The Krishna Sastri Era in Telugu Poetry

THE KRISHNA SASTRI ERA IN TELUGU POETRY
[The Poet completed 75 years of age in November 1972]

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 ground, 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 Prabandhatradition (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.

Poetic Diction of the Past

As Wordsworth and Coleridge found it earlier in the England of their youth, the rigidity of stereotyped metrical forms was cramping the style, like a strait-jacket. Borrowed imagery took the place of direct experience with nature, and the traditional poetic diction filled the mind of the poet, to the exclusion of all freshness of personal expression. It was also not unusual, even now for that matter, for the listeners at poetic gatherings to acclaim as true poetry anything that is recited with a resounding voice and in all impressively dramatic manner, with some histrionics thrown in. But these things had to change sooner or later, with the dawn of modernism.

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 Parnassus.

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 Kakinada, he came under the benign and liberalizing influence of the late Sri Raghupati Venkataratnam Naidu, a Johnsonian figure in his depth and range of scholarship and moral fervour, who was Principal at that time. It was through him that young Krishna Sastri was first introduced to the message of Brahmo Samaj and acquired a broad catholicism in his outlook on religion and society, as also to the glories of the English Muse which transformed him, to an appreciable degree, from the rigidity of an orthodox, classical upbringing.

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 England. Something of the sensuous melancholy of the former and the latter’s vision of freedom could be seen in Krishna Sastri’s own work, with occasional touches of Wordsworth’s identification with Nature, but little of Coleridge’s preoccupation with the macabre and. the super­natural. Nearer home, he had his idols in Tagore (of Gitanjali in particular) and Vidyapati, Jayadeva and Kalidasa, and the great mystics of Persian poetry like Rumi and Saadi, Hafeez and Omar Khayyam. All this heritage of the world, including the blood, toil, tears and sweat from the different cultural traditions, had its part in the making of the emotional matrix of the pupil himself. He is a child of “the Renaissance of wonder.”

Perfectionist

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 Mahatihe 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.

Flair for Lyricism

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.

Humorous Skits

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, Hyderabad, might have had to revise his old impression. “Chow Rastha”, “Rickshaw-wallah”, “Boot Polish”, etc., show him in a new light, reflecting the life and struggle of the common man. They are full of sympathy and insight. He has his ear close to the idiom of the common man with his joys and sorrows. Here was a new realism, harmonising the truth of imagination with the truth of fact.

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.

Contemporary Sensibility

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.