bAdha kavitvAniki paryAya padaM

uday bhaskar (srijna@hotmail.com)
Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:45:32 PDT 

Friends,

gunDe lOnci vacci gunDellOki coccukupO galigitEnE
vAkyaM kavitvamavutundi
prati aksharam dunduBhilA mrOginappuDu mAtramE
kavitvaM ninAdamavutundi

nAku tOcina, nAku naccina, mari konni udAharaNalu:

(I sAri cAlA maTuku itara BhAShallOnci teesukunTunnAnu -
 pAlana gAri anumatitO)

1. "banE hain ahelE hawas
      munsif Bhi muddaee BhI
      kis se vakeel karein, kis se munsifee chAhein"
          - faiz ahmed faiz

     (A very loose translation would be -
      These angels of greed - 
      They are the guilty, and they are the judges
      Whom shall I take my case to,
      Whom shall I ask to plead for me?)

2. "Ah, Love! Could Thou and I
     With Fate Conspire
     To grasp this sorry scheme 
     Of things entire
     Would we not shatter it to bits!
     And then,
     Remould it Closer to Heart's desire!"

     (Sir Richard Burton's translation of Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam)

3. "They Who in Folly,  Or mere Greed 
      Bade Us to serve the country,
      Where are they?
      It is the logic of our times 
      - No subject matter for immortal verse -
     That we who lived by honest dreams
     Are forced to defend the bad 
     Against the worse"
    (Cecil Day Lewis)

4.  "The Commissar of Information has said
       That the people have betrayed the confidence
       That the Government had in them,
       And now they have to work very hard to regain it

       Wouldn't it be simpler, in that case,
       To dissolve the people and elect another?"
       (Bertolt Brecht)

The first, was a couplet in Urdu written to lament the fact that the 
legal system of British India was of no use to the Indian people.

The second is one of Omar Khayyam's most forceful statement of rejection 
of the establishment view of life - throughout the Rubayyat, there 
appears to be an undercurrent of cynicism. Suddenly, here he shows 
himself to be so eager to "remould it closer to heart's desire!".

The third was written by a young British communist who fought and died 
in the Spanish Civil War.

In the fourth poem, Brecht uses sarcasm in a masterful way to portray 
what went wrong in Communist East Germany which he had chosen as his 
country.

All four have these common features which have appealed to me 
tremendously -

1. all of them portray a person's extreme dissatisfaction with life 
    around him

2. all of them have packed an enormous amount of rage and
   anger into very few words

3. all of them forcefully state that life ought to be better than
    what it is

4. all of them portray oppression from an "insider's viewpoint"
    rather than as "outsiders" lamenting injustice to some one else
   (a lot of today's sAmAjika nispRha belongs to the second category)

5 Not a single word is harsh or violent, yet each poem overflows
   with rage, leaving the reader with a sense of "wanting to get up and 
   make up for the lost time".

This level of hightened rage as poetry in telugu has been the hallmark 
of Cera banDa rAju's poetry (vandE mAtaraM immediately comes to mind). 
Of the new poets, ASA rAju seems to be heading in this direction. Can 
anybody post any poem from this poet? (He works in the AG's office at 
Hyderabad)

Regards,

Uday "kasitvaM kUDA kavitvamE" Bhaskar


---------------------------------------------------------
Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
---------------------------------------------------------