Sri Krishnasastri - A New Voice in Telugu Literature

Sri Krishnasastri: A New Voice

in Telugu Literature

Sri Krishnasastri

It was a cloudy evening. We could not see the sun set. When I met him that evening, the poet was in the midst of a group of his friends. Yet, in manner and in bearing, he was apart from them. He was clad in a most airy fashion. His eyes were those of a dreamer of celestial visions. His luxuriant curls seemed to speak of some wild fancy which swings between the infinitudes. He was looking wistfully, as if at the passing hours which crush beneath their feet the beautiful and the ugly, all alike. His searching glances seemed to peer through all hearts. That evening he was to give us readings from his poems and songs. Krishnasastri recited his own poems as well as some of those of his contemporaries. He has indeed a voice ‘sweet as the aeolean harp, soft, soft.’ He is no musical adept; yet a musical adept could please no better. At the end of the function, he was the subject of much criticism alike with those who cared to know and those who only cared to talk.

What is not easily understood. And what is not quickly comprehended is discarded by some as trash. It is true that Krishnasastri's poetry is not easily intelligible to all. The nature of much of the criticism must therefore be obvious. But why is the poet not understood? It is because, as some say, rightly enough, he has nothing tangible to give. In all his work the last word is never said. He leaves much for his readers to supply for themselves. In Telugu literature, the poetry of suggestion is something new. The average literary mind is not quite prepared for it. This is a period of transition. We are, as it were, emerging out of a barren epoch which succeeded the classic age in the history of our literature, Our national life is at a low ebb. Ithas nothing to inspire national poetry. But the impact of English literature and the importation of continental thought through the English medium, the fresh thoughts of masterminds like Tagore, all these are today modelling the substance as well as the quality of our literature. So, in this era, we naturally come across work of a transitional nature. We have now a brilliant set of poets who are bold enough to break the trammels of conventionalism. There is nothing strange, therefore, if their work is not cordially received. To seek a parallel in English literature, the Odes and Poems of Collins fell still-born from the press. He is said to have burnt them all with his own hands. But today the power and beauty of the poetry of Collins have won appreciation. A potent thought, a beautiful thought, is bound to live.

Again, in any literature, the work produced at a period of transition naturally lacks solidity of thought and unity of purpose. So it is with modern Telugu poets. They cannot build a colossal tower. But they can carve out an exquisite shape in marble. Although Krishuasastri is a poet of the transition and shares its qualities, he has given us fresh sentiments and fresh art-forms. His diction is highly original. His treatment of the passions is something very new in our literature. He is pre-eminently the poet of pathos and he revels in the pathetic. Beauty and Love are the very substance of his handiwork. He rarely philosophises. He just gives utterance to the mighty feelings which surge within him.

"Agikoledu regu nuhala nokinta
Inta chirugeeti eda vegirinchu neni
Padukonunu tandavanritya madukonunu."

[He cannot suppress thoughts that rage and swell. If but a little note teases his heart, he breaks in song and in wild revelry doth dance.]

A mighty feeling when expressed in an art-form can never be coordinated with the details out of which it springs. The details must all be suppressed and the reader left to supply them for himself. The main idea is never lost. Nor can a soul-shaking emotion be ever completely expressed. It can be but glimpsed. This is the art of suggestion. This has been condemned by many as ‘obscure’ simply because there is nothing tangible in it to clutch at.

The artistic value of any work is to be judged from the element of permanence in its form and content. A train of ideas is suggested by means of exquisite images. It is the power to produce such imagery that makes a poet. The poet pictures them to us in exquisite colour. The power of vision, the artistic effect of colour, the appeal of the emotions are enough to ensure permanence to the work. All poetry of high suggestive effect is great. Now, Krishnasastri's work is a series of suggestive pieces–like flashes of lightning. Though we cannot follow the flash from its birth-place to its destination, we admire it as it appears to us. So do we admire the poems of Krishnasastri. Verily, no man can probe into the heart of a poet. It is only when he sings that we catch a glimpse of his real being:

"Kaluvapoo bratukulo
Kanumodchu vennele
Kalanalammiina
Gati yemi ?"
[When the sleeping moon-beam
In the life of the lily
Becomes the consuming fire
Where is the refuge?]

This image suggests to us a thousand things. It may mean any and all of them. The note of pathos is unfailingly present whichever suggestion comes nearest to us. This verse becomes poetry in that the vision, the colour, and the emotion are blended together harmoniously.

"Na maranasayya parachu konnanu nene . . .
Bratikiyunna mrityuvunii pravasa timira
Neerava samadhi krulli k,rung!i napudeni
Ninu pilichi nana, na moolgu needa musiri
Kumulu nemo nee ganotsavamula nanuchu."
[My couch of death I have laid with mine own hands.
In living death, in penance of silence, in gloom of exile,
Though miserable and fallen,
Have I refrained from calling out to you, my friend,
Lest the evil shadow of my gasping breath
Should spread and secretly consume
The blissful festivity of your song.]

Supply the details how you will, the situation is intensely moving. It is the crash of a harmonious being. There is also in it a noble sentiment of sacrifice in that the poet wishes to hide his misery in himself for fear it should contaminate the happiness of a comrade. And there is an air of tragedy running all through the lines. Such situations are essentially the subject-matter of poetry. Co-ordinate the situation with your own life, or with the life of any one, the truth of it can be felt. The tragedy of human life, the crash of ideals, the pathos of a broken love, the loss of an intimate friendship, all these and kindred subjects have something ‘great’ about them. They kindle permanent emotions of the human soul. To give vent to them in poetry is a solace to the poet; and to find his own feelings echoed therein is a solace to the reader. Thus each isolated piece of Krishnasastri's work is great poetry. It is great art.

Again, Krishnasastri has an extraordinary measure of imagination. Happily his imagery never degenerates into gross conceit as in the case of the older poets.

"Tami bigisipovu nokka sandhyavasana
Sandra kasmim dridha parishvanga mandu
Nimidi niluvella nodigi soshilina yame
Nenu tolisari kanchi kampiliti nadu."
"Karmoyilu pedavula khanda khandamuluga
Chidiki poyina koumudi mridula kalika
Ganchiyoka reyi dussaha gadha duhkha
Mapuko leka yedche na yardra manasu."

[In the strong embrace of the dense purple of an eventide, with desire clutching at the heart, caught in that glory, fainting, I saw her. When first I met her thus, I thrilled to the core of my being.

A pale beam of moonlight, between the jaws of a gathering cloud, torn to little shreds, I witnessed; and my tender soul, melting with a burning sorrow, wailed away the night.]

Images like these could but spring from a powerful mind. We do not find the older poets use their imaginative faculties to create such exquisite pictures. They have always over- intellectualised their imagination and created a huge fabric of conceit. In addition to beauty of colour and energy, there is a soft vowel music in his verse:

"Nunu mabbu le dunka konalapii Sonaluv
Nelavanka chiru navvu chaluvapata."

An inferior artist would have "emptied a whole pallet of colour" or "shouted through the page" to achieve the effects which we have in each line of the above verse. The verse beginning with the line,

Neevu toli proddu nunumanchu teeva sonavu–

affords a clear contrast between the outlook of the poets of today and that of the classic poets whose imagination was circumscribed by conventions. Such intense emotional revelry in the realms of fancy and such treatment of external nature, thoroughly subjective in outlook, is a new departure in Telugu literature. It is partly the effect of the study of English lyric poetry and is a sure sign of the coming change in the cast ofnational poetic thought. As already said, we have now in the country a brilliant set of poets all essentially lyrical in temperament amongst whom Krishnasastri is pre-eminently subjective, occasionally touching the fringes of the mystic, as in

"Kantaka kireeta dharinii kalarathri
Madhya velala jeemoota mandirampu
Koluvukootala . . . "

[Crowned with a crown of thorns, in the dense heart of darkness, in the awful court halls of the clouds, I reign in my lone pomp, the sorrowful cadence of the owl's note surging and surging, flooding the gloomy depths. –Let no one pity me: mine are the luxuriant fans of heavily heaving sighs, piles and piles of pearl-strings of streaming tears, the eternal unmeasured treasures of deepest grief in which alone I see my wealth and find a weird joy. Let no one pity me. I am the Lord of dark and vast domains of dread sorrow!]

The unimaginative man condemns these lines as obscure and meaningless. One, more sensitive, experiences a strong emotion vibrating through one's being on reading such pieces. The discerning scholar and serious student of literature sets them apart for special study of the personality of the poet and endeavours to harmonise the work with the man. In all these poems there is a perfection of form which any master of verse might truly be proud of. There are here, in the words of Symonds, "Homeric Ocean-rolls" and "the surges and subsidences of Miltonic cadence." The management of the caesura, the choice of words and the weilding of verse are masterly. Even a stray verse will bear testimony to the statement.

Krishnasastri sets his stamp upon his diction; we know it wherever we may chance upon it. It sows a marked classical bias. But the peculiar merit of his diction is that, while it is apparently classical, it is employed to convey the most delicate sentiments of the human mind. It should have become monotonous in the hands of a less skilful artist. Indeed we see it become hackneyed and lifeless in the hands of some of his younger imitators. Everybody has some fascination for that classical phrase which glimmers like the vast green hillside clad in dew-drops in the morning sun.

However we notice an incidental defect of this type of diction. Where a strong feeling has to be expressed with directness, it is diffused in a huge mass of colour.

There are pieces which, in the opinion of some, bear out this statement.

"Apudu gontetti yedchi nanu.
Apudu nannu . . ."

Here the opening lines are direct but the main emotion is finally ‘diluted’ in the vast imagery that follows. The total effect is somewhat a weakened feeling. Such, they say, is the effect also of

"Maghava mastaka makuta
Manikya ragni nee
Velugu rupokareyi . . ."

Still Krishnasastri’s poetry is not obscure as is commonly imagined; but it creates such an impression because of its weird imagery and subtle suggestion. In this connection, one is reminded of the words of Mark Pattison. It is not the critical faculty that is developing, he pointed out, but it is the imaginative faculty that is failing us. Sympathetic imagination is greatly wanting in us. Without this equipment, no delicate feeling is ever understood either in poetry or in any other branch of Art. A mind which refuses to function with sympathy must be indeed fundamentally wanting in a great. quality.

We should now like to put forth a plea for inductive criticism. The art of criticism has not yet developed in Telugu literature. Though the ‘kind and rule’ method is not in vogue now, the spirit of it still remains. We need neither lavish praise nor condemnation of things. Let us be guided by sympathy and preference. The geologist does not look down upon the glacial epoch and hold that the red sandstone alone is model rock formation. So, picturing literature as a whole, we feel that the lyric; in its own place, is as great as the epic.

The somewhat disjointed nature of Krishnasastri's poetry is an inevitable defect. This is not the age when colossal literary structures are reared. The ‘power of the man’ is scarcely present together with the ‘power of the moment’. It is only in that conjunction that world-poets are born. Now we have the ‘power of the man’ without the co-ordination of the ‘power of the moment’. An intensely poetic soul has fallen on an unmeet age. Hence its utterances have become spasmodic. They leave us wondering at the complex personality of the poet. But we believe much is yet to come. There is a rich and a sure promise in Krishnasastri's work. He is to be grouped with that bright winged brotherhood to which Shelley belongs; he has a kinship with Blake and the visionaries; he is poetical to the very core of his being. Great poetry is in his work. Verily he is a new voice in Telugu literature–a gentle, yet powerful voice speaking tender, beautiful things. He is a lone fountain of delectable waters in a remote forest whither wanders the weary traveller, takes a draught, and stretches his languid limbs and sinks into sweet repose.