She was a solitary woman on a tract owned by male writers and wrote her way to acknowledgment and glory. Prof M Leelavathy gives the aura of glitz usually attached to women writers a miss. But the critic, who now has the state’s biggest literary laurel to her credit, is not easily irked by the less-popular status of her genre.
“Some people are born lucky, but some others have to rough it out braving all odds. Litterateurs are born with the sacred gift of instinct while critics lack any inborn prowess. They have to go through a rigorous routine of learning and research to acquire erudition. So I believe literary criticism is not an inch inferior to creative writing,” she says.
Prof Leelavathy’s style came as a fresh whiff when the genre of criticism was caught up in a time warp of conventionality. Her writings deviated drastically from the acceptable and the ceremonious and used tools like analytical psychology. “I am against the Freudian approach that connects everything to libido. While Freud connects a kid’s thumb sucking to sex, Jung says it has to do with sustenance which I find more acceptable. I also feel oedipal and electra complexes are rebellions against an idol of authority as opposed to the Freudian theories,” she clarifies her theoretical stand.
Prof Leelavathy says she doesn’t consider the existence of corresponding Indian approaches to many European streams of thought accidental. “Archetypes like voyage gets repeated in many epics such as Ramayana and Odyssey. There is also a variety of formless archetypes in the collective unconscious of a society and I base my criticism on them.”
Though her writings carry a deep woman-oriented insight Prof Leelavathy never belonged to the feminist bandwagon and says she is strictly against the radical ideology that brands men as an enemy clan.
“Issues of violence and polygamy have always been there. A woman should resist with all her might when she is reduced to an instrument of sensual pleasure, but it’s also not appropriate and justifiable to generalise individual incidents. I believe love generates equality but some feminists freeze off this very base of equality,” she says.
She believes that visual media has broke open an all new world you cannot eschew. “Of course it’s capable of manipulating our cultural concepts, usurping our reading habits and invading the space set apart for serious thought. But now we are so used to it that we stop reacting to it just the way pests grow immune to pesticides,” she says.
She also feels that there is no sense in scorning the situation or lamenting over the death of reading. “Since you cannot revert scientific progress all we can hope for is that both the worlds coexist peacefully.”
As a veteran in the field she asserts with confidence that Malayalam literature underwent no serious deterioration and still possesses an undeniable stature and grandeur. “One thing I noticed is while other genres keep a low profile fiction is flourishing in Malayalam.” She also says that Malayalam has an irrefutable supremacy over many Indian languages.
“We had colossal geniuses like Kodungallur Kunjikuttan Thampuran who translated Mahabharata from Sanskrit to Malayalam in 874 days while in Telugu the work involved three generations of translators. Even today we have unparalleled women writers in Malayalam who turn their celebrated contemporaries in other languages to commonplace writers,” she says.
Prof M Leelavathy says she values academia more than her eventful critical career and the accolades received. She stresses teaching has been her priority on which she has never made any compromise. “Writing is a relief from the hassles of life. But teaching — being a catalyst to the right thought process and evolving better individuals — is something that makes me more content . It’s therapeutic.”
navamy@gmail.com