Humanism Flowers in Belles-Letters

Prior to entering upon an inquiry into the Concept of Humanism, it will be worthwhile to observe that Humanitarianism is different from Humanism in as much as it emphasises the humansing qualities, such as, sympathy, compassion, generosity et cetera whereas Humanism is a fuller concept, taking into account the whole Man, his virtues and limitations together.

The importance of Man as the Crown of Creation had been enunciated by the celebrated author of the ‘Mahabharata’ when he stated that there was nothing greater than Man. None the less, Humanism, as we understand the term today, is an off-spring of western thought. The famous utterance of Protagoras of the fifth century B.C., founder of the Sophist School of Greek Philosophy,…”Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not”--- is taken to be the basis of Humanism. In plain language, Humanism suggests that Man is the yardstick of the reality or the propriety of all the objects and dispensations. That is to say, Humanism symbolises all patterns of thought and behaviour, which are in keeping with human nature.

Humanism is opposed to any sort of rigidity or regimentation; does not entirely negative Religion; only stresses the exercise of reason; and alongside underscoring of the fundamental humanity of man, stands for internal equilibrium, and in the realm of creativity, is opposed to absolute abandon and indiscipline. Thus, Humanism, in western speculation, has become synonymous with Renaissance whereas Veda Vyasa, the author of the ‘Mahabharata’, and Protagoras had emphasised the essential dignity of man who was to have been the sole touch-stone of all human thought and activity.

Naturally the question arises: How is the dignity of man to be defined and recognised and what is the basic nature of man? Further, how is the full flowering of Man to be located and identified? No trustworthy answer affords to be supplied here by Unilateral Approach as the Dialectical Truth has to be admitted which means that man lives unremittingly under a Duo of Contrary pulls, “Heaven and Home”, to cite Words-worth. The Inner Equilibrium, stressed by the Neo-Humanists, can be achieved only by truly reconciling the claims of these Antithetical poles. The Hindu Upanishads have spoken of a Two fold Path of “Preyas” and “Nihshreyas”¹, that is, the wordly and other-worldly, the Mundane and the Extra-Mundane to be pursued by man for self-fulfillment. When Jesus Christ advised the Non-believer to “render God the things that are God’s and to render Caesar the things that are Caeser’s”² he had in mind these two contradictory pulls operating in man’s life, and obliquely suggested that harmonious reconciliation between the two would lead to perfect internal equilibrium --- both the pulls being equally ingrained in human nature. And, let us comment that Protagoras’s proclamation that Man is the measure of all things presupposes this dialectical composition of Man and also that it is only by recognising this Supreme Truth that all speculation and material dispensation will justify themselves, further also that the full flowering of Man can be achieved. Paradoxically enough, the Dignity of Man desiderates that the Full or Complex Man should be recognised and respected.

It can be also affirmed in this continuation that the Truths, created by Man, to quote Schiller, are linked up with the earth and it is only within the frame work of these Human Truths that the genuine dignity of man can be protected and preserved.

Let us allude to the Hindu ‘Vaishnava’ Philosophy. One of the boldest, momentous achievements of this Philosophy, unnoticed anywhere else in metaphysical or spiritual speculations of the world, has been the Anthropomorphic Conception of the Ultimate Reality, that is Humanisation of the Supreme Being, making him travel the realms of human life and behaviour.

The ‘Bhakti’ Cult (of Devotion) has brought down the Supreme Being from his ethereal heights to the terrestrial plane and has further held out the message to man that he can attain to propinquity with the Supreme Being, by following the ideals enunciated by the humanised behaviour thereof.

The Bhakti Cult symbolises a happy harmonization between the calls of the flesh and the calls of the spirit, suggesting the governance of human affairs by some Transcendental Authority which is higher than and yet equal to man --- the entire spectrum of life being characterised by an interplay of apparently contrary pulls and yet eventuating into a Harmony. And, most important of all, the essential Dignity of Man comes to be defended and protected here because of the very fact of the Supreme Deity incarnating himself in human form, assuming human character, suffering and enjoying together, in the fashion of a Son of The Soil. “The Earth is my mother; I am the son of the Earth” states the Veda. Let us again emphasis that no other philosophy has ventured to humanise the God-head.

Accordingly, the conclusion can be safely drawn that the Hindu Vaishnavism turns out to be the best and most exalted form of Humanism.

Now we are in a position to affirm that World’s Best Poetry enshrines Humanism in one form or another, in as much as Man has been the principal object of portrayal in all good poetry which feeds mainly on exciting and administering to the Aesthetic ingredient of human nature. When Shakespeare proclaimed equality between the Lover, the Lunatic and the Poet on the basis of all of them being “compact” with imagination he obliquely spotlighted the Love of Beauty, characterising the psyche of this trio. The Lover is manifestly a votary of Beauty; the Poet, governed by imagination, is employed in the search and discovery of Beauty; and as for the Lunatic, he too, in most cases, has been a victim to the attractions of Beauty and though, at times, unconsciously, failure to encompass it within his arms has deranged his wits.

To return to the original thesis, Poetry is principally enunciative of an appetite for and discovery of Beauty. It is this Beauty which is Truth, as Keats has pronounced in his famous Ode. That is to say, Beauty, sought after and generated in Poesie, is the Truth which sustains the human spirit amid all the disintegrating hugger-mugger life. When --- let us observe—in Vaishnava Philosophy, the Supreme Being was humanised to play the role of Humans, he represented Beauty, being already the Ultimate Truth in all its material aspects, to wit, Corporeal Beauty. It has to be remembered here that the Full Man, the hard core of Humanism, is an integrated entity, chiefly an amalgam of an impulse of Beauty as well that of Truth.

Shakespeare’s poems and plays embody Humanism in its essentials. Not to speak of Comedies, even his Tragedies exemplify the interplay of the differing elements of human nature. The entire corpus of Romantic Poetry happens to be an illustration of Humanism. So is the case with the Poetry of the Metaphysical School, rejoicing in Paradoxes.

Coming to classical Indian Poetry and Poetics, we find that the ‘Rasa’ System occupies and pride of place in as much as it is grounded in the abiding complex of impulses, both attractive and repulsive, which is sought to be evoked to its fullest amplitude so that the reader’s psyche gets drowned into its “feel”, which ultimately results into a state of “Maha-vishranti”, to wit, internal equipoise.

The celebrated Love Poem, the ‘Meghaduta’ of Kalidasa, is profoundly saturated with Humanistic Nectar. It is worthy of note that the Cloud Messenger is advised by the love-lorn Yaksha not to make a roar, while approaching his house, located amid the hills in Alakapuri, since, he fervently hopes, his beloved might be dreaming of him in sleep and the loud roar would rudely disrupt her soothing vision. And, the message entrusted to the Cloud for conveyance to her is exquisitely heart-touching. The Yaksha tells the Cloud about the components of her corporeal charms and his inability to find the full semblance of her beauty in a single object of Nature together. That also points to one paramount component of our classical Aesthetic Sensibility, namely, that it assumes that human beauty is basically akin to Nature’s Beauties, scattered in different objects. Avoiding the risk of deviation from the main theme, we would reiterate that Poetry is a manifestation of Humanism in one of its noblest forms.

It is strange how Plato, coming after Protagoras, forgot the latter’s concept of man being the “measure of all things” and propounded his Theory of Absolutes, virtually falsifying the truths of Human Nature. And, when Plato goes to the extreme of banishing all artists and poets from his Ideal Republic because of --- as he considers – their dealing in illusions, and hence their telling “lies”, he commits a crime against Humanism. Paradoxically, we maintain that by telling artistic lies, the Poet introduces us to Truths through the medium of Beauty. When the ‘Shruti’ makes a Prayer to ‘Pushan’ (The Sun) to remove the golden pitcher which hides Truth, it utters a Supreme Reality, namely, that Beauty and Truth are consanguineous and co-eval; and that this governing compound constitutes the hall-mark of humanity which, in its turn, constitutes Humanism in one of its pre eminent aspects.

In this context, it will amount to literary crime not to allude to the famous play ‘Shakuntalam’ of Kalidasa, the playwright. King Dushyanta, in his spree of hunting, unwittingly happens to intrude into the hermitage of Sage Kanva, and his eyes fall upon the young Shakuntala, watering the plants along with her girl-friend and he is instantly captivated by her corporeal charms and exclaims: “Her evolving beauty is like a flower unsmelt ; like a sprouting leaf undisturbed by human nails; like sweet honey untasted by human lips and like the uncontaminated fruit of piety unscathed . There’s no knowing who has been created by Lord Brahma to enjoy her”.

The play depicts in the beginning deviation from the traditional pattern of Love-Union and yet the eventual closing into the traditional Bonds of the Family. Some of the readers might be familiar with the famous exclamation of the German Poet Goethe on having perused the English translation of the play to the effect that if one desired to witness the mingling of the Earth and Heaven, the Summer and the Spring together, one should take to the study of the play ‘Shakuntalam’. Goethe was thrilled with uncommon delight at the happy denouement of the play to which sort of consummation he was totally unfamiliar in his study of western belles-letters.

Now, we comment that Humanism, in its basic essentials has nowhere else been defended and protected in such a beautiful manner. The playwright has recognised the fundamental moornings of the human nature; has let both the lovers deviate from the sanctioned path under the force of their instinctive pulls; has finally asserted the claims of classical Indian Cultural Ethos of forgetting and forgiving and then vindicating the Institution of antiquity, to wit, the Harmonious Family. Deviation from ‘status quo’ and yet returning to the ‘status quo’ in different ways, generating “Inner Equilibrium” in the married couple …. this central  plank of Humanism has been beautifully observed and flustered.

Coming to Mystic Poetry, we also find there the essential man manifesting himself in the “dressing” of the Mystic Poet. In this context the Hindi Poet Kabir of the ‘Nirguna’ School of the Bhakti Cult, affords to be cited. In one of his well-known couplets, he states that the rubicund glory of his beloved (Male) pervades everywhere, and when he sets out to witness it, he also gets transmuted into that red lustre. Here the internal Pull, felt by the human Soul to be merged into the Divine Soul, has been beautifully conveyed. Even within the ambit of Roman Catholicism the attraction of the Individual Soul and the Divine Soul for each other has found beautiful expression in the Song of Songs, The Song of Solomon (Old Testament). The Suphi Saints, too, reach a phase in their internal devotion to the Supreme Being when their individual soul attains perfect Communion with the Divine Soul and in their writings this finds irrefutable expressions.

In concluding section of our paper, we would venture to predicate that Poetry is moored into truths of human psyche which are multiple rather than singular, which are multi-faceted, multi-coloured. And that accounts for multiple brands of Poetry, betokening the multiple approaches, to the visible phenomena, of the creative spirit. The same Daffodils have evoked differing responses in different poets: Wordsworth celebrates his encounter with the thousands of daffodils growing along the margin of a lake, waving their heads in sprightly dance in a competition with waves that are rising on the bosom of the lake in consequence of blowing breeze whereas Robert Herrick is reminded of the evanescence of life by the sight of the daffodils.

To sum up, Humanism, representative of Man and His Nature, in all its diversity, in its “infinite variety” best flowers in the realms of the Creative Muse.