Kannada Poetry Today: Themes and Concerns -Part 2

                  

    

C)  Transcending Ideological Frames:  The poets in this group (such as Aravinda Malagatti, L. Hanumanthaiah, S. G. Siddaramaiah, Savita Nagabhushana, H. L. Pushpa, Pratibha Nandakumar, and others) are those that were active in 80’s and 90’s of the earlier century as the angry poets of ‘Dalit-Bandaya Movement.’    However, most of them now have given up the single agenda of Dalit experience and /or women-subordination and have extended their fields of concern to include either the effects of the recent phenomena of Free Market economy and Globalisation or mystic experience in general.

Kannada Poetry Today: Themes and Concerns -Part 1

First, let me set out the broad contours of my paper.  Though I am aware that the history of Kannada poetry –of any poetry for that matter – has scant respect for the artificial periodisation of time in the form of decades and centuries, only for the sake of convenience, by ‘today’  I mean Kannada poetry in the last decade –ie. the first decade of the 21^st century.  

Kannada Drama with Particular reference to Chandrashekhar Kambar -Part 2

II  Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambar

a)    Biographical:

Padmashree Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambar, playwright-poet-novelist-critic, holds a unique place in the field of post-independence Kannada literature; he fuses modern sensibility with traditional forms of performance and expression.  With 21 plays, eight poetry collections, three novels, and 12 collections of research articles on theatre and literature, Kambar is one of the most significant writers in Kannada, today.

Kannada Drama with Particular reference to Chandrashekhar Kambar -Part 1

     The history of modern Kannada drama can be divided, roughly, into four periods: a) Professional-popular theatre,   b) Elite Theatre of Realism,  c)  Navya or Modernist Theatre, and d) Navyottara or Post-modernist Theatre.

a)     Professional-popular Theatre:

     Although Kannada poetry has a rich history of more than a millennium, drama entered Kannada literature only at the end of the 17^th century; and the first Kannada play to be staged was Singaraarya’s Mitravinda Govinda (1700), a free adaptation of Sri Harsha’s Ratnavali in Sanskrit.  However, popular local forms of theatrical entertainment – called ‘Pagarana,’ ‘Yakshagana,’ ‘Bahurupi,’ etc.  – existed since a long time.  Mummadi Krishnaraja Odeyar, the king of Mysore  (1811-1860), was himself a great writer; and he patronized Yakshagana, a popular dance-music-drama, and wrote many plays in that form.

Parasangada Gende Thimma -Part 2

     The Kannada film based on the novel (with the same title) was produced in 1978.  It was directed by Maruti Shivaram and the roles of Gendethimma and Maranki were played by Lokesh and Rita Anchan, respectively.  The artist behind the camera was the man known for his imaginative handling of the camera, Ramachandra; and the lyrics were penned by the famous poet Doddarange Gowda.  As a bridge-film, it was a big hit with both the masses and the critics. 

Parasangada Gende Thimma -Part 1

                          ‘Avva’ and ‘My Dear Lady’:   The Varied Avatars of a Text

     This paper, a comparative study of a Kannada text, its English translation, and the film based on the text, from the point of view of “ rhetoricity”  has three small sections: while the first section  analyses,  briefly, the Kannada novel Parasangada Gende Thimma  by Shrikrishna Alanahalli, the second section analyses the major features of the translated version  by P. P. Giridhar, and the final section its film version, and then it concludes with a few general comments on the act of translation.