We were subjected to a weekly torture session in school — a class called English Grammar. Imagine a twelve-year-old from Coimbatore in the deep south of India being bombarded with “subordinate clauses” and the “past pluperfect”! Those lessons were enough to drive most of us permanently away from English literature.
Then came a class on Figures of Speech using the opening couplets from Omar Khyyakm’s Rubaiyat (Translation – Fitzgerald), a revelation! For once, grammar turned into something alive, fun, colourful, and exciting. Let me share what I still remember from that day.
“AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.”
(Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, trans. Fitzgerald)
This isn’t just a sunrise — it’s a sunrise with flair, drama, and imagination!
Metaphor
• Bowl of Night — Night compared to a dark bowl holding the sky.
• Hunter of the East — The Sun as a hunter.
• Noose of Light — Sunlight as a glowing rope that ensnares towers.
Personification
Morning flings a stone, stars flee, light sets traps — the cosmos comes alive!
Symbolism
• Sultan’s Turret — Power and pride, humbled by the dawn.
Imagery
• Stars scattering like birds.
• Light roping in a turret.
• Night shattered like porcelain.
Who knew dawn could be so dramatic? Omar Khayyam turned a simple sunrise into a cosmic chase — and restored my faith in English grammar!
Years later, imagine my delight when I found that P. G. Wodehouse had stood this lofty imagery on its head — with his trademark anticlimax — in Leave It to Psmith.
The Scene
Poor Rupert Baxter is locked out after a failed attempt to locate Lady Constance’s missing necklace in a row of flowerpots. Exhausted and desperate, to attract attention he hurls flowerpsots through a window — which, alas, turns out to be Lord Emsworth’s bedroom! Finally, he falls asleep outdoors, only to be awakened by none other than Psmith himself.
Quote
“The spectacle of Psmith of all people beaming benignly down at him was an added offence.
‘I in person,’ said Psmith genially. ‘Awake, beloved, AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight… The Sultan himself,’ he added, ‘you will find behind yonder window, speculating idly on your motives for bunging flowerpots at him. Why, if I may venture the question, did you?’”
Unquote
Only Plum could take Omar Khayyam’s exalted poetry and turn it into a dazzling anticlimax involving flowerpots and a furious peer of the realm.
That’s Wodehouse — the magician who could turn the sublime into the side-splitting.
(Captain Mohan Ram, ex Naval designer, eventually moved to the automobile industry where, if one may hazard a guess, he might have been designing some amphibian vehicles. His career trajectory followed the Peter’s Principle. He rose to senior positions, until finally retiring recently at the age of eighty four. He is currently cooling his heels, writing inane posts on Facebook.)
Related Posts:
ashokbhatia 