U.R. Ananthamurthy’s poetry is an extension of his thoughts on culture and society. His poems construct a unique poetics, with its origin in the poetical traditions of our country. This essay attempts to analyze the relations bet-ween his poetry and his writing in other genres. In the context of his powerful prose, URA’s poetry was generally relegated to the background. However, one notices that the ideas deve-loped by him in his fiction have subtle parallels in his poetry. I quote: ‘I have never considered poetry and prose as different modes of expression. But there are many periods in my evolution when I have felt that certain things can be expressed only in poetry, where language becomes symbolic and gestural. Prose with its focus on details is incapable of doing that. Both of them are complementary in a search for unique identities.’¹ These ideas merit close attention by those interested in a study of a writer’s concerns about literary forms and the corresponding linguistic styles.

 

Ananthamurthy is best known and appreciated for his short stories, novels, literary criticism and cultural criticism. He began his writing career, however, as a poet. The fact that he did not persist with poetry as his major mode of expression could be a consequence of his personal preferences, as also the cultural needs of his times. This was equally true of many of his gifted contemporaries such as P. Lankesh, Yashawant Chittal, Poornachandra Tejasvi, Girish Karnad, Shanthinatha Desai and others who started writing during the sixth and seventh decades of the previous century. It is significant that all of them were deeply influenced by Gopalkrishna Adiga’s poetry. But they were unwilling to imitate him. Fiction and drama became alternative avenues for their creativity.

If one moves beyond Kannada poetry and looks at the European situation, we notice that the earlier prosaic models of English poetry gradually gave way to William Blake and others of his kind who created a new poetic style, capable of churning an experience to find latent and new meanings. This happened right from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Subsequently, poets seemed more concerned about truths that have to be deduced through one’s vision rather than those that were visible to the eyes. The newness of the language to realize experience became as important as the experience itself. A close scrutiny of the words that poured out of a poet’s inner mind became the felt need of those times. Modernist poets of Kannada concurred with this point of view.

URA attempted to transcend various conceptual models of poetry that prevailed during his youth and forge new ones, which also differed from those adopted by his peers. He says, ‘A few of my stories and some poems were published in the fifties, rather diffidently but truly in search of one’s own identity. In those days, I admired Gopalkrishna Adiga hugely and that has continued to this day... He was ruthlessly dismissive of the poetic practices of his predecessors… But there was a constant endeavour in my writings to be different from Adiga.’² The modes in which URA has negotiated the challenge posed by changing times become evident when one compares the intensely passionate poems of his early days with the deliberately prose-tinted and totally controlled poems of later periods. I believe that a departure from the ‘tradition’ is also a protest.

 

Ananthamurthy sidesteps the models forged by his seniors and contempo-rary Kannada poets: Adiga’s nuanced, taut structure; Lankesh’s synthesized lyrical quality and objective attitude; Ramachandra Sharma’s forging of mysterious and unfathomable poems, and A.K. Ramanujan’s exploration of linguistic possibilities were some of these models. URA’s poetry oscillates between two poles. He reverts to mythology whenever his poems become logical and depend on causal relations. He seeks recourse in poems of intellectual pursuits when he gets bogged down in excessive passion and sentiments. By doing this, he is protesting against the demands of his times. This is also the protest of the inner poet against the ‘contextual poet’. It is beyond dispute that a desire to achieve this balance kept him in a state of alertness throughout his career.

URA’s poems written after the mid-’80s are simple and straightforward in terms of their themes and style when compared with his earlier poems, where he makes use of the persona of ‘king’ (raaja) as his ‘mask’. A keen reader of URA’s work knows well his liking for W.B.Yeats and his idea of ‘masks’. Yeats was intrigued by the internal and the external self of a person, i.e., the true person and the aspects a person chooses to represent his self. He wrote, ‘I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a rebirth as something not one’s self, something created in a moment and perpetually renewed.’³

URA’s second collection of poetry takes a deviation by getting rid of ‘masks’. This is how a writer deconstructs and rebuilds himself. An excessive use of prose style was novel in Kannada poetry of those times. Many of the stories in his first collection, Endendiguu Mugiyada Kathe (A Story that Never Ends), were lyrical, while the poems he wrote concurrently were closer to prose. Even this was probably a part of his experimentation. During the mid-eighties, however, Kannada literature underwent major changes. The voices of Dalit and ban-daya (rebel) poets became far more prominent. Unswayed by them, URA made a sincere attempt to be himself in his choice of themes and the use of language. The structure of his poems demonstrates how he differed from his peers.

 

Ananthamurthy agrees with our ancient scholars when they compare poetry with Kanthasammitha (persuasive words uttered by either a wife or a beloved). The act of writing is close to a conversation between lovers, where one continues and completes what the other has said. This probably explains why many of his poems have two words/phrases linked by the conjunction and (mattu) in their titles: ‘Shit and Soul’, ‘The King and the Bat’, ‘Love and Duty’, ‘Dalailama and History’, ‘Gandhi and Henry the Eighth’, ‘The Gypsy and the Tree’ are some examples. It is not only the individuals who complement one another; even ideas and emotions act in tandem. For Ananthamurthy, the intellectual needed to transcend analytical skills; what is needed is a method of expressing the inner turmoil.

 

One requires this framework in order to internalize URA’s poetry. This multitude of poems that are linked by the conjunction ‘and’ draws our attention to the element of duality and nuanced thoughts that pervade his poetry. The following remarks by him are perti-nent: ‘…My grandfather used to say this as though it was a divinely ordained eternal truth: "There are still some good people living in this world. That’s why it rains regularly and our lands yield crops without fail." These were notions born in a mind with an implicit faith in the other world. It is not possible for me to either console others or console myself with these words, because my rational mind makes me feel embarrassed. I often think that I am waiting to create a poem which could transcend the pitfalls of literal statements and the determinism of logicality, infused with suggested meanings that would make even clever people stare at it in amazement.’⁴ Nuanced thoughts like these have given rise to many debates which kept the lite-rary and cultural atmosphere of Karna-taka alive and alert from time to time.

An anecdote in URA’s autobio-graphy Suragi unveils his poetic universe beautifully. His family had a maid servant named Abbakka. She conveyed town gossip to his mother. Her cheeks were smeared with turmeric and the vermillion mark on her forehead was prominent. Her eyes were full of love and empathy. She used to share a swig of tobacco with URA’s mother. All these details are delineated fondly. Occasionally Abbakka’s body became a vehicle for deities. This transformation of a human being into a goddess was one of the wonders of his childhood. Once, when Abbakka visited his home, the young URA said in jest: ‘Abbakkanna Gubbakka Kachkondhooytu’ (Abbakka was carried away by a sparrow). His mother was struck by her son’s verbal magic and the incident was narrated to all and sundry. It was nothing great in terms of meaning and imagination, but the alliteration of sounds and the elongated vowels succeeded in lending a dramatic quality to a simple statement. ‘Looking at the incident, from this distance in time, I feel that I was handed over a magical key to a mysterious universe.’⁵ This is probably the ‘key’ with which he tried to fuse the emotional and the intellectual within the magical realms of poetic language.

 

In the preface to his second collection of poems, Ajjana Hegala Sukkugalu (The Wrinkles on Grandfather’s Shoulders, 1989), URA opines: ‘For me, poetry is like a visiting guest, who arrives, departs and comes back as he pleases. I was immersed in poetry during the fifth decade of the 20th century, but I became a short story writer. However, I was trying to create poetry in my stories and novels also. Even my intellectual preoccupations are not those of academics. They belong to a person in love with poetry. This is neither a matter for jubilation nor diffidence. This is just what I am.’

He revisits this opinion in Samasta Kaavya. ‘Those were the days when a bat – which is neither a bird nor an animal – was my favourite metaphor. I could not arrive at cocksure decisions… I was finding it difficult to use language in a manner that would convince at least me. Of course, this difficulty persists to this day.’ It is possible for us in these musings to witness his introspective and self- critical personality.

 

Ananthamurthy’s concept of poetry gave equal importance to intended meaning and the structural devices required to embody that in a poem. But he believed in suggesting the meaning rather than stating it explicitly. This is known as vastudhvani in Indian poetics. The intellectual component of his poems, however, also carried an emotional load. Occasionally his poems assume the tone of a debate and try to explain the pros and cons of a proposition. For instance, in a poem titled ‘Poetry as Archibald MacLeish Perceives It’ (Archibald MacLeish Helu-vante Kavite), URA has this to say:

A poem should be bereft of words

As a bird flies without foot marks

It should be fixed silently in time

As the moon rises in the sky

Poetry should not say anything

Being is everything.

This poem illustrates the ambiguities of language and also its limitations. The title of the poem does not mean just what it states. It also suggests that poetry involves the rhyth-mic movements and tonal variations required in the enunciation of the words ‘Archibald’ and ‘MacLeish’.

URA explains the process of a poet’s search for meaning and a unique idiom, in the poem, ‘Kayaa, Vachaa, Manasaa…’ (‘In Body, Word and Mind…’:

…The idiom of poetry

Is a bent rod

That becomes a hook,

In to the well, it goes,

And then,

Searching

Probing

Fondling,

Nibbling

Understanding

Finally, finally

Grasping

Lifts it up and

Gives it you

If you are lucky

And if the words are cleansed

…If it dries up

And if strength remains even then

And if there is God’s grace along with the dried up sap

If and if and if. . .

This bloody bitch

(Look at its arrogance)

May give up its rotten habit.

This complex poem demonstrates the elusiveness of language as also its capacity to hold different dimensions of an experience. This plurality of meaning is a striking aspect of URA’s poetics.

 

The process of confronting the works of a writer like URA is very much akin to the ‘Just Connect’ concept of E.M. Forster. Readers familiar with the works of URA know that his perceptions start at a subjective level and gradually outgrow those limits to encompass wider temporal and spatial contexts. These perceptions coalesce into an integral vision. His method, which brings together different individuals and ideas under a microscope and subjects them to minute analysis, gives rise to a number of questions and debates. It tests the veracity of ideas. This search is conducted with humility, a humility which is also capable of puncturing an exaggerated sense of self-importance. For him, humility was a great virtue. Consider these lines:

Is there an excess or a limit to humility

A man becoming humble

Is like milk solidifying as cream (‘Humility’).

 

This humility of yours is as sweet as

A Parijaatha flower.

Lord, you bestow your company

To the meanest of insects

Your grace moves in to small seed

You rest in the great unperturbed.

Simple

Simple my Lord

This humility of yours (‘This humility of yours’).

 

During the morning walk

I saw your grace

Glowing sun and a little chill

The permanent is tickled by the fleeting mist.

How many coloured birds

If only you look for them.

Amidst the leaves slowly, serenely, secretly

 

This adult man gaining weight

Shedding this artificial weight

I am moved by your bounty and beauty

For a moment (‘Love’)

 

A critical comparison of URA’s ‘Raja’s Requests for the New Year’ and Gopalakrishna Adiga’s celebrated poem Prarthane (Prayer) reveals curious associations between them. Adiga read URA’s poem and later composed his masterpiece. URA had this to say about the incident: ‘My poem is a minor effort. Adiga’s effort is a major work of art which has internalized my poem.’ URA would have discontinued writing poetry if he had taken that as a personal failure. His love for poetry springs from a greater love for life. He wants to be in perpetual wonder. He wants to find his way towards a vision. His poetry wishes to get realized in the readers and the poet wants to see his poems through the eyes of others. Therein lies his joy. This is how the personal is transformed into the social and the universal.

URA is important for his ability to adopt the contemporary political scenario into his poems. We can notice the close connections that prevail bet-ween his poems and work in other literary forms written concurrently. This work, in its totality, makes us realize his sincere attempt to look at political attitudes with a humane approach. It is virtually a war between the writer’s convictions and principles with murky contemporary realities. His writings are infused with an awareness of the contemporary and critical attitudes towards it. He picks up regional issues and studies them in a universal context. This practice saves him from narrow chauvinism.

 

For instance, consider his poem on M.N. Roy. It brings in diverse personalities such as Ambedkar, Gandhi, Stalin, Nehru, Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan under the scanner and indulges in a comparative study. Focusing on the principles, theories and conflicts of Roy, it concludes that all theories should merge in the individual and result in an integrated stance. The idea that experiences and situations could be viewed from different vantage points is a strand that runs throughout URA’s writings.

The fact that truth gets transformed continuously in the psyche of the individual is another theme that engaged his creativity. This attitude has given a pluralistic dimension to his thoughts and writings. It is per- haps no coincidence that he titled his poetry collection as Samasta Kavya (which means poetry that includes everyone and belongs to everyone) instead of Samagra Kaavya (meaning collected poems). This serves as an important clue to understand his life and writings.

 

* All translations in this essay are by J.N. Tejashree. URA’s six volumes of poetry include, Hadinaidu Kavitegalu (1970), Ajjana Hegala Sukkugalu (1989), Mithuna (1992), Bidi Kavitegalu (2001), Abhaava (2009) and Pachhe Resort (2011).

Footnotes:

1. U.R. Ananthamurthy, Preface, Samasta Kavya (in Kannada). Abhinava Prakashana, Bengaluru, 2011, pp. v, vi, 438, 113, 81, 83, 80, 42.

2. Ibid.

3. William Butler Yeats, ‘Per Amica Silentia Lunae’, in William H. O’Donnell (ed.), The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Later Essays (vol. V). Simon and Schuster, New York, (1917) 1995, p. 10.

4. U.R. Ananthamurthy, Suragi. Akshara Prakashana, Heggodu, 2012, p. 414.

5. Ibid., p. 26.