Book Title: Karmayogi
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Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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Page 127
________________ KARMAVOGIN. It is a shortsighted and superficial ontlook which sees in the 16th October only the day of mourning for the partition of Bengal or in the 7th August only a commemoration of the Boycott. The Boycott is a symbol, the mourning a symbol. When the weapon of Boycott has done its work, we shall lay it aside, but the 7th August we shall not lay aside, for it is our sacred Day of Awakening. When the Partition is rescinded, we shall cease to go into annual mourning, but the 16th October will not fall into oblivion or forte of sophistry to remove. Hav-conspicuous especially in the choice ing secured so much we can go and building of the aircumstantia! on in the confidence that, whatever epitheta That characteristic of now happens to the pioneers, Hir- the poet, not the most fundamental anyagarbha has taken the new ideas and important, which most struck into his protection and when that the ancient critics, upamusu Kalidasah. Kalidasa for similes, is everyhas once happened Virat must inevitably fulfil them. where present even in such early and immature work,and already they have the sharp clear Kalidasian ring, true coin of his mint though. not yet possessed of the later high values. The deep blue midsummer sky is a rich purple mass of ground collyrium; girls with their smiling faces and lovelit eyes are "evenings beautifully jewelled with the moon': the fires burning in the forest look far off like clear drops of vermilion the new blades of grass are pieces. of split emerald; rivers embracing and tearing down the trees on their banks are evil women distracted with passion slaying their lovers. In all these instances we have the Kalidasian simile, a little superficial as yet and self-conscious, but for all that Kalidasian. When again he speaks of the moon towards dawn. growing pale with shame at the lovelier brightness of a woman's face, of the rains coming like the pomp of some great king all blazing with lights, huge clouds moving along like elephants, the lightning like a streaming banner and the thunder like a peal of drums, of the clouds like archers shooting their rains at the lover from the rainbow stringed with lightning, one recogocensional nises, in spite of the extravagance of phrase and violent fancifulness, the Kalidasian form of conceit, not only in the substance which can be borrowed, but in the wording and most of all in the economy of phrase expressing a lavish and ingenious fancy. Still more is this apparent in the sensuous and elaborato comparison of things in Nature to women in ornamental attire, rivers, autumn, the night. the pale priyungou creeper. Most decisive of all are the strok es of vivid description that giv the poem its main greatness and fulfil its purpose. The seasons live before our eyes as we read. Suinmet is here with its sweltering heats, the sunbeams burning like fires of nerfioo and the earth-swept with whuling gyres of dust driven by intplerable gusta. Yonder lies the lion forgetting his impulse and his mighty leap.;. his tongue lulls and wearily from time to time he shakes in general or particular come into being. They exist first in seed form in the silent and unexpressed idea, in a world of deep sleep where there is as yet no action of thought or deed, only the inert, inoperative idea. Shiva the white and pure, the ascetic, the still, contemplative Yogin holds them in himself as Prajna, the Wise One, God ideal. But Shiva is tamasic and rajas is necessary to induce motion before things can exist. The thing has next to sprout out of the seed and take a volatile and unfixed shape in the psychic world where it waits for a material birth. Here Brahma, the flaming, shapeless and manyshaped, holds them in his brilliant vibrating medium of active imagination and thought and by his daughter Vach, the Goddess speech eldestborn of the world, puts them into shape and body as Hiranya garbha, God imaginative and therefore creative. Last they take permanent shape and abide in some material body, form, organism. Vishnu there holds them in his fixed and visible cosmos as Virat, God desuetude, for it is our sacred Day of the Worship of the Indivisble Mother. These are the imaginations, these the mighty and creative thoughts and aspirations which we seek to foster by these celebrations, Therefore we regard the holding of practical, until the divine imagi- the Boycott Day as a national duty, Let those who scoff at it and talk of the necessity of silent sadhana, for we have heard of such, be warned nation wearies of them and Shiva as destroyer draws them back again, their outward form disintegrated and their supporting imaginations dead, into the seed-state from which they emerged. For a long time the idea of unity, the idea of a strong national self-expression were merely sleeping and inoperative ideas held as sounding words rather than possibilities. Still the repetition of the words like the repetition even mechanical of a powerful mantra, began to awaken the divine force latent in the idea and, however foebly, it began to stir. But it was not till the 16th of October and the 7th of August that these ideas seized on the faith and imagination of the people and took shape, volatile and unfixed but still shape, as a living aspiration. The day of inaterial realization is yet distant. Moving to unity we are still divided by external and internal agencies Moving towards strength and freedom we are still subject to external force and internal weakness. But this we have gained that the purpose and imagination of unity and strength is rooted in the hearts and minds of a great and the tno vigorous portion of the young generation, inheritors of the future, beyond the power of land lifelikenem -in description how they desecrate sacred words by using them as a convenient cant and try, out of selfish and infidel fears, to thwart in the minds of the young the work which by these celebrations God has been doing. KALIDASA'S SEASONS. 4 111 most ITS POETIC VALUE. Nevertheless the Seasons is not only an interesting document in the evolution of a poetic genius of the first rapk, but in itself a work of extraordinary force and immense promise. Many of the charistic Kalidasian gifts and tendensies are heru, somo of them in crude and unformed vigour but characteristic and unmistakeable, 'giving the poem a striking rosemblance of spirit and to some extent of form to the House of Raghou with a far-off prophecy of the ma ture mannor of Kalidasa in the four great masterpieces. There is his power of felicitous and vivid simile, there is the individual turn of his conceits and the single-minded force with which he drives them hotse, there is his mastering accuracy

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