Poetry - The Second Generation of Romantics

Of the three poets, Asan, Ulloor and Vallathol, it was Vallathol the youngest that attracted the largest following in his life - time and enjoyed the greatest popularity.

Among those who were close to him in style are Nalappat Narayana Menon, Kuttippurathu Kesavan Nair, K.M.Panikkar, G.Sankara Kurup, Pallathu Raman, Bodheswaran, Vennikulam Gopala Kurup, P.Kunjiraman Nair, Palai Narayanan Nair, M.P.Appan and Balamani Amma. Nalappat Narayana Menon (1887-1955) is mainly remembered for his clasic elegy on the death of hiswife, Kannuneer Tulli (Tear Drop), one of the best meditative lyrics in Malayalam. Like the English elegiac poets, he is prompted to speculate on the meaning of life by the experience of bereavement:

Infinite, inscrutable and ineffable
The route on which spins this cosmic globe;
What does man know of its true meaning,
Who looks at it from an obscure corner?

This philosophical strain which is an undercurrent of romantic poetry makes Nalappat Narayana Menon closest to Asan, of all the poets in the Vallathol school. Kuttippurathu Kesavan Nair (1883-1959) in his poem Grameena Kanyka (The Village Maid) wrote about the simple yous of the rural society that were threatened by the prospect of urbanization. Pallathu Raman (1892-1950) mainly wrote poems of social revolt. K.M.Panikkar (1895-1963), also a historian in English and a novelist in the C.V.tradition, came under the influence of the early Vallathol and wrote poems in several genres.
G.Sankara Kurup (1900-1978), brought up in the classicist tradition of Ulloor and Vallathol, fell early under the influence of Rabindranath Tagore and emerged as one of the major voices in the 1930's. He passed through various stages of evolution marked by movements such as mysticism, symbolism, realism and also socialist realism. Among his major lyrical and meditative poems are Nakshtragitam (Song of the Star), Suryakanti (The Sunflower) Innu Jnan Nale Nee (Today I, Tomorrow Thou), Nimisham (The Moment) and Viswadarsanam (TheCosmic Vision). They are all imbued with a spiritual earnestness whioch often brings him closer to the poetry of Kumaran Asan. His dramatic monologue, Perumthachan (The Master Carpenter), is one of the more successful poems in the genre in Malayalam.
Vennikulam Gopala Kurup (1902-1980) has stayed more or less within the Vallathol frame-work, but has achieved some fine effects in his best poems about scenes in everyday life. P.Kunhiraman Nair (1909-1978) was an indefatigable champion of the native tradition of life and an unwearied admirer of the beauty of Kerala landscape. Nalappat Balamani Amma is the greatest poetess Kerala has produced so far. She is equally good at domestic themes and at speculative phimosophy. Her longer monologues on Parasurama, Viswamitra, Mahabali and Vibhishana add a new dimension to Vallathol's portrayals of puranic characters and episodes.
Two poets, Edappally Raghavan Pillai and Changapuzha Krishana Pillai, brought in a new breath of life into the Malayalam poetry of the 1930's. Edappalli Raghavan Pillai (1909-1936), one of the true inheritors of unfulfilled renown among modern Malayalam poets, brought out and emphasized the finer elements which were often muted in the poems of the Vallathol School. His poetry reiminds us a a vibrant melody played on a single-string instrument. Before he committed suicide in 1936 he wrote a few excellent lyrics in the purer romantic strain with no hangover from neoclassicism. The close alliance between nature and the poet's mood of the moment is a recurring theme in his work, as in the

following lines from Prateeksha (Hope):
Come away, come away, my bird of hope:
Darkeness is spreading everywhere!
Singing its last song, to the west
Has flown the golden bird of twilight;
In the flower garden of the night
Already the jasmine buds of tonight have blossomed.
The last flickering smile of the lotus
Has melted into the twilight glow:
The cuckoo, tired of its singing,
is asleep on the tree in the yard.
My bird of hope, wandering somewhere
In the heavens, please come away!

The double-distilled essence of romantic lyricism, tender and delicate and wistful: never before or after in the history of Malayalam poetry has it been captured in words. Edappalli Raghavan Pillai has been compared by A.Balakrishna Pillai to Leopardi of Italy: the brooding melancholy of an autumnal afternoon lingers over the poems of both. Raghavan Pillai's best poem is perhaps Maninadam (The sound of the bells) which ends with a quiet prayer:
Will each drop of my blood
Dripping from my heart's broken wall
Tired of the repeated batterings
Of the rough rubbles of insult
Inspire the pen that writes love songs?
And if it does, will it be effective?

His companion Changampuzha Krishna Pillai (1911-1948) met the same challenge of life with greater resilience. But deep down in him too there glowed an incurable idealism which saw the world in primary colours. In a "statement" in verse prefixed to his first volume Bashpanjali (Tearful Offerings: 1934) he said:
May be it's right - this world
May be a source of unique joys;
May be a wave in the milky sea
Of the life of power and pomp;
Unlucky that I am, whatever I saw
Was shrouded in pain!
Whatever fell upon my ears
Was the cry of pity!
Whatever my burning soul suffered
Were sighs deep and hot.

Changampuzha's most popular work is a pastoral play in verse called Ramanan. It is a dramatization of the life and death of Raghavan Pillai presented in idealized terms. Its romantic melodies have captured the loveliness of the landscape of Kerala with its evergreen trees and its numerous rivers. With Changampuzha, Malayalam poetry comes directly under the influence of world poetry other than English too. He was a prolific writer with an ever-widening readership. He was susceptible to different kinds of influence from time to time: he has written poems extolling vedic culture and condemning it vehemently; he has denounced socialism and has hailed Marx. These contradictions exist only on the intellectual plane. The magic of his poetry subsumes all these paradoxes. His last collection of poems Swararagasudha (1948) represents his art at its most mature. "Rakkilikal" (Night birds: 1946) is in the form of a duet recited by a young man and a young woman calling upon the sleeping world to awaken to a new day, better and brighter than ever before. "Manaswini" (Women with a generous heart: 1947) is an autobiographical poem in which the poet pays his homage in glowing words:

As my heart, reflecting on you,
Melts and dissolves in a reverie,
My soul, urged by some ecstasy,
Is thrilled through and through.
Pain, pain, intoxicating
Pain - let me drench myself in it!
Drench myself, and from within me
Let a soft strain of the flute flow.

Changampuzha passed away in 1948 and with that the magic world of romanticism too came to an end. In the thirties and forties, realism had threatened to creep into Malayalam poetry, but never could raise its head very high. Edasseri Govindan Nair was one of the first poets to use a non-romantic diction and talk about the problems of life with precision and sharpness. Rural life and industrial life appear in his poems [Puthenkalavum Arivalum (The new pot and the sockle); "Panimudakku" (Strike)] in naked, unadorned and not-to-musical verse. Changampuzha's protest songs were so mellifluous that they often lulled both the rebel and his opponent into the luxury of a daydream. Edasseri made the rebel think and understand, before rushing into a fury of voilence. Through him Malayalam poetry learned to shed some colourful but unhealthy encrustations and speak the language of truth as in : "Bury the griefs in a pit and let us tale a leap to power".

Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon (1911-1985) is perhaps the last of our major links with Vallathol. He survived the flood tide of the poetry of Changampuzha, his exact contemporary. He started publishing collections late and in the late forties and fifties he wrote some of his very poems. He had once declared himself to be a "poet of beauty" but later extended the meaning of the word "beauty" to cover all aspects of life. His poetry gained in depth and complexity in the years that followed. His most popular poem is "Mampazham" (Ripe Mango), a very early work illustrating the Wordsworthian view that children are prophets. Among his more mature works are "Sahyante Makan" (Son of the Western Ghats) presenting with sympathy and understanding the troubled thoughts of a temple elephant in the process of going crazy and running amuck. The romantic train is not absent in him, for example Oonjalinmel (On the Swing), but it does not lead to uncontrolled outbursts or torrential overflow or loose meanderings. He always exercises severe control over his matter and manner: seldom does he tolerate sentimentality of melodrama. His most ambitious poem is perhaps Kudiyozhikkal ( Eviction), a kind of lyrical - dramatic narrative in which the poet tries to dramatize his own ambivalence vis-a-vis the community at large and to clarify the role of the poet in a world of changing values.
The Edappally school continued for a little while in the fifties as in the works of P.Bhaskaran. But the Edasseri line got strengthened with the coming into the scene of N.V.Krishana Warrier (1916-1989) author of Neenda Kavitakal (Long Poems) and Kochuthomman, Akkitham Achuthan Nambuduri, author of Irupatam Nootandine Itihasam (The Epic of the Twenty Century) and Olappamanna, author of Nangemakkutty