Nearly 38 years after Professor Frank D'Souza, the first head of the department of English at Siddharth College, Mumbai, left a manuscript on 'lyric poetry', his daughter Dr Daphne D'Souza Pillai has published the book, fulfilling a promise that she had made to her father at his death bed.
D'Souza, a co-founder of the People's Education Society (PES) which Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar established, left St Xavier's College where he was a lecturer, after Ambedkar, the Father of the Indian Constitution, invited him in 1946 to set up the English section at Siddharth College where he worked at till 1981. The book 'Lyric Poetry: Origin, Nature and Characteristics' was released last month. Pillai, Chairperson of the Management Board of the Pillai Group of Institutions, describes the book as a 'labour of love' from a daughter.
Lyric poetry is a genre of short hummable poems whose origins can be traced back to ancient Greece. The category includes sonnets, elegies, and odes, distinct from verse dramas and epic poems. Lyric poetry is hard to describe, but this is how D'Souza summarises it for those unfamiliar with the form: “It can be understood as 'a marriage between music and meaning, between sound and sense'.”D'Souza wrote the book with the University Grants Commission award in the late 1970s for researching lyric poetry, its origins, nature, and characteristics. The manuscripts were written in ink when there was no internet and D'Souza relied entirely on books, some of which may no longer be available to the public. "My dad entrusted the book's publication to me before he passed away in 1986," said Pillai.
As Pillai raised three children, pursued a PhD in English Literature, and managed academic institutions and non-profits, the promise was not forgotten but relegated to the back burner. She got a chance to redeem the pledge during the COVID lockdown.
The task of putting together the book was daunting as the handwriting could be deciphered by very few people known to him. Some pages were smudged and frayed at the corners. A few chapters had verses in Greek and Latin that had to be authenticated with modern research tools. Some of the manuscript pages were missing and not contiguous and retrieving the bibliography was arduous. It took Pillai six years to finish the project. "This exercise took me on an expedition to a beautiful lyrical world as I had to delve into the lyric origins just like my father did and relive the lyric arts from Greek times to modern times," said Pillai who added that the book takes the reader through a journey of understanding the strength and lyricism that can be achieved with the written word without music.
Prof. Frank, as he was known, was born on July 24, 1917. Of Goan origin, he lived in Dadar where the Goans had created a little enclave. He joined St Xavier's College in 1938 as a Fellow after receiving his Bachelor’s Degree and the prestigious Ellis Prize in English Literature from the University of Mumbai. He got his Master’s Degree from the University of Mumbai, topping his class in April 1941. He was considered a literary pioneer and his book of short essays and articles entitled ‘Frankly Speaking’ was published in 1987. He was also a postgraduate teacher of English Literature at the University of Mumbai between 1950 and 1977.
Minerva Pillai, D'Souza's granddaughter who wrote the foreword, jokes that her mother worked on the book with a Catholic guilt. "The era of Covid gave us all a new appreciation for the things important to us before we meet our Maker (and parents) when it is our time. This put my mother into high gear out of fear that when she met her father at the pearly gates, he would frown at her for ignoring his life’s work," she says in the foreword. "But in reality, this book is an expression of love of a daughter for her father and love of a teacher for his subject- in this case, the subject being lyric poetry," she adds.Publishing a book on lyric poetry at a time when there are questions about whether poetry has a place in popular culture anymore can seem futile. However, Pillai said that her father's book which takes a poetry connoisseur through the evolution of the genre and the works of great poets like T S Elliot and Octavio Paz will be an indispensable book for scholars.
