Balagangadhara Tilak: ‘Highpriest of Beauty’

DR S. S. PRABHAKAR RAO
Andhra Education Service

Poetry during the twentieth century is as a whole a medley of voices, often mutually exclusive. The co-positioning of inherently antagonistic tendencies is characteristic of poetry nowa-days. The presence among the poets of the traditionalist and the modernist–even, for that matter, of traditionalism and modernism in a single poet, as in T. S. Eliot. for instance –is a fairly familiar phenomenon. Modern Telugu poetry too is an orchestration of a variety of voices, ranging from the cloyingly mellifluent to the raucously cacaphonic. Among the babel or voices one may identify the languid, husky voice lisping sweet inanities eulogising the celestialness of their beloveds, and the strident, insistent voices blaring out against inequity and inequality. Among the poets one may identify the classicist moving heavily attired in hoary metaphor and style and ‘the ultra’ pirouetting around in the mini-attire of language and grammar.

Complex and conflicting personalities and forces have been dominant in Telugu poetry during the present century. The classicist, Viswanadha Satyanarayana, who nevertheless tried his hand at a variety of literary forms including free verse, is essentially a citadel of the traditional. Srirangam Srinivasa Rao (Sri Sri), the spearhead of modernism, sought to rescue poetry from the ironclasp of tradition. Although the cavalier disregard for the structure of language–characteristic of some of the more extreme of the ultras nowadays –hasn’t let in with him, he experimented boldly with diction metre and structure of poetry in Telugu. In the choice of his themes, he exhibits truculent pro-lectarianism; his poetry continually champions the cause of ‘the betrayed brother’. The overtones of proletarianism in Sri Sri are essentially a reaction against the somewhat naive romanticism of D. V. Krishna Sastry, undoubtedly the most celebrated highpriest of the ‘romantic’ in modern Telugu poetry.

The two streams of ‘the romantic’ and ‘the proletarian’ have flowed–even overflowed–in Telugu poetry continually for over three decades, but almost always apart and mutually exclusive. The posture of antagonism between the movements hasn’t always contributed to the preservation of quality in poetry. A certain decline in the quality of poetry is evident inthe post-Sri Sri poetry: the poetry of the neoromantics tended to be a sort of ‘mellifluent irrelevancy’, while the poetry of the neo-proletarians tended to be a series of intellectual gymnastics or of downright scurrilousness. In either case, the voice of honesty has been either muted or totally absent. The important task of the recovery of significance, through a revival of the voice of honesty, was left to Balagangadhara Tilak, who could bring about a synthesis between the two streams. Tilak was temperamentally most suited for the job, since he combined in himself the aesthetic sensibility of Krishna Sastry and the proletarian sensitivity of Sri Sri. The infatuation with the beautiful, characteristic of the romantic poets and the agonized empathy with the underdog, characteristic of the proletarian poets, found a satisfying culmination and apotheosis in his poetry.

Tilak shared with the romantic poets a love for the beauty of perception and expression of the real. About poetry he says:

both when you spit spumes of fire
and when you shower ambrosia,
beauty and bliss are its chief goals.
“Modernism and Poesy”

Accordingly, he took care to evolve for himself a style of expression which set beauty as its chief criterion. This led him to describe his words as “beautiful belles playing about under the moonlight.” Kundurti, a leader of the Free Verse Movement in Telugu, in his illuminating introduction to Tilak’s anthology of poems, Amritam Kurisina Raatri (which won for Tilak posthumously the Sahitya Akademi award in 1969),refers to the inability of Tilak to free himself from the clutches of romantic poetic conventions. But it would appear, however, that his share of romantic sensibility saved him from the arid banalities of much of the latter day proletarian poetry. The distinctive quality of his poetry is the reconciliation of the apparently antagonistic responses to contemporary reality. As he declared his poetic credo
In “Manifesto” he certainly presented

the oceans of moonlight, scintillant
with the waves of glass...etc.,

but he was also intensely aware of

the sea-gulls of fathomless agony,
the blood vessels of the knights of Dharma–

His words accordingly are

the doves ofpity
drenched in the downpour of human tears!

Tilak’s sympathy extended to Toulon “stamped under the ferric footfall of the Nazi machine gunner;” he indicts finally,

Darlan, Petain et al!
–the leaders or decimation–
are like owls turned mute
in the darkness of authority. –“Toulon”

He also presented a moving picture ofthe miserable isolatoe,

who seeks to set right
the snapped strings of the violin,
the heart of the stilled clock
and the tattered wallet of dreams.          –“inexorable law”

Although Tilak succeeded in presenting pulsating portraits of the downtrodden, he was really at his best in recording the mute aspirations, timid adventures and “tumid apathy” of the faceless middle-class “anti-hero”, reminiscent for the most part of the young man carbuncular of Eliot. He projected with exquisite skill the lacklustre lives of the middle-class, in “flat life”, when he described the tribe of clerks, of teachers and of listless morons, who slip into

the cocoon of existence,
ruminating the half-chewed dreams,
caressing gently the half-extinguished life! – “flat life”

He also gives us a memorable picture of the postman, who disseminates all around him the joy of living but takes home his own packet of personal sorrow:

You knock on numerous doors,
but find no place to unburden your sorrow;
countless eyes look eagerly for you,
but none looks beneath the uniform.      –“For the Postman”

The exposure, through a study of English, to the more important movements in European thought influenced the quality and content of writing in many Indian languages. Tilak too profited by such an exposure. The poet who influenced his poetic style most was W. H. Auden. In fact, a poem of Tilak’s, entitled “C. I. D. Report” is a free adaptation of Auden’s poem, “The Unknown Citizen.” Tilak, however, went beyond Auden in the complexity of thought. Besides his sympathy for the underprivileged, humanism, which soars above the narrow bounds of race and nation, is an important component of his credo. He announces:

right foot on the North Pole, the left on the South,
I reign supreme the ends of the universe!...
I unfurl the unafraid flag of humanity today.
–“The Song of the Cosmos”

Suspicious of the relevance of age-old dogmas of religion, Tilak gave pride of place to the essential significance of man. He regretted that

theists, atheists, religious canons
and Intellectual postulates,
ignoring the essential man, discover
and sanctify eternal verities about Man.             –“law inexorable”

He declared

our sole ornament is our humanness,
fragrant like sandal paste.                                  –“A Hymn”

His love extended far beyond the confines of Andhra Desa, even of India. His sympathy went out to the plight of Toulon under the Nazi invasion; he also assumed for himself the role of a world citizen–even of a cosmic citizen. He Imagined:

the equator pierces through my heart:
betwixt my eyebrows circumambulates
the cosmic constellation.                                    –“The Song or the Cosmos”

He poured out through his voice the melody of Paul Robson as well as the lion’s roar in the jungles of Africa and finally declared

like a wreath fit to adorn the Lord of Future
I stand, disseminate his message
and reconcile the corners of the cosmos.
–“The Song of the Cosmos”

He also dreamed

standing amid
the pyramids of Egypt, the mausoleums of Babylonia
and the deathless ruins of Mohen-jo-daro!

–“The Conquest”

His flair for internationalism, however, was untainted by fashionable pretentiousness: he hauled the hypocritical, cosmpolitan bores over the carpet with engaging satire in his poem, “The Cosmopolitan.” He gave us the picture of the pseudo-internationalist, who

sipped “revisionist” vodka in Russia,
dined a “revolutionist” supper in China.
drank to the dregs both poesy and champagne
In the bistros of Paris;
...enjoyed to the full both nature and woman
in the orchards of Florence...

but finally concluded,

in the vast universe there are only two morons–
god and man;
looked at from any angle of your choice,
these are miserable failures!
–“The Cosmopolitan”

The sweep of his vigorous imagination is enriched by the vitality and freshness of his imagery. The images employed by Tilak both particularise and concretise his emotional and intellectual apprehension of reality. They are drawn sometimes from unusual source and yet ensure the chief criterion of his poetry-beauty of expression. A few memorable images may be mentioned.

In “Toulon” we have;
the city is asleep
on the bedspread of silence.

We are presented a vivid picture of callous society in the following lines:

when the pythons of darkness swallow the rabbits of light
and curl round the banyan tree of society...
–“inexorable law”

There is then the unusual image, when he writes:

the radium-coated numerals
on the dial of the wrist-watch
are the yellow eyes of the lynx of darkness.                   –“The Duet”

Almost every poem of Tilak’s is distinguished by an unusual turn of phrase or an unorthodox phrase. To the Telugu poetic diction, dominated for the most part by stale cliches and hackneyed figures of speech, Tilak’s imagery has brought a much-needed authenticity of expression.

Notwithstanding his deep concern for the under-privileged and his alignment with the humanist and internationalist movements in European thought, Tilak never deviated from his primary fidelity to Beauty; in all that he felt and bodied forth through the verbal icon, he always remained the highpriest of Beauty. He set forth his aim thus:

poetry must draw out
the internal resources of illumination,
must extend the spheres of consciousness ...
–“Modernism and Poesy”

And his poetry contributes bounteously to the extension of the spheres of consciousness in the poet and in the readers as well. Another aspect of his poetry, to which a translation cannot do adequate justice, is his admirable felicity of expression. One experiences optimum sweetness when one reads out his verse aloud; his ability to handle the linguistic equipment of Telugu, one of the most mellifluent of Indian languages, set a stylistic trend in Telugu, emulated by several younger poets or today. His mastery over the Sanskrit-component of Telugu, indicated in his use of expressions, like

            ooha uyuuhoikara khedanachana
            upanishadartha mahodhadhinihita ratna raasii
–“Culture Imperialism”

            chaladdhemanta varshanidagha ritu sakunta garuttu (The Lamp)

‘dayaapaaraavata’ (‘Manifesto’), Kavivachassavitrukaanti (‘The Song of Cosmos’), ‘udaatta surabhilaatta sayya sajjita’ (The Anguish’), ‘valaahaka chelanchala’(‘Song Immortal’), ‘nitya naimittika mridbhittika’ (‘flat life’), ‘jnaanamadhuuli’ (The Window), etc., succeeds in imparting to his style a certain laconical impressiveness. The Sanskrit-component of his style is not, as some progressives would insist, an indication of Tilak’s inability to free himself from the sway of romanticism nor is it a sort of foetal stage in the growth of modern colloquial diction in Telugu poetry. It is really his unique contribution to Telugu poetic diction–a masterly blend of the classical and the colloquial.

Although Tilak’s chief contribution to Telugu literature is undoubtedly in the sphere of poetry, he tried his hand at the other forms of literature as well. He wrote around half a dozen unusual and highly sensitive short stories. Particular mention may be made of the following: “His Desire” and “The Discomfitted.” Healso wrote a sparkling one-act play, “Suchitra Pranayam.” Hispublished letters reveal his extraordinarily conscious and intellectually vigorous personality. Tilak’s premature death, in 1965, cut short a career of greater promise. But the slender output left behind is sufficient to ensure for him a lasting place in Telugu literature.

In life, Tilak was extremely handsome, physically. In his writing too he elevated Beauty to the apogee of worship and lived as the devotee of beauty. He was

full handsome indeed,
verily bliss incarnate, and
put on a crown draped in silken dreams.
– “As Ambrosia Dripped”