-10_Intuition and Inspiration in Art

 

As intuition plays the major role in one kind of art, even so inspiration in another. Two kinds of beauty have sprung into existence from these two faculties. Why speak of the artist alone – all powerful creators, in fact all human beings, differ in their individual nature, but they may be broadly classified under these two heads.

Knowledge is quite evidently the principle in one, life-energy in the other. Steadiness is the mark of the one, speed of the other. One has wideness, the other depth. One is comprehensive, the other penetrative. One gives forth light, the other heat. One is illumined, the other dynamic.

Intuition is inner seeing, inspiration inner hearing. Poetry breaks out of the former, music of the later. We find a considerable influence of inspiration in poetry where music looms large; e.g. in lyrics. Likewise a poetic form can often be found to a large extent in music – Wagner is an immortal instance. Inspiration is the fount of the lyric, intuition of the epic.

Forms of beauty and truth come into existence through the creator's intuition, and the rhythm, the gesture of truth and beauty through his inspiration. "The thing in itself," the substance, shines clear and lucid in intuition, while its character or "nature" reveals itself poignant and intimate through inspiration. One is the formative force, the other the kinetic or executive.

The following line of Kalidasa is an embodied figure of truth and beauty:

The fir trees shiver in the sprays cast by the descending torrents of the Bhagirathi.

 

While these lines of Shakespeare –

 

The shard-bone beetle with his drowsy hum

Hath rung night's yawning peal...

 

bring before our mind the sportive dance of truth and beauty.

The rhythmic swinging movement as described by Kalidasa more dearly reveals and fixes a static form; the picture that floats on the horizon of our mind through the lines of Shakespeare seems to fling far the waves of a dynamic movement.

In a way, the creators of the East seem to proceed more by intuition, while the creators of the West by inspiration. And it is here that we get some explanation for the charge that the East is inert and conservative in contrast to the dynamic and progressive West. The East is after beautiful static forms in her creations and the West is fond of sprightly flow.

One may say that inspiration reigns supreme in the West; and yet currents of intuition are found there side by side with it. The genius of the Latin is replete with intuition and that of the Celtic, the Slav, the Teuton with inspiration. If Shakespeare, Ibsen and Dostoevsky belong to the latter category, Virgil, Petrarch and Racine represent the former.

Intuition and inspiration do not limit themselves, however, to particular countries or races, but the two appear in all ideological schools and even through social customs. The Classical and the Romantic can be differentiated by these two principles. The Classical is motivated by intuition, the Romantic by inspiration.

Again the same difference is apparent between the ancient and the modern. Sparks of intuition are scattered all over 

the ancient arts, and inspiration marks the modern. The Renaissance of Europe failed in its attempt, however sincere, at imitating the intuition of Homer and Virgil of the remote past and unwittingly managed to usher in the epoch of inspiration. Dante was the harbinger of the spirit of this new age, while Shakespeare of the English and Ronsard of the French developed and exampled it in the comity of cultures. Again the glimpses of intuition that we come across in the inspiration of Dante, Shakespeare and Ronsard have further diminished in Shelley, Byron and Hugo. Finally, inspiration has become all in all among the modern and the ultra-modern artists including the Symbolists and the Impressionists of whom Paul Verlaine at one time was a leader.

It may be said that to a great extent in the East the whole of Sanskrit literature was founded on intuition. In the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and even in the Mahabharata, very often we find instances where the rein of knowledge has prevented the emotion and the zeal of the heart from running riot. In fact the speciality of Indian art does not lie so much in the play of colours as in the drawing of lines. Colour gives the tinge of the vital urge, while it is the lines that create here the real beauty by circumscribing or delimiting the object in view. Indian sculpture and architecture embody, the quintessential spirit and gracefulness of intuition.

Perhaps in India the Vaishnavas or the followers of the path of devotion have replaced intuition by inspiration. It is by their influence and at their hands that literature based on inspiration has become so rich, eloquent and intense. Western scholars say that the Aryans were mostly intellectual, principally guided by reason; it is the non-Aryans, the Dravidians, who have introduced the element of emotion into Indian culture. The Aryans generally followed the path of knowledge and the South Indians were predominantly devotional. Perhaps there is some truth in this saying. The Buddhists were also to some extent responsible for the

change in the even and tranquil tenor of Aryan culture. In the beginning the Buddhists, like the Vedic Aryans, laid the greatest stress on knowledge. Later on, when Mahayana, the Great Path, came into vogue, there commenced the worship of the Buddha. When the compassion of the Buddha was recognised as the principal trait of Buddhism we moved away from intuition and resorted to inspiration.¹

Bengal is chiefly the field of inspiration. It is inspiration that dominates the field of action, the art and religion of Bengal. Scholars hold that the Bengalees are three-fourths Buddhists in their culture and education and as a race they are Dravidians to the same degree. No wonder that by the union of these two currents Bengal has become the holy confluence of inspiration like Prayag, the place of pilgrimage, where the Ganga and the Jamuna have met.

Now, in the creation nothing can remain itself and unaltered for good. Difference and polarity are the inviolable laws of nature. Therefore it is not that we do not find glimpses of pure intuition here and there among the Bengalees. Chandidas, the pioneer poet of Bengal, represents an unalloyed, pure inspiration and Vidyapati reflects glimpses of intuition. When a feeling of emotion tingled through the blood of Chandidas he turned deep within and sang to himself with his eyes closed, in trance as it were:

 

Sister, who has sung first the sweet name of the Lord

                                                                                    Krishna?

 

On the other hand, the self-poised Vidyapati with his eyes wide open sang:

 

Childhood and youth fuse together.

 

¹ A similar event seems to have taken place in Europe with the advent of Christianity. The Graeco-Latin culture was predominantly based on reason and knowledge like that of the Indian Aryans. But Christ appeared on the. scene with the emotional gift of the psychic being.                                                                                     

     Again, if in Rabindranath we get at the fountainhead of some of the deepest, purest inspiration, we see on the other hand an effort and aspiration for intuition in Madhusudan.

Intuition and inspiration do not necessarily mean the same thing always and everywhere. Both differ in kind and degree – ranging from the subtlest to the grossest, from the highest to the lowest. If we want to make a differentiation between them, we have to look to the source from where they originate; otherwise by itself neither can claim superiority.

Besides, we must not forget that after all – even as the Vedic ‘all-gods’ – intuition and inspiration exist together and overlap each other. At places one takes the lead and comes to the fore and the other is subordinate and remains in the background.

To be sure, there is no such gulf between the two as we may imagine and construct in order to understand and distinguish them clearly and logically by our mind, which cannot grasp anything except by division.