Author: P. Marudanayagam
Publisher:
Published: 2020-10-17
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13:
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No apology may be required for bringing out a collection of essays examining ancient Tamil poetry and poetics from diverse contemporary perspectives. Now that Tamil has been declared a classical language by the Government of India, it behoves the native scholars of Tamil to convince the world that Tamil deserves the appellation that has elevated it to the level of Greek and Latin which the West has been unanimously cherishing as classical languages for a long time. By 'classic' we mean a literary piece which has achieved a recognized position in literary history for its superior merits. Classical literature may refer to Greek and Roman literature or any literature that exhibits the qualities of classicism. When the word 'Classical' is used to describe the characteristic features of a literary work it implies objectivity in the choice and handling of the theme, simplicity of style, clarity, restraint, order and formal structure. Praiseworthy books, according to Milton, "are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them". Great literature deals not merely with some aspects of the human mind but with the total human psyche. In Coleridge's view, its great achievement is to bring about a "whole-souled activity in man" by appealing to the senses, the heart, the intellect and the spirit of the reader. Besides possessing these attributes, Caṅkam writings have been exerting their profound impact on several succeeding generations of Tamil poets. How did the ancient Tamils conceive art? To them, art, especially poetry, is not a simple source of aesthetic delight, but as Tolstoy contends, "one of the conditions of human life", and, more importantly, "a means of union among men joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards the wellbeing of individuals and humanity." The claim of Tamil classics to international recognition and eternal fame is, therefore, based on solid grounds. In consequence of A.K.Ramanujan's English translations of selections from a few Caṅkam anthologies, the response by Western critics in the form of articles and books is much more widespread than ever before. But not all of them can be said to be insightful or even well informed and some of them are not free from howlers. It is again the duty of the insiders to adequately project the Tamil texts, to properly explicate them and to periodically provide the corrective, wherever necessary. We now have a vast variety of ways to interpret a work of literature ranging from traditional approaches like the moralistic and the historical through the formalist, the New Critical, the psychological and the mythic and into such post-structuralist approaches as deconstruction, feminist criticism, New Historicism, Bakhtinian dialogism and cultural studies. Caṅkam writings, being great literature, deserve correspondingly rich responses that are felt and reasoned. Such responses will be extremely fruitful when the critic appreciates these works from as many perspectives as they open themselves to. Matthew Arnold rightly stresses the need to reassess even a writer who has attained the status of a classic. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of the word, classic, classical), then the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry. P. Marudanayagam
