The history of the institution of Poet Laureateship in EnglandEngland In England, the Parliament was originally an advisory body summoned to consult with the monarch, and the courts exercised delegated royal powers, as “lions beneath the throne”. from where we borrowed this institution in IndiaIndia Bharat Varsha (Jambu Dvipa) is the name of this land mass. The people of this land are Sanatan Dharmin and they always defeated invaders. Indra (10000 yrs) was the oldest deified King of this land. Manu's jurisprudence enlitened this land. Vedas have been the civilizational literature of this land. Guiding principles of this land are : सत्यं वद । धर्मं चर । स्वाध्यायान्मा प्रमदः । Read more. But,we look into the nature of poetry and into the history of Poet Laureateship not from the point of view of an academician but for the purpose of finding out whether in law the termination of Poet Laureateship can be said to be unreasonable in the opinionOpinion A judge's written explanation of a decision of the court. In an appeal, multiple opinions may be written. The court’s ruling comes from a majority of judges and forms the majority opinion. A dissenting opinion disagrees with the majority because of the reasoning and/or the principles of law on which the decision is based. A concurring opinion agrees with the end result of the court but offers further comment possibly because they disagree with how the court reached its conclusion. of a reasonably well-informed and well-qualified people. Whether abolition of Poet Laureateship can be regarded to be so unreasonable as lacking totally in minimum of rationality.
The British Royal tradition of appointing Poets to the Royal Household as Poet Laureates was officially inaugurated by CharlesII with his appointment of Dryden as the first Poet Laureate of England. But even before them, kind James in his times, appointed Ben Jonson to his Royal Household and Charles I appointed William Davent to his Royal Household to perform the same duties. This monarchical tradition which was so begun by employing Poets to the Royal Household is continuing to this day in Great Britain, but not without from the beginning being subjected to better criticism and biting derision.
The Poet Laureats in legal conception is merely one of the salaried members of the Royal Household and is paid out of the Civil List and is placed under an obligation to produce New Year and Birthday Odes. Poet Laureate is thus, in essence, a Royal mirthmaker. Sweet are the uses of solemn flattery even for the kind. This tradition was condemned even in monarchical Britain as repudiation of true nature and function of poetry. There is British evidenceEvidence All the means by which a matter of fact, the truth of which is submitted for investigation, is established or disproved. Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Adhiniyam 2023 to show that almost from the beginning the appointment of Poet Laureate was treated by well-meaning people not as conferring recognition on merit, but as heaping humiliation on the person appointed as Poet laureate. Considering the nature of appointment and the duties of the person appointed to be Poet Laureate, any one appointed to that office can never hope to escape from the fate of eanting this ignominy. Poet under payment cannot but be object of ridicule. Offer of Poet Laureateship was rejected for this reason by several Great English Poets. On the death of Cibber, when the Poet Laureateship was offered to Thomas Gray (1716-1771) the immortal poet of Elegy in a country churchyard, Gray had contemptuously rejected that offer by comparing a Poet Laureate to a Royal rat-catcher, Gray wrote:
“I very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both of sack and silver yet if any great man would say to me. ” I make you rat-catcher to His Majesty, with a salary of .300 a year and two butts of best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or two, for form’s sake in public once a year, yet to you, sir we shall not stand upon these things. “I cannot say that I should jump at it; nay, if they would drop the very name of the office, and call me Sinecure to the King’s Majesty, I should still feel a little akward and think every body I saw smelt a rat about me.”
(See Nick Russal: Poets by Appointment” P.79)
Similarly , Byron (1788-1824) poured ridicule and scorn on the dullness and boredom of Robert Southexy (1774-1843) as Poet Laureate and criticised Pye, another Poet Laureate, an eminently respectable in everything but his poetry. In advising Walter Scott (1771-1832) to reject the royal offer of Poet Laureateship made to him his friend expressed the following contemporary view of Poet Laureateship:
“I shall frankly say that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which by the general concurrence of the worlds, is stamped ridiculous.”
(See The Poet Laureate by Kenneth Hokins P.132)
When William Wordsworth (1770-1850) in the least days of his life reluctantly accepted Poet Laureateship he brought upon himself the ridicule and opprobrium of his life-long friends and admirers. He was called a slave and his acceptance was denounced by Robert Browing in “Lost Leader” as an act of betrayal undertaken for earning a few silver pieces. Robert Browning wrote:
“Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his cost-Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devots; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our coppor hand gone for his service: Rags-were they purple, his heart had been proud; we that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great Language, caught his clear accounts Made him our Pattornto live and to die; Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelly, were with us, they watch from their graves:
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves:
(“A Treasury of Great Poems” by Louis Untermeyer, Vol.Two 859)
Such a high-minded Newspaper as the Times of London while editorially morning the death of William Wordsworth pleaded on 25th April, 1850 for the total abolition of the Post of Poet Laureateship on the ground that Poet Laureate is not an honour but a badge of ridicule and is an office entirely removes from the ideas and habits of our times. The great Newspaper even suspected that the aspirants to that post might be prostituting the divine gift’ and wrote the following biting denouncement of the institution of Poet Laureateship.
“The title is no longer an honour but a mere badge of ridicule, which can bring no credit to its wearer. It required the reputation of Southey or a Wordsworth to carry them through an office so entirely removed from the ideas and habits of our timeTime Where any expression of it occurs in any Rules, or any judgment, order or direction, and whenever the doing or not doing of anything at a certain time of the day or night or during a certain part of the day or night has an effect in law, that time is, unless it is otherwise specifically stated, held to be standard time as used in a particular country or state. (In Physics, time and Space never exist actually-“quantum entanglement”), without injury to their fame we know well enough that birthday odes have been long exploded; but why retain a nick name, not a title, which must be felt as a degradation rather than an honour by its wearer?”
In a free society, a poet is honoured only so long as he is true to himself and remains an authentic and spontaneous spokesman of his inner voice. His craft is acclaimed and his voice is respected only so long as he gives expression to his true sentiments and genuine emotions and his deeply perceived vision of human life. A true poet cannot, therefore be a mercenary acting at the behest of his masters and writing for the latter’s Pleasure or profit. He should act only according to his conscience. Keats said that “if poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a Tree it had better not come at all.” Unlike Faust, who sold his soulSoul Abraham, having wept a short time over his wife’s body, soon rose up from the corpse; thinking, as it should seem, that to mourn any longer would be inconsistent with that wisdom by which he had been taught that he was not to look upon death as the extinction of the soul, but rather as a separation and disjunction of it from the body, returning back to the region from whence it came; and it came, from God. (Philo) न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्-नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः-अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोयं पुराणो-न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे (Gita 2.20 ) to Mephistopheless, a true poet cannot barter away his freedom of action and conscience for a sack of gold. The institution of Poet Laureateship is based upon purchasing allegiance. It is not consistent with the essential condition of Poet’s freedom. The appointment of Poet Laureates on fixed salaries is calculated to rob from the poet not only his dignity but even his freedom to write according to his conscience. Poetry written to satisfy the commands of a well-educated monarch is no less feigned artificial and untrue, and therefore demeaning and degrading than poetry written to please and pander to the vulgar tastes of the less informed, but popularly elected officials. The destiny of poetry, therefore, cannot be fulfilled except by keeping the poet to the arduous path of truth and freedom. It is therefore clear that the institution of Poet Laureateship cannot be regarded as consistent either with the nature of poetry or with the democratic polity.
Arts, particularly poetry, cannot flourish under the bureaucratic tutelage of even democratic persuasion. By the rigid touch of the bureaucratic wand, all creativity will cease and wither away. Arts can hope to prosper and flourish only in free market conditions of perfect freedom and truthfulness. No word-smith wearing governmental blinkers and spinning alliterative phrases for ceremonial occasions and writing with an eye on his employment, can be regarded as a creative poet. The great Telugu Poets, Pothana, rejected the offer of royal patronage in order to preserve the freedom of his thought and expression. Again it is acting on this high principle that the conscience of a true writer should not be chained to anything except to his own social awareness that Satte rejected the Nobel Prize and resigned even his teaching post. Albert Camus echoed this sentiment when he declared that “a writer by definition, cannot serve today those who make history and that they must serve only those who are subject to it. “It is only the artistically innovative and ideologically defiant that can be regarded as great poets.