A Literary Revival in Bengal
BY BHABANI BHATTACHARYA.
AS the storm of political struggle in India begins to cease, it will be time for foreigners interested in the country to consider the more permanent aspects of its national life. In general, Indians are not politically minded ; they are much more impressed by things of beauty, in its widest sense, than by machinery of practical utility. The genius of India lies in its infinite capacity for absorbing new ideas into the stream of ancient Aryan culture. To-day, in no other field is this genius so furiously at work as in the literature of Bengal.
Chaitanya, a Bengali saint and mystic, is said to have fallen into a trance when he beheld the sea for the first time. Its terrific beauty roused madness in his blood. The great saint ran breathless into the water and did not stop till the waves carried him away.
The story has a wide significance. Chaitanya was a typical child of the soil ; in him were developed, to an amazing degree, the feelings and desires that stir the mind of the people of Bengal. To the Bengali mind nothing is so irresistible as Nature's beauty, and this racial trait has deeply tinged the literature of the country.
For a long time Bengali poets hardly drew on Life, for they looked upon it with the closed eyes of introverts.
Then, in the closing decades of the last century Western thought overflowed to the plains of Bengal, and English literature, which may fairly be called an interpretation of Life, set up new standards and new principles. The genius 'of Bengal began to work, assimilating the new into the Old. The new school of writers which came into being had one eye on Nature and the other on Man. Their methods became matured by the advent of Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, in whose work there is a meeting between East and West. He borrowed as freely from. Browning as from the Upanishads.
A new milestone had been reached, but the march had not stopped. New pastures lay ahead. A younger generation sprang up, and sharpened the steel of criticism to attack the work of established writers.
For many years, Dr. Tagore has been a literary Dictator and it has been a fashion to imitate his style. Now the fashion has changed, Dr. Tagore has become " classical " and legendary, but he is still as influential in Bengal as he ever was, and the country pays to his work the same kind of veneration as it used to pay when he was honoured with the Nobel prize.
Bengali literature is now in a melting-pot, with a furious fire burning beneath. The new order of 'Writers are determined experimentalists. Some of them evoke the wrath of critics for " obscene " work. But, in their justification they do not dig out the cliché of art for art's sake ; instead, they pull down the whole structure of existing moral values, to the horror of elderly readers and the delight of the young. "Down with tradition," is the battle-cry on the lips of thousands.
The experiments with form are sometimes pushed to such extremes that they fail and what was designed to reveal originality assumes the air of cheap literary jugglery. Dr. Tagore told me recently that what he disliked most in young Bengali writers was their constant effort to be " smart." An artist, he said in reply to a question of mine, should never be self-conscious in his work ; he should write not to show his cleverness, but to lift the heavy burden of ideas and emotions weighing on his mind. A talented Bengali writer has lately pub- lished a novel which begins almost at the end of the story and works back to the beginning. By attempting to do something strikingly original, the author has turned a readable story into a dull piece which drags after the first chapter. It is easy to multiply instances of " ultra- modern " Bengali authors who have inadvertently mis- used their craft in pursuit of a cheap " success." The country is full of talented writers who have been in- effectually beating their wings.
This heat and fury in recent Bengali literature is not without significance. There is creative energy in abund- ance, but much of it has not yet taken shape. The substance is present, but the form is lacking ; for the new wine has burst the old bottle and must flow over until a proper vessel is found for it. With the expansion of literature, the language is steadily growing. New words are being coined by the hundred. The Bengali language is proving itself to be as flexible as the English. Poverty is great in Bengal. The zeal of many writers weakens away, not infrequently, under the stress of hard work to earn a living. Payment for stories and articles is negligible. To write is to labour for love. The young writer considers it an honour to get his work into print, and the question of payment does not arise.
Among foreign authors, who have cast a great influence over young literary men in Bengal, the name of Knut Hamsun must receive the first mention. His Hunger has a special appeal to the starving writer for obvious reasons, but the popularity of Pan and The Growth of The Soil goes deeper than that. Dostoievsky and Gorki arg regarded with veneration. Anatole France was much in the public eye a few years ago, but seems at present to be under a cloud. Shaw, Wells and Bertrand Russell are among those who are universally read, and have left a deep impression on the literary productions of the country. Bengali poetry has been much in- fluenced by Walt Whitman. Not even a decade has passed since the day when a bitter controversy raged round Whitman's work, some critics, declaring it to be unreadable. But those critics were fighting with swords of wood, and the Whitmanites won the battle.
No account of the literary revival in Bengal can be complete unless mention is made of Sarat Chatterji, who is India's greatest novelist at the present day. It is unfortunate that Sarat Chatterji is not known to English readers even by name, though one of his works has been translated into English. In Bengal he is as well known for his novels as Dr. Tagore is for his poetry, and he has been the most vital force in the making of modem Bengali fiction. Romain Rolland read one of his novels in an Italian translation and expressed the warmest admiration for its author.
Economical in style, Sarat Chatterji writes with the minimum of embroidery, and creates his effects as much by the brilliance of his technique as by his psychological insight. He always builds with organic material. The life of common man is the pivot around which his stories move. He runs up quickly to the human soul, and tells us of it with an infectious intensity. Nothing is common- place •to him ; he finds moving realities behind the plain veil of appearances, and makes the lotus bloom in a slough of mud. Never does he fail to hold the mirror up to human nature. Some of his women characters have haunted my mind for weeks and months much as Mona Lisa has done ; their mystery of soul has suggested infinite possibilities and has given wings to the imagination. In his later works, Sarat Chatterji builds up the most difficult psychological situations, in which a slight misplacing of material might ruin the whole structure, but such an error is never made.
Not that the author is deliberately intent on parading his architectural powers. On the contrary, his stories seem to tell themselves. Sarat Chatterji is undoubtedly a master-builder ; his works ought to be translated into every civilized language in the world.
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