Vallathol Narayana Menon Biography | Poet

Many people in the West are not familiar with the works of Vallathol Narayana Menon, or with the works of many other South Asian poets who have managed to keep the Malayalam language alive. However, he might be one of the more famous poets of that culture and that region that they can draw on, which will probably make a big difference for them. Vallathol Narayana Menon was born on the sixteenth of October in 1878 and he passed away on the thirteenth of March in 1958. As such, he did manage to live a fairly long life, particularly for someone who was born in the nineteenth century. He received the Padma Bhushan award in 1954.

The Education of Vallathol Narayana Menon

Vallathol Narayana Menon started writing poetry at the age of twelve, making him the sort of poet who could be considered a prodigy and not the sort of poet whose gift is largely a product of scholarly attention. Vallathol Narayana Menon did have training in the Sanskrit language, but he actually lacked formal education overall. However, he did spend a year in training with Parakkulam Subrahmanya Sastri and Kaikkulangara Rama Variar in the studies of Philosophy and Logic. He managed to get some formal education in that regard, but no solid schooling.

The People Associated with Vallathol Narayana Menon

Like many people of his culture and his generation, Vallathol Narayana Menon learned a great deal of what he needed to know in order to succeed from the people who were close to him in his familial life. His uncle was the person who introduced him to Sanskrit poetry in the first place. He also learned more about the Sanskrit language from a formal Sanskrit scholar. Many poets have been influenced by the people in their lives directly or indirectly, and he was one of the many poets who can say that the people in his life really and truly wanted to make him someone who had a gift for language, rather than simply a person who had a lot of emotional experiences to draw from that could later be used for that purpose.

The Awards and Accomplishments of Vallathol Narayana Menon

He won the Padma Bhushan in 1954, and this is one of the highest civilian honors that a person could receive in that culture. His earliest works were Kiratha Satakam and Vyasavataram. The publication of Mahakavya Chitrayogam gave him the vaunted title of Mahakavi. Many people also rate his poems Achanum Makalum, Sishyanum Makanum, Divaswapnam, and Virasinkala. One of his largest works is Sahitya Manjari (A Bouquet of Literature).

The Legacy and Remembrances of Vallathol Narayana Menon

Many people specifically rate Vallathol Narayana Menon for the fact that he managed to write so eloquently in the Malayalam language, and that he was one of the rare poets who managed to do so in a way that would compete with the overexposure of Western poets. Many people from the twentieth century are still only aware of the poets from the West, and the poets of the South Asian area or even Asia in general continue to get ignored in favor of many of the Western competitors. This can be difficult for many of the people who are from those areas and who want to be able to see their culture represented among the cultures that have managed to stay dominant well after the end of British imperialism, which was alive and well for people of Vallathol Narayana Menon's generation.

Vallathol Narayana Menon was not merely the sort of poet who managed to bring more attention to a group of people who tend to get neglected. He was a genuine nationalist poet who really supported the Indian Freedom Movement in his lifetime. The people who have similar political convictions are going to see him as something of an artistic hero as a result, and that is going to continue today even though the Indians have managed to earn their freedom from the British. While British imperialism is officially over, many of the scars of that time period still persist today, and the remembrances of people like Vallathol Narayana Menon serve to demonstrate that there was plenty of opposition to the British even during this time period.