Ten Greatest Poets – William Shakespeare, England’s National Poet

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ENGLAND’S NATIONAL POET

“The sun never sets on the British Empire” was a popular boast in the nineteenth century. In its original form it was applied to the Spanish Empire of Charles I, the same as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, in the sixteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, Spain had lost almost all its colonies, and when America acquired the Philippines, the epithet was also applied to the U.S.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, vast swathes of the globe were subject to Anglophone hegemony, the British and American empires. British authority stretched from Canada in North America, south to the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, west to Honduras, crossing the Pacific Ocean to encompass New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, and Malaysia, extending further west to include the crown jewels of India and Pakistan, and chunks of the African continent, namely, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana—modern country names are used—besides various territories all around. The U.S. spanned the entire width of North America, spreading across the Pacific to include Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippine islands, among others.

In 1913 the total population of the British Empire was 412 million or 23% of the world population. The same year the U.S. population totaled over 97 million or 6% of the world population. At the greatest extent of Anglo-American hegemony, the British and American empires included nearly one-third of the world population.

Not surprisingly, English language and culture spread over a widely distributed and sizable proportion of the world’s inhabitants. The logical result is that English literature today is highly influential in world culture. Moreover, English is the language of international business and of large segments of the international scientific community.

Therefore, we include in our top ten, William Shakespeare, the foremost luminary of the English literary heritage. He well represents the English contribution to the world canon.

Shakespeare has been hailed as England’s “national poet,” an honorific going to the leading representative of a country’s poetic heritage. Two or more poets sometimes contend for the title, informally bestowed by consensus. In Shakespeare’s case, he is not only England’s poet primus inter pares but also its preeminent literary figure.

Only a small number of countries have leading national poets—for example, Dante Alighieri in Italy, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany, Luís de Camões in Portugal, Alexander Pushkin in Russia, or Pablo Neruda in Chile. The title is not commonplace.

Shakespeare’s title is well-deserved. Although it is disputed by some, it is not particularly debated.

Critical literature about Shakespeare and his works is huge, and it grows daily. His dramatic works, especially, are regularly performed, not only in classical revivals of the English Renaissance but also in productions ranging anywhere from amateur theatre to Hollywood. They are watched by millions.

Because of the voluminous corpus that has already been generated about Shakespeare, I will offer only a few remarks.

Almost anyone who has studied Shakespeare will at some point realize—the sooner, the better—that Shakespeare doesn’t speak English. Modern English, that is. He speaks Elizabethan English, yes, nearly half as different from today’s English as Old English, the English of Beowulf, is entirely different from contemporary English.

When Hamlet agonizes, “Who would fardels bear?” the contemporary English speaker might ask, “Who would fardels understand?” When Lady Macbeth invokes the spirits to “unsex me here,” our postmodern generation might wonder whether she is a transgender in pursuit of sex change surgery.

Shakespeare’s incomprehensibility to the contemporary English speaker will only get worse as time passes.

Notwithstanding, iterated readings of Shakespeare, especially when the reader pays solicitous attention to footnotes, is rewarded not only by understanding but also with appreciation, indeed, admiration.

At least two outstanding attributes distinguish Shakespeare. He is the astute observer of humanity and thereby the gifted creator of character. In Shakespeare’s characters, we encounter humanity in variegation and depth—for example, Falstaff’s roguery, Hamlet’s melancholy, Miranda’s ingenuousness. Samuel Johnson said it best in his preface to The Plays of Shakespeare (1765): “His characters…are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find.”

Shakespeare also epitomizes Renaissance Humanism. True, other artists exemplify this archetypal role—Michelangelo in sculpture, for example, or Da Vinci in painting—during what is acknowledged to be a vital turning point in Western history. Shakespeare embodies in literature this seismic cultural shift.

Renaissance Humanism changed the focus of art and culture from the supernatural and eschatological to the human, natural, material, and temporal. It drew inspiration from the study of classical, i.e. Greek and Roman cultures. Unlike the exponents of medieval Christendom, the Renaissance humanist, while continuing to profess a fundamentally Christian worldview, was also deeply interested in the human being existent in the natural world and in worldly society. Hence, Shakespeare’s ranging exposition of character.

So widely esteemed is Shakespeare today that it might surprise many that he has not been always so highly regarded. During the one hundred or so years after his death in the early seventeenth century, Shakespeare was only one among many Elizabethan playwrights and poets who vied for lasting remembrance in literary history. Neoclassical John Dryden, for example, faulted Shakespeare for his want of decorum. Shakespeare’s star began to rise in the middle of the eighteenth century, so that by the nineteenth century William Hazlitt would hail him as a genius. Burgeoning Shakespeare scholarship proceeded apace.

At one point I considered selecting Elizabeth Barrett Browning instead of Shakespeare in our top ten. She is among the premier luminaries of nineteenth-century Romanticism in England. During her lifetime her work received the highest critical praise, and it is still esteemed today. Her greatest work of poetry, “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” is well beloved and renowned.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning fulfills all the criteria for inclusion in our top ten poets, with the added advantage of being female. However, Shakespeare is so far and away world famous, justifiably so, that he outstrips her.

We close our discussion of Shakespeare with a sampler of his work—one excerpt each from his histories, tragedies, and comedies, concluding with a sonnet.

Henry V’s speech to the English soldiers at Agincourt can be better understood and appreciated by putting it in historical context. Henry IV, Henry V’s father, had deposed Henry IV’s first cousin, Richard II, in a disputed accession.

When Henry V assumed the throne, his position was not undisputed, so that Henry V’s victory over the French at Agincourt bolstered his claim—and the English crown—considerably by making Henry V regent and heir apparent to the throne of France. Agincourt was a great military victory not only for England but also for Henry V.

Henry V won the battle at a time when kings still led their armies on the battlefield, risking death. Henry V’s words establishing a blood compact, as it were, with his soldiers, carry, not surprisingly, a world of drama.

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

—Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3, 58-67

Kenneth Branagh plays the doughty king in Henry V (1989), the movie. His stirring delivery of the battlefield speech is worth viewing.

Title of the 1992 non-fiction book by Stephen E. Ambrose and of the 2001 TV series “Band of Brothers” based on the book is lifted from the above passage in Henry V.

The following passage from the tragedy Macbeth retains its power over the audience 500 years later.

Upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s suicide, Macbeth speaks about the futility of a short, pointless life.

Shakespeare’s figurative language here seizes the reader, or listener, as the case may be, shakes them up, and holds their attention fast to the very end of Macbeth’s exclamation.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

—Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, 19-23

Title of William Faulker’s novel The Sound and the Fury (1929) is lifted from this passage. One fourth of Faulkner’s narrative is told from the standpoint of an intellectually disabled man—“a tale told by an idiot.”

Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Shakespeare’s original play has seen numerous productions and adaptations. The 1971 and 2015 movie productions of Macbeth, commercial failures, both darkly gripping, are worth viewing.

The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play, builds on the allegory that “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players,” words spoken by Jaques in As You Like It.

The protagonist of The Tempest, Prospero, is Shakespeare himself. In the excerpt below, he muses philosophically on how life is very much like a dream, a theatric illusion. “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on,” he says, “and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”

When Prospero speaks reassuringly to Ferdinand, dispelling, with a wave of his wand, so to speak, the illusions he had wrought by magic, he broadcasts Shakespeare’s swansong, the playwright’s farewell to the life of the stage.

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself—

Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

—The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1, 141-148

“Such stuff as dreams are made on” is famous, inspiring Humphrey Bogart’s closing line in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Carly Simon’s 1987 hit.

Shakespeare has been immortalized for his sonnets, not only his dramas. He wrote 160 sonnets. Among them we select one of the small number frequently anthologized, Sonnet 73. It deals with the classic motifs of death, love, and related.

SONNET LXXIII by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou may’st in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day,

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by-and-by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

The sonnet illustrates well Shakespeare’s surpassing lyric gift. Deftly, he weaves together a lilting exposition adorned by exquisite metaphor. The sonnet is sealed with a brilliant couplet.

Matsuo Bashō, the Greatest Master of Haiku:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-matsuo-basho.html 

William Shakespeare (c. 1667) by Gerard Soest

Ten Greatest Poets – Dante Alighieri, Quintessential Poet of the Middle Ages

DANTE ALIGHIERI, QUINTESSENTIAL POET OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The medieval period in Europe witnessed a unique event in history: the emergence of Christendom. What is it?

“Christendom” has been defined as the complementary rule of the Church and the State, the sacerdotium and imperium, respectively.

Our understanding of Christendom, however, is broader and deeper, because it is not limited to the political or religious spheres. “Christendom” describes the interpenetration of entire societies by social mores founded on Christianity and prolific cultural advancement based on the same. By “Christendom,” we mean a unity among geographically proximate peoples that was not simply political, religious, or more accurately, politico-religious, extending from the rulers to the population at large, but rather a wholesale cultural ethos, giving rise to efflorescence in the intellectual and creative arts, and to some extent in related science and technology.

Comparable historical developments would be the emergence of Islamic civilization in the eighth century or the rise of Hindu civilization during the Gupta period in the third century.

Dante Alighieri is the poet par excellence of Christendom. He has no peer. The scope of his poetry, indeed, his vision is, properly, epic.

We could cite medieval epics of comparable dramatic power, suspenseful narrative, heroic subjects, and various other merits, like The Song of Roland or The Song of El Cid, but they are primarily tales of chivalry in which the Christian knight supplants the heathen warrior as hero.

Dante’s poetry, in contrast, is Christian theology, eschatological in outlook. It sums up the worldview of the age. It is a literary archetype of the period.

Dante’s magnum opus is Divina Commedia or The Divine Comedy. He wrote it over the course of 12 years, finishing it in 1320, one year before his death. It dates to the Late Middle Ages, 1250-1500, a period marked by large-scale crises like the Great Famine of 1315-1317, which Dante witnessed.

The epic is about the journey of Dante through three existential states of the afterlife—hell, purgatory, and heaven—which Roman Catholic theology defines as the eschatological lot of each individual person immediately after death. Of the three, only purgatory is temporary. Hell and heaven are final, irrevocable, and forever.

Dante, the author of the epic, is the protagonist. Classical, Christian, historical, and autobiographical personages, particularly Virgil, the creator of the Aeneid, and Beatrice, Dante’s beloved from his childhood and youth, are his guides. 

Beatrice who is in heaven sends Virgil to assist Dante in his journey through hell and purgatory. Although she makes her first appearance in purgatory, she assumes Virgil’s role only once Dante crosses the border into heaven. Beatrice is replaced by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux towards the epic’s end, which closes as Dante is pulled into the wheel of God’s infinite transforming love.

Dante’s is a fantastical universe straight out of Marvel comics. Hell, to begin with, is a witch’s brew of punishments concocted by Dante. Dante’s hell is a descending pit of nine concentric circles in which, for example, those condemned for sins of lust are whirled about by a fierce cyclone; those who had been overpowered by gluttony during their lives on earth wallow about interminably in a pile of putrefaction; and Satan is a three-headed demon who devours the worst sinners known to the medieval world—Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.

Purgatory, next in the journey, is a mountain of nine stories topped by the original Eden of Adam and Eve. At each level of the ascending mountain, souls purify themselves, for example, by tramping about in clouds of acrid smoke, or afflicted by incurable mania.

Heaven is an undiscovered country that reveals itself as a series of crystalline spheres enclosing each other in a series, each sphere embedded with the moon, sun, or one or more of the heavenly bodies, representing tiers of spiritual attainment everlastingly rewarded. Beyond the spheres and the engine powering their motion is the ultimate dimension, the Empyrean, where a mystical rose shines, Dante’s symbol of God’s eternal love and the union of the angels and saints in and with this love.

I composed a short description of Dante’s universe at this link:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-universe-of-dante-alighieris-divine.html

Throughout this cosmic journey, Dante episodically engages in biting commentary on the politics of the day, metaphysical exposition, and theological cerebration.

The entire account is a highly sophisticated moral allegory inhabiting an intricate, fabulous universe. Similar in inspiration is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, also a moral allegory.

Dante holds the distinction of inventing terza rima, the format in which the entire Divina Commedia is written.

There are at least three ways to deeply appreciate Dante’s Divina Commedia. The first is to marvel at Dante’s lively fantastical spectacle. We know based on the unflagging popularity of Greek or Norse mythologies, or that of Hollywood productions the likes of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, the series, for example, that human beings never tire of fantabulous works of fiction well-wrought. 

Often, readers are drawn into the narrative of Divina Commedia because of the description of the lurid chastisements in Inferno. They progress to Purgatorio and Paradiso in diminishing numbers.

Another way to engage the epic is to join Dante in his spiritual sojourn, that is, to read Divina Commedia like a book of spirituality, for example, Saint John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul or Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, an important difference being that the latter works do not claim to be fiction.

When, for example, in the first terrace of purgatory Dante stoops to gain access to the souls of the proud weighed down by stones; when in the third terrace he contemplates a vision of Saint Stephen, the very image of meekness, martyred by the Jewish mob; or when in the sixth terrace, he is admonished by a voice to abstain from eating the dainties of a tree of forbidden fruit, we can identify with his spirit and relive his sentiments.

A third way is to investigate the plethora of symbols populating the narrative. Many of hell’s punishments are symbolic plays, for example.

Dante shows Muhammad (Mahomet), the founder and first prophet of Islam, and Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, the first caliph and last prophet of Islam, both cleft in twain, Muhammad, the entire front torso, and Ali, the front of the head. They are condemned to the punishments of the fraudulent in the eighth circle of hell. Because the medieval mind understood Islam as a schismatic Christian sect, Muhammad and Ali are identified as instigators and promoters of schism. Hence, Dante symbolically cuts them in half.

The following excerpt from Inferno gives us a taste of Dante’s horrors. Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has been updated to modern English.

A cask by losing centerpiece or cant

was never shattered so, as I saw one

rent from the chin to where one breaks wind.

Between his legs was hanging down his entrails;

his heart was visible, and the dismal sack

that makes excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,

he looked at me, and opened with his hands

his bosom, saying: “See now how I rend myself;

how mutilated, see, is Mahomet;

in front of me Ali weeping goes,

cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

and all the others whom you here behold,

disseminators of scandal and of schism

while living, are therefore cleft thus.

—Inferno, Canto XXVIII, lines 22-37

See:

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=tpukDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=A%20cask%20by%20losing%20centre-piece&f=false  

Crucial to our appreciation of Dante is the quality of the translation. Critical reception of Longfellow’s translation has been uneven.

When Dante visits the sun in the fourth heavenly sphere, he meets a who’s who of medieval intellectual esteem—Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian, Peter Lombard, King Solomon, Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), Orosius, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Richard of Saint Victor, and Siger of Brabant. They are purportedly paragons of wisdom. Dante places them on the sun because it illumines the earth and, metaphorically speaking, wisdom is illumination.

A fourth way to appreciate Dante is to savor his lyricism. This possibility depends greatly on the quality of the translation.

One contemporary translator whose English shows a lyric flair is Allen Mandelbaum. Some of his work is available online.

In this passage, for instance, he does a good job conveying Dante’s dread at hearing the despairing sounds swirling from the gates of hell.

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries

were echoing across the starless air,

so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.

Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,

accents of anger, words of suffering,

and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—

all went to make a tumult that will whirl

forever through that turbid, timeless air,

like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

—Inferno, Canto III, lines 22-30

See: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

This next passage located in the first terrace of purgatory is powerfully poignant. It is, in my opinion, a lyrical masterpiece. Here Dante embroiders the Our Father, and this version is what the souls of the proud pray at the beginning of their ascent up the mountain.

Translation by Allen Mandelbaum has been slightly edited, updated to modern English.

Our Father, You who dwell within the heavens

but are not circumscribed by them out of

Your greater love for Your first works above,

Praised be Your name and Your omnipotence,

by every creature, just as it is seemly

to offer thanks to Your sweet effluence.

Your kingdom’s peace bestow on us, for if

it does not come, then though we summon all

our force, we cannot reach it by ourselves.

Just as Your angels, as they sing Hosanna,

offer their wills to You as sacrifice,

so may men offer up their wills to You.

Give to us this day the daily manna

without which he who labors most to move

ahead through this harsh wilderness falls back.

Even as we forgive all who have done

us injury, may You, benevolent,

forgive, and do not judge us by our worth.

Try not our strength, so easily subdued,

against the ancient foe, but set it free

from him who goads it to perversity.

—Purgatorio, Canto XI, lines 1-21

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatorio

Mandelbaum also enchants us with his lyrical translation of the verses describing the transforming light of God that primes Dante for the beatific vision.

Like sudden lightning scattering the spirits

of sight so that the eye is then too weak

to act on other things it would perceive,

such was the living light encircling me,

leaving me so enveloped by its veil

of radiance that I could see no thing.

—Paradiso, Canto XXX, lines 46-51

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiso_(Dante)

Vital to the success of any literary narrative is how it ends, and in this respect Dante does not disappoint.

Translation by C. H. Sisson is workmanlike.

But already my desire and my will

were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,

by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

—Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, lines 142-145

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiso_(Dante)

Divina Commedia ends with “stars,” the same word which closes Inferno and Purgatorio. It is a literary flourish that brings to mind Cassius’ grievance in Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene 2, 140-141):

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

To which Dante would undoubtedly take exception.

William Shakespeare, England’s National Poet:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-william-shakespeare.html

Dante Alighieri, detail (1865), Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy by Enrico Pazzi

Ten Greatest Poets – Vyāsa, Compiler of the Vedas

VYĀSA, COMPILER OF THE VEDAS

Hinduism is one of the four major world religions by population—six, if you include Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Hinduism is the third most populous religion, with over one billion adherents worldwide or over 15% of the world population. Ninety-five percent of Hindus reside in India, where they comprise about 80% of the population. Over 98% of Hindus are located in South Asia, although substantial populations also exist in Southeast Asia, North America, Western Europe, and Southern Africa.

Hinduism is the origin of another major world religion, Buddhism, which counts about half a billion followers or over 9% of the world population.

The remote origins of Hinduism, the world’s oldest religion, reach far back into prehistory, to the Indo-Aryans, a very ancient migrant pastoral population that includes, besides Indians of the Aryan migration into the Indus Valley, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and Iranian peoples.

Hinduism as a distinct religion began to develop around 1500 to 500 BCE, during which defining Hindu beliefs and practices were established and passed on through oral transmission. Although Hinduism today consists of diverse religious groups, they all still share the same worldview—a common metaphysics—as well as similar religious practices, including sacred rituals and pilgrimage sites, and they all invoke practically the same sacred texts.

Hindu sacred texts include mainly the Vedas, of which there are four. The most influential, the Upanishads, sets forth fundamental Hindu philosophy. Two primordial Hindu epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, are venerated as major vehicles of Hindu philosophy, especially the Bhagavad Gītā, the part of the Mahābhārata considered the most imperative and doctrinal. Also counted among the sacred texts are the Purānas, a collection of legends and folklore, and the Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali or Yoga Sūtras for short, teachings about yoga.

The Vedas were first set to writing around 500 BCE, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana afterwards. The Mahabarata in final form, written, has been dated to about 400 BCE. Although as many as three hundred versions of the Rāmāyana exist today in various languages, the earliest versions of the oral epic, traditionally attributed to Vālmīki, are set forth in Sanskrit and dated to approximately 700 to 400 BCE. Dating precisely the original inscription of the two epics is not possible, of course, because manuscripts from that time no longer exist. The Purānas was inscribed around 300 BCE, while the Yoga Sūtras was compiled between 500 and 300 BCE.

The two great epics of Indian civilization, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, contribute in an essential way to the development of Hinduism. Both transmit Hindu prayers and rituals, and fundamental Hindu philosophy, thereby defining the manner in which the religion is professed and practiced today. This influence is not merely literary but religious.

Therefore, the effects of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana on the third largest religion by population are considerable. This influence extends to Buddhism, which originates in Hinduism.

Consequently, we choose Vyāsa, the mythical author of the longer and more influential Mahābhārata, for inclusion in our list of the ten greatest poets.

Vyāsa is also called Veda Vyāsa, literally, “Compiler of the Vedas,” because he is believed to be one of 28 avatār or reincarnations of the god Vishnu who accomplished this sacred activity. This title is therefore shared.

Strictly speaking, Vyāsa is not a single person but multiple authors. Originating around 800 or 900 BCE, the Mahābhārata was orally transmitted by charioteer bards until it was set to writing about 400 BCE. During this process of oral transmission, it was adapted, developed, and finally canonized.

Vyāsa is both a character and a narrator in the Mahābhārata. He is the father of Pāndu and Dhritārashtra, the patriarchs of two warring clans. At beginning of the Mahābhārata, Vyāsa dictates the text to the Hindu god Ganesha. Subsequently, Vyāsa appears infrequently throughout.

The Mahābhārata is the longest epic in the world. It consists of over 100,000 couplets or 200,000 verses, or about 1.8 million words. It is ten times the length of the Iliad plus the Odyssey, four times the length of the Rāmāyana, and over three times the length of the Bible.

The Mahābhārata is principally about the saga of two sets of cousins, the Pāndavas and Kauravas, who are the children, respectively, of two brothers, Pāndu and Dhritārashtra. The parties clash over the right to rule the kingdom of Hastināpura during an 18-day battle at the plains of Kurukshetra in which the Kauravas are decisively defeated. Eldest brother of the Pāndavas is Yudhishthira, who ascends the throne. When the epic ends, Yudhishthira journeys to the afterlife and encounters his brothers and cousins, who, to his surprise, inhabit planes of heavenly existence in which each ātman or soul stays for a fixed time according to the law of karma, the inexorable justice governing all moral activity. The afterlife includes several levels of hell.

Only about one-third to one-fourth of the Mahābhārata is directly connected to the central story. The rest of it includes various elements like legends, folktales, wisdom literature, laws or quasi-legal codes of social mores, religious teachings, spiritual counsels, or metaphysical treatises.

As far as epic literature goes, the Mahābhārata is most similar to the Bible, that is, a collection of books consisting of different genres, unified by a religious worldview. The unifying motif of the Mahābhārata is the Hindu worldview, especially the place of human beings in it.

Just like the parvas or books of the Mahābhārata, only some books of the Bible, for example, the historical books, are epic narratives.

With mythic accounts of anthropomorphic gods, warrior valor, and pitched battles, the Mahābhārata resembles epics like Homer’s Iliad or the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. However, the Mahābhārata is not distinguished by the narrative unity we find in the epics of the West. Moreover, the Mahābhārata engages in deep metaphysical speculation, unlike classic Western epics.

One way of appreciating the Mahābhārata is by looking at how metaphysical concepts in Hinduism are expounded in the text, especially in the Bhagavad Gītā, the only portion of the Mahābhārata included among the Vedas. In the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna, the avatār of the god Vishnu, instructs Arjuna, the leading warrior among the five brothers, about dharma or right conduct, and other metaphysical concepts.

Basic metaphysical concepts in Hinduism include dharma, artha, kāma, moksha—purushārthas or the four aims of human life—karma, samsāra, yoga, ātman, Brahman, Devas, avatār, and ahimsā.

Following is a sampler of the religious and philosophical teachings found in the Bhagavad Gītā.

“It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.”

Here Krishna admonishes Arjuna to observe the fundamental, encompassing goal of all human life: fulfillment of individual dharma. This basic Hindu teaching is expressed in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, “Nothing is higher than dharma.”

Roughly, dharma translates as “righteousness” or “ethics.” Dharma is individual but related to and based on social mores. Using a Western philosophical framework, we might say that Hindu ethics is a type of deontology.

Fulfilling your dharma accumulates good karma, that is, good consequences for your actions. All living creatures are subject to the process by which bad karma is offset and good karma is accumulated—samsāra, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

Ultimately, the goal of observing your dharma is moksha, liberation from samsāra.

“Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction.”

Detachment from worldly desires, especially from compulsions arising from evil passions—lust, anger, or greed, for example—is considered essential to attaining moksha.

“With a drop of my energy I enter the earth and support all creatures. Through the moon, the vessel of life-giving fluid, I nourish all plants. I enter breathing creatures and dwell within as the life-giving breath. I am the fire in the stomach which digests all food.”

According to pantheistic schools of Hinduism, Brahman or the Ultimate Reality exists in the individual souls or ātman of all living creatures. All ātman are interconnected through Brahman.

Moksha entails realization of union between ātman and Brahman.

See, for the textual sources of the above verses:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hindu2/2014/10/100-great-bhagavad-gita-quotes-from-krishna/ 

—Sunil Daman, “100 Great Bhagavad Gita Quotes From Krishna,” Hindu 2.0, October 14, 2014

It is an interesting question why Hinduism has not spread very far beyond South Asia or attracted very many converts outside South Asian populations. Although geography is evidently a reason, the weakness of this argument is that Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism have also been limited by geography, but they undertook missionary activity that extended their respective populations far beyond their local origins. Hinduism, religiously inclusive, appears to lack this missionary imperative.

Furthermore, the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, vis-à-vis Hinduism, profess fundamentally different metaphysics.

The monistic deity, God, of the Abrahamic religions is an omnipotent spirit who personally relates to human beings, especially if we are speaking about the God of Judaism or Christianity. Yahweh, the God of Israel, proclaims himself in the Bible to be the husband of Israel, the unfaithful spouse, for example, while Jesus Christ reveals himself as the man-God, the Second Person of the Trinitarian God of Christianity, who dies to save humanity. The Allah of Islam, in contrast, is more remote. He is merciful but also inscrutable, in this respect possibly even capricious.

Moreover, the created universe according to the Abrahamic religions is not identical with God. Any suggestion of pantheism, including related doctrines, is considered heresy.

The Brahman of Hinduism, on the other hand, has a strongly impersonal character, while the sacred texts of Hinduism point to pantheism.

Given this primordial and antique divergence in metaphysics, besides many other important differences in religious belief and practice, it is not surprising that the Abrahamic religions have resisted any sort of major doctrinal influence from Hinduism.

Concededly, Hinduism has influenced the world in significant ways—for example, yoga is ubiquitous, karma belongs to the vocabulary of popular culture, and avatars roam electronic media. However, Hindu influence on the populations of the Abrahamic religions as a rule does not penetrate down to the level of altering fundamental religious doctrines.

Li Po, China’s Greatest Poet—Not:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-li-po.html

Vyāsa, mythical author of the Mahābhārata