BY P. NARAYANA KURUP, M.A., B.L.

The news of the Poet's death in April 1922 reached me at Madras a fortnight after the event. I was shocked; and I sorrowed most. Within the succeeding three or four days of solitary wand musings in the fields by, and the groves of ‘Hydari Garden,’ Perambur, (where I was then living) gushed out of my sorrow my elegy on the Poet's death which tops my book of poems, ‘Tamarothoni’ or the ‘Lotus Boat’ dedicated to the sacred memory of the Poet. I wanted to write a career sketch showing the chief aspects of his genius for the benefit of the non-Malayalees interested in the vernacular literatures of India. Unfortunately for me, I could not even attempt it till the month of July of the year, when I began an essay at Calicut and wrote and finished it at Trivandrum in September. Each syllable therein was written in moments when my soul was touched by sorrowful memory. Though a good many facts of the Poet's life have reached me thereafter, I have not made any change in the body of the essay which was more or less wrung from my sorrow-stricken heart.

My passion to come across a real living genius was fulfilled only when I met K. C. Narayanan Nambiar. Non- Malayalees have to take me on trust when I am unable to illustrate my statement here and now with translations of the Poet's works. Nambiar was unquestionably a genius. But there was in that genius a strain of madness. The word ‘madness’ is indeed difficult of definition when it is used as an attribute of poetic genius. It is the abnormal development of one or more faculties in an individual that Constitutes genius. But as madness is an abnormality, it is but natural that the common characteristics of abnormalities whether in one species of development or other, should present some at least of the aspects of madness, it being the most powerful of all abnormalities. But poets, as Plato says, are those who sing in a state of divine insanity; and Nambiar was one wholly within the literal sense of Plato's definition. He was born a poet. He lived for song, and lived all his life singing in a state of ‘divine insanity.’

I have often felt that Nambiar was born a little later in the world. His true place was with Kalidasa and others of the nine gems of Vikramaditya's Court or with Sadi, Khayyam or Firdussi, roaming through some fair rose-garden of Persia: or the wilderness of Kashmere, with a book of verse and a flask of wine. But as it was, Nambiar had to struggle with his environment and often had to create it amidst men and things, all mercenary and mechanistic. Nevertheless, his was a remarkable influence on his environment which he must have noticed with interest himself; and consequently, I think the struggle must have been one of enjoyment to him. The most peculiar feature of his genius was that it did not require geniuses for its recognition. Nambiar, whatever order of intellects he moved amidst, appeared as a remarkable man to one and all, his genius being accessible to high and low alike. The secret was that he was all sorts of men, which Carlyle says is the test of a truly great man.

The most considerable aspect of his personality was that he was so abundant and yet so simple in his wonderful intellect. Never was such an undaunted heart enshrined in such a frail body. In matters of society, friendship and love, Nambiar had an inimitable grasp of their secret of success, which, for the lack of a better word, I have to call ‘sincerity’. Hence the great naturalness in his relations with men and things. When Nambiar did anything, people felt after witnessing him, that he was the fittest to do it.

Novalis remarked about Shakespeare that those Dramas of his were products of nature. This in fact is the truth about Nambiar's works too. There is no artifice in his art. He sang as a matter of course, even as the birds sang, and the plants and creepers of spring time blossomed into flowers. When one goes into the details of his works, one is thunderstruck as much at the vastness of his thought as at the accuracy of his expressions with their logical. sense of proportion, usually to be seen only in erudite scholars in Metaphysics and Philosophy. It was all the work of his ‘unconscious intellect’ wherein was concealed a highly evolved power of intuition that found the truth quick as the lightning flash.

The poet, says Carlyle, who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. I consider this a great utterance of a great truth. When Shelley wrote that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, he said only a part of the whole truth. I fancy there is in the truly great poet, who is so rare, the Politician, the Thinker, the Legislator, the Philosopher and the heroic Warrior! Nambiar was not a poet of the armchair sort. He ‘was all sorts of men’ not merely in the kingdom of thought but in the realistic world of society and state.

I would call him a Lawyer, Legislator, Thinker, Politician, Actor, Orator and above all an unconscious Philosopher as well, besides a Divinely gifted song writer. He knew as much law as was very necessary to put the story of the Mahabharatha in the form of a legal trial satisfying the essentials and details of modern legal procedure, with plaint and defence, counsel and witnesses, arguments for and against, judge and judgment, verdict and punishment. This work entitled 'Bharatha Vyavahara' won great tributes from great judges and learned lawyers, and was regarded as transcending the powers of even experienced legal practitioners.

He was a Legislator as a member of a District Board, where he evinced remarkable powers of legislating by original suggestions, clear vision, and far-seeing critical powers,² winning the admiration and high esteem of great English Civilians like Mr. Dance, Mr. Wood, Mr. Innes and others.

Nambiar was a thinker, not that pious sort which resort to silence, but a thinker aloud, singing and speaking, not merely of the starry heavens above, nor of the moral law within, but of all sorts of things that ever fell within the ken of his sense perceptions.

He was a Politician where politics gave him a field for his songs. By nature he could never be a partisan where hatred and its accompanying attributes have their share in the creation of the competitive spirit. Nevertheless, politics interested him and he often showed his political vision by laconic and sound criticisms of political subjects like election, representation, vote by ballot and responsible Government, subjects which he never had any opportunity of studying except perhaps through intuition.

He had never been on the stage except on three or four occasions, and that too as buffoon. But his great powers for laughter gained recognition the moment he first stepped on the stage. Acting was in fact a great passion³ with him from very childhood. But for his status of royal relationship which prevented his entering the stage, he might have been one of the greatest actors of Kerala. His love of the metaphorical lime-light was nothing but his love for the actual writ large !

Of him, as an orator in Malayalam, I have said enough in the pages to come. I have heard almost all the great orators of India, but not one like Nambiar. He spoke with a great pleasant voice. There was a singular drag in his speech which gave it a tone of majesty and kept the audience anxious and eager to hear him thoroughly. It was said about Mr. Toole, a great English actor of the eightees, that one might almost think him one of Dickens' characters stepping out of the novels on to the stage. But when Nambiar entered the platform, one might think him the multiple personalities of Sam Weller, Falstaff, Byron, Burns, and himself, all taking shape into one form stepping out on to the stage and speaking of the geometry of this and the poetry of that, the mockery of things and the trickery of men, speaking to keep you most excellently amused. He was wonderful on the platform.

Like the proud ancestors of his race, he was a heroic warrior; a true warrior at heart. He would rather dwell in his necessities than bow before insolent might. Whether he was before the Court of Law or the temple of God, Nambiar was fearless, and was to his own self unhesitatingly very true. Like Sir Galahad, his strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. There are hundreds of stories of Nambiar's genuine independence and fearlessness, stories that remind you of Beaulieu, the French critic, telling Frederick the Great that His Majesty knew nothing of French, or of Diogenes asking Alexander to move away not to prevent his sunlight. But great soul as he was, he was always loyally submissive, reverent to what was over and above him. It was admirable to see him thus submissive to higher ones than he, his own sincere pride of manhood and independence only ennobling the submissiveness.

Nambiar often passed for a drunkard, even as the brave old English Samuel Johnson passed for an inflated gluttonous creature. But often society forgave him this fault for the sake of his splendours. Nevertheless, public criticisms at times took venomous shape; but his own true poetic heart and head where poison-proof and he could convert burning acids into delightful perfumes. On one occasion, when he was summoned as a witness by a Magistrate, this drinking weakness of his was referred to in cross-examination. He was asked to mention some of the occasions when he drank. To say that he was drinking every minute of his life would not be citing ‘occasions’, and hence be began with great accuracy of dates, citing many notable instances of State Banquets, and a host of garden parties where he had partaken of his share of the wine in the company of eminent Englishmen of the Indian Civil Service. Asked what he was, he enumerated his editorial relationship with a dozen foremost journals of Kerala. With these two answers, the disarmament of the Magistrate and the cross-examining lawyer, was complete. Nambiar was undaunted and sincere in word and deed. The loyal-hearted hung on him. The proud were disarmed of pride before him. Nor would the serpent flicker, at his side, with his double tongue. The brazen fool in his presence was softened. A warrior; yet a ‘golden-hearted child’ withal!

A great event in his life singularly reminds me of the divine Dante. A Malayalee Beatrice Portinari, a pretty little girl of his own age and rank, had won his love when yet a boy. They had thenceforth grown up in mutual partial sight. But destiny parted them, and mated her with another. Unbearable to him: this loss of the only one he had ever, with his hugest quantity of affection, loved. Nambiar himself was wedded. But he, a genius with wonderful strength of emotions, with very delicate and subtle chords of excitabilities, with a heart and head that could feel and know, only either all in all or not at all, was not the sort to make happy again. Hypochondriacal crotchets or imaginary sorrows and miseries, Nambiar had none. The one real great sorrow had banished all the others for life. I could not say what he would have been, had not this sorrow wrought the tragedy. For my part, I cannot think of any Power that shapes our ends besides the Almighty. "The Maker shaped the world long ago", says Goethe, "He thought it best even so." Nambiar came to this world just to enact the Fifth Act of a Tragedy under the sun. It was his destiny: his great destiny. I for one would not put my finger in the eye, and sob now, as I did once.