Tagore's Influence in Malayalam Literarature

How melodious is the rendering of thy song!

Sajai K V (Translated by K T Dinesh)

In the month of July, when the twilight hides itself

Under the shroud of darkness and the day retreated

It rained incessantly, and I, the solitary sojourner

Of the land of dreams, stayed at home all alone.

Hearkening to the above lines or watching the twilight view they offer, one can listen to or live in a season of rains. It happened almost two and a half decades back. A little boy, a solitary sojourner of the land of dreams, was reciting these lines in tune with the repetitive cadence of rain that replicates the lines of G Sankara Kurup’s translated version of Geetanjali. Thus, inadvertently, he was also treading along the farthest boundaries of the land of dreams. The boy who thus strode the land of dreams is the writer of this article.

Tagore composed Geethanjali, which celebrates its centenary this year, between 1906 and 1910. He translated Geethanjali into English in 1912. And the rest is history- the praise showered on the poem by W B Yeats, the preface he wrote to Geethanjali, the coveted Nobel Prize it received, its French translation by Andre Gide, Paul Valery’s article on it- all these developments helped Geethanjali and its author to become well-known to the world in amazing rapidity.  One can presume how the acceptance Tagore received influenced the Indian poets who were writing in their native tongue. This article tries to examine how Tagore and Geethanjali influenced the poets of Malayalam and the history of Malayalam poetry which is a manifestation of such influences as well.

Kumaran Asan and Tagore

Kumaranasan, the pioneer of romantic poetry in Malayalam and the greatest poet of all times, was the first poet in Malayalam who tuned the soft strings of Tagore’s lyre. In the light of Asan’s stay in Bengal for a short period, the poems he wrote titled Divyakokilam (The devine song bird) and Swagathapanjakam (A welcome song addressed to Tagore) and based on his self-teaching ‘Vangadyoviludicha raviye snehika viswambhare!’ (Oh world, please do worship yonder Sun – Ravi – in Bengal’s radiant horizon!)  critics often judge Tagore’s influence on him. It should be said that this appraisal is superficial. It fails to go deep into the imperceptible communiqué that might have happened between Tagore and Asan and detect how it shaped the power of imagination of a genuine poet like Asan. The pointers that might lead to such an enquiry are not the ‘flowery canopy’ of trees that are planted afar or their ‘freshly sprouted branches’ but the mysterious entanglement of their roots beneath.

The terrain of Tagore’s imagination was romantic as well as mystic. In Geethanjali one can see Tagore’s compositional skill as a poet in bringing the metaphors of love, parting, waiting and seeking the lover to mystic heights. It has been observed that the mystic lyrics of Tagore promulgated the indirect influence of Vyshnava Bhakthi Movement which was an indiscernible metamorphosed form of Radha-Krishna love knot. The focal point of his lyrics

is the feminine psyche that is deeply desirous, badly bashful and   experiencing excruciating agony of separation. This is the point of affinity between Asan’s romantic sensibility and Tagore’s poetic vision. The facet of love explored by Asan could only be depicted through a female. The love he portrayed was overflowing with prayers emanated from perturbed souls that transform one’s body into a ramshackle shrine. Many of the mystic lyrics in Geethanjali have a sadder and softer tone of such prayers.

‘Don’t hesitate to pluck this little flower of little value

so that

It will adorn thy garland before

It fades away and withers’

The above prayer in song 87 of Geethanjali is something that can be heard from the lips of Asan’s heroines Nalini, Leela or even Vasavadatta, the licentious lady who pined for the unrequited love of a handsome Budhist monk. In Asan it is a kind of search for God as manifested in women towards men but in Tagore it attains a romantic tone of the self which has been incarnated as a female. Interpreters like Karimpuzha Ramakrishnan were of the opinion that the relationship between Leela and Madanan whose name is synonymous with that of Cupid, creates a parallel in worldly life between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Karimpuzha makes a kind of over-reading here and to a certain extent such a reading is mechanical too. But it is an irrefutable fact that if the vast plot structure and the elaborate characterisation of Nalini and Leela were subjected to utmost saturation they would be as condensed as a lyric by Tagore.  P. K. Balakrishnan, the visionary critic of Malayalam, has realised this much earlier, though in another fashion. In his book titled Kavyakala Kumaranasanilude (The art of poesy through Kumaranassan) P. K. Balakrishnan makes a dazzling observation that the heroines like Nalini and Leela are the incarnations of the poet himself who begins his poetic career as a writer of hymns. In that long and tiresome search for self-realisation Asan touches Tagore as well. Tagore implores the Almighty to accept him in a tone that is characteristic of a lover experiencing piercing anguish. The hymns written by Asan are not different at all. They are the mantras of a soul that endures excruciating pain in exploring the woods and meadow seeking the cosmic soul. But P. K. Balakrishnan is unmindful of the complex transformation of Asan from a composer of hymns to a composer of love poems and the indirect catalyst he may have had from Tagore’s mystic imagination for such a transformation. He may have missed this fact that was so close to his eyes because of his over-confidence in the rarity and originality of the finding he had made. Whatever it is, the ensuing critical lineage of Malayalam has to underscore this fact. ‘Those who seek the  him/ have to seek the wind in the dense forest woods’ (Lines from Asan’s Leela). This might tell us how these lines create a kind of invisibility and elusiveness in a protagonist like Madanan and how he got hold of the distant face-look of the quintessential omnipotent that entices the humans in disguise.

G. Sankara Kurup’s ‘Pullankuzhal’ (The flute of reed)

Another major Malayalam poet who later took up the flute of Tagore’s mystic imagination was G. Sankara Kurup. Whatever be the self-justifications of the poet about the holy stream called Geethanjali, which greatly lured him at the dawn of his expedition through the boundless waters of literature, critics in Malayalam spent a significant amount of their time, most vociferously, to find something more than mere influence in it- even plagiarism and imitation. The third chapter of ‘Sankara Kurup Vimarsikkappedunnu’ (Sankara Kurup Criticised) by Sukumar Azhikkode, the doyen of literary criticism in Malayalam, is replete with arguments of this kind. Whatever it be, it is supposed that Sankara Kurup’s,  ‘Sunflower’, a famous poem of that title written by the poet, would not have been bloomed without the sun-like presence of Tagore; though the inclination of the sun flower towards the sun is instinctive.

The fiftieth year of Sankara Kurup’s Malayalam translation of Geethanjali coincides with the centenary of Tagore’s Geethanjali. It was in 1959 that Sankara Kurup’s complete verse translation of Tagore’s Bengali Geethanjali got published. It looks as if the literary circle of Kerala, which hardly forgets any anniversary, is oblivious of the fiftieth year of the publication of this translation. It is not a work that should be ignored in such a fashion. Its musical and meditative quality is unique. We can still hear G. Sankara Kurup’s lines which stand apart from such prosaic translations as ‘My Lord, I don’t know how you are singing! I always listen to it, in silence, surprised.’(Translation by L.M.Thomas.)

                                    ‘How melodious is the

                                    Rendering of thy song!

                                    In silence I listen to it

                                    with eternal esteem’

The influence in Changampuzha

Tagore’s magnificent style of rendering songs had attracted the imaginative poetic quality of Changampuzha, the greatest romantic poet in Malayalam. as well. Changampuzha’s creation of ‘Yavanika’ (The Curtain), a long poem, modelling Tagore’s ‘Victory’ and his translation of ‘Udyanapalakan’ (The Gardener) are finest instances of the influence Tagore had on him. We can also extract Tagore’s influence on Chamgampuzha from  indirect signs that are not that explicit. The well-known ‘Poomala’ (The garland) in ‘Bashpanjali’ (A tribute with Tears, the poets debutant anthology) is itself an example. We can see the distant image of the mendicant in the 50^th verse of Tagore’s English Geethanjali who wins a gold grain from the king, when he gives the king a mere grain while he begs for alms. Isn’t it the tune of the mystic song, ‘I will wait the whole day/ playing my flute’ (in the 8^th verse of Bengali Gitanjali) that we hear in the song of Changampuzha’s Remanan, the pastoral elegy that made him most popular in Malayalam, the selfless shepherd who awaits the virginal beauty? - I will sit the whole day alone/ on that hill side and sing’! It could be out of weariness after seeing the quack ‘mystic snobs’ in Malayalam that Changampuzha wrote these lines in ‘Padunna Pishachu’ (The Singing Devil) which was modelled after no lesser a poet than Charles Baudelaire whose ‘Fleurs de Mal’ ):

When the cosmic soul tickles in the

Armpit of the individual soul from time to time

The rays that emit out of the tickle

Hits at the lotus bud of life and

Oh, remember, what opens up its lips then

Is the crown of fragrance of mysticism.

           

T. K. Narayana Kurup was a minor poet in Malayalam who imitated Tagore in appearance and attire. He wrote prose poems modelled on Tagore’s. He was also the editor of a magazine titled, ‘Tagore’. He published an anthology titled ‘Athmageetham’ (Song of oneself) in 1934.

R. Ramachandran

Later on, we see a pale shadow of Tagore in the introverted sensibility of R. Ramachandran, a late romantic, who wrote about his ‘Days in dismay which were like deserted bowers!’; though spiritual alienation and distress were its basic traits instead of mysticism.

My eyes are feeble seeking the infinite sky for a merciful eye,

The moon glow melts in the twilight blush and my love that turns

Into a shining star in the night when the sky forgets the earth and the trust

I hold in my bosom, I know how far am I from all those celestial passageways

Tagore’s placid romanticism bloomed again in Malayalam poetry in the poets who belong to the last wrung of romanticism in Malayalam literature. The pure rustic image of love in Sugatha Kumari’s poems reminds us of Tagore. It is not difficult to identify the veiled ‘Tagorean’ tone in the devotion to Krishna pictured in the most celebrated ‘Krishna, Neeyenne Ariyilla’(Oh Krishna, You don’t know me). The transcendental tune of Tagore is latent in some of the film songs written by O.N.V. and P. Bhaskaran without their knowledge. ‘Paduvanay vannu ninde padi vaathilkkal’ ( I came to your doorstep to sing) and ‘Saradindu malardeepa naalam neetti’ (The autumnal moon offers a floral flame) written by O.N.V and ‘Thamarakkumbilallo mama hrudayam’ (My heart happens to be a lotus-cup) and ‘Thamasamende varuvan...’ ( Why are you late to arrive...) by P. Bhaskaran are examples that could be easily cited. Through these songs some of the rare and exquisite poetic features that reside in the ivory towers of imagination became a legacy of the common folk.

Basheer

‘Oh! Pristine beauty, what I hear are your desirous footsteps.

She comes! She comes! My love-stricken princess comes.

Why do you make my heart beat without rest?

Oh! Virginal beauty, why don’t you come?’

These lines were not written by any Malayalam poet, modelling Tagore. It is in Ekanthathayude Mahatheeram (The Boundless Shore of Loneliness) written by Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, a Sufi mystic with modern sensibility who wrote quite a good number of excellent short stories in Malayalam, that these lines of Tagore’s get echoed word by word! We can hear the same footsteps in verse 45 of the English version of Gitanjali and verse 62 of the Bengali Gitanjali. It is just that ‘he’ appears in Tagore’s poem instead of ‘she’.

‘Don’t you hear, don’t you hear

The casting of footsteps

He comes, he comes,

He comes, beloved’ ( Translated by G. Sankara Kurup to Malayalam)

We can hear such footsteps in stories such as Anargha Nimisham (The unforseen moment of fulfilment) and Sandhya Pranamam (The Evening Prayer) by Basheer. (The last verse of English Gitanjali) is included as 148^th verse in The Bengali Gitanjali.

  ‘In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee’

G. Sankarakurup’s translation (in Malayalam) is

In one salutation let me settle down

At thy holy abode

Basheer’s Sandhya Pranamam begins like this:

‘For the last time, Lord, for evening prayer

Have I reached

In the desertedness of this horizon.’

There is no doubt regarding of Basheer’s genuineness and original genius. The aim here is to make clear the fact that the omnipresent radiance of Tagore’s mystic imagination reached even Basheer in his early days of writing.

The story of Vijayan  

One more is there to be pointed out in this regard. It is an interesting fact that we can see a fairly similar image of the parting-lore of birth after birth in ‘Khasaakkinde Ithihaasam’ (The Legend of Khasak) in a poem that appears in an anthology by Tagore, titled ‘The Crescent moon’. In Vijayan’s story a girl, who parts with her sister in a valley of sunset, turns a champa tree. Ages after, the tree asks the girl who plucked flowers, tearing the branches, “Alas! Little sister, you have forgotten me!” In Tagore’s ‘The Champa Flower’ we see the child asking,

‘SUPPOSING I became a champa flower, just for fun, and grew on a branch high up that tree, and shook in the wind with laughter and danced upon the newly budded leaves, would you know me, mother?’

In Tagore’s poem we find the simple and naive imagination of childhood; Vijayan’s is a deep visionary imagination. Though these are not to be compared, it hints the indirect influence that Tagore’s poem has had on Vijayan as the champa flower re-appears in the latter in the disguise.

Tagore manifested through Geetanjali great poetry that had influenced Malayalam poetry and literature intensely and everlastingly. There have been multifarious translations that started with Keezhedatthu Madhavan Nair, the first translator and passed through L.M. Thomas, G. Sankara Kurup, K.C. Pillai, and V.S. Sarma and ultimately, K. Jayakumar, a poet turned IAS officer, for Geetanjali. New Malayalam translations may be done for that work in this century. Let’s hope that this expectation won’t be gone astray as is evident from N.P. Chandrasekharan’s recently published poem dedicated to Tagore and G. Sankara kurup, modelling it on the Malayalam translation that G. gave for the 64^th verse of Geetanjali.