THE
[The Poet completed 75 years of age in
November 1972]
D. ANJANEYULU
The Telugus have a rich
and variegated poetic tradition. It had undergone many changes through the last
few hundred years. Through all these changes, one thing remained constant, the
art of recitation. It has, however, its snares no less than its charms. In the
hands of one who is a pastmaster in this art,
competent verse, recited by a stentorian voice with a resounding effect, could
carry the day, forcing great poetry to the background, if less efiective1y
read. It took a generation of poets, led by D. V. Krishna Sastri, in the
‘Twenties of this century to establish the true voice of the poet on an
entirely new basis. For them, the soul of poetry lay in the power of the word
and the truth of emotion behind it.
But they had to cross
many hurdles before they could reach their goal. Not long ago, in Andhra,
poetic merit was hardly distinguishable from metrical skill and the parade of
classical scholarship. The forms and modes of Telugu poetry were so much under
the overpowering influence of the Sanskrit archetypes that unflinching loyalty
to the latter, with a flair for close imitation and wholesale adaptation were
all that were required of the Telugu poet for attaining public recognition,
which practically meant the royal patron’s recognition, Apart from the time-honoured practice of translating and adapting the Sanskrit
epics (the Telugu version of the Mahabharata is among the earliest of
poetic exercises in this language), the Prabandha
tradition (represented by ornate romances, part legend, part mythology, in
a style that could roughly be described as euphuistic) became so
well-established as to leave little room for new experiment or even the unfettered
expression of the true personality of the poet.
As Wordsworth and
Coleridge found it earlier in the
The modern age in Telugu
poetry could be said to have begun with the work of Gurazada
Appa Rao, whose poems and songs might be few in
number, but were remarkable as a bold departure from the beaten track. The
simplicity and directness of his appeal to the heart of the common man was
telling, though his output was limited. In another sense, Rayaprolu
Subba Rao was also a pioneer in that emotion of love
in all its aspects was purified of the dross of baser elements in the crucible
of his mystic vision. He was largely inspired by the poetic ecstasy of Tagore,
as reflected in Gitanjali, Gardener, etc. If Rayaprolu
is the forerunner of the Romantic Movement in Telugu poetry, Krishna Sastri has
been its most powerful exponent and popular exemplar. By his example and
precept, he had effected a kind of revolution in the
poetic taste and artistic sensibility of modern Andhra. It is not for nothing
that he is still looked upon as the living symbol of the Romantic Movement, of
modern poetry itself, for that matter, in a general sense.
The Pure Poet
Devulapalli Venkata
Krishna Sastri, to give him his full name, is indeed a poet in every sense of
the word–a poet with a distinct and vivid personality of his own, who stood for
the poetic way life. For at least a generation and even more, from the
‘Twenties into the’ Forties, he has been the Andhra young man’s dream of poetry
come true. He not only wrote poetry, but lived in it–to extent it is at all
possible to do so in the present-day world. There used to be in Andhra any
number of budding poets and others who affected his manners and mannerisms with
varying degrees of success, but none at all who could rise to the same heights
of his
Born in the year 1897
(November 1, according to the Christian era) in Coastal Andhra, not far from
the banks of the Godavari, Krishna Sastri had his
early schooling at the feet of his father and uncle. Both of them were erudite
scholars in Sanskrit and poets of the traditional school, who flourished under
the patronage of the Maharaja of Pithapuram. At the Pithapur Rajah’s College in
In the field of poetic
composition itself, Krishna Sastri, who had his roots in the classical
tradition of Telugu poetry, was soon drawn to the new-found wonders of Keats
and Shelley and other voices of the Romantic Revival in
The volume of Krishna Sastri’s writing, in prose and verse, is comparatively
slight; for he is a perfectionist, if ever there is one, in the matter of
handling the Telugu language. The bulk of his significant verse can be
contained in a couple of volumes of moderate size (say, of 200 pages each).
After playing the sedulous ape in his youth to the classical models favoured by his elders and betters, he found his metier, before long, in the lyric poetry that we now
associate with his name. Krishna Paksham (literally
meaning a part of Krishna Sastri, as well as the dark
fortnight), covering fifty-odd poems, was among his earliest published work
which is also his most characteristic work and chief title to fame. (Kanneeru was earlier, but bears marks of the beginner’s
handiwork) The dominant note here and in Pravasam
(Exile), a collection of fifteen pieces, is one of pathos, as also in the rest
of his work. The mood of melancholy that pervades these poems is not, on its
surface, derived from the agony of the world, or “Viswa
Vedana” (The ‘Welt Schmerz’
of the Germans) as in some of the other great poets, who tend to identify
themselves with the plight of the world as a whole. It is intensely personal
here and this poet seems to identify his personal anguish with the state of the
universe.
Though it is possible
for the less sympathetic critics of the biographical school to trace this
feeling to some glaring vicissitude of private life, like the death of a wife,
the denial by a beloved, unrequited love or some other disappointment, it would
only be fair to concede that it is something more fundamental, with a spiritual
dimension to it. It may be a result of the yawning gap between the ideal and
the actual, between one’s own aspirations and the hard realities around us.
When the vision of beauty is found hard to capture and the goal of happiness
eludes at every step, sorrow and self-reproach become inevitable. But what
happens with this poet is that this mood catches on, and like Keats he finds
some happiness in the company of sorrow and some consolation in the act of
self-reproach. It is as much a product of art as of nature. In places, it even
sounds like a manner rather than a mood! He amply demonstrates the truth of the
statement that the sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thoughts.
That part, at least, of
the sadness is traceable to the poet’s vital attachment to the values of
freedom and a continuous protest against the stuffy, cramped atmosphere he
finds himself in. His constant play with the images relating to the birds of
the air, clouds, hurricanes, the stars and the sky indicates his preoccupation
with the idea of freedom.
The poet’s conception of
Romantic love is best illustrated in Urvashi,
a collection of two dozen lyrical pieces, apostrophizing the celestial damsel
of Hindu mythology, who takes a new birth in his mind. Krishna Sastri’s ‘Urvashi’
may have a family likeness to Tagore’s ‘Urvashi’ and a nominal reference to the
heroine of classical tradition, but she is distirict
from both, a trifle loftier and grander than any other creation of Nature or
poetry. She is neither wife and mother nor courtesan and mistress. She is not
even merely a fascinating woman. She is a woman as she ought to be, an eloquent
representation of the female principle in man and God, with whom a union is
possible only in the poet’s dream.
From love for the
beloved to devotion to an Unseen Power is a natural transition. Krishna Sastri’s romantic love was always full of mystical
undertones. In Mahati he breaks into a
devotional ecstasy that may be reminiscent of the emotional fervour
of Madhura Bhakti as in
Meera and Jayadeva, Chaitanya
and Chandidas.
But it is not a personal
God that he addresses by name and surrenders to, as some of the devotional
poets of old are apt to do. His God is impersonal and nameless, but with a
presence felt by the poet and reader alike with a convincing immediacy. Krishna
Sastri is a confirmed humanist, in matters religious, for whom denominations
make no difference in man’s approach to his Maker.
Krishna Sastri’s comparatively limited output as a writer in prose
or verse is often attributed to his constitutional indolence and aristocratic
ease. The criticism is not altogether unjustified, though it must be said in his
favour that his genius is for the lyric rather than
for the epic. He usually shines in his shorter pieces in any branch of writing.
In the good old days, when his voice was at its best, he showed himself to be more fond of talking than writing. He also preferred the
convivial company of friends and admirers to the solitude of the writer’s
study, where only sustained literary work is possible.
As a prose-writer,
Krishna Sastri has proved that good prose is not
inferior to verse as a medium of expression, nor less difficult to write for a
writer who is conscientious. To the result, that his prose is almost as
untranslatable as his verse. It is his settled belief, in refreshing contrast
to that of many others functioning in Telugu, that there could be no real
synonyms to the words used in creative writing. He is fond of saying that every
word has its colour, taste, smell and flavour, as well as its sound, meaning and association. He
had realized, ever since he began to write, that any line of prose or verse “connects”
only when it gets the “feel” as well as the “concept” right. That is the secret
of his poetic eloquence, as that of Shakespeare at his happiest. Some of his
prose pieces, which had their original inception as skits or sketches, essays
or musings for being broadcast over the air are available to us in three slim
volumes entitled Pushpolaavikalu
(Flower-girls), Appudu Putti
Unte (If I had been alive then) and Bahukaala Darsanam (Ages
since we met), to be followed by others, all published by Visvodaya,
a literary-cultural organisation of Kavali in Nellore District.
Poetry of Nostalgia
The prose works,
referred to here, could be broadly classified under three categories. The first
of them roughly described as “sketches” partake of the spirit, if not the form,
of the personal essay that we are so familiar with in English literature. To
quote an extract from his essay, “My Village is Dead”:
“...It is a pity, but I
am lost in the crowded city. It leaves me severely alone. It is selfishness
incarnate. May be there are more brick walls here than in the village. Anyway,
I have become an exile here. Between man and man, man and tree, tree and bird,
and bush and field, there is a kind of family tie over there in the village.”
It is not merely the
vivid contrast between the city and the village, between the stark realism of
the present and the roseate hues of the past that grips his attention. The
village had meant something positive and intimate to him, a cherished way of
life. The poet’s imagination is fired by many scenes of village life,
especially the one relating to the puranic discourse
by the village pandit, Rama Sastri (who could, for
aught I know, be his father or uncle, both of whom were scholar-poets of the
old school). The Pandit sits with an ancient copy of
the Mahabharata spread on the old-type
book-rest, mildly aglow under a flickering wick-lamp:
“...The stars twinkle
from above in the canopy of the sky, like the watchful eyes of departed heroes.
From a corner of the listeners’ gathering comes alive the butt-end of a cigar
like a star from the firmament. In the enveloping dark, the voice of Rama
Sastri comes forth from the age of Dwapara and on his
winged words the listeners’ minds travel far beyond into the aeons gone by. By the livelong day, the eye
reach only as far as its sight can go. At night it reaches the age of Ramayana.
The wick-lamp listens to the puranas and nods
approval, too, in a visible flicker of delight. I was witness to that.”
A lyrical imagination like that of Krishna Sastri’s is not usually expected to coexist with an earthy
sense of humour. But the number of skits broadcast by
him during the ten years of his association with AIR reveal unsuspected
reserves of the kind of talent that could easily spot the incongruities in
everyday life with the mellowed eye of a sympathetic observer and chuckle at
the foibles of human nature with an avuncular indulgence that has no touch of
patronage about it.
In Bahukaala
Darsanam (a typical old-fashioned mode of greeting,
meaning something like “Ages since we met!”), we run into an all-too-familiar
character, a one-time freedom-fighter, his occupation now gone after the
attainment of political independence, a voluble, breezy, hail-fellow-well-met
sort of old man, button-holing the well-to-do acquaintances (who are not too
eager to see him) for a much-needed fiver or tenner
(given ostensibly for flood relief or aid to earthquake victims, or what you
will) and living largely by his wits, about the only thing that he could claim
to be his own. He cannot but touch the pockets of others, but he is a lovable
fellow all the same. More rollicking fun is provided by the skit of Iddaru Satyavaadulu (Two
Truthful Men) (named Harishchandra and Dharmaraja) who excel one another in the tall tales that
they try to pull off, without expecting to be taken on their word. The
character of Subbammavva (Granny Subbamma),
the grandame of a fast vanishing tribe, who is equal
to any situation, is convincing as well as amusing.
Readers, long used to
thinking of Krishna Sastri as a Romantic, out and out, find it difficult to
imagine him as a poet of the masses. To be sure, he is not a people’s poet,
fretting and fuming about hunger and disease, bloodshed and revolution. But
anyone who has had occasion to listen to his musical features and humorous
plays during his association with AIR,
As a writer for the
films, he never failed to play on the heart-strings of the listeners of his
lyrics. “Malleswari”, “Undamma
Bottu Pedathaa”, among
others, haunt the memory, as much because of his songs, as because of B. N. Reddi’s direction. He had never written lines, merely to fill
the gaps specified by the music director. He is no less a poet here than in his
published work.
Not many of the Telugu
poets are closely familiar with the work of their younger contemporaries, in
their own or other languages, for seldom do they have the time and the mind to
get away from their own. You could meet many a well-known poet in private
conversation for a couple of hours without hearing him say a word about any
work other than his own. He might be a man of one book, or of a hundred books,
but he does not seem to have heard of other books of the day, though he might
be fairly well-read in the classics. Krishna Sastri is, perhaps, one of the few
poets, if not the only poet, of his generation, to have a lively awareness of
the work of contemporaries of his own and the succeeding generation, as also
the significant trends in world poetry, through the English language.
He is one of the
best-read among the practising poets, though he
prefers to wear his learning ever so lightly. His innate courtesy and deep
humility might give a misleading impression about his scholarship, modern as
well as classical. It requires some degree of personal acquaintance with him
for one to have a fairly adequate idea of the range of his knowledge, extending
to the youngest Telugu poets (including the Digambara
Kavulu) as well as Ghalib
and Tagore, Pant and Nirala, Bendre
and Kurup, Subramania Bharati and S. D. S. Yogi in
this country, and Yeats, Eliot and Pound, Spender, Day Lewis and others abroad.
The masterly, non-academic survey of 25 years of Telugu poetry (from the early
‘Twenties to the late ’Forties) made by him two decades ago (in a lengthy
article contributed to Bharati, in 1948) shows him at his sympathetic best in
the critical appreciation of contemporary verse.
Touching Lines
When his voice was
intact, Krishna Sastri used to recite extracts from the verse of his
brother-poets, before taking up his own, in his illustrated talks at public
gatherings. He was particularly en rapport with Nanduri
Subba Rao’s Enki Paatalu and
the geyas of Basavaraju
Appa Rao. The latter’s Illu
Khaalee Chesi Velli Poyadu (Vacating the house, he went his way) is Basavaraju’s poignant line (which does not quite come off
in the translation), referring to the death of his baby boy, which Krishna
Sastri considers as one of the most touching lines of poetry for all time. He
had done equal justice to other poets like Nayani, Vedula, Viswanatha and Sri Sri.
Now, after having lost
his voice, his pen is as alert and active as his tongue used to be. His
observations on men and things, which he scribbles so readily and so neatly on
the pages of the pocket-book that he invariably carries with him, are as sharp
(and possibly more balanced than) as any he had written for print earlier. They
have restraint as well as feeling, perspective as well as perception. If
someone takes care to collect all these scrap-books for posterity, he will be
giving the readers the benefit of a brilliant commentary on life and literature
in Andhra and elsewhere.
At this stage in his
life, he owes it to himself and his readers to give a permanent form to all his
unpublished works, which might run into several volumes. Not caring for awards
and honours (for which there is presently a scramble),
he must help the generations to come to remember him as a poet. An epoch-maker
in poetry needs no other title. He is a poet and that is all there is to it.