Trends of Realism in the Telugu Novel
R. S. SUDARSHANAM
“In
any work of art, perspective is of overriding importance. It determines the
course and content; it draws together the threads of narration; it enables the
artist to choose between the important and the superficial, the crucial and the
episodic. The direction in which characters develop is determined by
perspective, only those features being described which are
material to their development. The more lucid the
perspective...the more economical and striking the selection.” (Lukacs: The Meaning of Contemporary Realism) 1
There
is no Realism without a perspective. Realism is an accepted trend today in
Indian fiction, but perspectives of individual writers differ. Unless one goes
into the outlook and philosophy of the writer, assesses his response and
reaction to the society of which he is a part, as expressed in his novelist’s
art, one cannot judge what kind of a Realist that particular writer is. George Lukacs, an eminent Marxist critic, formulates his theory of
Realism in accordance with the Marxist perspective of social change.
Recognizing two phases in the development of Realism in European literature, Lukacs designates them as Critical Realism of the bourgeois society, in which the perspectives of the
individual writers vary and differ; and Socialist Realism of the later
capitalist and the new socialist societies in
It
has been necessary for me to take Lukacs’
formulations as a point of departure for my paper on the trends of Realism in
Telugu fiction, because the problems of Realism are not dissimilar, though they
may not be identical in contemporary world literature. It is not necessary we
should accept in toto the theory of Realism
postulated by Lukacs, but it is good as far as it
goes and many of his observations and formulations certainly help to identify
certain significant novels of Realism in my own language, and to relate them to
the changing society from the Marxist point of view; for we cannot deny that we
are all socialists now!
The
first significant novel in telugu
published in 1878. Rajasekhara Charitram by the great social reformer, K. Veeresalingam Pantulu, was a
Realist novel. It presents the feudal society in decay; the author’s
perspective is that of cultural reform, and the emphasis on the reform of the
individual man through rational, thinking and enlightenment. Ramachandra Vijayam by
Chilakamarti Lakshminarasimham,
a follower of Veeresalingam, was another accurate
picture of the social life of the time, 1894, in the fertile
After
the three novels now described one might expect the early Telugu novel to have
started off promisingly in the Realistic mode. But it was a false start, and
during the years that followed even Chilakamarti
wrote romantic novels. Historical novels so-called but in fact Romances became
the fashion of the day. It was in 1921 U. Lakshminarayana
published his Maalapalli (The
Untouchables’ Village) which was before long banned by the British Government
for its powerful realism. A great novel it remains for its Realism, which is
that of great art, not measured by the Marxist yardstick alone. With
untouchables as the central characters, for the first time in Telugu fiction,
the agricultural set-up in its transition from feudalism to bourgeois society,
the importance of the change-over from barter to money, the influence of the
Soviet Revolution and ideas of trade-unionism, and the role of the Untouchable
as an agricultural labourer, along with the
repressive methods of the British imperialism branding troublesome population
as criminals and confining them in “settle-merits” and the hellish condition of
the British jails, were graphically portrayed in their complex reality. What we
have here is not merely the critical realism of the bourgeois writer, but a
revolutionary and prophetic realism pointing towards socialist realism of an
India to be. The future is contained in the present. The novel is firmly rooted
in its historic social context, but something more than what can be measured by
the known Marxist yardstick is forcefully present in this novel. The perspective
is that of the timeless Vedanta (or Sanatana Dharma),
not in its intellectual form known to the educated and to the pundits, but the
dynamic variety practised as a way of life by humble
people like Ramdas, the untouchable hero of the
novel, who is as real and as practical as Mahatma Gandhi was to be on the
national scene in the years that followed the publication of the novel. One
cannot just dismiss this perspective of the novelist as traditional, or mystic
or romantic, because the perspective, though it cannot be intellectually
categorized, is forward-looking, socialistic, and valid to Indian
life-situation of the time, as the Mahatma’s was in the political field Maalapalli is a great Realist novel in Indian
fiction by any criterion. It depicts a period of socio-economic change in
fullness and depth, and is comparable to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It was
also the first novel written in spoken Telugu, in the real language of the
people in the Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh at that period.
After Maalapalli, for over twenty years Telugu
fiction was dominated by Viswanatha Satyanarayana, Chalam, Adivi Bapiraju
and other romantics. Viswanatha’s cultural nostalgia,
Chalam’s fee-love proclivities and Adivi’s fervour for perfection
and beauty exclude them from the Realist tradition. During the period Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao alone kept Realism alive with his novel Chaduvu (Education), which portrays
accurately the period of non-co-operation movement, the trade-depression and
wide-spread unemployment among graduates in the ’Thirties leading to
disillusionment about the Western educution as a
means of livelihood and advancement. By 1945 the romantic tradition petered out
and instead of original works translations from other languages and imitations
abounded in fiction. The translated novels of Premchand,
Saratchandra and others were popular in the ’Forties.
In 1945 appeared Gopichand’s Asamarthuni
Jeevayaatra (The Life of an Incompetent Man),
which portrayed a disillusioned bourgeois youth suffering from schizophrenia.
In 1946 appeared Rachakonda Viswanatha
Sastri’s Alpa Jeevi (The Little Man), which portrayed from inside the
character of a Government clerk, who was also a (inferiority) case-study of
Adler’s complex. Around the same time Buchi Babu’s Chivaraku Migiledi (What remains at the end), a case-study of
Freud’s Oedipus complex. The romantic tradition was effectively shattered by
these outstanding novels in search of psychological realism, probing the depths
of the human psyche with the help of psychological concepts and creating
something new and original in the field of the novel. Critical Realism was kept
alive by Kutumba Rao in novels like Vaarasatvam (The Inheritance) giving a
picture of the Second World War years.
After 1947, Realism had
a new birth in the Telugu novel and became the dominant trend. Naturalism
appeared in a few novels, which remain a significant contribution to
literature. “The distinction between Realism and Naturalism depends on the
presence or absence in a work of art of a hierarchy of Significance in the
situations and characters presented”.7 (Lukacs)
The novels Manchi-Chedu (Good and Evil)
and Apasvaraalu (Discordant Notes)
written by a hotel-server, Natarajan, under the
pen-name of “Sarada” describe graphically the seamy
side or urban life and the distress and misery of the lower middle-class and
the have-nots especially of the women-folk among them, ruthlessly exploited in
individual and family relationships. The perspective is neither psychological
nor sociological; there is no “hierarchy of significance”; it is just detached
observation, and does not offer either consolations or conclusions. What was
said of Flaubert, the great name in Realism, applies here: “He rejected
utopianism with a gesture of ascetic defiance–he viewed his age without hope,
but also without fear”.8 And the most notable thing was he shed no
tears! The disillusionment with urban life leading to lack of perspective is
the characteristic of P. Sambasiva Rao’s Anveshana (The
Search) depicting life in Hyderabad City in the ’Fifties. Here we have a
montage of true-life scenes individually recognizable but totally meaningless.
The trend of Critical
Realism asserted itself with B. Kantha Rao’s Dagaapadina Thammudu (The Betrayed Brother), and influence of Premchand’s Godaan is
discernible here. Kantha Rao’s
novel portrays an exploited ryot migrating from the
countryside to the city in search of employment as an industrial worker.
Instead of employment he lands in jail. The author’s perspective is one of
moral conscience in man, with which he judges the transition of the age from
feudalism to bourgeois milieu.
In G. V. Krishna Rao’s Keelubommalu (The
Marionettes), we have the kind of Realism that raises questions without
answering them. It was Ibsen who said: “My concern is
to put questions, not to supply answers”.9 And Chekhov
declared, “Only the question a writer puts must be reasonable. The answers may
be unreasonable. But that does not invalidate the work as long as it is based
on a reasonable question”.10 Keelubommalu
asks the question: “What may be the power of a lie?” The result is a chain
of events ruining families, causing bitter factions, and spreading panic,
misery and disaffection all around, till the liar is crowned with political
recognition and hailed as the leader of the village community! This outcome may
look unreasonable, but there it is! It is a social fact! When Krishna Rao ends
his novel with the exit of the one and only sane person in the village, we
think the author is unduly pessimistic. The novel is a good period-piece. Then
came from the pen of Mahidhara Ramamohan
Rao a bunch of novels depicting the political currents and cross-currents in
Andhra Pradesh, especially delineating the part played by the Communist Party
of India in the area. The political struggle in Telengana
was effectively portrayed by Atwar Swami in his Prajala Manishi (The
Man of the People) and Gangu. These
novels may be called novels of political realism; because here the accent is
not on personal relationships; it is on political relationships; and the
individuals become but actors on a political stage. It is no doubt desirable
and even necessary to have literature with a political perspective; but a
caution has to be sounded here. Let us listen to Lukacs:
“Of course, there has always been a type of literature passionately engaged in
day-to-day political issues. It will, let us hope, continue to exist, and there
is no reason why it should not aim at artistic perfection. But it is disastrous
to subsume all literature under this head. Writers must be allowed to find
their own point of contact with day-to-day politics, and be allowed to work out
suitable means of dealing with it”. 11
Following the founding
of the Progressive Writers’ Association, Critical Realism came to be recognized
as the proper literary creed. This was a conscious acceptance of something,
which was already a matter of practice with creative writers keenly aware of
being rooted in their age and society, When this conscious acceptance of an
attitude grew into a creed, and that into a narrow political perspective, the
literature of Realism began to wither away, Round about the ’Seventies when the
Revolutionary Writer took over Realism in the name of commitment to Socialist
Realism and Revolutionary Realism, the death-knell of Realism as such was
sounded. Lukacs designates this development as
“Revolutionary Romanticism” and observes. “Revolutionary Romanticism is the
aesthetic equivalent of economic subjectivism...The reasons are evident,
economic subjectivism confuses what is subjectively desirable with what is
objectively there. It reduces perspective...to the level of practical
day-to-day exigency. Life is thus robbed of its poetry. For the poetry of life
lies in life’s wholeness and self-sufficiency. This poetic quality is inherent
in all human development, in a man’s individual fate, in growth and change. It
reveals itself also in the “slyness” of reality, of which Lenin used to
speak–implying that the laws of existence are more complex than thought can
easily express, and the realization of these laws a process so involved as to
elude prediction. That profound awe in the face of experience we find in great
minds–Leonardo or Lenin, Goethe or Tolstoy–is based on this knowledge. As is
the enduring spell of all works of art that evoke life’s inexhaustible
dynamism”.12 Commitment to Marxism of a creative writer has to be
viewed differently from that of a politician; otherwise creative writing will
deteriorate into “literature as illustration, based on the requirements of
agitation”. 13
In
the last fifteen years, Realism has given us notable novels, especially from
women writers like Vasireddi Sitadevi,
Dwivedula Visalaksbi, Binadevi and Madireddi Sulochana. Matti Manishi (Man of the Soil) by Sitadevi
has in its centre Varudhini, a Bovary-like
heroine, but with a difference. This woman from the countryside born in the
class of the landed-gentry but married to a ryot
because of her father’s decline in fortune makes a bid for power and social
status through her romantic involvement with a townsman and dies a tragic death
like Madam Bovary. The–bourgeois character of this woman is “typical” in the
sense that her “innermost being is determined by objective forces at work in
society”.14 Her adversary and an equal match to her in intensity of
personal will is her father-in-law, Sambayya, the man
of the soil, who loves the land he tills, and who succeeds in claiming his
grandson by Varudhini back to agriculture after her
death. In terms of social change, however, Sambayya
is seen fighting a lone battle already lost. The perspective of the novel is
the individual’s struggle against socio-economic change; and it provides a
fascinatingly true picture of contemporary life etched indelibly on the memory
of the reader.
In eschewing the
conventional “happy-ending” which a sop to the average reader, Visalakshi, Sitadevi and others
have added significance and lustre to their realist
portrayals of men and women. Binadevi in her
relentless indictment of an unjust society in the novel called Hang Me Quick
or Punyabhoomi Kallu
Theru (Holy Land, open your eyes) has made a
significant contribution to the growing literature of Critical Realism. Madireddi Sulochana is a prolific
writer focussing her torch of Critical Realism each
time on a new sector in society, and most of the pictures and characters she
draws are vivid with detail and enrich one’s perception of contemporary
society. Malathi Chandur’s
recent novels are pieces of investigative reporting on certain professions and
select fields of work. Kesava Reddi’s
novel, The Incredible Goddess is an admirable piece of Critical Realism
on bonded labour and the plight of the Harijan, but his perspective has invited the disapproval
and wrath of the committed Marxists. Kesava Reddi’s perspective in its implications is anti-political,
because political vested interests would keep the Harijan
confined to his narrow caste-walls. In the novel, Harijan
is used against Harijan as an instrument of
oppression; we see the sub-castes among Harijans
fighting against each other; and in the finale, it is the failure of the Harijan to overcome his mental barrier of caste, which
renders him incapable of asserting his common humanity with a person from the
upper caste, who befriended him and who was dying for his sake. This incisive
probe into the caste-psychology of the oppressed in our society is unacceptable
to politicians who trade on caste-differences, and indigestible to Marxists who
cannot conceive of a bond of friendship based on common humanity between an upper
caste and a lower caste man.
This is the point which
leads us to think whether the concept of Socialist Realism as it is understood
by Indian writers today will be an adequate yardstick at all for measuring the
future literature of Realism in our society. “Socialist Realism”, according to Lukacs, “differs from Critical Realism, not only in being
based on a concrete socialist perspective, but also in using this
perspective to describe the forces working towards socialism from the inside”.15
It is this formulation that makes committed Marxists and their followers
conceive of literature of the future on a rigid ideological basis. But Lukacs knows enough of the creative processes in literature
to say: “Literature depends on actual experience; resolutions, however
well-meant, are no substitute for it”.18 “Socialist Realism is a
possibility rather than an actuality; and the effective realization of the
possibility is a complex affair”.17 According to Lukacs,
with the change of society into a socialist society the basis of Critical
Realism will of necessity transform itself into Socialist Realism. Therefore
Critical Realism will have a prolonged existence even in a new socialist
society, Since a writer’s greatness springs from the depth and richness of his
experience of reality, a substitution of Marxist ideology for experience will
not result in Socialist Realism. Lukacs agrees that
“the stronger a writer’s ties with the cultural heritage of his nation, the
more original his work will be, even where he is in opposition to his own
society and calls in a foreign tradition to redress the balance”.18
In view of these elucidations, one can see that Socialist Realism will be an
emerging perspective based on the true achievement of a socialist existence;
and till then one has to do with Critical Realism only. This is as it should
be.
In the foregoing review
of the Telugu Novel of the Realist mode, we have noticed how different
perspectives of the writers over a hundred years, enriched the growth and
development of the Realist tradition, and these works of each period provide us
with an insight into the change of society from lime to time. To determine this
direction of change culturally is impossible even when one concedes that the
socio-economic future is bound to be towards socialism and a classless society.
The cultural transformation will always be a discovery to be made again and
again through not only literature but also art, philosophy and religion. The
Realist Novel will remain both an instrument of cultural change and a means of
its discovery.
Ref: Lukacs:
The Meaning of Contemporary Realism.
Pub: Merlin Press,
London. 1963, 1979
Notes: 1. P. 33, 2. P. 119, 3. P. 107, 4. P. 96, 5. P.
122, 6. P. 71, 7. P 34, 8. P 61, 9. P 69, 10. P 69, 11. P 120, 12. P. 125, 13.
P 119, 14. P 122, 15. P 93, 16. P 106, 17. P 96, 18. P 103.