Reviews

Kanthapura, by Raja Rao. (Oxford University Press, Bombay. Price. Rs. 6)

KANTHAPURA, which derives its title from a village of the same name in Mysore, is a successful piece of regional writing. By regionalism it is not meant to stick a label; novels like Venkataramani’s Kandan, The Patriot, Tagore’s Gora and Wreck, Anand’s The Big Heart and The Coolie, Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi, and similar others by the Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarathi, Marathi, Kannada and Malayalee writers, are regional in the sense that the authors are representative of their own regions, and produce works which bear upon them the individual geographical mark; in the vernaculars it is the genius of the language, pre-eminently; the medium, if it is English, has to be, in the opinion of Raja Rao, a dialect which will some day promise to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American.” Raja Rao achieves what he maintains–both colour and distinction in his prose. He begins his story with all the gusto and the grand manner of the born raconteur:Our village high on the Ghats is it; high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane. Roads, narrow, dusty, rut-covered roads, wind through the forests of teak and of jack, of sandal and of sal…”

Kanthapura is part history, part fiction; the history is contemporary the moral and political teachings of Mahatma Gandhi; the fiction deals with the reactions of the inhabitants of the village to these teachings, and the troubles that ensue when the theory of ahimsa is put into practice, when it becomes an urgent, momentous activity–the activity which is the highest flaming point in the philosophy of the religious reformer and the social saviour. Raja Rao has a thorough knowledge of his subject, but the historical, bucolic, and social elements he handles have somehow failed to integrate as pure story; in many places the novel suffers from overwriting; its concluding chapters, especially, are cluttered up with too many details of lathi-blows, gunshots, and blood-stains a prosaic and patient method aspires to be poetic through words repeated, rung, re-rung this proliferation, like painting the lily or gilding the gold, is indeed a wasteful excess. However, Kanthapura when it was first published in England ten years ago, when Gandhi lived and fought for our freedom, was a cry of challenge; today, its re-issue in India, after the death of him who was our saviour, sounds like a song of fulfillment. Then it was the manifesto of a legitimate claim; now it stands for all time as the record of a noble victory.
MANJERI S. ISVARAN

Two Lovely Beasts, and Other Stories, by Liam O’Flaherty. (Victor Gollancz Ltd., London. Price 9sh. 6d.)

LIAM O’FLAHERTY is in the front rank of writers in the West who, by their profound sympathy and understanding, have changed the scope and significance of the short story as an art-form and as an expression of life. The Irish are a poetic people, of the earth earthy; they look askance at urban ways, the urban glitter; their vitality springs from the soil that gave them birth. Mr. O’Flaherty’s stories are close-up views of Irish life from one whose observation is keen, vision direct, humanity deep, lit by cheerfulness and an engaging wit. His themes are dissimilar, but in each his touch is exact, his mastery sure. All are stories of high achievement, and apart from the title story, The Beggars, The Mouse, and The Wedding are the most notable. Ireland is fortunate in Liam O’Flaherty.
MANJERI S. ISVARAN

East Side, West Side, by Marcia Davenport. (Collins, 10sh. 6d.)

NOVEL–any prose stuff that runs from twelve to fifteen formes Double Crown 16 vo. This is the definition of an expert printer who, in his time, has set up novels without number, and felt like talking what he thought about fiction. Very sensible of him, and that without assuming the role of a literary critic. But if the novel happens to be American, nineteen to the dozen, it is beyond all judgment of printer–and the literary critic alike. It is made a sensation, in the true American style, ballyhooed wildly till everyone in sheer self-defence has to read it. One such novel I read was Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor.

East Side, West Side–New York’s–is typical. American ware, describing every little detail of lives lived expensively, details that are boring rendered more poring by sociological comments done in all seriousness, decking the descriptive upholstery. The heroine Mrs. Jessie Bourne is thirty-eight, and her deepest comfort for many years is her bedroom; Brandon, her husband doesn’t come up to her intellectual and aesthetic standards; and there appears on the scene General Dwyer, a war veteran and an epicure in eating and drinking. Jessie immediately recognises her spirit of kinship with him but complications arise. Dwyer departs, Jessie dismisses her husband in the hope the General would return, and the story ends not with a bang but with a whimper. One wonders why Marcia Davenport concluded her novel so briefly, she could have padded on another thirty thousand words and would have been none the worse for it.
I. M.

 

TAMIL

Mudrarakshasam, by Visakhadatta. Rendered into Tamil from the original Sanskrit by V. Srinivasa Sastri (Siromani) and T. Srinivasachariar (Siromani). (Shakti Karyalayam, Madras 14. Price Re. 1-8 as.)

OFTEN a doubt arises as to what exactly a drama is. The dramatist may have a conception of it different from that of the critic, but the, creator of characters need not care for the man of views. But the man of views does count to some extent as he seems to express the heart of the common man. Take, for example, the dramatist Shaw. He wrote play after play and he grew in age caring little for the man of views Shaw is a dramatist and man of views himself, a man of acute intelligence, portraying characters arresting at once for the starkness of thought and brilliance of conception. A drama is any aspect of life in that could be enacted to teach man to find for himself where truth and justice love and sympathy really are. It is poetry of life in that at certain places it explodes. Emotions explode in a blaze of ideas but the glow of harmony is not impaired in a perfect play. It is in harmonising poetry and life, imagination and events, that the genius of the dramatist works unceasingly till the consummation or the catastrophe of the play is arrived at.

The genius of Visakhadatta lay in that he was an analytical thinker fully conscious of the psychological life of the characters he made use of in the making of his difficult plot. His extraordinary capacity is well seen in the way in which he leads us to perceive the character of a statesman like Chanakya.

Vishnugupta was an ocean of learning whose only defect was his ego; and a temper violent and revengeful was not attractive in one of his immense learning and erudition. But he was a man of great convictions who thought error was unknown to him. To establish justice he adopted policies and means, which would have driven another to the gallows. He admired Rakshasa for his faithfulness and loyalty; he had respect for Chandanadasa whose willingness to sacrifice his own life to have his friend Rakshasa was genuine. We find in Kautilya a gifted brain, sharp as the edge of a razor, and shining like the tropical sun in summer. We also see a heart that was cold; it was cold to the environments, but it was conscious of its beats. Its beauty was in detachment, its pride was in renunciation, and its completion or fulfillment was in penance. In short, Visakhadatta’s characters are immortals. We cannot throw a stone at anyone of them. We can admire them, eradicate the defects in ourselves, encourage our intelligence, and improve our political tactics. A critic can only study the characters but has no right to pretend to be a man of views.

Tamil has been superbly served by the two translators who have shown intelligence in their study of the play. They could have given a synopsis of the drama to enable the reader to have a general idea of the plot stripped of its intricacies. It would have trade the understanding of the plot more easy. A scholar’s instinct seeks such books either in original or in translation. Our congratulations to Srimans V. Srinivasa Sastri and T. Srinivasachariar for their ardours to enrich Tamil and glorify Sanskrit.
M. S.

SANSKRIT

Kamasuddhi, by Dr. V. Raghavan, M.A., Ph.D. (Amritavani, V. B. Subbiah & Sons, Bangalore.)

Gopa Hampanna, by Dr. V. Raghavan, M.A., Ph.D. (Amritavani, V. B. Subbiah & Sons, Bangalore.)

DR. RAGHAVAN needs no introduction to the world of Sanskritists. He is a flower of the group of students that gathered around the great scholar Kulapati Kuppuswami Sastriar who made an epoch in the history of Sanskrit studies in this part of the country. For sometime past, the author has been trying his hand in the field of Sanskrit poetry; and the two booklets under reference reflect credit on his accomplishment in belles-lettres in Sanskrit. Kamasuddhi,–the purification of love–is an one-act drama in Sanskrit, a product of assimilation and implementing of the substance of the Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa. It is written in a simple, elegant style, interspersed with the honeyed words of that master-poet.

The substance of the drama is this: Rati, the sattvik aspect of love, wants to make human love, pure and holy. She tries to lift up Kama to a spiritual height when he asks her to go hand in hand with him in his maddening career. She is sorry for the role he plays as Madana, inflamer of passions, Manmatha, tormentor of mankind, and Mara, the slayer of mankind. She grieves at the inroads he makes into the realms of Dharma and Artha like the flood of a river that destroys its banks. She is sick with horror to see him defile the conjugal fidelity of chaste women, make saints and sages victims of surging passions, for his having caused the lord of men (the Cosmic Mind) to be in love with his daughter. She could no longer put up with his evil ways. She resolves to take to satyagraha, to perform penance, stern and long, for the sins he had committed, until he is purified and stripped of all worldliness. No amount of persuasion of Vasanta, the friend of Kama, could turn her from her resolve. Now the great Siva, the giver of reward of penance to all, is in a state of Samadhi, in the summit of the Himalayas. The intensity of the penance of Rati attracts the attention of the God and He reveals himself before her and counsels her thus: “Do not forsake your husband however bad he is. A true wife should enter into her husband’s heart by kind words and sweet persuasions and bring him under control. There will soon arise an occasion, when Kama will show his strength on Me and will be burnt to ashes in the fire of My vairagya. Then, purged of all his dross, Kama will rise again like the morning Sun in his pristine purity. He will then be your fit companion and will take the place of the prime Purushartha instead of being an ancillary pursuit of life.” Rati is satisfied and looks forward to the regeneration of Kama.

Hampanna, a Kurba watchman, was shot dead by a brutish British soldier for having given shelter to and defended the honour of a young Lingayat lady whom he had been chasing on an evening after beer. The culprit was caught, tried in the Madras High Court, but British justice found him not guilty and let him free. The indignant nation however raised a memorial for heroic Hampanna, on the Kurnool-Bangalore road. Dr. Raghavan, reading an account of the incident, has given utterance to his righteous indignation in the form of a ballad of 32 stanzas in Sanskrit,–a humble homage to the dauntless spirit of Hampanna. The annals of dependent India are full of incidents of heroic lives being treated with contempt, humiliated and massacred by perverted justice. Short poems corresponding to ballads and sonnets of the West having for their theme, some single thought, feeling or situation are not common in Sanskrit literature and the novel attempt of the author is therefore all the more welcome to the Sanskrit reading public. In this poem, the author freely uses a few expressions, which, though not conforming to the rules of the lakshanakaras, have yet the sanction of the living usages of Maha Kavis.

G. HARIHARA SASTRI