: माधव जूलियन) (January 21, 1894 – November 29, 1939) was the pen name which Madhav Trimbak Patwardhan (Devanagari

Devanagari

Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

: माधव त्रिंबक पटवर्धन) used in writing Marathi

Marathi people

The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...

 poetry.

He hailed from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Biography

Patwardhan was born in 1894 in Badoda

Badoda

Badoda is a city and a municipality in Sheopur district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India.-Demographics: India census, Badoda had a population of 15,672. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Badoda has an average literacy rate of 48%, lower than the national average of...

. He obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1916 and 1918, respectively, by specializing in the studies of Pharsi (Persian) and English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

.

During 1918-1924, he taught Pharsi at Fergusson College

Fergusson College

Fergusson College is a degree college in western India, situated in the city of Pune. It was founded in 1885 by the Deccan Education Society and at that time was the first privately governed college in India. It is named after Sir James Fergusson, the Governor of Bombay, who donated a then...

 in Pune

Pune

Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...

, and after serving as a high school teacher for the next four years, he joined Rajaram College

Rajaram College

Rajaram College, Kolhapur is a Government college affiliated to Shivaji University in Kolhapur. It runs degree level courses in science, humanities, languages and arts. It also has a popular junior college offering higher secondary education courses in science and arts. very old collge Rajaram...

 in Kolhapur to teach Pharsi there for the next eleven years (until his untimely death at age 45 in 1939).

In 1926, he published a Pharsi-Marathi dictionary.

During his years at Rajaram College, Patwardhan wrote in Marathi a thesis titled Chhandorachana (छंदोरचना) and received for it a D.Litt. Degree from Mumbai University in 1939, a few months before his death. He was the first person in India to receive a doctorate in the field of Marathi literature.

Patwardhan presided over Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan is a conference for literary discussions by Marathi writers. Though the conference has sometimes been held in a town outside the Indian state of Maharashtra, it is typically held annually in one of the towns in Maharashtra where Marathi is the mother tongue...

(मराठी साहित्य सम्मेलन) in Jalgaon in 1936.

Poetry

Patwardhan was among pioneers like Keshavasuta

Keshavasuta

Krishnaji Keshav Damle was a Marathi poet from Maharashtra, India, who wrote poetry under the pen name Keshavasuta .-Life:Damle was born on March 15, 1866 in the town of Malgund near Ratnagiri....

, Govindagraj

Ram Ganesh Gadkari

Ram Ganesh Gadkari was a Marathi poet, playwright, and humorist from Maharashtra, India.Ram Ganesh Gadkari was one of the writers in new age transformation in Marathi Literature. He wrote poetry under the pen name Govindagraj and humorous articles under the pen name Balakram...

, and Bhaskar Ramchandra Tambe in Marathi literature who introduced romantic poetry to it and also introduced the themes of social and political reforms in Marathi poetry. They further introduced new forms of poetry writing in Marathi, including sonnets (सुनीते), gazals (गज़ल), and bhavgeete (भावगीते).

Patwardhan published ten collections of his poems. His first publication titled Wiraha-Tarang (विरह-तरंग) (1926) was a romantic khand-kavya (खंडकाव्य) consisting of 234 shlok (श्लोक). His next publication titled Sudharak (सुधारक) (1928) contained his satirical 18-chapter khand-kavya with the theme of social reforms.

The idea of linguistic purity

Patwardhan held the idea that Marathi writers must maintain linguistic “purity” in Marathi writing. He wrote a book titled BhashaShuddhi-Wiwek (भाषाशुद्धि-विवेक) on that topic. He listed in it 1,200 words which were prevalent to different degrees in contemporary Marathi literature and which, he thought, ought not to be used any more in Marathi literature.

(In the above context, his inclusion in his poetry of some unusual words or word combinations like हृद्य मजा, खुर्चीसन्मुख, ज्वानीच्या अरुणोदयीं, and दुरत्यय वाग्यतता stands out, as also his choice of the pen name Madhav Julian with a “foreign” flavor. He might, however, have assumed the unusual pen name for the very sake of its unusualness.)