Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/18

 I. TAGORE.

the mediaeval sonneteers of Europe and can be ap- preciative companions of the nearer Burns and Scott, Rossetti and Whitman. Sense-life with all its heat, the desire to " see perfect completeness once and forever," the mad festivals of this earth, for which men and women would gladly forego the doubtful happiness of life in paradise, "a breast whose blood's a troubled ocean, each throb the earthquake's wild commotion," " a crysul brow, the moon's despair," and "lips that seem, on roses fed," these are the stuff out of which Tagore has shapen this delightful little work.

Prof. Jadunath Sarkar has said : " Chitra is no mere tale of joys and of a lover and his lass. It is a criticism of life." As if a tale of "a lover and his lass " is not a criticism of life ! Further, it may be asked : " Which piece of world's art has not been a -criticism of life ? i.e., has not brought with it its own system of life's values ? " Every artist has been neces- sarily a critic of life, a moralizer, even Inspite of himself sometimes, and has attempted, consciously or unconsciously, an answer to the greatest of all questions, the question, " How to live ? " Didactic Poetry is indeed a tautology if not " a contradiction in terms ; " as psychologically it is impossible to conceive an " art for art's sake." Every art-work is bound to be a criticism of life. The chief question always is " What criticism ? What transvalua- tion of values ? What suggestions for a new life ? "

With regard to Chitra Mr. Sarkar would have us believe that " the moral never overshadows the story, but that he who runs may read it." Let us read it. In the last scene Chitra throws off the disguise and tells her sweetheart, the hero Arjuna, that she is nour-