dutt family of Kolkata. Gobinda Chandra Dutt had converted to Christianity in the 1860s and had travelled abroad. Aru Dutt (1854-1874) was her elder sister. The two sisters were educated in France and England. They returned to India in the early 1870s and took to learning Sanskrit. Both the sisters earned fame for their literary activities, in spite of their premature death. Their grandfather Rasamay Dutt (1779-1854) was the first Indian Commissioner of the Court of Small Causes and was one of the founders of the Hindu College. Romesh Chunder Dutt, the famous administrator, writer and historian, was her cousin.

Achievements
After publication of several translations and literary discussions, she published in 1876, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Field, with translation in English of some 70-80 French poets. Eight of the poems were translated by her elder sister Aru. A novel Binaca was published in the Bengal Magazine in 1878. Her famous novel Le Journal de Mademoiselle dArvers was published in 1879 from Paris. Prithwindra Mukherjee translated it into Bengali, serialised it in the monthly Basumati, before bringing it out in a book form in 1956, with a foreword by Premendra Mitra. Once again, Prithwindra Mukherjee serialised its English translation in 1963, in the Illustrated Weekly of India with line drawings by Mario. Her Ancient Ballads and Legends of India, published in 1882, was a great beginning in Indo-Anglican writing. She also knew German.

Beschreibung Toru Dutt (1856-77) pioneered the Indian women's English literary tradition. Conversant in four languages - English, French, Bengali, and Sanskrit - Toru was a novelist, poet, essayist, and translator. When she died at the age of twenty-one, she left behind an impressive collection of writing. This volume brings together her two novels, a book of poetry, and a selection of her letters. Her writings give voice to the aspirations of a sensitive young woman trying to negotiate the cross-cultural complexities and nuances of an Indo-European encounter. Skillful crafted, her fiction and poetry reflect a passionate commitment of theme, character, and setting. The letters are charmingly written, limpid in style, and span the self-reflexive experiences of a young and impressionable mind grappling with the sociopolitical realities of British India. A Well-researched critical introduction by Chandani Lokuge analyses Toru Dutt's perceptions of her writing in the postcolonial context. It addresses questions about where Dutt belongs; how far her life and writing illuminate the emergence of an imperial, and later postcolonial, modernity; and what her extraordinary literary identity means in today's global context. The volume includes an author's biography, detailed explanatory notes, and an insightful commentary by Prithwindranath Mukherjee, whose translation of Toru's French novel into English is also part of the volume. [Vom Buchumschlag] Autorin

Toru Dutt was born on March 4, 1856, in Rambagan, 12 Manicktollah Street, Calcutta, to father Govin Chunder Dutt and mother Kshetramoni, a family that become Christians in 1862. Toru was the youngest child, arriving after sister Aru and brother Abju (who died in 1865). Their cousin was the poet and civil servant Romesh Chunder Dutt. Both girls honed their English and French during a four-year residence in England and France,

starting in 1869 at the French School at Nice, then in London in 1870, where The Dutt Family Album was published, and last in Cambridge in 1871, where the sisters attended the "Higher Lectures for Women." The family returned in September 1873 to their city house in Rambagan and their garden residence at Baugmaree. Toru produced her first volume of poetry, A Sheaf, in 1876: it held 165 translations from French writers, eight by her sister Aru and the rest by herself, including "My Vocation" by Jean-Pierre de Branger. After her best friend and sister Aru died of consumption on July 23, 1874, Toru determined to make a "sheaf" of poems for her native culture and proceeded to acquire Sanskrit in 1875-76. Though ill herself, she wrote her Ancient Ballads and Legends at this time. She died on August 30, 1877, also of consumption, and is buried at C. M. S. Cemetery in Calcutta. Her father ensured that her manuscripts - two novels, one in English and one in French, as well as her new "sheaf" - were published in London and Paris.

ONE day in August, 1876, the English poet and critic, Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, was lingering the office of the London " Examiner" mourning over the dullness of the book-trade at that season, and complaining that the publishers sent him no books worth reviewing. While he was still talking upon this subject to his friend, Mr. Minto, the editor of the paper, the postman arrived, bringing a meager little packet, marked with an unfamiliar Indian postmark. Upon being opened it proved to contain a small pamphlet, entitled, " A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, by Toru Putt," which Mr. Minto thrust hastily into the reluctant hands of Mr. Gosse, exclaiming as he did so: " There, see whether you can't make some-thing out of that." The critic did not expect to make anything of it. It was a thin, shabby, ugly little book, of about two hundred pages, bound in orange color, unattractive in type. and without preface or introduction, its oddly printed title-page merely conveying the information that it was published at Bhowanipore, at the Saptahiksauibad Press. He took it, however, and the first thing he found in it was a translation of A Morning Serenade, by Victor Hugo. "What was my surprise and almost rapture," he says in relating the incident, " to open at such verse as this: "Still barred thy doors! The far east glows, The morning wind blows fresh and free. Should not the hour that wakes the rose Awaken also thee ? "All look for thee, Love, Light, and Song; Light in the sky deep red above, Song, in the lark of pinions strong, And in my heart, true Love. "Apart, we miss our nature's goal, Why strive to cheat our destinies ? Was not my love made for thy soul? Thy beauty for mine eyes ? No longer sleep, Oh, listen now! I wait and weep, But where art thou ?" "When poetry is as good as this," continues Mr. Gosse, it does not much matter whether Rouveyre prints it upon Whatman paper, or whether it steals to light in blurred type from some press in Bhowanipore.''

The volume which thus pleasantly surprised an accomplished reviewer was the work of a young Hindu girl, then only twenty years of age. Toru Dutt was the youngest child of Govin Chunder Dutt, a retired Indian officer of high caste. She was born in Calcutta on the fourth of March, 1856, and, with the exception of a year's visit to Bombay, her childhood, and that of her elder sister Aru, was passed at her father's garden-house in the city of her birth. Her parents, whom she dearly loved, were devout Christians, and brought her up to share their faith. She was well acquainted, however, with all the ancient songs and legends of her own people, and always retained for them a tenderness of which she sometimes speaks half apologetically, while at other times she grows warm in their praise. Often her mother, herself, and Aru,for both sisters possessed very clear, and well-trained contralto voiceswould sing these strange old ballads in the evening, when the sudden descent of the tropic night brought welcome dusk and coolness after the glare and heat of an Indian day. The two sisters were devoted companions. Torn, the younger by eighteen months, always unconsciously took the lead both in studies and amusements, although, as their father records, there was no assumption of superiority on her part. " It seemed perfectly natural to Ann" he says, to fall into the background in the presence of her sister. The love between them was always perfect." They remained until 1869 in the happy retirement of their home, studying and learning how to perform house-hold tasks, none of which they considered too mean for them. Much of their time was spent in the garden, of which no description could be given so clear or so beautiful as Tortes own, written a few years later : "A sea of foliage girds our garden round, But not a sea of dull, unvaried green, Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen; The light-green, graceful tamarinds abound Amid the mangoe clumps of green profound. And palms arise, like pillars gray, between; And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean, Red,red, and startling like the trumpet's sound. But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes Into a cup of silver. One might swoon Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze On a primeval Eden, in amaze." In November, 1869, the two girls went to Europe, and visited France, Italy, and England. In France they were sent to school for the only time in their lives, spending a few months at a French pension. It must have been chiefly during this period that 'Toru gained her marvelous intimacy with the French language. English she spoke and wrote well wonderfully well considering her age and nationalityyet an occasional lapse betrays the foreigner. Her French, on the contrary, fluent, graceful, and idiomatic, seems not the wilfully acquired accomplishment of an educated Hindu, but the natural speech of a Parisian lady. A brief sample, taken almost at random, will prove this. It is a description of the hero in her romance called Le Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arvers. "Il est beau en effet. Sa taille est haute, mais quelquesuns la trouveraient mince ; sa chevelure noire est bouclee et tombe jusqu'a la nuque ; ses yeux noirs sont profonds et bien fendus ; le front est noble ; la levre superieure, couverte par une moustache naissante et noire, est parfaitement modelee ; son menton a quelque chose de severe ; son teint est d'un blanc presque feminin, ce qui denote sa haute naissante."

She always loved France. Her first book, as we see, was a volume of translations from the French ; her one long prose work was composed in French ; the first article she ever published was a critical essay upon a French author ; and two of her most stirring English poems treat of French subjectsone, an ode written in 1870 during the dark days of the Franco-Prussian War, the second, lines inscribed on the fly-leaf of Erckmann-Chatrian's novel Madame Therese. The latter concludes thus: I read the story, and my heart heats fast! Well might all Europe quail before thee, France, Battling against oppression ! Years have passed, Yet of that time men speak with moistened glance. Va-nu-pieds! When rose high your Marseillaise Man knew his rights to earth's remotest bound And tyrants trembled. Yours alone the praise! Ali, had a Washington but then been found! On leaving France the sisters went to England, where they attended the lectures for women at Cambridge, and in 1873 they returned to their beloved home in Calcutta, where the four remaining years of Tort's life were passed. A photograph taken before their departure shows both girls to have been pleasing and refined in appearance, while Toru's rather round face with its bronze skin, brilliant eyes, and shading mass of loose hair, might be termed pretty, (lid we not prefer to call it expressive, since its alertness and intelligence possess a stronger charm than its beauty. Toru's career as an author dated from her return to India. Equipped already with a stock of knowledge which, as Mr. Gosse well says, " would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous," she could not rest content with these acquirements, but devoted herself zealously to the study of Sanskrit, under her father's tuition; a pursuit which she continued until, in consideration of her failing health, he required her to give it up. Her first publication, which appeared in the Bengal Magazine when she was but eighteen years of age, was an essay upon the French poet Leconte de Lisle, with whose somewhat austere compositions she had much sympathy. This was soon followed by another upon Josephin Soulary, both being illustrated by translations into English verse. In July, 1874, her sister Aru died at the age of twenty, and in her Toru lost a faithful helper and friend. It had been their cherished project to publish an anonymous novel which Torn was to write and Aru, who possessed a striking talent for design, was to illustrate. Toru began the novelLe Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arversbefore leaving Europe, but Aru died without having seen a page of it, and Toru herself was in her grave when the completed manuscript was found among her papers by her father and given to the public.

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