An Ode to Joseph Furtado
By Augusto Pinto
pinto...@gmail.com
There is no statue to mark the memory of Joseph
Furtado. A pity; for his patrician looks and his
long flowing beard would have made a fine figure.
The house in Pilerne where he passed his childhood
is in ruins. Only a few of the oldest residents
have any recollection of him and fewer are aware
that he was one of the finest Indian English poets
of his time. We are fortunate that many of his
poems still survive -- though they only just
survive in a few slim volumes in Central Library's
rare book section.
It is curious that a boy coming from a literary back-land
could turn out to be a poet -- and that too in English.
Philip Furtado, his son, in a biographical note in the 1983
Journal of South Asian Literature's Special Issue on Goan
Literature, wrote that after passing the primeiro grau [the
Portuguese primary school exam] and apart from a year at a
Latin school in Saligao, his early education was conducted
mainly at home.
Perhaps this was a good thing, for Joseph was known to be a
sensitive child and the aesthetic tastes he was to develop
may well have been crushed by the drudgery of a mechanical
schooling.
Incidentally Furtado was also to write poetry in Portuguese.
Later Furtado was to make a switch to a third language, when
he was enrolled at the English medium St. Francis of Sales
School in Nagpur for two years followed by an eight month
stint at Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. In 1890, he
joined the Great Indian Peninsular Railway at Jubbulpore [as
it was spelt then] and went on to become a draughts-man in the
Engineer's office, a fairly important position. It was during
this period that he began to read the classics of world
literature and subsequently began writing.
He published his first collection of poems in 1910
and by 1927, when A Goan Fiddler was published in
England, he already had four volumes of poems to
his credit. A Goan Fiddler had a preface by Sir
Edmund Gosse, the most influential critic in
England at that time, and the book received warm
reviews. Furtado, then published The Desterrado
(1929); Songs of Exile (1938) and Selected Poems
(1939) besides a historical novel Golden Goa
(1938).
For a man to whom it was not even a second but a third
language, Furtado had a remarkable ear for the sounds of
English. In this he is unlike most Indian poets, who prefer
to work with images; and only a Sarojini Naidu can come close
to match him this respect.
Listen to the music of 'At Break of Day':
At break of day
In pleasant spring
When on each spray
The blithe birds sing
While half awake
In bed you lie
And one kiss take
Of her close by ...
Only a master of rhyme, rhythm and meter could be so
felicitous and using this gift, Furtado was capable of
transcribing the sounds emanating from his Indian environment
into his verses. In 'The Brahmin Girl' for instance, he
observes:
Mohini sweet, Mohini neat
So maddening to behold
With *kinning chinning* round her feet
And *fas fis* of the fold.
[emphasis added]
Keki N. Daruwalla in his 'Introduction' to the influential
anthology of Indian English poetry, Ten Twentieth Century
Indian Poets, points out that Furtado was the first to see
the potential of using 'Indian' English in poetry.
When using a pidgin or a patois there is always the
risk that the poet may end up sounding like an
English-educated snob sniggering away at less
fortunate people struggling to make their way in
the world using an alien language. Even Nissim
Ezekiel, the doyen of Indian English poets fell
into this trap in his well known 'Farewell to Miss
Pushpa T.' or in the following lines from 'The
Professor'.
If you are coming again this side by chance
Visit please my humble residence also
I am living just on opposite house's backside.
Furtado avoids sounding condescending because of his ability
to get under the skin of his dramatis personae often using a
technique called the dramatic monologue. In 'The Old Irani'
the speaker is ranting at his milk vendor who waters down the
milk:
Sly rogue, the old Irani
Has made a lakh they say
A lakh in land and money
By mixing milk and pani
What if she bolt away
The young Madame Irani
With all the fellow's money
Beware now Abdul Gani
Beware of Kala Pani
And meddle not with money
Like many a Goan, Furtado had to seek his fortune far away
from the land of his birth and his work in the Railways took
him to Nagpur, Calcutta and Bombay among other places. But
Mother Goa was always close to his heart, leading Prof. Lucio
Rodrigues to call him 'the Poet of Exile'.
Gosse in his 'Introduction' to A Goan Fiddler wrote,"I do not
know where else to look for an expression of the landscape,
the habits and the sentiments of that little known country
Portuguese India."
Certainly the poet writes of the sights, sounds and
smell of his childhood with love. Figures like
Pedro the cowherd, Ruzai the tailor and Vishnulal
the goldsmith come alive in his verses. But these
sketches do not seem parochial or sentimental
because of the poet's ability to see the essence of
humanness in his subjects.
His verses also shed critical light on the society of his
times. The irony of The Presentation gives the lie to the
much romanticized institution of the faithful family retainer
in his age. The poem depicts a mother depositing her young
son with a landlady where he is destined to remain a servant.
Her pleas to the bhatkarni to be considerate to her son, tell
how the landowners held sway over the lives of the lower
classes during Portuguese times.
There's the child, dear Mother, near
He comes not, lest Thou chide him,
He loves Thee all the same.
And gladly left off play
And came here all the way;
Poor boy, and none to guide him
None to shelter, but do Thee
A little corner give him
A child with gentle ways,
He will not trouble Thee
And naught will trouble me
Dear Mother, when I leave him.
Many of his poems have an autobiographical ring about them.
In the 1920s, he came to Goa to settle down, but got
embroiled in a dispute over a village creek where he
championed the cause of the villagers of Pilerne. This made
him the target of a brutal assault by some influential
persons. However none of his neighbours came to his aid and
in disgust he left his village for good.
This perhaps accounts for the undercurrent of bitterness in
The Desterrado and Songs of Exile In 'Birds and Neighbours'
he writes in an epigrammatic style that would have made
Robert Frost proud:
When I was young and went all day
Bird-nesting, oft would neighbours say
"Those birds will be his ruin"
'Tis not with age my hair is grey
And well might birds now turn and say
"'Tis all his neighbours' doin'."
The poet had a sharp eye for for recording the ways of the
world in an apparently naive manner. 'First Love' takes a
quiet but sarcastic swipe at the snobbery of society as it
depicts a man who wants to see, once again, a girl he was
infatuated with when he was young. But not to get married,
for he now realises she is lower down the social ladder:
I could not but desire
To see for once the maid who could
A love so deep inspire
Not that I wished to wed her now
Such changes time had wrought
In me I durst not link my name
To one with such a blot
Since well I knew unheralded were
The riches of her house,
Her mother's sister had besides
Profaned her marriage vows.
Furtado was especially critical, although often in a sly or
humorous way of patriarchal norms and the restrictions
different communities placed on their women, in poems such as
'The Brahmin Girl' 'The Mullah's Daughter' and 'The Pariah
Girl'. 'Kismet' tells the story of a prostitute resigned to
her fate while 'The Neglected Wife' explores the frustrations
of a young wife is left at home by a husband who has to seek
employment in a far off land -- a phenomenon that occurs in
Goa even today.
While his social concerns are apparent in his
poetry although he is never too preachy, it is in
his only novel Golden Goa that his social vision
and political views become quite overt. The plot
revolves around a love affair between a Christian
and a Hindu during the decadent Portuguese rule of
the 16th century. The story contrasts the good
works of the Jesuit missionary and later saint,
Francis Xavier, on the one hand with the horrors of
the Inquisition [which incidentally St. Francis
Xavier himself invited] on the other.
In this book, Furtado takes a series of pot shots against the
foreign rulers. At one time, quoting Robert Sewell he writes,
"The Europeans seemed to think they had a divine right to the
pillage, robbery and massacre of the natives of India. Not to
mince matters their whole record is one of a series of
atrocities." He continues, "If humanity be a proof of
civilisation Indians at that time were more civilized than
the Portuguese."
It would be a pity if the memory of this distinguished
literary artist from Goa were to disappear without a trace.
One way of honouring Joseph Furtado would be to erect a
statue to him. But the poet himself would surely have
appreciated it more if a fresh collection of his best works
were brought out and bought by every lover of Goa.
However, who will pay the printer?
Augusto Pinto is a book review, translator (from Konkani to
English) and lecturer in English. He is based at 40, Novo
Portugal, Moira, Bardez, Goa, India E pinto...@gmail.com or
ypinto...@yahoo.co.in P +91-832-2470336 M +91-9881126350
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