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.