Dr. C. R. Reddy: Epoch Maker in Telugu Criticism

Dr. C. R. Reddy
Epoch-Maker in Telugu Criticism

In the making of the modern age in Telugu literature, during the latter half of the last century and the beginning of this, three names stand out from the rest for the impact they have had on the minds of men of their own and succeeding generations.

To Kandukuri Veeresalingam goes the credit of being a pioneer in handling new art forms in prose, evolved (mostly by himself) largely on the English model.

That the drama is best written in the language of life which could be effectively used to depict the social problems of the day was proved by Gurazada Apparao, who also struck a new path in Telugu verse.

Possibly the first attempt at literary criticism in the modern sense, adopting a revolutionary approach to classical Telugu poetry, was made by Dr Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy, who is known to fame outside his region of birth as an educationist of vision, a speaker with the gift of phrase-making and as a political thinker ever in search of new ideas.

In fact, new ideas are a special characteristic of the Reddy touch, in whatever he said or did. New ideas, yes, but always within the framework of our cultural tradition, and in keeping with our native genius.

Quite early in life, while yet in his teens, he had the advantage of studying and reciting the Telugu Mahabharata under the expert guidance of his father, who was a devout, classical scholar by inclination, though a lawyer by profession. He retained this first love through his Cambridge days right up to the end of his life.

This great epic (rendered in Telugu by the classical Trinity– Nannaya, Tikkana and Errapraggada) was the major and decisive influence on his intellectual career. It formed the basis of his literary taste and provided the angle of vision for his critical outlook and frame of reference for his interpretation and judgment of works of art. This is, to some extent, true of the Andhras in general, for whom the Mahabharatahappens to be a closer favouritc than even the Ramayana, which holds the pride of place in the affections of all the others in this country.

Reddy’s predilection for the Mahabharatais based mainly on its vivid characterisation. He thinks that its characters–like Bhima, Arjuna and Draupadi, for instance–are more true to life than those of the Ramayana–Lakshmana, Satrughna and Sita, for example. They are not mere personifications of human ideals, and virtues, but full-blooded men and women–with all their faults and failings, lapses of temper and defects of temperament. They quarrel and make up, fight and repent–so like the brothers in a Hindu joint family. They do not just obey the father or the elder brother. Each of them has a mind of his or her own.

For Draupadi in particular, he is all praise. Her strength of character is derived from courage, resourcefulness and an active resistance to evil and injustice, worthy of emancipated Eve, if not the fighting sufragette. Who can question Sita’s strength of character–not Reddy by any means–but he thinks her a trifle too soft, shadowy and passive by comparison.

Like Satan in Paradise Lost, Duryodhana, with his regal dignity and personal majesty, draws his instant admiration. Karna and others too are of heroic proportions

Like the late Prof. B. M. Srikantaiya in Kannada–whose Aswatthaama and Karna reconsidered are famous–he brought to the conventional eyes of the Telugu reader a new way of looking at the Indian classics. This was traceable as much to an original outlook as to a study of the modern classics of the west.

The kind of Indian scholar who is contemporary in keeping himself abreast of the latest trends in Western thought without cutting himself adrift of his native moorings is almost a rarity now, as in the recent past. What is more common nowadays among the affluent intellectuals is a fair degree of sophistication in Western knowledge, co-existing with a too naive parochialism on the home ground or vice-versa.

C. R. Reddy was as closely familiar with Pope and Arnold, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Mill, Morley and Voltaire, as he was with Somanatha and Srinatha, Nannaya and Tikkana, Pingali Surana and Allasani Peddana, Chinnayasuri and Veeresalingam.

Unfortunately, he could not manage to keep himself so up-to-date in his later years. In fact, he did not show enough familiarity with the ideas of writers like Eliot, Richards and Leavis. Some would go to the extent of saying that his serious reading in literary criticism stopped with Arnold!

He was no creative writer manque, as a critic is cynically supposed to be. He was both a poet and a critic. The Kavitva Tattva Vicharamu (an enquiry into the philosophy of poetry), published in book-form in 1914 or so, had its origin in a paper read by him before the Andhra Bhashabhiranjani Sangham of the Madras Christian College in 1899. It started as a critical review of the well-known Prabandham(a species of fanciful literary composition in Telugu which can be described as poetic romance) of Pingali Surana, known as Kalapoornodayam.

Even as a college student, Reddy showed a maturity of taste, for beyond his years in matters literary. He had a poor estimate of the merit of this branch of writing, which was often too full of fantastic stories oflove and intrigue, involving princes and princesses, as also gods, goddesses and angels and nymphs with a prodigality of description and extravagance of imagery unheard of in the earlier classics of the East or the West.

He would rather relate them to the period of decadence in Andhra (for which the Restoration Period in England might offer a distant parallel), after the fall of Vijayanagar, though they might have had earlier beginnings. Among these Prabandhas, however, he made an exception of Surana’s work and had a special liking for Kalapoornodayam, which too he did not spare in his criticism.

Before embarking on a critical estimate of this work, Reddy laid down certain general principles, which can be considered as his canons of literary criticism. He sought to shift the emphasis in criticism from the external costume to the internal organism of Poetry, from philology to philosophy and from the body to the soul, as it were.

In a work of poetry, he gave the highest place to depth of emotion and integrity of imagination. He had no patience with the parade of scholarship and indulgence in the conventional imagery couched in the well-worn poetic diction. He ridiculed the verse-makers as drawing their imagery (moon-faced damsels, lilies, swans, lotuses and the rest) from lexicons and treatises on aesthetics rather than from an observation of real life. He laid greater store by unity (of time, place and action) in a work of art than the nine humours and eighteen descriptions laid down by the Sanskrit and Telugu Aalamkaarikas.

We have had enough of the illicit loves of gods and goddesses and the pangs of separation of kings and queens, he would say, and it was high time we did something about the joys and sorrows, the struggles and sufferings of the common people who are the salt of the earth.

He did not quite accept the Indian inhibition against a tragic ending to a story in a work ofart–be it an epic or a drama. He would think that the Mahabharataitself ended on a note of tragedy (it was at any rate the dominant note throughout the story), despite the formal conclusion.

Some of these theories, judgments and Obiter Dicta were, perhaps, disputable, but they could hardly be ignored.

These ideas, set in motion by the youthful Reddy, disturbed the placid waters of conventional scholarship in Telugu. He became the centre of violent controversy which raged for years and is not quite ended to this day. Some of the younger writes, influenced by the West, were on his side, but the more learned were ranged against him. He was praised and abused, but he was happy that he (and his ideas) got discussed. Poets and writers began to think. They no longer wrote and read as before. Vedam Venkataraya Sastri (whom he honoured as a Guru, though not a direct teacher) hailed him as a critic of promise, who would, however, do well to avoid the overstatement typical of youth.

At this distance of time, one might say that Reddy was only stating what are obviously the first principles of literary criticism, which should be commonplace enough to the modern student. But it took a few decades for many to realise their universal validity.

Among the Telugu classics, next to the Mahabharata, the one that drew Reddy’s attention most was the Ranganatha Ramayana, in Dwipada (or rhyming couplets), popularly attributed to a man called Ranganatha. Reddy does not give credence to popular belief nor does he accept the traditional theory. As early as 1919 he dismissed Ranganatha as a myth and a concoction. He also held that no evidence capable of overthrowing the direct evidence contained in the Ramayana itself was forthcoming and the usurpation of Gona Buddha’s authorship was unjustifiable.

Gona Buddha Reddi, according to him, was a prince of Royal blood, belonging to a dynasty of feudatory chieftains, under the Kakatiya rulers, who lived in the thirteenth century, composing the work around 1240 A. D. He had his own theory about the derivation of the name Ranganatha, which does not belong to the author.

This theory has not been able to win universal agreement among the research scholars. But, on the beauties of work and the originality of its author, however, there could be no two opinions. “There are many Valmiki Ramayanas in Andhra”, he wrote, “but only one Telugu Ramayana, namely Gona Buddha Reddi’s. With what wonderful art and power he has incorporated all the folk legends, into Valmiki’s epic!”

Ranganatha Ramayana is but one ofthe literary treasures that Reddy claims for Western Andhra. Among the others he includes the ballads, Palnati Veracharitra, Katamaraju Katha and the like, and many of the other Yakshaganasand Dwipadasand the bulk of Veersaiva literature.

The two great saint-poets with a prophetic insight and zeal for social reform, Vemanaand Pothuluri Veerabrahmam, also hailed from this region. It is part ofhis thesis that the popular type ofTelugu literature (Desi), with a mass appeal flourished in Western Andhra, covering the Ceded District. (Rayalaseema) and Telangana, while most ofthe scholarly, classical type (morga) with an appeal to the intellectual elite, grew in Eastern Andhra (or the Circars districts.)

Speaking of modern Telugu literature in general, irrespective of regional considerations, Reddy was happy that it had come out of the banal grooves of artificiality and decadence into which it had sunk during the medieval period ofthe Prabandhas. An impenitent classicist himself in the mater ofform and language, he was enthused by the new efflorescence in a bewildering variety of forms.

As a critic, Reddy had rescued critical thinking on literature from the rut of traditional scholasticism. To the serious student, he had given a new perspective; to the conscientious critic a new set of values. He was, indeed, the first of the new critics.

To establish the virtue of tragedy in poetry, as it were, Reddy composed a long narrative poem entitled Musalamma Maranamu celebrating the life and death of a young woman of virtue (of a village in Rayalaseema), who sacrificed herself for the welfare of the people of her village. Musalamma, incidentally is the name of that young lady and does not mean “an old woman”, as might be mistakenly supposed by those who had not read the poem.

Written in 1899, while he was not quite out of his teens, it won for him the poetry prize in the college. For its restrained emotion, natural description, and polished style, it is considered worthy of a mature poet at least twice his age. It is interesting to remember that this was composed at least a decade earlier than Gurazada’s Mutyala Saramulu and quite a few years before Rayaprolu’s earliest work in the new poetry. Though a traditionalist in verse form, he had a liking for native Telugu metres in preference to the Sanskrit Vrittas.

The notable features of the poem are

1)      It has a social theme with a contemporary relevance, viz., the willing sacrifice of an individual for the collective well-being of the village;
2)      It is an experiment, a daring innovation with a tragic ending, not favoured by what is regarded as conventional poetic practice;
3)      The characterisation of the heroine is realistic and marked by propriety, with the emphasis on the qualities ofthe heart, like sense of duty, loyalty and tenderness, rather than on the description of physical features.

Among his shorter poems, already published are:

1.      Dedicatory verses for his Bharata Artha Sastramu (1911), republished in 1958. These are of personal significance, as they cherish the memory of a beloved who remains nameless. Classical in form, they are romantic in substance, trying to capture a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. A good example of emotion recollected in tranquillity.
2.      The prefatory verses, attached to Kavitva Tattva Vicharamu (1913) are in the form of a conventional filial tribute to his father, a scholar of noted integrity;
3.      Ampakaalu(1919): Eight tearful verses written to mark the send-off he had to give his niece and adopted daughter, Sanjanti Kumari, on her marriage. The tender, paternal sentiment is reminiscent of the feelings of Sage Kanva for Shakuntala.
4.      Bharata Prasamsa (1919) is a collection of verses in praise of Andhra Mahabharata, with a promise to himself to write a critical commentary, which, in the event, he never did.

In prose, the major work to Reddy’s credit is a popular treatise on Indian Economics, Bharatiya Artha Sastramu, published in 1913. It is noted forits preciseness of expression and lucidity of exposition, though in content it may have dated, in view of the later researches in the subject. The Vyasa Manjari is but a disjointed collection of prefaces to other people’s books and miscellaneous essays and speeches. They show him as a critic of taste and discrimination (rasika) and a reader of sympathy and imagination (Sahridaya), but they remain only scattered gems and do not make an impressive garland.

It is a matter of surprise that this champion of the common man in literature could not reconcile himself to the use of spoken Telugu in writing. He spoke like a book, for all his simplicity, flashes of ready wit and strokes of spontaneous humour. I used to think of him as a Fabian Socialist in the field of letters, a revolutionary in coat-tails and top hat. He was a meticulous conformist in style, but an uncompromising individualist in his approach to any subject.

Reddy compels attention as a dynamic figure, a significant landmark, comparable, in many ways, to pioneers of informed modernism like B. M. Srikantaiya in Kannada, B. R. Rajam Iyer in Tamil, Ramachandra Shukla in Hindi and Michael Madhusudan Dutt in Bengali. To understand him well is to understand the confrontation of different traditions–the European and the Indian at one level and the Aryan and the Dravidian at another.

Unfortunately, as in life, so in literature, C. R. Reddy’s initial promise was hardly fulfilled by later achievement. He could have left a lasting commentary on the Mahabarata, for which he was eminently qualified, or a definitive history of Telugu literature, among other things, but he did not have the stamina or spirit of concentration required for sustained work of that magnitude. He worked by fits and starts–though the fits were original and the starts were brilliant. His contribution, rather slender in volume, was vital and significant in quality. It has burned itself into the consciousness of the Telugu student, while that of many an author of more than a hundred books is luckily enough, justly forgotten.