The Indian Review of World Literature in English, Vol. 2, No.II – Jul, 2006
THE RELATION OF TAMIL AND WESTERN LITERATURES - K.Kailasapathy (Speech delivered under the auspices of the Dept. of Cooperative Literatture, Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu, India)
My grateful thanks are due to the Vice- Chancellor and the other authorities of the Maduri Kamaraj University for the honour they have done me by asking me to deliver these lectures. I have chosen “The Relation of Tamil and Western Literatures” as the theme of my lectures. Very soon we shall begin celebrating the birth centenary of our greatest modern poet-Subramania Bharathi (1882-1921). A century is a brief moment in the life of a people whose cultural history goes back, at least, to two and a half millennia. Nevertheless, the last hundred years or so have a significance for exceeding the length of the period. This was a period when Tamil literature, was responding to external influences from the West, especially to English influence and at the same time trying to express its sense of nationality and the consciousness of its own tradition. It is paradox that the period which saw intense western influence has also been the period of the ‘National Resurgence’. For one of the first and chief things observable in the group of pioneers who heralded the Tamil ‘Renaissance’ in the middle of Nineteenth Century, both in Tamil Nadu and Ceylon, is that they were impelled to study their own history, and their own legends, their own customs and folk lore. It is a strange phenomenon that the modern movement that began to manifest itself during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century and gathered momentum by the turn of the century, should draw its initial sustenance from the conscious intellectual endeavor, in contrast to the mechanical repetitions of traditional arrangements that characterized life during the previous few centuries- that the foundations for a new literature were laid. This phenomenon will be familiar to cultural historians as inevitable process in the passage of a literature from colonial rule to national independence and maturity. And the poetical works of Bharathi exeplify this apparent paradox. Accordingly the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the Mahakavi will be most apposite for a retrospective appraisal or evaluation of the relation of our literature to Western literatures. One recalls here Dr.V.Sachithanandan’s admirable piece of work The impact of Western Thought on BHARATI. It will be evident enough, I hope, from the title of my lecture that I do not propose to go over the areas of Western impact on Tamil language and literature or to enumerate the results of such an impact. The story has been often told: the development of prose; the preparation of lexicons; the emergence of the modern movement; the rise of a critical awareness; these have been some of the direct consequences of the confluence of Tamil and Western literatures. To recapitulate them here would be to labour a truism. V.R.M. Chettiar’s observation is typical Modern Tamil Literature has had its growth and expansion both in style and range of subject matter through the influence of Western Literature, in all its varied aspects of poetry, drama, fiction and literary criticism. [1]