Dalla maestria al virtuosismo nella poesia indiana

Within the range of ornate poetry (kavya), virtuosity is one of the most evident features of this literary genre. This kind of effect is really very much far from pure and simple technical mastery. This can be exemplified through an ideal (not a chronological) journey, trying to evidentiate some of the didactical features of the poetical work, starting with most naive Sanskrit poetry and ending with some of its most sharpened and learned results. The litmus test of this kind of effect is translatableness: a poetical invention that is impossible to translate into another language demonstrates that in this case mastery (isitva) is defective, and tends to virtuosity, that is to a inferior kind of poetical creativity (adhamakavya), a sort of skill that poets and rethoricians consider with scarse tolerance, as a real symptom of decay.