prasad saripalli writes:
> >Dr. Veluri wrote:
> >
> > Of course, poetry is for communication; certainly not for
> > miscommunication!
When I was talking about poetry, I was talking about any written/spoken
communcation form. I am not excluding prose, stories etc. As such I am not
concerned about the obscurity of the langauge. The "aspashta kavitwam" is a
part of a whole picture, but to claim that it is an essential quality of a
poem is some thing I am not going to claim. On the other hand, some poems may
derive so much mileage out of this "aspashtata" that without that they may
become drab.
I am actually not too interested in discussing social message and poetry. What
I am interested in though is how the meaning of text ( Wow! I like this word!!
I feel like an English Major!) mutates. My contention has been that this
mutation happens, some times to the benefit of the reader. In fact, without
such mutation, meanings may not even exist.
For example, take any fairy tale. The literal meaning is all too obvious. The
secondary meaning, if I may call that, comes from two different sources(*).
One is the interpretations people provide for the tale. (Eg: Look at Tagore's
interpretation of chitrangada). Over time a drab tale gathers interesting
flavors depending on how people "live" the text. The meaning comes from the
people who interpret it. I don't mean this interpretation is textual. For
example, when a dying freedom fighter uttered the words "vandE mataram", she
gave a new meaning to that song. In fact, lots of social poetry may get
meaning from people.
Sometimes, the meanings that people impart to these texts may be abhorent,
uninteresting, and plain short-sighted. That is a different story.
> Kanaka Prasad
--rama
(*): True to the journalistic standards that eenaaDu espouses, I am leaving
out the second source! Last time I was in India, I picked up an eenaaDu
edition and read in the front page stated there were three reasons for ??? and
saw only two of them being listed!!