Rhapsodes were performers of Homeric poetry in ancient Greece. For instance, in Ion, Plato’s mentor Socrates challenges the rhapsode Ion to explain how he can be truthful and an artist at the same time. While The Republic is Plato’s most commonly cited work, he takes on poets or their allies in other books as well.

Surely the painting is artificial – and the creator of such a painting or a work of art, that is, an artist or poet, is a creator of untruths.Īlso read: Chained Muse: Notes from Prison by Varavara Rao There is the idea of the perfect bed, then there is the bed that the carpenter makes, and finally the bed that the artist paints. In Book X, he gives the example of a bed – or a couch, according to differing translations. He uses the example of painting to establish that poets are mimetic artists, and therefore they do not speak the truth. In his seminal work, The Republic, ancient Greek philosopher Plato, infamously, bans the poet from his utopian city state. The treatment that the Indian state has meted out to Rao – earlier and now – might seem Platonic. Some have even claimed that by ignoring Rao’s health, the state was imposing capital punishment on him, without even a trial. Over the past couple of days, the clamour to get him released has increased in India and abroad. He was till recently lodged in Mumbai’s Taloja jail in relation to the Elgar Parishad case, and was moved to a hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. In a recent article, his niece, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla claims: “It is, in fact, possible to sketch independent India’s history simply by the dates of fabricated cases brought against him by the Indian state: over the last 45 years, there have been 25, for which he has spent eight years in prison, awaiting trials that would eventually acquit him.” Rao, 79, has been arrested several times during his six-decade-long career as a man of letters and political activism.

In a poem from the 1990s, Telugu poet Varavara Rao details the night before being arrested:

1990s telugu novels