LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. POETRY-DRAMA-TRAGEDY

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

 POETRY - DRAMA-TRAGEDY

Classical poetry was lofty- in its subjects, ideas and language. It dealt with the lives and activities of gods (Devas), kings and heroes and their interaction.(Pindar's Odes deal with the achievements of the Olympic heroes!) It treated subjects like fate, meaning of the world and life, besides. Its language was appropriately unique. It left a lasting impression on the reader, far beyond the mere words or events described. Much of it was thus epic or heroic poetry.

Interestingly, we find the philosopher Plato condemning the poets in his 'Republic'. He would have them banished! He had three arguments against poets:

• they pervert morality. They write about subjects and in such manner that it promotes undesirable passions and leads to unethical thoughts and conduct.
• they are not philosophical ie they do not provide true knowledge.They address the lower faculties which do not lead to truth.
• they are not pragmatic.Poetry is inferior to the practical arts. They are imitators and imitators of imitators! They do not deal with reality but with appearances. In depending upon inspiration, they renounce reason or knowledge. Therefore poetry has no educational value!

We are really baffled by such a view, coming from Plato! Well, we are not the first. Even his student Aristotle did not agree.He developed a detailed theory of "Poetics" which has provided the classic justification  and grounds of appreciation of good poetry, followed even today. This is akin to our own theory of Rasa ie the nine rasas, though not as comprehensive.

But Plato's view contains a grain of general truth. Sometimes poetry gets so unrealistic as to demand "the willing suspension of disbelief" for its appreciation! You cannot appreciate it unless you give up your reason! And poets with command over language can and often do easily excite the baser instincts, or incite people to undesirable action or thinking. If we read  the current crop of what goes on in the name of poetry, we will have to side with Plato! But the great poets of all ages have been men of some vision, and their work has helped humanity in its search for aesthetic satisfaction, if not always in its quest for enlightenment. The greatest of the poets of all countries have been truly universal in spirit. "I am a citizen of the world; and I am a citizen of Weimar", declared the German poet Goethe. 'Every place is my place, every one my kinsman', proclaimed our Sangam poet. "Srunvantu Vishve Amrutasya putra:"- Listen ye all in the world, the children of Immortality- this is the Vedic declaration! Can thought get any loftier?

Along with poetry, Drama occupied a prominent place in ancient cultures. It was meant to be acted, but at times it was also written for reading! And old dramas were written in verse! It has also been popular throughout history, and every major literary figure has attempted to write great drama. Shakespeare achieved universal fame and everlasting name by his dramas which combine philosophy, poetry, history, dealing with all types of human natures and situations. Shakespeare invented more than 300 characters, and has thousands of quotable lines! Only our Mahabharata can rival and excel him in depth and range! But see the irony: the whole world falls for Shakespeare (deservedly,though), while Mahabharata is neglected even by educated Indians!

But there have been other great dramas in English, and it is a genre which is thriving.Milton's Samson Agonistes, Byron's Manfred, Shelley's  Prometheus Unbound and Thomas Hardy's Dynasts are all famous dramas, written for reading! And all of them are great poets too, Hardy being a novelist besides!

The list of English Playwrights will rival that of the eminent poets. Only, we in India are not exposed to drama in either its literary or theatre versions. To recall just a few names at random: Ben Jonson  and Marlowe (contemporaries of Shakespeare and hence overshadowed - like Rahul Dravid and Ganguly vis a vis a Tendulkar?), Ibsen, Chekov, Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, John Galsworthy, J.B.Priestley,A.J.Cronin, Noel Coward. There are many famous contemporary English playwrights, not at all known in India, except to a very few. Such is our preoccupation with cinema and cricket! And the American playwrights writing in English: Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Edward Albee,Sam Shepard, Neil Simon,David Mamet, August Wilson,Tony Kushner!

Like everything else, the West traces its roots in drama to the Greeks. The Greeks had a special category of drama called "Tragedy". It was performed in honour of god Dionysus, and conformed to strict morality and religiosity. Its origins are lost in antiquity, going back to archaic traditions but got a definite form in the hands of the three famous figures Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, in the 6th century BCE. It was however Aristotle who gave us the grammar of tragedy, based on ancient sources. It is amazing how faithful the ancients were to their own sources, even while attempting to innovate!

These tragedies dealt with the action of great legendary heroes and involved the interplay of gods and men. It involved some great action, ending in disaster for the hero, with great suffering and defeat along the way, as the gods did not like men to excel them! The feelings of pity and terror were invoked ( two of the rasas dealt with in Indian poetics). But the audience was supposed to feel relieved, exalted or elevated- even purified (morally) as a result of watching the tragedy performed! "Catharsis" was the word used. In this sense the audience was supposed to enjoy or derive pleasure from watching a tragedy!

The essence of Greek tragedy is that the hero finds himself bound by circumstances, faces frustration in all attempts to improve his lot or overcome his difficulty. He is in fact used by the gods to settle their own scores among themselves! The more the hero tries his wit, the more damned he becomes! He is just a toy in the hands of the gods. As Shakespeare said in King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,

They kill us for their sport. 

This is a deeply enduring theme in serious literature. The best modern exemplar of this line of thinking is Thomas Hardy whose novels, especially Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Jude the Obscure, become at times unbearably tragic. I do not think most of us will have the heart to read through these novels at a stretch.

That good people suffer is a theme in literature, also seen as  a fact of life. This is one of the basic questions asked by the sceptic of religious people: why should good people suffer, if there is a merciful God? We silence the question with the theory of karma, though it does not relieve the present suffering! No popular religion can survive if it does not face and answer this question in a practical way.

Our two Itihasas deal with just this problem. We see the suffering of Rama and Sita, Harishchandra, the Pandavas and Draupadi. At one stage, the hero triumphs- unlike in the Greek tragedy.Harishchandra's ordeal is because a Rishi wants to test him, as Shakuntala's travails are due to some curse, as also Nala's.But they all triumph in the end, and we proudly proclaim that dharma triumphs in the end. But do the Ramayana and Mahabharata actually have a happy ending? Most of us do not read the Ramayana beyond the Pattabhisheka: we do not even want to hear that Sita was banished. It is hard to even contemplate this could happen to Sita! So who triumphs in the end- dharma or the gossip mongers? As for the Pandavas, even with Krishna by their side, there was no end to their suffering. At the very end of the war, their children are wantonly killed by a Brahmin! Krishna saved Kunti's children, but not Pandavas'. This is a mystery. So, we display one more word in explanation:maya- it is all inscrutable.

I have always wondered at the close similarity between our itihasas and Greek tragedy. And it continues to trouble me. We like to think of happy endings, but it is because we close the books half way through!