Biography
Edappally Raghavan Pillai was a romantic Malayalam poet who committed suicide at a young age. He along with his close friend Changampuzha Krishna Pillai brought in a new breath of life into the Malayalam poetry of the 1930s. They are considered as Shelley and Keats of Malayalm poetry.
Raghavan Pillai has been compared by Kesari Balakrishna Pillai to Giacomo Leopardi of Italy.
Raghavan Pillai's best poem is perhaps Maninadam (The sound of the bells) which he wrote a short while before his death. The farewell song opens by:
?The tolling bell; It is the sweet knell
Of the day of the death; I am coming;
Let me say my farewell words
To friends who come to see me off.?
It is believed that the famous pastoral play Ramanan by Changampuzha is an elegy based on the life and death of his friend Raghavan Pillai. It is a play writtern in the form of verse which captures the loveliness of the landscape of Kerala with its evergreen trees and its numerous rivers. ..
