Poetique du theatre indien: Lectures du Natyasastra.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin

This work aims at nothing less than the rediscovery of the "theatralite" of the ancient Indian drama - engaging in vivid and representational terms the actual process of staging this long-forgotten art. And not in the dry text-based jargon of the philological academy, but in and through the thought of the greatest of the classical critics, Abhinavagupta, whose interpretations are not just taken as canonical - "something worth deciphering" - but as actually enlightening. Guided by Abhinava, we negotiate, not just the outward technique of the "metteuren-scene," but the entire mental process of "realization," from poet to actor. Mme. Bansat-Boudon's mastery of Abhinava's difficult and vast commentaries is exemplary. She ranges with authority over the entire Abhinavabharati (and also the Locana), citing appositely passages little remarked, that both bring the thought of Abhinava into focus, and demonstrate over and over again the comprehensive view he has developed of the Natyasastra as a theatrical whole - a mahavakya - perfect and complete. The result is stunning. The centuries melt away. The reader feels, at times, the great Kasmiri's presence at his side in the loges.(1) Never, in my experience, has the genius of this incomparable Indian been better - not just "understood," many have done that - but made vivid, relevant, quick, saksikrtah.

The author's "tilt" toward the Natyasastra and its eminent commentator is reinforced by adopting even Bharata's "Table of Contents" or samgrahakarika (6.10) as an organizing principle of her own work (ch. 2, "Les Regles" [pp. 85-233]).

The work can also be seen, within the traditions of French Indology, as a contemporary reworking of Sylvain Levi's monumental, and still relevant, Le Theatre indien of 1890,(2) and throughout it seems chiefly to wish to engage that tradition of scholarship - as a counterpoint against which it plays the bright treble of Abhinava. But this twin perspective has its costs - of which two seem worth dwelling on, not with any intention of diminishing the work's value, but better to situate its accomplishments, which may not have been achievable otherwise. By focusing so on Abhinavagupta, the author, at times, falls prey to the essentialist fallacy so decried by our anti-Orientalist friends. There is little sense conveyed here that Indian culture, Indian thought, has a history. The culture of the theater is represented, not only as perfected by Abhinavagupta, but as existing in a timeless continuum that encompasses at least the two millennia from Kalidasa to our own day. Phrases like "dans l'Inde, le theatre . . ." abound.(3) This, in part, is an accident of the author's method, but her many illuminating explanations of Abhinava's supreme critical achievement - the rasa theory - reinforce the very traditional view that rasa has a timeless validity: once discovered, it could not be otherwise - and it is of the essence of the Indian Geist (voire, esprit).(4) Now, this may or may not be true - I rather think it is (for I am an Orientalist of the most romantic sort) - but it is no longer enlightening, in academic terms at least, simply to assume it to be the case: the thesis must be argued.(5)

The contemporary bias of the author's study is reinforced - this is as it should be for an "essentialist" work on the theater - by frequent and far-from-peripheral references to and citations from the French theatrical tradition - from Racine to Claudel and Valery - passing very noticeably by way of Mallarme, whose obiter dicta supply many of the incipits to the chapters.(6)

A third goal, which develops concentrically within the outer aforementioned purposes like the petals of a budding lotus, is that of demonstrating the central relevance of the Natyasastra to the player, the nata, the instrument through whom poet and spectator communicate...