Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c11.s5.110

c11.s5.110

It will be seen that the Stotras, Birudas and Gitas of Rūpa Gosvāmin, however elaborate they may be, are not of the merely descriptive and reflective character, but that the fundamental characteristics of their picturesque devotionalism are saturated with erotic emotionalism, of which it is a transfigured expression. This is undoubtedly made prominent by the highly sensuous pictorial fancy and the inexhaustible lyrical and musical gift of the author; but profuse and overwrought rhetoric often obscures the reality of the emotion and gives it an appearance of spectacular sensibility. It is not the rhetorical habit by itself which annoys so much as its incessant and disproportionate employment; and the real grace of graceful poetry is too often smothered by overfertile prodigality and deliberate straining after purely verbal and metrical effect. No doubt, Rūpa's Stotras and Gitas bear witness alike to his devotion, learning and literary skill, but we miss in them the touching quality of self-expression, the flavour of a simple, lovable personality, which is so conspicuous in the less artistic efforts of his friend Raghu-nātha-dāsa. Rūpa is certainly a poet, but he is also a trained verbal specialist. His volume of vocabulary and richness of decorative devices become excessive and wasteful; the whole battalion of descriptive epithets, of alliterative and rhyming jingles is often too compactly and indiscriminately arrayed to give us convincing visual pictures. The exuberant verbal and metrical dexterity ceases to be a means of beautiful expression; it obstructs our sense of visualisation, although it pleases by its astonishing lavishness and endless ingenuity, not so much of sense as of mere sound. Rūpa possesses an irrepressible talent for such pleasing tricks, which he can accumulate untiringly in interminable series of fresh surprises. It makes his praiseworthy attempt to evolve new rhythmical prose and verse forms look plausible. To a certain extent, he is successful, but the effort fails by its outrageous tendency to prolonged elaborateness and meaningless pomp of brilliant, but hardly illuminating, gorgeousness. Rūpa, in his Stotras and Gitas, is not difficult and abstruse; nor is he didactic, nor prone to inane and recondite subtleties; but these tendencies of a scholastic training find expression in his inability to distinguish between art and artifice, between poetry and its make-believe.