LITTLE MAGAZINES

I used to read many Kannada small magzines when I was a student but was not much aware about their classification as the Little magzines. Little magazines, often called "small magazines", are literary magazines that publish experimental and non-conformist writings of relatively unknown writers. They are usually noncommercial in their outlook. The earliest significant examples are the transcendentalist publication The Dial (1840–44), edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller in In Boston. Little magazines played a significant role for the poets who shaped the avant-garde movements like Modernism and Post-modernism across the world in the twentieth century. The Little Magazine Movement originated in the fifties and the sixties in many Indian Languages  like Bengali, Kannada, Tamil,Marathi,Hindi ,Malayalam and Gujarati, as it did in the West, in the early part of the 20th century(Wiki).  I had an opportunity to attend a symposium of such small magazines of Kannada in Bangalore on saturday.

It was a learning experience of different kind to hear the Kannada literary giants during a symposium on the 'Literary Journals and Present Response' organised by Sahitya Academy in association with the Jain University on Saturday morning. I was in time to listen to the lecture of Ms Choodamani Nanadagopal,Nataraj Huliyur,Chandrasekar Patil and Shudra Srinivas.

It was a story of little magazines in Kannada which has traversed many decades in print. How these magazines have started survived and prospered or closed. Amongst all those magazines which survived for almost fifty years was’ Sankramana’ started by Mr.Chandrasekar Patil himself along with two of his friends. I had read this magazines while in college which was popular amongst the socially inclined friends. The content and the quality of the magazines has remained still good with Mr Champa’s involvement.

One of the speaker spoke about the history of creativity. He said that the creativity was defined by Chaucer in the 14^th century spiritual or divine form. That time I remembered a friend of mine now who is in the business of  a newspaper asking me after reading my poetry ‘Parakaya Pravesha agedeya?’(Meaning –Is there any spirits inside you who has influenced you to become a poet). The speaker also went on to compare creativity to sorcery where the creator moves away from the normal belief or practice to define and say something in his artistic forms, be it painting, poetry or novels. 

Finally Shudra Srinivas spoke about the story of his little magazine ‘Shudra’. His journey and relationship with Mr Lankesh.He also spoke about Maya Angelou’s poetry, saying that he was influenced by her writing. I was surprised and impressed when he spoke about Maya Angelou. He also said it has been his practice to read at least two new books in a week since his Lankesh magazine days.

One most important subject the symposium has not focussed much  is e-journalism, which is going to be the future medium with our young wired generation whether we like it or not,change is on the horizon.China has been more succesful in recent years in promoting and adapting effectively to the new form of literature.

 The programme was organised well by the Jain University, but some more publicity could have brought more writers and poets to the symposium.