Govinda Krishna Chettur

Commentary by Sreelatha Puthiyaveettil

(2006/12/16)

G. K. Chettur, one of the greatest of oriental writers in English, enthralled readers with his lyrical verse. His treatment of beauty and love, the rich sensuousness of his language, along with his mastery of imagery in the true spirit of Romanticism, remind his own people of Shelley and Keats. Although Chettur follows Petrarch’s sonnets both in form and subject matter--a doting lover’s hopes and pains are given divine status, and their words range from the flowery and hyperbolic to the simple and strongly appealing--he adopts the Elizabethan sonnet sequence to the culture of his contemporary India and deliberately echoes Shakespeare's sonnets.

All Chettur’s sonnets have a melodious gravity, a delicate phrasing, and ennobling imagery. A phrase of Matthew Arnold, “lyrical cry,” characterizes them, but Chettur was simultaneously personal and reflective. At one time he reveals his ardent passion for his wife, at another his anxiety about his separation from her as a result of sickness, all in a sustained meditation on human mortality. Everywhere he makes musical a spontaneous overflow of passionate feelings. This lyricism won over Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, his own countryman, who praised his "very fine lyrics," as well as the Poet Laureate of England, John Masefield, who simply wrote, "I like your sonnets best." The Triumph of Love (1932), Chettur's major sonnet sequence, is dedicated to his beloved wife Subhadra and is the most autobiographical of his works. In these sonnets we see a brilliant interweaving of hope and expectation, despondency and despair, and finally faith. His wife Subhadra inspired them.