living ideal he could use it as the ideal. But it held him so strongly in its power that he failed to discard any part of it. While portraying Torapa he could not describe his fury excepting in the words of Torapa himself. While portraying Aduri he could not set down the jokes she cracked excepting in her own language. While portraying Nimchand he could not help using the very words which he said in his drunken Mate. Any other artist would have made a compromise with Sympathy saying, "Just give me a full estimate of Torapa, Aduri, and Nimchand, but the language will be mine, not yours." But Dinabandhu could never come to such a compromise. On the contrary, it is as if Sympathy said to him: "I want you to take all that I give you, yes, even the language. Don't you see that once you leave out Torapa's language, the fury of Torapa will not be Torapa's any longer, that once you leave out Aduri's language, the jokes of Aduri will not be Aduri's any longer, and that once yon leave out Nimchand's language, the drunken brawls of the tipsy Nimchand will surely not be Nimchand's any longer. So you mustn't leave out anything." Dinabandhu had not the power to say, "No, I can't do that." That is why we have before us Torapa, Nimchand and Aduri—each one complete cap-a-pie. If Dinabandhu had to abide by the claims of literary taste, we would have found before us the broken torsos of Torapa, Nimchand and Aduri.
I do not mean to say that we should just cry out, "Well done" to whatever Dinabandhu did. There is no doubt every author should by all means guard against lapses of taste. The few words 1 have said about him are meant neither to eulogise him nor to censure him. They are meant to hold up before all Dinabandhu, the man. Dinabandhu was not responsible for the lapses of taste noticed in his works; they have been occasioned by his keen sense of sympathy. Everything good has its bad side too. This perhaps helps call up before us Dinabandhu, the man. Whatever might be the quality of his literary works, Dinabandhu was a man to be loved. In fact I haven't heard of a single Bengali who enjoyed the love of others as Dinabandhu did. His all-pervasive feeling of sympathy would perhaps explain this.
The two chief traits of Dinabandhu's character, namely, his experience of the society, and his keen and wide feeling of sympathy, were the sources from which sprang
229
