{"id":62,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=62"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:38","slug":"12-his-literary-history-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\/12-his-literary-history-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-12_His Literary History.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nFIVE<\/b><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nHis Literary History<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

 
\n        B<\/b><\/font>ANKIM’S <\/font>
\n<\/b>literary activity began for any
\nserious purpose at Khulna, but he had already trifled with
\npoetry in his student days. At that time the poet Iswara 
\nChandra Gupta was publishing two papers, the Sangbad
\nPrabhakar<\/i> and the Sudhiranjan<\/i>, which Dwarakanath Mitra
\nand Dinabandhu Mitra were helping with clever schoolboy
\nimitation of Iswara Chandra’s style. Bankim also entered
\nthese fields, but his striking originality at once distinguished him from the mere cleverness of his competitors, and
\nthe fine critical taste of Iswara Chandra easily discovered in this obscure
\nstudent a great and splendid genius. Like Madhusudan Dutt Bankim began by an ambition to excel in English
\nliterature, and he wrote a novel in English called Rammohan’s Wife<\/i>. But, again like Madhusudan, he at once realised his mistake. The language which a man speaks and which he has never
\nlearned, is the language of which he has the nearest sense and in
\nwhich he expresses himself with the greatest fulness, subtlety and power. He may
\nneglect, he may forget it, but he will always retain for it a hereditary aptitude, and it will always continue for
\nhim the language in which he has the safest chance of writing
\nwith originality and ease. To be original in an acquired tongue is
\nhardly feasible. The mind, conscious of a secret disability with
\nwhich it ought not to have handicapped itself, instinctively takes
\nrefuge in imitation, or else in bathos and the work turned out is
\nordinarily very mediocre stuff. It has something unnatural and spurious about it
\nlike speaking with a stone in the mouth or walking upon stilts. Bankim and Madhusudan,
\nwith their overflowing originality, must have very acutely felt the tameness of their
\nEnglish work. The one wrote no second English poem after the Captive Lady<\/i>, the other no second English novel after
\nRammohan’s Wife<\/i>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 90<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nBankim’s first attempt of any importance was begun at
\nKhulna, and finished at Baruipur, the birth-place of some of
\nhis finest work. It was the Durgesh Nandini<\/i>, a name ever memorable as the first-born child of the New Prose. At Baruipur he
\nwrote also Kapala Kundala<\/i> and Mrinalini<\/i> and worked at the
\nfamous Poison-Tree<\/i>. At Berhampur, his next station, he began
\nediting the Bangadarshan<\/i>, a magazine which made a profound
\nimpression and gave birth to that increasing periodical literature
\nof today, of which Bharati<\/i>, the literary organ of the cultured 
\nTagore family, is the most finished type. Since then Bankim has
\ngiven us some very ripe and exquisite work, Chandrashekhar<\/i>,
\nKrishna Kanta’s Will<\/i>, Debi Chaudhurani<\/i>, Anandamath<\/i>, Sitaram<\/i>, Indira<\/i> and Kamala Kanta<\/i>. Dating from his magistracy at Berhampur broken health and increasing weakness attended the
\ngreat novelist to his pyre; but the strong unwearied intellect
\nstruggled with and triumphed over the infirmities of the body.
\nHis last years were years of suffering and pain, but they were also
\nyears of considerable fruitfulness and almost unceasing labour. He had been a
\nsensuous youth and a joyous man. Gifted supremely with the artist’s sense for the warmth and beauty of life,
\nhe had turned with a smile from the savage austerities of the
\nascetic and with a shudder from the dreary creed of the Puritan.
\nBut now in that valley of the shadow of death his soul
\nlonged for the sustaining air of religion. More and more the
\nphilosophic bias made its way into his later novels, until at last
\nthe thinker in him proved too strong for the artist. Amid his
\nworst bodily sufferings he was poring over the Bhagavadgita and
\nthe Vedas, striving to catch the deeper and sacred sense of those
\nprofound writings. To give that to his countrymen was the
\nstrenuous aim of his dying efforts. A Life of Krishna, a book on
\nthe Essence of Religion, a rendering of the Bhagavadgita and a
\nversion of the Vedas formed the staple of his literary prospects in
\nhis passage to the pyre. The first two realised themselves and the
\nBhagavadgita was three parts finished, but the version of the
\nVedas, which should have been a priceless possession never got
\ninto the stage of execution. Death, in whose shadow he had so
\nlong dwelt, took the pen from his hand, before it could gather up
\nthe last gleanings of that royal intellect. But his ten masterpieces<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 91<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof fiction are enough. They would serve to immortalise ten reputations.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHIS PLACE IN LITERATURE<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nTo assign Bankim’s place in Bengali literature is sufficiently
\neasy: there is no prose-writer, and only one poet who can compete with him. More difficulties enter into any comparison of
\nhim with the best English novelists; yet I think he stands higher
\nthan any of them, except one; in certain qualities of each he may
\nfall short, but his sum of qualities is greater; and he has this
\nsupreme advantage over them all that he is a more faultless artist.
\nIn his life and fortunes, and sometimes even in his character, he
\nbears a striking resemblance to the father of English fiction,
\nHenry Fielding; but the literary work of the two men moves
\nupon different planes. Philosophical culture and deep feeling for the poetry of
\nlife and an unfailing sense of beauty are distinguishing marks of Bankim’s style; they find no place in Fielding’s.
\nAgain, Bankim, after a rather silly fashion of speaking now
\ngreatly in vogue, has been pointed at by some as the Scott of
\nBengal. It is a marvellous thing that the people who misuse this
\nphrase as an encomium, cannot understand that it conveys an
\ninsult. They would have us imagine that one of the most perfect
\nand original of novelists is a mere replica of a faulty and incomplete Scotch author! Scott had many marvellous and some
\nunique gifts, but his defects are at least as striking. His style is
\nnever quite sure; indeed, except in his inspired moments, he has
\nno style: his Scotch want of humour is always militating against
\nhis power of vivid incident; his characters, and chiefly those in
\nwhom he should interest us most, are usually very manifest
\npuppets; and they have all this shortcoming, that they have no
\nsoul: they may be splendid or striking or bold creations, but they
\nlive from outside and not from within. Scott could paint outlines, but he could not fill them in. Here Bankim excels; speech
\nand action with him are so closely interpenetrated and suffused
\nwith a deeper existence that his characters give us the sense of
\ntheir being real men and women. Moreover to the wonderful
\npassion and poetry of his finest creations there are in English<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 92<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfiction, outside the Bront\u00ebs and the supreme genius, George
\nMeredith, no parallel instances. Insight into the secrets of feminine character, that is another notable concomitant of the best
\ndramatic power, and that too Bankim possesses. Wade as you
\nwill through the interminable bog of contemporary fiction, you
\nwill meet no living woman there. Even novelists of genius stop
\nshort at the outside: they cannot find their way into the soul.
\nHere Fielding fails us; Scott’s women are a mere gallery of wax
\nfigures, Rebecca herself being no more than a highly coloured
\npuppet; even in Thackeray the real women are only three or
\nfour. But the supreme dramatic genius has found out this secret
\nof femineity. Shakespeare had it to any degree, and in our own
\ncentury Meredith, and among ourselves Bankim. The social
\nreformer, gazing, of course, through that admirable pair of spectacles given to him by the Calcutta University, can find nothing
\nexcellent in Hindu life, except its cheapness, or in Hindu woman,
\nexcept her subserviency. Beyond this he sees only its narrowness
\nand her ignorance. But Bankim had the eye of a poet and saw
\nmuch deeper than this. He saw what was beautiful and sweet
\nand gracious in Hindu life, and what was lovely and noble in
\nHindu woman, her deep heart of emotion, her steadfastness,
\ntenderness and lovableness, in fact, her woman’s soul; and all
\nthis we find burning in his pages and made diviner by the touch
\nof a poet and an artist. Our social reformers might learn something from Bankim. Their zeal at present is too little ruled by
\ndiscretion. They are like bad tailors very clever at spoiling the
\nrich stuffs given over to their shaping but quite unable to fit the
\nnecessities of the future. They have passed woman through an
\nEnglish crucible and in place of the old type, which, with all its
\nfatal defects, had in it some supreme possibilities, they have
\nturned out a soulless and superficial being fit only for flirtation,
\nmatch-making and playing on the piano. They seem to have
\na passion for reforming every good thing out of existence.
\nIt is about time this miserable bungling should stop. Surely it
\nwould be possible, without spoiling that divine nobleness of
\nsoul, to give it a wider culture and mightier channels! So we
\nshould have a race of women intellectually as well as emotionally
\nnoble, fit to be the mothers not of chatterers and money-makers,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 93<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbut of high thinkers and heroic doers.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOf Bankim’s style I shall hardly trust
\nmyself to speak. To describe its beauty, terseness, strength and sweetness is
\ntoo high a task for a pen like mine. I will remark this only that what marks Bankim above all is his unfailing sense of beauty. This is indeed the note of
\nBengali literature and the one high thing it has gained from a dose acquaintance
\nwith European models.
\nThe hideous grotesques of old Hindu Art, the monkey-rabble of Rama and the ten
\nheads of Ravana are henceforth impossible to it. The Shacountala<\/i> itself
\nis not governed by a more perfect graciousness of conception or suffused with a
\nmore human sweetness than Kapala Kundala<\/i> and the Poison-Tree<\/i>.<\/font>
\n<\/font> \n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 94<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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