THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. 2.Vyasa: Some Characteristics149Valmiki. The poet of the Ramayana has a flexible and universalgenius embracing the Titanic and the divine, the human and thegigantic at once or with an inspired ease of transition. But Vyasais unmixed Olympian, he lives in a world of pure verse and diction,enjoying his own heaven of golden clearness. We have seenwhat are the main negative qualities of the style; pureness, strength,grandeur of intellect and personality are its positive virtues. It isthe expression of a pregnant and forceful mind, in which theidea is sufficient to itself, conscious of its own intrinsic greatness;when this mind runs in the groove of narrative or emotion,the style wears an air of high and pellucid ease in the midstof which its strenuous compactness and brevity moves and livesas a saving and strengthening spirit; but when it begins to thinkrapidly and profoundly, as often happens in the great speeches,it is apt to leave the hearer behind; sufficient to itself, thinkingquickly, briefly and greatly, it does not care to pause on its ownideas or explain them at length, but speaks as it thinks, in a condensedoften elliptical style, preferring to indicate rather thanexpatiate, often passing over the steps by which it should arriveat the idea and hastening to the idea itself; often it is subtle andmultiplies many shades and ramifications of thought in a shortcompass. From this arises that frequent knottiness and excessivecompression of logical sequence, that appearance of ellipticaland sometimes obscure expression, which so struck the ancientcritics in Vyasa and which they expressed in the legendthat when dictating the Mahabharata to Ganesha — for it wasGanesha's stipulation that not for one moment should he beleft without matter to write — the poet in order not to be outstrippedby his divine scribe threw in frequently knotty and closeknitpassages which forced the lightning swift hand to pauseand labour slowly over the work. 1 To a strenuous mind thesepassages are, from the exercise they give to the intellect, anadded charm, just as a mountain climber takes an especial delightin steep ascents which let him feel his ability. Of one thing,however, we may be confident in reading Vyasa that the expressionwill always be just to the thought; he never palters with orlabours to dress up the reality within him. For the rest we must1The Mahabharata, Adiparva, I. 78-83.