Reviews

Introduction to the Study of English Literature by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar and prema Nandakuxnar. Asia Publishing House, Bombay-l. Pages 296. Price Rs. 12.

It is a pleasure to read a book written by competent scholars; it is a keener pleasure if they happen to be friends. One of the authors was the Head of the English Department in the Andhra University, the other was one of my brilliant students. The book is the joint product of a father and his daughter. The parts of the book are so seamlessly stitched together that one cannot tell them apart: Beaumont cannot be distinguished from Fletcher. It is a tribute to the daughter that she could so catch up with the father who is a veteran in the field. It is possible to detect the difference, however, between father and daughter, the syncretist and the specialist–the difference between age and youth, experience and innocence, a sense of facts and facts, the abstract and the concrete, philosophy and scholarship. The aims are modest; the means are exacting and the ends are admirable. The book is not merely an introduction to the study of English Literature; it is an introduction to the study of literature ‘from China to Peru.’ The tremendous commonplaces of criticism are emphasized because we need oftener to be reminded of vital ideas than revolutionized in our ways of thinking. The amount of reading that has gone into the book is amazing; it is almost encyclopaedic and Saintsburyan. Everywhere the Indian reader is exhilarated by parallels from Indian literatures. On any given topic the books that matter make their appearance and neat summaries of the views are given. For instance, in the chapter on the novel the inevitables: Lubbock, Forster, Muir pop in. But all such encyclopaedic introductions suffer from some lacunae:

(a) To illustrate, the reader comes across spotathroughout the book. The word is not Spotabut sphotaand 1 hope in a later edition of the book the correction will be made. Alaukiklis the word used to characterize conventionally Rasa, not the poet’s personal experience (as stated in the book).

(b) The statement on Keats’ Grecian Urn that the three middle stanzas are more richly satisfying than the first and the last on p. 199 is rather surprising because the third stanza with its unhappy repetition of ‘happy’ six times is regarded by critics as the weakest in the ode, an example of critical dimness, of the Keats of slippery blisses.

(c) Similarly after studying what C. S. Lewis has written on the structure of The Fairie Queene in the Literature of the Sixteenth Century and on the philosophy in the Allegory of Love there is no excuse for making the cliche statements on Spenser on pp. 128-129. Today we cannot ignore Janet Spens or C. S. Lewis. It will be a sad day for us if we cannot regard Holiness, Friendship, Courtesy, Chastity as neighbours and friends. If these are real, then Spenser is real. That is why it can be even stated that the allegory is more real than the story–particularly to a non-English reader. Courtesy is more real than Sir Calidore. It is the allegory that energises the poem; to regard it as confusion is to regard the legs of the centipede as confusion in its anatomy. And to talk of the Platonism of Spenser is not to know either Spenser or Plato; Spenser is a syncretist.

(d) In the rapid survey of English literature from Beowulf to Achebe the reader is stunned by a hailstorm of facts. I personally wish that the author recorded new perceptions which may liven up the reader jaded and fatigued with the old facts. It could have been mentioned that the Renaissance is not only New Learning but New Ignorance too, that the Augustan mathematization of language regarded metaphor as a bluff to be called, that the Romantic Imagination is a snapped kite on the viewless wings of poesy, that the Age of Tennyson is not one of smugness and complacency (as vilified so long), that the Bible is more oriental than Western and hence not a good model, that Bacon is as personal as Lamb because it is said that from his essays alone we can easily reconstruct his life, etc.

(e) In the chapter on tragedy and comedy the most significant discussion should be the mixing of the funerals and the hornpipes as aesthetically satisfying. Dr. Johnson’s explanation in the Preface that it is so in life is naive.

(f) In an Introduction like this the reader expects more pronouncedly a winding into the subject–which Goldsmith found lacking in Dr. Johnson but present in Burke. In the chapter on Prose Fiction let the author state the general principles regarding the Novel (because novel and fiction are not synonyms as they are supposed to be) and then discuss if a book like Moby Dick is a novel at all. Is it not a series of essays? It is not enough to say that it is a novel and that Melville had a vision. If he had, why is it Melville does not seem to know his own round in the book? Shall we vote for Ishmael or Ahab or Moby Dick? Is Moby Dick God or Devil, Good or Evil or some It transcending good and evil. The very fact that critics mention seven Moby Dicks posits that Melville’s vision was ‘sithila’ (as we say) or dim. That is, the reader should not be magisterially told or dictated to but made to discover things by himself. What I have on mind is the sort of discussion you find in Belgion’s Reading for Profit–a discussion which enables even a tyro to think by himself; one is led step by step to the conclusion that A Passage to India is superior to Random Harvest and Bleak House superior to both.

(g) In the discussion of art and morality the wisdom of D. G. James’ remark that poetry saves morality from itself should have been effectively stressed.

(h) And it is not fair to Aristotle to say that he goes as far as katharsis only. Katharsis is what tragedy does but tragedy is–Delight.

(i) In the discussion of Diction and Style, Tragedy and Comedy, Prose and Poetry, Classical and Romantic and the various literary forms it can be profitably pointed out that the fierce battle cries in Western literary criticism vanish like ghosts at the cock crow of Auchitya:

We are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and of fight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Vaakyam rasaatmakam kaavyam is a bewildering simplification of aesthetics and criticism. If vaakyamis rasaatmakam, whether it is lyric or epic, romantic or classical, poetry or prose, tragedy or comedy, rich or bare, matters precious little. All paths lead to Rome; by themselves the terms have no validity. In Sanskrit Aesthetics there is wise silence; the skies are not rent by such war cries.

He never lifted up a single stone

is poetry as indubitable as

Thou unravished bride of quietness.

Synge’s prose is as poetic as Elizabethan blank verse. Byron’s carelessness, as Bowra points out, is as amazingly competent as Flaubert’s quest for inevitability. It is natural for Lamb to be affected as it is for a lame man to limp. If Classical and Romantic are equated with Tradition and Individual talent (of Eliot) the debate ends: Revolt but enriches Tradition and becomes part of it. Romanticism plus success is Classicism.

(j) In the discussion of literature it should be constantly stressed that universalization is not deprivation of individuality nor is de-personalization desiccation. Herrick’s Julia is Herrick’s Julia; Julia is not universalized or de-personalized into Anybody’s woman. If sadharanikaranameans that, then she goes into the dust bin. ‘The possible Lucretius in myself interests me more than the possible C. S. Lewis in Lucretius’. The doctrine of the unchanging human heart is an ignis fatuus in criticism. In the ultimate analysis all art is subjective. No man walks abroad save on his own shadow. King Lear is no more objective than West Wind is subjective. If we know why Shakespeare chose the story of King Lear and not some other, we may not call it objective. ‘Song seraphically free from taint of personality’–is beautiful music and nothing more.

(k) In the analysis of the ground of ideas the useful distinction made by C. S. Lewis between ‘poetic’ ideas that make the poem what it is and other ideas, the so-called philosophy that matters not at all, could have been exploited. The Basil Willey approach lights up, no doubt, admirably dark recesses and enables us to spy on the mystery of creation and predict what the next line will be even in Shakespeare (as Peter Alexander suggests commenting on

the corner cap of society
The shape of Love’s Tyburn that hangs up simplicity).

(l) Talking about the Epic the auther uses the old misleading term: authentic and literary, as misleading as translating Anagnorisis as Recognition. It is to eliminate this ambiguity that C. S. Lewis used Primary and Secondary–terms useful and non-committal as tools of criticism.

(m) Lastly, I wish to say that some words repeated oftener than they need be lose their savour–words like splendorous, doubled, beyonding, recordation, etc. And I wonder if it is happy to say that Bede or Dante ‘occurred’ (except in a jocular way).

Any Introduction should not only map the known universe of discourse but should enable the reader to think by himself, grow from incunabula into adulthood. It should not only be a guide but an explorer, not only the Atlas of the known world but a Newton voyaging strange seas of thought, not only a record but a voyage of discovery. It should disfamiliarise the familiar and familiarise the unfamiliar. If it is the impact of Freud and psycho-analysis on literature the reader need not swallow Max Eastman’s highhanded dictum that a critic of literature without a diploma in psycho-analysis should be jailed at once; he should be made to think along with another scholar that the great Unconscious is not more real than selective consciousness just as the skeleton or the nervous system is not more real than the human body of flesh and blood.

What I have stated above are personal reflections or suggestions to make the book richer. The Introduction is an admirable text. As books do not teach their own use, a sahridayais needed and in his hands the text is the cue of Theseus to guide us in the labyrinth and slay the minotaur of ignorance, the wand of Moses to bring us to the land flowing with milk and honey, a pillar of fire to guide us across vast spaces of literature and poetics.

The bibliography at the end is in itself a rehearsal of scholarship.
–K. VISWANATHAM

Congress Cyclopaedia Vol. I. The Indian National Congress: 1885-1920 (The pre-Gandhi Era) by K. Iswara Dutt. Published by the author, 16/13, W. E. A., Kaml Bagh, New Delhi-5. Pages 387. Price Fifty Rupees.

Whatever differences there might be among the students of Indian politics on the role of the Congress party in governmental office, there could be no question about the glorious part it played in winning the freedom of India. It would, in fact, be no exaggeration to describe the history of the Indian Freedom Movement, by and large, as the history of the Indian National Congress. It was no doubt, true that before the advent of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene, it had not assumed the character of a mass organisation that it was to become under the magnetic leadership or one who had revolutionised the basic concept of political behavior. But it would be as well to remind ourselves, with the excellent aid of Mr. Iswara Dutt’s well-organised knowledge of all the Congress sessions and their illustrious presidents that the Congress in the first thirty-five years of its existence was neither an anglicised debating society nor wholly a mendicant affair as it is too often and too easily depicted to be.

Irrespective of the numbers attending its earliest sessions, the Indian National Congress was a truly national organisation and its secular character had provided the necessary inspiration for the secular basis of the Indian Republic. It had, from the beginning, attracted the imagination of the cream of the Indian intelligentia and the best minds of the generation were represented in the list of presidents which would indeed read like a roll call of honour in this country. The first session of the Congress held in Bombay was attended by 72 delegates, of whom more than 20 were from Madras, and it is supposed to have cost only some three thousand Rupees. A far cry indeed from Faizpur, Haripura and Tripuri in the late thirties, by which time they were attended by thousands of delegates and lakhs of visitors. As for the actual cost involved, it could be any body’s guess, but even an A. I. C. C. meeting of recent times would have cost any number of times more than an open session in days of yore.
For each of these 35 and more sessions, we have a vivid prfoile of the year’s president, a brief description of the special features of the session, including significant resolutions, and the obiter dicta in the shape of incisive extracts from the presidential and other addresses. Sometimes, there are interesting quotations, as, for example, from the brilliant despatch of H. W. Nevinson on the oratory of Surendranath Bannerjea. We have an impressive galaxy of impassioned orators like Lal Mohan Ghose, political thinkers like Gokhale fighters like Lajpat Rai and nation-builders like Dadabhai Naoroji of whom any country of the world could justly be proud. By the time we reach the Nagpur Congress in 1920, the stalwart patriot, C. Vijayaraghavachariar of Salem, makes no bones about comparing the bureaucracy to a broom waved in face of the mighty ocean’s rising tide.

Bold and lifelike drawing in pen and ink by Ranganath lend a new interest to each item. There is a useful index, besides a comprehensive summing up and introductory chapters by the author. This volume, which could be useful for browsing, as well as for functional reference, certainly raises high expectations about its successor, which is to follow soon bringing the account up-to-date.
–D. ANJANEYULU

Scientists of Ancient India and their Achievements by Dr. O. P. Jaggi. Published by Atma Ram & Sons, Delhi. Pages 258. Price Rs. 10.

In these days when science has been gaining greater and greater sway over the thoughts and actions of men the world over, almost any contribution to it is bound to be greeted with applause. This applies as much to scientific literature as to scientific discovery. While in the West–and particularly in the U. S. A. –where breath-taking discoveries both in pure and applied sciences are being made with staggering speed, the book-markets are literally flooded with scientific books and journals, not only for the specialist but even for the laity, in less developed countries like India such books are few and far between. The rule of supply and demand holds good in this field also and it may be put up as one reason for it.

The book under review is probably the only one of its kind published yet in this country. For this reason, if for nothing else, it commands attention. For an Indian to make excursions–and even incursions–into his own hoary but hazy past and cull valuable and rare information and present it in an easy-to-read and easy-to-remember fashion is a truly creditable achievement. This should not be construed as narrow nationalism for, while many of the milestones in the progress of science in the West (to wit: invention of steam engine and of aeroplane) are, by and large, familiar to the science students of even Indian schools today, the remarkable achievements of ancient Indian scientists are either totally unknown to most of our science graduates or are shrouded in mystery.

Intense interest, compelling curiosity, patience and perseverance are the sine qua non of any worthy undertaking and Dr. Jaggi evidently had these in ample measure. What makes the narration objective and hence acceptable is his refusal to adhere to either of the two “extreme views”: one view dismissing “much of the contents of the Vedas as primitive nonsense” and the other claiming omniscience for our ancestors. The truth, implies the author, is somewhere between, although one finds it difficult to appreciate the author’s quoting of Max Muller to vindicate his own stand. Max Muller was impressed with Hindu philosophy and religion and religion attributing appreciation of ancient Indian science to him is rather out of gear.

A brief biographical account of every notable ancient scientist–medical men like Dhanvantari, Bharadwaja, Atreya, Patanjali, Susruta; astronomers like Garga, Aryabhatta, Bhaskara; alchemists like Nagarjuna; philosopher-scientists like Kanada, Kapila and others–has been given besides their distinctive achievements. The reader enjoys a fare of the lives and works of even some less-known scientists: Jivaka the physician; Salihotra the “Father of ancient Indian veterinary sciences”; Baudhayana the geometer of the Vedic Altars; Brahmagupta who gave zero its status; and a host of others. Each of these accounts inspires in its own way.

Several factual entries and episodes are interspersed throughout the book and the uninformed reader is sure to read them with avidity and derive great intellectual enjoyment.

In a note “About the Book” it has been complained that “in the books on history of science….almost no mention is made of ancient Indian science and scientists” and the causes for this have also been discussed in the text. While to a large extent the complaint is justifiable, it either ignores or is ignorant of some substantial contributions in this regard. For example, the Bibliography omits the monumental work of Will Durant in which a sizable section is devoted to ancient Hindu achievements in science. While a great deal of labour preceded production of Jaggi’s book, a little more regard for English would have satisfied fastidious readers.
–K. V. SATYANARAYANA

Towards Truer Democracy–manifestoof the self-denialist–by Vishwanath Mehta. Visvakala Publications, Agarwal Cottage, Gita Nagar, Simla-4. Pages 131. Price Rs. 7-50

The democratic way of life, and not merely the democratic system of government, has been found fault with by many of its friends as well as its foes. The writer of the present booklet is obviously of the first category, who is not satisfied with the empty spirit without the true spirit behind them. Much of the inspiration for his line of thought, which is well-meaning but vague, seems to have been provided by Prof. Laski’s remark that democracy had not yet been able to discover the proper institutions that would make its implementation a reality. Many would agree with his plea for separating position from wealth and power and influence from personal aggrandisement. But few would find comfort, for solving these problems, in his general protestations and naive exercises in wishful thinking. It is perhaps too late in the day to imitate the accents of Tolstoy and Thoreau or Shaw and Wells without a semblance of their learning or experience in life.
–A. D.

Indian Writing Today: A quarterly journal devoted to significant writing in India. Vols. I and 2. Editors: Prabhakar Padhye and Sadanand Bhatkal. Nirmala Sadanand Publishers, 35c, Tardeo Road, Bombay. Annual subscription In India: Rs. 32.

Thanks largely to the multiplicity of languages in this country, Indian readers are proverbially ignorant of what is happening in the literatures of the neighbouring regions. Even the better read of them, for no fault of theirs, are likely to be more familiar with the literary situation in England or America, Russia or France than that in another linguistic state in our own country. It will be difficult to find a sizable number of critics or readers who can claim to know at least a couple of languages besides their own and English. The last-mentioned language, by some historical accident, lucky or unlucky according to one’s own way of looking at things, still happens to be the only effective medium for the intellectual elite, unencumbered by parochial sentiment and regional prejudice. Quite a few periodicals like Triveni quarterly, Indian Literature, Quest and Poetry India and Sameeksha, besides weeklies like Thought, have a good record of useful work in this field.

The need for an intellectual-literary periodical, exclusively devoted to a critical understanding of the ever-growing literature available in the different Indian languages through the medium of English was being felt for quite a long time. Indian Writing Today edited by Messrs Prabhakar Padhye and Sadanand Bhatkal of which few issues have so far seen the light of day, is almost like a dream came true for the serious reader, specially interested in contemporary Indian literature. From what one could glean from the first two issues, it promises to be frank and outspoken, constructive as well as critical, stimulating and purposeful. Besides the method of survey of literary trends and biographical notes as a necessary introduction to the uninitiated reader, it lays the emphasis on textual criticism and local analysis. The striking feature is that it has a definite point of view and is quite uninhibited in its intellectual “commitment.”

Most of these characteristics could be found in the inaugural issue which provides a definite point of view on the part of each of the contributors, besides a variety of useful information. Ten of the major Indian languages are represented here by practising writers and perceptive critics who had contributed forthright articles, refreshingly different from the non-committal, “willing to wound but afraid to strike” sort of surveys popularised by some of the popular, safety-first magazines. The editorial has some very thought-provoking comments on the intellectual situation of the creative writer in India after freedom. Compared with the writer in pre-Independence India it says, “he is more self-conscious and more concerned with his destiny as a human being who is no mere part of a macrocosm,” which is very true! And that is why the situation is more complex than it was before.

The second number of this periodical is wholly devoted to a record of the proceedings of the Seminar on the Changing Idiom in Modern Indian Poetry held in Poona towards the end of 1967 under the auspices of the Centre for Indian Writers, of which one of the editors happens to be the director. The dominant impression that emerges from the well-documented papers read at this seminar is that of the ceaseless experimentation in progress in many of the languages. The “dialogue” idea seems to have caught on and indeed it might well gain momentum in due course, so that the periodical might be able to spearhead a new movement wide enough to cover creative and critical writing, as the editors hope it would.
–HEMLATA ANJANEYULU

TELUGU

“KAVIKOKILA” Duvvuri Rami Reddi’s Life and Work by K. V. Ramana Reddi. Published by Kavikokila Granthamala, Srinivasa Agraharam, Nellore. A. P. Pages 452. Price Rs. 7-50.

Over-rating and under-rating are likely to be as much a feature of personal assessments in the field of literature as of stocks and shares in the market-place. The late Mr. Duvvuri Rami Reddi, popularly known as ‘Kavikokila’ (and justly too), was one of the most under-rated Telugu poets in the first half of this century. There should have been more than one reason for this. While he as a writer of beautiful verse and vigorous prose, he seemed to be a shy and reserved man in personal life, not given to the shining brass and tinkling cymbal of self-advertisement, which come naturally to some of the more successful of contemporary poets. Added to this, he was not a particularly impressive reader of his own verse, in an age in which versifiers, with a stentorian voice and a flair for dramatisation, seemed to get away with their wares while genuine poets without them had often to take a seat. His output, quite varied and substantial when one looks upon it now, was not perhaps as voluminous as that of some others. And he never took it into his head to compose a Mahakavyato perpetuate his name by a magnum opus. But, why should he have to do it, if he had not the inner compulsion for a work of that kind? His native genius was presumably best suited to the lyric and the elegy, of which he did quite a few, of high quality. But the fact remains that, as a poet, he got rather less than what his real worth due just as many others seem to have got rather more than what should have been, the due of their real worth.

Long years after the poet’s death (in 1947 while yet in his early fifties), the author of the present volume had done his very best to give the reader a vivid and reliable account of his life, along with a fairly balanced, though obviously favourable, assessment of his many-sided achievement. In handling this project, which must have been largely a labour of love, the author had put in a good deal of strenuous homework, though he knows enough of the art of writing to be able to wear his learning lightly. The result is an extremely well-documented book that draws from all the available sources including the poet’s own letters, diaries and note-books, reminiscences of his friends and relatives, besides a variety of information lying apart in the old files of defunct periodicals and the books of other writers. With all that, it remains eminently readable. The material is used with discretion and organised according to a recognised method-familiar to the readers of modern literary biographies in the English language. The chapter arrangement and the appending of footnotes is intelligently done and the bibliography and index are quite useful. It would be no exaggeration to say that this is possibly the first modern biography of its kind, of a Telugu poet in the Telugu language.

The scientific method adopted by the author is in refreshing contrast to the mechanical compilation of opinions and mass accumulation of facts so common with the traditional biographies. The early chapters are devoted to a description of the peasant ground, against which the personality of the poet had developed along the lines of a rational individuality that was sensitive enough to respond to the mystic and imponderable values of a dream life in which fancy and imagination must have had an equal play. While Krisheevaludu(The Ploughman) and Paanasaala(Telugu rendering of the Rubaiyatof Omar Khayyam) and Gulistanremain the chief title to his fame in the public mind, there are many other works of equal, or even greater merit, which the author examines at length. Among them could be mentioned the long poem Nalajaaramma, Karshaka Vilaasamu (play–unpublished), Vanakumari, Palitakesamu etc. In fact, the author would like to give a higher place to some of the scattered lyrics (Khandakavyas), written at a comparatively mature stage in the poet’s literary career, and quotes chapter and verse to prove his point.

That he was no mere poet alone–not a bookish one, at all, with a one-track mind–but a many-sided personality equally interested in the intricacies of a radio receiver set and in the metaphysics of Sufi mysticism, in the romance of languages (he learned German, French, besides Bengali and Persian, on his own) and the adventure of literature, in the mechanics of practical farming and the exciting technique of film-production, is eloquently brought home to the reader. But the author seems to have been carried away too far by his ownenthusiasm about the poet’s versatility to compare him (casually though) with Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe. The outcome of a conscientious effort is not out of focus or proportion, but the impression that cannot be helped by the reviewer is one of a larger and brighter than life image.

Samvedana(Literary Quarterly in Telugu) April 1968. Edited by R. Ramachandra Reddi. Published for Yuga Saahiti, Madras Road, Cuddapah, Andhra Pradesh. Annual Subscription Rs. 5.

In Telugu, as in all the other languages the world over, infant mortality has become endemic to little magazines and literary periodicals. (Such world languages as English and French are no exception to this pernicious law of nature where special care by way of subsidy is not forthcoming.) But it does not argue the case for total contraception, as thepopulation problem does not resent itself in this field in forms so familiar to us elsewhere. The urgent need would rather seem to be in the direction of a concerted drive for more effective maternity and child-welfare measures. He would be a brave man indeed who would now launch a serious literary periodical on the perilous seas of an uncertain readership, where the sharks of sex and crime journals and the whales of the ‘popular’ illustrated weeklies have almost an unchallenged monopoly all that they survey. Theeditor and the publisher of the newliterary quarterly, Samvedana, are not obviously unaware of the dangers inherent in a situation where they are making a determined entry. On the other hand, they are onlytoo keenly sensitive to the whirlpools and vicious circles that threaten the existence of newcomers, as the introductory editorial makes it so clear to the reader.

No reader who has spent an hour or two with the opening number of this periodical, would deny that there, is more in it than mere bravery. (It did act like a vigorous tonic on the present reviewer, who finds most of the other stuff near at hand so diluted and insipid where it is not too palpably and sickeningly saccharine.) The fictional treatment of a single, identical incident (of a chaplet of wilted jasmines) by four different story-writers presents a new experiment, with interesting possibilities. Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao’s comment on it is a happy amalgam of mature judgment and candid expression as could be expected of him. The poems are healthy, uninhibited and essentially down to earth.

Literary criticism is often found to be the weakest link in periodical journalism. It is but fair to admit that it seems to me the strongest section here in this periodical. The reviews and review articles presented here, written by the editor himself, are among the best that I remember to have read in any Telugu journal in recent times.
–“CHITRAGUPTA”