Kuvempu’s first piece of writing, a short story for children, “Narigaligeke Kodilla ”, came to light in 1917 and his magnum opus “Malegalalli Madumagalu” was published in 1967. Kuvempu Kathana Kauthuka is a good effort here to record some aspects of the creative genius spread over five decades.
Narahalli’s locates each text chronologically along with the other texts of Kuvempu and proffers some of the details, (most of them look intentionally biographical), that contribute to the genesis of the work. He then goes on to present a fairly good review of some of the critical material already available. The reviews include some facts about the poet and insights drawn from some illustrious critics. He quotes both from Kuvempu and other works on Kuvempu, and finally arrives at a thesis.
In the process, he conceptualizes binaries like ‘Nagara Samskriti’ vs ‘Vana Samskriti’, and a good idea like “payana” (‘journey’). This method may be useful when Kuvempu is taught to the students of literature.The quotations are too many that it is difficult to make out what is new, and if there are fresh insights.
There are several relevant observations, but they are not explored fully. For instance, Masti and Kuvempu are compared, though very briefly, towards the end of the chapter on short stories. The comparisons however, do not help get the reader get a full understanding of them. He says: “…Kuvempu is not interested in the Masti’s way of storytelling. Masti is a pure narrator of stories. Kuvempu is earnest about the narrative: story is a pretext for him. Thus if Masti’s short stories are episodic, Kuvempu’s stories are descriptive and emotionally centered”. (p.69). Narahalli does not back up his statements with the texts of either of them. The intertextual readings are interesting. For instance, when he writes about Ananthamurthy’s comparison of Karanth’s Choma with Kuvempu’s Gutti. The comparison that Choma is ‘high mimetic’ and Gutti is ‘low mimetic’ is perhaps the best example of how two creative minds of early twentieth century have looked at the subaltern issue closely. The much flogged criticism of Navya writers like Lankesh, MGK and Ananthamurthy that the narrative of “Malegalalli…” lacks centrality is taken up again here if only to offer a very tamed counter criticism.
In the concluding chapter, Narahalli recognizes two choices that Kuvempu makes in his writing. One, he chooses events from our ancient epics, myths and legends and after deconstructing their original meanings, recreates them and make them more relevant to our contemporary social and political order. This is evident in his plays and his poetry. Second, he chooses contemporary issues drawn from contemporary society and thus creates a new history of them. His novels are examples of this.
There has been so much work done on Kuvempu, and it is time that we cull out more meanings from his writings.
