महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

lxxxvii] Bhavabhūti as a Poet have no quarrel; it is a characteristic as much of a people as of a man, or of a particular period in the life of a man. Thus the ancient Greeks had it to a great extent, and even Kālidāsa's Dushyanta shows enough of it in the sixth act of the Śākuntala. Is the emotion genuine? is the expression natural? that is the main question. And we saw (§ 37) that such is not always the case in the Mālatī-Mādhava. In the Uttara-Rāma- charita the emotion is genuine, but the expression (especially fainting) is, to say the least, peculiar. A few other defects, such as the poet's use of the miraculous and his fondness for display, have already been mentioned. 47. Bhavabhūti's merits.—The real merits of the poet far outweigh his defects. We have spoken of his cumbrous style; this, however, is true only of his descriptive prose, and of less than a fourth part of his verse. Elsewhere, and whenever something stirring or momentous is happening on the stage, his language becomes notably simpler and simpler, until in some of the most intense situations he seems to have abjured compounds altogether.¹ No writer in fact has succeeded in keeping his prose and his poetry on two so entirely distinct footings. Then as to the ability to suggest the picture by a few, bold strokes, Bhavabhūti is not entirely devoid of such power;² more usually, however, instead of seeking for artistic similes and figures of speech, which were Kālidāsa's forte,³ Bhava- bhūti likes to select a few typical aspects of a situation or an emotion, and state them barely in succession; and this is equally effective in spite of, or rather because of, the absence of any poetic embellishments.⁴ We have already commented sufficiently upon the poet's skill in portraying the deeper emotions of the human heart. This he does quite as much by a cumulation of epithets, as by a solitary word or sentence put into the mouth of some character. Instances of the former kind are not far to seek;⁵ of the latter we may mention the exquisitely self-revealing speech of Sītā as she awakes to find herself alone (i. 51² ff.), or, in the words of Wilson, the truly Shakespearian device (U. R. C. i. 8⁶) of the chamberlain's addressing the newly crowned king first as 'Rāma dear' and then as 'Your Majesty'. Similarly the other chamberlain of the play (act iv), true to his calling, merely repeats or paraphrases the words of his betters. ¹ Cp. U. R. C. ii. 27 ; iii. 31 ff. ; iii. 46 ; iv. 13 ; vi. 11 ; vii. 6 ; &c. ² Compare for instance U. R. C. i. 29, or that beautiful description of the peacock in iii. 19 and 20. ³ 'Upamā Kālidāsasya.' Some of Bhavabhūti's particularly happy similes in our play are : i. 45 ; ii. 4 ; iii. 5 ; iii. 30 ; iii. 43 ; v. 11 ; vi. 4 ; vi. 17 ; &c. ⁴ Compare i. 27 ; i. 43 ; ii. 27 ; iii. 16 ; iii. 38 ; iv. 1 ; iv. 4 ; vi. 19 ; &c. ⁵ As typical ones we may mention U. R. C. i. 35 f. ; ii. 26 ; iii. 11 f. ; iii. 32 ; iii. 36; iii. 39 ; vi. 9 ; &c.