BOOK REVEIWS

 

ENGLISH

 

PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY OF C. SUBRAMNIA BHARATHI; N. Subramanian: Ennes Publications. Udamalpet - 642128. 2000. 221 pages. Price Rs. 250            Bharati (1882-1921) was a born poet. But poverty forced him into taking up the job of a hack pen-pusher at the editorial desk of Swadesamithran. Proximity to political news transformed the Shelleyan romantic into a fiery patriotic poet. He suffered because of his political views and had to choose self-exile at Pondicherry. His greatest poems were written in exile: Kannan Pattu, Panchali Sapatham and Kuvil Pattu. He passed away in Madras, “an inheritor of unfulfilled renown.”

 

            There have been tonnes and tonnes of Psychobiographies of writers abroad: Wallace Stevens, Coltte, Sylvia Plath. Have they revolutionised our understanding of the concerned authors? Mercifully not. In the same way, the present volume would not change our perceived view of Bharati much. Nor does Prof. Subramanian want such a result. He is a genuine admirer of Bharati and this fact seeps through every page of the book.

 

            The familiar details of Bharathi’s life are presented as also the familiar comment: while he lived Bharathi received no help from his people but when he died admiring words were uttered by the bushel and a mandapam erected for him.

 

            Bharati became a follower of Tilak, and thus to follow the logic of Prof. Subramanian’s argument further on a “political fundamentalist”. Meeting Sister Nivedita was a tremendous experience for Bharati. His views on women’s emancipation were inspired by the Sister’s presence. As for Bharati’s nationalism, to accept as true an ageing friends memory which accuses Bharati of having desired the physical extermination of the white people (men, women and children) who happened to be in India is not quite fair. It is better to acknowledge as correct Bharati’s own writings against bomb culture: one who dared to stand against society so boldly would not have cared to be untruthful in matters political. In fact, the professor himself says elsewhere that Bharati’s was an “integrated” personality. The conclusion that “his soul which was in torment (and it) had no earthly cures” seems apt. Bharati called for transfor­mation of this earthly life into a divine life but had no notion of where to go in for an army of idealists who could make it possible.

 

 In fact, Psychobiography of C. Subramania Bharati is important more in the light it throws on the Renaissance Movements (political, social) and personalities other than Bharathi who led our renaissance.

 

            Prof. Subramanian who is a rationalist with a crystalline historical sense says “So long as romantic mysticism refuses to yield place to reason and science”, no reform of Hindu society will be possible.” Food for thought since even the so-called philosophy of rationalism (pakuttariva) advocated by E.V. Ramaswami Naicker has been completely eaten up by the romanticisation of the Tamil land and Tamil Mother (Tamil-thaay). Bharati thundered hopefully: Jaathikall Ilayadi Pappa (Baby, there are no castes) but today Tamil Nadu is witnessing an unprecedented plurality of castes lighting for the fishes and loaves of power.

 

            There is a chapter on Bharati the man of letters linking the poems to his adolescent frustrations, to Shelley’s views and the Freudian parlance. Prof. Subramanian finds the Kuyil Pattu to be a sanitised version of the love Bharati may have cherished for a girl of a lower caste (Valliammai). Other criticisms include Bharati being a narcissist, his having little sense of humour his acceptance of “Pseudo­-spiritual vagrant humanity” and the manner in which he would justify idleness, indisci­pline, irresponsibility        Prof. Subramanian also says that Bharati was a genius. Faced with human failure down the ages, a historian will not use the word ‘genius’ idly. The Professor must have placed the word in the appropriate place with a high sense of responsibility.

 

            So we emerge out of the book, probably a little wiser but certainly happier. It was wonderful to have had a genius directing the socio-political events in the nation for a time from the editorial chair of India and inspiring the people with the poet’s quill: “When will this thirst for freedom slake? When will this love of slavery die?”

 

            Tamil Nadu has been lucky. What more need be said?

 

-Dr. Prema Nanda Kumar

 

FROM THE CORE WITHIN; Susheel Kumar Sharma. Creative Books, New Delhi - 1999, pages 72. Rs. 80-00.

 

            The deluge of free-market materialism and the computerized onslaught of technology on our 21st century civilization has failed to submerge the poetic spark, and the ark of the music is still afloat. This is amply proved by From the Core within, a collection of short lyrical poems by Dr. Susheel Kumar Sharma. Unburdened by the weight of rhyme and rhythm and shorn of the cliched poetic verbiage, the poems are capable of creating ripples in the staid and matter-of-fact methods of our times.

 

            What at first glace appears to be an attempt to articulate the storm within that has traumatized the poet in his personal life and the world around him reveals, on a closer look, an undercurrent of nagging irony pricking and goading the man of today on his failure to become what he aspires to be, and the shattering of his cherished dreams, which finds an expression in poems like ‘The Spineless’. ‘The Rejection of a Cordial Julep’ and ‘A Search for the Brains’, etc.

 

            The poet makes an attempt to come to grips with a world vitiated by anomalies and contradictions, hypocrisy and humbug, where principles and ideals have gone topsy turvy, and the moral fabric has gone haywire, which a sensitive soul is unable to cope with the sympathies of the poet are with the deprived and the marginalised as can be seen in ‘A Reverie.’ ‘Motherly Affection’, ‘Progress’, ‘Grandma’ and ‘Fate’, but he finds himself helpless and defeated ‘fluttering his wings in vain’, in his desire to change this wicked world. The ‘Seven Poems on the Gulf War’ in a similar vein expresses shock and dismay at the senseless violence and suffering unleashed by futile wars and pyrrhic victories.

 

            However, what relieves this doleful serenade is the glow and human warmth of sensual imagery and hedonic delight interspersed throughout the collection particularly in poems like ‘Parting’. ‘A Dream’ etc. Such colourful delineation of the scene around and the smooth unlaboured flow of poetic expression lend a rare charm to these poems, and suffuse them with musical cadences and echoes from the works of the leading lights of English poetry with whom the poet has had a long aesthetic association as a student of English literature.

 

            On the whole, this collection of poems has the freshness and gleam seen in well-lit earthen lamps floating down a holy river whose flickering flames create varying glimpses, according to the angle of vision and predilec­tion of those who may go through these poems.

 

- S. D. Joshi

 

PARAMAHAMSA; Dr. V. A. Sarma, S. V. University, Tirupati. 6/296, Ullipatteda, Tirupati, 517 502.

 

            The work under review is at once a Mahakavya, written as the author points out, according to the “lakshanani’, traditional “rules” and an “Epic” of the European type if also a verse-biography of a Mahapurusha whose memory is still green in Nation’s memory. It is subtitled, “An Epic of the New Millenium”. Swami Ranganathananda in his Foreword calls Sri Ramakrishna a prophet of the Modern Age and remarks:

 

            Sri Ramakrishna’s message which aims at the development of all that is best in human soul is most needed now as humanity is stepping into the Third Millenium.

 

            Perhaps, if the message is taken seriously the message may usher in a New Millennium in another sense than the Third Millenium of the Christian Era. The Bible itself (Rev: 20:1-5) envisages a period of perfection in which there will be a reign of God and supreme peace and happiness. The Paramahamsa wants nothing less than a rise from the life of the senses to that of the spirit. What better Millenium can we desire than a life which is centered in the spirit?

 

            Even a professor of Sanskrit today cannot escape thinking of life in terms used in English. The Paramahamsa himself was living at the dawn. of the “Modern Age” not in the sense in which Swami Ranganathananda uses the words in his Foreword but in the sense in which “Zoo” and “Museum” and all the rest had come into vogue. Even ways of thinking were changing with the advent of Brahma Samaj and other movements. The great creative writer, “Kavi Raiahamsa” that Sarma is uses Sanskrit to present different shades of experience in chaste Sanskrit.

 

            We have a detailed account of the Paramahmsa’s life from his birth to his last moments. Naturally the stress falls on his devout nature from the start, his Sadhana and attainment of different inner experiences. Embedded in the work are various hymns and prayers. It is by his own inner attainment he is able attract the best intellectuals of the day.

 

            Sarma brings out beautifully Gadadhara evolving into an Avatar and shows how he who was Rama and Krishna became Ramakrishna. The main work is both preceded and succeeded by a number of hymns which enchance the value of the work. Most remarkable is “Gayatri Paramhamsah”, each verse beginning with a syllable of the Gayatri Mantra composed. In the manner of the Gayathri Ramayana. There is also a New Gayathri Ramayana in the body of the work.

 

            Every pilgrim of Eternity will treasure the work.

 

- K. B. Sitaramaih

 

THEN CAME GANDHI: Cn. Srinath, Goodwill Fellowship Academy, Mysore, 1999, Price Rs. 50-00

 

Then Came Gandhi is a slim volume of 34 po­ems with an afterword by Mulkraj Anand, written by Professor Srinath of Mysore University. In all the poems in the volume, one could discern the poet’s lament over the loss of Gandhian values in the modern world, especially in India which has given this great legendary figure. Though Gandhi fought and sacrificed his life for the nation, people scarcely follow his ideals except a few self-styled politicians and some self-centered intellectuals who remember him and pay homage by holding seminars as a routine ritual on his birth and death anniversary days. It is in this context the poet’s lament assumes significance. One may discover as one reads through a sense of urgency that we should at least revive some of his values, though not all, in order to infuse a fresh life in the already debased and decadent corrupt society.

 

            The slim volume ends with an optimistic note in “And Thus Spoke Gandhi” like Nietczhe’s Thus spoke Zarathustra in the following mantra like lines, “It is faith that steers us, faith that jumps across the ocean”.

 

            The poems are well written in free style and highly readable. One can read them with ease. Srinath has made every line simple and lucid without any confusion. The book has been elegantly brought out by the Goodwill Fellowship Academy. I have no doubt that this slim volume of highly readable poems will stimulate thinking in the minds of everyone who comes across it. I recommend it for all.

 

-Dr. K.V. Raghupati

 

C. P. BROWN: V. Subbarayudu, Published by J. Hanumat Sastri, Mahati Publications, Kadapa - 516 004, pages 98 Price Rs. 60-00

 

            “When I began these books, Telugu literature was dying out: the flame was just glimmering in the socket.”

 

            “To revive the literature of a language was an arduous task for one man, and he a foreigner” said C. P. Brown in his autobiogra­phy. Yet he successfully completed this ardu­ous task. There are certain people born for a purpose and C. P. Brown was certainly one such. The wonder is that before landing in Cuddaph he never heard of Telugu or under­stood a word of it. Yet he not only mastered it but did such a yeomen service which no other person, not even a Telugu, did for Telugu lan­guage and literature.

 

            His transfer for Machilipatnam (Bandar) as Registrar of District Court and Assistant Judge was a turning point. It was here he came in contact with Vathyam Advaita Parabrahma Sastry and Mamidi Venkaiah who were great scholars in Telugu and Sanskrit. While the former introduced Brown to Telugu Classics the latter helped him greatly in compiling his most popular dictionaries, his Magnum Opus.

 

            Again it was sheer providence that during a short stint of six weeks in 1823 in Madras. Brown came across a book entitled “Description of the Character, Manners and the Customs of the people of India” (1817) by a French Missionary. Abbe Dubois, A brief reference in the book to Vemana turned the attention of Brown.

 

            Brown was transferred to Rajahmundry in 1825 where he began the study of Mahabharata. In fact by the time he gained a thorough grasp of treatises like “Kavijanasrayam” and “Appakaviyam” he wrote a book on the prosodic techniques in Sanskrit and Telugu.

 

            Brown returned to Cuddapah in 1826 and his real work began then. He named his resi­dence as “Brown’s College”. He collected thousands of palm-leaf manuscripts, employed scholars to compare, edit and prepare accurate versions copied. Thus he revived many classics like “Manucharitra”, “Vasu Charitra” etc. which otherwise would have been lost permanently. He wrote 64 books and 18 essays and articles. Even after retirement he continued his service to Telugu from London. He got a chair for Telugu installed in London University which he occupied in 1865 till his demise in 1884. He did such service which a host of Universities with teams of ex­perts could not do.

 

            In England Shakespeare’s birth place at Stratford-on - Avon is a tourist attraction. The Tamils made Tyagaraja’s house at Tiruvaiyaru a place of worship. But we do not know where is Bhadrachala Ramadasu’s house. Even the birth place of Bammera Potana is an issue of controversy between Orugallu and Ontimitta. We could not make Gurajada’s house a national monument. With such a dismal scenario it is heartening to note that Janamaddi Hanumatchastri with his untiring efforts could build C.P. Brown’s Library exactly at the spot where C.P. Brown ran his “College.”

 

            Mr. V. Subbarayudu published a biogra­phy of Brown entitled “C. P. Brown” in English. Though the book contains 98 pages it is the quintessence of Brown’s studpendous work. It gives a wonderful introduction to the present generation about Brown. His English rendering, language, style and presentation are all exemplary. He wrote this book at the behest of the young septuagenarian Janamaddi Hanumatchastri who assumed the role of Publisher also. Both deserve kudos for their missionary zeal.

 

            The dedication of the book to the memory of J. P. Gwynn, yet another British soul of our times (he passed away in Sept. 1999) who loved Telugu and did much to its cause is very appropriate.

 

-Dr. K. R. K. Mohan

 

Back