On Flowers and Nations: Native Symbol in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Kshetra Pratap Adhikari

Abstract

The local symbols laconically express the whole of the spirit of a nation in poetry as poetic expressions magnify even the tiny objects of nature to represent the complete picture of social sphere. American Romanticist poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882) and Nepali lyricist poet, Kshetra Pratap Adhikari (1943-2014) contemplate on the local flowers to transcend beyond the quotidian understanding and assert the aesthetic value of the native in relation to the national spirit. The sole purpose of both the poets remains the upholding of the beauty of the locally available symbols over the traditionally established images of canon that dictate the poetic imagination despite their staleness and predictability in poetic articulation. Emerson's "The Rhodora" (1834) presents a local flower over the traditionally established rose as a European symbol of aesthetics, while Adhikari's "Ma ta Laliguras Bhayechhu [I Happened to be a Red Rhododendron]"(ca. 1976) coins both the nation and personal romantic feeling into a single object that can spread itself across a variety of geographies . This paper seeks to textually analyze the two short poems to see the ways each poet develops a common poetic style to sing the person and nation through native symbols.