{"id":38,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=38"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:30","slug":"29-the-historical-method-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/29-the-historical-method-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-29_The Historical Method.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nThe Historical Method<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nO<\/font>F <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b>Kalidasa, the man who represents one
\nof the greatest periods in our civilisation and typifies so many
\nsides and facets of it in his writing, we know if possible even less
\nthan of Valmiki and Vyasa. It is probable but not certain that he
\nwas a native of Malva born not in the capital Ujjayini, but in one
\nof those villages of which he speaks in the Cloud-Messenger
\n<\/i>and that he afterwards resorted to the capital and wrote under
\nthe patronage of the great Vikramaditya who founded the era of
\nthe Malavas in the middle of the first century before Christ. Of
\nhis attainments, his creed, his character we may gather something
\nfrom his poetry, but external facts we have none. There is indeed
\na mass of apocryphal anecdotes about him couching a number of
\nwitticisms and ingenuities mostly ribald, but these may be safely
\ndiscredited. Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa, our three greatest
\nnames, are to us, outside their poetical creation, names merely
\nand nothing more.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is an exceedingly fortunate circumstance. The natural
\nman within us rebels indeed against such a void; who Kalidasa
\nwas, what was his personal as distinguished from his poetical individuality,
\nwhat manner of man was the great king whose patronage he enjoyed, who were his friends, who his rivals and how
\nhe dealt with either or both, whether or not he was a lover of wine
\nand women in practice as well as in imagination, under what special surroundings he wrote and who were the minds by whom he
\nwas most influenced, all this the natural man clamours to know;<\/font> 
\nand yet all these are things we are very fortunate not to know.
\nThe historical method is certainly an attractive one and it leads
\nto some distinct advantages, for it decidedly aids those who are not gifted with
\nfine insight and literary discrimination, to understand certain sides of a poet’s work more clearly and intelligently.
\nBut while it increases our knowledge of the workings of the
\nhuman mind, it does not in the end assist or improve our critical
\nappreciation of poetry; it helps to an understanding of the man<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nand of those aspects of his poetry which concern his personal
\nindividuality but it obstructs our clear and accurate impression
\nof the work and its value. The supporters of the historical
\nmethod put the cart before the horse and placing themselves
\nbetween the shafts do a great deal of useless though heroic labour in dragging both. They insist on directing that attention to the
\npoet which should be directed to the poem. After assimilating
\na man’s literary work and realising its value first to ourselves
\nand then in relation to the eternal nature and scope of poetry,
\nwe may and indeed must, \u2014 for if not consciously aimed at, it
\nmust have been insensibly formed in the mind, \u2014 attempt to
\nrealize to ourselves an idea of his poetic individuality from the
\ndata he himself has provided for us; and the idea so formed will
\nbe the individuality of the man so far as we can assimilate him,
\nthe only part of him therefore that is of real value to us. The individuality of Shakespeare as expressed in his recorded actions and
\nhis relations to his contemporaries is a matter of history and has
\nnothing to do with appreciation of his poetry. It may interest
\nme as a study of human character and intellect but I have no
\nconcern with it when I am reading Hamlet<\/i> or even when I am
\nreading the Sonnets<\/i>; on the contrary, it may often come between
\nme and the genuine revelation of the poet in his work, for actions
\nseldom reveal more than the outer, bodily and sensational man
\nwhile his word takes us within to the mind and the reason, the
\nreceiving and the selecting part of him which are his truer self.
\nIt may matter to the pedant or the gossip within me whether the
\nsonnets were written to William Herbert or to Henry Wriothesley or to William himself, whether the dark woman whom
\nShakespeare loved against his better judgement was Mary Fitton
\nor someone else or nobody at all, whether the language is that of
\nhyperbolical compliment to a patron or that of an actual passionate affection; but to the lover of poetry in me these things do
\nnot matter at all. It may be a historical fact that Shakespeare when he sat down
\nto write these poems intended to use the affected language of conventional and fulsome flattery; if so, it does
\nnot exalt our idea of his character; but after all it was only the
\nbodily and sensational case of that huge spirit which so intended,
\n\u2014 the food-sheath and the life-sheath of him, to use Hindu<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nphraseology; but the mind, the soul which
\nwas the real Shakespeare felt, as he wrote, every phase of the passion he was expressing to the very utmost, felt precisely those exultations, chills
\nof jealousy and disappointment, noble affections, dark and unholy fires, and because he felt them, he was able so to express
\nthem that the world still listens and is moved. The passion was
\nthere in the soul of the man, \u2014 whether as a potential force or
\nan experience from a past life, matters very little, \u2014 and it forms therefore
\npart of his poetic individuality. But if we allow the alleged historical fact to interfere between us and this individuality,
\nthe feelings with which we ought to read the Sonnets<\/i>, admiration,
\ndelight, sympathy, rapt interest in a soul struggling through passion towards self-realisation, will be disturbed by other feelings
\nof disgust and nausea or at the best pity for a man who with such
\na soul within him prostituted its powers to the interests of his mere bodily
\ncovering. Both our realisation of the true Shakespeare and our enjoyment of his poetry will thus be cruelly and
\nuselessly marred. This is the essential defect which vitiates the
\ntheory of the man and his milieu<\/i>. The man in Dr. Johnson expressed himself in his conversation and therefore his own works
\nare far less important to us than Boswell’s record of his daily
\ntalk; the man in Byron expresses himself in his letters as well
\nas his poetry and both have therefore to be read. It is only the
\nmost sensational and therefore the lowest natures that express
\nthemselves mainly by their actions. In the case of great poets
\nwith whom expression is an instrument that answers spontaneously and accurately to the touch of the soul, it is in their work
\nthat we shall find them, the whole of them and not only that
\nmeagre part which struggled out brokenly and imperfectly in
\nthe shape of action. It is really this difference that makes the great figures
\nof epic poetry so much less intimately and thoroughly known to us than the great figures of drama. Kalidasa was
\nboth an epic poet and a dramatist, yet Shiva and Parvati are
\nmerely grand paintings while Dushyanta, Shacountala, Sharngava, Priyamvada, Anasuya, Pururavas and Urvasie and Chitraleqha, Dharinie and Iravatie and Agnimitra are living beings who
\nare our friends, whom we know. The difference arises from the
\nimportance of speech in self-revelation and the comparative<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 231<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninadequacy of action, except as a check or a corroboration. The
\nonly epics which have creations equal to dramatic creation in
\ntheir nearness to us are the Mahabharata and Ramayana; and
\nthe art form of these far more closely resembles the methods of
\nthe modern novel than those of epic poetry as it is understood
\nin Europe; they combine, that is to say, the dramatic method
\nwith the epic and introduce a minuteness of observant detail
\nwith which European poets would have shrunk from tempting
\nthe patience of the sensational and soon-wearied West. The
\nimportance of the milieu<\/i> to criticism has likewise been immensely
\nexaggerated. It is important as literary history; but history is
\nnot criticism; a man may have a very wide and curious knowledge of literary history and yet be a very poor critic and the
\ndanger of the present times lies in the immense multiplication of
\nliterary historians with their ass’s load of facts and theories and
\nopinions and tendencies and the comparative rarity of really
\nilluminating critics. This is at least the case with all poets who
\nrepresent their age in some or most of its phases and with those
\nwho do not do this the milieu<\/i> is of very small importance. The milieu<\/i> of Shakespeare or of Homer or of Kalidasa, so far as it is
\nimportant to an appreciation of their poetry, can be gathered
\nfrom their poetry itself, and knowledge of the history of the
\ntimes would only litter the mind with facts which are of
\nno real value as they mislead and embarrass the judgment
\ninstead of assisting it. (I do not say that these things are not in
\na measure necessary but they are always the scaffolding and not
\nthe pile.) The tendency of the historical method beginning with
\nand insisting on the poet rather than the poem is to infer from
\nhim as a "man" the meaning and value of his poetry \u2014 a vicious
\nprocess, for it concentrates the energies on the subordinate and adds the
\nessential as an appendix. It has been said that in a rightly constituted mind the knowledge of the man and his milieu
\n<\/i>will help to a just appreciation of his poetry; but this knowledge
\nin its nature rather distorts our judgment than helps it, for instead
\nof giving an honest account to ourselves of the impression naturally made by the poem on us, we are irresistibly led to cut and
\ncarve that impression so as to make it square with our knowledge
\nand the theories, more or less erroneous and ephemeral, we<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
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\n

\ndeduce from that knowledge. We proceed from the milieu<\/i> to the
\npoem, instead of arguing from the poem to the milieu<\/i>. Yet the
\nlatter is the only fair method; for it is not the whole of the milieu<\/i> that affects the man nor every part of it that affects him
\nequally; the extent to which it affects him and the distribution
\nof its various influences can only be judged from the poem itself. We know from literary history that Marlowe and Kyd and other
\nwriters exercised no little influence on Shakespeare in his young
\nand callow days; and it may be said in passing that all poets of the first order
\nand even many of the second are profoundly influenced by the inferior and sometimes almost worthless work
\nwhich was in vogue at the time of their early efforts, but they
\nhave the high secret of mental alchemy which can convert not
\nmerely inferior metal but even refuse into gold. It is only poets
\nof a one-sided minor genius who can afford to be aggressively
\noriginal. Now as literary history, as psychology, as part of the
\nknowledge of intellectual origins, this is a highly important and
\nnoteworthy fact. But in the task of criticism what do we gain
\nby it ? We have simply brought the phantoms of Marlowe and
\nKyd between ourselves and what we are assimilating, and so
\ndisturbed and blurred the true picture of it that was falling on
\nour souls, and if we know our business, the first thing we shall
\ndo is to banish those intruding shadows and bring ourselves once
\nmore face to face with Shakespeare.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe historical method leads besides to much confusion
\nand is sometimes a veil for a bastard impressionism and sometimes a source of literary insincerity or at the best anaemic catholicity. As often as not a critic studies, say, the Elizabethan age
\nbecause he has a previous sympathy with the scattered grandeurs,
\nthe hasty and vehement inequalities, the profuse mixture of
\nflawed stones, noble gems and imitation jewellery with which that
\nschool overwhelms us. In that case the profession with which he
\nstarts is insincere, for he professes to base his appreciation on
\nstudy, whereas his study begins from, continues with and ends
\nin appreciation. Often on the contrary he studies as a duty and
\npraises in order to elevate his study; because he has perused all
\nand understood all, he must sympathise with all, or where is the
\nproof of his having understood ? Perfect intelligence of a man’s<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\ncharacter and work implies a certain measure of sympathy and
\nliking; antipathy has only half sight and indifference is blind.
\nHence much false criticism misleading the public intelligence and
\ncausing a confusion in critical weights and measures, a depreciation of the literary currency from which in the case of the frank
\nimpressionist we are safe. In more truth the historical method is
\nuseful only with inferior writers who, not having had full powers
\nof expression, are more interesting than their work; but even
\nhere it has led to that excessive and often absurd laudation of
\nnumberless small names in literature, many of them "discoveries", which is the curse of latter-day criticism. The historical method is in fact the cloven foot of Science attempting to
\ninsinuate itself into the fair garden of Poetry. By this I mean no
\ndisrespect to Science. The devil is a gentleman and Shakespeare
\nhimself guaranteed his respectability; but he is more than that,
\nhe is a highly useful and even indispensable personage. So also
\nis Science not only a respectable branch of intellectual activity,
\n\u2014 when it does not indulge its highly civilized propensity for cut-
\nting up live animals, \u2014 but it is also a useful and indispensable
\nbranch. But the devil had no business in Paradise and Science
\nhas no business in the sphere of Poetry. The work of Science is to collect facts
\nand generalize from them; the smallest and meanest thing is as important to it as the highest, the weed no less than
\nthe flower and the bug that crawls and stinks no less than man
\nwho is a little lower than the angels. By introducing this method
\ninto criticism, we are overloading ourselves with facts and stifling
\nthe literary field with the host of all the mediocrities more or less
\n"historically" important but at any rate deadly dull and uninspiring who at one time or another had the misfortune to take
\nthemselves for literary geniuses. And just as scientific history
\ntried to lose the individual genius into movements, so the historical method tries to lose the individual poem in tendencies. The
\nresult is that modern poets, instead of holding up before them as
\ntheir ideal the expression of the great universal feelings and
\nthoughts which sway humanity, tend more and more to express
\ntendencies, problems, realisms, romanticisms, mysticisms and
\nall the other local and ephemeral aberrations with which poetry
\nhas no business whatever. It is the sign of a decadent and morbid<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 234<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nage which is pushing itself by the mass of its own undigested
\nlearning into Alexandrianism and scholasticism, cutting itself off
\nfrom the fountainheads of creation and wilfully preparing its
\nown decline and sterility. The age of which Callimachus and
\nApollonius of Rhodes and Simonides were the Homer and the
\nage of which Tennyson is the Shakespeare and Rudyard Kipling
\nthe Milton present an ominous resemblance.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 235<\/font><\/p>\n

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The Historical Method   OF Kalidasa, the man who represents one of the greatest periods in our civilisation and typifies so many sides and facets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","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=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}