Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Swami Vivekananda’s views on Aesthetics

K. S. Ramaswami Sastri

Swami Vivekananda’s views on

Aesthetics

BY DEWAN BAHADUR K.S. RAMASWAMI SASTRI
Though Swami Vivekananda was not an aesthetician or a person directly interested in aesthetic theories or in the writing of poetry, or in expression of the human mind in art, yet as a person who had risen to the heights of spiritual experience, of God as the Supreme Beauty and the Supreme Love and the Supreme Bliss, he had a fine intuitive sense of the real nature of Beauty and of art. He said in London in 1895: “The artist is a witness of the Beautiful. Art is the least selfish form of pleasure in the world.” He said further: “If you cannot appreciate harmony in Nature, how can you appreciate God, who is the sum of all harmony?” He said again: “Of a truth, Art is Brahman.” He was thus aware of the quintessence of Art and Poesy, though he was not one who expressed his poetic nature in formal poetry. He said on one occasion: “Do you not see that I am first and foremost a poet?” In his lecture on “God in everything,” he said:

“Who enjoys a picture, the seller of the picture or the seer? The seller is busy with his accounts, what his gain will be, how much profit he will realise on the picture. His brain is full of that. He is looking at the hammer, and watching the bids. He is intent on hearing how fast the bids are rising. He is enjoying the picture who has gone there without any intention of buying or selling. He looks at the picture and enjoys it. So this whole universe is a picture, and when these desires have vanished, men will enjoy the world, and then this buying and selling, and these foolish ideas of possession will be ended. The money lender gone, the buyer gone, the seller gone, and this world the picture, a beautiful painting. I never read of any more beautiful conception of God than the following: ‘He, the great poet, the ancient poet: the whole universe is His poem, coming in verses and rhymes and rhythms, written in infinite bliss.’ When alone, when We have given up desires, shall we be able to read and enjoy this universe of God. Then everything will become deified. Nooks and corners, by-ways and shady places, which we thought so unholy, spots on its surface which appeared so black, will be all deified. They will all reveal their true nature, and we shall smile at ourselves, and think that all this weeping and crying hail been child’s play, and we, the mother, were standing there watching……..They are groping in darkness who are worshipping  this ignorant world, the  world that is produced out of ignorance. Those who are worshipping that world, thinking of it as of that Existence, are groping in darkness, and those who live their whole lives in this world, and never find anything better or higher, are groping in still greater darkness. But he who knows the secret of beautiful nature, thinking of pure nature through the help of nature, he crosses death, and through the help of that which is pure nature he enjoys Eternal Bliss. ‘Thou Sun, thou hath covered the truth with thy golden disc. Do thou open that for me so that I may see the truth which is inside thee. I have known the truth that is inside thee, I have known what is the real meaning of thy rays and thy glory, and see that which shines in thee, the truth in thee I see, and that which is within thee is within me also, and I am in thee.”

Thus Swami Vivekananda knew the intimate alliance between the aesthetic faculty and the religious faculty in man. He said: “The artistic faculty was highly developed in our lord Sri Ramakrishna, and he used to say that without this faculty none can be truly spiritual.”

Swami Vivekananda's utterances on specific arts also are very interesting. He said once: “The secret of Greek art is its imitation of nature even to the minutest details whereas the secret of the Indian art is ‘to represent the ideal.” He was himself a fine musician gifted with a splendid and vibrant voice. He made people realise that in Western music at its highest we find the perfection of harmony whereas in Eastern music at its highest we find the perfection of melody. In short, he taught India to realise herself as fully in National Art as in National Religion.

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