COMPILATION

IN
LIT 11
(TTH 1:30 – 3:30 PM)

Submitted by:
Christian Paul Macatangay

Submitted to:
Mr. Mark Vincent Noel
 Look to This Day
Kalidasa
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In this brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of achievement,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well-lived makes every yesterday
A dream of happiness
And tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn!

Author’s Background
Kalidasa, (flourished 5th century ce, India), Sanskrit poet and dramatist, probably the
greatest Indian writer of any epoch. The six works identified as genuine are the dramas
Abhijnanashakuntala (“The Recognition of Shakuntala”), Vikramorvashi (“Urvashi Won by
Valour”), and Malavikagnimitra (“Malavika and Agnimitra”); the epic poems
Raghuvamsha (“Dynasty of Raghu”) and Kumarasambhava (“Birth of the War God”); and
the lyric “Meghaduta” (“Cloud Messenger”).

As with most classical Indian authors, little is known about Kalidasa’s person or his
historical relationships. His poems suggest but nowhere declare that he was a Brahman
(priest), liberal yet committed to the orthodox Hindu worldview. His name, literally “servant
of Kali,” presumes that he was a Shaivite (follower of the god Shiva, whose consort was
Kali), though occasionally he eulogizes other gods, notably Vishnu.

A Sinhalese tradition says that he died on the island of Sri Lanka during the reign of
Kumaradasa, who ascended the throne in 517. A more persistent legend makes Kalidasa
one of the “nine gems” at the court of the fabulous king Vikramaditya of Ujjain.
Unfortunately, there are several known Vikramadityas (Sun of Valour—a common royal
appellation); likewise, the nine distinguished courtiers could not have been
contemporaries. It is certain only that the poet lived sometime between the reign of
Agnimitra, the second Shunga king (c. 170 bce) and the hero of one of his dramas, and
the Aihole inscription of 634 ce, which lauds Kalidasa. He is apparently imitated, though
not named, in the Mandasor inscription of 473. No single hypothesis accounts for all the
discordant information and conjecture surrounding this date.
Reasons Behind Writing the Poem
The poem 'Look To This Day', written by Sanskrit classical poet Kalidasa, is philosophical
in nature. Kalidasa asks the readers to listen what the dawn says. The dawn says to see
the day, the day is the truth and only it can tell the real nature of human existence. Today
is the day to realize the bliss of life and endure, for growth is from it. Most people exist,
but don't know how to live. In this life poem, Kalidasa tells them precisely how to do that.
He says that yesterday was a dream and tomorrow is a vision. It is today that counts.
Don't live in yesterday or tomorrow, rather enjoy the present. Kalidasa says that a life
lived in today makes yesterday a happy dream and tomorrow a perfect vision.

Own Interpretation
Can you see what is around you? How do you feel about what you have become? Have
you seen the beauty, have you paid attention to the small things that have made you what
you are today? Take into consideration all you have seen to give you a true evaluation of
what tomorrow might hold for you.

Yesterday is something of an experience that you can learn from, while tomorrow is
something that you can take these experiences, and use vital information to make correct,
or near assumptions which will help you through whatever situation you may find yourself.

Today can also make you feel like a better person, if you have taken the lessons of
yesterday to heart, and obeyed your own objectives in life. Take every moment in life to
define the next action you take, And, if done correctly, not only will the world salute you,
but you will know as well, you made the right decision for what you face.

Scholarly Interpretation – Pierre Pradervand, The Gentle Art of Blessing

“On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings
will call forth; for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the
very texture of the universe and awaiting each and all.”
 Tomorrow at Dawn
Victor Hugo
Tomorrow, dawn, the hour when fields are white,
I’ll leave. You see, I know you wait for me,
I’ll cross the woods, I’ll climb the mountain height.

I’ll walk my eyes affixed upon my thoughts,

No sound I’ll hear, nor gaze on any sight,
Alone, unknown, back bent, with folded hands,
Sad, and the day for me shall be like night.

I shall not see the evening gold descend,

Nor far-off sails making for
When I arrive, upon your tomb I’ll place
A green spray of heather and holly in flower.

Author’s Background
Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France. After training as a
lawyer, Hugo embarked on the literary career. He became one of the most important
French Romantic poets, novelists and dramatists of his time, having assembled a
massive body of work while living in Paris, Brussels and the Channel Islands. Hugo died
on May 22, 1885, in Paris.

Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon, France, on February 26, 1802, to mother
Sophie Trébuche and father Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo. His father was a military
officer who later served as a general under Napoleon.

Victor Hugo studied law between 1815 and 1818, though he never committed himself to
legal practice. Encouraged by his mother, Hugo embarked on a career in literature. He
founded the Conservateur Litteraire, a journal in which he published his own poetry and
the work of his friends. His mother died in 1821. The same year, Hugo married Adèle
Foucher and published his first book of poetry, Odes et poésies diverses. His first novel
was published in 1823, followed by a number of plays.

Hugo's innovative brand of Romanticism developed over the first decade of his career.

In 1831, he published one of his most enduring works, Notre-Dame de Paris (The
Hunchback of Notre Dame). Set in the medieval period, the novel presents a harsh
criticism of the society that degrades and shuns the hunchback Quasimodo. This was
Hugo's most celebrated work to date, and paved the way for his subsequent political
writing.

A prolific writer, Hugo was established as one of the most celebrated literary figures in
France by the 1840s. In 1841, he was elected to the French Academy and nominated for
the Chamber of Peers. He stepped back from publishing his work following the accidental
drowning of his daughter and her husband in 1843. In private, he began work on a piece
of writing that would become Les Misérables.

Hugo fled to Brussels following a coup in 1851. He lived in Brussels and in Britain until
his return to France in 1870. Much of the work that Hugo published during this period
conveys biting sarcasm and fierce social criticism. Among these works is the novel Les
Misérables, was finally published in 1862. The book was an immediate success in Europe
and the United States. Later reinterpreted as a theatrical musical and a film, Les
Misérables remains one of the best-known works of 19th century literature.

Though Hugo returned to France after 1870 as a symbol of republican triumph, his later
years were largely sad. He lost two sons between 1871 and 1873. His later works are
somewhat darker than his earlier writing, focusing on themes of God, Satan and death.

In 1878, he was stricken with cerebral congestion. Hugo and his mistress, Juliette,
continued to live in Paris for the rest of their lives. The street on which he lived was
renamed Avenue Victor Hugo on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1882. Juliette died
the following year and Victor Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. He received a hero's
funeral. His body lay in state beneath the Arc de Triomphe before burial in the Panthéon.

Hugo remains one of the giants of French literature. Although French audiences celebrate
him primarily as a poet, he is better known as a novelist in English-speaking countries.
Reasons Behind Writing the Poem
Hugo wrote Tomorrow, At Dawn to “show” his grief, and have others who read the poem
feel his grief. He was devastated when his daughter, Léopoldine, died at age 19 in 1843,
shortly after her marriage. She was drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by
her heavy skirts, when a boat overturned. Her young husband died trying to save her.
Victor Hugo was traveling with his mistress at the time in the south of France, and learned
about Léopoldine's death from a newspaper as he sat in a cafe.

Own Interpretation
The poem shows the grief and mourning of Victor Hugo because of his daughter’s loss.
His daughter whom he loved so much. I noticed in the first part of the poem that he is
saying that he is going somewhere, and there will be someone waiting for him at that
somewhere. In the second part, he is stating that in that journey to somewhere, he will be
alone packed with grief and sorrow. In the last part, it shows that journey is him visiting
his daughter’s grave, and he brings with him a green spray of heather and holly in flower
which may be his daughter’s favorite flowers.

Scholarly Interpretation – William Beauchamp

Victor Hugo's Tomorrow at Dawn is unusually effective as an initiation into French poetry:
it is short, accessible to students still unsure of the language, complex enough to pose
many of the basic problems of textual analysis. It is also generally admired.

In my introductory French literature course, which focuses on methods of analysis, I begin

by devoting three or four classes to this text, concentrating on questions such as
speaker/addressee vs. author/reader; structure and functions of inversion, enumeration,
parallelism; metaphor, metonymy, symbol.

Victor Hugo’s touching poem “Demain dès l’aube” is one such text. The three-stanza
poem uses simple phrases and verbs (in the futur simple and the present) in an address
to a beloved. The narrator will leave early tomorrow to see her. It seems to be a classic
ode to romantic love until clues in the second half suggest a more somber voyage. The
second-to-last line reveals that the narrator is in fact going to visit a tomb. (Hugo wrote
the poem four years after losing his daughter Léopoldine and her husband in a drowning
accident.)

The vocabulary is not difficult: the verbs should be familiar (voir, partir, aller, marcher,
etc.) and the adjectives seul, triste, should convey meaning to students. I have used the
poem in a unit on the futur simple. A quick introduction to rime and rhythm (noting that in
French syllables are always consonant-vowel) can make it a useful oral exercise as well:
you could even assign the memorization of one stanza.