Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/360

 336 BENGALI LITERATURE confused energy, diffused culture and political, social and mental chaos did not demand nor could inspire a_litera- ture of great value. There was hardly any leisure for serious writing ; what was wanted was trifles capable of affording excitement, pleasure and song. This poetry, there- fore, was never meant for a critical audience, and critical sense or practised art the Kabiwalas hardly possessed any. They lacked ideas and ideal utterance and were constantly hampered by the incubus of a conventional literary tradition ; there is a good deal of sad stuff in their verse-impromptu ; all this and more is admitted. But inspite of these draw- backs and difficulties, Kabi-poetry, in its best aspect, is an entirely homespun production, kindly, genial and in- dulgent, capable of awakening and keeping popular en- thusiasm and possessing simplicity and liquidity of utterance which draws its bone and thew and sinew from the lan- guage and ideas of the people themselves who begat them and with whose central life-foree they have an unconscious and spontaneous rapport. If it is not popular poetry in the true sense of the term, being mainly derivative and reproductive, its contact with the people, while debasing its nature in certain respects, gave it at the same time a robust and _ healthy character and a sincere homeliness unaffected by literary prepossessions. Kabi-poetry, therefore, is of a complex character and deties all systematic analysis or rigid labelling as a recog- nised.- species to be put into a definite pigeon-hole marked out by the literary critic. Its merit is simplicity and its importance lies in the fact that although the Kabiwalas were incapable of producing the highest type of poetry or painting life broadly or powerfully, they served litera- ture in their simple and homely way by furnishing a stimulus to the emotional life of the country. They suc- ceeded very often in piercing through the gauds and