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The
life and works of Edasseri
Govindan Nair have
assumed greater socio-literary significance after his
death. Readers of Malayalam poetry now go back to him with
renewed interest; critics recognize him as one of the most
important poets of Malayalam. On the one hand, his works
attempt to truthfully reflect the untold effects of
socio-economic changes which metamorphosed the life of
Kerala in the second and third quarters of this century;
on the other, they also try to critically redefine - with
an inimitable mix of anxiety, irony, humour and
objectivity - its changed priorities and concerns. Steeped
at once in the local mythological tradition as well as the
pressures of modernisation, his poems also represent the
ambivalent reaction of a Third World poet of his time.
Spread as they are almost equally in the pre and post
Independence eras his writings offer eternally valid
commentaries on the Gandhian politics with notes of
approval, admiration and dissent, evaluate the beginnings
of socialist awareness in Kerala and analyse the pitfalls
in the short term political strategies and long term
economic policies of the Nehruvian era.
Edasseri’s writings also afford a very different
perspective of the various aspects of womanhood; he has
been rightly called the bard of the heroic Motherhood. And
long before ecology and environmental pollution were heard
of in this state of Kerala, Edasseri has internationalised
the impending problem and prophesied the inevitable doom.
Now, practitioners of Feminist Literary theory and eco
aesthetics have re-discovered in him a kindred spirit.
Edasseri also ranks as a major playwright and eminent
prose writer of Malayalam. Interestingly he is one poet
who has inspired many of his successor poets as a subject
of poetry.
- text by Atmaraman
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