If this is the state of the realistic novel, the state of the romantic novel is even worse. Manjughosha andMuktamala belong to a sparse-harvest we once reaped in this field. Since then there has been no crop at all. In Germany, writers like Jean Paul Richter are even now producing fine Romantic work, while we sit here exchanging old men's tales about the passing away of the age of Romanticism. and the coming of the age of Realism. Many fields in the kingdom of our literary muse have lain untilled these few centuries. How they, can we pronounce these fields barren and others fertile? What kind of wisdom is it that picks up what foreign writers say about their own literatures and. apply it verbatim to our own situation ? The truth of the matter is that every field in our literary kingdom is pregnant with beautiful harvests. It only waits anxiously for the farmer who is hardworking enough to till and sow with sophisticated tools imported from the West. When these centuries of waiting ends, we will reap such harvests which will proudly raise every head in Maharashtra and compel all other heads to bow in acknowledgement. The question is, how is this to be achieved ? There is only one way our writers can produce the kind of literature Tolstoy, Hugo and Zola have produced. They must develop that kind of mind. Their hearts must bleed for the sufferings of widows. They must find it impossible to swallow a morsel of food while the poor of the country starve. The impoverishment of their country must drive the sleep from their eyes. The humiliation of women must raise the furies in their hearts. It was writers with this kind of sensibility who were able to stand against an entire nation on the side of a Captain Dreyfus, or make the Czar tremble in his boots. Without passion, all other literary virtues which in any case every writer worth the name must possess, virtues like erudition, wide travelling, sharp observation, a rigorous critical faculty, noble liberalism, deep compassion and an arresting style, are as nothing. Only passion makes a novelist great. Passion cannot be artificially acquired. It is a gift of God. No amount of State patronage can produce passion in writers. They must be bom with it If mere encouragement from the State could produce excellent literature, snapping one's fingers should produce babies. One may count it as one of the virtues of Apte's work that it was not born out of State patronage. Many are likely to accuse me of a lack of sympathy in comparing our small novelists with the great novelists of the world in order to show up their smallness. But, while this critic would dearly love to be sympathetic and encouraging, he considers that a search for truth is of greater importance. If we are to enter the arena of world literature at all, we must develop weapons that will at least match, if not surpass the other. Once in the arena, you are not likely to be pitied for your smallness. It is wiser then to weigh our literature on the same pair of scales as world literature. There is another reason why it is important to do so. While in theory the Marathi writer writes for all Marathi speaking people, the actual assessment of his work is done by that small section of the reading public that is highly Journal of Arts and Ideas 87