TELUGU LITERATURE ¹

By K. Ramakotiswara Rau

IT was on the banks of the Godavari and at the Court of the East Chalukyan monarch Raja Raja or Raja-Mahendra that the first great classic in Telugu–the Andhra Mahabharatamu of Nannaya Bhattaraka–was composed. That was a thousand years ago. By a strange destiny, the modern age in Telugu literature began at the same dear spot in the eighties of the last century, with Viresalingam, Lakshminarasimham, and Vasuraya Kavi. The light they then lighted at Rajahmundry, today illumines the farthest corners of Andhradesa.

The age produced other giants like Vedam Venkataraya Sastri of Nellore, the twin poets Tirupati Sastri and Venkata Sastri of Masulipatam, and Gurazada Appa Rao of Vizianagaram. These heralded the dawn of a new era. Viresalingam shaped modern Telugu prose and wrote the earliest novels, critical essays, and biographies. He paved the way for Chilakamarti Lakshmi Narasimham, Komarraju Lakshmana Rao, Chilukuri Virabhadra Rao, Vunnava Lakshminarayana, and Mallampalli Somasekhara Sarma. Gurazada Appa Rao was the forerunner of the great song writers of our day,–Basavaraju Appa Rao who is no more, Nanduri Subba Rao, and Adivi Bapiraju. Tirupati Venkata Kavulu rescued Telugu poetry from the decadent classicism of the early nineteenth century; they brought the Muse from out of the courts of chieftains and the coteries of pandits to the newly awakened population of Andhra. And they made possible the lyrical outburst of Battiprolu Subba Rao, D. V. Krishna Sastri, Visvanatha Satyanarayana. Pingali Lakshmikantam, and Katuri Venkateswara Rao. The last two are twin-souls and twin-poets like their gurus.

The impact of the nationalist movement of 1905 and, with it, the influence of Bengali literature as represented by Bankim Chandra and Rabindranath, was felt much earlier by the Telugus than by the other peoples of South India. While the earlier generation of Viresalingam was brought up on the English literature of the 17th to the 19th centuries and occasionally turned to the Sanskrit classics for inspiration, the generation of Rayaprolu Subba Rao was profoundly influenced by European literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries and by the outstanding achievements of the Bengali writers. The younger generation of Srirangam Srinivasa Rao and Rukmininadha Sastri turned to the post-war literature of Russia and the current movements of impressionism and surrealism. But the remarkable fact about all the writers of all these generations is their scholarship in Sanskrit and Telugu.

The young men who were at college during the first world war produced their best work between 1912 and 1932. These two decades in our literary history may be likened to the age of Pericles in Athens, of Elizabeth in England, and of Bhoja and Krishnadevaraya in India.

I shall endeavour to justify this claim by referring to different branches of creative literary effort like lyrical poetry, romantic song, the novel, the short story, and the drama. All these are comparatively recent developments in Telugu as in other Indian literatures.

The outpouring of devotion to the Lord by the Bhaktas of the epics and of the Satakas (centuries of verse), indicates the nearest approach to subjective poetry. But the personality of the poet rarely obtrudes on the reader’s attention in classic Indian poetry, whether in Sanskrit or in the other Indian languages. An expression of the poet’s joys and sorrows, and of his personal reactions to the movements of thought and emotion around him, represents a new phase in our literature.

The quest of a human Beloved, who is at once the perfection of loveliness and the guiding star of the lonely pilgrim to the shrine of Love, was the main pre-occupation of these new poets. To them, woman is an ethereal being; she is akin to a streak of lightning, the dewy dawn, or the white foam dancing on the waves of the ocean. By their idealisation of the object of love, and their haunting descriptions of the graces of her mind and soul more than the charms of the fleshy frame, they raised Telugu poetry to sublime heights. Platonic love is the theme of Rayaprolu Subba Rao’s Trinakankanam and Swapna Kumaram. The intense longing for a supremely fair denizen of heaven on the part of a lowly earth-born lover, and the agony born of despair, form the dominant note of Krishna Sastri’s Urvasi and other lyrics. The desire for a union of kindred minds and kindred souls is reflected in Sivasankara Sastri’s Hridayeswari. In Deepavali, Vedula Satyanarayana Sastri makes a grim resolve to pursue to the uttermost ‘this pilgrimage across the ocean of love.’ Nayani Subba Rao fears that his frail bark might go to pieces in midstream; but then, the planks will serve for his funeral pyre. Almost alone of this group of lover-poets, Nayani ends on a note of triumph. His love is fulfilled, and at long last, he succeeds in ‘linking heaven and earth.’

Rayaprolu Subba Rao was the leader of this group of poets. But it was Sivasankara Sastri, the founder of the Sahiti Samiti, who drew these and many more into a literary fellowship, like the later Ravi Kiran mandal of Maharashtra and the Geleyara Gumpu of Karnataka. Scholar in Sanskrit and a keen student of contemporary English literature and the literatures of three or four Indian languages, Sivasankara sastri became the ‘Anna Garu’–elder brother–of the poets, short story writers, and literary essayists of Andhra. The movement in favour of the spoken Telugu as the medium of literary expression was sponsored by Gidugu Ramamurti Pantulu, but the Sahiti Samiti brought success to the movement by their adoption of this newly forged instrument. Whatever of enduring worth was produced in verse, song, and prose for a quarter of a century preceding the second world war must be set down to the credit of these gifted members of the samiti and their admirers and followers. You cannot brush them aside as ‘escapists’.

Then there were those who could write verse, but preferred song. It seems but as yesterday–in sober fact, it was over thirty years ago–that the cousins Basavaraju Appa Rao and Nanduri Subba Rao were in the Law College and the Christian College in Madras. They were madly in love with the songs of Gurazada Appa Rao, and sang them with feeling. They soon started singing their own songs to small groups of eager fellow-students, and moved them to tears. The Selayeti Gaanamu (Song of the Rill) of Appa Rao and the Yenki Paatalu of Subba Rao took the public by storm. Today these songs are on everybody’s lips. Appa Rao urged that one should pass through sorrow so that ‘the heart might become tender’ and ‘the sense of ego wiped out.’ Subba Rao’s rural lovers, Yenki and Naidu Bava, are as soft and gentle, or as passionate and devoted as any hero and heroine of princely romances. For, when the lover accosts her with the simple query,

‘Where dost thou dwell, O Maiden of Light?’–

the artless maiden answers,

‘In thy shadow shall I build my palace.’

Adivi Bapiraju, painter, poet, and song writer, has latterly won distinction through his short stories and novels. He was influenced not by Gurazada Appa Rao but by Oswald Couldrey, Principal of the Government College at Rajahmundry. The companionship of this cultured Englishman who himself painted and wrote verse and short story, was a beneficent influence in the lives of Bapiraju, Kavikondala Venkata Rao, Damerla Rama Rao, the artist, and other youths of that period Mr. Couldrey is to modern Andhra what C. P. Brown of the Civil Service was to the Andhradesa of a hundred years ago. While Bapiraju’s genius is versatile, his characteristic mode of expression is the song, vibrant with emotion and lifting the listener to high altitudes, even like the river Godavari which, in a song of his, ‘shoots up to the skies.’

Viswanatha Satyanarayana in his Kokilamma Pendli (the Bridal of the Koil) and Kinnara Sani made song the vehicle of romantic and descriptive tales of nature in her tender moods, as Duvvuri Rami Reddi employed elegant verse. Among the makers of the renaissance in Andhra, Viswanatha takes a lofty place. He has experimented nearly every form of literary expression,–classical verse, romantic song, the drama, the novel, the short story, and the literary essay. In everyone of these forms he has achieved eminence, and he is now writing an epic with the story of Rama for his theme. There is richness and vigour allied to ruggedness in his writing which entitles him to a place apart. Bapiraju and Satyanarayana have run a close race in the affections of the Andhras, and, curiously enough, even the Andhra University had to split a prize for a novel between Satyanarayana’s Veyi Padagalu (The Thousand Hoods) and Bapiraju’s Narayana Rao. Within recent years, these two are the outstanding novelists, coming in direct succession after Vunnava Lakshmi Narayana whose Malapalli is the classic of the Gandhian movement.

Katuri Venkateswara Rao and Pingali Lakshmikantam achieved perfection of form coupled with richness of sentiment in Soundara Nandam a long, sustained kavya, recalling the age of the Buddha. Epic themes like the heroism of Rana Pratap Simha and Shivaji have been chosen by Rajasekhara Satavadhani and Venkatasesha Sastri for kavyas of great excellence.

The short story in Telugu, in its modern form of a portrayal of contemporary life, owes its origin to Gurazada Appa Rao, but its development in recent years is due to a band of writers headed by Chinta Dikshitulu. His stories, in their sympathetic interpretation of common men and women, and their gentle humour, are very much like those of Masti Venkatesa Iyengar of Karnataka. Munimanikyam Narasimha Rao is a master of the simple story which depicts domestic life in middle class families. Gudipati Venkatachalam writes with great power about the indignity suffered by woman. He is a believer in stark realism, particularly in his treatment of sex. He sometimes mistakes actualism for realism, and fills his stories with details which mar the artistic effect.

Of the writers of one-act plays, Visvanatha Kaviraju, Justice Rajamannar and Narla Venkateswara Rao are in the front rank. But, so far, we have not had a play comparable to Gurazada Appa Rao’s Kanya Sulkam or Vedam Venkataraya Sastri’s Pratapa Rudriyam. This is possibly because the writer of a one-act play works on a restricted canvas.

In the period of fifteen years since 1933, there has been a perceptible swing to Leftism in Telugu literature. Srirangam Srinivasa Rao led a revolt against the Romantic Movement, which commenced with Rayaprolu Subba Rao. A new world is in the making, according to Srinivasa Rao,–a world in which blood and toil must lead to the vindication of the rights of the worker in field and factory. There is no sense in celebrating the glory of the Taj Mahal; think rather of the sweated labour that made the Taj possible. Soft sentiment and the enraptured worship of nature in her beautiful moods can no longer form the theme of literature. The new group is influenced in a large measure by the impressionists and surrealists of the West, and seeks to break away from conventional verse-forms, including the gita metre employed by the romantics. Free-verse is their favourite medium, and oftentimes prose just run mad. In the short story, the one-act play, and literary journalism, the emphasis is on propaganda for leftist thought. The prevailing economic discontent, and the disillusionment following on the emergence of political freedom, are to be canalized for the class-war that is ahead of us. But alongside of these are others like Mallavarapu Visveswara Rao and Pilaka Ganapati Sastri who are wedded to the Rayaprolu-Krishna Sastri tradition. Buchi Sundara Rama Sastri, author of Panchavati, is a direct disciple of Sri Venkata Sastri and a poet of devotion.

The literature of knowledge, as distinguished from the literature of power, has made great headway in Telugu. Books on politics science, sociology, economics and history, have attained a high standard. The works on history, especially those of Bhavaraju Krishna Rao and Somasekhara Sarma, deserve to rank as literature. The autobiography of Sri Prakasam is a moving human document,–the revelation of a great personality. The style is simple, vigorous, and arresting. High-class journalism has been a great source of encouragement to aspiring writers in Telugu. Several periodicals have published creative writing, which later appeared as volumes of verse, story, and song. The greatest of Andhra journalists, the late Sri Mutnuri Krishna Rao of the Krishna Patrika, wrote splendid prose. His essays on literature, philosophy, and art are collected in Samiksha.

Telugu is a great and growing literature. The perfect blending of Sanskrit with the native Telugu words invests it with the sweetness and beauty which made Tyagaraja’s songs world-famous. When the history of the literatures of the principal Indian languages, through many centuries of striving and achievement, comes to be written, Telugu will assuredly hold a high place. The continuity of literary tradition from the age of Nannaya to our own has not been broken. One other Indian literuture which is twin to Telugu is Kannada.

¹ Broadcast from Madras on August 6. Reproduced by courtesy of All India Radio.

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