\n| <\/p>\n
\nIV <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nHis
\nVersatility <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n
\n
\n
\nW<\/span>HENEVER<\/span><\/b> a literary man gives proof of a high capacity in action people always talk about it as if a miracle had happened. The vulgar theory is that worldly abilities are inconsistent with the poetic genius. Like
\nmost vulgar theories it is a conclusion made at a jump from a few superficial appearances. The inference to be drawn from a
\nsympathetic study of the lives of great thinkers and great writers is that except in certain rare cases versatility is one condition of genius. Indeed the literary ability may be said to contain all the others, and the more so when it takes the form of criticism or of any art, such as the novelist’s, which proceeds principally from criticism. Goethe in Germany, Shakespeare, Fielding and
\nMatthew Arnold in England are notable instances. Even where practical abilities seem wanting, a close study will often reveal
\ntheir existence rusting in a lumber-room of the man’s mind. The poet and the thinker are helpless in the affairs of the world,
\nbecause they choose to be helpless: they sacrifice the practical impulse in their nature, that they may give full expression to
\nthe imaginative or speculative impulse; they choose to burn the candle at one end and [not] at the other, but for all that
\nthe candle has two ends and not one. Bankim, the greatest of novelists, had the versatility developed to its highest expression.
\nScholar, poet, essayist, novelist, philosopher, lawyer, critic, official, philologian and religious innovator, -the whole world seemed to be shut up in his single brain. At first sight he looks like a bundle of contradictions. He had a genius for language
\nand a gift for law; he could write good official papers and he could write a matchless prose; he could pass examinations
\nand he could root out an organised tyranny; he could concern himself with the largest problems of metaphysics and with the
\nsmallest details of word-formation: he had a feeling for the<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nPage \u2013 103<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nsensuous facts of life and a
\nfeeling for the delicate spiritualities of religion: he could learn grammar and he could write poetry.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhat shall we say in the presence of this remarkable versatility? Over-borne by the pomp of it and the show, shall we set it down as an adjunct of intellectual kingliness? Yes, to
\nhave it is an adjunct of intellectual kingliness, but to give expression to it is an intellectual mistake. To give impartial expression
\nto all your gifts is to miss your vocation. Bankim was never so far
\nled astray as that. His province was literature, prose literature, and he knew it. His lyrics are enchanting, but few; metaphysics he followed at the end of his life and law at the beginning;
\nand he used scholarship and philology, simply as other great writers
\nhave used them, to give subtlety of suggestion and richness of word-colour to his literary style. Even in the province of prose
\nliterature, where he might have worked out his versatility to advantage, he preferred to
\nspecialise. He never stepped unpardonably out of his province, but he was occasionally led
\nastray by this or that lure to allow small drains on his fund of energy;
\nand so far as he did so, he sinned against his own soul. The one great and continuous drain was the tax put upon him by
\nofficial drudgery. Under the morbid and wasteful conditions of middle-class life in India genius, when not born in the purple, has put before it, like the fair Rosamund of Norman
\nromance, a choice between two methods of suicide, the Services and the
\nLaw. It must either take the poisoned bowl or the dagger. And in this limited circle of professions the Educational Service with its system of respites and remissions, and the Executive Service
\nwith its indirect rather than direct tax on the pure intellect, present, it may be, the points of least repulsion. But they are none the
\nless a fearful drain because they are, under existing circumstances,
\nnecessary.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIn this versatility Bankim was only a type of the intellectual
\nHindu. This gift, at once a blessing and a curse, is the most singular characteristic of those two Hindu races, which have the
\ndestinies of the country in their keeping. It is the evidence of our high blood, our patent of nobility among the nations; for
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPage \u2013 104<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nit comes of the varied mental experience of our forefathers,
\nof the nation’s three thousand years of intellectual life. But it is at
\nthe same time a rock ahead, of which the Hindu genius has yet to pilot itself clear. To find your vocation and keep to it, that is
\nnot indeed a showy, but it is a simple and solid rule of life. We however prefer to give an impartial expression to all our gifts,
\nforgetting that the mind is as mortal and as much subject to wear and tear as any perishable thing, forgetting that specialism is one condition of the highest accomplishment, forgetting
\nthat our stock of energy is limited and that what we expend in one
\ndirection, we lose in another. We insist on burning the candle at both ends. This spirit appears in our system of public instruction,
\nthe most ingeniously complete machine for murder that human stupidity ever invented, and murder not only of a man’s body but of a man’s soul, of that sacred fire of individuality in him
\nwhich is far holier and more precious than this mere mortal breath. It appeared too with melancholy effects in the literary fate
\nof Kashinath Telang. It was one reason why he, a man of such large abilities, the most considerable genius a highly
\nintellectual people has produced, yet left nothing to which the world will
\nreturn with unfailing delight. Telang, it is true, worked mainly in English, a language he had learned; and in a language you
\nhave learned, you may write graciously, correctly, pleasingly, but you will never attain to the full stature of your genius.
\nBut it was a yet more radical mistake that he, whose power was pre-eminently literary, as any eye trained to these things can see that it was, yet allowed it to run in every
\ndirection except the very one that nature had marked out for it. Bankim was more fortunate. He wrote in his own beautiful mother-tongue, his best work was literary and his immense originality
\nwould in any case have forced its way out. But one cannot think without a pang of the many delightful master-pieces he
\nmight have brought into his garner, if he had had leisure to work single-heartedly in the field of his richest harvests. The
\nbody of work he gave us in nearly forty years of intellectual activity amounts to ten novels, two critical works on religion
\nand some scattered literature. Small in quantity, it is pure gold<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nPage \u2013 105<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nin quality. And it may be
\nthat in no case would he have written much. Nature gives us quartz profusely and mixed alloy
\nin abundance, but pure gold only in rare parcels and infinitesimal
\nportions.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPage \u2013 106<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IV His Versatility WHENEVER a literary man gives proof of a high capacity in action people always talk about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-early-cultural-writings","wpcat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11848,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions\/11848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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