THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. 2.Vyasa: Some Characteristics147properties of the quick artistic temperament prone to lose balanceby throwing all itself outward and therefore seldom perfectlysane and strong in all its parts. So much did these elementsform the basis of Coleridge's own temperament that hecould not perhaps imagine a genius in which they are wanting.Yet Wordsworth, Goethe, Dante and Sophocles show howeverthat the very highest genius can exist without them. But none ofthe great poets I have named is so singularly masculine, so deficientin femineity as Vyasa, none dominates so much by intellectand personality, yet satisfies so little the romantic imagination.Indeed no poet at all near the first rank has the same granitemind in which impressions are received with difficulty butonce received are ineffaceable, the same bare energy and strengthwithout violence and the same absolute empire of inspired intellectover the more showy faculties. In his austere self-restraintand economy of power he is indifferent to ornament for its ownsake, to the pleasures of poetry as distinguished from its ardours,to little graces and indulgences of style. The substance countsfor everything and the form has to limit itself to its proper workof expressing with precision and power the substance. Even hismost romantic pieces have a virgin coldness and loftiness in theirbeauty. To intellects fed on the elaborate pomp and imagery ofKalidasa's numbers and the somewhat gaudy, expensive andmeretricious spirit of English poetry, Vyasa may seem bald andunattractive. To be fed on the verse of Spenser, Shelley, Keats,Byron and Tennyson is no good preparation for the severe classics.It is, indeed, I believe, the general impression of many “educated”young Indians that the Mahabharata is a mass of oldwives' stories without a spark of poetry or imagination. But tothose who have bathed even a little in the fountain-head of poetry,and can bear the keenness and purity of these mountainsources, the naked and unadorned poetry of Vyasa is as delightfulas to bathe in a chill fountain in the heats of summer. Theyfind that one has an unfailing source of tonic and refreshment tothe soul; one comes into relation with a mind whose bare strongcontact has the power of infusing strength, courage and endurance.There are certain things which have this inborn power andare accordingly valued by those who have felt deeply its properties