Two Modern Telugu Poets

By D. V. KRISHNIAH, B.Com (Hons.)
(Lecturer S. R. R. College, Bezwada)

If diversion into new modes of thought and expression was the keynote of the first quarter of the 20th century, the next decade or two are characterised by a liberation of Telugu poetical expression from every preconceived maxim. Freedom is, therefore, the essence of the poetry of this period. In their drive towards a new phase, the poets of this decade carried the craze for destruction to the farthest limit, and irritated even their immediate literary predecessors. One wonders whether there is anything still left for these gallant rebels to disobey. Telugu poetry is no longer a Tagorean echo. Its affinity is with the eruptions of doctrinaire freedom makers all over the world. This is not mere cultural subservience, but the expression of an urge to create something brand new.

This intense desire for freedom is, unfortunately, not related to any genuine, original movements in Telugu literature. It is due rather to the divorce between life and literature. While the poets of this decade declare themselves against the old idealism, they are not sure what their new idealism is; they cannot continue the old trends, nor create the emotional ground for the new writing. These Telugu poets have little experience or capacity, so that their best efforts at transplantation of the modes of western writers of today are little better than parodies. The latest writers, therefore, began to fall in line with the post-war poetical theories of England, France, Italy, Russia or Germany. Imaginism, Impressionism, Futurism, Dadaism and a host of other eccentric doctrines like Expressionism and Cubism were imported with competitive zeal. The crowning point of these imitations is Surrealism.

II

In this decade, “Uma Vijaya Maheswar Vinayak” (Sistla Umamaheswara Rao of Guntur) started as a poet of transition from the romantic lyricism of the early twenties to the surrealism of “Sri Sri” (Srirangam Srinivasa Rao of Vizagapatam). In his Vishnu-dhanuvu he is almost an echo of Krishna Sastri in the love content, though he introduced some original metrical features. The language is less classic and flowery than that of Krishna Sastry. The metre is free from the ornamentation of Yati and Prasa. Rhythm exerts little influence in controlling the flow of words. A new reader is tempted to read it almost like prose, though with a slight musical blend it assumes “readable” form. But this has nothing to do with the poetic value of the work. If ever the new trends should prove of lasting value, Uma must get the credit for sounding the death-knell of old Vrittas like Utpalamala and Mattebha. In his emotion he is malleable like Krishna Sastri, but in thought he is aggressive like Viswanatha Satyanarayana. His eroticism is never monotonous, for, in wave after wave, the detail and the thought press themselves on the reader’s consciousness. He casts the entire idea into a matrix of accompaniments, so that what is said always predominates over what is left unsaid. The intensity of the poet’s vision is coupled with an inability to reader that vision into intelligible form within a brief compass. It is sometimes argued that the subtler the idea the more far-fetched will be the appropriate diction, so that the highest poetry is necessarily beyond the reach of the common man. But this does not seem to be true. There are several examples of good poetry in every literature clothed in common diction, especially where the poetic content so transmitted is of a high order. Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa with its simple vocabulary has limitless potentialities of interpretation. It depends on the reader to what extent he can seize the implications of Kalidasa’s lines. Sublime and pithy sentences convey feeling quickly and open up great vistas. From this point of view, Uma fares badly in the later portions of Vishnudhanuvu.

The greatest contribution of Uma to Telugu literature is his remarkable manner of pressing into service classical figures of speech to convey new sentiments. Viswanatha was struck by “the repetitive mental outbursts of this enchanted young man, springing up like the ten heads of Ravana under the influence of nectar”. But at some places, Uma falls into confusion and inaccuracy, His references to music, Yoga and Vedanta are full of ill- understood statements:

“In the terrific fire of adwaita imbedded,
Are the particles of Dwaita and Visishtadwaita,
The devotion of Veerasaiva,
The embodied form of the unembodied bliss absolute;
As the white gem glitters and sprinkles into colours seven,
This devotion puts on the lights of Enemies Six,–Kama Moha and others.
The lords of elements six, rule the worlds six, the last,
The domain of Sankara, the seventh world.
Attaining this, the negation of individual perfect,
In Nirvana, the negation of individual,
The pinnacle of wisdom is he, the triad of sat-chit-ananda
He alone disappears into the Bliss of Adwaita”.

This is even more evident in his language. Consonance of word and meaning (Sabda-artha-sahitya) is often absent. His imagination is powerful and his ability to hark to ancient culture is noteworthy. Referring to, the pangs of separation, he says:

“As Bharat without Gita–This book of my heart
Became stale. In your heart,
That things are inscribed? Who knows? Dear,
As the head of Aswathama deprived of the Kausthubha,
Lusterless is my head–without the imprint of your love;
My life is dragging me somewhere! I know not!
As the chariot of Arjuna, with no Krishna inside”.

But, as the massage is not clear, these do not achieve anything substantial.

In his Navami-Chiluka, Uma’s adventures into delightful prose deserve attention, as they promise to build up children’s literature. Recently, Uma’s work has entered on a new phase. He is developing a powerful poetic concept round ‘Kalingi’. According to his strange etymology, ‘Kalingi’ is made up of ‘Kala’ (art) and ‘Ingita’ (commonsense), and is related to certain aspects of culture, religion and the humanities. The impression of Vedanta is so deep on this poet that he struggles unendingly with the controversies about Dualism and Non-Dualism, without a correct grasp of either. He appears to admit the eternality of ‘Kali’ or ‘Parasakti’. This and other ideas are plunged in impenetrable confusion, and fantastic allusion:

“Between morn and morn, the western and eastern walls,
In the form of silence after death, before it sprouts,
As the seed waiting in darkness,
Your abode is built. In creation and destruction,
Life’s tumults of suffering, hilarious outbursts of mirth:
Your shrieks “Hram, Hreem, Hroom, Hrah”.
Merging all these, the silent cycle of time,
Like a golden waist-belt is your jewel,
The hanging blue balls, like enchanting buds,
Nagaswaras–the serpent voices broadcast.”

In this strain page after page is filled. Perhaps only a Freud can interpret the causes for such passages.

Due to the exaggerated sentiment of freedom in this decade the remarkable gifts of Uma have been somewhat misplaced. In a different context, he might have produced some masterpieces. His interferences with print and the bracketed arrangement of words are merely casual and need no special mention. His free coinage of words like ‘Santini’ (in the sense of ‘morale’) indicates the measure of his independence; it offers no solution for the difficulty of choosing technical terms.

Uma represents the peak of modernity and freedom combined with great poetic potentialities and the impact of classicism in ideology and imagery. He destroyed the old metrical and grammatical framework. His diction, though classical, is confined to short and broken phrases, rather than long Samasas. He revived interest in music, Yoga and Vedanta. His expression is for the most part ‘Indian’. In him there is greater contact between life and literature than in most of his predecessors or successors. He is a realistic idealist and a strange combination of the normative and heterogeneous aspects of life. We should discard his confusion and accept the spirit of his writing.

III

Historically, Sri Sri is the next outstanding personality in the modernist movement. This influence is far more elaborate, his freedom concept richer in content, and his popularity wider than that of Uma. Sri Sri is literally the maker of the new decade. All on a sudden, Telugu poetry is filled with imitations of all the leading literary movements of the West. It is no exaggeration to say that his ‘Maroprapancham’ - (‘a different world’) created, a sensation in literary circles. Here are a few lines:

“March Forward, on and on,
See ye not the burning blaze,
Of Treta, in that different world! ! ! !
Rising,
Rising,
Rising they fall,
Millions of mountains big!
Whirling,
Whirling,
Whirling the seas,
Dancing are in Deluge water!
Is it the burning oil? No!
A pool of hot blood!
Like Sivasamudram and Niagara,
Run on, Run Forward, 
On and on, March on and on!

The bronze drum of that different world,
Beats incessantly Lo!
As serpents wild,
And dogs enraged,
Or like Dhananjaya,
March! On!
See ye not of that different world,
Flashes of the crown of fire,
The twinkles of the red banner,
The gushing of the ritual flames!”

If Uma was a forerunner who could look to the future in the prevailing atmosphere of romantic lyricism, Sri Sri was the man of the hour. All the new poets of this decade are, directly or indirectly, bliss followers. I am not sure whether he got his inspiration from Uma or worked independently, or both. When Uma started writing, he was deemed an eccentric, but in the hands of Sri, Sri the new poetry becomes a recognised trend, exploring, and extending into, fresh ground.

The difficulty of estimating Sri Sri is due to the lack of a collection of his works, and the absence of any elaborate theme worked out in full. Sri Sri is versatile. He is a poet, a prophet and a critic. In him, he have a resurrection of Guruzada Appa Rao, in diction and metre. His words are appropriate and direct. In every piece, there is a new metre. I have noticed in the poems I collected four or five types of ‘Mutyalasaramu’ (‘Garland of pearls’) with slight alterations of feet. ‘Chedupata’, ‘Avataram’, ‘Batasari’, ‘Jayabheri’, ‘Unmadi’ are interesting specimens in such metres. All the new meters created by Sri Sri are capable of being brought within systematic prosody. His ‘Khandasasi’ is like a perfect medieval Telugu verse with Yati and Prasa. This has affinity with Dwipada. In ‘Advaitam’, ‘Navakavita’, ‘Pratijna’ and ‘Desacharitalu’ the meters are promising and if worked up with proper theme and content, they present unexpected poetic possibilities, and prove worthy vehicles of higher thought. Thus nobody has revolted more than himself against his own dictum that “all metres should go!” His poetry is purely metrical, though he has occasionally attempted free verse. Sometimes, he deliberately disturbs the metrical harmony. Sri Sri’s works are more musical than poetical. He does not possess the intense imagination of Uma, while sound selection, word-grouping and rhetoric play a greater part. The love-theme does not absorb him or excite his feeling. Exuberance of expression persists, instead of poetic reticence. In a song, ‘On Bitterness’, there is repetition and word-jumbling carried to unreasonable limits:

“No happiness, no essence
Bitter poison, Life’s fruit,
Life’s fruit, Bitter poison,
Bitter, Bitter, Poison, poison.”

“Yes it is, True it is,
It is true, what you said,
What you said, what you said,
What you said, Truth, Truth.”

“No happiness, No happiness,
No happiness, in this world,
Life is, futile, Learning futile,
Poetry futile, Futile, Futile.”

It is significant that Sri Sri has taken cudgels against the older generations and preached principles of poetry which he never practiced in their entirety. The essence of his teaching, however, is freedom from all conventions of language, prosody, and culture. Though he has not coined many new expressions, nor distorted the meaning of the old, he is an advocate’ of both methods, and his followers have adopted them. As regards prosody, the aim of the new movement is twofold: (1) to destroy everything old and create individual prosody like Sri Sri, and (2) to bid good-bye to verse and prosody altogether and write in some kind of prose like “Pathabhi”. Sri Sri has advocated the latter course, but himself held on to the former. Sri Sri is a universalist in culture. His ambition is that all new movements in all countries should find an echo in Telugu poetry: the range of inspiration should extend from the aboriginal of Central Africa to the highly technical scientist of the Third Reich. Freudian principles have a special fascination for Sri Sri and his disciples.

Sri Sri attacks all types of exploitation with real poetic talent. In a powerful yet balanced metrical piece ‘Desa” Charitalu’ (‘ History of the Nations’), he says:

“The history of any country, you see,
What achievement, object of pride is there,
The vast history of humanity,
An intense policy of exploitation.”

“The vast history of humanity,
An attempt at mutual extraction,
The vast history of humanity,
A drench in blood of battle.”

“A place which is not a battle ground,
Is not to be found in the earth all round,
The past is plunged in blood,
Or else in tears in flood.”

“At the dawn of the rise of history,
How humanity shone in life?
Which country, at what time,
Attained which ideal of great value?
Which sculpture, which culture,
Which science or art,
What lights have flooded the world?”

Patriotism has been perhaps discarded by him as “racial passion” and India’s territorial and cultural integrity makes little appeal to him. In him, there is neither the inferiority complex of slavery nor the ambition and the longing for emancipation. According to him, it is life that should conform itself to literature. To this limited extent, he adopts perhaps unconsciously the didacticism of the ancient idealists. Poetry, to him, is the means of contacting the most forward positions in intellectual and cultural advance, taking the entire universe as a unit. It is this thought that associates Telugu poetry with the latest theories, political, economic or cultural, current in every country, though the orient appears to him as static ruins, or as a slow absorbent of the occidental dynamic. Poetry is not, or need not be, conditioned by the poet’s environment. Thus Sri Sri placed before the younger generation the experiments of all lands for imitation and assimilation. He invited them to taste the adventure of swimming through different waters.

It is hazardous to speak of the content of his poetry, as there are renderings of several European writers without the source being mentioned. No foreign school of expression exclusively controls his work. There are traces of a mild form of symbolism. The mingling of a few English words in some of his pieces does not justify the application of the term ‘Dadaist’ to him. His free verse in ‘Vyatyasalu’ and ‘Kavita Oh Kavita’ is swift and aggressive, and mirrors the impatience of one in the throes of a rebellion, worrying to bring it to birth in hot haste. In ‘Vyatyasalu’ (‘Differences’) he says:

“Round life’s intricate corners alone centres our attraction,
Our point of view is circumlocutory,
Having no beginning, no end.
Transitional beings we are, creatures of doubt,
Questions! …. All are questions!
Answers, not satisfactory!

“We have no walls,
Unrest is our life,
Agitation is our breath,
Rebellion our philosophy,
Thorns stones……whatever the obstacles,
We go ahead.”

Sri Sri is beset by certain disadvantages. Though gifted with a clarity of expression, which never descends to the commonplace, his musical tendencies betray him. Meaning is subordinated to sound affinities. He is the only modern of this decade who observes ‘Prasa’ even in his new metres. In days when poetical music is discarding the sound magic of ancient verse this is a reactionary feature. I believe that is the main reason why Sri Sri rarely rises above the level of temporary amusement or cheap chastisement. I have not known him work out a theme either in narration or in abstract sentiment. As a poet, therefore, his actual contribution falls far lower than is warranted by his revolutionary writings. His “Introductions” sometimes, and his Radio Talks on modern poetry give him a status similar to that of Sivasankara Sastri in the previous decade.

Sri Sri has given a lead to the younger poets. But his main achievement is the perfection of the living Telugu as the medium of poetic expression. More than Uma, he has raised this to the status of a literary “form”. He uses allegory of an advanced type, leading to symbolism. Depicting the vacillating sympathies of on-lookers, he remarks so picturesquely:

“In bursting fires,
When I fly into the sky,
Struck with wonder they look!”

But this appreciation of these admirers coolly betrays one m times of ‘adversity:
“Vomitting blood,
When I drop down to the ground,
In merciless disdain, the very people!”

His language never descends to mere colloquial slang; nor does it depart from the elegant and forceful contemporary form in search of the high-flown and the ornate. In his symbolism, he is as unsystematic as Uma in not selecting easily comprehensible objects in common life. His jugglery of sounds partly prevented such right discrimination. But he is far more direct and expressive than his successors. After him, poets like Naryan Babu have used far too much of Sanskrit, while others like ‘Pathabhi’ have used far too little of it. Sri Sri always maintains a poise in this respect.

Sri Sri’s creative genius will find fuller expression, and win greater recognition, if he cultivates a cultural ground supplying the requisite poetical content for his new verse forms, instead of being satisfied with prophetic announcement about the new trends in Telugu poetry.