Devulapalli Krishna Sastry's Poems

The University, right from its inception, has been focusing upon the important objective of promoting inter- linguistic integration. Emphasis on the inter-lingual activity has doubled during the last one year by starting independent departments for all the four major Dravidian languages with emphasis on Translation Studies.

In furtherance of one of its chief objectives, the University has started two important wings-inter-related but independent in character and function- Prasaranga and anusruJana. While Prasaranga is the general publication and extension services wing, anusruJana is designed not as a Department but as a Bureau of Translation with the chief motto of introducing the genius of one language speakers to the others involving all the professionals and senior translators in all the Dravidian languages both at home and abroad.

Devulapalli Krishna Sastry (1897-1980) is a poet first and last, a poet of vision. It was he who formed the most dynamic spirit of Telugu romantic poetry. It was he who advanced the art of Telugu poetry by an original diction very original, even if a little fanciful. His contribution is a new aesthetics of freedom, joy, an emotion unattached and floating almost in the void. Critics likened him to Shelley, a beautiful but an ‘ineffectual angel!’ The adjectives after adjectives, images after images he uses do not clarify sense but they do impart a tone, a colour, a taste and a touch. In his own words, "every word in poetry carries a colour, taste and fragrance." He evokes an experience but does not interpret it. His is a world not of realism but Platonic realism.

Simile brings forth another simile, metaphor generates another metaphor but the point of beginning ends as a point of departure. In this technique he was compared with A.E. Housman. This is what the modernists call ‘creative disorientation’. His emotional fluency does not care for connections or conscious will. Krishna Sastry is essentially a poet of freedom.

He is at a loss to understand the absence of correlatives between nature and human nature. So he sounds a recluse, an anarchist, a fugitive, a refugee in his own land ~ all of which are characteristics of a romantic poet. But he is a romantic with a difference.

The difference is his love for sorrow; love for pity; love for agony — all of which have no causation. Pity is poetry and poetry is pity for him. Starting with Krishna Pakshamu (1925) he went on to write Pravasamu, Urvasi, Kanneeru and took a turn from pity to piety and wrote devotional songs which sound almost like hymns. His earlier Brahmo Samaj world view slowly gave way to Vaishnavism.

Krishna Sastry developed ‘duAkha’ as a cult: It is because he stood for freedom, total freedom. Freedom of concept and thought, freedom according to the European ideology of Romanticism. He was also influenced by Annie Besant, Brahmosamaj and Mahatma Gandhi.

Poetry for Krishna Sastry was always a quest, a thirst and an angst. It gave him a rich and joyous treasure of sorrow. This is a curious mix of a faculty which no other poet before or after him was bestowed with. He built a vast and an all encompassing metaphor of a huge tear drop around every poem he had written.

Krishna Sastry was very much involved in renaissance movements - in social, literary and progressive as well. He held special literacy classes for the untouchables. He declared that no poet could be free in a land ruled by a foreigner and wrote lyrics welcoming the proletarian revolution. "There shines a red star on the forehead of the sky" is a line from one of his songs that echoed in those days.

Love for him was total freedom in all its attributes. Poetry for him was not merely moral, theistic or social. It could be amoral, agnostic and asocial.

We are happy and proud in presenting a unique Telugu poet to the world over through English translation. My hearty congratulations to Smt. Kiranmayi Indraganti the gifted translator and Sri V. Mohan Prasad Director, Translation Bureau who has shown his editorial acumen.