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Lessons in history
A. RAMALINGA SASTRY
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Lecture A talk on modernism in Telugu literature
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Velcheru Narayana Rao
The history of mankind can be categorised as ancient (up to 5th century AD), medieval (5th to 15th century) and modern (post 15th century). The literati opine that modernism and modernity appeared for the first time in literature in the early 19th ce
ntury. It is affirmed that it got pioneered in Telugu literature by Gurazada in Andhra, Tagore and Bankimchandra in Bengal and so on. Dr. Velcheru Narayana Rao elucidated on these aspects in his prelude to his lecture at Visakhapatnam Public Library last Thursday. He was delivering its benefactor’s Garimella Sitaram and Mahalakshmi endowment lecture organised by the Library Society.
Dr. Rao is a professor of Asian Languages and Cultures in the Wisconsin University, Madison, United States, and has many a published work to his credit which includes translations of Prabandha Kavyas into English. His choice of the topic was “What do modernism and modernity denote? When did they start appearing in Telugu literature?”
To begin with the professor explicated his interpretation of modernism and modernity in terms of changes in norms of individual and collective life patterns, philosophy, thought and practice. Then eloquently quoting excerpts from classical literature starting from the Aadikavya Ramayanam by Valmiki on one hand and works of Nannaya to recent writers and poets in Telugu on the other, he sought to establish how modernism and modernity in some form or other including the concept of copyright in its varied hues happened to be the impetus behind their making up and get reflected in them.
But, whether such an interpretation could stand comparably conformable as nearly with the denotation of modernism (the phenomenon of any religious tenet or a norm of a tradition tending to get harmonised with modern ideas) and modernity (marked by fashion that has its roots either in the current or its immediate past which in turn did not get antiquated) as that of the empathetic treatment of evils like Kanyasulkam, Varakatnam, child marriage, practice of extra marital relations, untouchability etc., brought out by Gurazada, Tagore, Bankimchandra and the like with a telling effect, that too in the colloquial idiom of the common man, or not, remained however a moot point.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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