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“The mid-ninth-century thinker Anandavardhana, when arguing that it is rasa that makes literature literature, explains that it was to demonstrate this fact that “the grief of the first poet…was shown to be transformed into verse. For grief is the stable emotion of the tragic rasa.”11 The idea that the literary artwork is an expression of the author’s own emotion is summarized in an oft-quoted verse of Ananda’s: “If the poet is filled with passion, the whole world of his poem will consist of rasa; if not, it will be completely devoid of it.” — Sheldon Pollock
The mid-ninth-century thinker Anandavardhana, when arguing that it is rasa that makes literature literature, explains that it was to demonstrate this fact that “the grief of the first poet…was shown to be transformed into verse. For grief is the stable emotion of the tragic rasa.”11 The idea that the literary artwork is an expression of the author’s own emotion is summarized in an oft-quoted verse of Ananda’s: “If the poet is filled with passion, the whole world of his poem will consist of rasa; if not, it will be completely devoid of it.