THE CONTEMPORARY TELUGU POETRY
VASANTA
KUMAR PARIGI
Lecturer
in English,
Though
dates seldom serve as cornerstones to indicate the beginning of a period or
movement in literature, 1910 may be regarded as the year
when new voices were heard in Telugu poetry. It was in 1910
that Sri Sri, who was later to become an avantgarde poet, was born. In the same year Gurajada was evolving a new diction and a new idiom for
Telugu poetry. Ten years later, in 1920, the Kavikumara
Samiti came into being as an expression of the new
movement already in evidence in the writings of Gurajada,
Abburi, Sivasankara Sastri, and Rayaprolu. But it was
not till 1930 that a cohesive impact was made by the modern poets. The events
that led to the birth of the New Poetry had so much in common with the
movements in other parts of the world that Muddukrishna
in his anthology (presenting for the first time six thousand lines from
twenty-six poets), published in 1935, remarks: “Gandhi, Aurobindo,
Tagore, Ibsen, Marx, Tolstoy,
Shaw, Romain Rolland have all had a profound
influence on our society and our ways of living. It is of this change and
revolution the thinking of these men has brought that the modern Telugu poets
sing. This is a new creation. There is a newness in it.”
Feudal
oppression, economic inequality, and social injustice are the subject matter of
the New Poetry. The contemporary poets affirmed that art is sterile if it does
not contribute to the well being of our fellowmen. They declared that what is
passed on by one generation to another is not the original sin but a
perpetuated lie. Men have been listening too long to false prophets and
worshipping faked gods. To redeem ourselves from the marass
of statism and stagnant thought was the urgent need.
The New Poetry was an expression of such redemption. It was a new force which
would wake us from the deep slumber and accelerate us to a new dynamism and
vitality to give us a complete life.
With
the turn in thought and content, too, went a departure from
diction and form. Effete metrical traditions were buried along with the flabby
and ornamental diction in which the older poets revelled.
‘In poetry superfluity of words is a sin worse than nationalism,’ remarked Chalam in his preface to Sri Sri’s Mahaprasthanam.
‘For our electrified thoughts we need an electrified metre’
wrote Dasaradhi. However, by free verse the poets did
not mean an escape from the discipline essential to poetry as a literary form.
Diction underwent a sea-change to follow the new subtleties in thought and
imagination. New symbols were found in the creation of science and technology.
The rail engine, the motor-car and the factory–all found a place in the imagery
of the poets.
Gurajada’s Mutyala Saralu and
Dr. C. R. Reddy’s Musalamma Maranamu heralded the coming of a new age in Telugu
poetry. Rayaprolu and Abburi
in their poems showed a command of the new idiom and experimented with new
metrical forms. Both the writers were greatly influenced by the literary
revival in
Sri
Sri belonged to the new generation which in its
search for beauty and justice saw only the grinning futile faces of slaves and
economic barbarism. His youthful idealism was everywhere met with cruelty,
oppression and deceit:
Sulphurous fumes strewn
over our eyes
False
frankincense burnt in our hearts
Thorns
on our way, and whenever we think
thousand devils dancing before
us.
Is
this what the world has done to us?
asks
Sri Sri. He was, however, hopeful. Life, no doubt,
was a veritable hell where we are cudgelled for being
alive. But the pain can be overcome. We can live in joy. Like the lotus that
shoots up from the gorge? the sweat on the brows of
the working class would evolve a new order where justice will be denied to
none. ‘Let us all unite and march’, is the clarion call of Sri Sri. To him the Socialist revolution appears to be
inevitable:
This
world is yours
This
dream will come true
This
heaven will stay.
Devulapalli
sings of the inexplicable grief that shrouds our lives. ‘I shall walk alone
into the void,’ he says felicitously. The theme of Sivasankara
Sastry and Vedula also is
‘the tears that make men happy’. More mellowed is the voice of Abburi:
Why
this fondness for
The fading dew?
And Sri Sri, like a child lost in its search, asks:
Where,
where are the snows
Of yesteryear?
Arudra,
Pattabhi, and Tilak are the
apocalyptics. All of them, like their contemporaries,
read Eliot, Pound, Day Lewis, Dylan Thomas, and a host of other modern English
poets. ‘Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understoed,’
quotes Arudra in his Twamewaham,
a poem woven with rich symbols and allegory. His better work is Cine Wali. Its theme is a wasteland littered with lost men.
The sun is a silent spectator watching the defeated and the dead. After agony
and strife, peace appears on the scene. Harmony is sought. Tilak’s
poems are more esoteric. His images have a rare clarity and are deeply significant.
He is at home with all forms, and achieves a grandeur
with ease:
A
little virtue and some vice
Occasional
tears, a little happiness later,
Abandon, kindness, and joy.
Lord,
give us these.
Narayana Reddi, Kundurthi, and Dasaradhi look to the future when science would liberate us
from misery, squalor, and bondage. Narla Chiranjeevi joins them in their universality and pleads for
international outlook and catholic culture. Anisetti
and Byragi speak of kindness and charity that make
life congenial. A salient feature of the contemporary Telugu poetry is its
ardent appeal for a
As
Dr. Raghavachari, speaking of the contemporary Telugu
poets, has observed, “They show the urgent need for attaining a new balance in
life and a wholesome healing of the shattered personality of man in the new
environment. The poets are the prophets of social change and are already making
eager anticipations of a hopeful future lit up by a landscape of plenty and
happiness:
Mines
are found and work is found
Factories
have sprung and towns have smiled;
Lustily
today the
Full
of smiles, too, the
…………….
And
look! What is left in your hands? the gay
festoon of leisure!” –Arudra.
Yet,
with all the semantic nuances in thought and bold experiments in form, one
misses in the contemporary scene the sustaining tradition and talent which
determine the ultimate destination of Telugu poetry. When we ask ourselves
whether the age has sought its true image in any of the
poets, the answer would be that a true measure of ourselves is yet to
be found. The garishness and the bewilderment that the poets portray is inconclusive. Anisetti’s poser,
“Where is the ship that can sail across the oceans of darkness and defeat,”
still remains to be answered by the poets.