The Kavisamraat

            “Naan Rishih Kurute Kaavyam”

“One who is not a sage cannot create literature.”

A study of the life of Rabindranath Tagore reveals that Gurudev had been conscious of his greatness even in his boyhood. He had an overwhelming feeling of his superiority over his environment, a feeling that he was head and shoulders above all those that moved around him, a hunch that one day his greatness would be recognised and that recognition would bring honour to his homeland. He expressed this awareness in his letters to Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, while the latter was in England.

In a letter long before the founding of Santiniketan, Rabi Babu wrote to Jagdish Babu in London that one day the conceited western scholars would cringe before them to seek enlightenment in the ashram they were going to start. This was how young Rabindranath envisaged his own and the future of his distressed country long before he became Gurudev. His vision was realised when Santiniketanbecame an international university and the Nobel Prize for literature crossed the Suez and reached him in his Abode of Peace, quite sometime after he himself had lost the glamour for the covetable world-honour.

I know that Viswanatha Satyanarayana feels the same way as Tagore of the belated honours that have been conferred on him one after another: Kavisamraat, Kalaaprapurna, Padmabhushan, the Sahitya Akademi award and, the last but not the least, the Jnanpith National Award for literature. In his seventy-sixth year, settled in his cozy home on the banks of the sacred Krishna, far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, he is looking inward in man’s upward march. The mellowed light that he visualises leaks out in a successive volumes of prose and poetry, a perennial stream that had its birth sixty-two years ago ever-widening into a veritable Viswanatha Sahitya Sagaram.

Unique Personality

During my long, affectionate and admiring association with this unique personality, I discovered that Satyanarayana has the same sense of superiority as Tagore had. He told me once: “I am sure I will have my recognition one day. I am also sure I will get sufficient money to bequeath to my children.” True. He is, perhaps, one of the few Telugu writers that make money by producing high-class literature. When he was told of the latest award he said: “A sum of one lakh rupees is big money for me.”

That irreverent remark reveals the man. You can always depend upon Satyanarayana to say the unexpected and the un-pleasant, though true, in private audience or public platform. This apparent unsocial quality emerges out of an extraordinary sense of superiority over those around him, a consciousness of his profound scholarship and matchless brilliance that most often make his writing pedantic, pedagogic and showy.

Satyanarayana has a veneer of conceit. In his Ramayana, for which he is given the Jnanpith award, he describes himself as a high-souled person–Braahmimayamurti. Even the greatest of Telugu poets, Nannaya and Thikkana, he says, had not the enviable reputation of having a disciple of his stature as his guru (by courtesy), Chellapilla Venkata Sastry. This, of course, is poetic privilege. Another Telugu poet Srinatha had said: “The poets in Heaven are shuddering as Srinatha is repairing there.” Viswanatha is cast in the same mould.

Detached Pilgrim

Yet, there is not a trace of this ego throughout the length and breadth of his long and lovable epic, Srimad Raamaayana Kalpavrikshamu. One meets only a humble devotee in quest of divinity. In fact, the poet is absorbed and dissolves himself in the admirable narrative. Viswanatha is a paradox of paradoxes. Like the Indian mind and the Indian philosophy he seems full of contradictions. His mind and soul wander in the Vedic woods of karma and the Upanishadic ashrams of God-realization in the midst of a voracious reading of western literature including Perry Mason and regular speculation on the cotton market. And yet these are foibles of a fastidious sadhaka, a detached pilgrim in the highways of self-realisation.

Viswanatha Satyanarayana was born in an orthodox and opulent Brahmin family of Nandamuru in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. He is the eldest of three brothers. His father, Sobhanadri, was so charitable in his life that he left his children to the charity of others and the compassion of Lord Siva, whom he brought from Varanasi and installed in his village. Satyanarayana was educated at Masulipatam where he came into contact with Chellapilla Venkata Sastry and K. T. Rama Rao, both, of whom can be described as his gurus. Venkata Sastry, the poet of poets, was the first State Poet Laureate in Telugu. Kanukolanu Trivikrama Rama Rao, a Sanskrit scholar and teacher, renounced the world and as Vimalananda Bharati became the head of the Courtallam Math. The disciple has inherited the patent poetic, genius of Venkata Sastry and the latent spirit of renunciation of Rama Rao.

A self-made man, Satyanarayana is a Master of Arts in Telugu and Sanskrit of the University of Madras. At a grand reception in his honour in Calcutta where he was crowned under the auspices of the Bangla Sahitya Parishad and the Andhra Saraswata Parishad he delightfully surprised the learned and cultured audience by a long Sanskrit oration. It was extempore and admittedly the first; attempt in his life. The provocation was a written citation speech in Sanskrit by Dr. Gowrinath Sastri, Principal of the famous Calcutta Sanskrit College. At the college the next day, where he was invited and confronted by mighty pundits, Viswanatha came out in flying colours by his intimate knowledge of Tarkaand Mimamsa.

Patriotic Scholars

His stay in Masulipatam at an impressionable age brought him into contact with patriot scholars like Mutnuri Krishna Kopalle Hanumanta Rao and Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, founders of the Andhra National College where Satyanarayana had a spell of teaching service. He has been a teacher all his life, and made his living by that profession. He was a lecturer in Sanskrit and Telugu at Masulipatam and Guntur and was the head of the department of Telugu at the college in Vijayawada. He retired from service as the Principal of the college in Karimnagar.

Though Satyanarayana did not figure very prominently in the national struggle for freedom, he is an intense patriot and a scrupulous khadi-wearer. He is one of the greatest patriotic poets of the land, who inspires the young by recalling the glory that was Ind. There is not a single historical place or heroic episode in the Telugu land of which he has not sung with an infectious fervour, vigour and vitality. He deplores the present-day decadence and inaction. He sings with nostalgia of the days when man had regard for eternal values.

Satyanarayana began to write in his fourteenth year and has ever since been conscious of the high and distinguished quality of his work. He continues to write. Apart from the rare variety and excellence of his writing, his exuberance is astonishing. In sheer bulk, he is unequalled in the entire range of modern Indian literature. In addition to his greatest work, the Raamaayana, he has to his credit more than ten to twelve volumes of lyric, narrative and heroic poetry; three or four volumes of exquisite ballads, a dozen Satakams, for which he won the Sahitya Akademi Award; a few volumes of short-stories, half-a-dozen plays, literary criticism including prefaces to ancient and modern writings and above all, more than sixty novels, each of considerable bulk.

Andhra University Award

His Veyipadagaluwon him the award of the Andhra University forty years ago. This colossal composition depicting the change from the pastoral to the urban civilisation in the Telugu land ranks among the best novels in world literature like Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe. Veyipadagalu had recently been rendered into Hindi by Sri P. V. Narasimha Rao, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Viswanatha intends to write at least one hundred novels. The geography of his novels, like the Ramaayana, extends from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

He can thrill a child by presenting a picture in nursery rhyme of a squirrel on the coconut tree. He can perplex a pundit by unmouthable and impossible Sanskrit complexes. In between these extremes, any single composition of his, in prose or poetry, reveals his distinct originality in style and context. He has always something to say and says it in his own way. He is never dull but ever provocative. A casual reading is not enough to understand the depth of his thought and the beauty of his expression. One should read Satyanarayana many times over. His poetry has the glorious simplicity of a dew drop on a lotus leaf andthe awe-inspiring majesty of Mount Kailasa. Hisprose is simple and lucid. It runs in ripples like the crystal waters of the descending Ganga at Hrishikesh.

Greatest Writer

He is undoubtedly the greatest living writer in Telugu. When personal rivalries fade out, old judgments and assessments reviewed, when Telugu language becomes more popular with the Telugu people, when literary standards grow higher than at present, it is quite possible that Viswanatha may be classed as the greatest writer of all times. The very variety, excellence and vastness of his work must give him this place. There is no literary technique or type which he has not experimented upon and enriched. The old writers travelled on foot, bullock-cart and horse . Satyanarayana lives in the age of space travel.

The older poets had only Sanskrit as their drop behind them while Satyanarayana has, in addition, the entire west knowledge and literature at his . He has the depth of bygone centuries plus the width of the twentieth century. While most of his contemporaries have ceased to write and are struggling to publish their meagre collected works, Satyanarayana is still writing with a surprising freshness and vigour. The mature mind promises to give more.

Six years ago, Veyipadagaluwas considered for the Jnanpith Award. It did not win. This year, Satyanarayana’s greatest work, the epic, Srimad Raamaayana Kalpavrikshamu by securing the award has placed Telugu language on the Indian map. Viswanatha Raamaayanais not only the essence of the genius of India, but also the literary genius of the author. The poet is glad he had not got the award six years ago but got it now for his life-work. The creation of the Raamaayanais in itself a Tapas, which, he told me, had given him a variety of aesthetic and spiritual experiences. The fruit of these is the Raamaayana, which places him in the grand of literary sages like Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa.

Western Literature

In this stupendous work, Viswanatha achieves the compassion, the decorum, the simplicity and depth of Valmiki ; the sweep and width, the vivid characterisation and dramatic presentation of Vyasa, and the romantic beauty, the rhetorical craftsmanship and the lyrical grace and diction of Kalidasa. To this combination of classical splendour of the Orient he adds the Occidental finish. With his acquaintance of western literature from Homer to Huxley, Satyanarayana’s techniques of presentation have gained a variety, precision and richness unknown to Telugu poets of the past generation.

His Raamaayanais, therefore, a modern classic, a harmonious blending of the ancient and modern techniques of literary expression and presentation. The unique command of language with his characteristic coinages, the dramatic narration of sequences and the utter reverence with which the poet approaches his task are a few of the outstanding features of the work. Where Valmiki suggests, Viswanatha visualises. The story of Sita and Rama, the first literary composition in the world, first presented by the twins, Lava and Kusa, in a pastoral entertainment with dance and music, acquires in the hands of Viswanatha a cinematic dimension.

His approach to the delineation of the grand women of the Aryan concept Arundhati, Ahalya, Kausalya, Kaikeyi, Mandhara, Sabari and above all Sita, mother-incarnate, is so exalting and at the same time intensely human with sentiments representing the lofty womanhood in the cultured homes of India. Then his Rishis–Viswamitra, Vasishta, Goutama, Satananda, Bharadvaja and above all Parasurama are colossal figures that walk and talk across the canvas with the dignity of the gods.

The meeting of Parasurama the outgoing, and Rama, the incoming incarnations of Vishnu, is full of tense drama. One feels the author is projecting himself through the mighty wielder of the fatal axe, Parasurama.

In the woodlands with Sita, Rama and Lakshmana, the poet lives and makes one live with the rishis, the rishipatnisand the virgins of the ashramas. The author is one with the flora and fauna of the forests of the Deccan. The characterisation of Jatayu, the bird-king, is so moving and elevating. The treatment of the Vanarasand the Rakshasasgets the same respect and reverence. The animate and the inanimate are humanised. The epic throughout is the happy nuptial of the mundane and the divine. The scene Rishyasringa and the courtesans is full of innocent humour and entertainment. One is familiar with the amorous exploits of Sri
Krishna and the Gopis but not of the intimate marital affection of Sita and Rama. One wonders whether they ever made love to each other at all. Viswanatha presents this pure love so deftly and delicately that the utter humanness of the incarnate couple is brought home to everyone.
Sure Foundations

Most of these fineries that make Viswanatha’s Raamaayanascintillating reading, are not inValmiki. But Valmiki is the clear visible frame and sure foundation. The design is Valmiki’s and the super-structure is Viswanatha’s. The author says, it is his own vision, his own experience and observation and so his own Raamaayana. So it is.

Yet, I am not sure Viswanatha Raamaayanawill become as popular as the Bhaagavatamof Potana. All over India it is the story of the Raamaayanathat is most popular, whether it is the Hindi version of Tulasidas or the Tamil version of Kamban. In the Telugu land, for some reason or other, the story of the Mahaabhaaratais more popular. The author of the nee Telugu Raamaayanasuffers like the other classical writers under the handi-cap of the semi-literacy of the present-day Telugu people. Until this shortcoming is removed, Viswanatha’s immortal work will continue to be the feast of the highly literate few. That does not in the least, lessen the greatness of the poet or his epic.

Viswanatha Satyanarayana appears to believe in the evolution of universal Brahminism. In a powerful short story, “The dog at the Maakli Fort,” he poses the question: “Do you need good breeding and pedigree only for dogs and horses but not for human beings?” The original Vedic aspiration appears to be the evolution of a higher and purer race with a pedigree. Hence the Varnashrama Dharma. History tells us that this experiment carried on in the Indo-Gangetic plains centuries ago has failed.

The unravelling of the miracle of the gene, as the mystery of the nucleus, may perhaps tell us that the ancient experiment was rational and scientific. But in a world where in the name of equality we hug to sentiment and prejudice, the science of genetics remains vulgar. But nothing can stop the proud poet from creating his own Utopia. Kavi also means Brahma, the creator. The poet becomes a poet when he becomes prophetic. Of the greatness of the poet in society Viswanatha is rightly conscious.  

–Courtesy Andhra Pradesh