MUTRAN 77concrete reality of women. The suspicion is confirmed by a poem like 'A
Virgin Bathing in the Sky' (i,292) (written in 1907), the theme of which is the
planet Venus, pictured here as an idealized woman. But the picture, as in
all of Mutran's poetry about women, is strongly marked by the absence of
sensuality or even sensuousness. Here the poet declares his love for Venus
and not for any mortal woman. The contrast he draws between the two is
very much in favour of the goddess who is characterized by beauty, perfection,
freedom from sin and from the wiles of real women who are described as the
cause of so much human misery. Another poem, Venus' (U24), written as
early as 1901, depicts worshippers in the Temple of Venus led by an inspired
poet who, in response to the worshippers' longing to see the goddess of love,
predicts truly that by a miracle Venus will appear as a woman of perfect
beauty to those who spend two months in prayer and fasting. Here the Greek
myth is vivified and the planet is personified much in the manner one as-
sociates with, not just European Renaissance poetry, but specifically
Romantic writings: the poet is now the prophet or priest of the religion of
beauty. In another poem, 'The Two Roses' (i,35), even God is viewed as the
supreme poet and maker, and the world is regarded as a collection of cap-
tivating poems. A related image of the poet emerges from Mutran's poem
'Eloquence' (i,55) where the poet is revealed to us as a magician and poetry
is conceived as magic which transports the hearer to a higher and nobler
order of reality. The figure of the poet with his lyre, gazing into the invisible
world and telling stories of love, the poet, that is, as the lover, magician and
storyteller all in one, draws upon elements from the classical Arabic and
Greek traditions, in which we can detect echoes from Qais, the mad one, and
Orpheus. The poet's search for an ideal Beauty which does not exist on earth,
is unequivocally expressed in the poem 'In the Wood' which Mutran himself
describes as 'an imaginative picture of a poet roaming about in a mountainous
wood looking for a non-existent flower' (i,3O2). The poet is here obviously
looking for Perfect Beauty which does not exist in the outside world, but the
only approximation to which is in the poet's own mind or poetic imagination,
for in the end the lover offers his mistress a poem instead of the ideal flower
he could not find. On the fecundity of the creative imagination, which is yet
another Romantic theme, Mutran writes elsewhere (II,288):
The soul, like Nature, is an ever-creating mother
Bringing to a new form all created things.
It fashions whatever inspiration offers her
And through memory recaptures figures
Whose absence causes us grief.Mutran did not always express his experience directly, but he quite often