Karan - Welcome to Umamani.com

An interview with Professor Karandikar
(September 13, 1970)

A leading literary figure in the milieu of Marathi literature, Prof. G.V. Karandikar has a number of works to his credit. Two books on literary criticism “Tradition and Experiment” (in Marathi), and translation of Aristotle’s Poetics, two books of personal essays, four books of poetry for adults, seven small books of poetry for children, and translations of part of Goethe’s ‘Faust’, flicker across a wide sweeping curve of literary career.

When I asked him when he began his literary career, he felt it difficult to pinpoint the exact period. Probably he began writing at the age of sixteen. He had written his poems ‘juvenilia work’ as he put it, in a small pocket not-book black in colour. It was lost, and he was least inclined to call it as poetry by any stretch of imagination.

Out talk hen moved on to what modern poets of the day wrote. He felt happy they wrote better than him. All the same consoled himself that his early poetry wasn’t in any case imitation. There was no awareness of a ‘period style’ in them. They just came from life. Just a case of ‘original bad stryle’ as he put it. But the modern generation of poets felt the infulence of period style, the influence of some persons. Their influence stemmed not from life but from contact with celebrities. He wasn’t happy over this trend.

He then went to talk about the impact of some personlities on his develpment at a later stage. He had studied at Rajaram College at Kolhapur. Had come into contact with Madhav Julian, a distinguished poet of that period, and N.S. Phadke, the great novelist. He acknowledged the former as his guru, and had dedicated one of his collections to him, Madhav Julian was a distinguished poet, and a D. Litt. from Bombay University as well.

Thanks to Madhav Julian he had involved himself in poetry as a worth-while pursuit, and as a serious adventure of the soul.

(Professor Karandikar under whom I studied in the sixties, went on to win the Gnanapeet award in 2003)