REVIEWS
Peoms: by
M. R. Bhagavan. Price Rs. 3
Man’s fall and Woman’s
fall out: by Lawrence Bantleman. One Rupee. [Published for
the Writers Workshop by P. Lal, 162/92, Lake Gardens, Calcutta.-45]
Every
age has its peculiar response to the challenge of the world. This finds
expression in a new imagery and a new idiom in poetry as in painting, sculpture
and architecture, as in all the other visual and plastic arts, for that matter.
Modern man, being in a frantic hurry, would be brief and direct in all that he
wants to say or do. Our buildings are nowadays functional, and the elegance, if
any, is derived from a stork simplicity. There is no time for being ornate in
expression or elaborate in imagination. The baroque exuberance of the remote
past, and Gothic intricacy of workmanship are equally out of place in building
architecture. Even the Luetynses of yesterday with their domes and minarets and
symmetrical columns have given place to the Le corbusiers whose style
has something of the surprising quality of modern art. As in architecture, so
in literature, especially poetry.
A
conscious turning away from the conventional objects of beauty and a discarding
of the familiar themes of poetry are almost a universal feature of the modern
poet worth his salt. Workshop poets are, by and large, no exception to this
unwritten rule of poetic composition. They have a keenly developed contemporary
sensibility, along with an admirable flair for experimentation. These two
qualities are best illustrated in the poems of M. R. BHAGAVN, most of which
happen to have been written in Western Europe. In striving to be refreshingly
original in his way of looking at scenes and objects, he succeeds in being
up-to-date, after neutralizing an Indian consciousness, as if it were an impediment
to the airline passenger who prefers to travel light. His ‘Winter Sequence’
closes thus:
“Seasonal
shock of wind-raped trees,
dyspeptic
groans of grey factories
and
prolix hysteria of Christmas-bells,
displace
no phase in his reflexive relish,
of
the beer on the next pension-day.”
What
he says of the crystals in the little piece entitled ‘Change’ can equally truly
be applied to his own poetic technique, as that of many of his professional
contemporaries, bearing the Workshop imprint:
‘Their
caress-clad time,
forever
and once,
slipped
out of rhyme with navel priime
and
in carbon-allusion
named
spinster symbols
more
sublime.”
Some
of his phrases do come upon the average reader with the pleasant abruptness of
a cloud-burst in summer, even when their true import is not clear
enough, e.g., “the kiss-thirst air of summer night,” “limping sun on
shadow-bleached walls,” “A woodless wind sobs through my hall” etc.
Any visitor to a modern art exhibition, struggling for expression before an impressionist painting, is sure to sympathise with the poet in this stanza from the piece. “On looking at some Tahti paintings of Gauguin.” (The present reviewer does so, any way.)
“The
boat is no subject of the sea,
The
sea is also fish,
The
fish is the sudden prostrate man,
and
the prostrate man.”
If
the late-riser misses many things in the world for which man is thankful,
sunrise and sunset must be two of them. Modern poet Bhagavan has his own way of
evoking what must be a familiar sight to the resident of Madras–sunrise at San
Thome beach:
“Between
sands, now warm with shadow,
now
leeched by light,
The
thoughts, and limbs of fishermen
Resolve
nor wave nor time
Smelt
the drawn instant
to
drawn element.
Declaiming,
rays stand and speak
within me...”
If
Bhagavan tends, at times, to be obscure or incoherent in the struggle to
capture an intimate experience and convey it in a novel manner, Bantleman gives
the impression of being too smart and slick in his poetic intonation. He has an
impressive facility with word and phrase, but he can hardly resist the
temptation to ring the changes a little too often. He speaks of “friends
unknown and known enemies,” “like lake mist on the lake with fingers…..” “(a
banana word; peel the skin; eat a sentence).” But, I do not know what to make
of these lines from “Urbanus,” I hope it is more than a merely clever jingle:
“Night
you have burned me.
Dark
night you have burned me.
Night
dark you burned.
Have
you burned night dark?
Have
you?”
There
is also a deliberate boldness of imagery, obviously contrived for its shock
effect on the staid reader, as in:
“Before
the Silence Zone the monkey man
(keeper’s
of monkeys, not evolution: this
contretemp
suggests itself slowly) on a skin,
mottled
like a harlot
thin
as a virgin’s hymen,
beats:
such a noise!”
or,
“Death
anniversaries soon subside
Like
pregnant graves
Or
pregnant brides.”
or,
“….on
the painted panes
sunshafts
like tubercular grains
of
bacilli back-up the shadow;”
or, in this from
“Winter”:
“The
used tickets fly
from
the gutter bank,
passengers
may urinate
here
and there and cause the grass to grow;
poor
bladders
and
bad weather and the steam
from
urinators
colour
the dream.”
On
the other hand, he delights the reader with the felicity of expression achieved
by the apt and happy phrase as the one about the summer stranger nicknamed
night, that comes “gliding like a smooth shave.”
–D.
ANJANEYULU
Fragments of a Revolution:
Essays on Indian problems by M. Chalapati Rau.
Pages 118. Sole Distributors in India: Book Centre (Private) Limited, Ranade
Road, Dadar, Bombay-28.
The
author, Mr. M. Chalapati Rau, is the Editor of The National Herald, and
occupies a prominent position in the field of journalism. He has been India’s
delegate to the UNESCO General Conferences in Delhi and Paris, and to the U. N.
General Assembly in New York. He is thus, by virtue of his experience as a
journalist and his intimate acquaintance with public affairs, eminently
qualified to comment on the contemporary situation and the current developments
in the various fields of our national life. He is keenly interested in the many
aspects of the silent revolution which has been going on in the country for two
generations, first under the leadership of Gandhi and then under the leadership
of Jawaharlal Nehru. He is a professed disciple of Nehru, to whom he dedicates
the book, and obviously in sympathy with the objective of the Nehruist
revolution, which is curiously compounded of elements of democracy, socialism,
secularism, scientism, nationalism and internationalism, and has taken the form
of economic planning On a gigantic scale under the inspiration and leadership
of Nehru, after 1947, when political Independence was achieved, and Nehru was
free from the restraining influences of Patel and Rajaji.
The
volume contains thirty-six essays dealing with the various fragments, or
aspects, of this revolution. It describes the way in which a traditional society
is passing through a transitional state. It deals with the social and economic,
the political and constitutional, as well as the intellectual and cultural,
processes which constitute the Indian Revolution. The author has faith in the
revolution, but deals with it objectively and critically. Though he deals with
it in separate fragments, there is unity in his outlook and approach, and he
manages to bring out the underlying unity in the various current problems which
he discusses. The essay form has enabled the writer to adopt an easy confident
manner and he writes as a commentator, and criticises freely, but always with a
sense of responsibility. With uncanny frankness he declares
‘Every part of the community is discontented.’ He is highly critical of the execution
and achievements of the plans and even of the drafting of them. He complains
that they are full of padding and paddering and wanting in clear thinking as
well as clear expression. His claim (in the preface) to consistency of outlook
and seriousness in approach must be conceded. And he writes in a style of his
own, combining wit and humour, seriousness and charm, brevity and sarcasm; and
whatever the subject, and whether one agrees with the views expressed or not,
every reader is sure to find the treatment interesting as well as
thought-provoking. It is an eminently readable book and presents a
comprehensive picture of modern India and the troubled processes of the
revolution through which it is passing.
–M. SIVAKAMAVYA
Tapaswini or
The Lure of Power by K. M. Munshi. Published by The Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, Bombay-7. Pages 616. Price Rs.15,
Well
known as an eminent lawyer, a zealous nationalist, a seasoned statesman and a
gifted writer, Dr. K. M. Munshi, with his versatile talents and manifold achievements,
occupies a unique position in the public life of the country. Acknowledged as
the foremost writer in modern Gujarati literature, he has to his credit several
works in English as well both historical and critical. His latest social novel,
Tapaswini in Gujarati, was published in three volumes in 1957, when he
had attained political and literary eminence. It has been translated into
English, pruned to a suitable length, and is now published in the volume under
review, for the English reading public.
Having
come under the inspiring influence of Sri Aurobindo, during his student days,
Sri Munshi has been an ardent fighter for the political freedom of the country
as well as the cultural revival of the nation. He has worked, at the different
stages in his and eventful public career, in close association with Tilak,
Besant, Gandhi, Patel and Nehru, and brings to bear, on the picture life in
modern India presented in this volume, his vast knowledge and varied
experience. He paints, in the pages of this book, a vivid picture of the
political movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, with its different
phases of non-co-operation, civil disobedience, direct action, fasts and
martyrdom, which rocked the life of the nation in the third and fourth decades
of this century, against the background of the author’s inside knowledge, born
of experience, with the art of a seasoned literary craftsman.
The
story involves numerous characters of great variety, covering a wide range of
social background, political ideology and religious attitudes. Most of these
characters are vividly portrayed, carefully distinguished, and presented in an
intricate network of mutual relations, in an artistically constructed plot with
a social, political and detective interest.
Here
we find Ganapati Sastry, a venerable Brahmin, living in the world of ancient
idealism; his grandson Ravi, a victim of the ‘lure of power’ (the alternative
title for the novel), catapulted from a Sanskrit school into Congress politics,
in the hectic days of Gandhiji’s Satyagraha, via Communism; Alice, an
English-born young woman, thrown into an Indian life, unknown to her; Mona, a
Bengali girl trained in Russia and dedicated to Communism; Radharaman, the
successful lawyer, with his devotion to wealth and name, and weakness for
liquor and woman; Sheela, a noble lady cast in the Indian mould, yet modern in
her ways, the ‘Tapaswini’ of the title, and apparently the author’s ideal of
modern Indian womanhood; Uday the competent lawyer, with idealism and public spirit,
full of nobility, yet responsive to the realities of the situation and the
needs of modem life; and a host of other characters with distinctive
personalities, all jostling with one another in a vortex of joys and sorrows.
Through
the canvas on which these characters are painted, there shines Rajba, a lithe
little girl of modern India, endowed with delicate
sensibility and generous sympathies, and practical idealism, coming under the
influence of Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram at Pondichery, and seeking fulfilment
through faith. She makes her spiritual experiments on the base metal of which
Ravi is made and ultimately transforms it into pure gold.
The
book is, not a mere work of fiction, an interesting social novel, but also, at
the same time, an impressive and interesting political saga.
–M.
SIVAKAMAYYA
Sri
Samskrita Bhashaprakasika by K. S. Ramanujacharyulu, and A.
Achannasastry, Lecturers, S. V. Oriental College, Tirupati. Pages 230. Price
Rs. 8.
Innumerable
attempts are being made to make the study of Samskrit easy, and this book,
written in Telugu by two experienced Samskrit Lecturers, is the result of one
of those attempts.
This
book consists of two parts. The first part deals mainly deals with verbal
forms. Here the authors do not tease the reader with the rules of formation of
different verbal forms. They give the final forms of some verbs in the present
imperfect and future tenses, in the active and passive voices and in the
causative, and thoroughly illustrate their usage in appropriate sentences in
Samskrit. Then words ending with primary suffixes are illustrated. A detailed
and useful treatment of prepositions, denominatives and desideratives is also
found herein. The second part deals with nouns, indeclinables, numerals,
meanings of cases, Sandhis and Samasas, and sentence formation.
A
chart showing the final forms in singular, of 290 verbs in the present and
imperfect tenses, in the active and passive voices and in the causative, and
forms ending with the suffixes and two glossaries of Samskrit roots and nouns,
classified into different groups, add to the value of the book. The addition of
exercises at the end of each chapter and a mere detailed and illustrative
treatment of sentence construction in different forms, would have considerably enhanced
the value of the book.
We
have no doubt that any diligent reader of this book can have
a correct working knowledge of Samskrit in six months, as expected by the
authors, and this book compares well with many other books in
the “Teach Yourself Series.”
–B.
KUTUMBA RAO
Mahakavi Margamu by
Dr. S. V. Joga Rao. Pages 132. Published by M. S. R. Murty & Co.,
Visakhapatnam-2.
Tikkana’s
Telugu Virataparvam which, because of its excellent poetic beauties, attracted
the attention of many literary critics in Telugu, is a translation of the
Virataparva in Samskrit, in the Manabnarata of Vyasa. In his translation
Tikkana deviated from the original in many places, so much so,
the Telugu Virataparvam appears for all practical purposes, as though it were
an original and independent composition of the poet. If we are to appreciate
and estimate the merits of Tikkana as a poet, we have necessarily to take
notice of the original, compare it with the translation, trace out the
deviations made by the poet, and then, on the basis of merit in the deviations,
appreciate or censure the work of the poet. So an exhaustive comparative study
of Tikkana’s translation and the original Bharatam in Samskrit by Vyasa, is a sine
qua non for a genuine appreciation of Tikkana’s poetical talents. The book
under review furnishes us with this pre-requisite and is hence a valuable
addition to Telugu literature.
Previously,
late Sri Korada Ramakrishnayya made a similar study and published the results
of his research in his “Andhra Mahabharata Vimarsanamu.” While comparing the
Telugu Bharatam with its original in Samskrit, he took into consideration both
the Northern and Southern recensions of the Mahabharata in Samskrit, and he was
of the opinion that Tikkana had the Northern recension in his hands when he
wrote his Bharatam. In addition to the comparative study, Sri K. Ramakrishnayya
also brought out in full, in that book, the literary and poetical beauties
found in Tikkana’s writing.
Sri
G. Subbaramayya in his. ‘Kavitraya Kavitavimarsanamu” also devotes himself to a
similar study, though not of so very exhaustive nature. Sri K. Vyasamurty, in
his “Tikkana Kavitasamrajyamu” explained at large the charm in the poetry of
Tikkana, without bringing the original into the picture. Sri B. Lakshminarayana
Rao made a similar attempt, though very brief, in his “Tikkana Bharata
Rachanamu.” There are many other writings of the kind.
The
book under review is the latest attempt on this subject, viz., comparative
study of Tikkana and the original Bharata. Herein the author
compares the Telugu Virataparvam with its counterpart in Samskrit, obtaining in
the Southern recension only, which he thinks closer to Tikkana’s Bharatam. In
an analytical manner, he points 79 deviations, in all, and among them are included
many of the deviations pointed out by the previous writers also on this
subject. (cf. items numbering 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23,
26, 28, etc.) He gives the original Samskrit verses and the Telugu translations
thereof and briefly explains the significance, if any, of the deviations made.
Thus this book gives us a very clear picture of the changes made by Tikkana in
his translation as compared with the Southern recension of the Mahabharata in
Samskrit, and hence is of immense help to those who desire to appreciate
Tikkana’s originality, as far as Virataparva is concerned, but who, either for
want of a knowledge of Samskrit, or for want of time, cannot go through the
original Samskrit work. The learned Doctor promises similar studies on the
other Parvas also and we eagerly await them.
–B.
KUTUMBA RAO