{"id":69,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=69"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:40","slug":"09-the-bengal-he-lived-in-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\/09-the-bengal-he-lived-in-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Bengal He Lived in.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nTWO <\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe Bengal He Lived in<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/b>society by which Bankim was formed,
\nwas the young Bengal of the fifties, the most extraordinary perhaps that India has yet seen, \u2014 a society electric with thought
\nand loaded to the brim with passion. Bengal was at that time
\nthe theatre of a great intellectual awakening. A sort of miniature
\nRenascence was in process. An ardent and imaginative race,
\nlong bound down in the fetters of a single tradition, had had
\nsuddenly put into its hand the key to a new world thronged with
\nthe beautiful or profound creations of Art and Learning. From
\nthis meeting of a foreign Art and civilisation with a temperament
\ndiffering from the temperament which created them, there issued,
\nas there usually does issue from such meetings, an original Art
\nand an original civilisation. Originality does not lie in rejecting
\noutside influences but in accepting them as a new mould into
\nwhich our own individuality may run. This is what happened
\nand may yet happen in Bengal. The first impulse was gigantic
\nin its proportions and produced men of an almost gigantic originality. Rammohan Ray arose with a new religion in his hand,
\nwhich was developed on original lines by men almost greater one
\nthinks than he, by Rajnarain Bose and Devendranath Tagore.
\nThe two Dutts, Okhay Kumar and Michael Madhusudan, began a new Prose and new Poetry. Vidyasagar, scholar, sage and
\nintellectual dictator, laboured hugely like the Titan he was, to
\ncreate a new Bengali language and a new Bengali society, while
\nin vast and original learning Rajendra Lal Mitra has not met
\nhis match. Around these arose a class of men who formed a sort
\nof seed-bed for the creative geniuses, men of fine critical ability
\nand appreciative temper, scholarly, accomplished, learned in
\nmusic and the arts, men in short not only of culture, but of
\noriginal culture. Of these perhaps the most finished patterns
\nwere Madhusudan’s friends, Gaurdas Byshak, and that scholarly<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\npatron of letters, Rajah Jyotindra Mohun Tagore. At the same
\ntime there arose, as in other parts of India, a new social
\nspirit and a new political spirit, but these on a somewhat servilely
\nEnglish model. Of all its channels the released energies of the
\nBengali mind ran most violently into the channel of literature.
\nAnd this was only natural; for although the Bengali has by centuries of Brahmanic training acquired a religious temper, a taste
\nfor law and a taste for learning, yet his peculiar sphere is language. Another circumstance must not be forgotten. Our Renascence was marked like its European prototype, though not
\nto so startling an extent, by a thawing of old moral custom.
\nThe calm, docile, pious, dutiful Hindu ideal was pushed aside
\nwith impatient energy, and the Bengali, released from the iron
\nrestraint which had lain like a frost on his warm blood and
\nsensuous feeling, escaped joyously into the open air of an almost 
\nPagan freedom. The ancient Hindu cherished a profound sense
\nof the nothingness and vanity of life; the young Bengali felt
\nvividly its joy, warmth and sensuousness. This is usually the
\nmoral note of a Renascence, a burning desire for Life, Life in
\nher warm human beauty arrayed gloriously like a bride. It was
\nthe note of the sixteenth century, it is the note of the astonishing
\nreturn to Greek Paganism, which is now beginning in England
\nand France; and it was in a slighter and less intellectual
\nway the note of the new age in Bengal. Everything done by the
\nmen of that day and their intellectual children is marked by an
\nunbounded energy and passion. Their reading was enormous
\nand ran often quite out of the usual track. Madhusudan Dutt,
\nbesides English, Bengali and Sanskrit, studied Greek, Latin,
\nItalian and French, and wrote the last naturally and with ease.
\nToru Dutt, that unhappy and immature genius, who unfortunately wasted herself on a foreign language and perished while yet
\nlittle more than a girl, had, I have been told, a knowledge of
\nGreek. At any rate, she could write English with perfect grace
\nand correctness and French with energy and power. Her novels.
\ngained the ear of the French public and her songs breathed fire
\ninto the hearts of Frenchmen in their fearful struggle with
\nGermany. And as was their reading so was their life. They were
\ngiants and did everything gigantically. They read hugely, wrote<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nhugely, thought hugely, and drank hugely.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBankim’s student days did not happen among that circle
\nof original geniuses; his time fell between the heroes of the
\nRenascence and the feebler Epigoni of our day. But he had cotemporary with him men of extraordinary talent, men like
\nDinabandhu Mitra and Dwarakanath Mitra, men so to speak
\nof the second tier. Bankim was the last of the original geniuses.
\nSince then the great impulse towards originality has gone backward like a receding wave. After Bankim came the Epigoni,
\nHemchandra Banerji, Nobin Sen, Rabindranath Tagore, men
\nof surprising talent, nay, of unmistakable genius, but too obviously influenced by Shelley and the English poets. And last of
\nall came the generation formed in the schools of Keshab Chandra
\nSen and Kristo Das Pal, with its religious shallowness, its literary
\nsterility and its madness in social reform. Servile imitators of the English,
\npoliticians without wisdom and scholars without learning, they have no pretensions to greatness or originality. Before
\nthey came the first mighty impulse had spent itself and Bengal lay fallow for a
\nnew. It rests with the new generation, the generation that will soon be sitting in the high places and judging the
\nland, whether there shall be scope for any new impulse to work
\nitself out. Two years ago it looked as if this mighty awakening
\nwould lose itself, as the English sixteenth century lost itself, in
\nPuritanism and middle-class politics.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut when Bankim was a student, the traditions of the Hindu
\nCollege were yet powerful, the Hindu College, that nursery of
\ngeniuses, where the brain of the New Age had worked most powerfully and the heart of the New Age had beat with the mightiest
\nvehemence. The men around Bankim were calmer, sedater,
\nmore temperate; but they walked in the same ways and followed
\nthe same ideals. To that life of hard thinking and hard drinking
\nBankim was drawn not merely, as some were, by the power of
\nyouthful imitativeness, but by sympathy of temperament. He had
\nthe novelist’s catholicity of taste and keen sense for life, and the
\nartist’s repugnance to gloom and dreariness. Even when the
\nthoughts turned to old faith, the clear sanity of the man showed
\nitself in his refusal to admit asceticism among the essentials of
\nreligion. He never indulged in that habit of frightful and invete-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\nrate riot which has killed one or two of our second-rate talents,
\nbut it cannot quite be said that he never overstepped the limits
\nor always observed the principle of "nothing in excess", which
\nis the only sure rule for a man’s conduct. Some would like to see
\nin this sensuous exuberance the secret of his early decay. It may
\nbe so; but speculation on this subject will remain a solemn farce,
\nuntil it is taken up in a disinterested spirit. At present all our
\nwise disquisitions proceed from unchastened sentiment. Dr.
\nBhandarkar is a violent social reformer and wants to throw
\nodium upon Hindu society; Mr. Ranade’s hobby is a Conservative Radicalism and the spirit moves him to churn the ocean
\nof statistics in a sense more agreeable to his own turn of mind; a third authority, prejudiced against Western Culture, traces all
\npremature deaths to pleasure and wine-bibbing. Each starts from
\nhis own sensations, each builds his web of argument in the
\nspirit of a sophist. To this Dr. Bhandarkar brings his moral
\nardour and grave eloquence, Mr. Ranade his trained reason and
\ndistinguished talent, the religionist his prejudices and cold
\nprecepts. Widely as they differ, they have this in common that
\nthey have not for their aim to speak usefully: they are simply
\ntrying to find reasons for their own likes and dislikes. Dealing
\nwith subjects of scientific interest in a spirit of this sort is only to
\ninvite confusion and exclude light. We in Bengal with our
\ntendency to the sins of the blood are perhaps more apt than
\nothers to call to our aid the gloomy moralities of the Puritan; in censuring Bankim we are secretly fortifying ourselves against
\nourselves; but in this instance it is a false caution. The cultured
\nBengali begins life with a physical temperament already delicate
\nand high-strung. He has the literary constitution with its femineity and acute nervousness. Subject this to a cruel strain when
\nit is tenderest and needs the most careful rearing, to the wicked
\nand wantonly cruel strain of instruction through a foreign
\ntongue; put it under the very worst system of training; add
\nenormous academical labour, immense official drudgery in an
\nunhealthy climate and constant mental application; crown all
\nwith the nervous expense of thought and fever of composition
\nplus the unfailing exhaustion that comes after; and we need not
\ngo to the momentary excesses of a generous blood to find the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nexplanation of broken health and an early
\ndecline. The miracle of it is not that the victims die prematurely but that they
\nlive so long. Perhaps we might begin to enquire into the causes of that
\nphenomenon for a change.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOne thing however is certain that whatever
\nelse Bankim lost, he gained from his youthful surroundings much emotional
\nexperience and great flexibility of mind. There too he got his initial
\nstimulus. Like Telang, and perhaps even more than Telang, Bankim was blessed or
\ncursed with an universal talent. Everything he touched, shaped itself to his
\nhand. It would have been easy for him to make disastrous mistakes; to miss his
\nvocation, waste himself in English and at the end to leave no enduring monument
\nof his personality behind. What saved him ? It was the initial stimulus and the
\ncultured environment; it was that he lived among men who could distinguish a
\ntalent when they saw it and once distinguished were bent on realising it; among
\nmen in fact who had some instinct for finding their way. With a limited creature
\nlike man, the power of the environment is immense. Genius, it is true, exists
\nindependently of environment and by much reading and observation may attain to
\nself-expression but it is environment that makes self-expression easy and
\nnatural;<\/font> <\/font>
\nthat provides sureness, verve, stimulus.
\nHere lies the importance to the mind in its early stage of self-culture of fine
\nsocial surroundings ; \u2014 that sort of surroundings which our Universities do
\nnothing and ought to have done everything to create.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

TWO The Bengal He Lived in   THE society by which Bankim was formed, was the young Bengal of the fifties, the most extraordinary perhaps…<\/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-69","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\/69","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=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}