Ak Ramanujan Essay

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Ak Ramanujan’s – Small Scale Reflections of a Great House It has been rightly said that A.K. Ramanujan is not obvious as a poet; the poet in him has to be gradually discovered. His poems may not impress the readers on the first reading, but a closer reading of his poems will definitely reveal their myriad hidden beauties! Ramanujan has his own personal views on the poetic process. I think we should be on our guard while making comments on his poetry in the light of the poet's own views on what poetry should be like. A poet's own views on poetry are often the will-o'-the-wisps which mislead the unwary critics. If Wordsworth found it necessary to append a preface to the Lyrical Ballads , it only shows the poet's lack of confidence. T.S.Eliot, on the contrary, set a fine example in this respect. He did not find it necessary to add any preface to his landmark poem The Waste Land In making this short commentary on Ramanujan's poem "Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House" I have tried my best not to be influenced by the poet's own critical theories. On the surface, the poem is a quaint catalogue of things that come into the Great House but do not go out and and also an equally bizarre list of things that go out but soon come back. Even on the first reading, the reader may feel a bit uneasy and he may find the poem a deeply disturbing one in an inexplicable manner. A closer reading of the poem will convince the reader that the poem is a fine piece of social criticism. The poem will assume a universal significance when the reader ponders on this enigmatic poem. He will then recognize that the poem is an elegy on the death of human dignity and identity. It is interesting to compare "Small-Scale Reflections" with V.S Naipaul's masterpiece "A House for Mr Biswas" The hero of Naipaul's romance detests what Ramanujan euphemistically calls a Great House. Actually the
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