Rabindranath Tagore, his life and work

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THE HERITAGE OF INDIA SERIES

Joint
Editors

The Right Reverend V. S. Azariah,

Bishop of Dornakal.
J.N. Farquhar, M.A. , D.Litt. (Oxon.).

Already published.

The Heart of Buddhism. K. J. Saunders, M.A.

Asoka. Rev. J. M. Macphail, M.A., M.D.

Indian Painting. Principal Percy Brown, Calcutta.

Kanarese Literature. Rev. E. P. Rice, B.A.

The Samkhya System. A. Berriedale Keith, D.C.L.,

D.Litt.
Psalms of Maratha Saints. Nicol Macnicol, M.A., D.Litt.
A History of Hindi Literature. Rev. F. E. Keay, M.A.
The Karma-Mimamsa. A. Berriedale Keith, D.C.L.,

D.Litt.
Hymns of the Tamil Saivite Saints. F. Kingsbury, B.A.,

and G. E. Phillips., M.A.,

Subjects proposed and volumes under preparation.

SANSKRIT AND PALI LITERATURE.

Hymns from the Vedas. Prof. A. A. Macdonell, Oxford.
Anthology of Mahayana Literature.
Selections from the Upanishads.
Scenes from the Ramayana.
Selections from the Mahabharata.

THE PHILOSOPHIES.

An Introduction to Hindu Philosophy. J. N. Farquhar and

Principal John McKenzie, Bombay.
The Philosophy of the Upanishads.
Sankara's Vedanta. A. K. Sharma, M.A., Patiala.
Ramanuja's Vedanta.
The Buddhist System.

FINE ART AND MUSIC.

Indian Architecture. R. L. Ewing, B.A., Madras.
Indian Sculpture.

The Minor Arts. Principal Percy Brown, Calcutta,
Indian Coins. C. J, Brown, M.A., Lucknow,

11

BIOGRAPHIES OP EMINENT INDIANS.

Gautama Buddha. K. J. Saunders, M.A., Berkeley, Calif.

Ramanuja.

Akbar. F. V. Slack, M.A., Calcutta.

Tulsl Das.

VERNACULAR LITERATURE.

The Kurral. H. A. Popley, B.A., Erode, and K. T. Paul,

B.A., Calcutta.
Hymns of the Alvars. J. S. M. Hooper, M.A., Nagari.
Tulsl Das's Ramayana in Miniature. G. J. Dann, M.A.

(Oxon.), Patna. '
Hymns of Bengali Singers. E. J. Thompson, B.A., M.C.,

Bankura.
Kanarese Hymns. Miss Butler, B.A., Bangalore.

HISTORIES OP VERNACULAR LITERATURE.
Bengali. C. S. Paterson, M.A., Calcutta.
Gujarat!. R. H. Boyd, M.A., Ahmadabad.
Marathl. Nicol Macnicol, M.A., D.Litt., Poona.
Tamii. Francis Kingsbury, B.A., Bangalore.
Telugu. P. Chenchiah, M.A., Madras, and Raja Bhujanga

Rao, Ellore.
Malayalam. T. K. Joseph, B.A., L.T., Trivandrum.
Urdu. B. Ghoshal, M.A., Bhopal.
Sinhalese.
Burmese.

NOTABLE INDIAN PEOPLES.
The Rajputs.

The Syrian Christians. K. C. Mammen Mapillai, Alleppey.
The Sikhs.

VARIOUS.

Modern Folk Tales. W. Norman Brown, M.A., Ph.D.,

Philadelphia.
Indian Village Government.

Poems by Indian Women. Mrs. N. Macnicol, Poona.
Classical Sanskrit Literature.

Indian Temple Legends. K. T. Paul, B.A., Calcutta.
Indian Astronomy and Chronology. Dew an Bahadur L. D.

Swamikannu Pillai, Madras,

EDITORIAL PREFACE

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatso-
ever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things
are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and
if there be any praise, think on these things."

No section of the population of India can afford to
neglect her ancient heritage. In her literature, philo-
sophy, art, and regulated life there is much that is
worthless, much also that is distinctly unhealthy ; yet
the treasures of knowledge, wisdom, and beauty which
they contain are too precious to be lost. Every citizen
of India needs to use them, if he is to be a cul-
tured modern Indian. This is as true of the Christian,
the Muslim, the Zoroastrian as of the Hindu. But,
while the heritage of India has been largely explored
by scholars, and the results of their toil are laid out for
us in their books, they cannot be said to be really
available for the ordinary man. The volumes are in
most cases expensive, and are often technical and
difficult. Hence this series of cheap books has been
planned by a group of Christian men, in order that
every educated Indian, whether rich or poor, may be
able to find his way into the treasures of India's past.
Many Europeans, both in India and elsewhere, will
doubtless be glad to use the series.

The utmost care is being taken by the General
Editors in selecting writers, and in passing manuscripts
for the press. To every book two tests are rigidly
applied : everything must be scholarly, and everything
must be sympathetic. The purpose is to bring the
best out of the ancient treasuries, so that it may be
known, enjoyed, and used.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

THE HERITAGE OF INDIA SERIES

Rabindranath Tagore

HIS LIFE AND WORK

BY

E. J. THOMPSON, B.A., M.C.

Principal* Wesleyan College^ Bankura,

AUTHOR OF 'THE ENCHANTED LADY,' ' ENNERDALE BRIDGE,' 'BEYOND
BAGHDAD,' ' VAE VICTIS,' * VIA TRIDMPHALIS.' ETC, ETC.

ASSOCIATION PRESS

(y.m.c.a.)
5, RUSSELL STREET, CALCUTTA

LONDON: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK, TORONTO, MELBOURNE.

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS

1921

Fa,

As\sn

The Right of Translation is Reserved.

To
BRAJENDRANATH SEAL.

'SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?'

PREFACE

When I promised to do this book, two years ago, I
knew I was foolish. My task would have been difficult,
had my subject been an English writer. There is no
Western author of repute whose pen is not frugal,
compared with Rabindranath Tagore's. Through days
filled to~ overflowing with other work I have been
oppressed by the knowledge that, even in my own
tongue, Rabindranath was all the while lecturing and
writing faster than I could hope to read. I cannot
pretend to have read more than a considerable fraction
of the enormous output of his fifty years of incessant
activity. Much of that output has never got beyond the
magazines. My comfort is that perhaps not one of his
own countrymen has read the whole of it.

Those who have themselves made the effort of
compressing a vast theme into a small handbook will
be the most lenient to my shortcomings. The poet has
enjoyed nine years of world-wide fame, yet this little
book is, so far as my knowledge goes, the only essay in
English which is in any degree based upon study of the
original Bengali. This surprising fact justifies an
Englishman's attempt. I believe the poet is misunder-
stood in the West — is underpraised, by some overprais-
ed, is wrongly praised. But his own countrymen have
been content to grumble. Not one has come forward
to help the world to place a poet who cannot be
ignored but of whom every possible opinion is enter-

x RABINDRANATH TAGORE

tained in Europe and America, from his apotheosis as
the last and most wonderful teacher of the ages to his
contemptuous dismissal as a charlatan. 1

I am indebted to the Modern Review (published,
Calcutta), which for many years has been a mirror of
his activities, especially as prosewriter and travelling
lecturer, and is invaluable on that side of his work.
Its editor, Babu Ramananda Chatterji, has made
prompt and generous response to many calls which I
have made on his knowledge. I owe a debt to the
brilliant sketch of the Neo-Romantic Movement in
Bengal, in Dr. Brajendranath Seal's New Essays in
Criticism, and to Ajitkumar Chakrabarti's little book,
Rabindranath. I owe a debt which I cannot exaggerate
to Babu Prasanta Mahalanobis ; without his help I could
have done nothing. That help has left its mark on every
page. Among colleagues, Babu Sarojkumar Biswas
has helped me with Bengali texts. Among students,
Satyakinkar Kabiraj has read many hundreds of pages
of Rabindranath' s poetry with me and given invaluable
assistance in translation, so that my versions are often
as much his as mine ; Narayanchandra Ghosh has an
equal claim to the passage quoted from Evening Songs,
in Chapter III. The Rev. A. M. Spencer read proofs.

Translations, except when from Gitanjali or My
Reminiscences, are my own or by the two students
mentioned above. I thank the poet for generous
permission to translate and for the gift of his portrait.
Transliteration of proper names presented a problem.
It seemed best to follow Dr. Farquhar's advice. So I

1 I have just had my attention drawn to a book by Basanta
Koomar Roy, published in America (I believe). I have not seen
it, and do not know if it has any merit.

PREFACE xi

have used Bengali forms throughout, except in the case
of Kalidasa, Valmiki, and Vidyapati. Every well-known
name I have treated as anglicised, extending this rule
to cover as many words as possible. Thus, I have
printed Bolpur and not Bolpur, Rabindranath and not
Rabindranath, Brahmo Samaj and not Brahmo Samaj,
Kalidasa and not Kalidasa. Lastly, in words treated as
unnaturalised I have ignored all marks of length or
consonantal distinction, except the two which are essen-
tial to approximately correct pronunciation — i.e. I have
marked only 6 and a (the vowel a, as distinct from the
included vowel which every Bengali consonant carries,
which, though transliterated as a, is pronounced far
more as a short o in English). In ignoring the alleged
difference between short i and long i, sbort u and long
u, I have the support of my own ears and of the poet's
express testimony that there is no difference (in pro-
nunciation, that is) . I have not printed iakta but sakta ;
not Chandi but Chandi. To sum up : I have treated as
unnaturalised only titles of books and a very few other
words, including proper names of characters in Rabin-
dranath Tagore's books. This will not please the
scholar. But I have written for the general reader,
who finds an abundance of dots and accents vexing.

The reader who cares for a much fuller and more
detailed examination of Tagore's work will find it in my
Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford University
Press ; shortly).

Wesleyan College, Bankura,

16-7-1921. E. J. T.

CONTENTS

Chap. P AOR

Preface

IX

PART I. LIFE.

I. Early Life; First Literary Period . . . . 1

II. Later Life; Many-sided Activity . . . . 29

PART II. WORK.

III. The Poet and Creative Artist .. ..61

IV. The Reformer and Seer . . . . . . 87

PART I— LIFE

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD

Bengali Poetry: Sources and Inspirations.
Bengali literature has a double line of descent. The
older is lineal from Sanskrit literature, and especially
from Sanskrit lyric and drama. More than the great
epics, the writings of Kalidasa have inspired a succes-
sion of poets in the Ganges valley. Jayadeva, in his
Gita Govinda, in the twelfth century carried the classical
style in its decadence into Bengal, of which he was a
native — into Bengal, though not into Bengali, for he
wrote in Sanskrit. His poem is Vaisnava, in the
floweriest and most sensuous strain.

The second line of descent *is the indigenous one of
folk-lyric. A main current of this, also, is Vaisnava^,
in the songs of Chandidas and Vidyapati, who wrote in
the fourteenth century. Chandidas wrote in Bengali,
Vidyapati in Maithili. But Bengal has adopted Vidya-
pati as her own.

The Vaisnava tradition continues the strongest to
this day. Just as the softer beauty of Kalidasa's poetry
has touched the Bengali imagination far more than the
sterner grace of the epics, so the cult of Krishna has
made that of Rama sink very much into the background.
The race is emotional beyond any other in India, and
Vaisnava revivalists have again and again set flowing a
wave of excitement which has covered the province. Of
these the most famous was Chaitanya, in the sixteenth
century — Chaitanya, whom the sight of kadamba 1 trees
in blossom would throw into ecstasy by reminding him
of his beloved Hari, god of Springtide revels, Chaitanya,

1 Nauclea kadumba.

2 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

who walked into the sea at Puri, in a trance of adora-
tion, and was never seen again. 1 He was no poet, but
poets followed in the wake of the fervour which he
initiated. But a sterner cult, the sakta* has contri-
buted its strain to folk-poetry. The sixteenth century
Mukundaram Kabikankan* was a sakta ; and perhaps the
most popular of all songs are those of Ramprasad, a
sakta who wrote in the time of Warren Hastings. His
songs can be heard everywhere, and on everyone's lips.
There is a vast amount of anonymous folk-poetry,
variant on a few simple phrases and themes, to which
the individual singer can give a turn of pathos or imagi-
native beauty. And there are legends, of which some
belong to the great stock of Indian mythology, but
others are local ; many of these have been made acces-
sible to the West, by such well-known writers as
Lalbihari De and Sister Nivedita (Miss Margaret Noble).
The Influence of the West in the Nineteenth
Century. 1. On Literature. Into this double stream
of literary and intellectual tradition, whose diverse
waters hardly mingled, the pandits and the folk-poets
keeping aloof from one another for the most part,
came in the nineteenth century the life and thought of
modern Europe. No part of India was so powerfully
affected by 'the New Learning' as Bengal. The tide
came first through Christian teaching, the work of the
Baptist missionaries at Serampur,* and, especially of
William Carey. Of his manifold services to India this
is not the place to speak ; but he took all knowledge as
his province, from grammar to botany, and he set Indian
pandits working at translation and compilation. A
great Indian, Rammohan Ray, gave the new-found Ben-
gali .prose that distinction which only genius could
provide, and which neither native scholar nor foreigner
could give. He produced the first Bengali prose which

1 There are other stories of his disappearance.
* Worship of the Motherhood of God, of Strength, identified
with the goddess Durga. ,

3 Author of Chandi. Kabikankan means 'Gem of Poets.'

4 Correctly Srirampur.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 3

can claim permanent place as literature. The modern
education, in the thirties introduced by Dr. Duff on
religious lines, and on secular ones (more than a dozen
years earlier) by David Hare and Rammohan Ray, had
immediate and tremendous results. Other influences con-
tributed, among them the short-lived but electric force
of that ' marvellous boy,' Derozio. The modern age of
Bengali literature began; by the sixties an extraordinary
ferment was at work. There were minds of many types
busy ; the patience of Iswarchandra Bidyasagar, purist
and scholar ; the sober skill of Hemchandra Banerji,
introducing new but not very exciting lyric forms, such
a decorous beginning as Bryant gave to American litera-
ture ; the energy and intellectual force of Bankimchandra
Chatter ji, the novelist, 'the Scott of Bengal'; the
unequal and grandiose conception of Nabinchandra Sen,
' the Byron of Bengal.' Greatest of all, in literature,
there had come the genius of Michael Madhusudhan 1
Datta, 'the Milton of Bengal,' the naturaliser of the
sonnet and of blank verse, whose epic, the Meghnad-
bodhkabya, handling Sanskrit classical legend in an
essentially romantic spirit, is to this day the darling work
of his countrymen. With the old school (and with the
majority of the new) the statement that Rabindranath
Tagore is a greater poet than Michael rouses scoffing
anger.

2. On Religion. There was religious change, also.
Carey and Rammohan Ray fought primarily for religious
and social reform. How brave and successful a battle
it was men realise to-day, remembering that widows are
no longer burned on the banks of Hugli, recognising,
too, how much of Christian thought has been adopted
into the very breath of Hinduism. The Christian
missionaries were not alone in their belief that Hindus
were idolaters. The belief was strongly held by the
early Brahmos,* a fact which amazes the rationalist

1 He took the name, Michael, on becoming a Christian.

' Custom has by now prescribed this spelling, Brahmo for
Brahma; and, invertedly, a long o sound has come into the Bengali
pronunciation, though not into the spelling.

4 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Hindu of today. It was the incentive to the enthusi-
astic propaganda of Debendranath Tagore, the poet's
father, a passionate hater of idolatry, if ever there was
one. In this belief Rammohan Ray founded the Brahmo
Samaj, a theistic association. A presentation copy of his
Precepts of Jesus, in my possession, contains the in-
scription, ' Wishing the success of the cause of truth and
the total annihilation of idolatry in all forms whatever. '
The Samaj was gradually constituted out of vague
beginnings, and rightly traces itself to the inspiration of
the great reformer and to the small, like-minded band
whom he gathered round him. After Rammohan Ray's
death in 1833, it was kept just alive by the devoted
Ramachandra Bidyabagish and by Dwarkanath Tagore,
who had been Rammohan Ray's chief supporter.
Dwarkanath Tagore, like Rammohan Ray, visited Eng-
land, where he was received with great distinction and
known as Prince Dwarkanath Tagore. When he died, he
left a confused tradition of regal munificence and extra-
vagance and a load of heavy debts which his famous son
carried and paid, going very far beyond any legal
obligation. That son, the Maharshi, 1 was father of the
poet. He has abundant claims to remembrance on his
own account. His austere and noble life, his singularly
lofty and courageous character, won the veneration of
his countrymen, as his title indicates. He set the
Brahmo Samaj on a firm basis ; and, if Rammohan Ray
was its founder, he was its first lawgiver. His Autobio-
graphy is one of the most interesting and least morbid
of all spiritual documents, an exceptional book in every
way. With him for a time worked the brilliant Keshab-
chandra Sen ; but he broke away in 1866, causing the
first of the Brahmo schisms.

Rabindeanath the Representative Man of
Bengali Literature and Thought. It has been
part of Rabindranath's greatness that he has gathered
up into his work all these influences, and has cut a channel
in which all these streams have flowed. To the classical

* Or, Great Sage,

EARLY LIFE ; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 5

and folk-poetry traditions he has joined the eager
curiosity of the most modern mind Bengal has known,
with a very widet if not very deep, acquaintance with
physical science. /The beauty of his religious poetry has
made him world-famous ; but he was a love-poet first, and
a nature-poet first and last and throtighout his work. In
literature, her'has been the representative man of his
time, in touch with the fulness of his intellectual heri-
tage. Even in language he has been a mediator and
reconciler. He brought the diction of the road and
market into poetry, and married it with the great style
of Sanskrit literature./

His Home and Surroundings. He was fortunate
in his home. There is a Bengali proverb that the god-
desses of Learning and Good Fortune, Saraswati and
Lakshmi, will not live together. Yet an exception
must be admitted in the case of the Tagores. The
family has known times of embarrassment and debt, but
it has remained throughout one of the very first families
of Bengal, with extensive possessions in land. At any
rate, the poet has never known the grinding penury
of so many of his 'threadbare, goldless genealogie. ' l
Indeed, I do not think financial difficulty has ever been
the cause of anything that was done or left undone in
his education and upbringing. But, though Lakshmi
has been good to the poet, who has praised her in many
a tender personification — Lakshmi, the ever-gracious,
ever-smiling goddess — Saraswati might be said to have
made his home her temple. No other family has a
record like the Tagores. In addition to the distinction
of leading the thought of the Brahmo Samaj and of so
much of society in other than religious ways, in the
persons of Prince Dwarkanath and his son the Maharshi,
the family has been rich in genius and talent. Rabin-
dranath's eldest brother, Dwijendranath, now living in
happy, extreme old age at Bolpur, is philosopher, and
possessor of a prose style adequate to his thought ;
another brother, Jyotirindra, is an amateur artist

1 Henry Vaughan, To His Friend (In Olor Iscanus\.

6 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

whose pencilled heads have won the enthusiastic praise
of Mr. Will Rothenstein— ' I know few modern por-
trait drawings that show greater beauty and insight.' 1
A third brother was the first Indian to enter the Civil
Service. His nephews, Abanindranath and Gagan-
endranath, are the Great Twin Brethren of Bengali,
or, indeed, Indian Art. The former is head of the Art
School which attracts pupils from all parts of the land,
and often from foreign lands ; for a long time, he was
headmaster of the Government Art School. His paint-
ings have now a world-wide reputation, several being
particularly well known. He writes short stories,
especially for children ; writes as well as he paints,
according to Dr. Brajendranath Seal. His brother,
Gaganendranath, is unequalled as a black-and-white
artist. The family leads in music no less than in the
other arts ; and the women are only less talented than
the men. So that Rabindranath, from his earliest days,
grew up in the one house where all the surging tides of
the Indian Renaissance might flow round his daily life,
and fill the air he breathed with the exhilaration of
their fresh airs. That rambling Jorasanko 2 house held

' magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands '

that were anything but forlorn — rather, their waters
thronged with the white sails of innumerable and noisy,
eager voyagers.

Boyhood. He was born on May 6th, 1861. His
Reminiscences have sketched the story of his early
days. His austere father, more and more withdrawn
from the world, yet aware of everything that happened
in his vast household, was at first a pervading presence,
seldom seen or spoken with. The boy lost his mother
in childhood, and his up-bringing devolved much on to
servants. Of these first days he writes critically. Yet
he does not seem to have had much to complain of.
Tutors were provided, to whom he paid little attention.

1 Introduction to Twenty-five Collotypes.

8 The Calcutta quarter where the Tagore family-house is.

EARLY LIFE ; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 7

Schools were tried, which he soon managed to escape.
All his life, he has declined the orthodox paths, with
great satisfaction to himself and with almost unalloyed
gain to his poetry. He was one of those boys who are
unfitted for any sort of rough-and-tumble. It took a
lot of apprenticeship to life, to make him forget his
shrinking nervousness. His real education came, not
from the desultory and experimental alternation of
tutor and school, with a background of time spent with
servants, but from the whole circumstances and en-
vironment of his life. The Jorasanko house is a vast,
rambling congeries of mansions and rooms, represent-
ing the whim's of many generations. These run round
a central courtyard, and look out upon crowded Calcutta.
In the poet's youth, he could watch the strange, alien
life of the poor who inhabited a cluster of miserable
huts before the great house ; and perhaps the dominant
picture of his Reminiscences is that of a dreaming,
interested child, standing with face pressed against the
veranda railings. He could watch, too, the folk who
came to bathe in the tank ; and in these early days his
mind was already storing many a vignette, many a
swiftly-taken glimpse of habit or idiosyncrasy. Within
doors was a life so varied and busy that it was abundant
compensation for the outside fair that he missed,
except as spectator. Here every movement found
echoes, and the political and literary and religious
disturbances rippled against these banks. His brothers
were eager and full of genius. He was encouraged to
write verse almost as soon as he could walk ; and he
was a member of secret societies that studied politics in
what was felt by their members (though not by
Government) to be a very bold and revolutionary
freedom. Music and drama were the air he breathed.
He has told us of the way his eldest brother
entranced the household with the poetical opulence of
his Dream- Journey, 1 and of the way his fourth brother
improvised melody after melody. 3 The women were

1 My Reminiscences (translation, p. 122).
• My Reminiscences (translation, p. 196).

8 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

hardly less gifted, and were certainly not less eager.
The shy, sensitive boy made friends early with women,
and found the best and most delightful of confidantes in
his brother Jyotirindra's wife. Her death was the
event which clouded his young manhood, years later.

His boyhood had notable experiences. He went
into the country, a few miles above Calcutta, and his
Reminiscences tell of the ecstasy with which he first
saw fresh mornings and unspoiled sunsets. In words
often quoted, ' every morning, as I awoke, I somehow
felt the day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter
with some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening
of the envelope. And, lest I should lose any fragment
of it, I would hurry through my toilet to my chair out-
side.' 1 Past the garden flowed the Ganges, in later
days the lifeblood pulsing through his manifold work
in prose and verse. Then his father, an incessant
traveller, took the boy with him. He stayed some time
at Bolpur, which today is world-famous for his school
and retreat. It was characteristic of the boy that he
should keep his eyes tightly closed, when journeying
the two miles between the railway station and his father's
home. He was unwilling to have anything gradual or
disenchanting about his first sight. After Bolpur, came
a month in Amritsar, and then the Himalayas.

Bengal : Its Landscapes. There are two Bengals.
There is Bengal by the Ganges, a land of luxuriant
vegetation, of fields of an incredible lushness and
greenness, of pools where black-and-white kingfishers
dart and hawk, of great white-headed kites sitting on
telegraph wires and poles, of stretching sandbanks
climbing out of the lazy stream to sun their broad
backs, of drowsy, drifting sails, and of that mighty,
worshipped river. This is the Bengal which Rabindra-
nath knows and has celebrated in countless passages,
his life one with its life of steady flow and sudden storm
and flood. He knows its rain-swollen currents, its
dreadful roar and tussle of cloud and lightning and

* My Reminiscences (translation, p. 45)..

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 9

thunder, its exquisite peace and stillness, its vast
spaces. Then there is the other Bengal, lifted off the
malaria-belt, dry and arid, a land where sandstone crops
up, and laterite, where the jungle is sal 1 and mimosa
and rough tangle of zizyph, with splits and fissures
where dwarf date-palms grow and which palas* crowds
in Spring with brick-red flowers. This Bengal, judging
by his work, he hardly knows at all. His knowledge
of it came late, when he settled at Bolpur, — for this first
Bolpur sojourn was a very brief one, and the years of
his manhood were spent beside or upon the great flood
of the Ganges. Hence, his forests are^ conventional,
are ' flowery forests ' and entirely lack any distinctive
word which shows that he has seen. But his river-scenes
are as perfect as they are numerous. He is a river-poet,
first and last. The Himalayas were the very soul of his
father's passionate delight. But to the son they have
been very little. They are magnificent scenery — tower-
ing, dripping forests, and slopes on which he has gathered
a few charming conceits and comparisons occasionally.
They have never given his spirit a home. In this
respect, he differs not only from his father, but from
his master, Kalidasa, a mountain-poet, if there ever
was one.

His Writings : Beginnings and Juvenilia (1875-
81). In his Reminiscences, he has left some desultory
notes on his first appearances in print. 3 These occurred
before he was fifteen. He thus has the doubtful honour
of standing beside Cowley and Mrs. Browning in
precocity ; and his first productions were no more
valuable than theirs. Verse and criticism appeared in
Gyan&nkur — Sprouting Knowledge. His brother Jyo-
tirindra launched many projects, among them a line of
patriotic (i.e. Bengali-owned and run) steamers and a
monthly, the Bharati. The latter enterprise had the
boy-poet as one of the crew, and for long enough it was
his medium of expression, so much so that his first fifteen

' Shorea robusta. ' Butea frondosa,

8 My Reminiscences (translation, pp. 134 seq.).

10 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

years of literary activity might be called the Bharati
period. His first long poem, The Poet's Story, saw the
light in Bharati, and presently in book-form, — his first
work to attain that distinction. In was his Endymion
or Alastor. But for long enough he was to be writing
Endymions and Alastors. It was no accident that Shelley
became his favourite poet for a time. The shadowy
world of a poet's inner adventures, of his loneliness, of
his vast, vague, universal benevolence of love, — this
spacious world held him in thrall, as the Realm of Faery
held True Thomas. In such a world, years may pass
and yet seem to the captive like weeks. Another book,
Banaphul — Wild Flowers — appeared about the same time,
a collection of his lyrics, written at the mature age of
between eleven and fifteen. Their character is
sufficiently indicated by the book's title. Only a few
keep their place in his collected works. He wrote, too,
verse tales, Gatha, lyrical ballads, influenced by Scott.
Wrote, also, most of the Bhanu Singh songs, with
which, as nearly twenty are still in print, his literary
career is usually considered to have begun.

Rabindranath has always been exceedingly sus-
ceptible to the simpler melodies, drawn by these far
more than by the great classical achievements of the
Muse; which win intellectual recognition from him rather
than enthusiasm. 1 The lyric forms which Hemchandra
Banerji was introducing from English were too ordered
and conventional to take his fancy, but such artless
strains as the songs of Bihar ilal Chakrabarti charmed
him, and so, even more, did the old Vaisnava lyrics.
He read about Chatterton, and, as was natural, his
imagination was fired to emulation. He incarnated his
Muse as Blianu Singh — Lion of the Sun — a sort of play
on his name, Rabi, which means Sun-^s. supposed
ancient Vaisnava lyrist. His intense admiration for
the Sikhs and their martial history, so unlike anything
in the annals of his own race, was probably responsible
for the Singh. With these pseudo-archaic songs, he

1 Kalidasa's work is an exception to the truth of this statement.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 11

fooled his countrymen in plenty. He tells with glee
how Dr. Nishikanta Chatterji was awarded a German
Ph.D. for a thesis on Bengali lyric poetry, in which
Bhanu Singh was given high honour as one of the
ancient glories of his land's literature. He says today
that the poems could have passed as old with no one
who really knew the older Bengali poetry. The verses
echo the conventional themes and style, flutes and
flowers and forests, Radha lamenting Krishna's absence
or neglect and the poet comforting her. Rabindranath
dismisses them with scorn, as the tune of a ' hurdy-
gurdy ' compared with the genuine music of the real
Vaisnava poems. They are better than that, however,
especially two or three which were written several
years later than the rest.

First Visit to England, 1877. On September
20th, 1877, he sailed for England. He returned a year
later, reaching Bombay on November 4th, 1878. His stay
was not a very happy experience, and he has preserved
some unpleasant stories and added some unpleasanter
comments, in his Reminiscences} His prejudice against
England, and things English, dispelled for only a short
period following on the success of the translated
GitCtnjali, probably struck root in this visit. Letters of
a Visitor to Europe, descriptive of his experiences,
appeared in Bharati. He found England as inimicable
to the Muse, as English poets have found India. As
Schiller has observed — and the lines apply more to
poets than to most men —

' Cling to thy fatherland, keep hold upon it
With all thine heart ! For in this soil thy strength
Has its firm roots, while in an alien land
Thou art absorbed fpr ever, or remainest
A shivering reed, for every wind to snap.'

Yet the English stay was not altogether fruitless. He
saw snow for the first time close at hand, a magic
sight anywhere ; he made the discovery that human

1 Pp. 156 seq.

12 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

nature is very like human nature everywhere ; and
he read the Religio Medici with Henry Morley, an
experience whose delightfulness he mentions grate-
fully to this day. Also, he had talks with Loken
Palit, a fellow-student, the brilliant and unfortunate
friend whose abounding vigour and eager appreciative-
ness carried Rabindranath forward into so many
poetical assays.

Beginnings and Juvenilia Continued. This
brief English sojourn was hardly a break in this first
literary period. Scattered over, or rather, crowded into
these years were a number of writings which deserve
mention, if only to show his abundance and variety.
Some were before the English visit, some followed it; but
all preceded his twenty-first year. The prose was, on
the whole, more noteworthy than the verse. His Letters
of a Visitor to Europe, already mentioned, are fresh and
free from pose. They are still procurable. He has
always been a first-rate letter-writer, whether in public
or private correspondence. Then there was a famous
assault on Michael Dutt's Meghnadbodh. The poet
smiles over this today, and expresses remorse. Yet
it is vigorous and acute, and at the time when it
appeared attracted much notice. The poet has always
been the most independent critic of literature in Bengal,
and one of the very few whose opinions have reason
behind them.

Then there was a very early novel, Karuna — Pity.
There was Rudrachandra, a blank verse tragedy. Young
poets revel in gloom, and in these years the young
Rabindranath took the mournful view of life which is
usual at such an age. The drama, says Mr. Mahalanobis,
' is very melodramatic, with a stern father, a poet as
lover, and the inevitable - Ophelia-like Amiya. Both
father and daughter die in the last scene, leaving the
poet lamenting.' This poetic gloom is summed and
massed in Bhagna-Hridaya — The Broken Heart. This
was a lyrical drama, very popular at the time. Its
songs and a few lyrical passages he has preserved in his
Juvenilia. Of this poem he wrote, thirteen years

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 13

later, 1 in language which recalls Keats's famous dis-
tinction between the imagination of a boy and that
of a man, with his remarks on the imagination of the
period between : a ' When I began to write Bhagna-
Hridaya, I was eighteen — neither in my childhood nor
my youth. This borderland age is not illumined with
the direct rays of Truth ; its reflection is seen here and
there, and the rest is shadow. And like twilight
shades its imaginings are long-drawn and vague,
making the real world seem like 'a world of phantasy.
The curious part of it is that not only was I eighteen,
but everyone around me seemed to be eighteen likewise;
and we all flitted about in the same baseless, substance-
less world of imagination, where even the most intense
joys and sorrows seemed like the joys and sorrows
of dreamland. There being nothing to weigh them
against, the trivial did duty for the great.' He adds,
' This period of my life, from the age of fifteen or
sixteen to twenty-two or twenty-three, was one of utter
disorder liness. '

Period of Intellectual Ferment and Literary
Experiment (1881-87). With Evening Songs, it be-
came clear that he was a poet, and a new and true one.
Yet it cannot be said that they were remarkable, taken
on their absolute merits. One can say of Queen Mab that
it contained the prophecy of genius, but not that it had
any permanent worth. Something more can be said of
Evening Songs, and much more of the two or three
best pieces ; but the group as a whole cloys with same-
ness of thought and epithet. Its great achievement
is atmosphere ; and the poems are free, straying and
feeling after a metrical liberty undreamed of as yet in
Bengali literature.

Evening Songs are almost more remarkable for
the swiftness and completeness with which they were
overpassed, than for, their own merits, merits real
enough but entangled in a jungle of subjectivity and

1 My Reminiscences (translation, p. 179).
' Preface to Endymion.

14 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

hidden and choked by monotony of style. A break in
this mood was provided by two musical comedies,
Balmiki Pratibha — The Genius of Valmiki — and Kal
Mrigaya — The Fateful Hunt. Music is in his blood, and
Rabindranath has always been able to lift himself by
its wings out of depression or morbid concern with his
inward life. A famous singer in his own country, he has
delighted many Western friends also by singing his own
tunes, of which he has composed hundreds. I remem-
ber, when we were looking over translations together,
if I asked, ' What is the Bengali for this phrase ? ' he
would answer, 'Wait a minute,' and then, tapping the
table, would sing through the poem in question till he
reached the passage. He told me that once, when he
was seventeen, he was speaking in a large meeting ;
and after his speech, the audience clamoured for a song,
which he gave, straining his voice, so that (so in
his modesty he alleges) it has never been right since.
It is safe to say that this deterioration has been noticed
by no one but himself. To his two musical comedies he
gave a rapture which he tells us has never gone to the
making of any other work of his. If so, it must have
been rapture indeed, for no poet is more inspired, with
a very fury of concentration, than he when he works, or
. more exhausted when the influence has ebbed. When
Balmiki Pratibha was written, his house was a fountain
of song, whose rejoicing centre was his brother Jyoti-
rindra. Rabindranath, with his characteristic feeling
after and annexation of whatever was useful to him,
mingled Western tunes, from Moore's Irish Melodies,
with Indian. The poem shows traces of the influence of
English folklore. Its robbers are very like Robin
Hood's band and it has a chorus of woodnymphs who
are very like English fairies. Some of the songs remain
popular.

From Sandhya Sangit — Evening Songs — we pass
naturally to Prabhat Sangit — Morning Songs. The two
books are usually coupled together. But I cannot under-
stand how anyone can fail to see the immense advance
represented by the latter and only slightly later book ;

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 15

advance in technique, in firmness of treatment, in
objectivity, and in healthiness of tone and atmosphere.
Ajitkumar Chakrabarti, thebestof Rabindranath'scritics,
saw this, and always insisted that Morning Songs was
one of his key-books, an epitome and microcosm of his
later work. A shorter book than the Evening Songs,
it has more variety.

In a style new and immediately popular, he wrote
his Bibidha Prasanga, or Various Topics. In these, the
subject is of scant importance, the matter existing for the
manner's sake. It is the young tiger sharpening
his claws on the bark of any trees that took his
fancy ; and beautifully scarred the trees are, by the
keenest of claws. The first novel which he cares
to acknowledge, Bauthakuranir Hat, belongs to this
period. More important than any outward manifes-
tation of it was the inward illumination which pierced
through his world at this time, reaching him in a drab
corner of Calcutta and flooding his mind with a
happiness which has never wholly ebbed and has known
many periods of renewal. His body, no less than his
mind, travelled now, and his environment changed.
He sojourned at Karwar, on the Western coast, in 1883,
where he steeped his mind in the vast, spreading
landscapes so beloved by him, the sandy beach and
winding estuary of the Kalanadi River. In December
of this year, he married.

■ The Double Aim of His Art. Even thus early,
the double aim of his art had manifested itself — to get
into touch with the vast world, in all its endless moods
and expressions, and to escape from it. From first to
last, his poetry has been the faithful transcript of his soul.
Hence, when his mind has been confused and muddied,
his poetry has been clouded and clogged. And when his
mind has attained to serenity, either in clear vision of
life outside or sitting aloof from the world-pageant, he
has achieved that poise and calm for which he is best
known in the West. His earliest poetry represented
rather that side of him which sought escape and evasion
than the wandering pilgrim-side. Therefore, in the

16 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

collection of his works edited by Babu Mohitchandra
Sen, 1 his first poems are entitled Heart- Wilderness,
and Prabhat Sangit is placed in a section called Emer-
gence. But now, in his Karwar stay this Emergence
phase became what it was to remain for twenty years,
the ruling mood of his activity. He wrote Nature's
Revenge, the first of his non-symbolical plays. This
has been englished as Sanyasi, and the reader can see
how remarkable it is. On his return to Calcutta,
he wrote Pictures and Songs, a series of lyrics suffi-
ciently characterised by their title. These are more
objective than any previous lyrics. ' Whatever my
eyes fell upon found a response within me.' 2 He had
drawn closer to the stirring life without, though he had
drawn closer as spectator only. From his Jorasanko
home he watched incessantly and with deepening
sympathy the life of that jungle of poor huts before
his door. He is still entangled in his mannerisms ; but
the technique is growing firmer with every book, and this
book contains some very vivid effects and impressions.
Nalini, a short prose drama, followed. This is no
longer in print, and its theme, 'a tragedy of errors,' 3
has been more mercifully worked out in Mayar Khela.
Nalini, the heroine, is in love with Nirad, but hides the
fact. Disappointed, Nirad marries Niraja half in pique.
The latter, learning the story, dies, possibly by suicide,
and attempts in dying to reconcile her husband and his
first and real love. But Nalini refuses reconciliation,
announcing that she will soon join Niraja. In Mayar
Khela, the heroine coquettishly sends away her lover,
but afterwards repents in vain, for he has returned to a
former forsaken love.

Literary Experiment and Effort in Many
Kinds. These were days of extraordinary busyness and
happiness. He was writing and speaking constantly.
Prose and verse came alike with ease and abundance.

1 This edition groups poems regardless of chronology. It Is
useless to the serious student.

' My Reminiscences (translation, p. 242).
8 Mr. Prasanta Mahalanobis.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 17

Alochana — Discussions — miscellaneous essays, chiefly
critical, was like nothing in Bengali hitherto. Rabin-
dranath is a subtle critic, especially on the side of
form. His criticisms are impressionist, as those of
poets often are, but they frequently lay bare by a
flashing stroke deep-buried truth which the profes-
sional critic misses, with all his careful search and
adequate equipment — as the casual Bedouin may find an
incription worth all that the whole effort of the archaeo-
logical survey party and their elaborately furnished
camp has unearthed. But he has hardly taken his
critical work seriously. Rajarshi — The Saint-King —
is a novel of this time, afterwards used as the basis of
his greatest drama, Bisarjan {Sacrifice). Mayar Khela
— The Play of Illusion — a musical drama, shewed his
genius feeling out again in the directions it had taken in
Balmiki Pratibha. It is hard to say whether his genius
runs more naturally to music or to verse. Many of his
songs owe their popularity to their tunes at least as
much as to their words ; and in many cases words and
tune are inseparable. Mayar Khela added to the number
of his popular songs. Like Balmiki Pratibha, it has a
chorus of fairies, called 'Maids of Illusion.' 1 Sama-
tochana, a second volume of prose miscellanies, was
published. He made many disconnected raids into public
life and social politics, wrote and spoke on educational
questions. Altogether, he was considerably the most
important figure among the younger literary men. His
activities drew him first into comradeship and co-opera-
tion with Bankimchandra Chatterji, the novelist, and
then, when Bankim's reactionary religious views became
pronounced and aggressive, into conflict with him. More
than once, Rabindranath found himself and his words the
centre of sharp controversy, notably after a lecture on
Hindu Marriage in 1887. And, to crown this period of
work, his first great burst of activity before he attained
maturity of thought and expression, he published Kari
a Kdmal — Sharps and Flats. This book, with Pictures

1 Shall we say ' Mist-Maidens ' ?

18 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

and Songs, represents the high-water mark of his
early lyrical achievement. Ajit Chakrabarti's distinc-
tion may be admitted, that Pictures and Songs have
more imagination (? fancy) 1 and Sharps and Flats
more emotion. Sharps and Flats contains some of his
best poems, or, at least, poems only just below his best.
Pictures and Songs, as its title suggests, has his double
characteristics : his melody, and his gift of landscape (not
forgetting human figures) . In these landscapes there
is already present his quality of wonderful repose ; but
the pictures are disjoined and fragmentary. There are
far greater things in Sharps and Flats, especially a
group of splendid sonnets. This form he was to use
with great success for the next four or five years, after
which he abandoned it for an easy-flowing form, of
seven rhymed couplets, the Muse in slippers. On the
whole, he has written the rhymed couplet better than
any other metre, and this particular modification of it
is one he falls back on for expression of odd moments
of observation or feeling. With these sonnets were
others, more or less amatory and dedicated to glorification
of woman's physical charm. These are flawed by con-
ceits, often of the most extravagant kind. Bengali
opinion had never condemned these ; indeed, does not
condemn them to this day. Michael's work, as well as
that of older poets, is a mangrove-swamp of conceits —
'silly even in the Bengali,' as Mr. Mahalanobis remarks,
'whereas Rabi does not sound so silly in the Bengali
as he does in English.' The puerilities of the worst
Elizabethan verse did not sound silly to the writer's con-
temporaries. But, though these sonnets did not horrify
on literary grounds, they did on moral ones, and won
for Rabindranath a quite unjustified reputation as
daring and wicked. This reputation he enhanced in
Chitrangada, before flinging all excuses for it behind him
for ever.

First Period of Maturity : Purely Literary
Period (1887-95). Pictures and Songs and Sharps and

1 The Bengali word is used to mean both fancy and
imagination.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 19

Flats make up together Mohit Babu's Dream of Youth.
That Dream has never quite left the poet ; and it was to
throw glamorous wings about his wonderful years of
manhood. He now tried to put his dream into concrete
experiment. He went to Ghazipur, famed for its roses,
and here he lived the poetic life, shut in with flowery
thickets. Here he wrote most of Manasi, the book with
which his genius definitely attains maturity, both in power
over rhythm and thought. The verse is compact.
After this, when he searches for form, it is not
because he is not form's master. He experiments
to enlarge the range of his instrument and not because
he fumbles with it within its present range. There are
poems in Manasi — The Mind's Embodiment, or Ex-
pression — which explain why the Ghazipur sojourn
finished. There is the group of poems which savagely
satirise his countrymen, the ' rice-eating, milk-drinking
tribe of Bengalis.' 1 From his rose-bowers, the poet
was watching with the angriest scorn the bigotry and
brag and variegated folly of the Neo-Hindu movement.
One of the poems, Dharma-Prachar — Preaching of
Religion — is at once a lofty and generous tribute to a
Salvationist missionary who was brutally assaulted, and
a scorching arraignment of his assailants. Other poems
pour the fiercest contempt on the 'Aryan' boasting which
arrogated to the Bengalis of the present all the virtues,
real and imaginary, of the Indian heroic age, while it
left them complacent regarding the cruelties sanctioned
by social rules. Other poems, again, make a frontal
attack on those social rules, and especially on the
abominations of child-marriage of girls. It is no
wonder that "a poet so militant amid his roses should
have soon sallied out from their shelter. Manasi
shows, too, the virile influence of Browning, who had
succeeded Shelley as the chief English influence on
the poet.

Manasi brings us down to the year 1890. The same
period of detachment from the world produced King

1 Duranta AsM,

20 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

and Queen, one of the best of this first group of dramas,
those in which the symbolism is subordinate to the
action. In this play, Bikram's selfish love and its fate
are a reflection of the poet's own conclusions from
experience. Man can be freed from the serpent-coils
of such a love by sorrow, and by sorrow alone. These
two works, the lyrical and the dramatic, are the real
Emergence in the story of Rabindranath's work. For
his entry upon the world of ordinary men, an entry so
long delayed, till now he was on the threshold of his
thirtieth year, was at hand. Leaving Ghazipur, he
determined to travel across India in a bullock-cart, on
the Grand Trunk road, to Peshawur, 'eating vastness,'
to quote Ajit Babu. 1 He would be a spectator of life's
pilgrimage, using watchful eyes. But the Maharshi,
who saw most things that happened in his family, now
intervened with the suggestion that his son should go to
Shileida and manage the family estates. At first,
observes Ajit Babu drily, 2 ' the poet was just a little
afraid at the name of Work, but at last he consented.'

But first he paid a second brief visit to England,
chronicled in his Diary of a Journey to Europe. He
travelled on the Continent, and studied German and
European music.

At Shileida : The Sadhana Period. He was now
thirty. At Shileida he spent the most prolific period of
his amazingly prolific career. The next five years
might be called the Sadhana 3 period, from their close
connection with the magazine of that name, ' incompar-
ably the best periodical Bengal has known.'* This
succeeded to Bharati, and has itself been succeeded by
other magazines. Each new phase of activity, literary
or political, has seen the poet expressing himself
through a new medium, as if new thoughts required

1 Rabindranath, p. 31. Ajit Babu quotes the phrase from
Duranta Asha.

3 Rabindranath, p. 31.
Meditation. The Sadhana magazine must be distinguished
from the book of English lectures entitled Sadhana.

* Mr. Prasanta Mdhalanobis.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 21

a new dress. Years have made no tax on his readiness to
adopt new ideas, on his boyish willingness to start new
movements or societies. Today, we hear of a scheme
to start an International University, just as 1917, several
years before the non-co-operation movement began to
look about for an indigenous scheme of education, saw
him eagerly arranging for a Bengali Home University
Library. A great part of Sadhana he wrote himself.
One striking feature of the magazine was its eager
interest in the latest science of every kind. This
interest has always been an outstanding characteristic
of the poet. But ' the Skibereen Eagle had its eye
on ' other matters as well. Rabindranath's Diary of
the Five Elements provided a criticism of life, of remark-
able charm and philosophical insight. Miscellaneous
articles gave full play to his powers of vivacious
journalism. He smacked at society and at tradition.
Important political writings belong to these incisive
pages. Most of all, he enlarged upon the meanness
and mendicancy of always petitioning Government — a
foreign Government — for things wanted. Much of what
is most independent, and not a little of what the authori-
ties have found most troublesome, in recent Indian
political thought, owes its spring to Rabindranath's
teaching. He is the parent of many movements which
today he disowns.

Joy in Nature. Yet this crowded time was one of
the deepest and most joyous communion with Nature.
The family estates are not very widely scattered, yet
sufficiently so to entail a good deal of travelling by boat.
The chief, indeed almost the only feature of the land-
scape is the Padma, or Ganges. On its breast he spent
wonderful days, and these leisurely hours built up the
tranquillity of his later years. He is rarely happy in his
landscapes till he has added a river to them. In the hunt-
ed years of his world-fame, when notoriety became too
much for him, he has many a time fled to his ' ducks and
reedbeds,' as he once put it in a rejoicing letter to me.

In Contact with the People. At Shileidahe
came into intimate touch with the people at last. No

22 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

man ever had less of class-feeling ; in this, as in many
features of his poetry, he has resembled Shelley. Both
aristocrats by birth, both have never accepted their
heritage of social superiority. Now at Shileida the poet
showed himself a good business man, and the zemindari
prospered in his charge. He has always taken the
keenest interest in agricultural improvement, and
many new methods of farming have been introduced
by him. In later years, his son Rathindranath was
educated in the United States, the country which, in
his father's opinion, gives the best training in practical
science.

Torn Letters* a delightful correspondence, gives a
close picture of these dreamily wideawake years, with
their leisurely busyness. In them we can trace the
genesis of many, if not most, of his short stories ; in
them is many a beautiful sketch of life or landscape.
Of the peaceful beauty of his mood in these days, the
following passage gives a picture :

' I have an old acquaintance now with Evening on the
Padma. When I came here in winter, and used to be
late in returning from office, I had my boat moored to
the sandbanks of the further side. I used to cross
the silent river in a little fishing-skiff. This Evening
waited for me with grave kindliness. A peace, a
goodwill, a rest were ready for me throughout the
whole sky. This silence and darkness on the waveless
Padma in the evening seemed like a room in the inner
apartments. My mind is one of Nature's household
here, and her near kin — I^have an intimate relationship
which no one but myself knows. No one will under-
stand how real it is, however I express it. The
deepest part of life, which is always silent and always
hidden, gently stealing out here in the unveiled evening
and unveiled noon, walks with silent fearlessness. . . .
We have two lives, one in this world of men, and the
other in the world of feeling. I have written many

1 A part-translation is published as Glimpses of Bengal. For
the translation of the quoted passage here I am responsible.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 23

pages of the story of my life in that world of feeling, in
the sky above the Padma.' 1

These Letters reveal his ever-stirring sympathy with
the toilers. Towards them his attitude is never tinged
even with mockery, far less contempt, while he rarely
presents the more pretentions society of his land with-
out a touch of bitterness or of scorn. Something of his
pity and love for children was called out by the help-
lessness and simplicity of the rayats, who scrape their
fields and look up for rain, perishing uncomplainingly
if it does not come. Against this background of the
broad, laden river, of humble lives, of stretching,
solitary spaces, we see the loftiest and most fastidious
mind in India, watching with infinite kindliness. His
own loneliness is brought out in the Letters, -with undeli-
berate but sometimes startling clearness. I have used
the word ' fastidious.' We find him passing over such
universally accepted writers as Milton, without a word
to suggest that their work meant anything to him, while
he expresses his delight in Amiel's Journal. I have men-
tioned the joy with which, on his first visit to England, he
read the Religio Medici with Henry Morley ; and I have
two enthusiastic letters lyrical in their thanks for the
gift of William Canton's Child's Book of Saints and
W.V. Her Book. It is these quieter, more intimate
books that he has loved best.

Short Stories. These Torn Letters contain many
passages of the best prose that he ever wrote. But the
period of their composition saw a swift succession of
prose and verse, often of the highest merit. No poet
has ever experienced a greater Maytide, following on
the first flush of spring-blossoms. To many, this is
his greatest period, and CkitrS, its lyrical culmination,
his greatest book. Chitra cannot hold this pride of place
against the far stronger and deeper Balaka of later
days. But the other opinion has justification, when we
remember the time's astounding record of achievement,

■ Quoted by Ajit Chakrabarti, with his usual gift of
appositeness.

24 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

in short story, in drama, in essay and miscellaneous
journalism, and in lyric. The short stories began in 1891,
with the publication of The Baby's Return (englished
as My Lord the Baby, a title smacking too much of
journalese for such a simple, touching story). His
short stories continued to appear monthly for several
years. They have had boundless popularity, and
boundless influence on other writers. The opinion is
often pronounced that they are better than his poems,
an opinion which deserves mention as bearing witness
to their popularity and merit.

The First Group of Great Dramas. His earlier
(and greater) dramas, the non-symbolical, belong to this
period. Lyric, he tells us, he wrote in spring and
summer and the rains, drama in winter. Truly the
Gods filled the horn of his strength to overflowing,
when he could so confidently allocate separate seasons
to the service of different Muses 1 To this rule of work,
however, there was an exception, Chitrangada, a drama
which was written during the songtide, and is itself an
epitome of all the songs he ever sang, a glorious thing
throbbing with lyrical power and beauty. This is
englished as Chitra, and the reader can see how masterly
it is, in whole and detail. It is one of the summits of
his work, unsurpassed, and unsurpassable in its kind.
Immediately before Chitrangada, he had written King
and Queen, already mentioned, and Sacrifice. If
Chitrangada, on purely artistic grounds, must rank
above these, as I think it must, it is only because in it
he had no double purpose to serve, but simply followed
Beauty. 1 Not that the play is without its symbolism —

1 Cf. Keats's famous letter to Shelley (August, 1820): 'I
received a copy of the Cenci, as from yourself, from Hunt.
There is only one part of it I am judge of — the poetry and dramatic
effect, which by many spirits nowadays is considered the Mammon.
A modern work, it is said, must have a purpose, which may be
the God. An artist must serve Mammon; he must have " self-
concentration " — selfishness, perhaps. You, I am sure, will forgive
me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnani-
mity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject
with ore.'

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 25

for it is the shrine of the loftiest and noblest meaning —
but the poet for once was so captured by the loveliness
of his own imagination that he wrote a play which is
sufficient in itself, apart from any purpose maintained
by it. The play met with its measure of rejection, as
was fitting; was scorned and abused as 'sensual,' the
sort of work that might be expected from the author of
the sonnets of Sharps and Flats. But never was
Wisdom more completely justified of one of her
children. The play's form is superb, his splendid
farewell to blank verse. From now on, he used prose
or rhymed couplet for drama, finding (to use his own
words) blank verse ' not graceful enough.'

If Chitrangada is the lovelier poem, Sacrifice is the
greater drama, indeed the greatest in Bengali literature.
It is amazing that work so excellent and varied in kind
should have come together. The Sadhana period
produced a fourth drama, Malini, as wistful and
beautiful as King and Queen and Sacrifice. All these
dramas are vehicles of thought rather than expressions
of action ; and they show the poet's mind .powerfully
working on the subject of such things in popular
Hinduism as its bloody ritual of sacrifice. The dramas
show also how the poet was emancipating himself from
the tangles of the solely artistic aim and life. He is a
strayed Hercules trapped, as he slept, in the woodnymphs'
flowery meshes, and he breaks free in showers of
scattered radiance. Chitrangada shows the failure of
mere physical beauty, compared with the strength that
is equal to life's tasks and needs — shows its failure even
as beauty, on the plane of final artistic values. King
and Queen, as I have already said, shows how selfish
love can lead only to sorrow and ruin. Sacrifice shows
how greatly we slander Eternal Truth, when

' The wrong that pains our souls below
We dare to throne above.' 1

Malini, that wistful and beautiful play, teaches that love
and not orthodoxy worships God, and it burns like a

1 Whittier, The Eternal Goodness.

26 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

slow, deep fire against bigotry. In all these plays, it
is the woman who brings truth near ; and often, the
woman who is a mere child. It will be remembered
that in the earlier Nature s Revenge it was by the path
of love for a simple little girl that the Sanyasi, a
Bengali Paracelsus, was brought home. ' The shep-
herd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
found him a native of the rocks.' 1 But Rabindranath's
shepherds (who are mostly kings and priests) when
they become acquainted with Love find him an inhabitant
of their own homes, unrecognised and overlooked long.

The Curse at Farewell, dramatic in form, is a one-
act phantasy. It might have been made tragic, deep,
or sublime, but is none of these things. It is simply
charming. After all, a poet is entitled to rest his mind
sometimes, and merely amuse himself. And this poet's
genius had been flowering and fruiting with the most
unresting fecundity. The Curse at Farewell is the first
appearance of a characteristic and delightful class of
poems, dramatic snapshots, interviews and dialogues, —
the poet's Gods and Goddesses, as they might be called,
his counterpart of Browning's Me?i and Women.

Emergence of the Jibandebata Doctrine. After
Manasi, the next lyrical volume was Sonar Tari, The Boat
of Gold. This important and difficult book exposed him
to a new charge, that of mysticism, which he has found
harder to throw off than that other, of sensuousness. In
this book, the prevailing theme is the immanence of the
Universal in the common and particular. The poems
are haunted by sense of the transitoriness of life. But
the chief mark of Sonar Tari is the emergence in it of
what was to be the characteristic idea of the phase of
work through which Rabindranath was now to pass, — the
jibandebata doctrine. Jibandebata means ' Life-God.'
The jibandebata idea was a phase only, disappearing be-
cause through it he went on to his mystical apprehen-
sion of his Creator and Friend, God. But, while it last-
ed, it was important ; and without some knowledge of

1 Dr. Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield.

EARLY LIFE; FIRST LITERARY PERIOD 27

the doctrine many of the poems of this period must
seen the vaguest gibberish. It is partly because such
poems have been translated and printed in the West,
without a word of explanation of any kind, that so
widespread a belief has sprung up that Rabindranath is
a weaver of beautiful but meaningless words and
images. The fact of the doctrine's clear emergence at
this time may be mentioned here, while consideration
of the doctrine is postponed. 1

Chitra — Beauty — is the crown of this first half of the
poet's career. This is a volume of lyrics, to be care-
fully distinguished from the drama englished as Chitra,
already considered under its Bengali name of Chitran-
gada. Chitra is flawed by his usual inequality, and by
the verbal repetitions which are sown so thickly
through his earlier works, a jungle which a whole
lifetime of poetic effort has only gradually thinned, and
has never utterly cut away But the book merits its
simple, inclusive title. In no other book has he attain-
ed to more single-minded adoration and celebration of
Beauty. Half-a-dozen of the poems are of the most
exquisite loveliness — the poem which he has englished,
with even exceptional inadequacy, as The Gardener, The
Farewell to Heaven, Evening, A Night of Full Moon,
Moonlight. 2 The greatest poem of all, Urbasi, is
perhaps the greatest lyric in all Bengali literature, and
probably the most unalloyed and perfect worship of
Beauty which the world's literature contains.

Chitra finished this first lap of his race. In its most
consummate moments, he said all that he could say, out
of this first period of aesthetic development. Never
again was he to be sheer poet. From now on there is ' a
human trouble in the hills,' 3 and all perception of beauty
comes stained with reflection, often melancholy reflec-
tion. Increasingly there is an intellectual admixture,
often where he should be most imaginative ; and there
is sometimes a very prosy admixture, hands catching at

1 See pp. 74 seq.

* Translated in my Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

8 T. E. Brown, Epistola adDakyns.

28 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

wings that would soar. Greater poetry comes, in the
best moments of Kshanika and especially in page after
page of Balaka. But nothing lovelier, nothing more en-
tirely poetical, than Urbasi and The Farewell to Heaven.
Close of Early Literary Period, 1895. In 1895,
Sadhana ceased to be issued. The same year saw most
of the poems of Chaitali, the placid and beautiful sunset
of this period of work. Chaitali is the late rice gathered
in the month of Chaitra. The book of this name
shows the poet gathering up the 'fragments that
remain, that nothing be lost.' He is gleaning in fields
which have given magnificent harvest. There is an
autumnal atmosphere over the book. It is one of the
most prophetic things that have ever come out of the
human spirit. It looks back, in a mood of tranquil
reminiscence, knowing the day's work well done ;
and forward, with serene anticipation. It is written
almost entirely in ' Rabindranath's sonnet,' that flow-
ing, peaceful form of seven rhymed couplets. Its
poems are a succession of pictures. ' The light that
never was on sea or land,' the utter peace and tolera-
tion of the poet's mood, is over everything, trans-
figuring the commonest sights, a girl with a buffalo, a
baby and a kid, a prostitute, the ferry plying between
villages, folk going forth to their labour at dawn,
making them all sub specie aeternitatis. It is good that
this ' season of calm weather ' was given to him, for
there were stormy years awaiting him. Some tattered
rag of storm-cloud from the storms he has known
already occasionally drifts on even these quiet skies,
as in the ferocious ' sonnets ' in which he castigates his
own countrymen who wear European dress. ' Mother,
you have fifty million sons who are Bengalis, but you
have not made them men.' Yet even this anger is
for new reasons. He rages less now because of the
wrongs that are indigenous, the cruelties committed by
Hindu society ; and more for wrongs that are imported,
for imitation of the West. He is entering on his
' patriotic ' period. The first collected edition of his
poetry appeared in 1896.

II

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY

Period of Transition and Uncertainty (1896-
1900) . So Sltdhana ceased in 1895 ; and Chaitali appear-
ed shortly after its death. These events heralded a very
great break in the poet's career, which divides it almost
as sheerly into two as Milton's time as Latin Secretary
broke up his. The difference is twofold.

Politics. First, as already indicated, the stream of
his activity became muddy with politics. This was not
unnatural, for politics were increasingly occupying the
Bengali mind, till they became the obsession that they
are today. What is strange is not that Rabindranath
should have been drawn into the popular movement,
but that he should have kept aloof from it so long ; and,
further, that, even when in it, and exceedingly promi-
nent in it, he should have remained so lonely and
independent a figure. To understand this, we have to
remember, first, how detached his life had been, how
austerely aristocratic his family traditions, mixing only
with the best and most eclectic in Indian thought and
life ; and, secondly, with what a sense of the Real he
was gifted. His attitude has always puzzled both his
countrymen and the Government. Just as once an
incredibly silly official proscribed as ' seditious ' Dharma-
Prachar, that throbbing protest against his own country-
men's bigotry and cowardice, and generous recognition
of the courage and selflessness of foreigners whom he
considered mistaken, so Bengalis, especially the ' patrio-
tic ' party, have complained that he criticises even
when taking their side. One of the silliest of the
many silly catchwords that are today devastating Indian

30 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

thought is the one that ' solidarity is essential ' and that
it is treason to criticise what your own party thinks.
Criticism must wait, like a thousand other good things,
till Swaraj is obtained. You must postpone a visit to
the doctor, no matter how ill you are, till you have a
brand-new coat to go in. Rabindranath has never
accepted this, or any other catchword. Nevertheless,
I am bound to say that I think his real sense suffered a
temporary eclipse, during the decade after Chaitali, and
that it has had phases of obscurity from time to time
ever since.

Change in Religious Attitude. The second new
element now entering his work is religious. Hitherto, he
had been an artist for Art's sake. His religion had been
a sense of oneness with the Universe, such a religion as
is common with literary men, the religion we find in
Richard Jefferies's Story of My Heart. In a letter, he
expressly said that he understood no dogma save the joy
and love which are in the Universe. Incidentally, it may
be remarked that this is almost the most tremendous
dogma possible. Believing this, convinced of this, a
man might well rest happy. But Rabindranath did not
rest happy. There was too much of the puritan in his
blood. In his household was the austere presence of
his father, was the tradition of Rammohan Ray's courage
and stern battle with ignorance and evil. Ajitkumar
Chakrabarti's comments 1 on the change which came to
him are interesting. He suggests that the exhaustion
which follows on creative activity shows that Art can
never take the place of spiritual life. So (he says)
Rabindranath passed away from his early mood and
effort, because Art did not satisfy him. This is true
enough ; and to this day the poet's life shows this
conflict, this restlessness. The aesthete is in his
blood, and he can never repress his delight in form.
But the preacher is there, too. Ajit Babu adds another
reason 1 for the writer of Urbasi and the short stories
becoming the author of Gitdnjali and of the many prose

1 Rabindranath, pp. 55 seq.

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 31

pamphlets and lectures with which he has enlightened
those of his countrymen and of the West who felt inclin-
ed to listen. This is, that the narrowness of his field
of work was brought home to him. There was a very
petty side to the zemindari work at Shileida. The
ra.ya.ts were picturesque and patient enough, and had
merits which won the poet's abiding respect and love in
a measure which he never gave to his own class. But
they also cadged considerably, and probably had some of
the obstinacy, as well as the charming stupidity, of
the buffaloes which they tended so ably. And the
zemindari work meant" 1 listening to interminable and
foolish stories, meant gathering and remitting rents,
meant trying to get crass conservatism to adopt better
methods of farming. Perhaps all first-class work has
had a background of drudgery, and neither in his
character nor in the quality of his artistic achievement
has the poet lost by his Shileida years. 1 But it is not
strange that he should have wanted a wider field of
effort.

Bengali Life Very Narrow. In his country, at
best, all effort is pitifully restricted. A nation without
a living tradition of history, in subjection for nearly
a millennium, and before that with warring and petty
kings — a nation tied hand and foot by restrictions which
the needs of the new time imperiously demand should
be broken — in such a nation how can a poet become
great or -universal ? It is great part of the reason for
Rabindranath having achieved this impossibility,
having become both great and universal, that he re-
cognised, as no other did, the sheer necessity of his
people finding a larger life, a 'broader, freer universe of
discourse. After Sadhana, it is his incessant effort to
find this life for them, to break fetters and shatter
narrowness. Even before this, the short stories were,
many of them, tracts for the times, embodying truth
sometimes obvious and poignant, but sometimes truth

1 Drudgery is far too strong a term, of course, for his Shileida
work.

32 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

which his own generation missed, though a later
cannot miss it, for

' Wise poets, that wrapt Truth In tales,
Knew her themselves through all their veils. '»

And what he knew, and hid in three measures of
allegory or incident, others will know hereafter. Fur-
ther, Sadhana itself, in its immense scope of interest,
had represented a very definite attempt to enlarge his
country's range. While others were talking, he had
been trying to build. He now came out into public life
more and more. His attitude towards conferences and
congresses had been one of contempt. They were
mendicant institutions, begging and petitioning. Worst
of all, they were imitative, copying the West instead
of taking native models. Nevertheless, though he
despised congresses and places where men talk, he
rapidly made his way to the front as an extraordinarily
effective speaker. He lectured and wrote very busily,
especially on political and educational matters. At his
best he can hold an audience as very few men alive.
One long piece, The River, almost exhausts the poetical
activity of the two years following the finish of Sadhana.
But he delivered a course of lectures on literature, in
connection with the newly-formed National Council,
lectures republished as Sahitya.

Rabindranath's Mind Turns Back to the PastI
Characteristically, it was through his imagination that
he made his approach to politics. His disillusionment
with the present turned his mind to the past. He
turned to its heroic stories, to its noble ideals of service
and meditation. If he idealised it, that was a natural
mistake and one which everyone was making. The
stories to which he turned were not Bengali ones, but
chiefly Sikh and Mahratta. Rabindranath has been a
pioneer in every way, the first among his countrymen
in so many fields of ^thought, that in considering his
achievement the most watchful sobriety and critical

* Thomas Carew, Ingrateful Beauty Threatened, He writes
' her veils.'

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 33

detachment have to be maintained, lest admiration and
amazement lead to over-praise. Sometimes one feels
that there never was such a man, for vitality and range.
Between 1897 and 1900 he published four important
books of verse, Kalpana, Katka, Kahini, Kshanika.
This is the time of the ' Five K's ': for there was a fifth,
Kanika (1899), 'Chips from a Poet's Workshop.'
Kshanika is the lightest of all his books in tone. As
Ajit Babu observes, everything 1 is tossed on waves of
gaiety. It is a most important book. In it, for the first
time, he raids the colloquial language seriously. He
adopted the hasanta, or power of sharply truncating a
word by dropping a last syllable which was a vowel one
only, — a, shocking innovation, and one which cut the
pandits to the heart. Those excellent men have always
interested Rabindranath. They make very frequent
appearances in his work ; and, as when Matthew Arnold
introduces bishops, 2 one is always delightedly certain
that they are going to make fools of themselves. I
have letters from him imploring me to grant him one
favour, that I will not read his verse with any pandit.
His Bengali Gitanjali I once showed to my old head
pandit at the high school, a man of great Sanskrit learn-
ing. He ramped about the school like a leopard with an
arrow in his side. The Bengali was so shockingly bad !
He was seventy-five years of age, but his voice was
tremulous not with age but with anger. The second
pandit, a much younger man, said that the poems ' bhala
lage na' ('do not taste well'), and he too complained
of the exceeding badness of the diction. My masters
were unanimous in the same charge. The headmaster,
a sensible man, has frequently assured me that there
can be no comparison between Michael Dutt and
Rabindranath. The elder poet, he says, is immeasurably
the greater, especially in point of style, his style being
faultless and superb. Waiting once on a railway station, I
began showing the Gitanjali, side by side with the Eng-

1 Not quite everything. The later pieces are wistful.
' See Mr. Birrell's Matthew Arnold (Obiter Dicta).

3

34 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

lish translation, to some students. Immediately, a crowd
gathered, intensely curious, and read poem after poem.
There was one mind among them ; the thoughts were
high, certainly, but the diction was mean and bad.
And Gitanjali represents a late stage in the war
between Rabindranath and the pandits. That war
became acute with the publication of Kshanika. The
pandits raised a howl of sorrow. They are howling
still. Kshanika definitely represents the turning-point
in his tide of popularity. One is puzzled what to say
about such an essay as Mr. Yeats's famous introduc-
tion to the English Gitanjali. That introduction is
most eloquent and movingly written. But a vein of
misconception runs through it, from time to time
outcropping to the surface in definite misstatements.
Mr. Yeats's name carries so much authority that the
wrong perspective of his essay has done as much as
anything, even Mr. Rhys's book, 1 towards the mis-
understanding of Rabindranath in the West. Mr. Yeats
had no suspicion of the sharp division of opinion as to
Rabindranath, and of the intense dislike with which
his name is regarded by many of his countrymen. He
writes, ' If the civilisation of Bengal remains unbroken, if
that common mind which — as one divines — runs through
all, is not, as with us, broken into a dozen minds that
know nothing of each other. . .' But this unbroken
unity of Eastern minds is become an imaginary thing.
In so far as it is not imaginary, it is artificial and
superficial, the result of society's pressure upon the
individual. If an agreement so produced existed in
England or Ireland, Mr. Yeats would not think it
praiseworthy. Praiseworthy or not, it does not exist.
As to Rabindranath, 'my Indians,' as Mr. Yeats
confidingly calls them, the handful of Bengalis domiciled
in London, pardonably forgot that they represented
only a section of opinion in much that they said. From
their statements Mr. Yeats built up the conception of a
rejoicing Bengal acclaiming its universal voice. The

1 Rabindranath Tagore (Macmillans).

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 35

conception is a majestic one, and it has gone abroad and
won such acceptance that it seems hardly worth while
trying to show its falsity. Yet false it is. No man
ever had such enthusiastic disciples and friends as
Rabindranath, but no man has ploughed his way
through such a cloud of detraction. From the publica-
tion of Kshanika, the enthusiasm and the detraction
have both been intensified. That book was a watershed,
sending men's opinion definitely streaming to the side
of freedom and progress or the side of tradition and
stagnation. The title means ' What is Momentary,' and
it expresses its modesty of scope and purpose. In
these poems, he beguiled his heart-ache and misgiving,
masking his mourning with laughter. Ajit Babu speaks
of a spirit of ' mockery of his own pain, ' and complains
that it is hard to tell when he is serious. The poet's
graver compatriots were deeply offended. He had danced
his reputation away. But Hippocleides didn't care. He
had learned to trust his jibandebata, knowing well by now
that he was never less in danger of mistakes than when
he trusted his instincts. He was looking far ahead, to a
time when neither pandits nor popular patriotic dramat-
ists would matter. He never went back, either in
style or manner, despite his critics. No man can jest in
Sanskrit. But the use of hashanta gave the voice and
the rhythm something to break against. ' Obstructed
by the pebbles of hasJianta, the tune ripples.' 1 This is
his style today. As to the charge that he was not in
earnest, that charge was made by the same men who
had found ChitrHngada obscene. If he played for a
space, between the two great activities, that of his
earlier worship of Beauty and the one, about to begin,
of worship of God, it is not because his mind was
shallow. His irony rarely sleeps ; and it was the
element of sanity here, even when he glorified Ancient
India most extravagantly. He had done with his old
life, and was depressed with the knowledge that there
were no more Urbasis and Chitrangadas for him. But

1 Rabindranath, p. 69 (Ajitkumar Chakrabarti).

36 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

he laughed at his loss. He was disheartened by
Modern India, its noise and brag, and so he wandered
in distant times and regions of his land, playing in a
beautiful country of his imagination. His title asserted
that he was entirely satisfied with the passing and
momentary —

' The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly— and lo ! the Bird is on the wing.'

But the underlying spirit denied this assertion. Like
Matthew Arnold, whom he resembles in so many things,
in his constant irony, in his love of moonlight and of
river-scenes, in his desire to save religion by making
it rational, in his elegiac and reflective strain, most of
all in his deep earnestness beneath playfulness and in
the puritan who comes hand-in-hand with the poet, he is
not least but most passionate when he pretends to
abandon a struggle that is too much for him :

' Let the long contention cease !
Geese are swans, and swans are geese ! n

or closes an ironically polite exposition of sheer folly
with a hurjed permission to continue to keep to it :

' " That, or nothing, I believe ! "
" For God's sake, believe it then." '*

It should be added that Kshanika contains village-
pictures of great beauty. Many of its later pieces,
especially, are of quiet grace, dealing with his beloved
rains and rivers.

Flow of Verse Again (1897-1900). He had now,
after temporary hesitation, launched his boat again on
a full stream of poesy. Everything followed in
natural evolution. KalpanS. — Imagination — expressed
in visions of the past of India his sense of loss and his
sorrow, in this transition time, before he realised that he
had found a main current again. There is the same
brooding dreaminess and grief as in Mr. Yeats's mourn-
ing for Deirdre dead and Maeve vanished for evermore.
Many of the poems say farewell to his former self.

1 Matthew Arnold, The Last Word and Pis- Alter.

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 37

Never was any poet such an unconscionable time in
saying farewell. Kalpana is full of farewelling, of
ululation and the waving of hands. In The Season's
End, a very noble poem, he says goodbye both to the
tired year and to his own old poetry. The Bengali
year usually closes in a brief spell of stormy weather,
the period when most of the festivals are held in
honour of Rudra, the terrible God. Rabindranath did
not forget this. He was now more than ever, if that
be possible, drawn to the rains, and to storms. Was
increasingly pulled forward, also, to a stronger and
more terrible life. Baisakh 1 uses the sombre imagery
of the funeral fires and the burning-ground. So far, as
Ajit Babu points out, his patriotism had not taken a
much more definite form than a general desire that his
countrymen should walk in worthy ways. This mingled
with a general sadness at parting from his own secluded
life. Kalpana is one of his more important books,
and of great poetical merit. Katha — Stories — and
Kahini — Tales — are a series of simple narrative poems,
mostly of the times of the Buddha and of the Sikh and
Mahratta patriotic effort, two periods of self-sacrifice
and royal renunciation. The ballad-form used in
Katha is new in Bengali literature. Kanika means the
chips or sawdust of a carpenter's shop. The book
consists of epigrams, many of them translated in his
Stray Birds. These are of all sorts, some trivial or
commonplace, some profound or lovely

Between 1898 and 1904, he wrote a series of
dramatic dialogues, romantic in treatment and very
powerful ; Sati, Narak Bas — A Sojourn in Hell, —
Gandhari ' s Prayer, Kama and Kunti.

Period of Great Political and Public Activ-
ity ; Educational Effort ; Religious Mysticism
(1901-1907) . An important year is 1901. It saw the
revival of Bangadarshan — The Bengal Review — a
monthly, of which he became editor. It launched him
on his great period as a novelist. It was the year of the

1 The first Bengali month, mid-April to mid-May.

ERRATUM
P. 37. Delete ' and Kahini— -Tales.

38 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

foundation of his now world-famous Asram — Retreat —
near Bolpur. Two miles out of Bolpur, many years
before, the Maharshi had been attracted to a small group
of trees on an uplifted, bare plain. Here he came to
meditate, and round this nucleus he and his son since
have planted noble groves. Rabindranath's^waw has
become famous for its school. But the poet thought
of more than a school when he founded it. The problem
which had so long vexed him was with him as urgently
as ever, that of his country's condition. His country
seemed to him so broken and scattered, that the first
need was to give it some centre where it might concen-
trate. This idea is with him today, though now it
takes a wider scope, and he would found a World-
University at Santiniketan, the ' Home of Peace ' at
Bolpur. The old ideals of Ancient India, with its
schools of forest-meditation, were strongly with him,
and he was dreaming of renunciation. He wanted to
work for the world, yet to be withdrawn from the
world. His mind has been a plain of constant conflict,
as I have said already.

' Ah, two desires toss about
The poet's feverish blood.
One drives him to the world without,
And one to solitude.' 1

But he began, with a school. Disillusioned as to
what he might hope to do with his own generation,
he thought of the children. India, and Bengal in
particular, was afflicted with the worst system of educa-
tion the British Empire knows, 2 and Rabindranath, who
had escaped its talons, was its sworn foe. He wished
to cut out Calcutta University altogether, and to try to
found a school in harmony with national tradition, and
close to Nature, where the mind might be free to
expand into love of Beauty and of God. A noble con-
ception and experiment, of which more in place.

1 Matthew Arnold, Stanzas in Memory of the Author of
' Obermann.'

* Many Indian Universities are at present trying to remedy
things, and the future is much more hopeful.

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 39

Finds Himself as Novelist. In this period,
between 1901 and 1907, he became a serious novelist.
He wrote Gsra, the greatest novel in Bengali, a long
story with the fulness of detail of the Russian novel.
It is a study of the imaginative mind working apart
from close touch with fact. He shows the new thought
working in Indian society, and shows society at war
with itself. Gora is the child of English parents, lost
in the Sepoy Mutiny, and brought up as a Bengali. He
hates Englishmen, until his supposed mother tells him
that he is English. The book is a Bengali fCim. In
1902 he had his saddest year. It began with foreboding
on his part that it was to mean separation from
his wife. When she fell ill, he knew it was the end.
Her death left him particularly desolate, with anxieties
crowding in upon his life. He cut himself off from the
world, and went to Almora, in the Himalayas. His
youngest son was a baby, and one of his daughters was
dying of consumption. As Ajit Babu puts it, he was both
father and mother to them, in his lonely retreat among
the pines. Many of the ballads in Katha were com-
posed for his boy. He wrote Smaran 1 — Remembrance —
a series of poems commemorating his wife, poems of
extreme pathos and beauty. In 1903 appeared Mohit
Babu's edition of his poetry, in which poems of different
periods were grouped according to theme or character.
Another novel, The Wreck, followed, in which he shows
how Hindu family relationships are based not on human
feelings but on conventional respect and worship. In
1904, he issued a collection of his patriotic poems (in
Mohit Babu's Edition), entitled Swadesh Sankalpa —
'which may be englished as Resolution and Independence.
This volume proved very popular. Then, in 1905,
came Khea-x-Crossing — a volume of lyrics. About this
time his youngest son died.

The Partition and Public Excitement. In
1905 came events which for the time being put every-
thing else in the shade for Bengali opinion. It was the

* See the middle poems of Fruit-Gathering.

40 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

time of the Partition, and Bengal went mad,
Rabindranath flung himself into the battle. In all India
there was no voice more powerful than his, no pen
more effective. This was the time* of his mightiest
prose, whose periods march and burn. There is not
much political writing in English which can match his
best pages of this time.

An example of his passionate eloquence may be
taken from his Speech at the Bijaya-milan — the Festival
of Meeting Together in Victory — the great family festival
which marks the fourth day of the Durga Puja, the
national holiday of Bengal. ' In the mercy of God today
we understand afresh what the Meeting Together in
Victory means — understand, after so many years in
which we have not made worthy preparation for it.
Today we understand that the Meeting Together which
will give us blessing, will give us victory, will give us
fearlessness, this great Meeting Together is not one in
our courtyards but a Meeting Together, in our land. In
this Meeting Together there is not sweetness alone,
there is the heat of blazing flame! It is not satisfaction
alone, it gives strength !' He goes on, ' It must be borne
in mind today that the nationality of our land which
has risen before our vision does not depend on any
favour or disfavour of a king. Whether a law be
passed or not passed, whether the people of England
listen to our piteous cries or do not listen, our country
is our country eternally, the land of our fathers and of
our sons and descendants, the giver of life to us, the
giver of strength, the giver of good.' Thus, the Spirit
of Freedom uses different voices in different lands,
but the one message. Rabindranath wrote songs which
fanned the student-world aflame. He was the pioneer
in many movements. As in Shileida days he had tried
to introduce better farming and co-operative societies
in the villages on the Padma, so now he went round
establishing national schools, forming village committees
and patriotic associations. Yet all the while an inward
change was working. Khea, as its title indicates, sym-
bolised a passing from one bank of the stream of activity

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 41

to another. It is his farewell, as many of its poems tell,
to work, to the life of public endeavour. Ajit Babu
notes as characteristic of Rabindranath, from first to
last, that he should become absorbed in effort, then
should turn from that particular phase for ever. Re-
peatedly, he says, he has become entangled in bonds and
then has burst them. ' No sooner has the full tune
sounded on his lyre than the strings have snapped, and
he has become anxious to sound new tunes on new
strings.' 1 Contact with the world of politics gradually
dispelled the golden mists of his vision of Bengal
struggling to become free. The movement showed itself
as stained with sordid selfishness, and as a riot of noisy
brag and passion. More than all, the poet was longing
for completer life. It has been his never-pausing
endeavour to taste life to the full, of which endeavour
his verse is a faithful mirror. But from varied experi-
ence he has striven to co-ordinate a whole behind it,
seeking, as the Indian mind must, to find the One in the
Many. This blare and bluster and intolerance was not
Life, any more than the Neo-Hindu puerilities had been.

' His life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound, —
But for peace his soul was yearning. — "

He changed suddenly. In one day, he resigned his
membership of all political committees and bodies, and
fled to Santiniketan. Here he gave himself up to
educational work, to meditation, to poetry. Great was
the clamour of abuse which followed him. It was
assumed that he had given one more proof of the
instability of the poetic temperament, that he had
turned from the conflict to crown his head with roses
of poesy and idlesse. But his retirement remained
unbroken for several years.

Period of Retirement, of Educational Activ-
ity, and Religious Meditation and Poetry (1907-
12). He was now a marked man in official circles.
Though he was not on the list of political suspects, his

1 Rabindranath, p. 96. * Matthew Arnold, Requiescat.

42 RABINDRANATH TAQORE

/ Sai

movements were watched, and a spy was placed in his
school, an honorary worker. Rabindranath discovered
the latter move, and gave the gentleman permission to
resign.

One might have supposed that his withdrawal to
Santiniketan was the result of a natural desire for
rest, after the stupendous and unremitting expenditure
of nervous power. This was not so. Half-a-dozen years
of amazing effort followed. In 1908, a collected edition
of his prose was begun. He wrote a series of sym-
bolical dramas. In 1908 came Autumn- Festival, in 1910
Raja. (The King of the Dark Chamber), in 1912 The
Post-Office. This was the time when his religious poetry
was written. Naibedya had come out in 1901, born out
of due time. Now came, in 1909, Gitwnjali, and seventeen
small prose volumes of religious addresses entitled
Santiniketan (1909-16). These addresses were deliver-
ed in his school. They are full of subtle thought and
perfect expression.

In 1910, he showed signs of restlessness with so
long seclusion from the world. He returned to it with
suddenness equal to that with which he had quitted it.
He came to Calcutta, and threw himself into the work
of reorganizing the Adi 1 Brahmo Samaj, his father's
society. He convened a meeting of the three sects into
which the Brahmo Samaj. had split, and a new society
was started. He enlisted notable helpers, among them
Pandit Sibanath Sastri, Binayendranath Sen, and
Ajitkumar Chakrabarti. He brought Kshitishmohan
Sen down from Santiniketan, and made him a regular
acharjya* of the Adi Samaj. Even before this, he had
made Krishnakumar Mitra occupy the Adi Brahmo
Samaj bedi. 3 The principal cause of the original schism,
nearly fifty years before, had been Keshabchandra
Sen's demand that the bedi should be open to all castes.
Now, after so long a period, non-Brahmans again
preached from the pulpit of the parent Samaj. But
the conservative element beat the poet. After some

1 Adi means primitive, original. ' Minister. * Platform.

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 43

months of intense propaganda, he threw up the useless
effort and went back to Santiniketan. 1

Period of World-Wide Fame and Growing
Unpopularity in Bengal. For more than a year, he
did not stir out of Bolpur. When he again emerged, it
was from more than Bolpur. It was from his reputation
in a province to world-wide fame. From time to time
strangers had found him out in his asram, thanks to a
reputation which could not be altogether confined by a
difficult vernacular. The poet made a third visit to
England. What ensued is known to the whole world.
He brought with him translations of his own later
verses, which moved Mr. Yeats in the way in which he
has told us, in memorable words. Other English poets
were equally enthusiastic. The India Society issued to
its members, in a delightful edition, the English Gitan-
jali, with Mr. Rothenstein's noble portrait. The same
society issued Chitra, a translation of Chitrangada.
Messrs. Macmillans took over the issue of his books, and
a splendid success followed. Not since Fitzgerald's Omar
Khayyam won its vogue has any Eastern poetry had such
acceptance. His fame spread over America and Europe.
The poet's character endured some of the severest tests
that had come his way. Homage and praise were
showered on him. The same enthusiasm followed him
on his return to India. ' It was roses, roses, all the way,
Withmy r tie mixed in my path like mad. ' His own country-
men awoke to his greatness. Even Calcutta University
became aware of him. A few years previously, when
some one had wittily suggested that a suitable way of
honouring him was to have him appointed as one of the
examiners in Bengali for the Calcutta Matriculation,
vernacular papers had protested, on the straightforward
ground that he wrote bad Bengali. It had become
a not uncommon practice in examinations for passages
to be set from his works, with the injunction, ' Rewrite
in chaste Bengali.' Sir Asutosh Mukherji, the all-
powerful Vice-Chancellor of the University, told me

1 For these details, I am indebted to Mr. Prasanta Mahalanobis.

44 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

that when he proposed, less than half-a-dozen years
before the Nobel Prize award, that Rabindranath be
made a Doctor of Literature, the Senate objected,
for ' he was not a Bengali scholar.' However, in 1913,
Rabindranath was crowned before the whole world with
the Nobel Prize for Literature. Calcutta University
sublimely followed, with a Doctorate, which the poet
demurely accepted. Recollection of this last and
most unexpected honour has cheered him in many
dark moments. A knighthood came in 1914. But
this rush of success embarrassed as much as it cheered.
I was his guest when the wire came announcing
the Nobel award, and I can testify that its first effect
was depression. ' I shall never have any peace again,'
was his cry. It was a night of wild excitement without,
the Santiniketan boys parading the grounds singing, the
masters as excited as they. But within, the poet was
troubled with misgiving for the future. We talked of
other things, then wandered into the moonlight. Next
morning, no trace was visible of his fears, but .they
remained, and were swiftly realised. Requests poured
in for introductions to books, all sorts of books.
Speaking from impression only, I should say that the
poet refused none of these. This was the first mistake,
one which soon made his introductions as well-known and
little-heeded as those of certain English men of letters.
Begging letters poured in, and requests for autographs.
Strangers hunted him. I remember once calling on him
in Calcutta just after visitors had represented themselves
as the Governor of an American State and his party.
Rabindranath had answered a number of remarkably
frank questions, when he discovered that he was being
' interviewed ' for a newspaper. Some of the letters he
received were unreasonable, some insulting. One lady
wrote that she understood that the English of Gitanjali
was by Mr. C. F. Andrews. Would Rabindranath kindly
send his own autograph, and give her Mr. Andrews's
address, that she might obtain his autograph also, and
thus have the signature of ' both authors ' in her copy of
GitanjaWi As he observed, ' On the title-page it says,

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 45

Translated by the Author. Isn't that good enough for
them ? '

His English. Since this last doubt is one which gives
him especial annoyance, I may as well say something about
his English here. About the time of the lady's tactful
request, a very highly-placed English official in India
had sneered in public at Gitanjali, expressing a wish to
know what Englishman had written it. Now this kind
of insult not only questions the poet's good faith, but it
shows the speaker incapable of judging English.
Examination of Rabindranath's English soon shows that
it is by no means perfect grammatically. It contains
sentences which no educated Englishman would have
written, sentences marked by little, subtle errors.
There are others who could bear testimony that his
English is absolutely his own, but I will speak out of
what I know, having seen some hundreds of his
translated poems before publication. He writes English
of extreme beauty and flexibility, but with mistakes
that can be brought under two or three heads. First,
he is not quite at home with the articles. Secondly, he
does not use prepositions as an Englishman would.
Thirdly, he sometimes has an unnecessary word where
clauses meet, which makes the rhythm sag, like cloth
with a stone in it. Add to this an occasional misuse of
idiom, as ' I took my shelter, ' where English says ' I
took shelter,' and you have the whole of his slips.
These things are but the tacks and nails of language.
The beauty and music are all his own. It is one of the
most surprising things in the world's literature that
such a mastery over an alien tongue ever came to any
man. Conrad conquered our language more completely;
but he began to attack it in his teens, whereas
Rabindranath was over fifty 'before I began my
courtship of your tongue.' 1

Universally Known and Misunderstood: His
Translations. He was now established as a poet
recognised universally. A cult of his work sprang up.

1 In a letter to me.

46 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

His lectures were eagerly heard, he made friendships
in England, the Continent was interested. To the Con-
tinent his work came necessarily at third-hand, translated
from the English translation. But this did not diminish
the keenness with which it was read, especially in
France, Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian coun-
tries. Perhaps his fame was greatest of all in America.
Yet his real reputation began to decline, almost as soon
as it reached its height. This is a cause of much
bitterness to his Indian friends, who assert that it is one
more proof that the materialistic West is not competent
to appreciate the spiritual depth and splendour of the
East. I venture to challenge this conclusion. Rabindra-
nath's loss of reputation to me is a distressing thing, yet
I think the poet himself and his publishers almost
entirely to blame. Very grave mistakes were made.
Gitanjali was a selling proposition, as it deserved to be.
So book after book was hurried out, almost fortuitously,
and flung at the public. After Gitanjali came The
Gardener, a selection from his earlier books. This
gave pleasure to many. But the word had gone
round that he was a 'mystic' Mysticism was the
current catchword in the circles that think they make
and understand literature, and the most unexpected
people were talking of it. 'We mystics,' said the
journalist and the popular novelist. I remember find-
ing the poet, just after the publication of The Gardener,
more vexed than pleased at an enthusiastic letter of
praise from a distinguished English lady writer. ' You
know, she insists on seeing mysticism in all I write.'
The Crescent Moon followed, and then the English
Sadhana. His fate was sealed. Let me recur to
Mr. Yeats's essay. His enthusiasm is so nobly
expressed that the reader rarely stops to examine
what is being said. Only once does he fall below
a level of lofty praise, and that is when he writes :
' These verses will not lie in little well-printed books
upon ladies' tables, who turn the pages with indolent
hands that they may sigh over a life without meaning,
which is yet all they can know of life.' One

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 47

wonders to find so hackneyed a smartness ; Bagehot
said much the same about Wordsworth, and the pro-
phecy is a stock one with reviewers. That is by the
way. What is relevant is, that this fate was exactly
the one which overcame the poet's work. Out in
India, the rumour reached us of mobs of ' worshipping
ladies,' which he had the modesty and sense to avoid.
But his work could not avoid them. Such a book as
The Crescent Moon exactly hit the taste of those who litter
drawing-room tables with ' pocket R.L.S.' anthologies,
and literary confectionery of all sorts, appropriately
' bound in yapp, ' side by side with the box of chocolates.
S&dhana made wild with joy the kindred type which
' simply adores whatever is so delightfully Eastern,
don't you know.' Both poet and publishers continued,
unwittingly, let us hope, to draw these adorers.
Several books by other writers, of remarkably thin
quality, appeared with forewords by him. A man gets
the discredit of what he praises, no less than of what he
writes. When his short stories appeared, the first
volume contained only seven first-class tales out of its
fourteen. Chitra slipped out, a slim volume hardly
noted. In the next few years, more lectures came, and
yet more, mostly delivered in America, some bearing
signs of haste and of more care for ornamental metaphor
and illustration than deep thought. The poet dug his
groove deep, and kept to it. In translating, he more
and more felt along one stratum only of his work, the
wistful-mystical one. His boldest, strongest poems he
avoided, or else watered down to prettiness. There
came never a word of explanation, and his readers had
not the intelligence to guess that he could not always
have been this man, that there must have been change,
probably had been progress, may have been retrogres-
sion. There came the mystical dramas, dramas which
you were assured you could not understand unless you
were very deep. By this time, most of his best readers
had turned sorrowful and disappointed away, convinced
that he was a bird with one note, and that that note
had already been heard once in its fulness and would

48 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

only be heard in repetition and weakening hencefor-
ward. Punch found him very easy to parody. The
reaction came. Mr. J. C. Squire 1 wrote of ' fastidi-
ous people ' coming to ' the hasty conclusion that
the Indian writer's reputation is founded on nothing
more than a mystical bag of tricks and what has
been described as a blue beard.' It is unfortunate
that Mr. Squire should have selected for special
opprobrium the touching poem which Rabindranath
wrote for his dying child at Almora. But there is
certainly nothing in the English translation to have told
him what he was doing, and the passage, as it came to
him, justified his assault. Rabindranath' s work had
gone abroad without a word of biographical explanation,
without a note on jibandebata or on mythological or
historical allusions. The reader was left to get what
he could, and, if he said ' Oh, I can't make head or tail
of this, I suppose it must be nonsense or else mysticism
too deep for me,' who could blame him? 'The only
slightly moist bones of the translations,' said Mr.
Squire, ' reveal a gentle and sensitive spirit, but very
little more.' Had the poet from the first issued, in
full translation, with the necessary minimum of
explanation, a selection in chronological order from all
his work, the verdict would have been very different.
Or, after Gitanjali's first success, if he had given the
West Chitrangada, one strong volume of short stories,
then the volume containing the dramas Sanyasi,
Sacrifice, King and Queen, and Malini, he could have
waited, secure of the most careful and respectful
attention for whatever he published. And he could
have left prefacing other folk's rubbish alone, though this
meant sacrificing his boundless good-nature on the altar
of the true Muses. It should be added that his false
fame in the West seemed to have infected him also, and
made him tend to be like what he was believed to be.
He took to inserting in his English ' translations ' pretty-
pretty nonsense that was not in the originals at all.

1 In a newspaper review of Mr. Rhys's book.

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 49

And his titles, in the Bengali so splendid always, were
sugared. The fine and descriptive Kanika appeared
in English as Stray Birds. So that the lover of
Rabindranath who knows the original text regards the
translations as something to be read for their pensive
charm as poems by a different writer and with no
connection with him who wrote Balaka. From this
condemnation, which must seem sweeping, I except
Gitanjali. This in English is, to all purposes, a new
work. It is a haunted book, haunted by Rabindranath' s
brooding personality. He kept those first translations by
him and pondered over them so long that much of himself
passed into them, as into no subsequent translations. I
would except also, to some extent, Fruit-Gathering and
Stray Birds. I am very conscious of the many passages
of subtle thought and beautiful phrasing, which occur in
every one of his English books. But it is undeniable that
a maddening monotony of tone and diction and a same-
ness of imagery placed him far lower than his true rank
as poet. As regards translation, his treatment of his
Western public has sometimes amounted to an insult to
their intelligence. He has carefully selected such
simple, sweet things as he appears to think they can
appreciate. Perhaps not one of the greater poems that
he has translated is not badly truncated. Lest I seem
to have spoken unjustly, I set side by side not a great
poem but a very true and beautiful one and his English
' translation.' Its title is Happiness.

' To-day is free from clouds ; the happy skies
Laugh like a friend ; on breast and face and eyes
A gracious breeze blows soft, as if there fell
On these our bodies the invisible
Skirts of the sleeping Heavenly Bride j 1 my boat,
On the calm Padma's peaceful breast afloat,
Sways in the liquid plash ; in distance gleam
Half-sunken sands, like creatures of the stream
Sprawling at bask ; high, crumbled bluffs ; and trees

1 The Ten Directions— i.e. the eight points of the compass,
with the zenith and nadir— are represented in Hindu mythology
as ten deities and their consorts. Here they are all visualised as
one unseen, sleeping Sky-Beauty.

4

50 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Dark with deep shade, and hidden cottages.

A narrow, winding path its streak has worn

From some far hamlet through the fields of corn,

And dips to the water like a tongue athirst.

The village women, to the throat immersed,

Shrill gossip hold, their garments drifted round ;

Their high, sweet laughter makes one rippling sound

(Reaching my ears) with the light waves that run ;

With bent head and with back stooped to the sun,

Sits an old fisher, weaving, while his boy

Round the moored boat splashes in naked joy,

Shouting and leaping, laughing in delight ;

The buffets of his loving hands that smite

And cuff her, as his playful anger breaks,

The Padma with a mother's patience takes.

Before my boat both banks are plain in view :

A spreading crystal clearness tinged with blue ;

On stream and land and groves, flooded with blaze

Of noon, a streak of varied colour plays ;

In the hot breeze comes scent of mango-flowers

Or tired call of birds amid the bowers

O' the shore.

Today in peaceful current flows
The river of my life ; my mind now knows
Happiness as a very simple thing,
As simple as the opened buds of Spring,
Or as the laughter of an infant's face, —
Widespread and generous, filling every place.
Its eager lips their kiss of nectar thrust
Into each face, with childhood's silent trust,
Each day, each night I Its strains like music rise
From the World-Harp, flooding the tranquil skies.
Ah, in what rhythmic pattern shall I weave
That music ? How, that others may receive ?
And in what laughing language make it bloom,
And cause it what fair shape and face assume,
A gift for those most dear ? With what love make
It spread through life ? This easy joy how take,
How bring into the homes of men with ease
A boon so soft, so gracious ? If we seize
With eager zeal, it breaks within our hands !
We see it run ! We chase through distant lands,
But nevermore have word of it.

Today
Out of full soul with steadfast gaze each way
I look and look with charmed, delighted eyes,
Reflecting, as I watch the firm, blue, skies
And peaceful, placid stream unquivering,
Happiness is a very simple thing I

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 51

I have rendered success impossible by tying my
words in chains of rhyme, which necessitate an occa-,
sional (very slight) diffuseness which is not in the
poet's finished picture. But the poet himself used
prose, in which he has often shown us that almost per-
fect success is attainable — certainly in such prose as his
best. However, let us see what he has thought fit to
give to his poor pensioners of the West. It is number
51, in Lover's Gift :

' The early autumn day is cloudless. The river is full to
the brim, washing the naked roots of the tottering tree by
the ford. The long narrow path, like the thirsty tongue of
the village, dips down into the stream.

' My heart is full, as I look around me and see the silent
sky and the flowing water, and feel that happiness is spread
abroad, as simply as a smile on a child's face.'

That is all. But it is too much. The picture might
have had value of its own — there are elements of
value in it, niggardly precis though it is — had he taken
any trouble to polish it. As it is, it is a handful of
careless words thrown at a public that he seems to
have come to despise. He has kept tbe perfect simile
of the path like a thirsty tongue dipping down to the
stream ; but has ruined it by that touch of cleverness,
a red dab of paint from rhetoric's brush, a dab which
did not disfigure the original, which makes the path the
thirsty tongue of the village. This conceit is good in
itself, but had no business to intrude here, where
nothing else has any suspicion of cleverness. Then
' the naked roots of the tottering tree ' is a ' gag.' I
suppose he thought the roots would look picturesque to
his simple Western readers ; so he brought them out of
the ' bag of tricks ' that goes with his ' blue beard. '
And, of course, he had to add a ford. All Western
readers expect a ford to go with a river, even if the
river is the mighty Ganges herself, about to unite
in divine marriage with the Son of Brahma and
branch into a thousand waterways, the least of their
children a greater than Thames.

Growing Unpopularity in India ; Mental
Strain ; Fourth Foreign Tour. Returning from

52 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

England, he ran the gauntlet of homage, and fled to Santini-
ketan, as I have said. Here the honours already mentioned
fell to him. Andothersalso. Amobof five hundred, Euro-
peans and Indians, in a special train, descended on him.
He received them in a way which set every bar-library in
Bengal buzzing angrily for weeks. I remember asking
him a few days later what he had done to make them so
vexed. He flushed with memory of the annoyance, and
then laughed. ' I told them I did not want this sort of
thing. Some of you are my friends, and I value your
kindness. But others of you are my enemies, you have
always opposed whatever I stood for, and I can't accept
your homage.' The hero- worshippers returned, and
envy of his success and anger at his refusal to let it be
exploited for purposes of empty national brag added a
new venom to the detraction which worked more busily
than ever. But the poet gained a measure of peace.
He wrote the wonderful Balaka, — A Flight of Wild
Cranes^ — greatest of all his books (written 1914). The
vigour and freedom of these lyrics is amazing. The
old man — for he insisted on regarding himself as an old
man, though only fifty-three — brandished a fiercer torch
than ever before the pandits, the owls and obscurantists
and sticklers for old bad ways. Those gentry had
had their beards too painfully singed to care to meet
him openly, but they grumbled and worked secretly.
He found himself, while his fame was world-wide, less
and less of a popular poet in Bengal. The English
Gitanjali ran into several editions before the Bengali
emerged from its first. In this present year of grace
(1921) I doubt if his royalties from all his Bengali
books, fiction and patriotic prose as well as verse,
amount to three hundred rupees a month. I know a
Bengali novelist whose royalties last year were nineteen
thousand rupees. But the poet had great consolations.
Every mind that could think was with him, and, though
his following might be small and growing smaller, they

1 For translations of many Batiks, poems see Fruit-Gather-
ing, especially its last pieces.

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 53

were the very brain and soul of his land, f He worked '
on at his school. ' Its days of poverty were over, and
never again would he have to sell his own library to
find funds for it. ^ He was an honoured guest at Govern-
ment House whenever he cared to go there, which was
as little as he could without being downright rude. In
the beginning of 1916, he published Phalguni—The
Cycle of Spring. I was one of the audience at the
unforgettable first night when it was staged at the
Jorasanko house by the Santiniketan boys, and the
scenery and the small boys' appearance — as Spirits
of the South Wind, and the Bamboo, and other
distinguished personages — and their singing were too
ravishing for words. It was a complete musical and
scenic success. The songs have lived. Greatest of all
was the poet's acting as Bawl, the Blind Bard. J3ut the
drama was not a literary success, and its reception by
the critics preyed on the poet's mind. He was over-
burdened in many ways. He had been passing through
one of his greatest periods of song-production, when
there were times when the house was never silent
from his humming, and he had written his fine novel,
The Home and the World. About the same time, he
made one of his most unfortunate excursions into
politics, in connection with the assault of certain
Presidency College students on Mr. Oaten. The poet
came down heavily and excitedly on the wrong side of
the fence, writing passionately and unfairly in both
English and Bengali. In any case, the whole affair
was so trumpery that his commonsense in normal
conditions would have kept him from getting mixed up
in it. The strain upon him mentally and emotionally,
from all these causes, brought him near breaking-point.
There was estrangement between him and friends,
there were misunderstandings, there was illness and
practical breakdown. In the summer, he went to
Japan. On the voyage, he translated his Kanika
as Stray Birds. In Japan, he lectured on Nation-
alism. From Japan, he went to the United States,
where he lectured on the same subject and on Per-

54 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

sonality. His tour was a stupendous success, but
proved more than he wanted or could bear. He
abandoned it, and returned to India, This was in 1917.
Heavy sorrow came. His daughter died, in 1918, after
long illness. Those who saw him going through the
protracted anticipation will never forget his patience
and courage. His brainstorm had passed, but his mind
was still distressed. The European War was an agony
to him, and he wrote incessantly about it. It dazed
and bewildered him. He never did anything like justice
to the nobler side of the tragedy. To him, it was
nothing but a volcano shattering itself with fearful con-
vulsions, the robber-civilisation of Europe flaming to
well-deserved ruin. There is hardly a word in all his
fiery denunciation that suggests that he knew that
countless men as gentle and peace-loving as any. Indian
who ever lived had ' set their faces steadfastly to go up
to Jerusalem,' knowing well that nothing but death
awaited them, death when life was most holy and sweet.
These men went not to kill but to be killed, and the
world is immeasurably poorer today not only by these
who died but by many of those who survived.
Humanity in her throes did not receive from a great
poet the help she had a right to expect. In this matter,
at any rate, ' we shall march prospering, not through his
presence.' His dislike of England and things Western
seemed intensified ; yet he could not praise everything
he found in his own people, and his real sense revived,
bringing increased unpopularity on his head^ He
made an elaborate attempt to spread knowledge among
his people by University Extension lectures and a
Bengali Home University Library} But he soon
abandoned his schemes. In 1918, he issued Palataka,
— The Runaway — his last collection of verse. It showed
no falling off. The same period saw the creation of
many of his best songs.

1 The proposed editors were Jadunath Sarkar (History and
Politics) , Pramathanath Chaudhuri (European Literature), Ram-
endrasundar Tribedi and Prasanta Mahalanobis (Science^ ; with
the poet as general editor.

LATER LIFE : MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 55

The Punjab Troubles. In 1919 came the Amritsar
tragedy, and the Punjab disorders and repres-
sion. Tagore became the national voice, once again
finding a theme worthy of his greatness. No man
in all India spoke with anything approaching his
loftiness of protest. His burning indignation reached
classic utterance, in his letter to Lord Chelmsford,
renouncing his knighthood, the letter of a very great
and representative man to an unfortunate man who had
been confronted with a situation too much for his
powers. ' The accounts of insults and sufferings,
undergone by our brothers in the Punjab, have trickled
through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of
India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in
the hearts of our people has been ignored by our
rulers — possibly congratulating themselves for im-
parting what they imagine a salutary lesson.

'The time has come when badges of honour make
our shame glaring in their incongruous context of
humiliation, and I, for my part, wish to stand shorn of
all special distinction by the side of those of my
countrymen who, for their so-called insignificance, are
liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings.'

His renunciation of his knighthood was declined, but
he insisted on it, and has ceased to use the title. 1 With,
its disappearance, his friends felt a relief that a false
situation was ended. Knighthoods are not for poets.

Fifth Foreign Tour. He continued to speak on
the Punjab happenings, while refusing to countenance
any measures of reprisal, such as a boycott or the non-
co-operation movement which soon sprang into being.
He was dreaming of making the Santiniketan a kind
of World University, a place where all lands might
meet and exchange their best. So much scheming, and
so much public work, drained him. I remember asking
him in April, 1920, if he had ever known a period
of deadness in poetry. He answered, ' I am passing
through it now.' In that year, he went to England,

1 No one now uses It, except his publishers.

56 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

where he met with disappointment, finding people less
interested in his message. As this has been resented
by many of his disciples, I think it only fair that we
should remember several things. First of all, values
have changed immensely in England. If Shakespere
and Aeschylus and Kalidasa were all to come together to
this post- War England, they would hardly be feted as
in the old days when men had forgotten how stern life
could be. Despite the apparent selfishness and frivolity
of life, under the surface there is more hard thinking
than ever before ; and there is, with many of the best
men and women, a renunciation like that which so many
of their noblest made when the call came to the trenches,
a renunciation of Beauty, that those who come after
may have Life, with Art and all good things added.
Secondly, the poet's reputation has fallen into the hands,
generally speaking, of those whom a wise man avoids, the
lovers of whatever is dim and dreamy and only vaguely
intelligible. Hence, a distinguished English man of
letters spoke for many beside himself, when he wrote
to me, ' Rabindranath is at Oxford, but I did not go
to hear him. His poetical fame has suffered a slump.'
Probably fifty years will hardly undo the harm his
absurdly inadequate presentation of his genius to the
West has done. After a brief stay in England, he
visited France, and then America, in 1921 going to
Denmark and Sweden and Germany. In all these
places, he found friends, and made the impression
which his noble personality and appearance never fail
to make. At Copenhagen, there was a torchlight
procession of students ; in France and Berlin crowded
lecture-rooms. He received the greatest possible
homage. The Continent previously had never taken
him up as enthusiastically as England did at first and
therefore had not passed through the phase of dis-
appointment. Even now, strict revision and a presenta-
tion of his work de novo, eschewing the old jumbling up
of work of all periods (but of one sort only) in the same
volume, might prevent this phase ever coming at all,
But this is too much to hope.

LATER LIFE: MANY-SIDED ACTIVITY 57

New Experiments in Form. On the eve of this
last visit to the West, he published in the Sabuj-patra —
T/ie Green Leaf 1 — and other periodicals a series of
remarkable experiments in a new form, which may be
called either vers-libre or prose poetry. These pieces
are at once prose as intricate and beautiful as he has
ever written, and poetry that ranks with his best.

He has returned with his mind eager as ever for new
effort, and to fresh activity. All his periods of active
participation in public life have been followed by
creative periods. He is now sixty years of age, and
his experience is Dryden's at ten years older. Thoughts
come so fast upon him that his only doubt is whether
to run them into verse or ' the other harmony of prose.'
Both mediums are at his choice and absolute command >
and he has become almost as great a master of English
prose as of Bengali, so that his craft can sail on many
seas at will.

1 This had become so much his new organ of expression that
Ajlt Babu suggested the name ' Sabuj-Patra Period ' for this
latest phase of his work (now, latest phase but one). Patra, like
the English leaf, means either leaf of a tree or leaf of a book.

PART II— WORK

Ill

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST

A Universal Poet. An English poet is reported
to have said, in the first days of Rabindranath's vogue,
under the spell of Gitanjali and the wonder of its
perfection of beauty, ' He is a great poet, greater than
any of us.' Very few English writers would believe
this today. Nevertheless, he is a much greater writer
than English critical opinion imagines. The first
question is, how did Rabindranath, born in the Ganges
valley, a Bengali, become the universal poet that he is ?
For universal he is, if only as a poet who has exquisitely
phrased moods of misgiving and wistful trust that have
been inarticulate but felt by men and women of many
races. Even though his expression of these has frayed
with much repetition, the achievement of Gitanjali
remains, and the world will not be so ungrateful as to
forget it. Believing, as I do, that this is not his
greatest title to remembrance, I yet take my stand on
it, as something admitted. The rest must be proved,
or, at least, indicated.

Variety of His Work. Even the brief sketch just
finished must have shown that there is an astonishing
variety in his work. Drama of every kind, and in
every medium, — tragic, symbolical, comic, farcical ; in
blank verse, rhymed couplet, prose, and prose and lyric
mingling, — novels, short stories, poetry reflective, relig-
ious, elegiac, purely lyric, — not even Victor Hugo had a
wider range of form and mood. I leave out of account
his countless essays and lectures, sermons, criticisms,
writings on politics and education, even on economics
and psychology. Yet he was born a Bengali. The

62 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

measure of his loneliness and greatness begins to
appear, when we remember that even to-day, after
forty years of his influence, there is no other remotely
like him. This epoch has been Rabindranath's as
emphatically as that of Dante was his, and far more
decidedly than Shakspere's was his. He has had no
Ben Jonson.

Bengali Opinion Provincial. Babu Ajitkumar
Chakrabarti, who often took a very objective view of his
country and time, notes how strange it is that he should
have become so varied and various, or that he should
have cared for life in its fulness and variety at all. He
mournfully reflects upon the extreme narrowness of
Bengali life, and on the ignorance of Bengalis. This
is partly due to the pressure of caste, and to the strict
purdah which secludes half the race and shuts their
eyes. But it is inherent in wider and deeper circum-
stances. The race has no great traditions, 1 and when it
would talk of history must adopt those of other Indian
races. Timidity has tightened bonds which events first
fastened, and has further circumscribed a sphere of work
already very narrow and petty. They do not go down
to the sea in ships, neither do they cross to other lands
as soldiers. Their trade is in the hands of foreigners,
of Englishmen, Scots, Parsis, Marwaris, Afghans,
Armenians. Thought, as well as opportunity, is
narrowed. It either becomes provincial, Ajit Babu
observes, or else runs to ridiculous excess. On the least
excuse it shouts, ' Great is Diana of the Bengalis ! '
and brags that it leads the world, because it has
produced a Tagore or a Jagadishchandra Bose. 2
Bengali thought is so provincial that any Englishman
who praises Tagore is at once called his ' disciple,'
since the popular opinion cannot understand that a man
may admire intensely and yet keep independence and
critical detachment. The Nobel award was commonly
understood to mean that the world's opinion had sent

1 It is discovering them now.

2 Bengali Basu. Bose, like Tagore, Banerji, Chatterji,
Mukherji, is an anglicised form.

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 63

him to the head of the class, with the corollary that his
race also now 'led all the rest.' Or, if Bengali opinion
escapes provincialism, it falls into the slough of
uncritical acceptance of everything alien. Bengal's
greatest need, intellectually, is that its people should
follow the example of their poet, one of the most
independent and fearless spirits alive and yet one who
has unhesitatingly taken whatever he found good, from
whatever source. The mass of his countrymen, as Ajit
says, have never begun to realise how enormous their
loss is, from these circumscribed, narrow experiences
and lives of theirs. In a hundred passages, Rabindra-
nath chafes against these bonds.

Rabindranath, as we have seen, was brought up
in the one family where this disability was at its
minimum. The mind is greater than its fetters, and
here was pulsing, eager life. Hence, as the boy grew
up, and came against restrictions on every hand, in the
wider world outside his wonderful family, his early
freedom ' lusted ' against these restrictions, as St.
Paul tells us the Spirit lusts against the flesh. Bonds
and limits made his eagerness for the universal more
clamant. There was much eagerness abroad among
his people, eagerness which led to mistakes and
consequent reaction into conservatism. Finding these
other tides, the .tide of his spirit flowed with them, and
more strongly than they. As increasing power came
to him, he battled for freedom the more fiercely. ' In
his poetry of every period,' says Ajit Babu, 'is a
restless crying for adventure into the world.' This
crying reached its most passionate as he passed into the
thirties. Before that, the pageant of life had sufficed,
the pride of the eyes had been enough. His aloof
manner of living had fostered his critical rather than
his sympathetic side. His fastidious perception of
values had made him blaze up in passionate revolt
against many things in his land. Manasi, as I have
indicated, marks the fieriest moments of this revolt.
There is the bitter, mocking poem which purports to
be a dialogue between a Bengali husband and the little

64 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

girl whom he has just married. There is The
Impossible Hope, in which the chatter, chatter, chatter
of the men around him seems to have driven him
almost crazy. O that I were a desert Bedouin, he
cries, instead of one of these meek Bengalis I To live
in the vast spaces, to skim the sands on my horse, to
wield a spear, to risk my life, to commune with sun and
Stars and infinity ! To have some claim to call myself
a man ! Then in other pieces he pours scorn upon the
card-playing parties who talk glibly of a life which is
for men and not for cattle, who read about Cromwell
and with a yawn of admiration turn to games and
supper. Anger could hardly be more savage still, yet it
is, in Preaching of Religion. A gang of young ' Aryan '
bloods hear a Salvationist missionary call ' Victory to
Jesus!' Banding together, as many as possible, they
fan their valiant souls aflame. They must save the
credit of their ' Aryan ' land and name, and wonderful
' Aryan ' religion. When they see that the missionary
is dressed in the garb of one of their own ascetics and
wears no shoes, they can hardly credit the evidence of
their eyes. A sahib so meek and defenceless I They
make quite sure that he will not attempt to defend
himself, and then rush on him all together, and knock
him down and beat his head with sticks till the blood
runs. The missionary is a figure of heroic pathos and
dignity throughout. Suddenly the band imagine they
see the police coming. They flee in cowardly terror,
but revive in the calm of their homes, where they
boast of their great triumph for ' Aryanism ' and beat
their wives for not having refreshment ready for such
warrior-husbands . *

The Conflict in His Experience. This conflict
of experience, between the wide, full life close to him 2
and the narrow, mean world of his race and time, had
its constant effect upon his work. That resolved itself,
in one aspect of it, into a lifelong attempt to escape

1 This sequel is omitted from the present text of Manasi,

2 In his home.

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 65

from the narrower world, an attempt which took double
shape. Sometimes it drove him in upon himself. At
other times, it drove him far out of self, into the
universal life and the worship of Beauty. First among
his countrymen, he lived, in the fullest sense, shrinking
from nothing that was life, fearing nothing that was
strange or alien. Yet he came home to his own soul,
and to God within his soul. That narrow vexing middle
world, between himself and the infinite world, he
transcended entirely. Or, if he came into it, it was
in pursuit of his unresting endeavour to save it from
itself, and to make it noble and beautiful. Hence the
fulness and variety which mark his poetic effort. His
followers claim that he has not only saved his own
soul, but also his comrades' homeward way. He is a
pioneer in this, in his constant resolve to taste life to
the full.

A Pioneer in Poetry, in Form and Manner. It
must never be forgotten that he had to make roads, for *
there really were none save byways. All discipline
had to come from within, and a poet's nature is not one
that easily submits to any yoke, though it be a self-
inflicted one. He found his own path, with none to
guide him. His poetry, first to last, has been sincere,
as the work of true poets is. Here he has always been
true to his innermost self, moments of freak and
writing for writing's sake apart, and therefore his work
abounds in contradictions. A large book has been
written, The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. 1
But he has never had any philosophy, a fact which he
acknowledges most rejoicingly. He has had principles
and convictions, felt to the roots of his being, but no
mosaic of closely-tesselated dogma. He has been poet,
not philosopher, and as poet has made a highway
through a swamp. He had to find out how far the old •-
Sanskrit poetry was a satisfactory model today,
and how far Western models might be followed or

1 By Profesor Radhakrishnan (Macmillans). 'Till I saw
that title, ' said an old and distinguished friend of the poet, ' I
did not know he had a philosophy.'

5

66 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

naturalised, and had to find new metres. Also, all
through his career he has never paused in his effort to
enlarge his range. Something of this has been
indicated in the biographical sketch, but it calls for
closer consideration now.

Influences : Vaisnava Lyrists ; Kalidasa.

«^First, the question of sources and inspiration arises. It
is only in their formative period that great poets have
masters. Therefore, though Rabindranath has never
ceased to learn, and is as great a thief as any in all litera-
ture, it is in the pre-M&nasi period that we must look for

-'influsnces. First, of course, are the Bengali Vaisnava
lyrists. The poet's own authority compels this state-
ment, for did he not in the Bhanu Singh songs carefully
catch their very notes ? And he has never ceased to
praise them, has translated them, and always refers to
them as his masters. Be it so, then ; one must suppose
that they are. Yet I have always been rebellious
under the importance he ascribes to them, and I believe
he does them too much honour. I will say frankly
that I am sure they have not influenced him to anything
like the extent he has persuaded himself. He is grate--
ful to them because they put him in the way of finding

«4iis gift of pure song, and therefore he is more filial than
he need beV'mlstaking for parents those who are only
among his chief teachers. When at length I ventured,
foreigner as I am, to drag this conviction to light, I was
comforted to find that it was shared, ' numbering good
wits,' among them Prasanta Mahalanobis and also
Babu Ajitkumar Chakrabarti, judging by the little space
the latter gives to the Vaisnava singers and his stress
on other influences. Rabindranath's real master has

*-been Kalidasa. He never misses a chance of paying
Kalidasa homage, either by explicit panegyric or by the
subtler way of paraphrasing or quoting, as Shakspere
does Marlowe :

' Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might.
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ?"

1 As You Like It,

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 67

Frequently, when the strain is ostensibly a Vaisnava
one, and the theme is Krishna and Radha, the real mood
is not Vaisnava at all, but, as obviously as possible, is
Kalidasa's. The two poets, the greatest India has ever
produced, differ as strikingly as they resemble each
other. The one is the poet of mountains, rejoicing
in their strength and vastness. The other is the ,
poet of rivers and of quiet places. But the two between
them so completely represent Indian landscapes, that
any third poet hereafter must seek some other way to
fame. Both are passionate lovers of the rains, and
have given us picture after picture of them which is
perfect in faithfulness and charm. Both, again, love the
gentler beauties of Nature and character ; and both are
at home in symbolism and mingle with easy grace in
the affairs of Gods and Immortals.

Bengali Poetry; Shelley. A very important
strain in Rabindranath's work is the influence of folk-
tale and folk-poetry other than Vaisnava. This is
responsible for many charming moments, and also for
occasional moments of dulness, when it contributes to
that cult of the trivial which is the defect of his great
quality of interest in the smallest things. The great
epics, too, have given him thoughts and incidents that
have touched him to fine issues. He is, in spite of the
opinion of Calcutta University (on whom be peace !), a
very fine Bengali scholar, and there is very little in his
own literature which has any value of any sort which
has not been taken into his genius. But I think we
are justified in placing Western (which means, mainly, <
English) literature third among formative influences,
after Kalidasa and the Vaisnava lyrists. He was called,
while in his teens, the Bengali Shelley, and he has
translated Shelley, and has acknowledged him as an
influence. The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he says, 1
was like a transcript of his mind in his youth. ' I felt
as if I could have written it.' Shelley has been the
favourite English poet of many Indians, and they find

1 In conversation with Mr. Mahalanobis.

68 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

an affinity between his genius and that of their own
poets. I remember Loken Palit had a theory that
Shelley must have known Sanskrit, because he personi-
fied abstractions so in the manner of its poetry. He
used to quote, with great emphasis,

' Be my bride, and sit by me,
Shadow-vested Misery.'

Sanskrit or not, those two lines might occur anywhere
^va. Evening Songs. Shelley's mythopoea, his compound
adjectives, his personifications, his unhappiness, especi-
ally his vague, poetical unhappiness, — these things fill
Evening Songs. Both poets show a remarkable readi-
ness to make offers of marriage to any pleasing ghost
that comes their way. In Rabindranath, sometimes it
is Misery, sometimes it is Evening, sometimes it is his
own heart. Often, it is the Poem which he wishes to
woo to himself : ' As Day comes, very gently with
gentle smiles, and with vermilion on her forehead, to
die on the funeral pyre of her husband, in the burning
flames of the West ; as a dying gust rushes in from
sojourn in a strange land towards the forest of its own
country, its tired limbs refusing to move, and, as soon
as it reaches the grove, dies uttering its last words by
the side of its flower-bride ! Even so ! my Poem I My
Bride ! Come, with tenderness manifest in your sad face,
with tears flowing gently in your eyes ! '

It would be hard to find elsewhere such a similarity
between two poets of different tongues and civilisations,
as this passage shows between Rabindranath and
Shelley. The similarity was a natural one, and not due
to imitation of the latter by the former. But it is not
strange that at first the Indian should have adored the
Englishman. That phase went. ' I have long out-
grown that admiration,' he told me.

Other English Poets ; Keats and Browning.
He never walked the great highways of English litera-
ture very systematically. He wandered, often in pretty
out-of-the-way meadows. He translated ; but not from
Shakspere, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, or Browning.

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 69

Instead, he translated Christina Rossetti, Mrs. Brown-
ing, Hood, Ernest Myers, and (as already related)
Shelley ; and not these alone, but Philip Marston and
Augusta Webster. Among these names, the translated
and the untranslated poets, I venture to pick out four.
The delicacy and grace of Mrs. Browning and Christina
Rossetti attracted him. But real influence I ascribe
to Keats and Browning. From Keats's Odes he learnt, t-
if my guess is right, to build up magnificent stanza-
forms in his own tongue, by which he enriched it
immensely. His stanzas are very many, and carried
Bengali poetry far beyond the metres introduced by
Hemchandra Banerji. The following lines will give a
notion of the stanza in which Urbasi is written :

' Like some stemless flower, blooming in thyself,

When didst thou blossom, Urbasi ?
That primal Spring, thou didst arise from the yeast of Ocean,
In thy right hand nectar, venom in thy left.
The swelling, mighty Sea, like a serpent tamed with spells,
Drooping his thousand, towering hoods,

Fell at thy feet !
White as the ^wwrfa'-blossom, a naked beauty, adored by the

King of Gods,

Thou Stainless One.'

The Ode on a Grecian Urn is a favourite poem with
him ; and there is evidence that he admired these
compact, masterly stanzas very early in his career, and
he has certainly made such stanzas at home in his own
tongue. But a stronger influence than Keats was
Browning. This influence came as he entered upon *-
maturity. It is very marked in the new psychological
interest of many poems in Manasi, it is present in that
first group of non-symbolical plays, it is present most
strongly and nobly of all in the short dramatic dialogues
of the later nineties, G&ndhari's Prayer, and Kama and
Kunti. In his novel, The Home and the World, he has
made a striking adaptation of the scheme of The Ring
and the Book, telling the one story through different
minds.

1 A jasmine.

70 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

But, in the case of a wide and- desultory reader like
Rabindranath, it is not possible to say where he found
the suggestion for this or that idea or phrase. It is
enough, that he has ' taken his own where he found it,'
and has laid under contribution German, and French,
and Russian literature, as well as Sanskrit and English.

Monotony of Style in Much of His Work. It
seems hard to maintain that he is a poet of wide range,
in face of so much superficial evidence to the contrary.
It must be admitted that he has written a great deal too
much, and that the chief stumblingblock in the way of
-''accepting him among great poets is the inequality of
his work, There are frequent outcroppings of stony
ground, as in a Bengal upcountry landscape. Also,
especially in his earlier books, there is a vast amount
of flowery undergrowth which needs a sickle or (better
still) a fire, to clear the loftier trees and show them in
their strength and nobleness. There is a recurrence of
a certain vocabulary, of flowers, south wind, spring,
autumn, tears, laughter, separation, tunes, bees, and
the rest, which sometimes is positively maddening.
This sort of thing is most apparent when he is least
inspired, but it is by no means absent from his best
work. 'In Rabindranath,' said a Bengali to me,
' flowers are always opening, and the south wind is
always blowing. ' Even in much of the noblest work of
his later years, his incorrigible playfulness, the way in
which, often when most serious, he will fondle and
toss with fancies, spoils some splendid things. In
his lectures and addresses, he can never resist
the temptation of a glittering simile. Often he dazzles
the beholder with beauty when he wishes most to
convince. When he should run a straight course, he
turns aside. Never was such an Atalanta. From all this
comes sometimes a sense of monotony, which hides from
the reader the richness and versatility of his work. This
is the great weakness of his earlier work, that which
finishes with Chaitali. One is often surprised, on ana-
lysis, to find how much of even his most exquisite work
is built upon themes well-worn with him. Never has he

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 71

expressed more perfectly his wistful sense of loss in the
visible world, than in that lovely finish of Urbasi :

' She will not return, she will not return ! That Moon of
Glory has set,
She has made her home on the Mount of Setting, has Urbasi !
Therefore today, on earth, with the joyous breath of Spring
Mingles the long-drawn sigh of some eternal separation !
On the night of full moon, when the world brims with

laughter,
Memory, from somewhere far away, pipes a flute that brings
unrest,
The tears gush out !
Yet in that weeping of the spirit Hope wakes and lives,
Ah, Unfettered One ! '

Moon, Spring; sigh, eternal, separation, night and full
moon, laughter, flute, unrest, tears, weeping, Hope, —
these are the old performers, none abse.nt. There is
many a passage in Rabindranath when you might call
the roll, and, if one of these were present, all the rest
would click their heels and answer. Here, in the
supreme inspiration of Urbasi, they are transfigured
into unsurpassable loveliness, which no criticism can
touch. Yet, as the flawless Idea which lives in God's
presence suffers loss with the judgment of us mortals
for the faulty embodiments of that perfection which we
see and have made, so even on the best of the poems
of his early period some shadow falls from memory of
the many passages which have their accidents without
their essential of inspiration.

Abundance of Natural Imagery. Yet this fault
really witnesses to a great strength, his wonderful
"abundance of imagery. In these early years, had he
carried a pruning-knife through orchards in blossom,
their beauty would have shown to greater advantage.
But the beauty is there, in wealth that makes the beholder
catch his breath. Most of all, wealth of natural illustra-
tion. Here we get very close to the heart of his genius,
and can confidently claim for him the title of great poet.
No poet that ever lived (I shall use this phrase again)
has had a more constant and intimate touch with natural •
beauty. He can use, at his best, the same images and

72 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

pictures, the, oldest ones in the world, a score of times
in as many lines, and each time with freshness and
charm. His wealth here is inexhaustible, and it is as
manifest in prose as in verse, and today, after his swift
advance in mastery of the tongue, is almost as manifest
in English as in Bengali. Let this be noted, then, for
it is part of the reason why he is not a small poet, and
in this book is not going to be admitted to be one. But
a much greater and stronger reason remains, in his
treatment of the spirit of natural beauty.

Variety and Freshness of Natural Imagery.
But first, before we pass to consideration of that, two
important points demand mention. There is the
variety, as well as the freshness and abundance of his
natural magic. My Bengali friend, who complained
of too much south wind and a glut of flowers, had
reason. Only too many suppose that Rabindranath is
a poet of softer beauty, evading the sterner. But this
was never the case, even in his early work ; at any rate,
was never the case after Eveni?ig Songs. In Manasi,
for example, is one of the grandest and most terrible
sea-storms in the world's literature — written, not by an
Englishman, but by a Bengali. I quote its opening
stanzas :

Sba-Wavbs

' Destruction swings and rocks on the lap of the shoreless sea,

In dreadful festival !
Clanging its hundred wings, the indomitable Wind

Rages and runs !
Sky and Sea revel in mighty union,

Veiling the world's eyelash in blackness !
The lightning starts and trembles, the waves foam in laughter, —

The sharp, white, dreadful mirth of brute Nature !
Eyeless, earless, homeless, loveless,

The drunken Forces of Evil
Have shattered all bonds and are rushing wildly to ruin !

Mingling all horizons, the darkened Sea

With tumult, with crying,
With anger, with terror, with heaving, with shouting and

With mad bellows, [laughter,

Swells and seethes and crumbles,

Struggling to find its own shores !

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 73

It is as if, the earth flung aside, BasukP is playing,
Spreading his thousand hoods, swingeing his tail !

As if the Night has melted and shakes the ten directions'
A moving mass ! [together,

It tears to tatters the net of its own sleep.

There is no tune, no rhythm ! It is the dance of brute Nature,

Meaningless, joyless !
Can it be that vast Death, taking to himself a thousand lives,

Is dancing there ?
Water, vapour, thunder, wind have found blind life,

Are exerting aimlessly the nerves of new being.
They know no direction, heed no stay or hindrance,

In terror of self they rush to their ruin !
See, in their midst are eight hundred men and women,

Clinging to each other,
Life clasping life ! They stare before them.'

The Poet of Bengali Seasons. His very many
descriptions of the Rains abound in imaginative touches ;
the lightning, like a fiery snake, biting the darkness
again and again, the clouds appearing on the aerial
stage like dancers, shaking their tambourines of thunder,
and disappearing. Many and many a page seems to be
soaked and sodden with his intense realism. What is
perhaps his finest story, Cloud and Sun, opens :

' It had rained all yesterday. Today, the rain had
ceased, and all morning straggling rays of sunlight and
dense masses of cloud drew their shadows, like the
strokes of a brush, over the autumn fields of ripening
paddy. The spreading green canvas wouldflush beneath
the streaks of sunlight, only to fade into dimness again ;
growing golden, it swiftly exchanged its brightness for
cool shadows and quiet colours. Cloud and sun, sole
actors in the sky's vast theatre, played their parts; and
their every movement found immediate response on
that lower stage, an endless flicker and alternation.'

That is a typical day of the Indian Rains. Such a
story as Living or Dead is not less wonderful, in the
way in which he can bring a sudden rain-drenched gust
sweeping across the pages. There is the wind which

1 The serpent who upholds the earth.

• The eight points of the compass, the zenith and the nadir.

74 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

blows out the candle, as Jogmiya and her husband are
arguing about their uncanny guest ; or the utter damp-
ness of that hut on the buming-ghai, where the watchers
by the body wait for their companion to bring the wood.
But he is not simply a poet of the Rains. He has a thou-
sand pictures, all distinct from each other, and all
perfect, of every Indian season. Autumn is a favourite
of his, as she deserves to be ; and he personifies her as
Lakshmi, the gracious goddess. Noon in the summer
heats is another favourite ; and he can make the page
quiver with its tense, blinding quietness. Spring, — and
he can make the page fragrant with bakul blossom and
musical with bees. Winter he does not care so much
about, but has depicted equally well when he chose.

The Jibandebata. Doctrine. Secondly, his Nature
poetry is closely connected with that characteristic phase,
the jibandebata doctrine. This doctrine, like most that
is most characteristic in Tagore, is a blend of several
threads. In it are Indian teaching as to reincarnations
and previous births ; the revelation of modern science
concerning the way in which the strands of all being
reach back to dim, hidden beginnings ; the findings of
psychology ; and, binding all and giving them in their
union a personal quality of his own, there is the poet's
own imagination and inspired guessing. Jibandebata
^means Lite-God. The jibandebata is the over soul who
binds in sequence the poet's successive incarnations and
phases of activity. He is not God ; on this, the poet
insists. Yet he is more than the poet himself ; or, at
any rate, more than any one embodiment. of the poet.
He is the daemon of Socrates ; is the Idea of Plato ; is
the Quaker's Inner Light, considered not as God but
simply as the revelation of God. The poet does not
sanction our saying that he is any one of these things,
yet it is certain that he is all of them. The doctrine
dawned on Rabindranath only gradually. Even in Even-
ing Songs, the poet is conscious of a voice sounding
in his heart which is not just his own voice, yet has
affinities with his own voice. In Morning Songs is one
poem, The Echo, which is startling, as what is almost a

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 75

jibandebata poem years before its time. 'Then in
Manasi the doctrine begins to take conscious shape, and
in Sonar Tari and Chitra it is the most characteristic
thing. It appears strikingly in the dedication-poem
of Chaitali. Then its sway is practically over, because
by its means the poet, when the next stormy and
uncertain years are finished, and he has leisure for
poetry again, has attained to a peace and knowledge of
God which make all else fall to one side.

In such a poem as Swinging? the poet is seeking
an understanding with this strange, beautiful, terrible
mistress of his life. That makes the poem intelligible,
when before it could hardly have been more than an
obscure love-poem set in an atmosphere of magnificent
storm. In other poems, the poet humbly asks the
jibandebata if he is pleased with him (Rabindranath)
and with the revelation of himself that has been made in
the poet's work. In yet other poems, he asks, terrified
or bewildered, whither the jibandebata is leading him.

It is easy to dismiss all this as poetic fancy, but I
can assure the reader that the poet means it seriously.
It led to misunderstanding. The poet claimed to an
interviewer that at his best he was inspired, for
a voice that was not simply his own weakness spoke
through him. This claim he would make for all
true poets, in so far as they are poets. What is
weak and poor in his work is his fault ; what
is good is the jibandebata 's doing. Dwijendralal
Ray 2 accused Rabindranath of setting up as an in-
spired prophet, the first step towards claiming the
honours of avatarhood. The poet replied. D. L. Ray
returned to the charge. Rabindranath remained silent.
But parties sprang up, those who held with him and
those who held with his antagonist. Many will think
with Ray. Yet surely the poet's intuition was not with-
out reason, when it guessed between this individual life
and the Infinite Life some medium which is the sum

1 Jhulan {Sonar Tart); see No. 82 in The Gardener.
8 The popular dramatist and song-writer,

76 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

and whole of whatever imperfect phases and expres-
sions the former may have known and be going to
know. Nor, even if this life be the first conscious one,
is it unreasonable to suppose that this dumb matter
which has been built up from the travail of so long a
process has some dim memory stirring of its pre-human
days. Thus, the poet often turns to the thought of
pre-existence and of recollection from such existence.
In some of the most imaginative passages he ever
wrote, he turns back in memory to the aeons when
the Earth was molten, or when she was a waste
of water, and he feels still the fiery breath of those
vapours and the mighty roll of that surge. 1 His mind
naturally followed with keenness all that science had to
teach of those great ages, and the discoveries of his
distinguished fellow-countryman, Sir Jagadishchandra
Bose, have had no more eager or understanding
student. The Earth has never known a son more filial,
or one who has knelt to her in more worshipping
wise ; and this is because he knows that he is breath of
her breath, bone of her bone, in soul and mind and
memory no less than in body.

Power of Identifying Himself with Nature.
From this comes his greatest and most individual gift.
No poet that ever lived has shown his power of identifi-
cation of himself with Nature, of sinking into her life.
T. E. Brown would have rejoiced to know his work.
What Marvell imagined — 2

' Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide '—

what Brown imagined — 3

' All that my life has in me wrought
Of complex essence shall be brought
And wedded to those primal forms
That have their scope in calms and storms ' —

he has realised in his best work with absolute com-
pleteness.

1 See poems in Sonar Tart and Chitra.

* The Garden, ' Epistola ad Dakyns.

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 77

Power of Merging His Figures with His Land-
scape. Again, no poet that ever lived has shown such
a power of merging not only himself but his human
figures with their landscape. Here he is absolutely
great, and absolutely original. Sometimes, the ming-
ling is a matter of subtle and exquisite perception of the
intimate inter-relation between mind and matter. ' But
black eyes need no translating ; the mind itself throws
a shadow upon them. In them thought opens or shuts,
shines forth or goes out in darkness, hangs steadfast
like the setting moon, or like the swift and restless
lightning, illumines all quarters of the sky.' 1 Some-
times, it attains to such a haunting picture as that of the
lonely, dumb girl at noon ; ' in the deep mid-noon,
when the boatmen and fisherfolk had gone to their
dinner, when the villagers slept, and birds were still,
when the ferryboats were idle, when the great busy
world paused in its toil, and became a lonely, awful
giant, then beneath the vast, impressive heavens there
were only dumb Nature and a dumb girl, sitting very
silent — one under the spreading sunlight, the other
where a small tree cast its shadow.' 1

These Gifts Shown in His Short Stories.
This rich, individual gift of his nowhere finds more
satisfying expression than in his short stories. Indeed,
Ajit Babu goes so far as to say that most of these are
' written to express single phases ' — or, ' moods ' — ' of
Nature.' This is saying too much. The stories,
the best of them, are excellent stories. But Ajit
Babu's remark does suggest the weakness of the few
failures among them, which is that the poet has
written as poet or philosopher, and not as story-teller.
These we can ignore, while noting the outstanding
qualities of the best stories, qualities which put him
among the world's greatest short story writers. First
among them is their range and variety. This writer
or that has surpassed Rabindranath in some quality or
other. But where are we to find a writer of stories so

1 Subha {Mashi and Other Stories) .

78 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

different and so good as Hungry Stones, Living or
Dead, Subha, Cloud and Sun, The Kingdom of Cards,
The Trust Property, The Riddle Solved, and The Elder
Sister ? Four of these eight are of the deepest tragedy,
a very unusual feature in an Indian writer ; two are of
tragedy of a less mixed and absolute kind, but suffi-
ciently poignant, with irony salting the bitterness and
with tender laughter softening the pathos ; one deals
with a realm of sheer phantasy, two are ghostly ;
several are masterly psychological studies. It is
strange that his stories have received so little fame in
the West ; they are the most under-rated of all his
work.

His Irony. Irony is almost the differentia of his
stories, being always present. By it the poet supplies
the place of comment and chorus to his own action. It
is present when Subha's parents sell her, or her dis-
appointed husband goes to get another wife ; and
present when Krishnagopal stands beneath the banian
making confession to his son ; it is the very woof of
The Skeleton ; it is terrible in that pregnant summary
of a whole history of stupid cruelty, at the finish of
Living or Dead, when Kadambini ' by dying made
proof that she had been alive.' It gives edge to
stories which were tracts for the times, exposing social
evils, with a relentlessness and imaginative force
which no pamphlet could attain.

Social Questions in His Stories. Noquestionhas
stirred him more deeply or constantly than the position
of women. His stories show an understanding of women,
as the work of exceedingly few men does. His youth
owed a very great deal to the friendly encouragement
and comradeship of his elder brother's wife, whose death
was a poignant grief to him ; and many of the letters and
poems of his Shileida days were addressed to his niece
Indira (Mrs. Pramathanath Chaudhuri). His fiercest
scorn has flashed out at Hindu society for its child-
marriage and cruel treatment of girls who are little
more than babies. I remember saying to him that
Hindus lost five years of childhood in their girls, just

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 79

when they were most delightful. He replied, ' I quite
agree with you, and it is the saddest thing in our lives. '
His sympathy and understanding have had then-
reward. Whatever mistakes his countrymen have
made, in following the vogue of this or that third-rate
writer, his most intellectual countrywomen have never
made any as to where these men stand in letters and
where Rabindranath stands. Judging by the many
charming and interesting . stories by Bengali ladies
which have come my way, in book and manuscript, his
is the one influence which puts all others into a very
cold and deep shade.

The Glamour of Some Stories. Of the poetical
beauty of the stories something has been said. I would
add to this their glamour. The authors of The Blessed
Damosel and of Christabel would have been glad of
the chance of reading Hungry Stones or The Lost
Jewels.

His Novels. His novels deserve more serious notice
than can be given here. Two of them are available in
English, and their qualities and shortcomings can be
appreciated. They will remain the classic pictures of
the Bengal of his time. Especially admirable is their
detachment, shown, for example, in the remorseless
exposure, in The Home and the World, of the meaner
side of that great anti-Partition movement in which he
took so prominent a share. Very few men could have
seen and criticised so clearly, and yet have remained
convinced partisans. His greatest novel of all, GsrH,
is the greatest novel in Bengali (which almost certainly
means in Indian) literature. Its fulness and closeness
of observation have been followed by the greatest of
Rabindranath 's successors, Saratchandra Chatterji, who
has expressed to me his intense admiration for Goya.
The qualities of the short stories can be found in
the novels, if not in the same concentration of beauty
yet on a wider field and in fuller study.

His Dramas. It will have been seen that Rabindra-
nath' s creative work cannot be divided up, but that
poems and fiction must be taken together. His

80 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

dramatic work similarly refuses to allow of any
clear-cut division into prose and poetry. Some of
it is witty prose dialogue, as is Baikuntha's Manu-
script; at the other extreme we have the sheer
loveliness of Chitrangada ; and between are dramas and
dramatic dialogues of every texture between prose and
poetry. His dramas may be classified in three main
groups. There are the Sadhana dramas, his best, the
best Indian dramas since Sanskrit days. Their beauty,
though subtle and variegated, is always clear, and the
symbolism does not fog the action. They are vehicles
of ideas, powerfully filled with conviction ; yet things
happen in them, and usually happen rightly and
naturally. Sacrifice, especially, has shown that it
possesses stage-qualities that can make it a success
today.

Dramatic Dialogues. The second group are the
brief dialogues of the late nineties. The way for these
was pointed by Chitrangada and The Curse at Farewell.
Gandhari's Prayer is statuesque ; Lakshmi s Testing is
gracious and mocking ; Kama and Kunti is as tense and
moving an interview as any literature possesses. The
first and last are classical in theme, and establish their
relationship with the great literature of Sanskrit by
moments as powerful as any of its own. In Gandhari s
Prayer, Durjyadhan, who has won by sharp practice and
sent his kinsmen into exile, faces his father and mother.
He is a Prussian, extolling strength and success.
Passion, as commonly in Rabindranath, enters with
the woman, with the mother, who pleads that her
husband renounce their son. He refuses, and the Queen
is left alone, to voice the wrongs of the uncounted ages.
Kama and Kunti shows us Kunti, the Pandava Queen,
trying to win Kama, the unacknowledged son of her
shame, from the Kaurava host. To-morrow he will die
in battle, as he knows well. But when his mother
refused to give him his birthright, years before, she set
an eternal gulf between the life that is his and the life
that should have been his. He remains with the host
of his adoption, who trust him. The piece is beyond

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 81

praise. Lakshrni s Testing gives us a generous queen,
a sharp, selfish maidservant, and Lakshrni herself.
The Goddess makes the grumbling maidservant a queen.
She behaves as might have been expected, and finally
spurns the Goddess herself, who comes disguised.
There is a quick reversal back to her real estate, as
Lakshrni reveals herself, and — Khiri the servant wakes
up from her dream, vowing to serve her generous
mistress better in future and without complaint for the
position which she now sees is the only one she is fit
for.

Symbolical Plays. The third group of plays em-
braces all his later ones. All, including even the playlets
which he has written for his Santiniketan boys,
sometimes very simply for the youngest boys of all, are
symbolical. I find them clouded, with too much ' sob-
stuff ' in them and often a tiresome insistence on the
tremendous significance of the trivial. The life has gone
from them, for the symbolism has been a vampire,
sucking the blood of action away. Yet all the plays
have qualities. Several have been acted with success
before select (if not selected) audiences in London and
Dublin. The Post-Office, especially, is a favourite with
all Tagorites (if one may coin a horrible word),
both in the West and in India. Phalguni — The Cycle of
Spring — is redeemed by its songs; The King of the
Dark Chamber by the majesty of the conception which
it presents. At least one, Autumn- Festival, is just
delightful, an open-air frolic. The English reader
should remember that it is translations which he is
reading.

His Dramatic Gift Never Carried to Fulfil-
ment. I feel that the poet has never realised his possi-
bilities as dramatist. He is a natural dramatist, when
symbolism does not strangle his powers. His earlier
dramas reached an achievement which he failed to carry
to fulfilment. If today he were to return to drama,
fighting against his incorrigible tendency to

■ See the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower, ' —

6

82 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

a tendency which can become a habit and, like all things
in excess, very wearing to others, he might lift himself
quite out of the rank of great dramatists — in which
Sacrifice and Malini and Kama and Kunti undoubtedly
placed him securely for all time — into the small class
of very great dramatists. The Tagorite will demur, that
the symbolism is essential, is veritable Tagore. He
need not vex himself. Though the poet should fight
his sternest against it, enough of symbolism would
inevitably enter, to give his work the right Tagore
note.

His Songs and Lyrics. His most characteristic and
popular work awaits a word. Everyone has heard how
«-his songs have passed into the daily life of Bengal.
Here, for once, Mr. Rhys and Mr. Yeats and the others
all touch fact. His songs are popular, with a popularity
often made boundless by the tunes to which he has set
them. 'There is no doubt,' as he said to me, ' that I
have conquered my countrymen by my songs. I have
heard even drivers of bullock-carts singing my latest
and most up-to-date songs.' His songs are some
fifteen hundred in number, and are of all periods. His
latest are better than his earlier, which is strange,
since the gift of song is a young poet's gift and leaves
most poets as age clogs the current of their blood. His
songs are of a grace and lightness that no translation
can convey. In them we have the one altogether
adequate portrayal of her manifold moods that Bengal
has produced.

' For every season he has dressings fit, —
Spring, autumn, winter, summer.'

If the reader can take his English books, and find the
half-dozen lyrics most perfect in grace and suggestion,
and then in imagination multiply that grace and sugges-
tion tenfold, he can guess what these songs are like.

Essentially a Lyrist ; Development of Lyrical

Form and Range. The basis of his work is essentially

"lyrical. Evening Songs showed, long ago, that a new

lyrist had arisen. Their characteristics have been

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 83

excellently given in Dr. Brajendranath Seal's famous
praise 1 — over-praise, as Dr. Seal would admit today,
but genuine discernment. Indulgence is due to the
enthusiasm of a man who recognises first a new star,
of a different kind, in brightness and magnitude, from
any already visible in the heavens. He speaks of
' aerial fascinations and somnolescences, dissolving
phantasms and sleepy enchantments, twilight memories
of days of fancy and fire, ghostly visitings of radiant
effulgences, or the lightning-flashes of a Maenad-like
inspiration,' which float under the grey skies of evening
and are ' transfixed and crystallised for us in many a
page of delicate, silver-lined analysis, of subtly-woven,
variegated imaginative synthesis.'

Rabindranath has used an immense number of stanza-
forms, and has experimented endlessly with metre, is
experimenting today. His greatest book, Balaka, over
thirty years later, shows the lyric freedom of Evening
Songs carried many degrees further, till the metres
stream over the page, hither and thither, in the swift-
est and most perfect obedience to the poet's dancing
mood. And the greatest thing of all is that this
freedom goes with the strongest thought that the
poet had ever shown. Balaka is a great book intel-
lectually, with a never-pausing flow and eddy of abstract
ideas. Its imaginative power surpasses that of any
earlier book, and moves to admiration continually. In
diction, the book completes the merry defiance of con-
vention which Kshanika had begun.

Religious Lyrics. The beauty of his religious
lyrics is adequately presented by the English Gitanjali,
in such perfect pieces as this : 2

' Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before
thee face to face ? With folded hands, O lord of all worlds,
shall I stand before thee face to face ?

Under the great sky in solitude and silence, with humble
heart shall I stand before thee face to face ?

In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and
with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before
thee face to face ?

1 New Essays in Criticism, p. 75. * No. 76.

84 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

And when my work shall be done 1 in this world, O
King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee
face to face ? '

Or in such a sublime turn of imagination as :

' Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play
among dust, and the steps that I heard in my playroom are
the same that are echoing from star to star.' 3

Patriotic Poetry. Even his patriotic poetry has
very many passages of the truest feeling and noblest
expression. Here is the poem whose Bengali title is
Asha 3 — Hope, — which we may call The Poei's Dream :

' Mother, my sun had set. ' Come, child,' you said ;
You drew me to your heart, and on my head
With kisses set an everlasting light.
About my breast, of thorns and blossoms plight,
A garland hung, Song's guerdon, — in my heart
Its pangs burnt deep ; your own hand plucked apart
The barbs, and cleansed of dust, and did bedeck
With that rekindled loveliness my neck :
You welcomed me, your son to endless years.

Rising, I lift my heavy lids of tears ;
I wake — I see — and all a dream appears.

Grkatnkss as a Lyrist ; Urbasi. To show his
greatness as lyrist, and as poet, extensive quotation would
be necessary. But space is exhausted, so I finish with
three stanzas from Urbasi, part of which has been
quoted already. Urbasi is the heavenly dancer of
Indra's court, the type of Eternal Beauty, who in the
beginning rose from the sea when it was churned by
the Gods to recover the lost nectar of immortality.

' Wast thou never bud, never maiden of tender years,
O eternally youthful Urbasi ?
Sitting alone, under whose dark roof
Didst thou know childhood's play, toying with gems and

pearls ?
At whose side, in some chamber lit with the flashing of gems,
Lulled by the chant of the sea-waves, didst thou sleep on
coral bed,

A smile on thy pure face ?

1 An Englishman would have written ' is done.' Cf . what I
said as to tiny slips in his English.

' No. 43, Gitanjali. ' KalpanS..

THE POET AND CREATIVE ARTIST 85

That moment when thou awakedst into the universe, thou
wast framed of youth,

In full-blown beauty !

From age to age thou hast been the world's beloved,

O unsurpassed in loveliness, Urbasi !
Breaking their meditation, sages lay at thy feet the fruits of

their penance ;
Smitten with thy glance, the three worlds grow restless with

youth ;
The blinded winds blow thine intoxicating fragrance around ;
Like the black bee, honey-drunken, the infatuated poet
wanders, with greedy heart,

Lifting chants of wild jubilation !
While thou . . . thou goest, with jingling anklets and waving
skirts,

Restless as lightning !

In the assembly of Gods, when thou dancest in ecstasy of joy;

O swaying Wave, Urbasi !
The companies of billows in mid-ocean swell and dance, beat

on beat ;
In the crests of the corn the skirts of Earth tremble ;
From thy necklace stars fall off in the sky ;
Suddenly in the breast of man the heart forgets itself,

The blood dances !
Suddenly in the horizon thy zone bursts asunder ;

Ah, Wild in Abandonment ! '

The Western reader can gain little notion of
this glorious poem's wealth of allusion, in which
Indian mythology mingles with European legends
of mermaids and with recollection of the ' peri-
lous goddess ; who was born of the ocean-foam.
Neither can he remotely guess at the melody of the
splendid, swaying lines, knit into their superb stanzas,
or the flashing felicity of diction in such a line as
that one :

' In the crests' of the corn the skirts of Earth tremble.'

But something of its unflagging glory of imagi-
nation should touch him with gladness, something
of its wonderful. succession of pictures should unfold
before his vision,— enough, surely, to make him see that
the man who wrote Urbasi produced a world-master-
piece, and not merely the most accomplished lyric of

86 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

India, and won for himself the right to be included
among the world's lyric poets. 1

1 A complete translation of Urbasi, as also of Sea-Waves,
Dharma-Prachar, and other pieces referred to in this book, will be
found in my -forthcoming Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore
(Oxford University Press).

IV
THE REFORMER AND SEER

His Religious Teaching later than His Public
Activity. No man's life and work fall into compart-
ments. But it is true that it was from political and
social activity that Rabindranath passed to educational
experiment, and from the last to the peace and poise
which mark his religious attitude and are his message
today. There never was a period when religion was
not a serious matter to him. Nevertheless, in his own
words, 'The day was when I did not keep myself in
readiness for thee ; and, entering my heart unbidden,
even as one of the common crowd, unknown to me, my
king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many
a Meeting moment of my life.' 1

Youth a Period of Impressions and Experiences.
At first, as we have seen, his life was one of gathering
impressions. Moments of illumination came, notably
the one which flooded his mind with happiness in
early manhood and produced the most spontaneous of
the Morning Songs. ' The end of Sudder Street, and
the trees on the Free School grounds opposite, were
visible from our Sudder Street house. One morning,
I happened to be standing on the veranda, looking that
way. The sun was just rising through the leafy tops
of those trees. As I continued to gaze, all of a sudden
a covering seemed to fall away from my eyes, and I
found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with
waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side. This
radiance pierced in a moment through the folds of

» Gilanjali (English, No. 43).

88 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

sadness and despondency which had accumulated over
my heart, and flooded it with this universal light.

'That very day the poem, The Awakening of the
Waterfall, gushed forth and coursed on like a veritable
cascade. The poem came to an end, but the curtain did
not fall upon the joy-aspect of the Universe. And it
came to be so that no person or thing in the world
seemed to me trivial or unpleasing.' 1

Sudder Street is a dingy, dismal spot, to have given
him the illumination which the Himalayas had previously
denied.

RABINDRANATH AND THE MAHARSHI. From his

father he had a noble inheritance. The Maharshi stood
out among men by his uprightness and fearlessness, by
his stern monotheism and detestation of idolatry, and the
fervour of his personal communion with God. His son's
mind has shown wider interests, and has been without the
sternness. The detestation of idolatry has not been his,
for it has been unnecessary. The Maharshi' s attitude
and influence made all question of idolatrous observances
for him once for all as dead as they are to any Christian.
But the monotheism came to him, with a definiteness
that has been overlooked, for all its obviousness.

In Youth, Rabindranath Observant and
Critical. The young poet of Evening Songs and
Sharps and Flats was Beauty's worshipper,

* The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.' 2

But his were the most observant eyes in Bengal,
with a generous heart whose feelings their impressions
fed. In his own family circle had been a free, happy
life. But he quickly awoke to the fact that the mass
of his countrymen lived in a tyranny which at some
points challenged comparison with any cruelty that
Time has known. What horrible wrongs enlightened
men can permit to exist without any protest the history
of many lands and periods has shown. Let the
Westerner who feels entitled to fling a stone at some

1 My Reminiscences (translation, pp. 217-18).
' D. G. Rossetti, Soul's Beauty.

THE REFORMER AND SEER 89

Indian evils remember England's penal laws of a
century ago, or her representatives' paroxysms of fury
in the Indian Mutiny or in Governor Eyre's Jamaica
regime, or the savagery of both sides in Ireland, or
America's lynching record. Yet good men, men earn-
est for the reform of humanity and for religion, have
lived in the same age with these things, apparently
untroubled. Rabindranath was not one of such. He is
not of those

' to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.' 1

Wrong, and cruelty, I think, do not come home to
him as with the stab of personal infliction. But he is
one of that not less useful company whose sense of
abstract justice is extraordinarily keen and awake, and
who are tormented with the thought of things that
ought not to be, by any law of God or good men. His
intelligence revolted at the folly which passed often
for patriotism with his noisier fellow-countrymen, and
his attitude, during the first thirty-five years of his life,
was chiefly critical. As the preceding pages have
shown, he had a lash of cutting anger, freely plied.

Gradual Growth of His Nationalism ; then,
Loss of Faith in Nationalism. But the evils which
he saw and hated came gradually closely home to him.
The land which was cursed by them was his mother. As
he looked at them, he seemed, like so many Indian
patriots, to find their cause in her helpless condition. If
only she were strong and free, she would expel these foul
birds from her altars, where they had nested so long,
poisoning the deepest life of her children. He looked at
the West, which seemed so powerful, so organised. As
he looked, the secret of her effectiveness seemed to come
to him. It was her nationalism. Therefore, he, too, would
be a nationalist. Let India become a nation, and she would
be as strong as these nations overseas. So he entered
public life. When a Viceroy, whose many gifts to India
were obscured by his habit of giving offence in speech

* Keats, Hyperion, a Vision (the second draft of Hyperion).

90 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

and manner, said publicly that the Bengalis were liars,
Rabindranath replied with all his artillery of sarcasm,
even analysing those notoriously truthful things, official
communications, and quoting their obsequious conclu-
sion, 'Your obedient servant' A debating score, and
one which does not touch the essential question at issue !
But he took up more serious challenges. He unmasked
the hollowness and falsity of the Delhi Durbar, a
painted shell hiding the poverty of India. He was the
heart and soul of the campaign against the Partition.
The years of battle brought disillusion. He grew weary
of nationalism, which made so much noise and carried
with it so few incentives to honesty and unselfishness.
What he came to think of it, as a means of salvation,
he has shown, in that disillusioned book, The Home
and the World, and in his book of lectures, Nationalism?
The latter book is remarkably one-sided and unfair, yet
it puts, more powerfully than it has been put elsewhere,
the Indian indictment of British rule in his land. The
Englishman asks, Is not our rule efficient ? Is it not
immeasurably 'juster and honester than the rules which
went before it ? To which the reply is, -¥ 03. - It is just
and efficient beyond any comparison with the rule of
Mogul or native prince. What is wrong, then ? the
Englishman asks, bewildered. Rabindranath's National-
ism gives him his answer. His rule is impersonal,
a matter of machinery. Through the very cracks left
by their abounding inefficiency, personality percolated,
in the days of the old bad rules. Whereas this foreign
rule goes its strong, impersonal way, like an instru-
ment of torture,

' exempt itself
From aught that it inflicts.' 2

It has given them an Emperor seven thousand miles
away, and a Parliament which has no time or wish to
attend to their affairs.

1 Indignant Bengali Nationalists ascribed his changed views
(a matter of years before!) to his knighthood. Browning's
Lost Leader was freely applied to him.

3 Shelley, Cenci.

THE REFORMER AND SEER 91

His Ideas To-day as to Nationalism. His lead-
ing ideas are simple and clear enough, though they are
expressed with an inexhaustible wealth of picturesque
illustration and an angry energy that often defeat their
ends, by distracting attention from his theme to its
ornaments and accidents. The Western nations to him
are robber-nations, organisations for exploitation of the
weak. Their government of dependencies is callous and
stupid. The Moguls lived in India, whereas the British
pass through it for a few years. The Moguls and
other former rulers enriched India by art and literature
and architecture. The British have given India railways
and bridges and bank buildings. The Moguls left the
Taj behind them, this epoch will leave the gigantic
railway-stations. Its civilisation, he says, is a matter of
machinery. ' When this engine of organisation begins
to attain a vast size, and those who are mechanics are
made into parts of the machine, then the personal man
is eliminated to a phantom, everything becomes a
revolution of policy carried out by the hunwnMparts of
the machine, with no twinge of pity 'or moral
responsibility.' The Nation, as the West has evolved
it, 'this abstract being,' rules India. 'We have seen
in our country some brands of tinned food advertised as
entirely made and packed without being touched by
hand. This description applies to the governing of
India, which is as little touched by the human hand as
possible. The governors need not know our language,
need not come into personal touch with us except as
officials ; they can aid or hinder our aspirations from
a disdainful distance, they can lead us on a certain
path of policy and then pull us back again with the
manipulation of office red-tape ; the newspapers of
England, in whose columns London street-accidents
are recorded with some decency of pathos, need take
but the scantiest notice of calamities which happen
in India over areas of land sometimes larger than
the British Isles.' 1 More than any other man, he

1 Nationalism, p. 13.

92 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

created the national feeling which is today the most
obvious fact in Bengal (and, therefore, throughout
India). Yet to him nationalism, in his own land and
everywhere, is now the enemy, which obstructs all
progress and freedom of thought and life. This has
been made startlingly clear by his attitude towards
the non-co-operation movement, which has been ravag-
ing Bengal student-life ; and some of the leaders of
that movement have attacked him with almost
incredible insolence. He condemns its sterility and
negative teaching. His mission in life, he says, is to
strive for reconciliation of East and West in mutual
helpfulness.

His Honesty and Earnestness-. There is this
difference between Rabindranath's indictments and much
of the wild criticism which has flooded the path of the
British Government in India during recent years. He is
sometimes unfair, often one-sided ; but he is never either
liar or fool. His criticism deserves the closest attention,
because no man has a stronger sense of fairness. If he
says a thing, it is because he is convinced it is true.
Prove it false, and he would withdraw it. In the pass-
ages I have quoted there is only too much truth, as
many an Englishman in India would admit. Those in
the Services who are most sympathetic to India
know how few there are today in their ranks who
have the close knowledge of the people and things
Indian which marked many an administrator and soldier
in former days. They know, too, how miserably low
the standard of knowledge of the vernaculars has
become. Anyone can pass the official tests, whether
'Proficiency' or 'Higher Proficiency.' If a man goes
further than this, and actually takes an interest in
a vernacular literature, he is repaid by an amount of
reputation which ten times the labour and knowledge
in any subject could not bring in England. The half-
dozen Englishmen who are interested in Bengali
literature today are known by name to many whom they
have never met, and their attainments are considered
much greater than they are.

THE REFORMER AND SEER 93

His Attitude to the British People. Rabindra-
nath makes a distinction between the British Nation and
the British People. ' I have a deep love and a great
respect for the British race as human beings. It has
produced great-hearted men, thinkers of great thoughts,
doers of great deeds. It has given rise to a great
literature. I know that these people love justice and
freedom, and hate lies. They are clean in their minds,
frank in their manners, true in their friendships ; in
their behaviour, they are honest and reliable. The
personal experience which I have had of their literary men
has* r,oused my admiration not merely for their power of
thought or expression, but for their chivalrous humanity.
We have felt the greatness of this people, as we feel the
sun ; but as for the Nation, it is for us a thick mist of
a stifling nature covering the sun itself.' 1

His Generalisations and Sweeping Indict-
ments. It is pardonable for the Englishman occasionally
to feel a momentary annoyance at the decision with which
Rabindranath sets him and his civilisation and religion
to rights. Westerners have in the past been good
enough to give the East the benefit of their generalisa-
tions on many things. Bolder than Burke, they have
not shrunk from indicting a nation. The East has
learnt the trick from them ; and not Rabindranath only,
but many a round-mouthed little lawyer or student
will speak with readiness and clearness and fulness
about their most complex questions, questions which
have puzzled those whose whole lives, and those of
their ancestors before them, have been lived close to
them. As the West began the game, it must put up
with it. Rabindranath, at any rate, might have let
fall some word of natural pity for the appalling
sorrow and ineffable heroism of these last dreadful years.
Fault has been committed, and blame abundant is due.
But many of those who suffered were innocent. The
fathers ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth have
been set on edge. Could the poet have carried his

* Nationalism, pp. 16-17.

94 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

memory back to his own mind of twenty years younger,
he would have seen the nobler side of all that he hated
so, and might, even, have asked himself if his own
civilisation, for all the virtues he finds in it, could have
shown one-tenth such patience under pain, such willing-
ness to face agony. Nevertheless, he is right in his
insistence that the War was a necessary outcome of the
horrible state of things in which the whole West had
acquiesced. Is right, too, in his indictment of modern
civilisation as material and hard. Here there is a leaven
working for better things, and there are many in the
West who feel as strongly and deeply as he does.
Unfortunately, the curse of modern industrialism, from
which the toiling masses of Europe are wrestling to get
free, is gripping his India every day more firmly. Not
a hundred miles from his beloved Santiniketan, the land
is foul with it, the skies are wreathed with factory-
smoke, the wayside is piled with slag-mountains. If
East and West could combine, each giving where the
other is poor !

His Views on Social Questions. In domestic
politics, he has been consistent. Woman is different from
man, and therefore to him the modern outcries to make
her equal with man are meaningless. He would have her
remain woman, a centre of love and inspiration without
which the world is poverty-stricken. But he has never
ceased to attack the injustice and cruelty which regard
woman as inferior, as unfitted for education or the
arts. The desolation of so many women's lives by
the way in which Hindu society treats widows, the
shameful marriage-market of Bengal, the sending away
of little girls, — these things he has striven against with
all his powers. On another Indian institution, caste,
he has said, in words often quoted, 1 'The regeneration
of the Indian people, to my mind, directly and perhaps
solely depends upon the removal of this condition.'
He says this, while recognising the essential services

1 Letter to Mr. Myron H. Phelps (Modern Review, August,
1910 and February , 1911 ) .

THE REFORMER AND SEER 95

which the institution of caste rendered in ancient
days.

Educational Reformer ; Santiniketan. Out
of his political activities came his educational ones. The
disillusionment and disappointment which resulted
from the one were the direct road to the other. He
himself tells us, ' I seemed choked for breath in the
hideous nightmare of our present time, meaningless in
its petty ambitions of poverty, and felt in me the
struggle of my motherland for awakening in spiritual
emancipation. Our endeavours after political agitation
seemed to me unreal to the core, and pitifully feeble in
their utter helplessness. I felt that it is a blessing of
providence that begging should be an unprofitable
profession, and that only to him that hath shall be
given. I said to myself that we must seek for our own
inheritance and with it buy our true place in the world.' 1
These words describe his feeling in his days by Padma,
but they are certainly not less true of it in the
days of his political energy. Accordingly, in 1901, he
founded the Santiniketan, beginning with five students
only. But his original idea was wider than that of a
school, as has been already said. He wanted a home
for the spirit of India, distracted and torn in the conflict-
ing winds of the present age. Today, he seeks a home
for the spirit of all nations, for his mind is so universal
in its sympathies that it can never rest content with
a part. That is why he will never be a non-co-operator ;
he feels too much the need of every part for each.
But he began with a school, formed on the model of the
old forest-schools of India. The school is now world-
famous. Among its teachers have been artists of
reputation such as Nandalal Bose and A^tTmTnarHalHar,
writers such as Ajitkumar Chakrabarti and Satischandra
Ray, philosophers such as the poet's eldest brother,
Dwijendranath Tagore, 2 and Englishmen such as C. F.

1 Introduction to W. Pearson's Shantiniketan, p. 2.

* Though not a teacher on the staff, he has lived near the
school for a quarter of a century, and is one of its formative
influences.

96 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Andrews and ' Willie ' Pearson. 1 The chief teachers,
on whom the poet has placed his main reliance, have
been the open spaces around the groves, the trees,
dawn and evening and moonlight, the winds and great
rains. He believes in the education of Nature, by
which

' beauty born of murmuring sound '

can pass into character. His own broken and not exten-
sive memory of school-life in childhood was unhappy.
Therefore, all through his Santiniketan experiment, he
has insisted on one thing, first and second, and all
along the line, — on freedom, more freedom, always
freedom. The place is hallowed by memory of the
Maharshi, who found three trees — still extant, and
marked by a tablet, — in the midst of a bare, uplifted
plain, two miles out of Bolpur, and came here to
meditate. There are now noble groves, with abundance
of the sweet-flowering shrubs and creepers that India
loves. Outside the groves, the great plain stretches
away, and here the boys sit on mats on moonlight nights
while their own teachers or visitors address them. It
is a very notable experience to visit Santiniketan. The
air seems charged with solemn, happy thoughts, and
purer than elsewhere ; and the whole place is filled
with joyous faces and voices. The boys play games
energetically and well, they discipline themselves by
means of their own courts, they have their school-song
(written by the poet), their place of worship (a church
of perfect simplicity, open to the breezes), their
organisations for tending the sick among them and for
visiting villages and conducting night-schools giving
elementary education. A very prominent feature of
school-life is their dramatic performances, chiefly of
the poet's own plays. The boys are very perfect
mimics. Classes take place in the open-air whenever
possible, and a boy sits where he will, — up a tree, if he
chooses. The one or two criticisms that occurred to me

1 To whom the poet dedicated Balaka, in eight playful,
affectionate lines.

THE REFORMER AND SEER 97

in my casual acquaintance with the school are too trivial
to set down here. What is certain is, that the place is
the only school in Bengal which has an idea and a
personality behind it. 1

Difficulty of Maintaining the School. For
long enough, the school was run at a loss, and the poet
was put to all sorts of shifts to find money for it. Official-
dom frowned on it ; and ordinary parents fought shy of a
school which did not tread the orthodox road to the
University examinations, but led its rejoicing students
through Bypath Meadow. It was a most effective blow
at the school when it was allowed to be understood that
its pupils would have no chance of Government service.
This was years ago. These difficulties no longer exist.

Religious Atmosphere of Santiniketan. The
day begins and ends at Santiniketan with prayer. Boys
go round the groves, chanting. This is the morning
prayer :

' Thou art our Father. Do Thou help us to know
Thee as Father. We bow down to Thee. Do Thou
never afflict us, O Father, by causing a separation
between Thee and us. O Thou self-revealing One, O
Thou Parent of the Universe, purge away the multitude
of our sins, and send unto us whatever is good and noble.
To Thee, from Whom spring joy and goodness, nay,
Who art all goodness thyself, to Thee we bow down
now and for ever. '

This is the evening prayer :

' The Deity Who is in fire and water, nay, Who
pervades the universe through and through, and makes
His abode in tiny plants and towering forests — to such
a Deity we bow down for ever and ever.'

Rabindranath as Religious Teacher. We come
to the matter of our final consideration, Rabindranath as
religious teacher and man. This is a question on which
no wise man would care to speak at great length or
with great positiveness ; and, the nearer he has been
privileged to come to this noble spirit, the less he cares

1 For a fuller account, see W, Pearson's Shantiniketan.

7

98 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

to give definite expression to what he has come to think.
Yet- no account of Rabindranath, however briei, can
pass it entirely by. I have said that he has no reasoned
philosophy. His mind is too mobile and sensitive, too
glancing and universal.

Is Gitanjali Christian in Tone and Teaching ?
Some things are obvious. Since I have been criticised 1
for saying that it was 'nonsense' to say that the Gitanjali
represented the teaching of ordinary Hinduism, let me
repeat and slightly expand my reply. First of all, it is
as plain as can be that his work has none of the outward
dress of Hinduism. This is seen to be inevitable, directly
one knows the background of his life. At Santiniketan,
even the stones cry out, inscribed with texts of austere
monotheism. The pillars at the gate prohibit the
bringing of idols within or the slaughter of beasts for
food or sacrifice. For Gitanjali, that exquisite chapbook
of mysticism, Indian mythology is exactly what Greek is
to a Western poet — a storehouse of illustrations, nothing
more. ' The divine bird of Vishnu, perfectly poised in
the angry, red light of the sunset,' 2 might be the eagle
which carried off Ganymede. He uses the popular Indian
story of Love in a human form, sporting with mortal
girls, uses it repeatedly, — in his earlier poems for the
sake of its background of rain-soaked or flowery forest,
in his later for its allegory. Yet in his later verse how
changed it is from the form in which popular Hinduism
knows it! It has become 'jam pro conscientia Ckris-
tianus '; losing its Hindu differentiae, it is one with the
Divine Eros of all ages and religions, and the Christian
mysticism of any century can parallel even its bold-
ness. But neither idolatry nor mythology forms the
battleground. Hinduism and Christianity are at grips
in their doctrines of karma, life after death, of the
nature and character of God. It is hard to see how
karma can stand without the doctrine of transmigration

1 In Professor Radhakrishnan's Philosophy of Rabindranath
Tagore.

2 Gitanjali (English No. S3).

THE REFORMER AND SEER 99

as its expression and ratification. Yet surely in karma
we have Hinduism's most characteristic doctrine.
Neither the Hindu karma nor the Hindu doctrine of trans-
migration can be found in Rabindranath. The idea of
many incarnations is found in his poetry, and it is hard
to say with exactly what intensity of belief it is held in
each place. Many poets, and not poets only, have played
with the thought, or seriously considered the possibility.
Reincarnation, for the Christian as for Rabindranath, is
an open question. It may happen. We do not know.
But, as for the ordinary Hindu doctrine of transmigra-
tion, Rabindranath's words, when asked if the common
report was true, that his father in his old age inclined
to accept it, are explicit : ' My father never believed in
that fairy-tale.' Transmigration is losing its hold on
modern Hindu thought. I turn to the question of the
life after death, which both Christian and Hindu admit,
in their different ways. Many Indian minds crave
personal immortality. Ramprasad (eighteenth century)
asks, in a passionate lyric, ' What is the use of salvation
if it means absorption ? I like eating sugar, but I have
no wish to become sugar.' Rabindranath's thought on
this question varies. That Christian is unusually for-
tunate whose belief in survival of death has never known
periods of doubt and clouding over. There are passages
in Rabindranath's verse which look forward eagerly
to what must be a fuller, and, in a real sense, a
personal life, if the longing and its strong expression
are to have any meaning. He has told me that he
believes that Buddha's mind has been misinterpreted,
and that men went wrong in thinking that he taught
extinction of personality. But, as to what Rabindranath
himself thinks today, the evidence before me is too con-
flicting for me to care to pronounce opinion. He is a
poet, and a poet has moods. He is a man, and a man
must struggle.

Religious Ideas of Gitanjali Overassessed.
Before touching on the third point, of the poet's teaching
as to the nature and character of God, I wish to digress
briefly. The West has formed its impression of his

100 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

religion chiefly from Gitanjali. But one element in the
poet's loss of reputation was that men came to see that
the religious ideas (as distinct from the warmth of
personal emotion) of Gitanjali had been overassessed.
The book's leading thought was of life as lila, a thought
which was fresh to the West but commonplace in India.
Lila is sport, in its highest meaning rising into drama of
tragic and heroic significance, in its lowest sinking into
mere play and laughter. Now all life is lila, as Hindu-
ism rightly and nobly insists. But too prevalently in
Gitanjali lila seems to bear its least worthy meaning.
God is the great playfellow who creates flowers of
beauty for His children, and death is a momentary
interruption of the lila. Such a conception of life
might produce a lovable and interesting personality,
but hardly a strong one. 1 And, indeed, the weakness
of Gitanjali, on its religious side, and of much of
Rabindranath's work, especially his poetry, is its minor
tone, its wistfulness, almost its wailing. His father's
message had something more robust about it.

Christian Influence in His Work and Life.
When Gitanjali was published, people found so much in
it that resembled the best thought in Christianity, that
many concluded that the poet had been greatly influenced
by Christianity. Some said, he is really a Christian.
But this is equal nonsense with saying that his attitude
represented ordinary Hinduism. In my judgment, the
direct influence of Christianity on his thought has been
very little. His father was the least Christian of all the
Brahmo leaders. The poet repelled the suggestion that
he had been influenced by Christian thought in writing
Gitanjali by saying that he had never read the Bible — a
confession which helps to explain the remarkable thin-
ness of his essays on Christ. A Christian who wrote
on Buddha from casual hearsay and general knowledge
would not produce anything very creditable to himself.
Further, I am sure that the sterner side of Christian

1 For this criticism I am indebted to the Rev. E. W.
Thompson, M.A., formerly of Mysore.

THE REFORMER AND SEER 101

doctrine has made no appeal to Rabindranath. Many
Hindus, while remaining Hindus, have felt to the depths
of their souls the conflict between good and evil which
caused St. Paul to cry out, ' O wretched man that I am !
Who shall deliver me from this sinful body of death ? '
They have understood, even while not sharing its
attitude, why Christian thought has turned so much to
the death of Jesus. Rabindranath had his one moment
of fleeting sympathy, when that poor Salvationist was
beaten and filled up in his body what was lacking of the
sufferings of Christ. Then he never felt it again, this
sympathy with the side of Christianity which faces
suffering and evil-doing. Nevertheless, Christianity is
in the air of India, and Rabindranath has not escaped
its influence. What is best in Git&njali is an anthology
from the ages of Indian thought and brooding ; but it is
the sun of Christian influence that has brought these
buds into flower. Those who felt, when it appeared,
that it was the most hopeful thing that had happened
for fifty years, were right. The man who henceforward
must rank among the great religious poets of the
world did not call himself Christian, and only sheer
ignorance of him and of Christianity could claim him as
Christian ; but in him was given a glimpse of what the
Christianity of India will be like, and we see that it will
be something better than the Christianity which came
to it. The Christianity of India, when it has sloughed
its present apathy and mendicancy and poverty of man-
liness, will help Western Christianity, which has made
so many ' mistakes, to know God and Christ better.
The Gospels teach a simplicity of life and of access to
God which Western Christianity has overlaid. European
Christians who live in India do not live uninfluenced by
the broad, free spaces, the generous sun, the flooded
moonlight. God in Nature becomes a reality, as to
Christ amid the Galilean lilies. We can see, and, seeing,
rejoice, that Indian Christianity will have at least a
Vedantist tinge. Rejoice, because we know that once
again man will share in the joy which is overflowing
the worlds, and that the beasts of the field will be at

102 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

peace with us. What Western Christianity is charged
to carry to India is Christ ; and what the ancient
religion of India has to gain from Christianity is Christ —
not a teacher only, but the Word made flesh, God enter-
ing our lives, our poverty and agonies, living as a
working man in Eastern bazaars, dying the shameful
death of a criminal slave.

The Christian Doctrine of God's Father-
hood. One Christian doctrine has profoundly influenced
Rabindranath, and that is the doctrine of the Fatherhood
of God. If the reader will turn back to the Santiniketan
morning and evening hymns, he will see that, while the
latter is Indian in wording and inspiration, the former is
Christian, Christian in every phrase. And, whenever
Rabindranath mentions Christ, it is this aspect of His
teaching which he emphasises. Upon His declaration,
'I and My Father are one,' he builds an interpretation
which all Christian exegesis would reject, but he is
happy because Christ said the words. In his more
buoyant moods, the Divine Lover or Sojourner of so
many wistful images— the traveller who comes at night
and vanishes before morning, the boatman who is out
in the wildest storm, the player whose flute sounds
through the heavy rain and the darkened forest, —
becomes his Father, between Whom and His child's spirit
there should not fall the least shadow of separation.

Rabindranath and the Vedas and Upanishads
and Buddha. The Christian influence is there, then.
But the main ground of Rabindranath' s religious teaching
and belief is Indian, and (still more) individual. It is
Indian. It will be remembered that in his earlier phase
as poet, he believed in two dogmas, the love and joy of
the Universe. He has believed in these to the end.
The latter is characteristically Indian. Despite the
lesson of that frank, joyous Life lived under the Syrian
skies, in ■ the loveliest land of all lands, among the
dancing flower-seas of mountain pasture, upon the sun-
kissed, shimmering waters of a lake, the West has
never taken this joy into its belief. A Wordsworth
may declare that

THE REFORMER AND SEER 103

' 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.'

But who believes with him ? Not bishop, not Baptist,
not Methodist. Perchance a Francis of Assisi holds to
this truth, but such an one comes not twice in a thousand
years. But to the Indian Joy is as essential to the
Universe as all-creating, all-upholding Love itself. So
from the Upaniskads Rabindranath wholeheartedly
embraced this doctrine, from the Rig-Veda he took the
freshness of those early Aryan dawns, and, because
Christianity's doctrine of the Fatherhood of God chimed
with these and with the feelings of his own soul also,
he found a place for that ; and he has lived by this
faith. He believes, too, that all is Love, except man's
hasty perversions of God's purposes in Time. From
the Upaniskads he learnt that life should be lived as
closely to Nature as possible. Hence, his days have
been cool with the breezes that make their way under
boughs and through blossoms and his nights have been
gentle with moonlight. It was said of Lord de Tabley
that he never missed a sunset. Rabindranath cannot
have missed much moonlight. These things have
become the very warp and texture of his spirit. To
them he has added the teaching of Buddha, for whom
he has a boundless reverence. Buddha's compassion
for all living things, and the wonder of his renunciation,
have cast a golden splendour about man's history ; and
in Rabindranath's thought they have shone again,
making his speech glow. He is almost more Buddhist
than Hindu. Certainly, he is far more Buddhist than
he is in sympathy with many forms of Hinduism that
are most popular in his native Bengal.

Rabindranath as a Bkahmo. In all this, I have
been thinking of his attitude, so far as it could be express-
ed by any dogma or religion. A word should be added on
his connection with the Brahmo Samaj, the church so
closely linked with his family and in whose teachings
he was brought up.

Nominally, and by inheritance, Rabindranath is a
member of the parent body, the Adi Brahmo Samaj . He

104 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

is a most acceptable preacher, who pours out his whole
soul. I shall never forget hearing him in early 1916,
when the Brahmos were celebrating their centenary.
He seemed almost tranced in adoration and meditation,
as his voice went quietly and tensely through his prayer
and address. The Jorasanko courtyard was crammed up
to the galleries all round it, and everyone was watching
that still, absorbed figure. After such services, he is
exhausted, and empty of all~nervous energy.

Today he rarely attends a service, unless he is him-
self the preacher. His failure to break down the conser-
vatism of the Adi Samaj, in a matter on which he feels
so strongly as he does on caste, — an episode referred to
at some length in the second chapter of this book, —
may have chilled his attitude towards a body which
seemed cold and unprogressive. His sympathies are
now rather with the Sadharan Samaj, 1 which is the
most vigorous branch of the Brahmo Samaj, numbering
in its members a remarkable proportion of influential
and well-known men. The Sadharan Samaj has this
year elected him an honorary member.

He has told me that he does not like missionaries,
whether Christian or Brahmo, as he regards, them as
narrow-minded. He objects to dogmatism and propa-
gandist work. Yet, if pressed, he would not deny that
a man who cares greatly about truth that he has found
is morally bound to try to bring it to others — which is
the sufficient justification for all missionary work,
whether Christian or Brahmo, Buddhist or Moslem. A
man who is a missionary for such a reason has no -place
in his mind or attitude for arrogance or patronage, but
should be humble and anxious to serve, willing to learn,
respecting all men everywhere. So Rabindranath has
found some of his best friends among both Christian and
Brahmo missionaries, and admits the unselfish useful-
ness of the best among these. And, though he prefers
to be regarded as a theist in the broad sense and shrinks

1 Sadharan means common (i.e. here, universal or demo-
cratic ; almost, catholic) .

THE REFORMER AND SEER 105

from labels which suggest any sort of separatism, he
would not deny that the Brahmo Samaj has been very
important among the formative influences of his life.
He belongs to the Hindu civilisation ; but he is unmistak-
ably Brahmo, in his strong, clear theism, and his
insistence on personal relationship with God as the
thing that matters. The teaching and attitude of
Git&njali would never have surprised the West as they
did, if the hymns of the Brahmo Samaj had been
known. These hymns have not received the notice
they deserve, as influences in his religious poetry.
He himself has written some hundreds of hymns. It is
mainly through the Brahmo channel that the abundant
Christian influence in his life and thought has been
mediated.

His Religion : Personal Experience, not a
Theology. But, when all is said, and said haltingly
and uncertainly, the essential thing remains to be said.
What matters in him is not what he may set before his
audiences or readers as his doctrines, but his personal
experience of God. Of the depth and sincerity of this
no one who has read Gitanjali can doubt. God is
strangely close to his thought. He is often more theistic
than any Western theist. This has always struck
me as the least-noted and yet the most remarkable thing
in his religion, this way in which God becomes more
personalised for him, the Indian, in the most intimate,
individual fashion, than He does for the ordinary Chris-
tian. This is not Vedic, not Vedantist. I can only
assume that he found it so in personal experience, that
neither flesh nor blood revealed it to him but our
Father in Heaven. 'My cup has been emptied,' he
cries, in a letter to me, ' and I must run for dear life to
the one living stream I know that flows in the depth of
solitude.' He is a poet, and his mind is restless, and
passes through moods of the darkest depression. All
his life has been a conflict. Hence the troubled under-
tone of his religious work. It is the crying of the
poet within him, of the eternal child. The world has
wounded him, effort has drained, results have disappoint-

106 RABINDRANATH TAGORE

ed. While life remains, this note will never be silent.
Yet beneath all he has a calm and a poise of spirit,
which knows many seasons of uninterrupted restfulness.
Personal Characteristics ; His Significance
for Our Time. I suppose a word should be said as to
personal characteristics. He is the most interesting of
companions, witty and alive to every thought that rises.
His gentleness and courage, his consideration, the
dignity and nobility of his features, all combine to make
up a personality whose fascination posterity will not be
able to guess. This man, remarkable in himself, is still
more remarkable as a prophecy of what is to be. After
the farce of education and the tragedy of character, let
us take hope, all of us who aspire to be counted among
men of good will, patriotic Indian and sympathetic
Englishman alike. Through him, we can believe that
the end of this mingling of East and West will be good
and not evil. Of that intermixture, and its results, men
have seen enough that was hideous and depressing. But
in Gitanjali came a result which was only lovely, a book
that will stir men as long as the English language is read.
We may feel that in such books and such a man we have
the earnest that the enmity of East and West will be
reconciled, that the mysterious destiny which has thrown
a handful of northern islanders upon these ancient
peoples will be justified. Both may believe that some
better thing has been provided for them than aught
either has yet experienced, that apart from the other
neither could be made perfect. Neither he nor we
have entered into the greatness of our heritage. Yet,
in the words of F. W. H. Myers, 'we may trust and
claim that we are living now among the scattered
forerunners of such types of beauty and of goodness as
Athens never knew.' 1

1 Greek Oracles.

INDEX

(Only titles of books or poems in italics.)

ADI Brahmo Samaj, 42 seq.,

rt 103 seq.

Alastor, 10

Almora, 39, 48

Alochana, 16

America, 22, 46, S3, 56, 89

Amiel's Journal, 23

Amritsar, 8, SS

Andrews, C. F., 44, 95 seq.

Arnold, Matthew, 33, 36, 38, 41

Art, Bengali, 6

Aryanism, 19, 64

Asha, 84

Asram (see Santiniketan)

As You Like It, 66

Athens, 106

Autobiography of the Maha-

rshi, 4
Autumn-Festival, 42, 81
Awakening of the Waterfall,
The, 88

ViABY'S Return, The, 24
D Bagehot, Henry, 47
JBaikuntha's Manuscript, 80
Baisakh, 37

Baldka, 23, 28, 49, 52, 83, 96
Balmiki Pratibha, 14, 17
Banaphul, 10

Banerji, Hemchandra, 3, 10, 69
Bangadarshan, 37
Baptist Missionaries, 2
Basuki, 73

Bauthakuranir Hat, 15
Bedi. 42
Bedouin, 64

Bengal Landscapes, 8, 9
Bengal Review, The (see Ban-
gadarshan)

Berlin, 56

Bhagna-Hridaya, 12, 13

Bhanu Singh, 10, 11, 66

Bharati, 9, 11, 20

Bibidha Prasanga, 15

Bidyabagish, Ramachandra, 4

Bidyasagar, Iswarchandra, 3

Bijaya-Milan, 40

Birrell, Augustine, 33

Bisarjan (see Sacrifice)

Blake, 81

Blank verse, 3, 25

Blessed Damosel, The, 79

Boat of Gold, The (see Sonar
Tart)

Bolpur, 5, 8, 9, 38, 43, 96 (and
see Santiniketan)

Bombay, 11

Bose, Sir Jagadishchandra, 62,
76

Bose, Nandalal, 95

Brahmaputra, 51

Brahmo Samaj, 3, 5, 42 seq.,
103-5

Broken Heart, The (see Bhagna-
Hridaya)

Brown, T. E., 27, 76

Browning, Mrs., 9, 69

Browning, Robert, 19, 26, 43,
68, 69, 90

Bryarit, W. C, 3

Buddha, 37, 99, 102-3

Burke, 93

Byron, 3

CALCUTTA, 15, 16, 42 (and
^ see Jorasanko)
Calcutta University, 38, 43, 44,
67,97

108

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Canton, William, 23

Carew, Thomas, 32

Carey, William, 2, 3

Caste, 62, 94

Cenci, The, 24, 90

Chaitali, 28, 30, 70, 75

Chaitanya, 1, 2

Chaitra, 28

Chakrabarti, Ajitkumar, IS, 18,

20, 23, 30, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42,

57, 62, 63, 66, 77, 95
Chakrabarti, Biharilal, 10
Chandi, 2
Chandidas, 1

Chatterji, Bankimchandra, 3, 17
Chatterji, Nishikanta, 11
Chatterji, Saratchandra, 79
Chatterton, 10
Chaudhuri, Pramanath, 54
Chaudhuri, Mrs. Pramanath

(Indira Devi), 78
Chelmsford, Lord, 55
Child's Book of Saints, A, 23
Child-Marriage, 19
Chips from a Poet's Workshop

(see Katiika)
Chitra, 23, 27, 75, 76
Chitrangada (the English

Chitra), 18, 24, 25, 27, 35, 43,

47-48, 80
Christabel, 79

Christianity, 3, 98-99, 100-103
Cloud and Sun, 73, 78
Coleridge, Samuel, 79
Conceits, 18
Conrad, Joseph, 45
Copenhagen, 56
Cowley, Abraham, 9
Crescent Moon, The, 46 seq.
Cromwell, 64
Crossing, 39, 40
Curse at Farewell, The, 26, 80
Cycle of Spring, The, 53, 81

DAEMON (of Socrates), 74

LJ Dante, 62

Datta (Dutt), Michael, 3, 12,

18,33
De Lalbihari, 2
Deirdre, 36

Delhi Durbar, 90

Denmark, 46, 56

Derozio, 3

De Tabley, Lord, 103

Dharma-Prachar (see Preach-
ing of Religion)

Diary of a Journey to Europe,
A, 20

Diary of the Five Elements, A,
21

Discussions (see Alochana)

Doctorate of Literature, 44

Dream of Youth, The, 19

Dream-Journey, The, 7

Dryden, 57

Dublin, 81

Duff, Dr.,_3

Duranta Asha, 19, 20, 64

Durga, 2

Durga Puja, 40

V CHO, The, 74

*-■ Elder Sister, The, 78

Elizabethan verse, 18

Emergence, 16, 20

Endymion, 10, 13

England, 4, 11, 12, 34, 43, 51,

54-56
Epics, Indian, 1
Epistola adDakyns, 27, 76
Eternal Goodness, The, 25
Europe, 11, 12, 20, 46, 56
Evening, 27
Evening Songs, 13-15, 68, 72, 74,

82, 83, 88
Eyre, Governor, 89

FAIRIES, 14, 17

1 Farewell to Heaven, The,

27-28
Fateful Hunt, The, 14
Festival of Meeting Together in

Victory (see Bijaya-Milan)
Fitzgerald, Edward, 43
Flight of Wild Cranes, A (see

Balaka)
France, 46, 56
Francis of Assisi, St., 103
Free School, Calcutta, 87
Fruit-Gathering, 39, 49, 52

INDEX

109

CAWDHARI'S Prayer, 37,

v* gg go

Ganges', 1, 3, 8, 9, 21-23, 49, 51,

61
Ganymede, 98
Garden, The, 76
Gardener, The, 27, 46, 75
Gatha, 10
Genius of Valmiki, The (see

Balmiki Pratibha)
Germany, 46, 56
Ghazipur, 19, 20
Gita Govinda, 1
Gitanjali (Bengali), 33, 34, 42,

52
Gitanjali (English), 11, 30,

33 seq., 43 seq., 48-49, 52, 61,

83-84, 87, 98-101, 105-6
Glimpses of Bengal, 22
God, Character of, 99
God, Fatherhood of, 102
Gods and Goddesses, 26
Gora, 39, 79
Grand Trunk Road, 20
Greek Oracles, 106
Green Leaf, The, 57
Gydnankur, 9

LJALDAR, Asitkumar, 95
1 * Happiness, 49 seq.
Hare, David, 3
Hari (see Krishna)
Hasanta, 33, 35
Hastings, Warren, 2
Heart-Wilderness, 16
Himalayas, 8, 9, 39, 88
Hindu Marriage, 17
Holland, 46
Home and the World, The, 53,

69, 79, 90
Home of Peace (see Santi-

niketan),
Home University Library, 21, 54
Hood, Thomas, 69
Hope (seeAsha)
Hugo, Victor, 61
Hungry Stones, 78-79
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 67
Hyperion, 89

IDEA (Plato's Doctrine), 71,

1 74

Idolatry, 3, 4, 88, 98

Illumination, 15

Imagination (see Ka I panel)

Immortality, 99

Impossible Hope, The (see

Duranta Asha)
India Society, The, 43
Indian Christianity, 101
Ingrateful Beauty Threatened,

32
Inner Light, The, 74
International University, 21
Ireland, 34, 89
Irish Melodies, 14

JAMAICA, 89

J Japan, 53

Jayadeva, 1

Jefferies, Richard, 30

Jhulan, 75

Jibandebata, 26-27,35, 48, 74-76

Johnson, Dr., 26

Jonson, Ben., 62

Jorasanko, 6, 7, 16, 53, 104

Journal, Amiel's, 23

Joy, 30, 87-88, 102-3

Juvenilia, 6 seq., 16, 53

l^ABIKANKAN (see Mukun-
**■ daram)
Kahini, 33, 37
Kal-Mrigayd (see The Fateful

Hunt)
Kalanadi river, 15
Kali (see Durga)
Kalidasa, 1, 9, 10, 56, 66-67
Kalpana, 33, 36 seq., 84
Kanika, 33, 37, 49, 53
Kari 6 Komal, 17-18, 25, 88
Karma, 98-99.

Kama and Kunti, 37, 69, 80, 82
Karuna, 12
Katha, 33, 37, 39
Karwar, 15-16
Keats, 6, 13, 24, 68-69, 89
Khea (see Crossing)
Kim, 39
King and Queen , 19, 20, 24-25, 48

110

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

King of the Dark Chamber, The,

42,81
Kingdom of Cards, The, 78
Knighthood, 44, SS, 90
Krishna, 1, 2, 11, 67, 98
Kshanika, 28, 33 seq., 83

I AKSHMI,5,74

V - J Lakshmi's Testing, 80-81

Last Word, The, 36

Letter to Lord Chesterfield

(Dr. Johnson's), 26
Letters of a Visitor to Europe,

11-12
Lila, 100
Lion of the Sun, The (see

Bhanu Singh)
Living or Dead, 73-74, 78
London, 81
Lost Jewels, The, 79
Lost Leader, The, 90
Love, 30, 103
Lover's Gift, SI
Lynching, 89

MACMILLANS, 43
Maeve, 36
Mahalanobis, Prasanta, 12, 16,

18, 20, 43, 54, 66-67
Maharshi (see Debendranath

Tagore)
Mahratta, 32, 37
Maithili, 1

' Maids of Illusion,' 17
Malini, 25-26, 48, 82
Manasi, 19, 26, 63-64, 66, 69, 72,

75
Marlowe, 66
Marston, Philip, 69
Mashi, 77

Marvell, Andrew, 76
Mayar Khela, 16-17
Meghnadbodh, 3, 12
Men and Women, 26
Milton, 3, 23, 29, 68
Mind's Embodiment, The (see

Manasi
Missionary work, 2, 64, 104
Modern Review, The, 94
Moguls, 91

Moonlight, 27

Moore, Thomas, 14

Morley, Henry, 12, 23

Morning Songs, 14-16, 74, 87

Mukherji, Sir Asutosh, 43

Mukundaram, 2

Music, 7 14, 20

Mutiny, The Sepoy, 39, 89

My Lord the Baby (see The

Baby's Return)
Myers, Ernest, 69
Myers, F. W. H., 106
Mysticism, 46

\AAIBEDYA, 42

1N Nalini, 16

Narak Bas (see Sojourn in

Hell, A)
Nationalism, 89-91
Nationalism, 53, 90-91, 93
Nature's Revenge, 16, 26, 48
Neo-Hinduism, 19, 41
New Essays in Criticism, 83
Night of Full Moon, A, 27
Nivedita, Sister, 2
Nobel Prize, 44, 62
Noble, Margaret (see Sister

Nivedita)

OATEN, E., 53
w Obiter Dicta, 33
Ode on a Grecian Urn, 69
Olor Iscanus, 5
Omar Khayyam, 36, 43
Ophelia, 12
Oxford, 56

DADMA (see Ganges)

* Palataka, 54

Palit, Loken, 12, 68

Pandits, 2, 33 seq., 52

Paracelsus, 26

Partition Agitation, 39 seq.,

79 90
Paul', St., 63, 101
Pearson, W., 95-97
Personality, 53-54
Phalguni (see Cycle of Spring ,

The)
Phelps, Myron W., 94

INDEX

111

Philosophy of Rabindranath

Tagore, 65, 98
Pictures and Songs, 16-18
Pis-Aller, 36
Pity (see Karuna)
Plato, 74
Play of Illusion, The (see

Mayor Khela
Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore,

27, 86
Poet's Dream, The (see Asha)
/Ws Story, The, 10
Post-Office, The, 42, 81
Prabhat Sangit (see Morning

Songs)
Preaching of Religion, 19, 29,

64, 86
Precepts of Jesus, The, 4
Presidency College, The, S3
Punch, 48

Punjab Troubles, The, SS
Purdah, 62
Puri, 2

QUAKER, 74
Queen Mab, 13

RABINDRANATH, 20, 30,

^ 33,35,41

Rabindranath Tagore, 34

Radha, 11, 67

Radhakrishnan, Professor, 65,

98
Raja (see King of the Dark

Chamber, The)
Rafarshi, 17
Rama, 1

Ramprasad, 2, 99
Ray, Dwijendralal, 75
Ray, Rammohan, 2-4, 30
Ray, Satischandra, 95
Rayats, 23, 31
Real sense, 29-30
Reincarnation, 99
Religio Medici, 12, 23
Remembrance, 39
Reminiscences, My, 6-9, 11, 13,

16, 87-88
Renaissance, Indian, 2, 6
Requiescat, 41

Rhys, Ernest, 34, 48, 82

Riddle Solved, The, 78

Rig-Veda, 103

Ring and the Book, The, 69

River, The, 32

Robin Hood, 14

Roses, 19

Rossetti, Christina, 69

Rossetti, D. G., 79, 88

Rothenstein, W., 6, 43

Rudra, 37

Rudrachandra, 12

Runaway, The (see Palataka)

Russian Novel, The, 39

Q.ABUJ-PATRA (see Green
u Leaf, The)
Sacrifice, 17, 24-25, 48, 80, 82
Sadhana (Bengali), 20-21, 25,

28-29, 31-32, 80
Sadhana (English), 20, 46 seq.
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 104
Sahitya, 32

Saint-King, The (see Rajarshi)
Saktism, 2

Salvationist, 19, 64, 101
Samaldchana, 17
Sandhya Sangit (see Evening

Songs)
Sanskrit, 1, 5, 33, 35, 65, 68
Santiniketan, 38, 41 seq., 52-53,

55, 81, 94-98
Santiniketan, 42
Sanyasi, The (see Nature's

Revenge)
Saraswati, 5
Sarkar, Jadunath, 54
Sastri, Sibanath, 42
Sati, 3
Sati, 37
Schiller, 11
Scott, 3, 10

Seal, Brajendranath, 6, 83
Season's End, The, 37
Sea-Waves, 72-73, 86
Sen, Binayendranath, 42
Sen, Keshabchandra, 4, 42
Sen, Kshitishmohan, 42
Sen, Mohitchandra, 15-16, 19, 39
Sen, Nabinchandra, 3

112

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Serampur, 2
Shakspere, 56, 62, 66, 68
Shantiniketan, 95, 97
Sharps and Flats (see Kari

Komal)
Shelley, 10, 13, 19, 22, 24, 67-69,

90
Shileida, 20-22, 31, 78
Short Stories, 23-24, 77 seq.
Sikhs, 10, 32, 37
Skeleton, The, 78
Smaran (see Remembrance)
Soul's Beauty, 88
Socrates, 74
Sojourn in Hell, A, 37
Sonar Tari, 26, 75-76
Sonnet, The, 3, 18, 28
Soul's Beauty, 88
Sprouting Knowledge (see

Gyanankur) ,
Squire, J. C„ 48
Stanzas in Memory of the

Author of Obermann, 38
Stevenson, R. L., 47
Story of My Heart, The, 30
Story, The Poet's, 10
Stray Birds (see Kanikd)
Subha, 77-78
Sudder, St., 87-88
Swadesh Sankalpa, 39
Swadeshi enterprises, 9
Swadeshi movement, 29
Swaraj, 30
Sweden, 46, 56
Swinging (see Jhulan}

T-AGORE, Abanindranath, 6
1 Tagore, Debendranath, 4

seq., 20,38,88,96
Tagore, Dwarkanath, 4 seq.
Tagore, Dwijendranath, 5 seq.,

95
Tagore, Gagendranath, 6
Tagore, Jyotirindra, 5 seq., 14
Tagore, Rathindranath, 22
' Tagorites,' 81-82
Taj, 91

Ten Directions, The, 49, 73
Thompson, E. W., 100
Theism, 105
To His Friend, 5
Torn Letters, 22 seq.
Transmigration, 98-99
Tribedi, Ramendrasundar, 54
Trust Property, The, 78
Twenty-Five Collotypes, 6

T JNIVERSITY Extension
^ Lectures, 54
Upanishads, 102-3
Urbasi, 27-28, 30, 35, 69, 71, 84-86

\/AISNAVISM, and Vaisnava
v Lyrists, 1, 10, 66-67, 98
Various Topics (see Bibidha

Prasanga)
Vaughan, Henry, 5
Vedas, 102-3, 105
Vedantism, 101, 105
Vernacular, Ignorance of,

among officials, 92
Vidyapati, 1
Virgil, 26
Vishnu, 98

WV., Her Book, 23
• War, The, 54, 93-94
Webster, Augusta, 69
West, Influence of, 2 seq.
What is Momentary (see

Kshanikd)
Whittier, J. G., 25
Wild Flowers (see Banaphul}
Women, Position of in India,

19, 62-64, 78, 94
Wordsworth, 47, 68, 96, 102-3
World University, 55
Wreck, The, 39

VEATS, W. B., 34 seq., 43,
1 46, 82

VEMINDARI work, 20-22, 31

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