SELECTIONS FROM SRI SRI AND OTHER ESSAYS
COMPILED, TRANSLATED EDITED BY: DR. SYAMALA KALLURY
EDITORIAL CONSULTANT: DR. ADDEPLLI RAM MOHAN RAO
SRI SRI AND TELUGU POETRY AT HIS TIMES
The themes that Sri Sri chose, made him the champion of the downtrodden- “What matters most is not the palanquin the king rode on, but the people who carried the king in the palanquin! He also asked pertinent questions like “Who are the coolies that carried the stones while a Taj Mahal was being built?”
His concern was for the farmer who tilled the land, the factory worker who had to sweat it out in the kharkhanas. He became a role model for the generation of poets who followed him immediately after.
The progressive movements that shaped the course of Telugu poetry were given their first impetus by Sri Sri’s school of thought. If Gurajada was the father of Modern Telugu poetry, Sri Sri was definitely seen as the architect who shaped and moulded the course of literary movements covering the entire century, a force behind all the progressive movements that Telugu literature witnessed during the 20th century after the thirties.
It is said that while poets like Viswanatha and Krishna Sastry wrote with a subjective experience and imposed their sorrows on the world, Sri Sri took upon himself the burden of the sorrows of the world.
His poetry reflects his concern for the common man. Prior to the Mahaprasthanam period, Sri Sri was an ardent admirer of poets like Devulapalli and it cannot be denied that though he took to writing with a political ideology as the basis after the thirties he was basically a romantic at heart. The film songs that Sri Sri penned till the end of his life gave him ample scope to articulate his romantic fervour.
In addition to Mahaprasthanam he published another collection of poems Khadgashrushti, which won the Soviet Land Nehru Award for poetry. Khadgashrishti, Creartions of the Sword, was a collection of poems written during 1940-45 but published only after 1965.
SRI SRI’S POETRY FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
When one looks at the times of Sri Sri’s advent with a historical perspective, one has to point out here two of the most important landmark events that marked the beginning of the twentieth century.
One is the very well known and significant Spoken Word Movement in Andhra led by scholars like Sri Gidugu Srirama Murthy. His active and tireless efforts touring the whole of Andhra region advocating for the release of Telugu literature from the shackles of the highly Sanskritised diction and promoting the use of spoken dialect as a medium for creative expression, brought in a much needed paradigm shift in the writing of the times in Telugu.
The second most important event was the advent of Gurajada on to the literary scene. In many ways Gurajada’s foot print is often referred to as the one that led the way. He, not only actively believed in the spoken word as literary medium as advocated by Gidugu Ramamurthy, but was also one of the leading figures who spearheaded the social reform movements like abolition of child marriages and widow remarriages. His well known literary compositions the poem Puttadibomma, Purnamma and the play Kanyasulkam stand testimony to this.
However, though Gurajada’s was the first voice of modernity, immediately after Gurazada there emerged a group of strong voices whose poetry represented an altogether new trend in literature. The new influences cast by familiarisation with English literature, especially the great romantics of English poetry, the award of first Nobel Prize to Asia and the emergence of Tagore as a major influence in all the Indian literatures changed the course of poetry in Telugu. A strong subjective element dominated the poetry for almost half a century.
These were the predecessors of Sri Sri who were his first major influences before he turned to Marxism. Thus, in addition to Sri Sri, Viswanatha Satyanarayana and Devulapalli Venkata Krishna Sastry, who preceded Sri Sri and Devarakonda Balagangadhara Tilak who wrote just after Sri Sri are often cited as some of the others who made their mark in Telugu Poetry in 20th century.
THE DISTINCTIVE LITERARY VOICES DURING SRI SRI’S TIME
Each of them had a distinctive voice of his own, Viswanatha believed in the Sanathana Dharma of the Hindu religion and wrote extensively and effectively on his beliefs. He was awarded the renowned Jnanapeeth award for his epic Ramayana Kalpavriksham. This was the first Jnanapeeth for a Telugu poet.
Krishna Sastry was perceived as a poet of the Gandharva world for his highly aesthetic and refined romantic poetry. Urvasi was the divine nymph who was the heroine of his dreams and many of his generation were swept of their feet by his romantic outbursts in poetry. He wrote on love, separation and resultant sorrows.
Apart from the themes, Krishna Sastry’s poetry was known for its aesthetic grandeur and sublime poetic sensibility marked by extreme subjectivism. It was referred to as ‘atmashraya poetry’ by the critics of the day. The oneness that the poet felt with his inner sensibilities was so absorbing that the lovers of poetry easily identified themselves with his passionate poetry which also displayed an extreme refinement in diction.
There are others like Addepalli, Endluri, Jayaprabha, and Hymavati who have been writing with commitment to one school of thought or other and maintaining literary aesthetics at the same time. Sri Sri too, like many of his time, was carried away by this romantic whirlwind. But then he made a conscious effort to break away from this tradition and this called for an extraordinary quest for an alternative and the effort resulted in his lifelong passion and dedication for poetry for common man.
His long monologue poem dedicated to his muse Kavita! O, Kavita reflects his struggles to identify a distinct voice of his own. The poem talked of the search, the heartaches, and the breakup caused in his poem Kavita! O Kavita.
Sri Sri took advantage of the monotony of the stereotyped poetry that was prevalent and while his language still remained highly Sanskritised, his purpose of writing set a new paradigm. He started writing for the common man.
SRI SRI’S THEMES
His themes were not the sweethearts of the imaginary world but the workers and farmers who toiled day and night for fulfilling the bare necessities of life. He thus started a new trend in poetry and how his poetry changed the tenor of writing is something that needs to be re-examined. His times not only demanded his breaking away from the established poetic traditions, but also demanded of him an equally passionate belief which can replace the powerful trends that dominated the era.
Sri Sri successfully created through his search a viable and equally powerful alternative for the existing and dominant poetic trends of contemporary Andhra. Thus historically Sri Sri forms a bridge between the classical and romantic trends represented by poets like Viswanatha and Krishna Sastry; and progressive trends represented by the Dalit and feminists writers of the later eighties. He spearheaded the revolutionary movements of the in-between seventies.
However, today in literary circles it is widely believed with full justification that Sri Sri who advocated progressive thought in every sphere was strangely silent about feminist movement which began to take shape during that time.
While he had within him the heart and the passion of a romantic, the language and the imagery were drawn from the traditional world which he rejected in his themes. Some of his well known poems on a lost traveler, an old woman reveal his intense identification with the plight of the people who form the core of his concern.
The humanism that latter day Telugu poetry reflects, finds its seeds in these concerns. Sri Sri is thus a fountainhead whose poetry contained most of the modern trends the 20th century Telugu poetry witnessed after the 40s.
In a way this falls in line with the contemporary literary trends in the rest of India. Many poets in the Indian subcontinent were influenced by the Progressive Writers Association which made its mark during the first half of the 20th century.