Table of Content
Grief in the Ramayana
Quotes and comments from this week’s readings
Anna Karenina, Part two, V-XXI
The Prisoner. p. 1706-1746 (ed. Quarto Gallimard) or p. 148-180 (ed. Penguin Classics Deluxe)
Ramayana, Uttara Kanda, Sarga 57-100
Next week’s readings
Grief in the Ramayana
Despite what some artists and art critics may claim, art is mainly about emotions. Throughout history, great works of art were recognized for the emotions they elicited from their viewers and readers. In the Western tradition, following Aristotle, the focus has traditionally been on catharsis. Drama, and epic poetry should produce a sort of purging of dangerous emotions from listeners. Consider the first few lines of the Iliad :
Wrath—sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles,
that inflicted woes without number upon the Achaeans,
hurled forth to Hades many strong souls of warriors
and rendered their bodies prey for the dogs,
for all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished (Tr. C. Alexander)
Right from the beginning, we know this will be a poem about wrath, and all it consequences. The emotion is there for all to see.
In the Indian tradition, following views exposed by Bharata in the Natya Shastra, the Treatise on Drama, art, mostly drama and poetry, is also about the creation and expression of emotions. An artist’s goal is to allow individuals to experience the essence of an emotion, rasa, what Goldman calls, in his introduction to the Uttara kanda, “the aesthetic flavor or enjoyment stimulated by successful literary composition.”
Rasa is the central concept in Indian aesthetics. The objective of any work of art is to be allow this essence to be manifested. As explained in the Treatise on Drama : “Rasa arises from the conjunction of factors, reactions, and transitory emotions.” I will not even try to explain what this means, and what exactly rasa is, because, as Pollock explains in his book A Rasa Reader, “Explaining this compact statement remained for a full millenium and a half what it meant to explain aesthetic experience.” Suffice to say that there are 8 or 9 rasas, each associated with a dominant emotion.
The rasa associated with the Ramayana, is compassion, pathos, a sense of the tragic, and its associated emotion is grief. This is made very clear at the beginning of the first book, the Balakanda, when Valmiki witnesses a scene that will inspire him to write his epic poem :
Nearby, that holy man saw an inseparable pair of sweet-voiced kraunca birds wandering about. But even as he watched, a Nisada hunter, filled with malice and intent on mischief, struck down the male of the pair. Seeing him struck down and writhing on the ground, his body covered with blood, his mate uttered a piteous cry. And the pious seer, seeing the bird struck down in this fashion by the Nisada, was filled with pity. Then, in the intensity of this feeling of compassion, the brahman thought, "This is wrong." Hearing the kraunca hen wailing, he uttered these words: "Since, Nisada, you killed one of this pair of krauncas, distracted at the height of passion, you shall not live for very long." And even as he stood watching and spoke in this way, this thought arose in his heart, "Stricken with grief for this bird, what is this I have uttered?"
But upon reflection, that wise and thoughtful man came to a conclusion. Then that bull among sages spoke these words to his disciple: “Fixed in metrical quarters, each with a like number of syllables, and fit for the accompaniment of stringed and percussion instruments, the utterance that I produced in this access of soka, grief, shall be called sloka, poetry, and nothing else.” (Balakanda, Sarga 2)
This story is a reversed echo of what would eventually happen to Rama and Sita, twice separated, and always at a moment when the godly couple is experiencing bliss. First at the hand of Ravana, during their stay in the forest, then due to Rama’s pride when the couple is back in Ayodhya. The couple will also be separated for good, at the end of the Uttarakanda, when Sita, finally able to be reunited with her lover, calls on the earth to swallow her whole.
The Ramayana thus opens with grief, and closes with it as well. In a way, as Anandavardhana says, it is “grief transformed into poetry.”
Thus one can see that for the literary, as opposed to the religious, tradition the Uttarakāṇḍa, with its account of the final separation of Sītā and Rāma on earth, is the emotively and aesthetically appropriate ending to a poem whose very inspiration was the feeling of grief and loss, and which is marked throughout by passages of lamentation for lost friends and lovers. (Goldman, introduction to the Uttarakanda, p. 62)
I have already quoted at length one of the most moving example of such expression of grief, when Mandodari, wife of Ravana, looses her husband. But other examples abound. A few times Rama is grief stricken because he thinks Sita is lost (I recently analyzed Lakshmana’s reaction to one of this instances). Two other instances are worth mentioning. The first is Tara’s grief over her husband, Vallin, king of the monkeys :
When passionate Tara, her face like the lord of stars, saw her husband on the ground, killed by a death-dealing shaft loosed from Rama's bow, like an elephant struck by an arrow, she went to him and embraced him. Seeing the monkey-lord Valin, splendid as great Indra, brought down like an uprooted tree, Tara was anguished. With her heart tortured by grief, she lamented:
Warrior with your fierce prowess in battle, best of leaping monkeys, why do you now not speak to me, a wretched woman who has done no wrong? Rise up, tiger among monkeys! Go to your own fine bed. Great kings like you do not sleep on the ground. How deep your love for the earth must be, lord of earth, that even in death you abandon me and embrace her with your limbs. By living righteously, warrior, you must have created on the path to heaven some other city as charming as Kishkindha. Now you have brought to an end those pleasures we enjoyed with you in the honey-scented woodlands. Without joy, without hope, I am sunk in a sea of grief since you, great leader among troop leaders, have gone to your death. My grief-tortured heart must be hard indeed that it does not break into a thousand pieces though I see you on the ground, destroyed. (Kishkindhakanda, Sarga 20)
The second is the moment when Dasharatha, Rama’s father, who, having just exiled his son, dies of grief :
"The grief arising here in my very soul has left me helpless and insensible. In its wild rush it is sweeping me away, as a raging river sweeps away its bank. Oh great-armed Raghava, the one relief of my agony!"
With this last cry of grief King Dasaratha reached the end of his life. And so it came about, just after midnight, when he had finished his mournful tale, that the lord of men, a man of noble vision, anguished by the exile of his beloved son and afflicted with the most profound sorrow, breathed his last. (Ayodhyakanda, Sarga 59)
Despite all this grief, the Ramayana, is not a tragedy. It is an epic poem on manhood. Why then such a focus on grief ? I’m not exactly sure. Things get even more complex when one realizes that most of the men characters are totally useless in the face of grief. Dasharatha dies, and Rama, everytime he grieves over Sita, is dumbstruck and unable to act.
A possible answer is hinted at in the event that inspires Valmiki. When he witnesses the killing of the kraunca bird (which a fascinating article identifies as the Sarus Crane, the animal pictured up top) it’s not the male that survives, but the female. If this pair of bird is to be identified with Rama and Sita, we could hypothesized that even though the poem is mostly about the war between Rama and Ravana, it is also about the grieving of Sita. She looses her man twice, first when she’s abducted by Ravana, and second when' she’s exiled due to Rama’s pride. If we were to take this idea seriously, it could mean that the Ramayana is an epic poem about what it means to be a man, and the suffering brought about by their actions. It is both an exaltation and a condemnation of manhood.
Quotes and comments from this week’s readings
Anna Karenina, Part two, V-XXI
“Tell us something amusing but not wicked”, said the ambassador’s wife, a great expert at graceful conversation, called ‘small talk’ in English, turning to the diplomat, who also had no idea how to begin now.
“They say that’s very difficult, that only wicked things are funny” he began with a smile. “But I’ll try. Give me a topic. The whole point lies in the topic. Once the topic is given, it’s easy to embroider on it. I often think that the famous talkers of the last century would now find it difficult to talk intelligently. Everything intelligent is so boring…” (p. 133)
The effect produced by princess Miagky’s talk was always the same, and the secret of it consisted in her saying simple things that made sense, even if, as now, they were not quite appropriate. In the society in which she lived, such words produced the impression of a most witty joke. (p. 135)
Another instance of something that hasn’t changed.
The only happy marriages I know are arranged ones. (p. 137)
Considering the rate of divorce is now somewhere around 50% I would be interested in knowing if there is any truth to that.
I think that in order to know love one must make a mistake and then correct it, said Princess Betsy. (…)
I think, said Anna (…) if there are as many minds as there are men, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. (p. 138)
To put himself in thought and feeling into another being was a mental act alien to Alexei Alexandrovitch. He regarded this mental act as harmful and dangerous fantasizing. (p. 144)
I wonder what prompted a writer, somebody whose whole work consists of putting himself “in thought and feeling into another being”, to write such a line.
The Prisoner. p. 1706-1746 (ed. Quarto Gallimard) or p. 148-180 (ed. Penguin Classics Deluxe)
En abandonnant en fait cette ambition, avaos-je renoncé à quelque chose de réel? La vie pouvait-elle me consoler de l’art, y avait-il dans l’art une réalité plus profonde où notre personnalité véritable trouve une expression qui ne lui donnent pas less actions de la vie ? Chaque grand artiste semble en effet si différent des autres, et nous donne tant cette sensation quotidienne! (p. 1721)
In definitely abandoning that ambition [becoming an artiste], had I forfeited something real? Could life console me for the loss of art, was there in art a more profound reality, in which our true personality finds an expression that is not afforded it by the activities of life? Every great artist seems indeed so different from all the rest, and gives us so strongly that sensation of individuality for which we seek in vain in our everyday existence.
Mais les choses laides et cossues sont fort utiles, car elles ont auprès des personnes qui ne nous comprennent pas, qui n'ont pas notre goût, et dont nous pouvons être amoureux, un prestige que n'aurait pas une fière chose qui ne révèle pas sa beauté. Or les êtres qui ne nous comprennent pas sont justement les seuls à l'égard desquels il puisse nous être utile d'user d'un prestige que notre intelligence suffit à nous assurer auprès d'êtres supérieurs. (p. 1735)
But ugly and expensive things are of great use, for they enjoy, among people who do not understand us, who have not our taste and with whom we cannot fall in love, a prestige that would not be shared by some proud object that does not reveal its beauty. Now the people who do not understand us are precisely the people with regard to whom alone it may be useful to us to employ a prestige which our intellect is enough, to assure us among superior people.
Or dans le monde il n'y a que la conversation. Elle y est stupide, mais a le pouvoir de supprimer les femmes, qui ne sont plus que questions et réponses. Hors du monde les femmes redeviennent ce qui est si reposant pour le vieillard fatigué, un objet de contemplation. (p. 1740)
Now in society, there is nothing but conversation. It may be stupid, but it has the faculty of suppressing women who are nothing more than questions and answers. Removed from society, women become once more what is so reposeful to a weary old man, an object of contemplation.
L'univers est vrai pour nous tous et dissemblable pour chacun. Le témoignage de mes sens, si j'avais été dehors à ce moment, m'aurait peut-être appris que la dame n'avait pas fait quelques pas avec Albertine. Mais si j'avais su le contraire, c'était par une de ces chaînes de raisonnement (où les paroles de ceux en qui nous avons confiance insèrent de fortes mailles) et non par le témoignage des sens. Pour invoquer ce témoignage des sens il eût fallu que j'eusse été précisément dehors, ce qui n'avait pas eu lieu. On peut imaginer pourtant qu'une telle hypothèse n'est pas invraisemblable. Et j'aurais su alors qu'Albertine avait menti. Est-ce bien sûr encore ? Le témoignage des sens est lui aussi une opération de l'esprit où la conviction crée l'évidence. (p. 1744-1745)
The universe is true for all of us and different for each one. The evidence of my senses, if I had been outside at that moment, might have told me that the lady had not walked a little with Albertine. But I had learned the opposite, it was by a chain of reasoning (one of those chains in which the words we trust form strong links), and not by the evidence of the senses. To be able to call on the evidence of the senses, I would precisely have had to be out of doors, which had not been the case. It is easy to see, however, that the hypothesis is not implausible. And then I would have known that Albertine had been lying. But could I have been sure even then? The evidence of the senses is itself a mental event in which conviction creates belief.
Ramayana, Uttara Kanda, Sarga 57-100
“Gratified and filled with delight, the gods then said to her, ‘You must divide yourself by yourself into four parts, O unassailable lady.’ When Brahmahatyā, with whom it was impossible to abide, had heard the speech of the great gods, there, in their presence, she requested a residence somewhere else:
With one portion, I will dwell in rivers when they are filled with water, and with the second, in trees. This is the truth I am telling you. And as for my third portion, with that I will dwell for three nights in women endowed with youth and filled with pride, as a crusher of their pride. And, O you bulls among the gods, with my fourth portion, I will possess those who intentionally kill innocent brahmans.’ (Sarga 77)
The Ramayana had to end with an explanation of why women are menstruated.
When Lakṣmaṇa had heard those terrifying words of the great seer, he reflected in his mind on their import. He announced the seer to Rāghava, after having resolved: “Let me alone die. Let there not be the destruction of everything.” (Sarga 95)
This kind of utilitarian reasoning is really found most everywhere and throughout all of history.
Next week’s readings :
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part two, XXI-XXXV
Proust, The Prisoner. p. 1747-1785 (ed. Quarto Gallimard) or p. 180-230 (ed. Penguin Classics Deluxe)
Confucius, Annalects (tr. E. Slingerland), Books 1-3
Sometimes one has to read the article twice to give rise to some of the different rasas! Grief is widely considered one of the more profound emotions in Hindu tradition, one has not loved till one has not lost!