Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c11.s3.60

c11.s3.60

It is needless to multiply examples, for the poet has verses enough for anything. The verses have often the fascination of sonorous sound and sentimental sense, but their frequency and extravagance become undramatic and tiresome. Sometimes they have resonance but no melody; and being industriously multiplied with set phrases and conceits, they have, when they are not deliberately recondite, little originality in idea and expression. The prose and the dialogue contain much smart repartees and witty erotic suggestions, but they have hardly any dramatic quality, for the simple reason that everything of importance, according to the established dramaturgic tradition, is expressed in verse. In the leisurely progress of the elaborate verse and diligently witty prose, the action and the plot, for which the themes do not afford much scope, are left to take care of themselves; dramatic motive or unity is of little concern; a panorama of painstaking pictures or a loosely connected series of narrative incidents is supposed to be sufficient. The devotees of the faith think highly of these productions of Rūpa Gosvāmin; that is perhaps not for their dramatic or poetic excellence, but chiefly because they are deliberate scholarly attempts to illustrate the doctrinal nuances of the emotional Bhakti in terms of the freshly and ingeniously interpreted Kṛṣṇa-legend. The works undoubtedly constitute a departure, and are inspired by a strange combination of acute scholastic learning, literary dexterity and great devotional fervour of a refined erotico-religious character; but their real interest is other than literary, and they have little pretension either to the dramatic or the poetic in the proper sense.