Nature has bestowed every season with unique beauty and charm. Be it Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. Had man not been unfriendly to nature, never would have nature reacted in its violent style.
Unfortunately this so called modern man has gone beyond the human ethics to quench his materialistic thirst. Nature can never be blamed, as Newton’s third of law warns, “To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Famous nature poet Wordsworth has transported the same philosophy/nature’s law however, in a poetic language. “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” Physics strikes the mind, while as poetry warms the heart.
Winter is a starkly beautiful season. With frosty mornings, bright, crisp days and snow-covered earth. It’s easy to see how it has inspired writers throughout ages. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dickens, Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, Pablo Neruda, and Agha Shahid Ali, all have aestheticised winter in their own way.
Winter had been at the heart of countless writers. And for generations, it has served for writers as a metaphor of stillness, sterility and despair. For some it is the season of despair, nonetheless, it cannot stop springing hope as well.
Moreover, it has also served as a means of introversion and contemplation. Inexplicably, there is the relationship between a writer and winter—intrigued for a long.
For an ordinary person, a season is nothing other than the circle of the year, but for a writer it is an opportunity to celebrate, mourn, remember, witness etc. Winter is the night-time of seasons: the haziness develops, the cold encompasses the world.
The water bodies freeze, the temperature dips to minus, makes it difficult to cope with bitter cold. And in literature it holds a special space and reference with its white carpet and icy fangs which have fueled up the imagination of poets and writers alike. It is time to rest and keep oneself mostly inside. For a writer it is time to comprehend and analyse. It can abet or plume their imaginative soul.
Winter is a time when the dip in temperature makes a writer relish a hot cup of tea, rejoicing the bounties of nature. Bard of the Avon William Shakespeare in The Winter’s Tale, writes: “A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one/of sprites and goblins”.
Though the great bard described winter in a desolate manner, he cannot help celebrating it as well like in Titus Andronicus, as he writes, “In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow/And keep eternal springtime on thy face”.
Celebrated Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali has written on winter in Kashmir. He has almost painted every season of Kashmir in his poetic oeuvre, no doubt his favourite season was autumn, as he wanted to die in Kashmir in autumn.
He couldn’t restrain himself from painting winter in his poetry, indeed a full poem titled ‘wintermen’.
“Snow gleams as if a lover’s gaze has fallen to earth//. How the season whitens! //Even the evergreens are peppered with salt, and only love can take the place of the mountain”.
At another place, Shahid depicts the mid-Winter in Kashmir:
Find the invincible summer in your heart when you,
in the depths of winter,
come to the slopes of the Vale
where even gods have sought refuge…
and then regard the frost and the pines crusted with snow.
Marry Shelly had a dramatic effect of winter in her, Frankenstein transporting the depths of winter.
The novel begins with “floating sheets of ice” and ends with the monster receding into the distance on an ice floe.
James Joyce’s depiction of a winter evening in Dubliners is clothed in these words: “When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown somber. The space of sky over us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street”.
Pablo Neruda once beautifully wrote, “I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter.”
In fact, when the chilling impact blends with urban presence, one is reminded of T S Eliot who composed, when chilling impact blends with existence, “The winter evening settles down//With smells of steaks in passageways.//Six o’clock/Burnt out ends of smoky days”.
Lewis Carroll celebrated the winter in the famous lines carrying awe, wonder and hope, “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again”.
American poet Robert Frost in a nostalgic mood calls “my best bid of remembrance’ and writes of the winter in ‘Woods on a Snowy Evening’, the often quoted quartrian philosophizes the meaning of optimistic life.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
While sitting in a home in cozy chambers, one can enjoy lot of literature what may be called wintry-literature. It is like liberating our souls from the coldest days and nights of winter.
Literature is a solace in every season. There is famous poetic phrase in Kashmiri language pregnant with hope “Wand chal, sheen gaal—be aye bahaar” loosely translated as (winter shall pass, snow must melt— and spring will come).
The same connotation is transported from English poet P B Shelley’s famous line, resonating far and beyond the literary world:
If winter comes, can springs be far behind
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.