K. Raghavendra Rao is one of the Indian English poets who belong to the modernist group. Though basically a professor of political science who taught at Madras Christian College, Madras and later in Mangalore University, Raghavendra Rao is a committed poet and critic who, along with P. Lai spearheaded the modernist movement in Indian English poetry.
image source: galleries.celebs.movies.2.pluz.in
In fact he со-edited with P. Lal the historic publication of The Writer’s Workshop, namely The Modem Indo-Anglian Poetry (1959) which included a ‘credo’ or manifesto for the ‘new poets’ and their poems. He was again one of those who dismissed with a snigger “writers like Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and Sri Aurobindo who used the English language, not as creators but as manipulators”. Like Lal, Mr. Rao was one of the Workshop writers who “tried to turn their passing allergies into a manual of poetics and asserted that they were the only poets and that theirs alone was the true poetry” (Dr. K.R.S. Iyengar). He has been consistent in his loyalties and has always expressed himself strongly against all the earlier poets and in favour of the modernists. He has published two volumes of poetry, Poems (1968) Continents of Silence (1982).
ADVERTISEMENTS:
“The Journey of Golgotha” is almost a religious poem which expresses the tender feelings of the speaker in respect of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is pictured throughout more as Child Jesus. While the emphasis in the poem is on the ‘innocence’ of Child Jesus, the opening lines strike a note of caution against the ‘calculated innocence’ of children which hides a great deal of complexity. The suggestion perhaps is that a child, however innocent, carries within itself potentialities which, maturing in the fullness of time, can work miracles and even, transform the world.
The poem is at once an apostrophe and a prayer which invokes the mercy of the Lord for himself and the world.