Rayaprolu Subba Rao An Epoch-maker of Telugu Poetry

RAYAPROLU SUBBA RAO

An Epoch-maker of Telugu Poetry

Men of letters in Andhra, while unanimously agreeing that Gurazada Appa Rao (1861-1915) is the precursor of the Modern Age in Telugu literature, do not fail to mention Rayaprolu Subba Rao as the epoch-maker and founder of a new school of Telugu poetry. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, writing from Calcutta University in the year 1939, admired Rayaprolu’s remarkable powers as an author and found it safe to prophesy that “his work will mark an epoch in Telugu literature.” The only Jnanpith Award winner in Telugu, KavisamraatViswanatha Satya­narayana, acknowledged him as “the Grand Sire of lyrical poetry in Telugu” (Bhaavakavitva Pitaamaha) and observed that “He gave to the Telugu people a poetry which may be described as one of the most beautiful in its annals. Sweetness was inherent in everyone of his utterances. I wrote my poem Andhra Prasasti drawing inspiration from him.” Sri Sri, the maker of the Progressive Age and later Revolutionary Age in Telugu poetry, in one of his lighter vein satirical poems, called him “A Milestone.” Vaitaalikulu(The Harbingers), a representa­tive anthology of modern Telugu poetry published in 1935, begins with Rayaprolu’s poem on the Motherland Bharat. Thus we find that there are two epoch-makers as far as Modern Age in Telugu literature is concerned. This is so because Rayaprolu, whose arrival on the literary scene was late, being very much younger than Gurazada in age, complemented the work begun by Gurazada who had diverse interests, having been a poet, a playwright of eminence, a brilliant essayist, a letter-writer, an epigraphist, a champion of the cause of spoken language and an adviser to the Vizianagaram princely household, all simultaneously, whereas Rayaprolu’s only preoccupation was poetry and nothing else except his jobs, and hence with his ground he was properly equipped in certain respects, apart from possessing a unique diction and imaginative gifts to contribute a poetry which was unheard of before, and Gurazada’s domain was entirely different.

Rayaprolu has many firsts to his credit to be called an epoch-maker. He wrote poems which are models of unprecedented beauty and simplicity. He brought the Andhra rural environ­ment along with its intimate picture of Telugu life and culture into Telugu poetry and thus produced poetic descriptions which conjure up scenes of great picturesqueness. His Khanda Kavyas (short poems) written in traditional but simple metres and their manner of composition became models for the later Telugu poets for their narrative poems. He was the first to sing the past glory of the Andhras exhorting them to action when they did not even have a separate State and by 1913 he could have the vision of a unified Andhra Desa and his poems recited at a gathering of Andhra stalwarts who were deplorably divided on the demand for a separate Telugu State, united them and hence he is known as essentially a Telugu poet. At the same time he exhorted his countrymen to “praise their motherland Bharat in whichever land they stepped in and whichever office they assumed or what­ever others said.” He gave the ordinary woman the highest place, nay the position of a goddess, in his writings, while during the Prabanaha period, a woman was a pleasure-doll. He proposed the doctrine of “A-malina Sringara” (Untainted Love) in his love poems. He was the first to write treatises in verse of traditional metres in support of his theories on Rasa in poetry and also expounding his doctrine. He was the first to write an elegy in Telugu which he did when Gopalakrishna Gokhale passed away in 1915. He was the first to translate Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyatinto Telugu in 1924. He laid the path for the later Bhaava Kavulu (Lyrical poems) in Telugu in respect of ideals, themes, imaginative skills and in handling the language, especially the power of phrasing, picking up words which were around but which did not gain currency and in so doing “he imparted new colours, fresh taste and a delicate fragrance to such of the words”, as observed by Devulapalli Krishna Sasiri. Profound presentation of Indian culture and depiction of Telugu life with all its charms are the hallmarks of his poetry.

Rayaprolu Subba Rao was born in Match 1892 in a village in Guntur district. As a boy he met at Kakinada Sir Raghupati Venkataratnam Naidu, one of the leaders of the Brahmo Samaj movement in Andhra and an educationalist of repute. The boy got admission to the fourth form with a free scholarship, but he could complete his Matriculation only in 1910, after which he left for Hyderahad for higher studies. In between, he worked as a columnist for the Andhra Kesari, then being edited by the great historian Dr. Chilukuri Veerabhadra Rao. At Hyderabad, he could get a seat in the Nizam College, but before completing his college education and obtaining a degree, he left for Madras to work as one of the Assistants of the first Telugu encyclopedia then being compiled by that giant among scholars, Komarraju Lakshmana Rao. In the movement that was started by the Andhra Mahasabha for the formation of a separate Andlua State, his poems eulogising the past history of Andhras and also repeatedly telling them that their glorious history has not died, stirred the Telugu masses as never before and he was hailed as the Poet of the Andhra Movement. In the Christmas of 1914, he went to Santiniketan to pursue further studies at the feet of Rabindranath Tagore and a point to be noted here is that the disciple was already a recognised poet and that too in the path of Gurudev. Probably he belonged to the first batch of the Andhra youth to travel all the way to Bolpur for the thrilling experience of a Gurukula education started in those early times when idealism and a sense of purpose dominated the mind of the Indian educated classes.

Santiniketan Days

His Santiniketan days were memorable in more than one respect. He remembered Tagore blessing him, placing his hand on his head and “his feeling at that moment as if Goddess Saraswati gently touched his head.” He even remembered an incident of the Santiniketan days when one evening he along with Mr. W. W. Pearson, met Gurudev at his residence “Uttarayana”. Rayaprolu was carrying in his hand Goethe’s “Faust”, upon which Gurudev remarked: “You seem to have been nearer to a tender flame.” Rayaprolu who did not come across that line till then, could not follow what Gurudev said. The next day Mr. Pearson explained to Rayaprolu that by “tender flame” was meant a young woman, and it appeared to him as a striking expression, because by putting together two words, opposite in sense to each other, the German poet created a lovely sense, and he (Rayaprolu) immediately recollected Jagannatha Pandita Rayalu’s phrase “taruna tapam” which also means tender flame and he was struck by the similarities of expression of the two savants and said to himself: “The bird of imagination of the Gurudev can sing the morning song at the dawn like a Chakravaki (the female of the poetical Swans) and also wail like the pangs of separation felt by the lovers in the evening twilight.”

In due course of time, Rayaprolu was appointed the first Telugu Professor of Osmania University at Hyderabad and later he was for some time the Head of the Telugu Department of Sri Venkateswara University at Tirupati. He passed away at Secunderabad on June 30, 1984, at the ripe old age of 92.

The Two Influences

Before proceeding to refer to his poetic career, it would be worthwhile to mention the two influences on him that shaped the poet and the idealist in him long before he left for Santiniketan to be exposed to Gurudev’s all-pervading influence. His maternal uncle Avvari Subrabmanya Sastri was a scholar in Sanskrit and Telugu and had translated Dandin’s Kaavyaadarsamuin Telugu verse. Sastri was also a poet and was skilled in Avadhaana Vidya (the art of performing feats of memory and extempore versifica­tion on a given subject). Rayaprolu not only studied critically Kalidasa’s Abhijnaana Sakuntalam and Bhavabhuti’s Uttara Ramacharitam whh the guidance of his uncle, but also became an adept in Avadhaana Vidya and began to perform Avadhaanams joining his uncle. But he soon realised the futility of such Avadhaanams as they left no written word for record and gave it up. Otherwise he would have remained just an Avadhaani and modern Telugu poetry might have gone a-begging a path-finder. But what he thoroughly learnt from his uncle not only benefited him in versification with ease but left an impact on him in the matter of his ideology. In the two Sanskrit plays referred to above, the predominant Rasa or sentiment is love in separation (Viyoga Sringara) and later when he became a full-fledged poet, he not only showed an inclination but also became a strong advocate of the two Rasas–Sringara and Karuna. Both Sakuntala and Sita, the heroines of the two works are the women who were abandoned by their husbands and both proved their chastity and character by undergoing difficult ordeals. This made the budding poet realise the lofty and exalted status of the woman.

The second personality was his aunt Anasuyamma who was an accomplished lady with a good taste and fine sentiments and who was responsible for his upbringing from his infant days. One day the young student finished reading out to her the story of Anasuya of the Hindu mythology. After listening to the story, she said: “Look here, my child, have you noted how the Triumvirate (Brahma, Vishnu and Maheswara) took the shape of sucklings in a cradle when a woman looked at them with the eyes of a mother? If such kind of sentiments and emotions were to be the order of our literature, would not the vessel of love be full to the brim? But a peep into any book of ours these days will show that these males write. I know not, what sort of umpteen things about a woman!” At that very moment, Rayaprolu made up his mind and was determined that a poet should give due respect to woman in his poetry and that was the main reason for his depicting his heroines who were ordinary young women as if they were celestial beings who could show the way out to a forlorn male. Long after that, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday when he was felicitated by lovers of poetry at Hyderabad, he recollected the incident and remarked: “That was the drop of nectar for all of my tunes that released themselves from my voice.” It was at his aunt’s instance that Royaprolu translated Sankaracharya’s hymn Bhaja Govindam Into Telugu in the same metre as that of the Sanskrit original.

Poetic Career

Rayaprolu Suhba Rao’s writings can be classified into three main categories: 1. Translations or adaptations 2. Original poems 3. Treatises in verses and prose in support of his doctrines and other views on language, poetry, Rasa or aesthetics, etc.

He wrote the narrative poem Lalitain 1909 which is based on Oliver Goldsmith’s Hermit. It was quite an independent adaptation being in the Telugu translation tradition of Sanskrit classics and was acclaimed by the scholar Rama­kanthacharya as “the first successful attempt on the part of a Telugu poet to sing the glories of sacred passion of love under the direct inspiration of the votaries of English Muse and as such marks a new epoch in the development of modern literature.” The Telugu author took liberties with the original in such a manner that the adaptation strikes as if it is an original Telugu poem, conceived and executed as such. He bas taken the heroine to a high pedestal and made her dwell there, imparting her grace, dignity and nobility. A significant feature of the poem is that glimpses of his later philosophy of love, especially his well-known doctrine of “A-malina Sringara” (Untainted Love) can be found in it. Of course, they are just traces and not fully developed. Another remarkable feature of this poem is that the beginnings of Romantic Poetry can be seen clearly in it, and as such the poem acquires a claim to be the first love-poem in Telugu with ordinary people as characters, with the imprints of the characteristics of English Romantic Poetry in it. The style is so mature and the descriptions so novel, that Dr. C. Narayana Reddy, in his brilliant doctoral thesis entitled “Tradition and Experiment in Modern Telugu Poetry”, is of the opinion that “there should not be any disagreement on anyone’s part if I say that Lalitais the first new Telugu poem.”

Rayaprolu’s next poem was Anumatipublished in 1910 which again is an adaptation, this time from Tennyson’s Dora. It is a slight work. In his prefatory verse to this poem, the poet said that he rendered it in Telugu “with a view to reveal to the Telugu intellectual world a new kind of poetry.” Thus it is seen that Rayaprolu was yearning for a new type of poetry in Telugu in traditional metres since his high school days and that he was not content with what was appearing around and amidst him.

Later he translated Sankaracharya’s Soundarya Lahari into Telugu verses and also the Sundara Kanda of Valmiki’s Ramayana in lyrical mode. His Telugu rendering of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyatunder the title Madhu Kalasamu in 1924 (not directly from the Persian original, but from Edward Fitzgerald’s English translation) certainly attracted the attention of many, but it is certainly not the same poetic masterpiece as the English rendering, even though Dr. C. R. Reddy greeted it, as it was the first rendering in Telugu, saying that “it reads well and reproduces the Fitzgeraldian spirit in no small measure.” Many lovers of poetry in Andhra give first preference to Duvvuri Rami Reddi’s Paana Saala as that was rendered direct from Persian and truly carries the melancholy mood and the spirit of the original Rubaiyat.

Rayaprolu’s original poems, though very few in number and slender in size, present heroines; who are embodiments of love, high idealism and sacrifice. Kashta Kamala (Kamala in Distress) written in 1913 is the tragic tale of a young girl who receives a love letter from her childhood friend Kumara proposing marriage. She did not expect this as she was all the while treating him as a mere friend from childhood, and dazed at the turn of the friendship into love and the consequent offer, she meets her death, of course, accidentally. The poem seems to have been written by the poet in support of his theory that friendship is the basis for a noble association and not for the conjugal love or sex, friendship is not to be confused with conjugal relationship and need not necessarily lead to sexual desire, the poem seems to say. Anyway, as a story it is peculiar and odd. It need not have ended as a tragedy. It is difficult to interpret the mind of Kamala. Perhaps the poet was concerned with the problems the boys and girls of those days, when liberal attitudes were just catching up with the society on account of English education and social intercourse, presented to the society and especially the anguish suffered by girls who could not think of their childhood boy-friends as lovers and husbands as there were set up certain norms for matrimony. The boys may be self-­indulgent, but not the girls until wedlock. The story apart, the narration in verse is so engaging, thanks to Rayaprolu’s skill of composition, that one would not like to leave it till one has finished it.

Snehalata(1914) is the poem based on a real story from Bengal. It is again a tragic story of a fifteen-year old unmarried girl denouncing the evils of dowry system and committing suicide in order to save her father’s house from being sold to obtain the money needed for the dowry. Snehalata, before dying, leaves a note addressed to her father which the poet has highlighted with remarkable powers of presentation. The poet has also created in the poem an ambience of Hindu spiritual thought and tradition. For relevancy, he also referred to the contemporary events like the Swadeshi movement and boycott of foreign goods in Bengal. The poet is also interested in pinpointing the higher celestial qualities found in a woman as against man which is evident from Rayaprolu quoting poet Ottway’s poem in the beginning of the poem: “Oh Woman, lovely woman, Nature made thee to temper man; we had been brutes without you; angels are painted fair to look like you; there is in you all that we believe of heaven, amazing brightness, purity and truth; eternal joy and everlasting love.” It is a memorable poem for its pathos. Particularly the similies and descriptions heighten the appeal of the poem.

Swapna Kumaramu is the poem in which a youth’s one-sided love affair purported to have taken place in his dream is presented. As a theme, it was novel when it was written. The youth in his dream sees a beautiful damsel named Sundari and is enamour­ed of her. He pulls her by her apparel. She says she cannot offer her face to him as she has not given her heart to him. The poet appears to say that a man should not look upon woman as an object of pleasure according to his whims and fancies. Any woman whom one comes across is either a sister or a mother. The entire poem runs as a dialogue between the youth and the damsel. The age-old relationship between the lotus and the bumble-bee is that of the beloved and lover, but in this poem it is strangely transformed into mother-son relationship. As the dream fades out, and the day dawns, there is a suggestion which tells the youth that it is the Nature which is the mother of all human beings which manifested itself before the youth in his dream. The accent in the poem is on motherhood. For the first time in modern Telugu poetry, the phrase “Bhaava Geetam” is used in this poem and that is the pointer to the “Bhaava Kavitvam” in Telugu which flourished later and had its grip over the young talented poets in Andhra at a later stage.

Among Rayaprolu’s other collected poems are Andhraavali, Jada Kutchulu, Vana Maala and Misra Manjari which are all his original works. The last one won the Sahitya Akademi award for Rayaprolu as the most outstanding book of literary merit for the year 1965.

Rayaprolu’s major contribution to Telugu poetry is Trinakankanam(A bracelet of straw tied to the wrist to honour an undertaking) written in 1912. It is also his best-known poem, after his patriotic poems, which earned him immortal fame as a poet of New Directions. It is a poem of hardly a hundred verses written in traditional metres and most of the verses are of small four lines. The maxim “Small is Beautiful” best applies to the original poems of Rayaprolu. Almost all his works, including translations and adaptations, are slender volumes, but they are unrivalled for their beauty, ideas, message and most precious from the standpoint of quality. In Trinakankanamit is unfulfilled love that is the main theme. A young man and a young woman were in love, but their Jove could not consummate into marriage. She was married to someone else and he was in deep distress. One day they meet at a solitary place and she finding him dejected and forlorn consoles him in words which are full of sense and evocation. She dwells at length on the fundamental nature of love and tells him that mere conjugal love is not the only love. If worldly love was not possible, it should not be an impediment to the unworldly attachment. He cools down and ties to her wrist a bracelet made of straw and addressing her “Sister” asks her to see that it does not wither. This poem which was hailed in 1938 as the First Poem of modern Telugu literature by no less a person than Tallavajjhala Sivasankara Sastri (Sivasankara Swami in his later station of life), president of the Sahiti Samiti and himself a renowned poet and scholar. Sastri has also said that some people were misled to believe that Rayaprolu wrote his poem with the influence of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats as the book was published under the banner of “The Telugu School of Romantic Revival”, but it was not correct. The banner only indicates a new publishing concern. Rayaprolu composed the poem after thoroughly absorbing the spirit of the three plays of Kalidasa, namely Abhijnaana Sakuntala, Vikramorvasiya and Malavikaagnimitra, observed Sastri. This is only Sasiri’s understanding of the origins of the poem. Let us know what the poet himself says. Rayaprolu has gone on record saying that the main reason for his composing the poem “Trina­kankanam” was to bring into Telugu poetry, the vintage of the English lyric which was “a cluster of choicest grapes from the viewpoint of Paakaor style of composition,” that is Draakshaa­paaka which was a superior style from the reader’s point of view of enjoying a poem. I think Dr. S. Radhakrishnan made a correct appraisal when he observed: “His poetic soul saturated with the best of Indian culture and Western thought has found for itself a new vision and expression.” Whatever it is, the poems as soon as it was out, had a great impact on the younger gene­ration of readers who were moved by the depth of love presented in the poem. Several of them became ideal lovers much against the conception of the poet, it really prompted the young collegians how to fall in love and how to sustain the love even in the face of being unsuccessful in it. The purity and profundity of love, the pangs of separation and the resulting sacrifice were so much noble and hence tempting to the idealists. In this poem Rayaprolu’s doctrine of “A-malina Sringara” finds its fullest expression as the lovers both agreed to keep their love untainted by absence of physical contact and both abided by it. The Western educated people in Andhra immediately interpreted it as platonic love. Of course, there is some similarity between the two. Dr. Narayana Reddy has opined that both were cer­tainly not the same, despite their similarities. Rayaprolu’s student in the Osmania University, the late Dr. Palla Durgaiah said that one need not go up to Plato to understand the import of the love presented in the poem. He said that after a man and a woman had their looks met, and their hearts responded with throb, their separation without physical contact is known as “Abhilasha Vipralambha” in Indian aesthetics which in its turn has three stages. The second stage known as “Manjishta Raaga” will be nearer to Rayaprolu’s theory which he named as “A-malina Sringara.” There has been a great debate in Andhra about this theory and some people denigrated it. It is true that the theory has not been followed by any later poet. But it is also true that it has come to stay because it has its distant origins in Bhavabhuti’s play Uttara Ramacharita, wherein the Sloka “Kalena Varanatyayat” which means that as years advance, the relationship between the human couple crosses the enclosure of Kama or passionate, desire, and evolves as Sneha or friendship or rather companionship. In Rayaprolu’s works, it is this sort of love or affection which is the upshot. The poem “Trinakankanam” with its distinct type of love portrayed, along with its poetic merits, is the standard testament and serves as a prelude to “Bhaava Kavitva” or lyrical poetry in Telugu which has come to occupy a separate chapter of the modern Telugu poetry, where love, separation, yearning and even death or disintegration predominate,

Treatises of Theory

Ramyaalokamuand Maadhuree Darsanam written in beautiful verses in traditional metres, represent Rayaprolu’s thoughts and views on language, arts, nature, love, creation, rati, rasa, poetry, aesthetics, etc., and are known as his treatises. Thus he is a “Laakshanika Siromani” also. He has very aptly pointed out the difference between the outlook of the old and new poets and thus gave an exposition to the world of arts. Tagore’s plays are “engines of ideas” and his characters are “vessels of ideas than individualised human beings.” Rayaprolu wrote Roopa Navaneetam which is in the form of a play in prose, and which presents his ideal of love unsullied by lust. In this play three pairs of couple and others are characters. The author points out to the parallels from the theories of Anandavardhana whom he admires personally. It is a very high-brow discussion and the play is certainly not meant for putting on hoards. He intended it for elaborating his “A-malina Sringara” theory, even combining Sringara, Preya and Vatsalya Rasas with it.

With Rayaprolu’s poetry which is exquisite in quality and finish, and replete with thought and message regarding love, the Romantic Movement in Telugu poetry comes out of the mansion of poesy and presents itself in the courtyard from where it reached out to the nook and corner of the Telugu country. He led the way and hence he is a pioneer.