I spent this past weekend trying to catch up on the discussions going
on, and had to pick and choose (can you believe there were more than
700 msgs in this period?!). I am going in a rather random order, so I
apologise (again) if I am bringing up topics on which the fat lady has
already sung (or maybe I am the fat lady ;-)).
So here go my 2c worth on these topics. I will try to be brief.
Re: What is and what is not telugu poetry?
I was quite surprised to see the polarity and dichotomy of positions
on this one. People who would have normally been generous enough to
say "it takes all types" seem to be excluding the other group, or
atleast vehemently denouncing it. Given the fact that english is just
about as unpopular today among the general laity as sanskrit was in
its heyday, I don;t understand how using english words in telugu
is any more excusable than using sanskrit words, if the intent is to
reach the common folk. Since the poet has also to bother about things
like beauty, brevity and other such qualities, substituting an english
(or equivalently sanskrit, hindi, urdu) word even if a very sonorous
telugu word is available is no crime. As long as the poetry retains a
predominant flavor of telugutanam (hard to define, so I will not;-)),
using sanskrit/english/hindi/urdu words should not distract us from
the message.
The distinction now is whether the poet uses O.Henry type english or
James Joyce type english. Given that the general sanskrit vocabulary
is orders of magnitude less than general english vocabulary of most of
us, anything beyond "aham dugdham pibAmi" sounds Joycean to us. That
in it self is not reason enough to despise a poet or his expression
of a thought. Excessive sanskrit usage could have been a purely survival
tactic used to impress people. Someone had posted a telugu+sanskrit
"yaDlapATi yugandarah" poem; I think the legendary girISam aptly
demostrated that point by "conversing" in english with venkaTESam and
therby confounding the latter's parents. He spoke nonsense, just like
the "yaDlapATi yugandarah" poem, and managed to impress his audience.
So where do we draw the line? If a poet doesn't have much to say, it is
likely that he will take refuge in media that few can comprehend (like
bombastic language, sleight of poetry, etc), but simply because a poem
is so worded doesn't inherently demerit it. The issue is also not just
the incomprehensibility of foreign words, it is also the relative
dominance of such words (in terms of number). But the way languages
evolve, there is really no way to pin point words as being native and
foreign, or as being esoteric vs. exoteric. Those are very subjective.
It seems to me that depending on how the poet's thoughts flow, several
seem to stick to "pure telugu" in some compositions, and extensively
use other languages in other compositions (for example, tyAgarAjA's
"jagadAnanda kAraka" vs. "duDukugala", the former very sanskritc and
the latter almost vADuka telugu). Maybe we must pay lesser attention
to the language issue.....
--sreenivas-- dsr@vnet.ibm.com
(Part 2: chandO and non-chandO poetry)
ps: I hope I am not breaking any of the initial charter's directives.
I don't think there is any mention of time-lag there....;-)