The metaphor of the wasteland is explored as a mental disposition in T K Santhosh Kumar’s nonfiction ‘Tharisunilathile Kavya Sancharangal’. The book takes off from the basic premise of T S Eliot’s epochal ‘The Waste Land’ to examine its echoes in Malayalam through the poetic idioms of K Ayyappa Paniker, K Satchidanandan and Balachandran Chullikkad.
The author has attempted to demarcate between the influence of Eliot on the Malayalam poets and their spontaneous compliance to the dominant sentiments of the era.
The emphasis, therefore, is on the milieu in which these writers produced their poetry - the yawning void in the political and cultural spheres of the country in the mid twentieth century. The worst of times, the best of hope and the fieriest of battles had come and gone. The struggle for independence had been won, the communist ideal had begun to wane and the poet suffered the absolute lack of a romantic ideal.
The book devotes its first chapter to revisit the signature poem that inaugurated the era of the ‘fragmented self’. The 24-page chapter is an engaging reflection on ‘The Waste Land’, given that the perspective is put on record almost a century since the publication of the poem in 1922.
Ayyappa Paniker’s magnum opus ‘Kurukshetram’, which earned him the title ‘T S Eliot of Malayalam’, is at once juxtaposed as an abstraction of the poignancy of ‘The Waste Land’ and an independent take on the sterile age.
K Satchidanandan’s ‘Sathyavangmoolam’ was acclaimed as a highly experimental work when it was published in the 1970s. The poem, resonant of the activist phase of the writer, has since been referred to as a highlight of modern Malayalam literature. The author invites attention to the poem for its ironical accent on pathos to mark an era that was profoundly lacking in authenticity.
The revolutionary fervour in the poetry of Balachandran Chullikkad is read as a quintessential wail of the lost soul in the light of his poem ‘Mappusakshi’.
The poetry of N N Kakkad, G K Sankara Pillai and other modern poets are also analysed in the context. The book, published by State Institute of Languages, will be released in the city on September 17 by former ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
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