{"id":65,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=65"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:39","slug":"37-hindu-drama-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\/37-hindu-drama-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-37_Hindu Drama.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nHindu Drama<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE <\/font>
\n<\/b>vital law governing Hindu poetics is
\nthat it does not seek to represent life and character primarily or
\nfor their own sake; its aim is fundamentally aesthetic: by the
\ndelicate and harmonious rendering to awaken the aesthetic sense
\nof the onlooker and gratify it by moving and subtly observed pictures of human feeling; it did not attempt to seize a man’s spirit
\nby the hair and drag it out into a storm of horror and pity and
\nfear and return it to him drenched, beaten and shuddering. To
\nthe Hindu it would have seemed a savage and inhuman spirit
\nthat could take any aesthetic pleasure in the sufferings of an
\nOedipus or a Duchess of Malfi or in the tragedy of a Macbeth or
\nan Othello. Partly this arose from the divine tenderness of the
\nHindu nature, always noble, forbearing and gentle and at that
\ntime saturated with the sweet and gracious pity and purity which
\nflowed from the soul of Buddha; but it was also a necessary
\nresult of the principle that aesthetic and intellectual pleasure is
\nthe first object of all poetic art. Certainly poetry was regarded
\nas a force for elevation as well as for charm, but as it reaches
\nthese objects through aesthetic beauty, aesthetic gratification
\nmust be the whole basis of dramatic composition, all other super-structural
\nobjects are secondary. The Hindu mind therefore shrank not only from violence, horror and physical tragedy,
\nthe Elizabethan stock-in-trade, but even from the tragic in moral
\nproblems which attracted the Greek mind; still less could it have
\nconsented to occupy itself with the problems of disease, neurosis
\nand spiritual medicology generally which are the staple of modern
\ndrama and fiction. An atmosphere of romantic beauty, a high
\nurbanity and a gracious equipoise of the feelings, a perpetual
\nconfidence in the sunshine and the flowers are the essential spirit
\nof a Hindu play; pity and terror are used to awaken the feelings,
\nbut not to lacerate them, and the drama must close on the note
\nof joy and peace; the clouds are only admitted to make more
\nbeautiful the glad sunlight from which all came and into which<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nall must melt away. It is in an art like this that the soul finds the
\nrepose, the opportunity for being confirmed in gentleness and in kindly culture, the unmixed intellectual and aesthetic pleasure in
\nquest of which it turned away from the crudeness and incoherence of life to the magic regions of Art.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf masterly workmanship in plot-making and dramatic situation, subtlety, deftness and strength in dialogue and a vital force
\nof dramatic poetry by themselves make a fine and effective poetical play for the stage, for a really great drama a farther and rarer<\/font><\/p>\n

gift is needed, the gift of dramatic characterisation. This power
\nbases itself in its different degrees sometimes upon great experience of human life, sometimes on a keen power of observation
\nand accurate imagination making much matter out of a small circle of experience, but in its richest possessors on a boundless
\nsympathy with all kinds of humanity accompanied by a power of imbibing and afterwards of selecting and bringing out from
\noneself at will impressions received from the others. This supreme power, European scholars agree, is wanting in Hindu dramatic literature. A mere poet like Goethe may extend unstinted
\nand superlative praise to a Shacountala<\/i>, but the wiser critical and scholarly mind passes a far less favourable verdict. There is
\nmuch art in Hindu poetry, it is said, but no genius; there is plenty of fancy but no imagination; the colouring is rich, but colour is
\nall,
\nhumanity is not there; beautiful and even moving poetry is abundant, but the characters are nil. Indian scholars trained in
\nour
\nschools repeat what they have learnt. A Hindu scholar of acute diligence and wide Sanscrit learning has even argued that
\nthe
\nHindu mind is constitutionally incapable of original and living creation; he has alleged the gigantic, living and vigorous
\npersonalities of the Mahabharata as an argument to prove that these characters must have been real men and women, copied
\nfrom the life, since no Hindu poet could have created character with such truth and power. On the other side, the Bengali
\ncritics, men of no mean literary taste and perception, though inferior<\/font>
\nin pure verbal scholarship, are agreed in
\nregarding the characters of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti as beautiful and energetic
\ncreations, not less deserving of study than any personality of an Elizabethan drama. This contradiction, violent as it is, is not<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\ndifficult to understand, since it takes its root in an element always
\nmore or less present in criticism, the national element; national
\ncharacters, national prejudices, national training preordain for
\nthe bulk of us the spirit in which we approach unfamiliar poetry.
\nNow the average English mind is capable of appreciating character as manifested in strong action or powerfully revealing speech,
\nbut constitutionally dull to the subtleties of civilised characters
\nwhich have their theatre in the mind and the heart and make of
\na slight word, a gesture or even silence their sufficient revelation.
\nThe nations of Europe, taken in the mass, are still semi-civilized;<\/font><\/p>\n

their mind feeds on the physical, external and grossly salient features of life; where there is no brilliance and glare, the personality is condemned as characterless. A strength that shuns ostentation, a charm that is not luxuriant, not naked to the first glance
\nare appreciable only to the few select minds who have chastened
\ntheir natural leanings by a wide and deep culture. The Hindu
\non his side dislikes violence in action, excess in speech, ostentation or effusiveness in manner; he demands from his ideal temperance and restraint as well as nobility, truth and beneficence;<\/font><\/p>\n

the Aryan or true gentleman must be mitācārah<\/i> and mitabhāsī<\/i>,
\n<\/i>restrained in action and temperate in speech. This national
\ntendency shows itself even <\/b>in our most vehement work. The
\nMahabharata is the section of our literature which deals most
\nwith the external and physical and corresponds best to the
\nEuropean idea of the epic; yet the intellectualism of even the
\nMahabharata, its preference of mind-issues to physical and emotional collisions and catastrophes, its continual suffusion of these
\nwhen they occur with mind and ideality, the civilisation, depth
\nand lack of mere sensational turbulence, in one word, the Aryan
\ncast of its characters are irritating to the European scholars.
\nThus a historian of Indian literature complains that Bhima is the
\nreally epic character in this poem. He meant, evidently, the only
\ncharacter in which vast and irresistible strength, ungovernable
\nimpetuousness of passion, warlike fury and destroying anger are
\ngrandiosely deployed. But to the Hindu whose ideas of epic are
\nnot coloured with the wrath of Achilles, epic motive and character are not confined to what is impetuous, huge and untamed;<\/font>
\nhe demands a larger field for the epic and does not confine it to<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 304<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsavage and half savage epochs. Gentleness, patience, self-sacrifice, purity, the civilised virtues appear to him as capable of epic
\ntreatment as martial fire, brute strength, revenge, anger, hate
\nand ungovernable self-will. Rama mildly and purely renouncing
\nthe empire of the world for the sake of his father’s honour seems
\nto them as epic and mighty a figure as Bhima destroying Cichaka
\nin his wild fury of triumphant strength and hatred. It is noteworthy that the
\nEuropean temperament finds vice more interesting than virtue, and, in its heart of hearts, damns the Christian
\nqualities with faint praise as negative, not positive virtues; the
\ndifficulty European writers experience in making good men sympathetic is a commonplace of literary observation. In all these respects the Hindu attitude is diametrically opposed to the European.
\nThis attitude of the Hindu mind as evinced in the Mahabharata
\nis so intolerable to European scholars that they have been forced
\nto ease their irritation by conjuring up the phantom of an original
\nballad-epic more like their notions of what an epic should be, an
\nepic in which the wicked characters of the present Mahabharata
\nwere the heroes and the divine champions of right of the present
\nMahabharata were the villains! The present Mahabharata is,
\nthey say, a sanctimonious monastic corruption of the old vigorous and half-savage poem. To the Hindu the theory naturally
\nseems a grotesque perversion of ingenuity, but its very grotesqueness is eloquent of the soil it springs from, the soil of the half-barbarous temperament of the material and industrial Teuton
\nwhich cannot, even when civilised, entirely sympathise with the
\nintellectual working of more radically civilised types. This fundamental difference of outlook on character, generating difference
\nin critical appreciation of dramatic and epic characterisation is of
\ngeneral application, but it acquires a peculiar force when we come
\nto consider the Hindu drama; for here the ingrained disparity is
\nemphasised by external conditions.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt has been often noticed that the Hindu drama presents
\nmany remarkable points of contact with the Elizabethan. In the
\nmixture of prose and poetry, in the complete freedom with which
\ntime and scenery vary, in the romantic life-likeness of the action,
\nin the mixture of comedy with serious matter, in the gorgeousness
\nof the poetry and the direct appeal to the feelings, both these<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\ngreat literatures closely resemble each other. Yet the differences,
\nthough they do not strike us so readily as the similarities, are
\nmore vital and go deeper; for the similarities are of form, the
\ndifferences of spirit. The Elizabethan drama was a great popular
\nliterature which aimed at a vigorous and realistic presentation of
\nlife and character such as would please a mixed and not very
\ncritical audience; it had therefore the strength and weakness of
\ngreat popular literature; its strength was an abounding vigour in
\npassion and action and an unequalled grasp upon life; its weakness a crude violence, imperfection and bungling in workmanship combined with a tendency to exaggerations, horrors and
\nmonstrosities. The Hindu drama, on the contrary, was written
\nby accomplished men of culture for an educated, often a courtly
\naudience and with an eye to an elaborate and well-understood
\nsystem of poetics. When therefore English scholars, fed on the
\nexceedingly strong and often raw meat of the Elizabethans, assert
\nthat there are no characters in the Hindu drama, when they
\nattribute this deficiency to the feebleness of inventive power
\nwhich leads "Asiatic" poetry to concentrate itself on glowing
\ndescription and imagery, seeking by the excess of ornament to
\nconceal poverty of substance, when even their Indian pupils
\nperverted from good taste and blinded to fine discrimination by
\na love of the striking and a habit of gross forms and pronounced
\ncolours due to the too exclusive study of English poetry, repeat
\nand reinforce their criticisms, the lover of Kalidasa and his peers need not be
\nalarmed; he need not banish from his imagination the gracious company with which
\nit is peopled; he need not characterise Shacountala as an eloquent nothing or Urvasie
\nas a finely-jointed puppet. These dicta spring from prejudice and the echo of a
\nprejudice; they are evidence not of a more vigorous critical mind but of a
\nrestricted critical sympathy. If we expect a Beautiful White Devil or a Jew of
\nMalta from the Hindu dramatist, we shall be disappointed; he deals not in these splendid or
\nhorrible masks. If we come to him for a Lear or a Macbeth, we
\nshall go away discontented; for these also are sublimities which
\nbelong to cruder civilisations and more barbarous national types;<\/font><\/p>\n

in worst crimes and utmost suffering as well as happiness and
\nvirtue, the Aryan was more civilized and temperate, less crudely<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 306<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nenormous than the hard and earthy African peoples whom in
\nEurope he only half moralised. If he seeks a P\u00e8re Goriot or a
\nMadame Bovary, he will still fail in his quest; for though such
\ntypes doubtless existed at all times among the mass of the people
\nwith the large strain of African blood, Hindu Art would have
\nshrunk from poisoning the moral atmosphere of the soul by elaborate studies of depravity. The true spirit of criticism is to seek
\nin a literature what we can find in it of great or beautiful, not to
\ndemand from it what it does not seek to give us.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 307<\/font><\/p>\n

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