Rao Veluri writes:
> The following is by vEda vyaasa from his mahaabhaarata(XI.24.19).
>
> ayaM sa rasanOtkarshee peenastana-vimardhanah
> naabh-yuru-jaghana-sparsee neevee visraMsanah karah.
>
> tr: This is the hand that used to remove my belt
> That would fondle my large breasts
> That touched my navel, my thighs
> And what lies between the thighs.
> This is the hand that untied the knot that held up my sari.
>
> This is the scenario for the poem: The great bhaarata war is over.
> Shooting location: The battle field. The scene: The dead husband's
> hand is severed from his body that is lying on the field. The wife
> is lamenting!
I, for one, think it is a great poem, without resorting to the lakshaNa
Saastra.
Before I run ahead of myself, let me state few of my points and argue for them
in the next few paragraphs.
1. A poem written by Nannaya has greater meaning to me than if it is written
by my next door neighbour.
2. A poem written by Nannaya, that was recently discovered has less meaning to
me than if the poem has been known to be written by him for a longer time.
3. A poem written by VCV [ vaaDrEvu ] has more meaning to me than if the same
poem was written by some body else that is unknown to me.
[I am not going to go into the order of evaluation for these statements!]
Explanations:
A text always has a context in which it is to be read. We cannot escape it. If
I were to see the cave paintings in that cave in france, well, I would be
impressed in the context in which they are painted. They speak to me as a
testomony to the human esthetics. If it were to be painted by some body from
the current art world, I fail to see the greatness in that.
Therefore, time adds value to the text. The text becomes a part of collective
human experience. Rightly or wrongly, the more people know the text, more mass
it gathers. It does not matter what the author meant. It matters what people
understand it as. Because, we use poetry to communicate with ourselves.
Such contextual evaluation is difficult: even such a contextual evaluation
makes me criticize most poets of yester years.
Why should I do these contextual evaluations? I am still grappling with this
question. Not doing them means doing a disservice to my heritage. On the
other hand, under the name of contextual evaluation, if I were to condone some
practices, and even praise them, I would be betraying the context in which I
try to understand the world. Something like "maa taatalu nEtulu..." etc.
--rama