Reviews

Peoms: by M. R. Bhagavan. Price Rs. 3

Man’s fall and Woman’s fall out: by Lawrence Bantleman. One Rupee. [Published for the Writers Workshop by P. Lal, 162/92, Lake Gardens, Calcutta.-45]

Every age has its peculiar response to the challenge of the world. This finds expression in a new imagery and a new idiom in poetry as in painting, sculpture and architecture, as in all the other visual and plastic arts, for that matter. Modern man, being in a frantic hurry, would be brief and direct in all that he wants to say or do. Our buildings are nowadays functional, and the elegance, if any, is derived from a stork simplicity. There is no time for being ornate in expression or elaborate in imagination. The baroque exuberance of the remote past, and Gothic intricacy of workmanship are equally out of place in building architecture. Even the Luetynses of yesterday with their domes and minarets and symmetrical columns have given place to the Le corbusiers whose style has something of the surprising quality of modern art. As in architecture, so in literature, especially poetry.

A conscious turning away from the conventional objects of beauty and a discarding of the familiar themes of poetry are almost a universal feature of the modern poet worth his salt. Workshop poets are, by and large, no exception to this unwritten rule of poetic composition. They have a keenly developed contemporary sensibility, along with an admirable flair for experimentation. These two qualities are best illustrated in the poems of M. R. BHAGAVN, most of which happen to have been written in Western Europe. In striving to be refreshingly original in his way of looking at scenes and objects, he succeeds in being up-to-date, after neutralizing an Indian consciousness, as if it were an impediment to the airline passenger who prefers to travel light. His ‘Winter Sequence’ closes thus:

“Seasonal shock of wind-raped trees,
dyspeptic groans of grey factories
and prolix hysteria of Christmas-bells,
displace no phase in his reflexive relish,
of the beer on the next pension-day.”

What he says of the crystals in the little piece entitled ‘Change’ can equally truly be applied to his own poetic technique, as that of many of his professional contemporaries, bearing the Workshop imprint:

‘Their caress-clad time,
forever and once,
slipped out of rhyme with navel priime
and in carbon-allusion
named spinster symbols
more sublime.”

Some of his phrases do come upon the average reader with the pleasant abruptness of a cloud-burst in summer, evenwhen their true import is not clear enough, e.g., “the kiss-thirst air of summer night,” “limping sun on shadow-bleached walls,” “A woodless wind sobs through my hall” etc.

Any visitor to a modern art exhibition, struggling for expression before an impressionist painting, is sure to sympathise with the poet in this stanza from the piece. “On looking at some Tahti paintings of Gauguin.” (The present reviewer does so, any way.)

“The boat is no subject of the sea,
The sea is also fish,
The fish is the sudden prostrate man,

“And there never is fish nor sea, but the wall, the wall

and the prostrate man.”

If the late-riser misses many things in the world for which man is thankful, sunrise and sunset must be two of them. Modern poet Bhagavan has his own way of evoking what must be a familiar sight to the resident of Madras–sunrise at San Thome beach:

“Between sands, now warm with shadow,
now leeched by light,
The thoughts, and limbs of fishermen
Resolve nor wave nor time
Smelt the drawn instant
to drawn element.
Declaiming,
rays stand and speak within me...”

If Bhagavan tends, at times, to be obscure or incoherent in the struggle to capture an intimate experience and convey it in a novel manner, Bantleman gives the impression of being too smart and slick in his poetic intonation. He has an impressive facility with word and phrase, but he can hardly resist the temptation to ring the changes a little too often. He speaks of “friends unknown and known enemies,” “like lake mist on the lake with fingers…..” “(a banana word; peel the skin; eat a sentence).” But, I do not know what to make of these lines from “Urbanus,” I hope it is more than a merely clever jingle:

“Night you have burned me.
Dark night you have burned me.
Night dark you burned.
Have you burned night dark?
Have you?”

There is also a deliberate boldness of imagery, obviously contrived for its shock effect on the staid reader, as in:

“Before the Silence Zone the monkey man
(keeper’s of monkeys, not evolution: this
contretemp suggests itself slowly) on a skin,
mottled like a harlot
thin as a virgin’s hymen,
beats: such a noise!”

or,
“Death anniversaries soon subside
Like pregnant graves
Or pregnant brides.”

or,

“….on the painted panes
sunshafts like tubercular grains
of bacilli -up the shadow;”
or, in this from “Winter”:
“The used tickets fly
from the gutter bank,
passengers may urinate
here and there and cause the grass to grow;
poor bladders
and bad weather and the steam
from urinators
colour the dream.”

On the other hand, he delights the reader with the felicity of expression achieved by the apt and happy phrase as the one about the summer stranger nicknamed night, that comes “gliding like a smooth shave.”
–D. ANJANEYULU

Fragments of a Revolution: Essays on Indian problems by M. Chalapati Rau. Pages 118. Sole Distributors in India: Book Centre (Private) Limited, Ranade Road, Dadar, Bombay-28.

The author, Mr. M. Chalapati Rau, is the Editor of The National Herald, and occupies a prominent position in the field of journalism. He has been India’s delegate to the UNESCO General Conferences in Delhi and Paris, and to the U. N. General Assembly in New York. He is thus, by virtue of his experience as a journalist and his intimate acquaintance with public affairs, eminently qualified to comment on the contemporary situation and the current developments in the various fields of our national life. He is keenly interested in the many aspects of the silent revolution which has been going on in the country for two generations, first under the leadership of Gandhi and then under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. He is a professed disciple of Nehru, to whom he dedicates the book, and obviously in sympathy with the objective of the Nehruist revolution, which is curiously compounded of elements of democracy, socialism, secularism, scientism, nationalism and internationalism, and has taken the form of economic planning On a gigantic scale under the inspiration and leadership of Nehru, after 1947, when political Independence was achieved, and Nehru was free from the restraining influences of Patel and Rajaji.

The volume contains thirty-six essays dealing with the various fragments, or aspects, of this revolution. It describes the way in which a traditional society is passing through a transitional state. It deals with the social and economic, the political and constitutional, as well as the intellectual and cultural, processes which constitute the Indian Revolution. The author has faith in the revolution, but deals with it objectively and critically. Though he deals with it in separate fragments, there is unity in his outlook and approach, and he manages to bring out the underlying unity in the various current problems which he discusses. The essay form has enabled the writer to adopt an easy confident manner and he writes as a commentator, and criticises freely, but always with a sense of responsibility. With uncanny frankness he declares ‘Every part of the community is discontented.’ He is highly critical of the execution and achievements of the plans and even of the drafting of them. He complains that they are full of padding and paddering and wanting in clear thinking as well as clear expression. His claim (in the preface) to consistency of outlook and seriousness in approach must be conceded. And he writes in a style of his own, combining wit and humour, seriousness and charm, brevity and sarcasm; and whatever the subject, and whether one agrees with the views expressed or not, every reader is sure to find the treatment interesting as well as thought-provoking. It is an eminently readable book and presents a comprehensive picture of modern India and the troubled processes of the revolution through which it is passing.
–M. SIVAKAMAVYA

Tapaswini or The Lure of Power by K. M. Munshi. Published by The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay-7. Pages 616. Price Rs.15,

Well known as an eminent lawyer, a zealous nationalist, a seasoned statesman and a gifted writer, Dr. K. M. Munshi, with his versatile talents and manifold achievements, occupies a unique position in the public life of the country. Acknowledged as the foremost writer in modern Gujarati literature, he has to his credit several works in English as well both historical and critical. His latest social novel, Tapaswini in Gujarati, was published in three volumes in 1957, when he had attained political and literary eminence. It has been translated into English, pruned to a suitable length, and is now published in the volume under review, for the English reading public.

Having come under the inspiring influence of Sri Aurobindo, during his student days, Sri Munshi has been an ardent fighter for the political freedom of the country as well as the cultural revival of the nation. He has worked, at the different stages in his and eventful public career, in close association with Tilak, Besant, Gandhi, Patel and Nehru, and brings to bear, on the picture life in modern India presented in this volume, his vast knowledge and varied experience. He paints, in the pages of this book, a vivid picture of the political movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, with its different phases of non-co-operation, civil disobedience, direct action, fasts and martyrdom, which rocked the life of the nation in the third and fourth decades of this century, against the ground of the author’s inside knowledge, born of experience, with the art of a seasoned literary craftsman.

The story involves numerous characters of great variety, covering a wide range of social ground, political ideology and religious attitudes. Most of these characters are vividly portrayed, carefully distinguished, and presented in an intricate network of mutual relations, in an artistically constructed plot with a social, political and detective interest.

Here we find Ganapati Sastry, a venerable Brahmin, living in the world of ancient idealism; his grandson Ravi, a victim of the ‘lure of power’ (the alternative title for the novel), catapulted from a Sanskrit school into Congress politics, in the hectic days of Gandhiji’s Satyagraha, via Communism; Alice, an English-born young woman, thrown into an Indian life, unknown to her; Mona, a Bengali girl trained in Russia and dedicated to Communism; Radharaman, the successful lawyer, with his devotion to wealth and name, and weakness for liquor and woman; Sheela, a noble lady cast in the Indian mould, yet modern in her ways, the ‘Tapaswini’ of the title, and apparently the author’s ideal of modern Indian womanhood; Uday the competent lawyer, with idealism and public spirit, full of nobility, yet responsive to the realities of the situation and the needs of modem life; and a host of other characters with distinctive personalities, all jostling with one another in a vortex of joys and sorrows.

Through the canvas on which these characters are painted, there shines Rajba, a lithe little girl of modern India, endowed with delicate sensibility and generous sympathies, and practical idealism, coming under the influence of Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram at Pondichery, and seeking fulfilment through faith. She makes her spiritual experiments on the base metal of which Ravi is made and ultimately transforms it into pure gold.

The book is, not a mere work of fiction, an interesting social novel, but also, at the same time, an impressive and interesting political saga.
–M. SIVAKAMAYYA

Sri Samskrita Bhashaprakasika by K. S. Ramanujacharyulu, and A. Achannasastry, Lecturers, S. V. Oriental College, Tirupati. Pages 230. Price Rs. 8.

Innumerable attempts are being made to make the study of Samskrit easy, and this book, written in Telugu by two experienced Samskrit Lecturers, is the result of one of those attempts.

This book consists of two parts. The first part deals mainly deals with verbal forms. Here the authors do not tease the reader with the rules of formation of different verbal forms. They give the final forms of some verbs in the present imperfect and future tenses, in the active and passive voices and in the causative, and thoroughly illustrate their usage in appropriate sentences in Samskrit. Then words ending with primary suffixes are illustrated. A detailed and useful treatment of prepositions, denominatives and desideratives is also found herein. The second part deals with nouns, indeclinables, numerals, meanings of cases, Sandhis and Samasas, and sentence formation.

A chart showing the final forms in singular, of 290 verbs in the present and imperfect tenses, in the active and passive voices and in the causative, and forms ending with the suffixes and two glossaries of Samskrit roots and nouns, classified into different groups, add to the value of the book. The addition of exercises at the end of each chapter and a mere detailed and illustrative treatment of sentence construction in different forms, would have considerably enhanced the value of the book.

We have no doubt that any diligent reader of this book can have a correct working knowledge of Samskrit in six months, as expected by the authors, and this book compares well with many other books in the “Teach Yourself Series.”
–B. KUTUMBA RAO

Mahakavi Margamu by Dr. S. V. Joga Rao. Pages 132. Published by M. S. R. Murty & Co., Visakhapatnam-2.

Tikkana’s Telugu Virataparvam which, because of its excellent poetic beauties, attracted the attention of many literary critics in Telugu, is a translation of the Virataparva in Samskrit, in the Manabnarata of Vyasa. In his translation Tikkana deviated from the original in many places, so much so, the Telugu Virataparvam appears for all practical purposes, as though it were an original and independent composition of the poet. If we are to appreciate and estimate the merits of Tikkana as a poet, we have necessarily to take notice of the original, compare it with the translation, trace out the deviations made by the poet, and then, on the basis of merit in the deviations, appreciate or censure the work of the poet. So an exhaustive comparative study of Tikkana’s translation and the original Bharatam in Samskrit by Vyasa, is a sine qua non for a genuine appreciation of Tikkana’s poetical talents. The book under review furnishes us with this pre-requisite and is hence a valuable addition to Telugu literature.

Previously, late Sri Korada Ramakrishnayya made a similar study and published the results of his research in his “Andhra Mahabharata Vimarsanamu.” While comparing the Telugu Bharatam with its original in Samskrit, he took into consideration both the Northern and Southern recensions of the Mahabharata in Samskrit, and he was of the opinion that Tikkana had the Northern recension in his hands when he wrote his Bharatam. In addition to the comparative study, Sri K. Ramakrishnayya also brought out in full, in that book, the literary and poetical beauties found in Tikkana’s writing.

Sri G. Subbaramayya in his. ‘Kavitraya Kavitavimarsanamu” also devotes himself to a similar study, though not of so very exhaustive nature. Sri K. Vyasamurty, in his “Tikkana Kavitasamrajyamu” explained at large the charm in the poetry of Tikkana, without bringing the original into the picture. Sri B. Lakshminarayana Rao made a similar attempt, though very brief, in his “Tikkana Bharata Rachanamu.” There are many other writings of the kind.

The book under review is the latest attempt on this subject, viz., comparative study of Tikkana and the original Bharata. Herein the author compares the Telugu Virataparvam with its counterpart in Samskrit, obtaining in the Southern recension only, which he thinks closer to Tikkana’s Bharatam. In an analytical manner, he points 79 deviations, in all, and among them are included many of the deviations pointed out by the previous writers also on this subject. (cf. items numbering 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 28, etc.) He gives the original Samskrit verses and the Telugu translations thereof and briefly explains the significance, if any, of the deviations made. Thus this book gives us a very clear picture of the changes made by Tikkana in his translation as compared with the Southern recension of the Mahabharata in Samskrit, and hence is of immense help to those who desire to appreciate Tikkana’s originality, as far as Virataparva is concerned, but who, either for want of a knowledge of Samskrit, or for want of time, cannot go through the original Samskrit work. The learned Doctor promises similar studies on the other Parvas also and we eagerly await them.
–B. KUTUMBA RAO