Rasa and katharsis: a comparative study, aided by several films.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin
• Position: Indian rasa aesthetic, Aristotelian katharsis

For Stanley Insler...

Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci

1. INTRODUCTION

   THE GENERAL PROBLEM here considered is the old one of finding a vocabulary adequate to talk about Indian and Western, especially Greek, poetics. (1) My suspicion is that such a vocabulary will itself constitute a rudimentary poetics, but it is by no means certain that it will be any better than either of the points of departure: it will however be somewhat more general, and in that generality, will test the limitations of the comparative method.

2. POETRY AND MESSAGE

   The specific form of the problem is one which arises in Aristotelian terms: how is it, given the contrafactual and self-contained definition of the artistic work, that a work can or does convey an extrinsic social or political message? The Greek tragedies themselves were clearly understood as having such messages. And what are legitimate, as opposed to ineffectual, ways of so communicating that message? If there is an answer to these questions, then it will not be as obvious that Aristotle's is so one-sidedly an objective poetics, or that it may not usefully be compared to the rasa poetics of Anandavardhana, which is a poetics of message--at least a message incapable of other and more direct communication. The purusarthas as well fall into this realm of inexpressibility, and it may be in this way that the Sanskrit drama conveys its extrinsic message: i.e., by equating or collapsing purusartha and rasa.

   Let it not be thought that I am addressing the indeed fatuous "problem" of whether poetic works have extrinsic messages. This, as fact, I simply take for granted. The issue is rather how we are to conceive of that message, within the constraints of a poetic that does not seem, on the surface, to accord much importance to extrinsic standards of judgment. This narrow issue would not, for example, even be worth formulating had we adopted a Platonizing stance, for it is clear that Plato accepts only extrinsic standards in judging works of art, both in terms of their existence (reality) and in terms of their purpose (the good).(2) For a work is nothing but its message, in the sense of the socially beneficial or deleterious effect it has.(3) The Platonist, in addition, fears, denigrates, or despises art because it is harder to control, less effective, or less real than other, non-artistic means to that same end.

   Neither should my search for the message of the work, intrinsic or extrinsic, be confused with the usual sociology of literature; I am not at all proposing to explain literature or literary works in terms of the works' social or cultural conditions.(4) In fact, this inquiry presupposes the irrelevance of such explanations in order to seek within the work the conditions that make social commentary possible. Commentary in a direct sense is itself proper to a genre other than belles lettres. But the status of literature as a social artifact makes inevitable that its sense will in a complex of structured ways relate to the social environment in which it arose or in which it is experienced. The most evident such messages are to be found in the formative elements of plot and character, inasmuch as it is here that the imitative principle predominates. The democratic hubris of Creon; the aristocratic petulance of Antigone--these are elements immediately meaningful because they reflect experience common to life outside the theatre. This aspect of dramatic meaning was termed by the authors of the Dhvanyaloka, vastu, vastavika (fact, factual). Here we see no difference, in semantic terms at least, between the play and life. But it is rarely on this level of meaning that the meaning of the play as a whole is to be sought. We do not (nor did the Greek audience) respond to the Antigone as though Creon were Pericles. Such identification is at best a formative aspect of another purpose; and in this case, it is an irrelevant diversion. And yet, the character of Creon would have been understood by the Greek audience as commenting on that of Pericles.

   The question I have put, then, presumes the contrafactual character of the work of art, and ipso facto, an Aristotelian point of view.

3. RASA AND [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

   The question of dramatic meaning is intimately connected with that of end or purpose. Rasa and katharsis constitute the ends of theatrical presentation, according to Ananda's and Aristotle's notions, and both appear to answer a basic need of a contrafactual poetic: to express that meaning in terms intrinsic to the work. Further, both terms appear to involve as essential to their conception some affective movement or response of the audience, which suffices to define or mark the work as a whole. But audience is even more ambiguous a term than are plot and character mentioned above: not only is it essential to the form of the play; it is a factual link between the play and the world outside. To what extent do rasa and katharsis involve comparable emotional categories, or serve similar structural purposes? And how do they help us to understand the relation between intrinsic and extrinsic meanings--between emotional responses and social and ethical messages?

   I have alleged two kinds of concern: to account for the Indian and Aristotelian notions of poetic message in terms of some common framework; and to relate katharsis and rasa as intrinsic messages, as integrative experiences. Message from the point of view of the work is experience from the point of view of the audience: not only is the work understood by the audience alongside and in terms of other or more commonplace experiences, but the poet takes advantage of these relations to define issues, characters, and effects. The most obvious linkage of the poem to the world is therefore symbol. The incidents and characters of the work stand for incidents and characters known to the audience. The symbolization is either implicit (as in "realist" cinema) or explicit (as in allegory). By explicit I mean that it must be worked out by the audience: the symbol is then transcendental rather than immanent. Indeed this difference seems also to account for the Indian distinction between the vastu and the pratiyamana(vastu), the former not being regarded as poetic--because the symbolic usage coincides with the ordinary power of language itself: abhidha.(5)

   At this level of analysis, the messages are those of semantic intention, sakti, borne by the language in reference to its presumed domain of representation. Aristotle's mimesis however is a broader and more self-referential concept, and it brings us to another level of poetic significance, the structural. Indeed, poetry at the level of symbol is also structural, but the structure, that is, the way events and characters are put together, is in some important sense borrowed from or predicated on the order of reality external to, and referred to by, the symbolist poem. But Aristotle does not mean by mimesis just imitation of events, but rather that whatever we are pleased to call events--that which is external to the theatre--is itself recast as a component of another reality that exists nowhere but in the theatre--a reality which we may now talk about, for instance, as having a "beginning, middle, and end," etc. Which is to say that poetic language, at this level, only seems to refer to events elsewhere; in fac t, the events are elements of the poem, in the sense that their import is general, or universal--and since this transformation is already symbolic, the semantic intention of the poem is essentially reflexive. We are talking about things which by convention we have accepted as other than the particular things which embody them; which are ipso facto creations of language itself, referring as much to ourselves--the audience--as to any world elsewhere.

   But what is this self-defining structure? It cannot be understood simply as a structure other than but similar to a real structure, for we exclude even the notion that the contrafactual structure is borrowed from the external structure. That is, it is "proper to" the work of art, as we conclude from Aristotle's account. But precisely because it is not borrowed, not based on any extrinsic format, it may be said to be what it is--to be real--only insofar as it displays the primary quality of any artifice, any construction--namely that it be functional, serve a purpose which in turn guides its formation. It must have a proper function because we have understood it to be something apart from that to which it appears to refer, where alone the notion of functionality seems to apply. Aristotle considers the fine arts to be no different, in that sense, from the useful arts: there would be no bed, and no art of carpentry, apart from some purpose that in no way derives from the reality of the bed--the bed as wood. Art and Nature are clearly opposed, for the tree has no purpose other than to grow and reproduce itself: it does not grow for our repose. (6) And here is the important Aristotelian link to the world outside the play: not referential, but functional. The wholly artificial arrangement of words, gestures, impersonations, cadences we call the play exists for us alone, to accomplish something for us that presumably could not be accomplished otherwise, or in that way. Since it would be foolish to think of this end as merely useful--for this would reduce poetry to carpentry--we must perforce think of it as self-contained: never exceeding the limits of the experience that it generates. Poetry is therefore a species of learning, akin to philosophy, in that what we experience thereby has no immediate useful application, or even reference, but is quite general, and has to do more with insight into the nature of things--in particular, into our nature--as social individuals.

   Rasa and katharsis at this level are both signs of the experience that validates the work of art; the functionalism of the Aristotelian approach...