Of the inner drama
| Date :16-Jun-2020 |
Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland
By Vijay Phanshikar :
“A biography of anyone is hard to write. But a biography of a saint is the most difficult of all, because most of the drama of a saint’s life is lived within -- far from the gaze, and even
farther from the understanding, of the rest of the world. ...”
-- An excerpt from the
publisher’s statement about the masterly
biography ‘The Life of Ramkrishna’
by French Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland, translated from French into English by
E F Malcolm-Smith, Adwait Ashram, Kolkata.
Prose
WHAT an accurate observation! The publisher is very right -- that the drama of a saint’s life is mostly taking place within him or her, far from the public gaze and understanding. That may be the reason why most biographies of saints are generally anecdotal in nature, relying more on events and incidents in their lives rather than on the inner growth the saints’ experience. Of course, this particular biography of Shri Ramkrishna Paramhansa is often considered an authoritative interpretation of the evolution of the great man who gave to the world Swami Vivekananda.
After the initial statement, the publisher asks a question: “What then would compel a distinguished, world-renowned French writer -- a Nobel Laureate, in fact -- to write the biography of a poor, almost-illiterate priest of a Hindu Kali temple in India? And why would he want Westerners to know about him? ...” Let alone what Romain Rolland has had to say about Shri Ramkrishna Paramhansa in detail, but the publisher’s observation is accurate -- the mental stresses and strains of having renounced certain parts of material life, the psycho-spiritual trauma of pursuing the Divine, the pulls and pushes of the familial issues, the social isolation in most cases, the inability of other people to understand the metaphor of abstinence which generally marks a saint’s life ...!
Some of these do become visible and sensable to public. But in most cases, much of this inner happening remains away from public’s understanding. And because these inner tidings are invisible to the people, they rely mostly on outward expression of the saint’s personality, which they interpret from the anecdotes that shape their understanding about the saint. But the inner happening is more important. For, it is there that the saint’s inner being gets purified and ready to accept the fine nuances of Divine experience.
It is this part that makes it harder to write a saint’s biography in the method, manner and mould of Romain Rolland. This particular biography is certainly out-of-the-ordinary mould, though some of the interpretations may militate against the understanding of Indians about Shri Ramkrishna Paramhansa. But beyond those few points, the biography does make a successful attempt to interpret the inner drama of the saint’s life. Romain Rolland has also written on Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudeo Rabindranath Tagore. Each of his writings are marked by a very deep and fine understanding of the subjects.