Literary Profiles

By D. ANJANEYULU. B.A. (Hons.) B.L.

E. C. Bentley’s simple definition that “history is about chaps just as geography is about maps” underlines the human factor in the chronicle of countries and kingdoms. History, like philosophy, is invested with a monumental dullness by pretentious pedants, who identify it with a catalogue of kings and a diary of events and incidents. To the great Gibbon must go the credit to some extent at any rate, of enlivening the dusty pages of ancient history with vivid and virile men, pulsating with life and throbbing with human emotions. His grand manner and nervous prose have enhanced the appeal of his method of narrating the fortunes of Rome like an exciting novel. Macaulay, who was an ardent admirer, though not a mechanical imitator of the Author of the Decline and Fall, worked on similar lines and sought to go one better in his ambitious History of England, which is a picturesque panorama of people, in their varied hues and variegated shades. Compton Mackenzie and Arthur Bryant, among others in English literature, can be considered living exponents of the biographical treatment of history.

Biography is an eminently human art that forms an agreeable branch of literature. The overwhelmingly large number of classical works in this category written in England is ample proof of its popularity which persists, pervading all channels of expression like books, newspapers and broadcasting. Hardly can one open a ‘class’ magazine or weekly journal without coming across a biography in miniature. The ‘profile’ feature of the Observer is as well-written as it is widely read. Done by experts who know the job, the weekly dish is delicious and digestible. It is as interesting as it is informative, adequate in matter and flawless in manner. The sketches in the Sunday Times are in a smaller compass, drawn with a severe economy of expression. The portraits in the Picture Post and other such ‘popular’ periodicals are naturally more breezy, if less authoritative. Readers of the English Review are not likely to miss the regular ‘personality paragraphs’ which are homely and refreshing. One may have one’s likes and dislikes, preferences and predilections, but it is only too clear that pen-portraiture is a precious and popular feature ofEnglish journalism.

For some reason or other the Profile has not yet become a regular or readable feature of journals and newspapers over here. The reason is evidently the same as for the paucity of good biographies, with a few notable exceptions like R. P. Masani’s Dadabhai Naoroji, H. P. Mody’s Pherozeshah Mehta, P. C. Ray’s C. R. Das and D. G. Tendulkar’s Mahatma Gandhi. Seldom does the reader get a satisfactory pen-portrait of any person of importance, or one of no importance who suddenly flits across the scene into the limelight. It is quite possible that the subjects are more often than not gluttonous to flattery, but over-sensitive to criticism as the writers are sometimes willing to wound, but afraid to strike. There is therefore, no dearth of hysterical and unabashed panegyrics of those with pelf, power and position, and loud lampoons against those who might have fallen from grace. This only highlights the position, by contrast, of conscientious craftsmen of the ‘Profile’ art like K. Iswara Dutt, Khasa Subba Rau, Frank Moraes, and M. Chalapathi Rau, who are all unlike one another, and at the same time far above the common run of sketch-writers.

‘I. D.’

‘I. D.’ are familiar initials to readers of the Hindustan Times and represent Mr. K. Iswara Dutt, who is really a man of letters in the Street of Ink. His weekly ‘Miscellany’ is an engaging mixture of politics and personalities, lending a literary flavour to the rough and tumble of daily journalism. Iswara Dutt took the reading public of Madras by storm over two decades ago by his sparkling booklet Sparks and Fumes, which was in fact a collection of sketches published earlier in Swarajya and elsewhere. The 13 portraits (the number was more accidental than ominous) were marked by keen insight and fair judgment. The analysis of character was shrewd and subtle and the expression was lucid and luminous, with a phrasing that is crisp and convincing. Among the ‘victims’ (all Andhras), who came under the author’s ‘knife’ are Dr. Pattabhi and Messrs. T. Prakasam and B. Sambamurthi.

That the author has meticulously modelled himself after A. G. Gardiner does not detract from the merit of, his work, through the traces of adaptation may at times be rather too obvious. I. D.’s ‘C. R. Reddy’ recalls to the reader’s mind A. G. ‘Rosebery’, but none can quarrel with the estimate of that ill-fated genius’s life and work:

“It is hard to find a life so rich in promise and so poor in performance, so full of aspiration and so little of achievement. His record is indeed a woeful tale of false steps, mistaken preferences, fatal miscalculations and lost opportunities.”

‘I. D.’ warms up to his subject when it attracts his admiration and he is never reluctant to give praise where it is due, as in the case of Dr. Pattabhi:

“Words flow from his tongue or pen in swift succession, form themselves into serried ranks, march like marshalled units and discharge their function with un-failing precision. As a speaker he appeals sometimes to the emotions and always to the intellect and his utterances are crammed with information and spiced with wit.”

He can be scathing in attack; as when he compares Sir A. P. Patro’s excursions into the field of education to John Gilpin’s rides. It must be interesting to speculate what Sir A. P. Patro must have felt like when the author called a spade a spade:

“With a past that reflects no credit, with a future, that reveals no hopes, Sir A. P. Patro, chief of the salaaming satellites of Sir John Simon in Madras, stands today, on the political stage, throwing up his hands in despair and crying out,

“O, Time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me to untie.”

‘I. D.’s later works in this line are distinguished by a mature estimate of men and a less exuberant expression. The same pattern, however, persists with that studiously symmetrical syntax, characterised by balance and antithesis. It is rather a pity the author has not given us more books of pen-portraits.

‘Saka’

If ‘I. D.’ dances round his subject with sparkle and gaiety, ‘Saka’ (Khasa Subba Rau) grapples it with a firm grip and an infectious gusto. The Men in the Limelight published over a decade ago is a dazzling gallery of a dozen luminaries of Madras,–politicians, pressmen and lawyers. As indicated by the expressive title of the booklet, the author focuses the searchlight of candid criticism on the men who happen to be in the limelight for the time being. To this he has later added a collection of his Side-lights which are of the same texture as the once famous Comments of Bagshot by J. A. Spender. If Iswara Dutt has tried his best to write like Gardiner, Khasa has attempted, with a commendable degree of success, to look at his subjects with the sharp and piercing eyes of Spender. He is more anxious to analyse the character and estimate the personality of the man under his merciless microscope than to exhibit his mystery of language or indulge his whims of style.

In spite of his strong likes and dislikes, he strives to make a correct analysis of a man’s mental make-up and reach a balanced assessment of the composite effect of his qualities, as when he writes of the late S. Srinivasa Iyengar:

“Punctilious punctuality, a mastery over self that never wavers or permits the slightest loss of temper, a reserve so complete as to be almost forbidding and to ward off all familiarities from the officious, are the ingredients of his external functioning as an advocate.”

He has a warm corner in his heart for a colleague and friend, Pothan Joseph, who is “like a magician who collects odds and ends from the wayside and transforms them, by the setting in which they are placed and the polish given to them, into exquisite literary pieces of surpassing grace and charm.”

He can sum up a whole life in one sentence as when he remarks that “recognition without reward has been the political fate of Dr. C. R Reddy”. Though he has no patience with straw Caesars who might strut about the bargain basement, he is always just and at times generous to his sitters. Seeing things steadily and seeing them whole, he is particular about including the “warts and all” in his pen-portraits. While his sense of style is usually unerring, the consuming zeal with which he plunges into his subject makes him look more like a crusader than a craftsman. A philosophical ground has given him a distant vision and a wide perspective that help him in making apt and illuminating generalisations on public life and private conduct.

‘Ariel’

The weekly column on “Men, Matters and Memories” by ‘Ariel’ (Frank Moraes, the Editor) is an eminently readable feature of the Times of India. True to his pseudonym, ‘Ariel’ delights his readers with a lightness of touch and a sprightly manner, that reminds one of the winsome fairy of The Tempest. As is only natural, he is more concerned with men than with matters, and deals with matters when both happen to be synonymous. He has not missed his vocation; as his wide travels (again like the winged elf) and interviews with the men–and women too–who matter, as well as his familiarity with masters of prose and poetry provide him with the equipment for a job that he obviously enjoys doing.

His compact cameos are characterised by a commendable conciseness of treatment and an admirable economy of expression. The right word is used to express the right idea, and the result is a rare harmony of substance and style. How correct and convincing is his appraisal of ‘C. P.’ who has a ‘mind that scintillates’. “He has a quickfire brilliance which has partly proved his undoing. Quick to grasp the intricacies of a subtle problem, he is apt to be impatient with those whose cerebral processes move rather slowly. If his light dazzles others, it occasionally blinds himself.” Here is a crisp comment on the Communist orator, Prof Hiren Mookerjee: “In the parliamentary arena he gives no quarter and asks for none. His chiseled English intonation must seem a little out of place in the serried ranks of Tuscany.” Of President Prasad he says: “Though a lawyer by training, he is by temperament a peasant. He has peasant’s humility and gentleness, something of his stubbornness and the shrewdness which often goes with men who eke their living from the soil.” “Dr. Radhakrishnan must have found Stalin a tougher proposition than Schopenhauer and Kant. The dialects of Marxism are more abstruse than the philosophy of Hegel and the Kremlin is not Kurukshetra.”

Even a writer with usually keen insight and correct vision has his blindspots, and ‘Ariel’ has his in the Congress. He is not exactly an admirer of Congressmen. To the Historian of the Congress he is less than just:

“He talked himself into the Congress and very nearly talked himself out of it. Indeed he really stops talking. When his tongue relaxes, his pen revolves. If he is a prolific talker he is also a voluminous writer. Pattabhi is the Congress Historian. But he writes history, does not make it.”

He is a graphic stylist and his penchant for picturesque phrasing gives him mastery of description:

“The strong, impassive, often imperious face (of Sardar Patel) with the bald skull and the heavy-lidded eyes might have been carved out of granite. There is something faintly monolithic about him. He is Rome to Nehru’s Greece, for Nehru conjures up grace, a grace not only of thought but of living. The Sardar symbolises strength and certainty.”

Characters are at times summed up in a sentence, nay in a phrase, as when he calls the ‘saturnine’ Kripalani a ‘dancing dervish’ and a ‘gloomy prophet,’ Kidwai ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’ and Mountbatten ‘Britain’s professional charmer’. He has a racy style that is the delight of his readers and the despair of his imitators. If ‘Saka’ is fond of using the bludgeon and the sledgehammer, ‘Ariel’ wields with consummate skill the warrior’s rapier and the surgeon’s scalpel.

Reader’s of Shankar’s Weekly are often in the habit of eagerly looking out (after a glance at the cartoons) for the scintillating sketches appearing under the pseudonym of ‘Magnus’ or the initials ‘M. C.’ The man with the mighty pen, hiding under this inadequate mask is, of course, the formidable Editor of the National Herald and the popular leader of working journalists, M. Chalapathi Rau. The ‘imaginary interviews’ with the ‘pillars of society’ and ‘people of importance’ are brilliant sketches, done with savage satire and purposeful parody. The devastating wit reminiscent of Swift and Shaw spares none, not even Jawaharlal Nehru. Balloons are pricked with unerring precision and masterly ease, and the victims, if they are wise and have a sense of humour, would surely be chastened by this ruthless ridicule. Weaker vessels with a too sensitive skin writhe under the carping, caviling and cutting pen, which can sometimes be mightier than the sword. The foibles of human character are exposed with merciless and malicious humour. It is not certain if the same writer is behind the ‘man of the week’ in that journal, but the master’s touch is often in evidence in those exquisite character-sketches. Gifted with a marvellous memory ‘Magnus’ has acquired a deep scholarship that has served to refine the sharp edges of his massive intellect. His wide literary ground provides him with a cultivated taste and has helped the evolution of a splendid, if gorgeous, style, scintillating with epigrams and sparkling wit that reveal his closeness to Lytton Strachey and Philip Guedalla, two writers who seemed to have influenced him most in the manner of his writing. A certain sophisticated sourness is visible in the jewelled epigrams of this fastidious stylist, who is equally a satirist, who lashes with a whip of scorpions.

The writers discussed above are illustrative rather than exhaustive of the practitioners of this exacting art. Among others deserving mention is K. Chandrasekharan, who has drawn thumb-nail sketches of some Madras lawyers in his Persons and Personalities. There are, however, more persons in it than personalities, as the author’s sense of too much caution and balance has made the portraits less vivid than they would otherwise be. His recent Studies and Sketches is also in the same decorous and conventional tradition. Yusuf Meherally, in the booklets about the Leaders of India, gave us a number of passable ‘miniatures in biography,’ which are rather elementary in their scope and treatment. Other aspirants in this field were less successful. Joachim Alva’s ‘Men and Supermen of Hindustan’ is informative and interesting in its detail, but somewhat amateurish and scrappy, lacking in the unerring touch that marks out good writing fromthe bad and indifferent. G. Venkatachalam’s Profiles is diffuse and desultory.

Pen-portraiture, like the writing of a poem or a short-story, is a fine art with exacting standards of style and workmanship. A good ‘profile’ is a sonnet in prose. It is a compact cameo, characterised by a severe, even austere and astringent, economy of expression, which realises the importance of the waste paper basket. But as literary fashions change like ladies’ clothes, any evidence of careful writing or lucid exposition is nowadays suspect in the eyes of the elite, who profess a fondness for anything as staccato and strident as Hemmingway or as vague and inscrutable as James Joyce. To such sophisticated souls, any semblance of accepted idiom and conventional form must be anathema. It is difficult to tell what form the ‘profile’ takes under ultra-modern masters of fashion, and whether it will resemble Picasso’s paintings or other unrecognisable experiments in cubism and surrealism. We can only hope that there are still at least a few, who are so old-fashioned as to like A. G. Gardiner, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill.