impulse or bringing comfort”.9 Stopford Brooke might have spoken of ancient Tamil poetry in these words, for the happy combination runs through all Cankam literature. The Tamil poets made man their greatest study, not man of one class or society, but ideal man and universal man. They were expected to be both psychologists and naturalists, and Nature was important to them only in relation to man. Nature was the stage on which the human actors came and went. It provided the background and setting for the drama of life, but was not a mere frame or mere background. It was a sympathetic background. The important aspect of poetry was the feelings, the behaviour, the conduct of man, but Nature served to show these themes in bolder relief by being portrayed as being in harmony or in contrast. Professor Ryder writing about Kālidāsa says that the poet has achieved a wonderful balance in being both a poet of the human heart and of natural beauty. “The two characters unite in him, it might almost be said, chemically. The matter which I am clumsily endeavouring to make plain is beautifully epitomized in The Cloud-Messenger. The former half is a description of external nature, yet interwoven with human feeling; the latter half is a picture of a human heart, yet the picture is framed in natural beauty. So exquisitely is the thing done that none can say which half is superior. Of those who read this perfect poem in the original text, some are more moved by the one, some by the other”.10 The Tamil poets do not give that equal place to Nature which Professor Ryder sees in the works of Kālidāsa, but one acquainted with Cankam poetry, after reading these observations, would have reason to regret that scholars of the West are so unacquainted with ancient Tamil poetry. A familiarity with it should make their studies on the poetic interpretation of Nature gain in depth. In Nature being the sympathetic background, it did not cease to be a store-house of similes and metaphors to the Tamil poets. In fact such minute study was imposed on them that, as a result, their bland fidelity to Nature and their ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9 STOPFORD A.BROOKE, Naturalism in English Poetry, p. 27. 10Shakuntala and other Writings, in “Introduction”, London, 1933. |