Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/321

INTERREGNUM IN POETRY 297 The literature of the first half of tae L9th century is dominated in the main by two distinct tendencies; the one is fostered by European writers or by men _ tutored in European ideas and marked generally by the spirit of an intellectual aristocracy, while the other derives 115 strength from the essence of native genius, untouched by foreign ideas, and expresses itself chiefly in various forms of popular literature. The one, dressed in the new apparel of prose, goes forth to capture the gifts of the new know- ledge, but the other, conveyed in the traditionary vehicle of verse, remains content with the spiritual inheritance of the past, diminished though it is with the lapse of time. The antagonism between these two tendencies, though it may not be very marked in later periods,’ lasts throughout the literary history Antagonism between of the 19th century; and in the two opposing tenden- ; cies in the 19th literature of to-day, although the Geen triumph of the new tendency is said to be fully proclaimed yet it remains to be considered how far this triumph has been or may be achieved without making legitimate concessions to the demands of the opposing tendency. Till the death of [svar Gupta, in whom we find indeed the last, if not the least, valiant champion of the old race, the antagonism is definitely posed and consistently worked out. With the death of Igvar Gupta, we are at the end of the most effective note in the ancient trend of thought and feeling ; and followers of the old tendency thereafter, in struggling to maintain their own against the stronger drift of new ideas, were obviously fighting for a lost cause. siglo rts 9 09281 Ever since that time the cause may takable influence in indeed be regarded as lost, and any eee ae attempt to-day to revive the old style would be possibly as futile and ridiculous as the 38