LITERARY PROFILES
By D. ANJANEYULU. B.A.
(Hons.) B.L.
E.
C. Bentley’s simple definition that “history is about chaps just as geography
is about maps” underlines the human factor in the chronicle of countries and
kingdoms. History, like philosophy, is invested with a monumental dullness by
pretentious pedants, who identify it with a catalogue of kings and a diary of
events and incidents. To the great Gibbon must go the credit to some extent at
any rate, of enlivening the dusty pages of ancient history with vivid and
virile men, pulsating with life and throbbing with human emotions. His grand
manner and nervous prose have enhanced the appeal of his method of narrating
the fortunes of Rome like an exciting novel. Macaulay, who was an ardent
admirer, though not a mechanical imitator of the Author of the Decline and
Fall, worked on similar lines and sought to go one better in his ambitious History
of England, which is a picturesque panorama of people, in their varied hues
and variegated shades. Compton Mackenzie and Arthur Bryant, among others in
English literature, can be considered living exponents of the biographical treatment
of history.
Biography
is an eminently human art that forms an agreeable branch of literature. The
overwhelmingly large number of classical works in this category
written in England is ample proof of its popularity which persists, pervading
all channels of expression like books, newspapers and broadcasting. Hardly can
one open a ‘class’ magazine or weekly journal without coming across a biography
in miniature. The ‘profile’ feature of the Observer is as well-written
as it is widely read. Done by experts who know the job, the weekly dish is
delicious and digestible. It is as interesting as it is informative, adequate
in matter and flawless in manner. The sketches in the Sunday Times are
in a smaller compass, drawn with a severe economy of expression. The portraits
in the Picture Post and other such ‘popular’ periodicals are naturally
more breezy, if less authoritative. Readers of the English Review are
not likely to miss the regular ‘personality paragraphs’ which are homely and
refreshing. One may have one’s likes and dislikes, preferences and
predilections, but it is only too clear that pen-portraiture is a precious and
popular feature of English journalism.
For some reason or other the Profile has not yet become a regular or readable feature of journals and newspapers over here. The reason is evidently the same as for the paucity of good biographies, with a few notable exceptions like R. P. Masani’s Dadabhai Naoroji, H. P. Mody’s Pherozeshah Mehta, P. C. Ray’s C. R. Das and D. G. Tendulkar’s Mahatma Gandhi. Seldom does the reader get a satisfactory pen-portrait of any person of importance, or one of no importance who suddenly flits across the scene into the limelight. It is quite possible that the subjects are more often than not gluttonous to flattery, but over-sensitive to criticism as the writers are sometimes willing to wound, but afraid to strike. There is therefore, no dearth of hysterical and unabashed panegyrics of those with pelf, power and position, and loud lampoons against those who might have fallen from grace. This only highlights the position, by contrast, of conscientious craftsmen of the ‘Profile’ art like K. Iswara Dutt, Khasa Subba Rau, Frank Moraes, and M. Chalapathi Rau, who are all unlike one another, and at the same time far above the common run of sketch-writers.
‘I.
D.’
‘I.
D.’ are familiar initials to readers of the Hindustan Times and
represent Mr. K. Iswara Dutt, who is really a man of letters in the Street of
Ink. His weekly ‘Miscellany’ is an engaging mixture of politics and
personalities, lending a literary flavour to the rough and tumble of daily
journalism. Iswara Dutt took the reading public of Madras by storm over two
decades ago by his sparkling booklet Sparks and Fumes, which was in fact
a collection of sketches published earlier in Swarajya and elsewhere.
The 13 portraits (the number was more accidental than ominous) were marked by
keen insight and fair judgment. The analysis of character was shrewd and subtle
and the expression was lucid and luminous, with a phrasing that is crisp and
convincing. Among the ‘victims’ (all Andhras), who came under the author’s
‘knife’ are Dr. Pattabhi and Messrs. T. Prakasam and B. Sambamurthi.
That
the author has meticulously modelled himself after A. G. Gardiner does not
detract from the merit of, his work, through the traces of adaptation may at
times be rather too obvious. I. D.’s ‘C. R. Reddy’ recalls to the reader’s mind
A. G. ‘Rosebery’, but none can quarrel with the estimate of that ill-fated
genius’s life and work:
“It
is hard to find a life so rich in promise and so poor in performance, so full
of aspiration and so little of achievement. His record is indeed a woeful tale
of false steps, mistaken preferences, fatal miscalculations and lost
opportunities.”
‘I.
D.’ warms up to his subject when it attracts his admiration and he is never
reluctant to give praise where it is due, as in the case of Dr. Pattabhi:
“Words
flow from his tongue or pen in swift succession, form themselves into serried
ranks, march like marshalled units and discharge their function with un-failing
precision. As a speaker he appeals sometimes to the emotions and always to the
intellect and his utterances are crammed with information and spiced with wit.”
He
can be scathing in attack; as when he compares Sir A. P. Patro’s excursions
into the field of education to John Gilpin’s rides. It must be interesting to
speculate what Sir A. P. Patro must have felt like when the author called a
spade a spade:
“With
a past that reflects no credit, with a future, that reveals no hopes, Sir A. P.
Patro, chief of the salaaming satellites of Sir John Simon in Madras, stands
today, on the political stage, throwing up his hands in despair and crying out,
“O,
Time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It
is too hard a knot for me to untie.”
‘I.
D.’s later works in this line are distinguished by a mature estimate of men and
a less exuberant expression. The same pattern, however, persists with that
studiously symmetrical syntax, characterised by balance and antithesis. It is
rather a pity the author has not given us more books of pen-portraits.
If
‘I. D.’ dances round his subject with sparkle and gaiety, ‘Saka’ (Khasa Subba
Rau) grapples it with a firm grip and an infectious gusto. The Men in the
Limelight published over a decade ago is a dazzling gallery of a dozen
luminaries of Madras,–politicians, pressmen and lawyers. As indicated by the
expressive title of the booklet, the author focuses the searchlight of candid
criticism on the men who happen to be in the limelight for the time being. To
this he has later added a collection of his Side-lights which are of the
same texture as the once famous Comments of Bagshot by J. A. Spender. If
Iswara Dutt has tried his best to write like Gardiner, Khasa has attempted,
with a commendable degree of success, to look at his subjects with the sharp
and piercing eyes of Spender. He is more anxious to analyse the character and estimate
the personality of the man under his merciless microscope than to exhibit his
mystery of language or indulge his whims of style.
In
spite of his strong likes and dislikes, he strives to make a correct analysis
of a man’s mental make-up and reach a balanced assessment of the composite
effect of his qualities, as when he writes of the late S. Srinivasa Iyengar:
“Punctilious
punctuality, a mastery over self that never wavers or permits the slightest
loss of temper, a reserve so complete as to be almost forbidding and to ward
off all familiarities from the officious, are the ingredients of his external
functioning as an advocate.”
He
has a warm corner in his heart for a colleague and friend, Pothan Joseph, who
is “like a magician who collects odds and ends from the wayside and transforms
them, by the setting in which they are placed and the polish given to them,
into exquisite literary pieces of surpassing grace and charm.”
He
can sum up a whole life in one sentence as when he remarks that “recognition
without reward has been the political fate of Dr. C. R Reddy”. Though he has no
patience with straw Caesars who might strut about the bargain basement, he is
always just and at times generous to his sitters. Seeing things steadily and
seeing them whole, he is particular about including the “warts and all” in his
pen-portraits. While his sense of style is usually unerring, the consuming zeal
with which he plunges into his subject makes him look more like a crusader than
a craftsman. A philosophical background has given him a distant vision and a
wide perspective that help him in making apt and illuminating generalisations
on public life and private conduct.
The
weekly column on “Men, Matters and Memories” by ‘Ariel’ (Frank Moraes, the
Editor) is an eminently readable feature of the Times of India. True to
his pseudonym, ‘Ariel’ delights his readers with a lightness of touch and a
sprightly manner, that reminds one of the winsome fairy of The Tempest.
As is only natural, he is more concerned with men than with matters, and deals
with matters when both happen to be synonymous. He has not missed his vocation;
as his wide travels (again like the winged elf) and interviews with the men–and
women too–who matter, as well as his familiarity with masters of prose and
poetry provide him with the equipment for a job that he obviously enjoys doing.
His
compact cameos are characterised by a commendable conciseness of treatment and
an admirable economy of expression. The right word is used to express the right
idea, and the result is a rare harmony of substance and style. How correct and
convincing is his appraisal of ‘C. P.’ who has a ‘mind that scintillates’. “He
has a quickfire brilliance which has partly proved his undoing. Quick to grasp
the intricacies of a subtle problem, he is apt to be impatient with those whose
cerebral processes move rather slowly. If his light dazzles others, it
occasionally blinds himself.” Here is a crisp comment on the Communist orator,
Prof Hiren Mookerjee: “In the parliamentary arena he gives no quarter and asks
for none. His chiseled English intonation must seem a little out of place in
the serried ranks of Tuscany.” Of President Prasad he says: “Though a lawyer by
training, he is by temperament a peasant. He has peasant’s humility and
gentleness, something of his stubbornness and the shrewdness which often goes
with men who eke their living from the soil.” “Dr. Radhakrishnan must have
found Stalin a tougher proposition than Schopenhauer and Kant. The dialects of
Marxism are more abstruse than the philosophy of Hegel and the Kremlin is not
Kurukshetra.”
Even
a writer with usually keen insight and correct vision has his blindspots, and
‘Ariel’ has his in the Congress. He is not exactly an admirer of Congressmen.
To the Historian of the Congress he is less than just:
“He
talked himself into the Congress and very nearly talked himself out of it.
Indeed he really stops talking. When his tongue relaxes, his pen revolves. If
he is a prolific talker he is also a voluminous writer. Pattabhi is the
Congress Historian. But he writes history, does not make it.”
He
is a graphic stylist and his penchant for picturesque phrasing gives him
mastery of description:
“The
strong, impassive, often imperious face (of Sardar Patel) with the bald skull and
the heavy-lidded eyes might have been carved out of granite. There is something
faintly monolithic about him. He is Rome to Nehru’s Greece, for Nehru conjures
up grace, a grace not only of thought but of living. The Sardar symbolises
strength and certainty.”
Characters
are at times summed up in a sentence, nay in a phrase,
as when he calls the ‘saturnine’ Kripalani a ‘dancing dervish’ and a ‘gloomy
prophet,’ Kidwai ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’ and Mountbatten ‘Britain’s
professional charmer’. He has a racy style that is the delight of his readers
and the despair of his imitators. If ‘Saka’ is fond of using the bludgeon and
the sledgehammer, ‘Ariel’ wields with consummate skill the warrior’s rapier and
the surgeon’s scalpel.
Reader’s
of Shankar’s Weekly are often in the habit of eagerly looking out (after
a glance at the cartoons) for the scintillating sketches appearing under the
pseudonym of ‘Magnus’ or the initials ‘M. C.’ The man with the mighty pen,
hiding under this inadequate mask is, of course, the formidable Editor of the National
Herald and the popular leader of working journalists, M. Chalapathi Rau.
The ‘imaginary interviews’ with the ‘pillars of society’ and ‘people of
importance’ are brilliant sketches, done with savage satire and purposeful parody.
The devastating wit reminiscent of Swift and Shaw spares none, not even
Jawaharlal Nehru. Balloons are pricked with unerring precision and masterly
ease, and the victims, if they are wise and have a sense of humour, would
surely be chastened by this ruthless ridicule. Weaker vessels
with a too sensitive skin writhe under the carping, caviling and
cutting pen, which can sometimes be mightier than the sword. The foibles of
human character are exposed with merciless and malicious humour. It is not
certain if the same writer is behind the ‘man of the week’ in that journal, but
the master’s touch is often in evidence in those exquisite character-sketches.
Gifted with a marvellous memory ‘Magnus’ has acquired a deep scholarship that
has served to refine the sharp edges of his massive intellect. His wide
literary background provides him with a cultivated taste and has helped the
evolution of a splendid, if gorgeous, style, scintillating with epigrams and
sparkling wit that reveal his closeness to Lytton Strachey and Philip Guedalla,
two writers who seemed to have influenced him most in the manner of his
writing. A certain sophisticated sourness is visible in the jewelled epigrams
of this fastidious stylist, who is equally a satirist, who lashes with a whip
of scorpions.
The
writers discussed above are illustrative rather than exhaustive of the
practitioners of this exacting art. Among others deserving mention is K.
Chandrasekharan, who has drawn thumb-nail sketches of some Madras lawyers in
his Persons and Personalities. There are, however, more persons
in it than personalities, as the author’s sense of too much caution and balance
has made the portraits less vivid than they would otherwise be. His recent Studies
and Sketches is also in the same decorous and conventional tradition. Yusuf
Meherally, in the booklets about the Leaders of India, gave us a number
of passable ‘miniatures in biography,’ which are rather elementary in their
scope and treatment. Other aspirants in this field were less successful.
Joachim Alva’s ‘Men and Supermen of Hindustan’ is informative and interesting
in its detail, but somewhat amateurish and scrappy, lacking in the unerring
touch that marks out good writing from the bad and indifferent. G.
Venkatachalam’s Profiles is diffuse and desultory.
Pen-portraiture, like the writing of a poem or a short-story, is a fine art with exacting standards of style and workmanship. A good ‘profile’ is a sonnet in prose. It is a compact cameo, characterised by a severe, even austere and astringent, economy of expression, which realises the importance of the waste paper basket. But as literary fashions change like ladies’ clothes, any evidence of careful writing or lucid exposition is nowadays suspect in the eyes of the elite, who profess a fondness for anything as staccato and strident as Hemmingway or as vague and inscrutable as James Joyce. To such sophisticated souls, any semblance of accepted idiom and conventional form must be anathema. It is difficult to tell what form the ‘profile’ takes under ultra-modern masters of fashion, and whether it will resemble Picasso’s paintings or other unrecognisable experiments in cubism and surrealism. We can only hope that there are still at least a few, who are so old-fashioned as to like A. G. Gardiner, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill.