REVIEWS
Kanthapura, by Raja Rao.
(Oxford University Press, Bombay. Price. Rs. 6)
KANTHAPURA, which derives its title from a village
of the same name in Mysore, is a successful piece of regional writing. By
regionalism it is not meant to stick a label; novels like Venkataramani’s Kandan,
The Patriot, Tagore’s Gora and Wreck, Anand’s The Big
Heart and The Coolie, Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi, and
similar others by the Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarathi, Marathi,
Kannada and Malayalee writers, are regional in the sense that the authors are
representative of their own regions, and produce works which bear upon them the
individual geographical mark; in the vernaculars it is the genius of the
language, pre-eminently; the medium, if it is English, has to be, in the
opinion of Raja Rao, a dialect which will some day promise to be as distinctive
and colourful as the Irish or the American.” Raja Rao achieves what he
maintains–both colour and distinction in his prose. He begins his story with
all the gusto and the grand manner of the born raconteur: Our
village high on the Ghats is it; high up the steep mountains that face the cool
Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a
centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane. Roads, narrow, dusty,
rut-covered roads, wind through the forests of teak and of jack, of sandal and
of sal…”
Kanthapura is part history, part fiction; the history is contemporary the moral and
political teachings of Mahatma Gandhi; the fiction deals with the reactions of
the inhabitants of the village to these teachings, and the troubles that ensue
when the theory of ahimsa is put into practice, when it becomes an urgent,
momentous activity–the activity which is the highest flaming point in the
philosophy of the religious reformer and the social saviour. Raja Rao has a
thorough knowledge of his subject, but the historical, bucolic, and social
elements he handles have somehow failed to integrate as pure story; in many
places the novel suffers from overwriting; its concluding chapters, especially,
are cluttered up with too many details of lathi-blows, gunshots, and
blood-stains a prosaic and patient method aspires to be poetic through words
repeated, rung, re-rung this proliferation, like painting the lily or gilding
the gold, is indeed a wasteful excess. However, Kanthapura when it was
first published in England ten years ago, when Gandhi lived and fought for our
freedom, was a cry of challenge; today, its re-issue in India, after the death
of him who was our saviour, sounds like a song of fulfillment. Then it was the
manifesto of a legitimate claim; now it stands for all time as the record of a
noble victory.
MANJERI S. ISVARAN
Two Lovely Beasts, and Other Stories, by Liam O’Flaherty. (Victor Gollancz Ltd.,
London. Price 9sh. 6d.)
LIAM O’FLAHERTY is in the front rank of writers in
the West who, by their profound sympathy and understanding, have changed the
scope and significance of the short story as an art-form and as an expression
of life. The Irish are a poetic people, of the earth earthy; they look askance
at urban ways, the urban glitter; their vitality springs from the soil that
gave them birth. Mr. O’Flaherty’s stories are close-up views of Irish
life from one whose observation is keen, vision direct, humanity deep, lit by
cheerfulness and an engaging wit. His themes are dissimilar, but in each his
touch is exact, his mastery sure. All are stories of high achievement, and
apart from the title story, The Beggars, The Mouse, and The Wedding are
the most notable. Ireland is fortunate in Liam O’Flaherty.
MANJERI S. ISVARAN
East Side, West Side, by Marcia Davenport. (Collins, 10sh. 6d.)
NOVEL–any prose stuff that runs from twelve to
fifteen formes Double Crown 16 vo. This is the definition of an expert printer
who, in his time, has set up novels without number, and felt like talking what
he thought about fiction. Very sensible of him, and that without assuming the
role of a literary critic. But if the novel happens to be American, nineteen to
the dozen, it is beyond all judgment of printer–and the literary critic alike.
It is made a sensation, in the true American style, ballyhooed wildly till
everyone in sheer self-defence has to read it. One such novel I read was Forever
Amber by Kathleen Winsor.
East Side, West Side–New York’s–is typical. American ware, describing
every little detail of lives lived expensively, details that are boring
rendered more poring by sociological comments done in all seriousness, decking
the descriptive upholstery. The heroine Mrs. Jessie Bourne is thirty-eight, and
her deepest comfort for many years is her bedroom; Brandon, her husband doesn’t
come up to her intellectual and aesthetic standards; and there appears on the
scene General Dwyer, a war veteran and an epicure in eating and drinking.
Jessie immediately recognises her spirit of kinship with him but complications
arise. Dwyer departs, Jessie dismisses her husband in the hope the General
would return, and the story ends not with a bang but with a whimper. One
wonders why Marcia Davenport concluded her novel so briefly, she could have
padded on another thirty thousand words and would have been none the worse for
it.
I. M.
Mudrarakshasam, by Visakhadatta. Rendered into Tamil from the original Sanskrit by V.
Srinivasa Sastri (Siromani) and T. Srinivasachariar (Siromani). (Shakti
Karyalayam, Madras 14. Price Re. 1-8 as.)
OFTEN a doubt arises as to what exactly a drama is.
The dramatist may have a conception of it different from that of the critic,
but the, creator of characters need not care for the man of views. But the man
of views does count to some extent as he seems to express the heart of the
common man. Take, for example, the dramatist Shaw. He wrote play after play and
he grew in age caring little for the man of views Shaw is a dramatist and man
of views himself, a man of acute intelligence, portraying characters arresting
at once for the starkness of thought and brilliance of conception. A drama is
any aspect of life in that could be enacted to teach man to find for himself
where truth and justice love and sympathy really are. It is poetry of life in
that at certain places it explodes. Emotions explode in a blaze of ideas but
the glow of harmony is not impaired in a perfect play. It is in harmonising
poetry and life, imagination and events, that the genius of the dramatist works
unceasingly till the consummation or the catastrophe of the play is arrived at.
The genius of Visakhadatta lay in that he was an
analytical thinker fully conscious of the psychological life of the characters
he made use of in the making of his difficult plot. His extraordinary capacity
is well seen in the way in which he leads us to perceive the character of a
statesman like Chanakya.
Vishnugupta was an ocean of learning whose only
defect was his ego; and a temper violent and revengeful was not attractive in
one of his immense learning and erudition. But he was a man of great
convictions who thought error was unknown to him. To establish justice he
adopted policies and means, which would have driven another to the gallows. He
admired Rakshasa for his faithfulness and loyalty; he had respect for
Chandanadasa whose willingness to sacrifice his own life to have his friend
Rakshasa was genuine. We find in Kautilya a gifted brain, sharp as the edge of
a razor, and shining like the tropical sun in summer. We also see a heart that
was cold; it was cold to the environments, but it was conscious of its beats.
Its beauty was in detachment, its pride was in renunciation, and its completion
or fulfillment was in penance. In short, Visakhadatta’s characters are
immortals. We cannot throw a stone at anyone of them. We can admire them,
eradicate the defects in ourselves, encourage our intelligence, and improve our
political tactics. A critic can only study the characters but has no right to
pretend to be a man of views.
Tamil has been superbly served by the two
translators who have shown intelligence in their study of the play. They could
have given a synopsis of the drama to enable the reader to have a general idea
of the plot stripped of its intricacies. It would have trade the understanding
of the plot more easy. A scholar’s instinct seeks such books either in original
or in translation. Our congratulations to Srimans V. Srinivasa Sastri and T.
Srinivasachariar for their ardours to enrich Tamil and glorify Sanskrit.
M. S.
Kamasuddhi, by Dr. V. Raghavan, M.A., Ph.D. (Amritavani, V. B. Subbiah & Sons,
Bangalore.)
Gopa Hampanna, by Dr. V. Raghavan, M.A., Ph.D. (Amritavani, V. B. Subbiah & Sons,
Bangalore.)
DR. RAGHAVAN needs no introduction to the world of
Sanskritists. He is a flower of the group of students that gathered around the
great scholar Kulapati Kuppuswami Sastriar who made an epoch in the history of
Sanskrit studies in this part of the country. For sometime past, the author has
been trying his hand in the field of Sanskrit poetry; and the two booklets
under reference reflect credit on his accomplishment in belles-lettres in
Sanskrit. Kamasuddhi,–the purification of love–is an one-act drama in
Sanskrit, a product of assimilation and implementing of the substance of the Kumarasambhava
of Kalidasa. It is written in a simple, elegant style, interspersed with
the honeyed words of that master-poet.
The substance of the drama is this: Rati, the sattvik
aspect of love, wants to make human love, pure and holy. She tries to lift
up Kama to a spiritual height when he asks her to go hand in hand with him in
his maddening career. She is sorry for the role he plays as Madana, inflamer of
passions, Manmatha, tormentor of mankind, and Mara, the slayer of mankind. She
grieves at the inroads he makes into the realms of Dharma and Artha like
the flood of a river that destroys its banks. She is sick with horror to see
him defile the conjugal fidelity of chaste women, make saints and sages victims
of surging passions, for his having caused the lord of men (the Cosmic Mind) to
be in love with his daughter. She could no longer put up with his evil ways.
She resolves to take to satyagraha, to perform penance, stern and long, for the
sins he had committed, until he is purified and stripped of all worldliness. No
amount of persuasion of Vasanta, the friend of Kama, could turn her from her
resolve. Now the great Siva, the giver of reward of penance to all, is in a state
of Samadhi, in the summit of the Himalayas. The intensity of the penance
of Rati attracts the attention of the God and He reveals himself before her and
counsels her thus: “Do not forsake your husband however bad he is. A true wife
should enter into her husband’s heart by kind words and sweet persuasions and
bring him under control. There will soon arise an occasion, when Kama will show
his strength on Me and will be burnt to ashes in the fire of My vairagya.
Then, purged of all his dross, Kama will rise again like the morning Sun in his
pristine purity. He will then be your fit companion and will take the place of
the prime Purushartha instead of being an ancillary pursuit of life.”
Rati is satisfied and looks forward to the regeneration of Kama.
Hampanna, a Kurba watchman, was shot dead by a
brutish British soldier for having given shelter to and defended the honour of
a young Lingayat lady whom he had been chasing on an evening after beer. The
culprit was caught, tried in the Madras High Court, but British justice found
him not guilty and let him free. The indignant nation however raised a memorial
for heroic Hampanna, on the Kurnool-Bangalore road. Dr. Raghavan, reading an
account of the incident, has given utterance to his righteous indignation in the
form of a ballad of 32 stanzas in Sanskrit,–a humble homage to the dauntless
spirit of Hampanna. The annals of dependent India are full of incidents of
heroic lives being treated with contempt, humiliated and massacred by perverted
justice. Short poems corresponding to ballads and sonnets of the West having
for their theme, some single thought, feeling or situation are not common in
Sanskrit literature and the novel attempt of the author is therefore all the
more welcome to the Sanskrit reading public. In this poem, the author freely
uses a few expressions, which, though not conforming to the rules of the lakshanakaras,
have yet the sanction of the living usages of Maha Kavis.