Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/342

 318 BENGALI LITERATURE dual authorship and all the conventionalities of a literary tradition ; it has never shown, in its growth and develop- ment, any tendency towards the romance, the story or the chronicle so as to take it out of its original dramatic and choral structure. The songs of the illiterate Kabiwalas no doubt enter into a vital rapport with the people who compose the nation, the people who are far more puissant and important in national history than the so-called culti- vated minority. At the same time, if they constitute popular poetry at all, they represent only a very narrow type of that species: for the true function of popular poetry is the interpretation of the people to themselves and and the creation of a popular ideal, which function these songs discharge only partially ; while the forms and expres- sions of this literature are much less the property of the race than of the individual. These poets were no doubt born among the people', lived with the people and understood per- fectly their ways of thinking and feeling ; hence their direct hold upon the masses of whom many a modern writer is contentedly ignorant. But these poems, meant for popu- lar entertainment and bearing a close contact with the people, hardly ever speak of the people themseives and pos- sess little or no democratic sympathy or exaltation. They are thoroughly preoccup:ed with the It is the product of 8 E@onyentional themes of earlier poets, conventional literary E tradition though their treatment may be a little popular, and they even express themselves in conventional diction and imagery. They 1 Kabi-poetry counted its votary amongst the lowest classes. Except Haru Thakur, Rasu and Nrsithha, Rim Basu and a few others, the Kabiwalas belonged to the lowest social grades of a muchi (shoemaker), a mayara (sweetmeat-vendor), achhutar (carpenter), a feringt (nalf-bred Eurasian), svarnakar (goldsmith), a ta/ati (weaver), ete. In this catholi- city it resembles Baignabism itself,