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Any poetic must ultimately account for the contrasting principles which
receive emphatic treatment in other theories of criticism. We meet here,
near the end of our list of figures, the imagination, a principle which we
might say has been emphasized almost to the point of exclusiveness in
many modern poe
and which dominates our contemporary attitudes
toward poetry. Originality is a quality highly favored; indescribability,
the state of having surpassed conventional limitations, is considered to be
the quality of the poetic product corresponding to the faculty of imagina-
tion and is considered proof of genius.154 In a certain sense, the poet is
thus the "culture hero", possessing as he does the virtues of individuality,
inimitability, and creative distinctiveness in an absolute degree. Our
attitude toward poetry is as stereotyped as that of classical India, where
such notions were in fact largely supplanted by their opposites.
In the Indian tradition, then, imagination (bhāvīka) is generally
described as the ability to make the several images of the individual
poetic statements coherent in terms demanded by the work as a larger
whole. It is manifested in such things as the plot (the story stringing
together the individual statements), by the lack of shocking contrast in
its development, by the general appropriateness of one image to its
neighbors, and the like.155 Modern critics have been worried by the
fleeting attention paid to this "crucial" concept; it is above all this short-
sightedness which has earned the Indian poetics its reputation of literary
irrelevance.156 We will examine possible historical reasons for this
difficulty in the following section; here we shall only remark that the point
INTRODUCTION
154 "One of the greatest limitations of Sanskrit poetics which hindered its growth into
a proper aesthetic was its almost total disinterest in the poetic personality by which a
work of art attains its individual character" (De, SPSA, p. 72).
"4 "... we search in
vain for a complete definition or clear discussion of the poetic imagination in the whole
range of Sanskrit poetics" (ibid.). "A poetic intuition cannot have a prescribed technique
of expression ... it is not an intellectual concept ... nor is there any passage to it from
the physical fact or the intellectual concept. It stands by itself" (ibid., pp. 76-77).
But on the uniqueness and inexplicability of the creative act, cf. Empson: "Things
temporarily or permanently inexplicable are not to be thought of as essentially
different from things that can be explained in some terms you happen to have at your
disposal... Explanations of literary matters are more like Pure than Analytical
geometry, and, if you cannot think of a construction, that may show that you would
be wise to use a different set of methods, but cannot show the problem is of a new
kind" (p. 285).
155
Dandin, Kävyādarśa, 2.364ff.
www
148 "The Indian theorists have almost neglected an important part of their task, viz.,
to find a definition of the nature of the subject of a poem as the product of the poet's
mind; this problem is the main issue of Western aesthetics. Only svabhāvokti and
bhävika can be adduced as a proof that the Indian theorists were conscious of the
problem...", De, ed., Kuntaka, Vakroktijivita, Introduction, p. xix.
Any poetic must ultimately account for the contrasting principles which
receive emphatic treatment in other theories of criticism. We meet here,
near the end of our list of figures, the imagination, a principle which we
might say has been emphasized almost to the point of exclusiveness in
many modern poe
and which dominates our contemporary attitudes
toward poetry. Originality is a quality highly favored; indescribability,
the state of having surpassed conventional limitations, is considered to be
the quality of the poetic product corresponding to the faculty of imagina-
tion and is considered proof of genius.154 In a certain sense, the poet is
thus the "culture hero", possessing as he does the virtues of individuality,
inimitability, and creative distinctiveness in an absolute degree. Our
attitude toward poetry is as stereotyped as that of classical India, where
such notions were in fact largely supplanted by their opposites.
In the Indian tradition, then, imagination (bhāvīka) is generally
described as the ability to make the several images of the individual
poetic statements coherent in terms demanded by the work as a larger
whole. It is manifested in such things as the plot (the story stringing
together the individual statements), by the lack of shocking contrast in
its development, by the general appropriateness of one image to its
neighbors, and the like.155 Modern critics have been worried by the
fleeting attention paid to this "crucial" concept; it is above all this short-
sightedness which has earned the Indian poetics its reputation of literary
irrelevance.156 We will examine possible historical reasons for this
difficulty in the following section; here we shall only remark that the point
INTRODUCTION
154 "One of the greatest limitations of Sanskrit poetics which hindered its growth into
a proper aesthetic was its almost total disinterest in the poetic personality by which a
work of art attains its individual character" (De, SPSA, p. 72).
"4 "... we search in
vain for a complete definition or clear discussion of the poetic imagination in the whole
range of Sanskrit poetics" (ibid.). "A poetic intuition cannot have a prescribed technique
of expression ... it is not an intellectual concept ... nor is there any passage to it from
the physical fact or the intellectual concept. It stands by itself" (ibid., pp. 76-77).
But on the uniqueness and inexplicability of the creative act, cf. Empson: "Things
temporarily or permanently inexplicable are not to be thought of as essentially
different from things that can be explained in some terms you happen to have at your
disposal... Explanations of literary matters are more like Pure than Analytical
geometry, and, if you cannot think of a construction, that may show that you would
be wise to use a different set of methods, but cannot show the problem is of a new
kind" (p. 285).
155
Dandin, Kävyādarśa, 2.364ff.
www
148 "The Indian theorists have almost neglected an important part of their task, viz.,
to find a definition of the nature of the subject of a poem as the product of the poet's
mind; this problem is the main issue of Western aesthetics. Only svabhāvokti and
bhävika can be adduced as a proof that the Indian theorists were conscious of the
problem...", De, ed., Kuntaka, Vakroktijivita, Introduction, p. xix.