The Influence of Western Movements on Tamil

THE INFLUENCE OF THE WESTERN
MOVEMENTS ON TAMIL FICTION

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the novel form became quite popular in India as a result of English education. First, some Indians started writing novels in English imitating the English writers. Some others, while rejecting the English language for literary expression adopted the literary types and techniques studied through English and wrote in their own tongues, initiating a renaissance in Indian Languages. Foremost among such writers was Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1833 - 1894).

Mayuram Vedanayakam Pillai published the first Tamil Novel Prathaba Mudaliar Sarithiram in 1879. Following him Rajam Iyer published his novel Kamalambal Sarithiram in 1896 and Madavayya brought out his novel. Padmavathi Sarithiram in 1898. These novels are mostly imitations of the works of English writers like Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and Henry Fielding. The western influence which began thus in the later part of the 19th century continued. Tamil writers came under the influence of writers like Bernard Shaw, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and George Meredith after the First World War and under the influence of American novelists like John Steinbeck, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair during the post-­Second War period. Tamil novels of the last two decades have recorded the influence of writers like D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Kafka, Sartre and Camus, psycho-analysts like Freud and Yung and great radical thinkers like Karl Marx and Lenin.

After    the introduction of Comparative Literature as an academic discipline in the universities, Influence Study has attracted the attention of researchers and a good progress has been made in this direction. Systematic and serious attempts have already been made to investigate the influence of foreign writers on some Tamil novelists including Kalki, Sandilyan and Jeyakandan.

In this article an attempt is made to trace to some extent, the influence of some major literary movements of the West on Tamil fiction. An elaborate influence study analysing the influence of each of the movements could be attempted in a book form. However, this paper would initiate interest in comparatists who are interested in this area of Comparative Literature.

Freudism: The Philosophy of Sigmund Freud includes a detailed analysis of several aspects of human nature including man-woman relationship and the vitality of the sex instinct. D.H. Lawrence is considered as a pioneer of the psysco-analytical fiction in England. His Sons and Lovers may be considered as the first psycho-analytical novel in English because it is in it that for the first time a novelist has particularly examined a psychological theory - the ‘Oedipus Complex’ or mother-fixation theory of Freud.

Tamil novelists like Jeyakanthan. T. Janakiraman, and Indra Parthasarathy have based many of their novels on Freudism either through direct influence of Freudian philosophy or through novels of D. H. Lawrence. Sex looms large in these novels in all its biological, psychological and metaphysical relations. Jeyakandan is most modern in his treatment of sex in his novels like Cila Nerankalil Cila Manitharkal, Oru Natikai Natakam Parkiral, Rishirmulam and Oru Veedu oru Manithan oruUlakam. The heroine of the first novel, Ganga, leads a detached, lonely and abnormal life characterised by conflicts and soul-­storms of sex. The Hero of the second novel, Ranga, considers sex as a temporary relief. He is of the opinion that there cannot be any intellectual involvement between a husband and a wife. Love and sex have much to do with emotions than with intellect and therefore he says, “I need a married life only for an emotional relaxation.” The Heroine of the same novel, Kalyani expresses almost a similar attitude and thinks that the subject of love is fit only to be a theme in a story and not in real life. She is not ashamed of her promiscuous behaviour because she willingly chooses that sort of life. The frank and free treatment of love and sex in these novels reminds one of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Ganga and Ranga and their creator Jeyakandan seem to endorse the statement made by Lawrence in one of his letters to his friend Earnest Collins; “My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh as being wise than the intellect…..All I want is to answer to my blood, direct without fribbling intervention of mind or moral or what not.”

Rishimulam and Indra Parthasarathy’s Manakuhai and Veshangal are based on Freud’s theory of ‘oedipus complex’. The son in Rishimulam and Veshangal and the father in Manakuhai are full of abnormal sentiments. The sons love their mothers almost like lovers. The father is unable to move out without the company of his 25-year-old daughter. He feels that he can live a life without his aged wife but not without his daughter.

T. Janakiraman’s true-to-life treatment of the theme of man-woman relationship in his novels is highly commendable. The women in his Amma Vanthal, Uyirthen and Marappasu want to enjoy full liberty (legally or illegally) in their sex life. Their do-as­-you please way of behaviour offends the puritan-minded people. Gertrude’s marriage with Walter Morel in Sons and Lovers and Alarigarathammal’s marriage with Dandapani in Amma Vandal are good examples of mismatched marriages. Both the women are dissatisfied with their husbands. Unable to find fulfillment in an uneducated, unsophisticated drunkard-husband, Mrs. Morel starts ‘loving’ her son Paul More! Being dissatisfied with her pious, well-­behaved, well-informed but sexually less potent husband, Alangarathammal starts loving another man Sivasu.

Stream of Consciousness: In the beginning of the 20th century, Western novelists came under the influence of psychologists and as years advanced, the psychological tendency became more pronounced in English fiction. A new technique was developed in the psychological fiction which was cultivated in all its complexity by writers like William James, Dorathy Richardson, James Joice and Virginia Woolf. In this new technique of stream of consciousness, extreme emphasis is laid on subjectivism.

La. Sa. Ramamirtham, Neela Padmanaban, and Puthumai Pitthan have introduced this technique in Tamil novels. As in their western models, in their novels also, transitions are sudden; past in mixed up with the present and retrospect intrudes upon prospect. Characters themselves reveal their inner thoughts, moods and feelings, however inconsequent and fragmentary and fleeting these might be.

Ambi, the hero of La. Sa. Ra’s Abitha (1970), after several years of his marriage comes to his native village where he lived before his marriage. His wife also accompanies him. During the train journey, he starts ‘reliving’ in the past. He is haunted by the violent feelings roused by the surroundings of the village which were once the scenes of his love making, bringing to his mind several lively images of his head lady-love. His emotional involvement in the past is intensified further by the present rift between his wife and himself. The fictional reunion with his former lady-love almost becomes a present reality and he finally leaves the village with the satisfaction of having ‘re-lived’ with her.

Neela Padmanaban’s Uravuhal begins with a letter received by the hero informing him of his father’s serious illness. This information throws him into his past life and enables him to ‘relive’ his boyhood days reflecting upon his relationship with his father, grand father, grand mother and several others. He helps his ailing father for a period of ten days. During this period, his physical journey between the home and the hospital signifies the journey of his mind from the present to the past and vice versa. We feel that to understand the reaction of a character to any present situation, we must be told of entire truth about all that happened to him. We also understand that the past always exists in the present colouring and determining the nature of the present response.

These Tamil novels have successfully developed a kind of narrative texture that moves ward and forward with a new freedom to try to capture the sense of time as it actually operates in the human awareness of it. They emphasize the individual human being, the individual sensibility and the individual reaction.

Naturalism: Naturalism emerged in the Western fiction of the last decades of the nineteenth century as a literary technique reflecting a deterministic view of human nature and attempting a non-­idealistic, detailed quasi-scientific observation of events. It is a technique of rendering an artistic subject so as to reproduce its natural appearance in detail. The works of Emile Zola arid Theodre Dreiser embodied the principle of Naturalism. The Naturalists show how the external forces control and guide the destiny of mankind. According to them every character is to be studied with relation to its heredity and environment.

Dr. mu. Varatharajan introduced naturalism into Tamil fiction. His novels Akal Vilakku, Karithundu, Alli, Malarvizhi, Vada Malar and Mankudisai show how the principal characters become victims of the social milieu and how they are finally led astray. These characters do not anticipate or attempt at amelioration of the existing social conditions. They either bear with them or alienate themselves from the society. The novels of Akilan and Na. Parthasarathy also contain several aspects of Naturalism.

Existentialism: The existential philosophy influenced at least two major Tamil novelists, Ka. Na. Subramanian and Indra parthasarthy. Ka. Na. Subramanian’s Paci can be taken here as an example. The hero of the novel Saminathan after completing his higher education in Kumbakonam College comes to his village Sathanoor. He decides to marry his classmate Raji, a widow. But she refuses to accept the offer of marriage and requests him to marry. In the meantime Saminathan comes to know that he has failed in his examination. Now he chooses to become a writer and gets married to Kamala. Saminathan comes before us as a typical representative of existentialism. To him the past is already dead; the future is a mere fantasy; only the present is realistic. He decides to marry Raji but the next moment he changes his decision. He enjoys enormous freedom in choosing.

The impact of other movements like Symbolism, Surrealism, Marxism and Humanism; could also be traced in the same manner. An extension of this influence study to other genres of Tamil Literature would also be more revealing and rewarding.