By P. PADMARAJU
An untamed head of hair, worn rather long, a square face which is an anathema to portrait painters and photographers, a thin vermilion line on the forehead, not necessarily indicating any strong religious propensity, a wide mouth and a pair of eyes with a mischievous twinkle in them, are Some of the features of Sri Krishna Sastri’s exterior which have come to be associated in the public mind with the picture of ‘Bhava Kavi’ in the Telugu country. Those features have been the subject of ridicule for the poets and scholars of the old school and have become the symbol of revolt against a dead tradition for the literary men of the new generation.
Those
were the days of public meetings and public recitals. Poets of the new school
formed into a sort of brotherhood and actually accosted each other as
‘brothers’. Though it looks a bit too naive at this distance of time, the
attachment was genuine while it lasted and was more impersonal than blood
brotherhood. Poets of that age have not merely created a new school of poetry, they have also created their own platform and their
own public. In Sri Krishna Sastri the movement found a powerful protagonist.
There
are very few who have made public speaking as much of an
art as Sri Krishna Sastri has done. He is witty without being common, lucid
without being prosaic, brilliant without pearing
pedantic. I sometimes feel that what would have been his greatest
contribution to Telugu purpose is lost to us for ever, as none of his public
speeches have been recorded. The prose he writes, excellent in its own way does
not come anywhere near the prose of his public speeches. His written prose is
merely good, but the prose of his speeches is great. He is a
brilliant conversationalist with a Highly developed
sense of the ridiculous. He loves company and all the good things of life, and
is always cheerful. But Krishna Sastri of ‘Krishna Paksham’–his
first book of short poems–presents a paradox. He is a
lover who has last not merely his Love, but even his capacity for love. The
poems leave a feeling of emptiness beyond all possibility of hope. He says of
his life:
“My
life looks strange even to me, sometimes lit up by the soft silvery moon, and
sometimes shrouded in dark shadows.
“Among
the purest and loveliest musical notes, do I sometimes hear
bitter wails which break the heart. I wantonly
search for the highway among the ugly bye-paths. Knowing that it is poison, I
drink it to satiety, throwing away the goblet of nectar.”
The
prevailing mood of the book is epitomised in the
following lines:
“May
no one feel pity for me! Who do you think I am? I am
the Lord of the dark, desolate land of sorrow. Have you not seen me holding my
court at the midnight hour of death, wearing my crown of thorns, in my palace
among the darkest clouds, and cleaving the heart of night with my terrible
songs of woe, to the tune of the wails of owls?”
These
poems appear to have been written under the stress of a great calamity. They
present to the reader, with frightening power, a state of mind almost bordering
on morbidity, which one would never associate with the ever smiling, cheerful
Krishna Sastri of normal life. The answer probably is that he is a dual
personality. It is difficult to say which of these states of mind is real and
which the escape. The poems are the outcome of a great emotional crisis and
possess an unparalleled intensity of feeling. The same mood pervades his second
book of short poems, ‘Pravasam’, though the mood is
softened a little. It is pain and despair in recollection that these poems
portray, rather than the stress of actual experience of pain. In one poem he
says:
“If
every tree, every flower and every song the birds sing, that rise on either
side of the path I tread, melt into nothingness, even as the strange
twilight of the evenings, can my fragile life bear the loss?
“Even
as the footprints I leave on the endless path of life, the imprints of many many happenings are there on my tender heart, like the
stars embedded in a dark sky, like the rustling tunes piercing the land by
silence.
“When
I look back, each footprint, glowing with eternal life, puts new cheer into me
and gives me peace and strength to plod on my path, into the unknown realms of
the future.”
‘Urvasi’, a third group of short poems, contains some of the
finest lyrics ever written in Telugu. In these poems, his imagination reaches
out towards glimpses of the Divine. His love sheds its mundane associations and
his heart longs for communion with Beauty devoid of form. But even here the
doubts and the despairs of the former mood persist. He says to his
beloved:
“You
are the diamond-studded feather that adorns the emerald crown of the Lord of
the three worlds, whereas I am a streak of sheer darkness crawling amidst the
lonely lanes of an underworld.
“I
can only claim your hand in the vast abode of the sky lit up by the stars, the
moon and the sun. How can you come down to me? Oh, how can I
rise up to you?”
The
opening poem of ‘Urvasi’ recaptures the mood of the
former experience in wistful, elusive phrases. One feels the softening down of
despair even in the bitter self-reproach the poet indulges in:
“Many
a jasmine was trampled under my ruthless, stony tread. Oh! How I searched and
searched for a single flower to put on my dust-laden head!
“As
my foolish, longing looks stretched this way and that, there was not a single
flower, in all this huge garden, that did not close
its petals and shrink away from me.
“Where
the stifling darkness spread from the corners of my eyes, there was no
fragrance, no honey and no beauty. I was disease, I was old age, I was death.”
But
the song of hope rises like the dawn on a rainy day, half afraid of itself and
hesitant:
“Are
they the jingling steps of the dancing spring? Or, are they the lovely
rustlings of your saree, that flash in my eye and whisper in my ear? Are they the
receding steps of winter in the four corners? Or, are they the desperate
sighs of old age at the time of the final parting, that flee
with fear like dim shadows?
“Is
my life going to become today the
When
these three series of short poems were published as a collection, it had a
mixed reception, some acclaiming it as a landmark in Telugu poetry, and others
decrying it as hopelessly morbid. But these poems exerted an abiding influence
on the minds of the younger devotees of the Muse. A series of subjective
outpourings have emerged during that period, some genuine and some simulated,
though most of them ended as mere echoes of a great voice.
Krishna
Sastri is a very sensitive artist. He achieves an
unique effect by skillfully concealed assonances, and by breaking the natural
pattern of the classical metres with rising periods
of phrases and sentences which have a pattern of their own. The way he has made
use of the ‘Geetham’–a very simple Telugu metre–is not merely novel, but has opened up immense new
possibilities. He seems to have imbibed in himself, the secret of the masters
of the Telugu language of all ages in verse composition.
There
is another quality which marks him out as a master-craftsman in lyric
composition. It is a trick of his to qualify concrete material things with
abstract adjectives, achieving an elusive and, at the same time, an arresting
effect. In one poem, while describing the advent of spring he says:
“Groups
of tender mango twigs abound everywhere,
red like the bunch of desires that is my
heart.”
Instances of this type
can be cited by the score from his lyrics and poems. It can be said without
exaggeration that no other poet of the present age is as good as Krishna
Sastri, in putting to the fullest use the innate music of words. His words not
merely balance an idea, but they balance a sentence as well from the musical
angle. Common words acquire rare echoes of sound, of sense, in the peculiar
contexts where he uses them. As he often says, he is keenly conscious of the
fact that of a hundred words having the same prose meaning, one and only one
fits into a particular context. For him, a word does not have meaning alone, it
has a colour and smell as well.
He
has written quite a number of plays for the radio, which, unfortunately, have
not been published in book form so far. There are, among them, purely lyrical
plays like, ‘Sharmishta’, lives of great Bhaktas like ‘Dhanurdas’, and
great events of mythology like the ‘Birth of Sri Krishna’. The prose he uses in
his dialogue does not distract one from the essentially lyrical qualities of
these plays. It leads up to, and becomes one with, the songs and verses which
are the highlights of these plays. It is impossible to bring out in translation
all the charm and beauty of the original. But I shall
render a few songs from these plays into English, merely in illustration of
what 1 said earlier.
‘Sharmishta’ is the story of King Yayati
who regains his youth for the consummation of his marriage with young, lovely Sharmishta. The story of the earth shedding its garb of old
age with the passing of winter and its rejuvenation with the coming of spring,
are the undercurrents of thought interwoven into the main theme. The play
starts with ‘Hemanta’ (winter) Singing his swansong:
“Why
do you make this farewell so painful?
I
cannot tarry here any longer,
but
must hurry on my journey to my home
on
the misty distant shores.
“Is
the fire of this warm oven falling into a
slumber
of exhaustion?
These
chrysanthemums weep and weep, out of
a
sense of frustration–And the girdle of Lodhra
flowers
slips down tired and faded.
“My
mantle of mist flutters, hesitantly before lifting.
Oh!
How pathetic is the call of the sighing winds?
Perhaps
the northern door has gone a little ajar now!”
‘Aruna Radham’ or the Chariot of
the Sun is the legendary story of the Vindhya
mountain arresting the passage of the Sun, until Agastya
makes it bow down and clears the passage for the Sun, when voices mortal and
divine sing in chorus:
“Oh!
Is that the herald of the dawn, Aruna rising at last!
There the night retreats to its abode in the nest or the cave. Oh! Behold! On
the stony summits of the eastern hill, the hoofs of horses drawing Aruna’s chariot sound sharp and swift.
“Look
there, the diamond crown of the hill of Sunrise fills the eastern garden with
creeper-like patterns of light. Listen, there rises the voice of the earth, its
purest and sweetest melody filling the very depths of the sky.
“Oh!
Joy untold is ours, for, the cool breeze must have started moving its limbs. Or
else, wherefrom are these unseen effortless fans working!”.
In
the ‘Birth of Sri Krishna’, when a group of Gopis rap
on the door and ask the door to be opened, Radha
sings:
“You
ask me to open a door which is never bolted, and it makes me laugh. When the
Love that is in slumber in you and me awakens, where is any door, or the need
to open it? When our Lord has made the entire Universe his abode, there is
neither a front door nor a backyard. When the Lord follows Radha
like her shadow, there is no door and no need for a shout.”
In ‘Andal Parinayam,’ there is a beautiful poem describing Andal’s pre-occupation with thoughts of Sri Rangesa as she grows up:
“Looking at the streaks of light heralding sunrise over the eastern hill, she thinks they are the glistenings of His golden yellow robe. Seeing the hovering line of clouds of Sravan in the sky, she imagines it is His dark and dainty form. Observing the white string of Balakas flying across the sky, she feels it is the garland ‘Vyjayanti’ adorning His neck. Hearing the majestic roll of thunder, she dreams it is the Lord blowing His conch ‘Panchajanya’. Seeing the golden streaks of lightning, she imagines it is Goddess Lakshmi who has made the Lord’s bosom Her abode. And she imagines herself to be His other consort, the Earth Goddess.”
In
these Radio plays, Sri Krishna Sastri has achieved a balance between the two
aspects of his dual personality. And so, these are the fullest expression of
his entire self. They make pleasant reading, and with sparkling wit and mellow
emotion fill your soul to satiety. Even when he draws your tears, he draws them
out of the fullness of your hearts overflowing with joy and a sense of
well-being.
In
public and in private many friends have exhorted him to write a long poem of
abiding interest and thus claim his place among the great poets of all time.
More intimate friends have accused him of a love of easer even of laziness.
Whether this accusation is true or not, I personally feel that the very method
of his writing precludes the possibility of his ever writing poems of great
length. I have known him labour over a line or two
for hours and hours together. The word, the idea, the emotion, the music, all
should blend together in him and should emerge as a poem or a song. Each one of
his poems is the epitome of a long process of contemplation, of an elaborate
rejection and selection of words and images. Where others would have made their
poems as long as their contemplation, Krishna Sastri waits and digests the
entire thought-process into a line or two. Each one of his songs is like an
elaborate fresco in which each detail is worked out to a rare and laborious
finish. But in spite of this elaborate workmanship, the finished pieces are
marvels of ease and flow.
Sri
Krishna Sastri is one of the pioneers of the romantic revival that characterises the new era of Telugu poetry. But the
classical is so deeply ingrained in him, that all his writings pulsate with the
life blood of an age-old tradition. In spite of the classical garb, his
concepts and flights of imagination acquire a freshness and novelty on account
of a predominance of the romantic element.
In
Krishna Sastri, whatever is best in the old and the new find the happiest
synthesis and in him the spirit of the age finds its fullest expression.