Viswanatha: The Novelist

 

“Being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher and the poet. The novel is the one bright book of life” said D. H. Lawrence, the famous English novelist, with an artist’s pardonable licence. If there is anybody who can repeat it with justifiable pride among the Telugu writers of this century, it is Sri Viswanatha Satyanarayana, who authored about three score and ten novels of different categories and types–the masterpieces and milestones, the classics and commercials.

They have now become every Telugu reader’s heritage–an opportunity to take part in the magnificent adventure of the spirit. Despite all differences of plot, story and theme, the novels of Sri Viswanatha have all kept watch over man’s mortality; they have something everlasting to report to us about ourselves, and they report it in the syllables of art.

In most modern novels materialism seems to be the negation of life. These modern novelists have crowded out reality with the furniture of their novels; they had laid so much dull stress on environment, social setting–the fabric instead of the substance–that the essence of being had escaped them. The novels of Sri Viswanatha do not fall under this category. The meaning of real, the nature of reality gained new dimensions in the novels of Sri Viswanatha–where life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged. Life is depicted as luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope which surrounds man from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

The reality in the novels of Viswanatha is thus of a very different kind from that in many contemporary novels. Meeting it in prose fiction today (in Viswanatha’s novels) one has to approach it as he approaches the reality of a poem; with a response to its rhythms, its imagery, its timeless flow of memories and impressions.

Sri Viswanatha’s luminous style, a subtle handling of the undercurrents of consciousness, is an almost lyrical flow. This is too obvious in his novel Ekaveera. In his novels the range of implicit experience seems limitless.

The essential concern of Sri Viswanatha in his novels is with the character in itself; and because his characters are real, his novels survive. The characters, above all, solace the reader. We, who can hardly understand ourselves much less one another, meet in Sri Viswanatha’s world of novels a more comprehensible and thus a more manageable human race. The reader has a comforting illusion of understanding at least, the secret invisible truth of people.

The characters in the novels of Sri Viswanatha, more particularly those in Veyipadagalu, his magnum opus, are not created but found; they preexisted revealing themselves in his novels. What the reader has to do is to recognise the people of the novel as they play their roles in the story.

Sri Viswanatha is not fond of melodrama but he projects the reverberation of the thousand small shocks that make life palpable.

Reading Ekaveera or Veyipadagalu, we love, suffer, comprehend vicariously. These novels satisfy our hunger to share the news about human condition. The characters open their hearts to us. We are in torment with Setupati, Veerabhupati and Ekaveera; we learn that struggle is life itself; we come to the fruition of genius with him.

To read and understand Sri Viswanatha – empathy, imaginative sympathy, understanding of human values is necessary on the part of the reader as the characters grow larger than themselves, possibly larger than life. In Cheliyalikatta the common place youngman sophisticated and westernised in his thinking tries to disentangle reality from the nightmare engulfing himis a symbol of modern man, who has ceased to understand human destiny.

Beyond plot, story and theme the novels of Viswanatha contain something–the essence of all–which ishis personal idiom, his statement outside logic or casuality a statement poetic in that it is always its own excuse for being.

The theme of Veyipadagalu is the decline and fall of a Telugu generation–not by any pressure of outward circumstances but by psychological forces engendered by modern sophistication–chiefly by the emergence, with increasing force of westernised ideas and values of life–like loose living, laziness to a passionate yearning to be completely identified with new westernism.

Veyipadagalu has over a score of major characters and a large number of minor ones which are sharply individualized in appearance and temperament. Physical details add to the scene of reality; the novel is rich in reference to all aspects of life–a kind of a social enyclopaedia. This novel is an embodiment of social realism–an exhaustive study of a certain segment of society at a particular time and place in history, at work, in public life, in society and at home. In short it is a portrait of a whole society of the time.

Sri Viswanatha is not anti-progress. His respect for our ancient culture is not a blind admiration. He has not a closed mind – not jealous of the so-called modernists. Dharma Rao, the hero of Veyipadagalu, may look like arguing irrationally for some sophisticated modernists. His argument against the unauthorised tresspass and erosion of our culture by the enemies and is totally intended to safeguard our own cultural interests and not at all intended to persuade others to embrace or accept it.

One thing is very clear. In the name of social progress injustice, exploitation, blind emulation have become the order of the day. So many atrocities are committed. Sri Viswanatha exposed these into public gaze. His logic is of course sharp and words pungent. But the truth he has revealed, is unquestionable. His opinions need not, and are not binding on everybody. But he has succeeded completely in portraying the social realism of the times.

Some ultra modernists describe Sri Viswanatha as a reactionary and as an old traditionalist. Some interested people did their utmost to bring him and his writings into disrepute–out of ill-will, jealousy and lack of proper understanding.

One need not agree with Sri Viswanatha with whatever he writes. But before launching an attack on him, one has to make a deeper study. The communion of the story, the plot and the theme, the characterisation, the development of the story, the portrayal of the present day social circumstances and environs–or anything else is not against progress. Everything depends upon the spirit of love of national culture and patriotism. The author believes that large-scale industrialisation of the country does not solve our problems. He projects the Gandhian view that village reconstruction is essential without losing the ancient village arts and crafts and the inherent rural charm.

Dharma Rao, the hero, has once tried to massage the feet of his wife Arundhati. She objected. But he told her that man and woman are equals and that there is no place for a complex between them. Is this anti-progress? Mangamma was a fallen woman. She was not condemned or rejected as an earthly bitch. She was moulded into a penitant devotee–a woman of sacrifice. A closed-minded traditionalist will never do like this.

Ratnagiri belonged to dancing community. Girika was her daughter. They became ideal women worshipped by everybody. Nobody else can do it. The building up of the character of Ratnagiri as a woman of piety and her daughter Girika as a model of devotion and saintliness could never be done by a closed-minded traditionalist who is against progress.

Through and through the novel Veyipadagalu there was no objection to inter-caste marriages. Rameswara Sastry and Kumaraswamy married women of other castes. They led ideal lives. They lived happily and enjoyed life. This is not the viewpoint of a closed-minded traditionalist. There are several other instances. He is not against progress. He knows the secret of progress. He has boldly exposed the inner deception of those that always talk of progress while exploiting everything for personal gains. They are the enemies of progress.

Sri Viswanatha loves his characters so well that he lives in them. He does not despise any character. If the reader is perceptive enough, he can pluck out the heart of each man’s mystery.

There is no villain in the novel Veyipadagalu. But the position is occupied by a “viewpoint”–“Paradharma”–the alien culture. It is the conflict of our culture and the alien that comprises the theme of this novel.

The literary objectivity of the novels of Sri Viswanatha is mixed with the expression of this personal problem which always fascinated him–the rival claims of Indian culture and the alien culture to dominate the modern Indian type. To this theme he was to return repeatedly in later works.

This conflict is presented almost entirely from the Indian point of view–or so it seems first. There are some characters strong and articulate enough to project the other point of view.

Sri Viswanatha does not criticise his characters. He simply allows us to see how many lives can be warped or ruined in the attempt to live as they do.

On every page Sri Viswanatha has left his signature for us  to read. The oldest quotation–of Buffon’s–“the style is the man is most accurate with Sri Viswanatha.