seshendrasharma

When Longinus attributed poetry to the ability to form grand conceptions he realises that he has to answer the question as to how one could acquire that ability. The answer in his own words is:

‘ it is absolutely necessary to indicate the source of this power and to show that the truly eloquent man must have a mind that is not mean or ignoble. For it is not possible that those who through out their lives have feeble and servile thoughts and aims should strike out anything that is remarkable, anything that is worthy of an immortality of fame; No, greatness of speech is the province of those whose thoughts are deep, and stately expressions come naturally to the most high-minded of men.’


This obviously means that Longinus connects poetry directly to the life of the poet and lays down the principle that nothing short of sublime living yields sublime poetry. This has been my strong conviction also, which I have been voicing vey often and is also strewn over many pages of this notebook. My reasoned analysis convinced me of the correctness of my views. I will not enter into details here as I have already spelt out my mind at length in the other pages, and my preface to Seshajyotsna and birds, two collections of my poems.


I also wonder at times whether the established Indian theory that one should become a sage to become a poet is not the same as the theory of Longinus. Only because the word sage, Rishi, is too high-foluting in this context one is led to think that Indian poetics offers no clue to the enigma of genius being the only source of poetry. If the Indian theory could be equated with the theory of Longinus, then the clues of Longinus are superfluous to Indian poetics. It may be of some interest to note here that I have interpreted the word Rishi from the point of view of practical solution and that might hold good in the present context. I may add that Longinus calls the ability to form grand conceptions as ‘the nobility of soul’. His another sentence ‘literature is the crowing achievement of long experience’, is also worth contemplating in this context.


Another major principle of significance projected by Longinus is that it is not enough to have the natural gift of genius to make poetry, but there should be cultivation of the art to yield poetry worthy of consideration. Here are his words:

‘ Although nature is in the main subject only to her own laws where sublime feeling are concerned, she is not given to acting at random and wholly without system. Nature is the first cause and the fundamental creative principle in all activities, but the function of a system is to prescribe the degree and the right moment for each, and to lay down the clearest rules for use and practice. Furthermore, sublime impulses are exposed to great dangers when they are left to themselves without the ballast and stability of knowledge; they need the curb as often as the spur.’

The Indian theory agrees with this point of view entirely and lays distinct emphasis on scholastic training (vyutpatthi) and steadfast practice (Abhyaasa) to fortify and regulate the gift of genius. There is more direct and clear statement of Longinus, which I am tempted to reproduce here:
‘Since freedom from faults is usually the result of art and distinction of style however unevenly sustained is due to genius, it is right that art should everywhere be employed as a supplement to nature, for, incorporation the two may bring about perfection.’

There is no much-detailed treatment of the subject that you are entirely charmed at the completeness of the form and matter of the work of Longinus. There is no question relating to poetry which subtlety could conceive of and not answered in Longinus. The mechanism of poetry remaining the same through all times though its motives and behaviour changed from age to age. The theories of Longinus are as freshly applicable and useful today as they were in his own times.

The western literature should have relied more on Longinus for classical background than on Aristotle who is primitive compared to Longinus. But still very recently after the days of Greece and Rome the west does not seem to have woken up to this discipline of literature, with the result that necessary attention was not perhaps given to these works and their authors. When the west does not rehabilitate these lost minds and projects a partial picture as they did in confining themselves to Aristotle, we in this part of the world naturally get a distorted picture of their literary antiquity and begin to think that Aristotle is the only thinker who did some work on this subject in the west. Translation of Longinus and others have appeared very recently and have become available to us. It was very difficult for instance, to get at J.W.H. Atkins’s literary criticism in antiquity. In England in the 16th century Philip Sydney also was referring to Aristotle alone all the time in his ‘ A defence of poetry’. This is only to say works like that of Sydney project an incomplete picture to a student in the East, because no reference is made to the other master-minds though the context calls for such a reference.

-Seshendra Sharma
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