Reviews

XIV International Congress of the P. E. N. Clubs. 1936. Speeches and Discussions. (Buenos Aires. 1936.)

The Congress of the P. E. N. Clubs met at Buenos Aires last year, the capital of a young and growing country, and it discussed many problems affecting authors, both in the old world and the new. Discussions raged round the Future of Poetry, the relation between Intelligence and Life, and War and Peace. The Congress passed unanimously a resolution against war and affirming its faith in peaceful methods. But the most interesting debate was the one over the Function of the Writer in Society. The question has become the most urgent one in every country. Should authors take part directly in political and social action? Or should they stand aside, contemplate and compose? The line between literature and propaganda is being obliterated by younger writers; on the other hand there is clearly an accent of futility in the writings of most older ones, What should authors do? Herr Emil Ludgwig passionately pleaded that they should actively participate in the struggle for freedom; Signor Marinetti, the Italian delegate, contested that writers do not write primarily for the common reader, so they ought not to let their private intuitions be stilled by their social functions; but it was the Frenchmen present who hit the nail on its head, M. Georges Duhamel, guest of honour, said that the writer’s duty was to transform the unknown into the known," but that it was also his duty to speak at the right moment on public issues and speak what was necessary; and M. Jules Romains argued, in his reply to the welcome given to the foreign delegations, that there is no real literature against democracy and against the people.

The Congress was a galaxy of notable authors, more or less interested in freedom of thought and writing. There were loud demonstrations in the public gallery, and protests from some of the members of the Congress, whenever the Italian delegates spoke in defence of Fascism. The Arab members from Iraq, on the other hand, spoke with great understanding, and were loudly applauded. But we in India are particularly interested in the contribution made by the Indian delegates.

Madame Sophia Wadia seems to have attracted much attention both by her speech and her person. She was "Minerva in Oriental attire," as an enthusiastic delegate described her. She intervened in the debates with striking success. And her speech on the Place of Philosophy in the Life of the Masses, although it was not as clear in parts as it was eloquent throughout, was appreciated by all who heard her. We wish we could say the same of Dr. Kalidas Nag also, Speaking on the Future of Poetry he warned his listeners: "I come from a country who possesses an incomparable wealth of unwritten poetry. I bring, then, to this assemblage of so many poets and writers, the memories of my forefathers’ tradition of those who sought after beauty and sang of beauty in that country where we enjoy the heritage of four thousand years of poetic attestations. And this being so, my right to make a purely oral exposition before this Congress will be readily recognized." Is it the traditional poetic impulse bursting the bounds of modesty? Or is it the traditional lack of a sense of proportion?

D. S.

Authentic Report of Seventeen Talks given in 1936 by J. Krishnamurti. (Issued by the Star Publishing Trust, Vasanta Vihar, Adyar, Madras.)

This series of lectures will certainly interest the curious as well as the eager. The curious who merely seek to find some more material to compare with their pet theories and philosophies of life, and either applaud and accept or intellectually criticise and reject, would merely waste their time perusing the book. But he who is deeply concerned with the problem of life will find a new and fresh outlook placed before him. The author exhorts his readers not to approach him with a preconceived mind and heart, filled with definite ideas, attitudes and faiths, but with a mind divested of all past accretions; not to accept superstitiously, but to consider critically without fear or prejudice.

The lectures are supplemented with answers by Krishnamurti to various questions put by his audience, which help much towards clarification of doubts and in the application of his philosophy to problems confronting the man in the street. The questions are so typical of an average individual that the reader would hardly need to ask any himself.

The main characteristic of the Talks is a simplicity and directness of language and thought, in which there is no trace of book learning or floridity of language for the sake of effect. The ideas, which are for the most part abstract, are expressed with vitality and feeling and seem to flow from the actual life and experience of Krishnamurti.

According to Krishnamurti, there are two main attitudes towards life and life’s problems–the religious and the secular. There are those who profess to believe in the Divine Power observing, ruling and controlling our actions, who inevitably lose sight of realities in life, and looking beyond it, have invented the multifarious engines of exploitation carried on in the name of religion.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that "man is essentially a social entity." This idea brings in its wake the coercive features of Society i.e., Government, the authority of groups and institutions, and of ideal concepts.

Strongly discouraging the acceptance of any ideas on faith, Krishnamurti affirms that there cannot be a choice between the two attitudes as "choice is based on like and dislike, on prejudice and tendencies, and so loses all validity." Instead of choosing between the various accepted philosophies of life which will be the outcome of intellectual argument or fear, he suggests a different approach to the comprehension of oneself which lies "through direct discernment through the proof of action" which must be prefaced by a state of "vital uncertainty."

Krishnamurti is convinced that the world as a whole cannot be fundamentally changed for the better except by individuals understanding themselves and solving their individual problems. To understand oneself would be to understand what he calls the "process of the ‘I,’ of individuality." "There is energy which is unique to each individual and which is without a beginning. This energy–please do not attribute to it any divinity or give to it a particular quality–in its process of self-acting development, creates its own substance or material which is sensation, discernment and consciousness. This is the abstract as consciousness. The actual is action. Of course, there is no such absolute division. Action proceeds from ignorance which exists where there are prejudices, tendencies, cravings that must result in sorrow. So existence becomes a conflict and friction. That is, consciousness is both discernment and action. Through the constant inter-action between those cravings, prejudices and the limitations which this action is creating, there arises friction, the ‘I’ process."

So far it is clear and will be satisfying to many, but when the reader eagerly awaits Krishnamurti’s ‘prescription’ for the ending of this ‘I’ process which is necessary to experience the ‘bliss of reality’, and to understand life and its problems, he will first be rather disappointed. All that Krishnamurti will say is that ‘right effort,’ a continual awareness (which is different from introspection which "objectifies action and calculates the result of an act") can alone bring about the discernment of reality and the awakening of intelligence. He does not supply a technique by which this ‘I’ process can be ended, maintaining that the very desire on one’s part to get rid of sorrow either by avoiding life or by a set method is the wrong approach to life, "To forget sorrow, to overcome it, to modify it, you seek refuge in beliefs, in the anchorage of self-protection and security." This is different from comprehension of sorrow, which does not consist in avoiding or forgetting but in "allowing it to ripen for its own process of fulfillment." "So long as the artificial process of interference with sorrow continues, sorrow must be your constant, companion."

Thus all craving which is the outcome of fear must cease, not by artificial denial or the intellectual process, but as a result of deep observation of the process by which want results in fear, illusion and misery. "When the mind perceives that the mind is engendering its own ignorance and so its own fear, then there is the beginning of choiceless awareness. Through silent observation and deep discernment in which there is no choice and so no conflict, there comes the cessation of ignorance."

Apart from this clarification of the cause of sorrow and the requisite state of mind which is to precede a direct and clear perception, Krishnamurti does not offer a set of disciplinary practices or a clear cut path to follow. All systems according to him are merely a dope which deadens the mind, and thus destroys its alertness which is vital for the discernment of true values in life.

The Talks are studded with gems of very striking and original statements, certainly out of the common and ringing with dynamic life and truth. To cite a few instances:

"Memory is but the many layers of self-protective responses against life. Thus action or experience, instead of liberating, creates further limitation and sorrow."

"When you comprehend right values of life, the idea of renunciation has no meaning. When you do not comprehend right values, there is fear and then there is the hope of freeing yourself from it through renunciation. Enlightenment does not come through renunciation."

"Conformity to a principle, to an ideal, is but an escape from actuality. It is death. It is but the formation of habit, the strengthening of the unconscious and results in the slow withering of perception."

Krishnamurti is a challenge to those sunk in a state of complacent stagnation. He who has still in him the capacity and the desire to think will find him very powerfully stimulating.

R. KRISHNAMURTI

The Teaching of Sri Madhva.–By P. Nagaraja Rao, M.A. (Minerva Publishing House, 13, T. P. Koil Street, Triplicane, Madras, pp. 12. Price As. 8.)

Within the short compass of a dozen pages Mr. P. Nagaraja Rao expounds the essentials of Dvaita Vedanta. He rightly deplores the scant justice that has been hitherto done to the pluralistic, realistic theism of Madhva. It is possible that the "irritatingly brief and cryptic" style of Madhva makes his thought-system unalluring. But is it not also true that man does not require a rational philosophy for believing in a pluralistic universe? Radical realism reigns in the hearts even of the least of us. It requires effort and metaphysical thinking only to show that things are not what they seem to be. Contradictory it may appear, but nevertheless it is a truth, that, while man’s sensibility and empirical usage refer to the sphere of distinctions and divisions, he feels the irresistible call of the Absolute which knows no differences. That explains, to our mind, the prolific writings on Advaita and the fascination which a majority of minds have for it.

The metaphysical soundness or otherwise of Madhva’s system apart, nobody will disagree with Mr. Nagaraja Rao when he pleads for the necessity of an authoritative exposition of the great Acharya’s point of view. The study of a well-thought out philosophical system is a discipline in itself. Even an Advaitin cannot afford to be ignorant of the arguments advanced by his opponents. In fact, the skill of a philosopher consists in his ability to formulate his opponent’s position in a way acceptable to his opponent.

Mr. Nagaraja Rao has taken sufficient care to present in broad outlines the philosophy of Madhva. He refers to Madhva’s loyalty to the three basic tests, to his belief in the ultimate and absolute reality of differences, and to the central place which God occupies in his theistic system. There is also a somewhat detailed treatment of the criticism of ‘non-difference’ by Jayatirtha and Viyasatirtha; and the category of ‘difference’ is sought to be established through a statement of definition and evidence. We nave no doubt that Mr. Nagaraja Rao’s booklet will be welcomed by students of Vedantic thought.

T. M. P. MAHADEVAN, M.A., Ph.D.

KANNADA

Samudrada-Acheyinda (From Beyond the Seas).–By Prof. V. K. Gokak, M. A. (Manohar Grantha Mala, Dharwar. Pages 188 Price. Re. 1)

To delight is one of the essential functions of literature and particularly so of the literature of travel, for what constitutes the essential charm of this branch of literary activity is the glamour of the unseen in the external world, and the romance of the unexperienced feeling or emotion in the inner world of the mind. New sights and sounds, new thoughts and feelings and experiences are its theme, and the literature of travel has therefore, hardly, if ever, failed to capture popular appreciation. Prof. Gokak’s latest book, a collection of letters and extracts from diaries, happily compiled by the Manohar Grantha Mala, provides excellent entertainment of a rare variety. A literary mind, extremely sensitive and critical, scans the busy sights of London, walks over the pavements of Westminster with an imagination charged with English history and literature of the past, or visits the house of John Keats with feelings almost pregnant with poetry, so that what the readers enjoy in reading Prof. Gokak’s accounts is not merely a dry record of observations but something more. The interest of the book does not rest mainly on the interest of the places which the author saw or the people whom he visited, but really in the intellectual and emotional reactions which his sensitive mind accorded to what it saw around. A lively record of impressions taking stock of the great happenings of the day as well as of the comparatively unimportant ones, of the iniquitous racial distinctions, of the irresponsible vagaries of most of the Indian students abroad, of the gaiety and mirth of the good-humoured English friends, of the serene solitudes and superstitions of the "home of lost causes," of the College dinners and Oxford Unions and of a thousand other things, makes the book as engaging a reading as may be desired.

It is being said that the author’s attitude in writing the book is too "academic and insular and that what one gathers of Oxford on a reading of the book is nothing more than a cursory information regarding the high sounding rhetoric of the Unions and some empty talk about some plays and pictures. That may be so. Prof. Gokak is essentially a student of literature and the book does not pretend to hold a mirror to the panorama of English life of today.

Being in the main a collection of letters and extracts from diaries, the style has a conversational ease and fluency, and criticism whenever it comes is quite frank and outspoken. We only wish Prof. Gokak will write more books of the kind and enlighten the readers of Karnataka, providing at the same time an entertainment unquestionably delightful.

V. M. INAMDAR

TELUGU

Madhukeela.–By Mallavarapu Visveswara Rao (Published by the Navya Sahitya Parishat. Guntur. Price Re. 1.)

This daintily got-up book is a collection of verses written by Mr. Visveswara Rao. The majority of the verses depict the various experiences of unsatisfied love. Mr. Visveswara Rao is well known to the Telugu-reading public and is popular among the younger generation who are enthusiastic about the renaissance of Poetry in Andhra Desa. Here then is an example of typical modern Telugu verse, with all its achievements and some of its draws.

There is, in general, in Mr. Rao’s verse an attitude of escape, to use the word of Keats, from the actual realities of this world into some far-off heavens created by the poet’s imagination, an attitude which marks the earlier poetry of Keats himself. Mr. Rao, addressing the Maiden of Poetry, visualises how

‘Shaking off all bonds and leaving this blind world,

When we both in oneness roam about in the lovely woodlands of bur hearts,’

he will be crowned the King of Heaven. But Keats discovered very soon that he could not ignore the common world if he wanted to write verse that will last for ever as ‘a thing of beauty.’ There was a period in the life of Keats when the poet passed through an important phase of internal struggle. He felt that his poetry lacked in something which gave to the poetry of a Wordsworth or a Shakespeare its abiding significance. It was Keats who wrote in his later years,

"None shall usurp this height," the Shade replied,

"But those to whom the miseries of the world

Are misery and will not let them rest."

And the miseries meant were not the delicate individual miseries of a sensitive poet in his seclusion but the ugly devastating miseries of humanity’s bulk. A poet has to see life, understand life, interpret life, and only then transcend life. It will not do merely to say that this world is a ‘blind world’ and escape into the recesses of one’s imagination.

In some of Mr. Rao’s verses, which are obviously of an earlier date, there is something defective which leaves an impression that the ideas of the verses have been thought out first in English. The reader has to strain much to understand the ideas. Some of the verses are not quite intelligible. There is in them an attempt to over-impress his feeling upon the reader, and even a strange affectation in style.

The poet tries some new rhyme-schemes. But some of them are perhaps not fitting vehicles for the heavy thought which he tries to convey. And he sometimes uses both spoken and written Telugu in the same line, which invariably results in a confused and inartistic effect.

But Mr. Visveswara Rao undoubtedly possesses depth of thought and feeling and he shows flashes of unmistakable genius. This volume of verses clearly indicates that the poet has had his own struggles of the mind and that he has been completely alive to them.

The following are but a few of the many verses in which the true poet in Mr. Rao comes out:

‘The roarings of the quivering old sea die out, but my heart remains dazed, in endless thought submerged.

Heavy thoughts stun my imagination. In this lovely palace of a blissful Nature’s blissful silence, the rest I enjoy even in sleeplessness invigorates me. My life does not close its half-opened wings, but hears eagerly into the depths of Silence.’

(One Night)

"Oh, my friend! If you find in my poetry the coolness of the brooks that have come melting down from the hard peaks of the Himalayas, do not be surprised. For my very life is hardened, like unto a mass of ice, by the mockery in the denials of unkind people.’

(The Exile)

‘Perhaps the monster cloud has bidden thus.

A lonely star dances low in the sky.

Suppressed desires spring up again

And bid me on in my unknown journey.

(Inspiration)

Telugu poetry is now passing through a critical stage. It is trying to come to a level with the achievements in the rest of the world’s languages. And naturally the poets are facing many difficulties in trying to translate their modem thoughts into a language quite unused to modem ideas. Mr. Visveswara Rao is one of the few young poets in Andhra who have a powerful imagination; and if the style of his verses is not always suited to his thought, it is not entirely the poet’s fault, because modem Telugu as an efficient literary medium is still in the making, and men like Mr. Rao by their partial success are helping to create the language of the future.

This is Mr. Rao’s first published volume of verses. He is young and he has genius. He is easily among the most promising of Andhra writers.

PADMA RAJU

HINDI

Hans–Premchand Smrithi Ank.–(Special Number in memory of Premchand), Edited by Baburao Vishnu Paradkar and published by Sripath Rai. (Saraswati Press, Benares. Price, Rs. 2/-)

Premchand was a famous novelist and short story writer in Hindi. His literary achievements are without an equal, His ‘Seva Sadan,’ ‘Rang Bhumi’ and ‘Premashram’ are three gems of modem Hindi literature. He is the only literary personage of modern times in Hindi whose works have been translated into other Indian languages. Instead of writing stories of adventure and romance, he has depicted true pictures of Indian life, especially village life, of which he was a master. In his works he has successfully shown that the non-violent method of persuasion advocated by Gandhiji is better than that of force, for ameliorating the condition of the masses.

A novelist of his standing who has been adored by young and old alike, would have become a Shaw or a Sinclair had he been born in an independent country. But this poor son of mother India led a life of self-denial and poverty, and when he died he left his wife and children without adequate provision.

He started Hans with the express desire of making this a medium to bring all Indian literatures into close contact. For some time, Hans served as the official organ of the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad and even today it is doing appreciable work in that direction also.

This special number, published in his memory, gives abundant material to show Premchand the man as well as Premchand the author. The articles are from men of literary eminence and his intimate friends who knew him very closely. No person could have known him better than Mrs. Premchand with whose pathetic article ‘Main lut Gayee’ the number starts. The next important articles ‘Premchand-Main ne Kya Jana aur Paya’ is a character sketch of Premchand written in a high literary style, by no less a person than Jainendra Kumar, a close friend of Premchand and the present editor of Hans. This gives one an idea of his simplicity and straightforwardness, his ability as an editor and his views about art and literature. He believed that art is for man and not man for art. And therefore an author should utilise and if necessary sacrifice his art for the good of mankind. At one place he has rightly said that, in fact, none of us is a true realist. No one has ever tried to show life as it exists but every one has written how it should be.

In the words of Prof. Dhinendra Varma, the greatness of Premchand can be very well judged from his popularity and the way in which the greatest of his critics imitated his style, knowingly or unknowingly. Among others who have contributed to this number are Pandit Ramnaresh Tripati, Sri Prakash, Seth Jamnalal Bajaj, Hari Bhau Upadhyaya, Moulana Mohamed Akhil and Vrajanandan Sharma.

Those who are interested in Premchand and Hindi literature should certainly add a copy of this number to their book-shelf.

BHAL CHANDRA APTE