The poem ‘The Sower’ is translated by the Bengali poet Torulata Dutt from the French poet Victor Hugo’s French poem ‘Saison des Semailles : Le Soir.’ The French name literally means in English, ‘Sowing Season’: In the evening “where the poet talks about a sower and his attitude towards his job.
The poet was leisurely spending time in a porchway enjoying the beauty of the twilight sky which dominated the day because it was the time between the day and the approaching night. Suddenly a lone sower caught his attention since the working hours were over and there was no one else in the field. The towering black shadow of the man was so majestic that it even appeared bigger than the deep trenches around the field.
The man was absolutely engrossed in spreading the grains all over the ground. His confident steps and dedication towards his work even in fading light impressed the poet. He developed a deep respect for the sower and appreciated his larger than life appearance.
The theme of the poem is to show the powerful human aspects which could even dominate the nature. The attitude and sincerity of the sower made him appear to the poet so impressive that he put him in a high pedestal of searching the ‘starry skies’. The poet Tarulata Dutt has used a simple rhyme scheme “abab” The word imageries, like the domination of the twilight over the sunlight, the majestic shadow of the sower growing bigger than even the deep trenches around the field and the poet’s imagination of putting the sower at a great height of touching the sky with his grains representing the twinkling stars enhance the beauty of the poem.
They bring out the poet’s love for the nature placing it side by side with humanistic features. The focus of the poem is basically on the sower but nature has been included right from the beginning to the end very elegantly b the poet giving a novelty to the poem.
The poem has a strong message of selflessness of the old sower who is doing his job diligently without even bothering to know the result. His age and experience must have given a lot of experience on farming which has taught him not to give up even if it is a bad harvest. He is sincerely doing his job even after the working hours.
We, the readers, get the message from the sower that we need to do our job with dedication and hard work will definitely pay.
The poem appeals to me because of the impressive presentation of the sower and the unusual comparison between human features with nature. Both nature and human aspects play dominant roles making the poem interesting.
