Page:2015.396258.Vyasavali.pdf/127

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
INTRODUCTION
115

genius of the language can we adopt and adapt from English or other writers, whereby variety, emphasis, lucidity, and strength may be attained? Prose writing is yet in its infancy with us; *[1]this instrument of expression has yet to be forged. Reflexion may help to a satisfactory tempering. And poetry too may be developed. We would encourage the collection of ballads and songs and an analysis of their natural art in critical discussion. The real indigenous metres wherein accent plays an important part we would discover or if any poets will essay flights in the native manner improving upon the rude art of the unknown singers of the people, we shall welcome their efforts.

On the linguistic side, we would point to the need there is to study dialects and to gather material for dialectal glossaries. In other countries there is already a mass of work done in this direction and poets and tellers of tales have arisen who have used their dialects with effect in English, for instance Waugh in the Lancashire dialect, Barn in the Dorset, and above all Burns in the Scots. Our superior persons pretend contempt of the simple flok and their utterance; but that the simple have their needs and will have them is proved by the ill-printed ballad books to be found in any bazar.

  1. Vide A Defence of Literary Telugu by Mr, J. Ramayya Pantulu, page 2,