POET
OF RENAISSANCE
K. CHANDRASEKHARAN
“His
verse has the significant quality of being clear as a mountain stream; withal
it is mystic as the sea or a mountain summit of an evening. It is beautiful as
a bird, swift of wing, exquisite in its poise, picturesque of plumage and soul-stirring
in its cadence...patriotism becomes real and potent only when it is linked to
the witchery of liquid song; and the late Subramania Bharati’s work in that
direction is both unique in quality and rich and varied in quantity.” Thus
wrote the late Sri S. Srinivasa Iyengar, prefacing the publication of Bharati’s
works in 1922. Doyen of the Madras Bar and an outstanding legal luminary as he
was, no less was he an ardent lover of the Muse. In words which have vividly
summed up the many-faceted poetic output of Bharati, the preface further adds: “The
humble folk in a far away village in Tirunelveli or Madurai, the busy labourer
in a crowded city, the strenuous middle class and the ease-loving aristocracy,
have all alike, in his poems, a golden key to the still-locked chamber of their
and their country’s happiness.
Bharati
was undoubtedly a harbinger of renaissance in Tamil literature. He burst upon
the literary scene of Tamil Nad like a shower of manna to the parched-up souls
for genuine poetry. In the dearth of a living language to stir human hearts and
emotions for some decades previous to his emergence, his powerfully motivated
songs in simple diction awakened the country to recapture its heritage of
poetry and philosophy, music and arts, dance and drama. His vibrant voice
filled with strikingly fresh conceits, made such a headway into the hearts of
his countrymen, high and low, prince and peasant, scholar and layman, that before
long his genius shot up with almost primal force in a surfeit of invigorating
lyrics. The inner fire glowed in every word and line that he uttered or wrote.
Words from his lips rose winged with an embodied spirit of rare insight and
intensity. The rich legacy of culture from the past of his motherland imbued him
with an unbending outlook and confidence. Though the times he lived in were
cramping his soul in utter inanity, his mind easily rid itself of the
disabilities under a repressive foreign Government’s governance and plunged
into an overpowering spate of outpourings that wrought a great change in his
brethren to wake up from mental torpor and act with an unusual determination to
throw off a foreign rule. Patriotism inspired him much earlier than others, and
his entire being could seek relief only in song after song clamouring for the
coveted freedom for his country. While despising the alien attempt to keep in
serfdom for long his country, he was not for one moment unaware of the need for
cleansing his own house which lay under a heap of contradicting beliefs and
social inequalities. The modernism born of a world outlook induced him to decry
every custom and faith that thwarted the progress of the country in its march
towards the same goal of self-sufficiency which every Western country possessed
with the advance of science and industrial development. Combining in himself a
new upsurge for reform and salubrious change with a steadfast conviction in the
spiritual traditions of his country’s honoured sages, his intellect soared in
ever-widening thought and expression for the regeneration of decaying
institutions such as recitation of Vedas and study of classics. Adorer as he
remained of Tamil language and its culture, he never descended into chauvinism
and narrow linguistic exclusiveness. His strong belief in Sanskrit was
unchanging; his desire for change and acquisition of modern languages in order
to be abreast of a fast-growing international outlook everywhere, emboldened
him to wish for the Indian woman leaving her once-cherished bashfulness but
follow the new spirit which expected of her a lifted gaze and an upright tread
along with civilized man. Bharat, as one undivided image, always dwelt in his inner
eye goading him on to picture an
integrated nation and to sing of her diversity in unity.
“If the soul becomes aglow with
vitality of Truth, then speech
would follow with no less illumination,” sang Bharati in one of his moments of
deep understanding of life as a whole. Indeed, the expression of every
authentic poet will be the same, born of experience, though none before him
said it in Tamil with such bright terseness of language. The birth-pangs of
creativity in an artist has its results of researches within and moments of
churning of facts collected of human affairs. Unless the soul gets reflected in
the work of art no great message for posterity can ever flow from it. On those
occasions of profounder plumbings of the soul, the writer or artist does not
feel different from his creation. Somerset Maugham observed in describing the
writers’ creative urge as “something like an organic thing that develops not
only in their brains, but in their hearts, their nerves and their viscera–something
that their creative instinct evolves out of the expression of their soul and
body, and that last becomes so oppressive that they must rid themselves of it.”
In an analogical bit of a song, Rabindranath Tagore uttered: “The bow whispers
to the arrow before it speeds forth: ‘Your freedom is mine” The delivery of
lasting poetry seeks its relief from tension in the act of expression.
A
poet need’s must comprehend life as a whole. Otherwise his mission on earth
would lack permanence. In order to understand wider life the poet or writer has
to be constantly in touch with all aspects of life. His mind or observation
must embrace all life, all knowledge, all experience.
Despite
the shortness of his life (39 years), Bharati proved himself actively
conversant with the past history of thought while reflecting with equal concern
upon the present happenings around. His projectiles into the future also were
prophetic. If he anticipated for his country a time when the speech in Banaras
could be heard in distant Kanchi or when wheat of the Gangetic plain could be
exchanged for the fresh betel leaves of the Kaveri delta or when the gold of
Kanara could be transported to Rajasthan, everyone of his prognostications came
true even within half of a century of his death. Again an element of mysticism
can be discerned in all great poetry. At any rate none of the poets of renown
in our country has failed to touch the peak of self· expression without
reaching out to touch the Higher Being. Bharati in his “Beloved Kannamma” rose
to heights of exaltation of the spirit by decorating the Deity of his heart,
Lord Krishna, with epithets which reminded of the beloved seeking her lover, or
the lover waiting for his love or the master calling his servant or the elder
scolding his little boy or the companion wanting his bosom friend–all alike in
their depth of feeling towards the one Supreme that ever holds sway over our
hearts. To sample a few lines from that fascinating bunch of verses, let us see
the pictures drawn with delicate brush and colour.
Thou
art the leaping light my dear, and I
The
eye roving free.
Thou
art the gleaming wine my dear,
And
I the drunken bee.
I
strive to speak of the glory thou art,
But
words fade into quiet,
Thou
art a splendour from Heaven, my dear,
A
Nectarine riot. 1
The
ecstacy rises in a crescendo as it were, and we find lines which breathe of an
intoxicating union of the two, the lover and the beloved.
And
there somebody softly stole to me
And
behind me standing, closed my eyes
I
felt soft hands and in a flash was wise,
I
knew her by the fragrance of her silk saree,
I
knew her by the joy that within me welled,
I
knew her by the beats of our kindred hearts,
“Oh,
take thy hands away Kannamma, thy arts”
I
cried, “are of no avail.” Her hands I held
And
when her laughter tinkled, I freed my eye,
And
turning drew her to me and said “Behave”. 2
The
seduction of words entice us as we lisp the lines. It becomes part of our
experience alike with no more scanning of the import. God-madness pervades the
reader and the read.
His
long pieces such as “Panchali Sabadam” and “Kuyilpattu” are by themselves
deserving of serious study as of higher literature. Both mark him out as one of
our never-to-be-forgotten poets, because of their sustaining power of the
graphic and the lyric. Some of his much smaller poems too bear the touch of
true art, and lift the reader to realms of enjoyment and induce the untrained
voice to sing in quiet a verse or two without knowing of any effort.
Critics
sometimes point out that the Nayaki-Nayaka Bhava in poetry is an old one
which every saint-singer in the land has adopted to describe his own craving
for the Lord and that Bharati has not been at all fresh in his conceit. But the
very detractors forget that even while in the traditional mould he has departed
from the usual and struck out his own path of assuming different roles as a
seeker of God. The other type of criticism accuses the writer of eroticism in
making the whole picture one of physical contact. Scoffers apart, there cannot
be anything more sustaining than this form of invocation to God from a heart
pining for liberation. The long-drawn-out strains of despair from the throats
of the Gopis when their dearest
It
is now common to witness people, especially politicians, expending their lungs
in shouting Bharati’s national songs, as if they alone registered his claim to
the world’s attention. They imagine that his horizon was limited. But what
provides freedom to a poet- seer is not merely welfare of his own country but
of the entire humanity. Patriotism itself has its limitations when viewed in
this light. Loving one’s own country too much may not stop with it but lead to
even hatred of others. To view all as belonging to oneself requires greater
sympathy and consideration for others. It is this sense of an expansive heart
and mind which gave the Rishis of old to visualise the epics in all their
grandeur of universality. Bharati mastered while yet a youth the intimations of
a deep study of our spiritual classics.
Bharati
was not satisfied with merely writing poems and prose of his own. He keenly
advocated the need of translations from other languages of important literary
works. Himself he translated some of the passages from Vedic literature and
Bhagavadgita as well as from foreign writings like English. His own poems–at
least some of them–found in him a good translator. They easily convey how much
“wonderfully in compact verse forms” they look “not merely without a flaw but
with a polished brilliance which is a joy to contemplate.”
The
main corpus of Bharati’s works can bear any amount of critical study. The prose
from his pen as well as his attempt at prose-poetry equally show his sincere
belief in weaving language not to baffle readers as to their meaning but to
wean them over to his conclusions in interpreting thoughts and events in a
maddening world of misunderstandings. Further, they help in knowing the poet’s
sidelights of observation of many other subjects in an age of total political
dependence and social inhibitions. His articles in the Swadesamitran Daily,
forthright in their views, made it clear how sincerity of thinking can bear
fruit in clarity and forceful language.
Full
sixty years now after his death in September 1921, and a century after his
birth, we are still the same captives to his music and poetry. Either before or
after him none other shot up with the same leap of a flame. Days of his early
striving for recognition were not in vain, for the later inundation of praise
has almost engulfed him out of recognition. Still, let us not forget the wise
utterance of Tagore: “It is far better for a poet to miss his reward in this
life rather than have a false reward or his reward in an excessive measure.”
While
extolling the poet’s mind and art, one aspect of his manhood is liable to
escape notice. People who grow crazy in their paens of acclamation of his
wonderful merits–especially his gift of poesy–do not pause a moment to consider
the other and more unusual gift of his being a greater man. In the year 1913,
the Nobel laureateship went to Rabindranath Tagore and the whole of
To
express high praise of the kind about another contemporary poet with no trace
of self-consciousness requires no small measure of fairness and outspokenness.
Bharati remained to the last his own appraiser and critic. He depended more for
the stamina of a bold spirit on what his conscience dictated to him. His
worship of the Goddess of Letters during all the vicissitudes of fortune he
went through, made him cast in the mould of the warrior-heroes of old. He
strove with an unfatiguing pen, inspiring his countrymen to conquer their fear
and weakness in order to win freedom from the clutches of a foreign rule. At
the same time, he also tried to rescue literary language from the coils of
pedantry and conventionality to which for long they were condemned.
1 and 2 ‘Voice of a Poet’ by A.
Srinivasa Raghavan