Life and the Literary Subject: Literary Criticism in Malayalam in the 1930s

Udaya Kumar

Literary criticism (sahityanirupanam) acquired relative coherence as a practice in early twentieth century Kerala, slowly differentiating itself from discussions of aesthetic doctrines of literature (sahityasastram). While the concept of the sahrdaya retained its currency in the language of criticism, it acquired meanings which did not imply cultural lineage or special apprenticeship. This paper considers the emergence of a new idea of the literary subject in this period of expansion of literary practice and enquires into its conceptual coordinates. What were its links with the invocation of the ‘people’ and the ‘public’ in contemporary discourses on politics, society and community? What degree of individuation did this concept necessitate and permit? I shall address these questions by gauging the pressure they exert on the writings – especially of the 1930s – of A. Balakrishna Pillai (1889-1960), newspaper editor and influential literary critic. While Pillai’s ideas on jivatsahityam (life-literature) anticipated Marxist arguments on progressive writing, his preoccupation with psychoanalysis and European modernism led him to formulate more complex and conflict-ridden arguments on the individual and social dimensions of literary experience. This paper will examine his use of words such as ‘life’ (jeevan and jeevitam), ‘pleasure’ (anandam) and ‘renunciatory detachment’ (vairagyam) and their consequences for conceiving a subject for literary practice. My aim is to extend the discussion on the literary public in Kerala sketched in my earlier paper in the last Conceptual History workshop.