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A POET’S CREDO

D. V. KRISHNA SASTRI
(Rendered from the Telugu original by HEMALATA)

[Mr. Devulapalli Venkata Krishna Sastri, who died in Madras in February 1980 at the age of 82, won the Sahitya Akademi award for the best work in Telugu in 1978. He had lost his voice in an operation for laryngitis in 1964.

The following is a slightly condensed version of the poet’s presidential address at the Progressive Writers� Conference in Madras sometime ago.]

I wonder why you had invited an old and dumb man like me to preside over your function.

Was it not W. B. Yeats who said: “Old and gray and full of sleep.�

Old age is bad enough. But, coupled with dumbness, it can be terrible, like darkness in a deserted temple.

“Can you imagine how it feels when speech gurgles in the throat, struggling to come out?�

Likewise, the light behind the blind man’s eye, trying hard to pierce through.

Once I visited a blind girls� hostel. In a song composed for them, I wrote:

“We know darkness, we know light,
Our ears have eyes,
We see with our hands.�

The eye that sees not is mute. The voice that speaks not is blind. My voice is stone; my voice is still and dark.

My voice is the Ahalya, with no hope of the Lord’s touch. But I blame no one. Nor weep nor wail. An optimist with a deep-rooted faith in man can ill afford to do that.

What of the millions worse off?

John Wesley, the Methodist, had a friend who always bemoaned his lot. One day in the London Street, they saw a beggar, blind, mute and leprous. And Wesley remarked: “There goes John Wesley, but for the grace of God.�

Wherever we find poverty, pain and suffering, blindness and dumbness, it is our duty to relieve it–yours and mine.

When we are dead and gone, even if a single soul mourns for us, besides our kith and kin, we are still alive!

Man is an eternal traveller.
His journey continues from the days of Adam.
Else, we won’t be here.

Nor can a poet stop. He can’t say: “Thus far and no further.�

He keeps the experiences of the past; the truths of aeons in his rucksack, as bread and butter, throwing away the worn-out and the worthless.

He can’t walk wards, like a man with a mote in his eye. Nor sideways like the crab.

The man who comes from afar, it seems, is the one most likely to go fat again. “He can’t stay away here�, we are led to think.

In his bag remain things which are whole, true and useful. He discards the rest.

In the words of Tagore:

“Light is young–the ancient light. Shadows are of the moment. They are born old.�

Hence, light, youth, and truth are identical.

Youth spells luck. That’s why I say, I follow the youth � even to the grave!

Youth represents the future. And future is but another name for man.

But you can’t quite cut asunder from tradition. Why? Because light is not only young; it is also ancient.

Wonderful indeed it should have been for the primeval man to stand beneath the endless sky and wave to the breeze like a young tree, gazing at the countless stars!

But, if that primeval man had stayed out, we should all be roaming about naked, eating leaves for food.

Science is great; it has wrought miracles. No science–no clothes to wear, no house to live in. Science means progress.

Now I come to the writers.

The Telugu language is of two kinds–the poetic language and the spoken language. The writer must be thorough with at least one of the two. If he knows both, somuch the better; He should know the idiom. The spoken language that most of us write is our own–personal. In Gurazada’s Kanyasulkam, it is the spoken language of the people in general.

The writer must have a close contact with the common people. From them he should pick up the language of life. They are the inexhaustible reservoir, from which he should fill his life with experience. They are the dynamo from which he should charge his batteries. He needs raw material from the living world. He needs the compassion that makes for creativity.

High-sounding exhortations tothe masses from a safe distance, be it Madras or Bombay, will not do. The poet’s word will not thus have the needed warmth.

He should immerse himself in the ocean of human life. Only then does he get the needed warmth. Otherwise, his word will be devoid oflife, though pretty in form.

Another thing to remember. A poem cannot be woven around a single phrase, a word compared or an image, that attracts one’s attention. That image or phrase might pass muster for the time being.

Likewise, a poem may happen to have a series of beautiful images and phrases. But that is not enough. They should form an integrated whole. A collection of beautiful windows and doors does not make a good house. If you remove any of them the whole house will collapse. Those images quarrel among themselves, says Cecil Day Lewis.

The works of many poets do not appeal to me. For one thing, they lack the warmth of life. For another, the words and images fail to have the inevitability to make an integrated whole. To recall the words of Tagore: “The whole universe is a lyric, in which every part or thing must agree with the other parts or things.�

Of all forms of literary art, poetry is the most subjective; the lyric is even more so.

An incident or an anecdote touches a poet’s heart and moves him to his depths. It then becomes his own experience and through the alchemy of his art emerges as a lyric. The heart is more important here than the mind and the brain. The lyric expresses the truth of the emotions.

“I will fly to thee on the viewless wings of poesy, though the dull brain perplexes and retards,� said Keats. Every word in a lyric has its own colour and fragrance. It has no synonym. It is the inevitable word that matters. No other word has a place there. Can a true poet use a synonym at all?

In a lyric, the words are intimately linked to one another–like personal friends and family relations. These words attract one another. They move hand in hand and in one another’s footsteps. Together they have one body and one soul.

A lyric need not necessarily be a geyaor song, sung to a tune. It can be in verse or in prose. As Tagore observed, “The expression and the expressed are one. Separated, they are mutually hostile. They have to be integrated, after overcoming their natural hostility. Otherwise, the result will be second-rate poetry.�

In some writings, ideas are smothered by the embellishments. Some other writings fall flat for want of style.

Some do not know how to say a thing. Others may know it, but they have nothing to say.

There is need for co-ordination for any creation, not only that of the poet. There are before us, many mutually hostile forces, whose interaction we seem to ignore. This is not good for creativity.

The whole world, the entire creation, is in itself a wonderful lyric. Our life is like listening to its song. One need not wail till the end to enjoy the beauty of this song. The song itself is there.

When the song opens one does not at once look for its closing. The listener proceeds with the song, enjoying every minute detail of its modulation. So also, in the song of life. The details do not tire us. The more we get at the underlying unity, the better we enjoy it.

More than in words themselves, poetry lies in the music arising from their combination and transformation.

You cannot throw a violet in a crucible, to analyse its colour and smell. That was why Shelley dismissed as futile all efforts to translate the poetry of one language into another.

“The tree has to grow from the seed; else it will not bloom,� he said.

“Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas in the fairy lands forlorn.�

These lines represent the high watermark of the art of the English lyric. Each of these words has endless powers of suggestion. They somehow draw tears from our eyes, said a noted English critic.

How to translate them into another language?

No problem if it is only the meaning. But each word here is a casement. It opens out on of perilous seas in the fairy lands forlorn.

Such magic lines abound in our poetic classics too. More so in the Mahabharataof Nannaya. There is no lyric poet like Nannaya in Telugu. There is no dramatic poet like Tikkana, in the entire range of Indian literature, it seems to me.

Are not our Andhra Mahabharata and Bhagavataonly translations, you might ask. Well, I don’t know. Nor would I like to. They will do for me.

Their authors are poets of uncommon genius. They are seers (Rishis) as well.

Every word and line of these mahakavyas(or great classics) is part and parcel of their culture. Every incident is for them an eternal truth, as their own life and society is suffused with those incidents and truths. That is why these mahakavyasare like trees that grow and flourish in the soil. So the plant has again sprouted from the seed.

To sum up, I go where we started from.

Man the eternal traveller goes forward–he has to; the poet even more so.

In this age of speed, the world changes faster than ever.

If we happen to be slow, we only fall by the wayside.

We cannot, therefore, afford to hug the dead past to our bosoms. Nor can we discard the living past.

Sympathy is very important. It is also unwise to reject anything good, simply because it is advocated by an opponent or by an opponent’s party.

The writer is always on the side of right, irrespective of caste, creed or party. The writer should never lose sight of humanity, love, compassion and the commitment to life.

All the writers should unite and forge ahead. I cannot see eye to eye with those who see all the good only in the past. We unite not only to write, but to work–to work with our bands. This is good for the mind as well.

My mind goes to 1914 and the years that followed, marked by my youthful enthusiasm for social work, the resultant excommunication and other forms of social persecution.

The Progressive Writers� Association should not rest content with writings and conferences. It should plunge into the field of action and march ahead, in response to Sri Sri’s call to go “forward and onward!�

Coming now to my old age, I was only joking, when I spoke of it. No dotard am I. Listen now to this song of mine:

Keep off the cold
Kick out the winter!
Never let go the spring
Never, never!
Beware, beware, beware!
Beware, beware, beware!
Even if scorching sun
Of summer attacks you,
Or weeping rain-cloud
Bursts upon you.
Keep off the cold,
Kick out the winter!
Growing desires of spring,
Floating dreams of autumn!
Drowsy sleep of December,
Decay and death in winter.

When old age knocks
sharply at the door,
Say ‘Not at Home,�
Shout ‘Not available.�
Keep off the cold!
Kick out the winter!