Rabindranath Taqore
Basdnta Koomar Roy
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RABINDRANATH TAGORE
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RABINDRANATH TAGORE
The Man and His Poetry
BY
BASANTA KOOMAR ROY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY HAMILTON W. MABIE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1916
Copyright, 1915
BV DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
TO
THE FAINT MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER
WHO DIED IN MY EARLY CHILDHOOD, AND
TO
MY GRANDMOTHER
WHO NURTURED ME,
THIS BOOK IS MOST LOVINGLY
DEDICATED
PREFATORY NOTE
FOR the last thirty-five years Rabindranath
Tagore, India's greatest living poet, has been in
the public eye in India for his poetic excellence,
patriotic fervour and physical attractiveness.
But it was only in the summer of 1912 that this
great poet was introduced to the West by the
Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The Eng-
lish papers and magazines were full of enthusi-
astic eulogies on him. Some of them even de-
plored the decadence of poetry in the West, and
lauded the Hindu poet to the skies as a man
representing genuine poetical feeling.
In the autumn of the same year, Tagore
came to America. Unnoticed he came to this
great country, and unnoticed he left in the
spring of 1913. In the winter of the latter
year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for ideal-
istic literature, and he at once gained an un-
precedented international reputation as a poet.
7
8 PREFATORY NOTE
At present he is nothing short of a literary sen-
sation throughout the world.
My first paper on Tagore was published in
July, 1913; and at the time of the award it was
about the only article in English that gave an
idea of the wonderful personality of the poet.
So it was quoted and translated in many
countries of the world. During my lecture
trips in different parts of America, I have felt
the demand for a book on Tagore. These cir-
cumstances have encouraged me to publish the
present volume.
My personal acquaintance with the poet and
his family has helped me a great deal in writ-
ing this book. I have, wherever possible,
tried my best to represent Tagore in his own
words in my translation. The translations
are not always literal. At times I have been
obliged to translate the thought rather than the
words, just to avoid unpleasant phraseology.
Almost all the quotations in the book are trans-
lations; and unless otherwise expressly stated,
these have been made by the author.
My thanks are due to Dr. Paul S. Reinsch,
PREFATORY NOTE 9
the present United States Minister to China,
and Professor Willard G. Bleyer of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, who encouraged me to
write my first article on Tagore; to Rathindra-
nath Tagore, the poet's only son living, and
Somendranath Burman, a devotee of Tagore,
for presenting me with books and pamphlets
that have been useful in preparing the present
volume. I must here thank the editors of the
Yale Review, The Independent, The Open
Court, The Bookman, The Book News
Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and The Crafts-
man, for their permission to use parts of my
different articles on Tagore that first appeared
in their pages. And I take^this opportunity of
expressing my gratitude to the Macmillan
Company for their kind permission to make use
of certain poems and prose quotations from
the following copyrighted books: "The Gar-
dener," "Gitanjali," "Sadhana" and "Songs of
Kabir."
BASANTA KOOMAR ROY.
NEW YORK CITY,
February 12, 1915.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I FAMILY — EARLY YEARS — PRECOCIOUS
POET 2.7
II ROMANTIC YOUTH — REALISTIC POEMS . 54
III TRANSFORMATION — PRACTICAL IDEALISM
— DEVOTIONAL POEMS 72
IV AT SILAIDAH 103
V TAGORE THE FEMINIST 116
VI As POET OF INDIAN NATIONALISM — UNI-
VERSALISM 131
VII TAGORE AND His MODEL SCHOOL AT BOL-
PUR — ON Music 155
VIII TAGORE'S PHILOSOPHICAL MESSAGE . .177
IX TAGORE AND THE NOBEL PRIZE — His
PLACE IN BENGALI LITERATURE . . . 189
BIBLIOGRAPHY , 221
ILLUSTRATIONS
Rabindranath Tagore, on his Fifty-third
Birthday Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
The Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the poet's
father 30
Rabindranath Tagore, age Thirty .... 90
Tagore in Devotional Posture 120
One of Tagore's Devotional poems in his own
handwriting, in the original Bengali char-
acter 146
Tagore, at Fifty 182
Tagore at the home of Mrs. William Vaughn
Moody, in Chicago 204
INTRODUCTION
TA GORE'S poetry needed precisely the back-
ground which this sympathetic sketch of his
childhood, education and activities brings be-
fore Western readers. As the recipient of the
Nobel prize for Literature his name gained a
sudden publicity in the West, and the intel-
lectual curiosity which is one of the character-
istics of the time secured for the translations of
his books which began to appear a wide read-
ing. Many readers into whose hands these
books came found them vague and elusive in
thought, and as remote in form from the ex-
perimental and agitated verse of the hour as
the moonlight ecstasy of the nightingale from
a policeman's rattle. There were some, how-
ever, who found in the Bengali poet the joy of
discovery, the refreshment that comes from con-
tact with another order of mind.
15
16 INTRODUCTION
The fluent transcriptions of Oriental thought
with which Edwin Arnold fed the desire for
new and strange interpretations of Nature and
life were comfortable adaptations of Eastern
ways of thought and speech to Western habits
and taste; they made things easy for those who
hunger and thirst for local colour, but they
brought neither aid nor comfort to those who
wanted to understand the ideas behind Oriental
imagery and art.
These are precisely what Tagore gives us, hi
the forms of expression which have been shaped
in the atmosphere generated by these ideas.
He is a modern man in whose prose and verse
the genius of his race is as distinct and unob-
scured as if they had been written a thousand
years ago. For this reason he is a very impor-
tant figure in the coming together of the East
and West which promises to be the most dra-
matic and perhaps the most important event of
this century. The irritation incident to the
establishment of closer relations between civil-
INTRODUCTION 17
isations as far apart as those of the Orient and
Occident will give place to a clear recognition
of the value of the achievements of both sec-
tions of the world and of the resources, spiritual
and artistic, supplied by diversity of tempera-
ment.
The gains of this new appraisement of past
sen-ices will come, not from any sacrifice of the
integrity of what appear to be conflicting ideals
in the endeavour to secure harmony by com-
promise, but from a clear definition of those
ideals. It will probably appear that those ideals
are complementary rather than antagonistic; it
is obvious that each section has over-empha-
sised the aspect of truth which has appealed
to it; and much of the divergence will dis-
appear when each section understands more
clearly the point of view of the other. In any
event, nothing will be gained by blurring the
differences ; much will be gained by giving them
the sharpest definition.
We must understand the East if we are to
i8 INTRODUCTION
deal justly and wisely with the delicate and
difficult questions already raised by more in-
timate relations. Those questions will become
dangerous to the peace of the world unless sym-
pathy, knowledge and imagination unite in the
endeavour to set them at rest. The West has
exploited the East too long. The habit of deal-
ing with countries from the standpoint of busi-
ness advantage does not conduce to an under-
standing of those countries. As a rule no class
knows less about the spirit and character of a
people than those who live among them for
purposes of exploitation. The door of under-
standing closes automatically when a people is
approached in this spirit. And dealing with a
people for the sake of the profit that can be
made out of them inevitably breeds that sense
of superiority which is the source of arrogance
and assumption and makes normal and whole-
some relations between races impossible.
Tagore's work is deeply rooted in the soil of
Oriental religion and civilisation; its imagery,
INTRODUCTION 19
language and informing spirit are unaffectedly
and therefore uncompromisingly Oriental. He
is the man of the Far East uttering the deepest
and most characteristic thought of that ancient
world with a sincerity so deep that we cannot
miss his essential message to us, though it de-
mands from us the exercise of faculties which
have become almost atrophied by disuse.
He makes no concession to our habit of for-
mal logic ; to the literalism of phrase which we
have come to regard as the evidence of sin-
cerity and clear thinking. The Western states-
men who are called upon to formulate a Far
Eastern policy ought to be required to take an
examination in Tagore's "Sadhana" and "The
King of the Dark Chamber."
No account of a living man can make any
claim to completeness or finality; but in the
case of a writer so far removed from our habits
of thought and ways of living as Tagore it
stands in no need of explanation or apology.
For many readers Tagore is further away than
20 INTRODUCTION
the writers of the i6th century; the distance
in thought obscures the nearness in time. This
distance is strikingly brought out by comparing
this study of the Indian poet with Franklin's
"Autobiography" or Mills' "Autobiography."
The scenery which forms the background of
these diverse biographies is not more radically
different than are the ways of thinking and the
habits of life they report. It gives one a kind
of shock to read what Tagore has to say about
the condition of women in India in contrast
with their condition in Europe and in this coun-
try. It is wholesome to have a generally ac-
cepted view so unconcernedly disregarded, as
if it were too unintelligent to be challenged.
It revives the hope of ultimate emancipation
from absorption in material interests to read
of the activities of a man to whom these in-
terests make no appeal. The American who
expects his Indian friend to be awed by
the colossal scale of the "sky-scrapers" discov-
ers that he is oppressed rather than impressed
INTRODUCTION 21
by them. If he is making an estimate of our
civilisation he is likely to put them on the debit
side of the account; they retard rather than
advance spiritual progress. This implied chal-
lenge to Western activities and immediate aims
runs through this study of a representative
Oriental; it is not belligerent; it lies in the
presentation of ideas of life so different that
they compel a re-examination of the claims of
Western civilisation.
The service of a poet of Tagore's distinction
lies in his eloquent and moving faith in ideals
and an attitude towards life which make us real-
ise that, without surrendering our fundamental
conception of the integrity of personality and
the group of truths that flow from it, the East
has much to teach us in the way of a broader
and richer interpretation of both divine and hu-
man personality; a psychology at once more
subtle and more serviceable in the use of mind
and body; an intimacy with nature which will
strike a truer balance between meditation and
22 INTRODUCTION
action, and put behind efficiency a restraining
idealism. In the civilisation of the future East
and West will secure a harmony between the
life of thought and the life of action.
This account of Tagore's interests and ac-
tivities, his devotion to education and his meth-
ods of dealing with boys, his habits of work,
his hopes for India, gives Western readers an
intimate impression of a personality formed by
Eastern ideas and conditions, and disclosing the
richness and beauty which flow from them and
witness to their vitality and value. As a poet
Tagore needs no commentator save a willing-
ness to see truth from the other side of the
world and to give the imagination its rightful
place beside the critical faculty. His thought
is elusive and must be patiently pursued, and
his speech is saturated with symbolism and
imagery; he cannot be read at full speed; he
must be waited upon and communed with.
But if he demands much it is because he has
much to give; and what he has to give is pre-
INTRODUCTION 23
cisely what we need in this over-worked West-
ern world and this eager, impatient age.
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
New Tork, February, 1915.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
CHAPTER I
FAMILY EARLY YEARS PRECOCIOUS POET
POETRY is a part of our daily life in India.
The first blessing the newly born baby receives
on entering this world is couched in verse.
When the growing child does anything im-
proper the mother recites a little poem telling
him of the unwelcome consequences of such a
deed. When the child goes to school, the first
lessons after the alphabet are given in verse.
When the grown up boy takes to learning
Sanskrit, one of the first slokas to be impressed
on his plastic mind is that, "The two great
blessings that hallow the horrors of this hard
world are tasting the sweet nectar of poetry
and keeping good company." Most of the mat-
ters that this Sanskrit scholar has to learn are
written in verse — the rules of grammar, the
aphorisms of metaphysics and logic, the sciences
27
28 POETIC INDIA
of botany and medicine, astronomy, chemistry,
and physics are all in verse. The Ramayana,
the most widely read book in all India, is in
verse. At marriage the young couple is united
by mantrams in verse; and again when after
death the human body is consigned to fire or
earth it is the Hindu Muse of poetry that has
the last words to say.
It was in such a country and in a family
that has been in the very forefront of the in-
tellectual renaissance that has been going on
in Bengal for more than one hundred years
that Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize
Winner of 1913, was born on the 6th of May,
1861.
In social and religious reform, in the revival
of art and music, and in political and industrial
nationalism, the Thakur, Anglicized into
Tagore, family has rendered conspicuous serv-
ice; and has thereby gained the high esteem
of the people of India, especially of Bengal.
Among the Tagores are counted men like Pro-
HISTORIC TAGORE FAMILY 29
sonno Koomar Tagore, a landowner, a lawyer
of great reputation, an editor, a writer on
legal and educational subjects, founder and
president of the British Indian Association;
Raja Sir Sourindra Mohun Tagore, undoubt-
edly one of the highest musical authorities in
India, the founder of the Bengal Music School
and the Bengal Academy of Music, and author
of many volumes on Hindu music and musical
instruments; Abanindranath Tagore, a distin-
guished pamper, and an undisputed leader in the
Hindu art revival; Maharaja Ramanath Ta-
gore, brother of our poet's grandfather, a polit-
ical leader and writer; Prince Dwarakanath
Tagore, the grandfather of the poet, a land-
lord, a founder of the Landholders' Society,
a philanthropist, and a social reformer, pre-
eminently an agitator against suttee.
The most noteworthy of the poet's ances-
tors is his own father, Debendranath Tagore,
who was not a Maharaja (great king). He did
not care to be decorated that way. Instead
30 TAGORE'S FATHER
he was decorated by the people with the title
of Maharshi (great sage). Though Deben-
dranath was no intellectual peer of his master,
Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the father of modern
India; yet in devotion to the cause of social
and religious reform, in willingness to sacrifice
and to suffer for a principle, he was second to
none. Son of a Prince, yet moved by a sense
of moral duty, for there was no legal or docu-
mentary obligation, he refused to tell a single
untruthful 'no' and handed over his vast estate
to his father's creditors, thus reducing himself
to the position of a pauper. No wonder that
the people decorated him with the title of
Maharshi ; and no wonder that the kind-hearted
creditors, moved by the heroic honesty of De-
bendranath, made a compromise and left some
property with the youthful seer.
Maharshi Debendranath Tagore was one of
India's greatest spiritual leaders. His godli-
ness was contagious. Once a sceptical friend
of his came to him and asked: "You talk of
.......
THE MAHARSHI DEBENDRANATH TAGORE,
THE POET'S FATHER
WHERE IS GOD'? 31
God, ever and again of God! What proof is
there that there is a God at all*?"
The Maharshi pointed at a light and asked
his friend, "Do you know what that is4?"
"Light," was the reply.
"How do you know that there is a light
there?'
"I see it; it is there and it needs no proof;
it is self-evident."
"So is the existence of God," replied the
Maharshi. "I see Him within me and without
me, in everything and through everything, and
it needs no proof, it is self-evident."
The Maharshi in his early youth was very
luxury-loving, and he himself tells us in his
autobiography the story of his transformation;
and we quote it at length, as translated by Mr.
Sen, because it has a striking parallelism with
the subsequent transformation of Rabindranath :
"On the night previous to the day when my
grandmother would expire by the River Ganges,
J was seated on a mat spread near the tiled
32 FATHER'S VISION
hut ; the full moon had risen on the horizon and
close by me was the funeral ground. At that
time they were singing Kirtan songs around my
grandmother.
" 'When will that blessed day come,
When I shall leave this mortal body
reciting thy name, O God*?'
"A gentle breeze was carrying the sound to
my ears; suddenly at that moment a strange
emotion passed over my mind. For the time
being I became an entirely different man from
what I was — I felt a total abhorrence for
wealth. The mat on which I sat appeared to
be my proper and fit place. The rich carpets
and all seemed worthless and of no value to me.
I felt a serenity and joy which I had never ex-
perienced before. I was only eighteen years
old at that time . . . the joy I felt on the
funeral ground that day overflowed my soul.
. . . No one can experience that joy by filling
his head with logical discussions. Who says
THE FACE SUPERB 33
there is no God? Here is the evidence of his
existence. ... I could not sleep that night.
The reason of my sleeplessness was the ecstasy
of soul ; as if moonlight had spread itself over
• my mind for the whole of that night."
After the passing of this great soul Ananda
Mohun Bose, the senior wrangler, said: "Son
of Dwarakanath Tagore, and the first Secretary,
I believe, of the British Indian Association, he
might have been a Maharaja long before this.
But he chose the better part. The Maharajas
die, but the Maharshis live — live in the grateful
hearts of unborn generations." No doubt that
the Maharshi will live forever and inspire the
younger generations with the sublimity of his
character.
Rabindranath was born the youngest in a
family of seven brothers and three sisters. It
is said that born poets are generally handsome.
If this is a true generalisation, Rabindranath
was no exception. He has long been famous in
India both for his poetry and his beauty. In-
34 THE POET OF GALILEE
deed, his youthful portraits bear a striking re-
semblance to the best pictures of the poet of
Galilee, who wrote not a single verse, but who
hallowed the world with the majestic poetry of
his life and sayings. The Hindu poet's flowing
hair; his broad, unfurrowed forehead; his
bright, black, magnetic eyes, chiselled nose,
firm but gentle chin, delicate, sensitive hands,
his sweet voice, pleasant smile, keen sense of
humour, and his innate refinement, make him a
man of rare and charming personality. To
look at him is to notice the true embodiment of
the artist.
The God-intoxicated father of our poet used
to travel a good deal; and so could not take
personal care of the training of his children all
the time. And unfortunately, the rearing of
"Rabi," instead of falling into the hands of his
mother and the maids, fell into those of the
male servants. They were terrible taskmasters,
and were most cruel to the child. To simplify
the work of watching the child ward, they used
THE JOY OF BONDAGE 35
to shut him up in a room, and very often in
punishing him, they would make a circle with
chalk inside the room and command him not to
stir out of the circle. Fortunately for the
child, the circle used to be near a window which
looked into a garden with its pond, flower-beds
and orchards. There he used to watch the
kaleidoscopic movements of the people, the ani-
mals and the birds. The ducks playing in the
water and hunting for food; the people — some
gossiping and basking in the sun, others pluck-
ing fruits or flowers — were so fascinating to him,
that he would even forget the sorrows of his
solitary imprisonment.
Though he thus occasionally enjoyed the ad-
vantages of neglect, the bondage made his heart
long for further freedom. This veiled view of
things without whetted his growing appetite for
the ultimate union with nature, and through
nature with nature's God. It intensified his
passionate love for nature so much that when
the union came about through freedom, it was
36 THE SEEDS OF MYSTICISM
perfect, and, so to say, mutual. Nature took
the child to her bosom, and he began to love
her with ravishing unrestraint. Separation in-
tensified the bliss of the union of lovers.
This lonesome existence in the locked room
naturally made the child pensive ; and the seeds
of his subsequent mysticism were sown there.
In one of his letters, the poet refers to his early
days in a passage which may be translated as
follows: "I but faintly remember the days of
my early childhood. But I do remember that
in the mornings, every now and then, a kind
of unspeakable joy, without any cause, used to
overflow my heart. The whole world seemed
to me full of mysteries. Every day, I used to
dig the earth with a little bamboo stick, think-
ing that I might discover one of them. All the
beauty, sweetness, and scent of this world, all
the movements of the people, the noises in the
street, the cry of the kites, the cocoanut trees
in the family garden, the banyan tree by the
pond, the shadow on the water, the morning
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 37
perfume of the blossoms — all these used to
make me feel the presence of a dimly recognised
being assuming so many forms just to keep me
company."
Again, in another place, he thus recalls his
childhood days: "Whenever I look back to
my childhood days this stands prominent in my
memory that the life and the world seemed full
of mystery. I felt and thought every day that
everywhere there was present something incom-
prehensible, and there was no certainty of my
ever meeting Him at any definite time. It
seemed that nature used to close her hands and
ask me: Tell what I have in my hands.' I
never dared to answer, for nothing was impos-
sible to be found there."
The future poet was then about six years old ;
and one morning he saw one of his elder
brothers and his cousin Satya going to school
for the first time. He begged to be sent with
them, but was refused the privilege. He began
to cry and make everybody miserable. His
38 SCHOOL DAYS
teacher at home lost his temper and slapped him
sharply on the cheek and said : "Some day you
will cry more not to go to school than you. are
crying now to go to school."
Before long, Master Tagore saw this proph-
ecy fulfilled. For soon afterwards, when his
turn came to go to school he was happy; but
when he was in school he did not enjoy it in the
least. To pass from one bondage to another
was too much for this nature-loving child.
He was transferred from the Oriental Semin-
ary to the Norman School to see if that suited
him better. There, too, history repeated it-
self.
As Goethe did not like his school because his
fellow students were rough, so Tagore did not
like the Normal School, for the students were
anything but pleasant to him, but more than
that, he could not learn to like a certain teacher
for whom he had a whole-hearted hatred.
Tagore thus tells his story : "I quite remember
my experience with one of my teachers. He
A BLOCKHEAD 39
was wont to use such harsh language that out
of contempt I would never answer any of his
questions. All the year round I monopolised
the last place in his class, and spoke not a word,
but thought within myself and sought to solve
many great problems of life. I remember one
of them : How to defeat an enemy, even though
I had no weapons. The solution was that if
I might train lions, tigers, and dogs to start the
fight, the victory would be easy. . . . Thus one
year was spent, and at the annual examination
our papers were examined by Sri jut Madhusu-
dan Bachaspati. I won the highest grade in
the class. My teacher was furious and told the
authorities that partiality must have been shown
to me — a blockhead. Then under the direct
supervision of the superintendent of the school,
I was examined a second time, and that time,
too, I fortunately kept up my record." First or
last in the class Tagore did not like the school
at all. So his guardians took him out and sent
him to Bengal Academy — an Anglo-Indian
40 LAUGHS AT ENGLISH
school. Though there was no special cause
of complaint against the students or the teach-
ers, still it was to him a school — "a prison
house," "a ghastly hospital."
Reluctantly attending school he was, at the
same time, studying at home biology, physio-
logy, geography, geometry, history, physics,
music, gymnastics, wrestling, and English liter-
ature. Of all subjects English was of least
interest to him. His Bengali teacher tried his
best to make Tagore feel that the English lan-
guage was very charming. With melodramatic
intensity, the teacher would recite some of the
most sonorous passages from the famous English
poets, to make the child feel the beauty of
English verse. But that excited nothing but the
mirth of the boy. He would go into hysterics
with laughter, and his teacher would blush and
give up reciting, and with it all hope of turning
his pupil into an English scholar. And yet this
boy, forty years later, as the author of "Gitan-
jali," was to give to the world a new style of
JAL PAWRAY 41
English prose, rich in its singular simplicity, but
superb in its rhythmic effect.
These studies in sciences and literature were
not, however, all that Tagore was doing. His
best thoughts were engrossed in the development
of his art. He had already felt within himself
an all-devouring poetic impulse. The first
breath of poetry touched his childhood body
and mind when, he was only five years old.
After finishing the syllables he had just begun
to learn words, and very simple short sentences.
One morning he read two short sentences that
rhymed :
Jal pawray (water falls)
Pata nawray (leaves tremble)
This mute waterfall and the imagined gentle
tremor of the leaves — their idea, their sound,
their rhyme, gave the child an ecstatic thrill.
To quote the poet's own account of it: "This
is the poetry of the primordial poet that touched
my heart. When I remember the inexplicable
f
42 LISP OF LEAVES
joy I felt over those words at that time, I realise
why rhyming is such an essential factor in verse-
making. It is due to the fact that the words
do not end with the end of the sound. Their
thrill survives their import. The thrill from
the rhyme lingers in the ears and vibrates in
the mind. That whole day my heart was leap-
ing with joy as water was spraying and the
leaves were rustling in my inner consciousness."
It is odd that this sudden birth of poetry in
the childish soul sprang from a Bengali phrase
which is virtually the same as Swinburne's line,
"Lisp of leaves and ripple of rain."
Robert Browning's father, though a bank
clerk, was given to versifying, and he was wont
to take Robert in his study, make the child sit
on his lap and teach him the words that rhymed,
and also show him the way to the rhyme-world.
Tagore's father was one of the greatest poets
that ever lived in the land of Kalidas (India's
greatest poet of all ages) though he did not
write a single poem. He was a poet of "elo-
THE BEGINNING 43
quent silences." The silent poet did not, like
Browning's father, give his son any lessons in
verse-making. But it was the boy poet's
nephew, Jyotiprokash, older than himself, that
gave him the first lesson in composing poems.
One day at noon, when Tagore was only seven
years old, Jyotiprokash suddenly took him by
the arm, and led him into his study and said :
"You have to write poems."
"How can I do it1? I do not know how,"
replied the future author of "Gan," "Gitan-
jali," and "The Gardener."
"I shall teach you. I have been reading
Shakespeare's Hamlet, and though I am not a
poet, I feel from your turn of mind that, with
proper training, you may become a great and
original poet." A pregnant prophecy indeed!
Jyotiprokash took paper and pencil and showed
his nephew the way to compose poems in cha-
turdas padee payar cJianda (verse of fourteen
syllables). This was the first lesson in poetry
of Rabindranath Tagore, who has now to his
44 THE YOUNG FAWN
credit about one hundred volumes of poems,
dramas, essays, short-stories and novels. Here
is what he himself says of this experience:
"Thus far, verse was a thing only to be
seen and read in the printed pages. No
signs of corrections or alterations, nay, not
even a trace of the weakness of the human
mind. I was even afraid to think that such
a thing could be written by trying. . . . When
I realised that by patching together a few
words here and a few words there it turned
out to be payar chanda, and the whole thing
blossomed into a poem, I stood disillusioned
about the mysterious glory of composing verses.
. . . When fear once left me, who could stand
in my way? Through the courtesy of one of
our clerks I secured a blank book with blue
paper in it, drew some uneven lines with my
own hand, and began to write poems in huge
letters. As a young fawn at the time of its
horn-growing strikes at anything and every-
thing, so with the first consciousness of poetic
CHILDHOOD POEMS 45
power, I used to bother anybody and everybody
with my poesy. Even my eldest brother was
proud of my childhood poems, and did every-
thing in his power to make things miserable for
people all around us in his attempt to secure
listeners."
In the same normal school where the much-
disliked teacher taught, the embryonic poet won
the friendship of another teacher, Sri jut Sat-
kowri Datta. He was poetically inclined, and
discovering the latent possibility of Rabindra-
nath, he often gave him lessons in versification.
The teacher would either suggest subjects, or
would write the first two lines and ask this boy
of nine or ten to finish the stanza. For exam-
ple the teacher once wrote :
"Rabi Karay jalatan achilaw sabai
Barasha varasha dilaw ar vai nai."
The budding poet added:
"Mingan din haway chilaw saroboray
Ekhan tahara sukhay jalawkrira kawray."
46 "YES"
In other words, the teacher wrote:
"Everybody was harassed by the scorching
rays of the summer sun, but they all are com-
forted now by the coming of the rainy season."
The apt pupil completed this idea thus:
"The fishes, all emaciated, dragged on a mis-
erable existence in the pond; now they feel fine
and frolic in the water."
Just about this time, the boy's father re-
turned home after a long absence in other parts
of India. The Maharshi at once perceived the
poetic bent of the boy, and felt that the child
was not to blame for his dislike of schools, and
he decided to train him in the school of nature.
So one day he called the child to his room on
the third floor of their palatial home at Jora-
sanko, Calcutta, and inquired if he would like
to go to the Himalayas for a trip. The boy
poet was jubilant and shouted the loudest "yes"
of his life. To be out of school, and then to go
to the Himalayas — what a chance! Young
Tagore was glad to get out of school and be-
HE CLOSED HIS EYES 47
yond the reach of his teacher's care, and his
heart leaped with joy now that he was about to
see the mountain world. The Maharshi or-
dered some excellent suits of clothes for him,
and feeling proud in the new clothes, stockings
and a gold embroidered satin cap, Rabindra-
nath, with his "blue" blank book and pencil,
started for the Himalayas.
The first night out of Calcutta, as he was
being carried in a palanquin from the railway
station to the Bolpur Shanti Nike tan (Peace
Cottage at Bolpur, his father's country home for
meditation), he closed his eyes all the way to
the bungalow, simply not to see the beauties of
nature by the faint light of the falling dark-
ness, that he might take keener delight in the
rich landscapes under the morning light.
At Bolpur, Tagore's favourite study, as it had
been for some time, were the moral slokas of
Chanakya and the Ramayana. For hours to-
gether, in open air, he would read the Rama-
yana with deep emotion. Now he would sob
48 PRECOCIOUS BODY
over a sad story, and in a minute he would laugh
over something comic, and again he would thrill
as he read of feats of strength or adventure. His
emotional nature still continues to be the same.
Here he used to play a good deal with pebbles
and streams, yet he soon filled the "blue" blank
book, and felt exceedingly dignified when he
was able to secure a copy of Letts' diary to write
his childhood poems in. With this "book" in
hand he would feel like a poet and write poems
sitting with his bare feet outstretched on the
green grass under a young cocoanut tree, and in
the evenings sing devotional songs for his father.
The precocious poet had a precocious body.
He looked older than his years, and on their
way from Bolpur to the Himalayas, this fact
was the cause of a rather striking incident. Be-
ing under twelve years of age Master Tagore
was entitled to a half -rate ticket, but in a cer-
tain station the ticket collectors doubted from
his looks that he could be under twelve and
referred the matter to the station master. The
"I NEVER TELL LIES" 49
station master came to investigate and he, too,
questioned the veracity of the Maharshi. The
Maharshi at once handed over a note represent-
ing a large sum of money. In a minute the
station master brought the change to the train
and gave it to the Maharshi. The Maharshi
took the silver rupees in his hands, and unhesi-
tatingly threw them all on the stone platform
and said: "I never tell lies for anything, much
less for money." That incident may help to
explain the noble pride and peculiar fineness
which characterise Rabindranath's works.
When in the course of time the boy reached
the Himalayas, he knew that he had found
what his heart was craving for — a wealth of
lovely colour and majestic form. Here his
father introduced him to the sylvan deities,
who, in their turn, unfolded to the boy poet a
thousand mysteries of nature. He was not
only enthusiastic over the solemn grandeur of
the Himalayas, but he was enthusiastic also be-
cause his father gave him freedom of move-
50 LESSONS IN RESPONSIBILITY
ment, except to forbid him the ice-water bath
every morning. Tagore used to roam about
from mountain to mountain, finding company
in the rocks, trees, springs and the unlimited
sky overhead, and also visualising the rocks and
the trees of different forms into crouching lions
and veiled brides, into panoplied soldiers and
unclothed sanyasins. In fact, under the moth-
erly care of the Himalayas the boy's mind
began to expand as does the water in a flood.
During this period of absence from home his
father not only taught him English, Sanskrit,
Bengali, botany and astronomy, but also gave
him lessons in responsibility. He gave an ex-
pensive gold watch to the boy to wind it regu-
larly and take care of it. The boy took such
excellent care of the watch that it had to be
sent to Calcutta for repairs very soon. But his
father uttered not a word of displeasure, and
handed over the repaired watch to him again.
The Maharshi gave him also his cash box and
taught him to keep accounts, and never re-
CHILDHOOD TRAINING 51
preached him for mistakes. What Tagore says
about the training he received from his far-
sighted father we commend to parents and edu-
cators: "Once in a while, with a stick in hand,
I would rove from one mountain to another, but
father never showed the least anxiety on my
account. I noticed that up to his last days he
never stood in the way of my freedom. I have
had occasion to do many things against his wish
and liking. He could have easily punished me
by way of correction, but he never did. He
used to wait for the unfolding of the truth
within me, for he knew that to accept truth one
must learn to love it spontaneously. He knew
also that if one travelled far away from truth,
still he might, some day, find his way back to
it, but if external and artificial punishment
compelled one blindly to follow the supposed
truth, the way back to the real truth was eter-
nally blocked. ... He was never afraid that
I would make mistakes, he was never perturbed
at the prospect of my suffering through mis-
52 A TRUANT
takes. He used to hold lofty ideals before me,
but he never lifted the rod of chastisement."
When in the Himalayas, Rabindranath was
only a boy of eleven summers, and he had al-
ready finished reading the most important books
in Bengali. The next year his mother died,
and his love for her now went to reinforce his
worship of nature. When his father sent him
back to Calcutta, his elder brothers at home re-
turned him to school again, against his repeated
remonstrances. "After this trip," says Tagore,
"to the Himalayas, school became all the more
unbearable." But he outwitted his guardians
by playing truant. At last he was taken out of
school in disgust, and his eldest sister remarked
in despair: "We all expected that Rabi would
make a mark in the world; but all our hopes
have been nipped in the bud by the wayward-
ness of this boy — and now he will be the only
unsuccessful man in the family."
Once out of school, he devoted his whole time
to artistic pursuits, and at the age of fourteen
EXCELLENT ACTOR 53
wrote "Balmiki-Prativa" — a musical drama
which has been published at the beginning of his
book of songs, entitled "Gan." In its presenta-
tion Tagore took the prominent part of Balmiki
and his niece Prativa took the part of the hero-
ine. It may be mentioned, by the way, that
Tagore still takes part in his school plays; and
it is said by dramatic critics that, had he chosen
the stage, he would have been one of the great-
est Bengali actors.
His guardians, not satisfied with his fruitless
pursuit, decided to send him to London to study
for the bar. The Maharshi gave his unwilling
consent. The call of the unknown hastened
Rabindranath's departure for London. But
once there, his spirit again revolted against com-
pulsory study, and within a year he returned to
his beloved Bengal.
CHAPTER II
ROMANTIC YOUTH REALISTIC POEMS
Now a full-fledged young man of eighteen, and
brimming with the wine of youth, his passions
and emotions ran riot, and he could only see
love and romance. The same nature, the same
people, the same, life; yet everything looked
different to him. He was at a loss to know
whether it was himself or the world that had
changed; and it did not take him long to dis-
cover that as he changed first, so the world
changed to keep in touch with him. His boy-
hood mysticism returned to the forests and
flowers, the mountains and stars, from where it
originally emanated. He was no more a mys-
tic, but an uncompromising realist. And for
a time he became an epicure and bon-vivant;
fashionable dress — the finest of silk robes — de-
licious dishes, ardent romances, love lyrics and
54
VAGARY OF YOUTH 55
literary productions, constituted his interests.
Tagore himself makes a frank confession on this
point in his Jiban Smriti: "At the dawn of
youth, revolt against nature, so characteristic
of that time, also captured my hauteur-filled
heart. I had no connection with the usual
spiritual current of our family. I was a
thing apart. I was only adding fuel to the
flaming furnace of my heart. It was in-
deed a purposeless vagary of youth." Youth-
ful Tagore was never a youthful Byron,
but he drank deep of the wine of youth. In
his fiftieth year Tagore, looking back on
this time of his life, wrote, with a rather
strong flavour of mysticism: "The period
of my life between the age of sixteen and
twenty-three was one of extreme wildness
and irregularity. As at the dawn of creation
when the demarcation between land and water
was not pronounced, huge-bodied and strange-
looking amphibious animals u.sui to rove in the
primitive forests full of branchless trees, so at
56 EXCESS OF LICENSE
the dawn of youth my inner longings assumed
gigantic proportions, and wonderful forms of
chiaroscuro used to roam in the shade of an un-
known, pathless, and endless wilderness. These
longings did not know themselves, nor did they
know the purpose of their existence. The
reason of their not knowing themselves was re-
sponsible for their attempt, at every step, to
imitate something else. . . .
"As the attempt of a baby's teeth to express
themselves causes the fire of fever in the entire
system of the baby, and the fever is allayed
only when the sharp teeth can bite and take
revenge on eatable things, so before the passion-
ate longings of the adolescent heart find ade-
quate expression, and establish relationship with
the outer-world, they cause excruciating pain.
During that period the untruth of things, feel-
ing the pangs of its separation from truth, used
to console itself by excess of license."
What a poetic way of expressing a simple
thing ! The poet has embodied this idea in the
THE MUSK-DEER RUNS 57
poem, "The Gleaming Vision of Youth," which
has appeared in his own translation in "The
Gardener" :
"I run as the musk-deer runs in the shadow of
the forest, mad with his own perfume.
The night is the night of Mid-May, the breeze
is the breeze of the south.
I lose my way and I wander, I seek what I can-
not get, I get what I do not seek.
From my heart comes out and dances the image
of my own desire.
The gleaming vision flits on.
I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me
astray.
I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not
seek." *
It was at this time when the "deer was run-
ning mad with its own perfume," that Tagore
wrote such poems as "Despair of Hope" and
"Lamentation of Joy." The latter may be
translated thus :
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
58 LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
"With a long-drawn sigh, Joy opened his
languorous eyes and said: 'I am all alone in
such a moon-kissed night,' and soon all his
thoughts bloomed in the song — 'I am fearfully
alone, I have nobody to call my own — I am all
alone, I am all alone.'
"I approached him and gently asked:
" 'Whom do you expect to comfort you,
Joy?'
"Joy began to weep and said:
" 'Love, Love, Love, my friend.'
"Joy continued: 'I would fain put an end
to my existence and re-incarnate myself as sor-
row.'
" 'Why this wild desperation, Joy*?' I asked.
" 'Why, I am all alone, all alone, I have no-
body to call my own.'
" 'Whom would you be happy to get, whom
does your heart pant for, Joy*?' I inquired.
"Again tears glistened in his eyes and he
said:
" 'Love, Love, my friend, Love alone.' "
THE POET OF LOVE
59
Tagore is a profound philosopher, a spiritual
and patriotic leader, an historical investigator,
a singer and composer, an able editor (having
successfully edited four different magazines,
Sadhana, Bangadarshan, Bharati and Tattwa-
bodhini), a far-sighted educator, and an ideal
administrator, but he is above all the poet of
love. Love flows from his heart, mind and soul
in a continuous stream, assuming different
forms in its windings from the gross to the spir-
itual, from the known to the unknown, from the
finite to the infinite. He interprets love in all
its multiform expressions — the love of mother,
of son, husband, wife, lover, beloved, patriot,
the Dionysian, the nature-drunk, and the God-
frenzied. Each and every one of these he por-
trays with his characteristic softness of touch
that recalls the lyrics of Theophile Gautier, and
with the exquisite felicity of Shelley and Keats.
His lyrics carry within them emotions that
thrill, enrapture and cause every fibre of a
human being to ache with joy that almost stops
60 PREM
the throbbing of the heart and draws tears to
the eyes.
Expression of love is so natural to him be-
cause of the fact that he has passed through all
the phases of love and life. Like the prose-
poet Tolstoy, he has travelled from the worship
of the senses to the quiet of sainthood. He un-
derstands the thrills of love, the romantic pas-
sion, the gloom of disappointment, the depth of
despair, the profundity of quiet, and the ecstatic
realisation of "being," "intelligence" and
"bliss" (sat, chit, anandarn).
The realistic love poems of Tagore's youth
shocked many old-fashioned Hindu moralists,
who received them with disdain. They were
up in arms against Rabindranath, thinking that
he was likely to demoralise the youths of India
by the sensuousness of his love poems and songs.
They were afraid that he was going to intro-
duce the romanticism of the West, of Byron
and Shelley, in India, and to depart from the
classic severity of Indian literary treatment of
FO VULGARITY
61
the human passions. But they, in their over-
zealousness to preserve for the youths of India
the pleasures of Nirvanic bliss, forgot to take
notice of the fact that in the writings of the
young poet there could not be found anything
like the coarse vulgarity of an earlier poet,
Bharat Chandra Rai Gunakar, who was widely
read by the young Bengalees at that time.
I remember one day in a students' boarding
house in India when I was trying to sing to my-
self one of Mr. Tagore's songs, some of the
young men that were present shouted :
"What makes you sing that nautch-song1?"
When told that it was one of Rabi Babu's
songs they were more than surprised and would
not believe it until the printed verses were
shown. Then they all changed their mind and
confessed that it was quite proper to read or
sing anything that Rabi Babu wrote. The
song in prose translation reads :
"Hither, O beloved, come hither! step forth
62 "COME HITHER"
in this pleasure garden of mine and see where
my flowers are blowing in beauty. Gentle
breathes the west wind, laden with the perfume
of the blossoms. Here moonlight glimmers and
a silvery stream murmurs down the forest ways.
"Hither, O beloved, come hither ! for we shall
unfold the depths of our hearts gleaning the
beauty of the immortal flowers ; and in consum-
ing ecstasy weave garlands each for the other,
and watch the stars until they fade in the dawn.
"Beloved, in this joyous garden of ours we
shall ever dwell and sing songs in rapturous joy.
Here shall our hearts thrill in the mystery of
life. Yea, and the days and nights shall pass
as Visions of the Lord of Love, and we shall
dream together in a languor of everlasting de-
light."
Again, he sings thus, on the "Pensive Be-
loved."
"The young girl who sits by the window
alone has forgotten to garland the flowers for
"UNION" 63
her beloved. With her head resting on her hand
she seems entirely rapt, while about her the
gathered blossoms of the summer lie neg-
lected.
"For the breeze gently blows in to her, whis-
pering softly, caressingly, as she sits by the
window in a solemn rapture.
"The clouds fleet in the blue, and the birds
flutter in the forest ; and the odorous bakul blos-
soms fall intermittently before her eyes, yet
she is unregardful.
"But in sweet repose she smiles, for now the
tender chords of her heart stir melodiously in
the shadowland of dreams."
And again listen to his musings on the
"Union."
"Beloved, every part of my being craves for
the embrace of yours. My heart is heavy with
its own restlessness, and it yearns to repose on
your heart.
"My eyes linger on your eyes, and my lips
64 MEMORABLE PERIOD
long to faint upon yours, O my beloved, even
unto the ecstasy of death.
"My thirsty heart is crying bitterly for the
unveilment of your celestial form.
"My heart is deep in the ocean of being, and
I sit by the forbidding shore and moan forever.
"But to-day, beloved, we shall enter the mys-
teries of existence, our bosoms panting with
divine rapture; and thus my entire being shall
find its eternal union in thine."
This is the period of Sandhya Sangit — a
period when Mr. Tagore was free from the tra-
ditions of his family, a period when he was free
from the practice of writing poems on paper,
for he had been writing poems on a slate. He
wrote just as he liked and wiped his poems out
whenever he pleased. He did not have to write
to please friends, but he wrote to please himself.
Let Mr. Tagore speak for himself: "In the
history of my life as a poet, this period shall
ever remain most memorable to me. From the
A NOVEL STYLIST 65
standpoint of art the 'Sandhya Sangit' may not
be of exceptional value, for the poems in it are
unripe. Its language and thought, metre and
measure have not been able to express them-
selves adequately. Its paramount merit lies in
the fact that it embodies my freed and un-
restrained thoughts. So, though not of any
value to the critic, the value of the pleasure
is immeasurable to me."
Tagore was not only attacked for the sen-
suous nature of his poems, but he was attacked
as well as being a poor and novel stylist. He
was mercilessly attacked for having introduced
colloquialism in Bengali. Mr. Tagore replies
to his critics thus: "They were wont to call
me a poet of broken metre and lisping lan-
guage— all nebulous. Though these remarks
were very unpleasant to me at that time, still
they were not without foundation. Truly
those poems represented nothing of the cold
realities of this world. As I was reared within
the walls of absolute restrictions in my early
66 "SIMPLE AS A SONG"
childhood, I am not at all surprised that I had
no better material to entertain my muse with.
"But the critics also characterised my style
as a 'fashion' and a 'fad'. I am not at all
willing to accept this criticism without a pro-
test. Those elderly men that have splendid
eyesight often abuse the young men for using
the 'ornaments' of spectacles. The contempt
for short-sightedness is easy to bear, but the
reproach of feigned short-sightedness seems to
be intolerable."
Indeed, he has introduced many delicate new
metres, and new forms into Bengali poetic liter-
ature that have added to its grace. Like
Dante, casting tradition to the winds, he has
dared to speak to the people in the language
of the people; and as a result he is so clear
that men and women, and even children of all
walks of life can read or hear and understand
him readily. The young Bengali poets of to-
day are all imitating Tagore. So in the
present-day poetry there is to be found an im-
MEETS BANKIM 67
print, quite often a very poor one, of Tagore's
style. There is something about Tagore's style
and thought which permits a critic to detect the
author in the first line or two of a poem.
Tagore is unique in his own way, and this
"something" is inimitable.
All of a sudden amid showers of adverse
criticism Tagore received, quite accidentally, an
inspiration, an impetus that sustained his spirit
and spurred him on to achieve higher heights
and nobler flight in the realm of poetry. As the
meeting of Nietzsche with Wagner was a source
of inspiration to the former and of pleasure to
the latter; so the meeting of Rabindranath with
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya, the greatest of
all Bengali novelists, was a source of inspiration
and encouragement to the young poet, and of
pleasure to the novelist. They met at a wed-
ding party at the home of Romesh Chandra
Dutt, the statesman, historian, and novelist.
Mr. Dutt, to do homage to the greatest literary
genius of Bengal, put a garland of flowers
68 TAGORE GARLANDED
round this prose poet's neck. Chattopadhya
immediately took the garland off and de-
corated Rabindranath with it, saying, "This gar-
land is due to him — have you read his 'Sandhya
Sangit' "?" Romesh Chandra replied in the neg-
ative, but Bankim Chandra lauded to the skies
some of the poems in the book. Such unstinted
praise from such a high source almost drew
tears of joy to the eyes of Rabindranath, and
made him forget all the pains of the darts of
unpleasant criticism from the general public.
This signal honour meant much more to him
than the Nobel Prize means to him now.
Like other men, Tagore was created with a
dual nature, — part sensuous and part spiritual.
His youthful mind was oscillating between the
twin currents. Even though the sensuous was
the uppermost for a time, the other never de-
serted him altogether. There was always that
ineffable feeling of inherited spirituality. The
two tried to harmonise themselves and the story
of the struggle between the sensuous and the
THE SENSUOUS 69
spiritual within him found the fullest expres-
sion in his most exquisite love poem — "The
Beloved at Night and in the Morning," which
in our translation necessarily loses much of its
original beauty.
I
"Last night we were seated in a pleasure
garden in enchanting surroundings. The dark-
ness of the night was blanched with moon-
beams, and a soft wind robbed the flowers of
their fragrance.
"I held before your mouth the brimming cup
of the wine of youth. You looked at my eyes
and slowly took the cup in your hand, and your
kiss-charged lips blossomed into a faint but elo-
quent smile and sipped the cup of youth's wine;
and we both were intoxicated with love.
"I took off your veil with my hands, trem-
bling with an ecstatic nervousness, and then
placed your dear hands, tender as the lotus
leaves, next to my heart. Your eyes were half
70 THE SPIRITUAL
closed with the languor of love and you spoke
not a word. I unbound your hair and slowly
hid your radiant face within my heart.
"Beloved! In the moon-kissed night, with
smiling consent, you submitted to all the tyran-
nies of our first union of love."
II
"In this peaceful morning mellowed by pure
and fragrant air, I see you dressed in white
after your morning bath, as you walk swan-like
along the lonely Ganges. A flower-basket is
hanging from your left hand as you pluck
flowers with the other. I hear the distant
morning music of the temple, in this pure and
fragrant morning by the lonely river Ganges.
"Goddess ! a fresh vermilion line illumines the
parting of your hair, and a sanka bracelet
adorns your left wrist. Oh, in what a trans-
figured form you appear to me this morning!
Last night you were the sweet-heart of my
GODDESS DIVINE 71
pleasure garden, and this morning you appear
as my goddess divine.
"In this pure and fragrant morning by the
lonely river Ganges, I look at you from afar
with my head bowed hi reverent awe."
CHAPTER III
TRANSFORMATION PRACTICAL IDEALISM
DEVOTIONAL POEMS
TAGORE did not, however, have to struggle very
long to attain the highest truth. When the
time was ripe, the illumination came of itself
one morning, and the Divine Beloved revealed
himself quite unexpectedly and in a singular
way. The illumination came as it did to his
father or to St. Francis of Assisi, and the story
may be told in the poet's own beautiful Eng-
lish: "It was morning, I was watching the
sunrise in Free School street. A veil was sud-
denly drawn, and everything I saw became
luminous. The whole scene was one perfect
music, one marvellous rhythm. The houses in
the street, the children playing, all seemed part
of one luminous whole — inexpressibly glorious.
The vision went on for seven or eight days.
72
THE AWAKENING 73
Every one, even those who bored me, seemed
to lose their outer barrier of personality; and
I was full of gladness, full of love, for every
person and every tiniest thing. . . . That
morning in the Free School street was one of
the first things that gave me the inner vision,
and I have tried to explain it in my poems.
I have felt ever since that this is my goal in
life : to explain the fulness of life, in its beauty,
as perfection."
The whole day a poem flowed out spon-
taneously from his discovered self. This,
perhaps, is the most significant work of Ta-
gore. The poem — Nirjharer Sapna Bhang a
(Fountain Awakened from its Dream) though
not technically of the highest order, yet in
its rugged beauty and in the revelation of
the inner emotions of the poet on that his-
toric day, is a masterpiece. It is also sig-
nificant in that it throws light on the develop-
ment of the poetry and personality of Tagore.
In reading the following striking passages from
74 THE WORLD TREMBLES
it, one should remember that "Rabi" — the
shortened form of the poet's name — means "the
sun":
"I do not know how my life after all these
years could have such an awakening to-day.
Neither do I know how in the morning the
true rays of the sun (Rabi) could have en-
tered my heart or the music of the morning
bird could have penetrated into the very depth
of the darkness of my heart's core.
"Now that my whole being is once awakened,
I cannot control the desires and longings of my
heart. Look! the whole world is trembling to
its very foundation, the hills and the mountains
are falling in confusion; and the foam-crested
waves are swelling in anger as if to tear out
the heart of this earth to wreak vengeance for
its restricted liberty. The ocean, rendered bois-
terously jubilant by the touch of the rays of
the morning sun, desires to engulf the world in
its pursuit for self-fulfilment.
THE OCEAN CALLS! 75
"Oh, cruel Providence! why hast Thou put
even oceans under restraint*?"
"I — the liberated I — shall shower tenderness
all around me. With dishevelled hair and
flowers in my hands, and with a radiance that
will dim the sun, I shall be borne on the wings
of rainbows and travel from mountain to moun-
tain and from planet to planet; or I shall as-
sume the form of rivers and thus flow from one
country to another to sing my message, my song.
"Something inexplicable has happened, my
whole being is aching with an awakening, and
I hear at a distance the call of the Great Ocean.
Yes, it calls! it calls! the Great Ocean calls!
And yet, and yet — at this moment, why all
these walls around me! Still my heart hears
the call that says:
" 'Who wishes to come"? Who wishes to
come? Those that wish to come after break-
ing the stone walls of bondage, after bedewing
the hard world with love, after washing the
76 "I COME"
forests into new green, after setting the flowers
abloom; after comforting the broken heart of
the world with the 'last breath of your life — if
then any soul wishes to enter my life, then
come, come.'
"I come, I come — where is He, and where is
His country*? I do not care, I shall pour forth
the last drop of the water of my life in this
world, and I shall sing tender songs; and my
anxiety-stricken heart shall mingle its life with
the life of the distant Ocean. Thus my song
shall end.
"But bondage again, bondage all around me !
What a terrible prison is this ! Let blows fall
upon blows and thus break, break the prison;
for the morning birds have sung a strange song
and the true rays of the sun have entered my
heart to-day."
In the original, this poem has something of
the Miltonic force which is usually so lacking
in the writings of Tagore, but which invig-
REUNION
77
orates the writings of the poets like Madhusu-
dan Datta, Nabin Chandra Sen and Dwijendra
Lai Roy.
Though Tagore's subsequent visit to the
Himalayas failed to emphasise the vision, still
it was not altogether lost in him. It trans-
formed his entire life as did the vision on the
banks of the Ganges transform the life of his
father. It was a change, a crisis, yes, a con-
valescence. Tagore came out of it a better
man, a deeper thinker, and a universal poet.
When the ardour of the new awakening
cooled a little, Tagore graphically recorded the
history of this period of his life in his poem — •
"The Reunion" :
"Mother nature ! in my childhood days I used
to play in thy affectionate lap and be happy.
Then something happened and I went astray
and strayed farthest away from you, only to
enter and lose my way in the boundless wilder-
ness of my youthful heart. There is no sun,
78 REUNION
no moon, no planet, and certainly no stars. It
is enveloped in Cimmerian darkness, and con-
fusion is the order of the place; and therein I
was the only benighted wayfarer.
"I left you behind, dear nature ! and entered
the wilderness to spend many, many days of
discomfort and unrest.
"But now, a single bird has shown me the
way out of the wilderness to the shore of the
endless ocean of bliss.
"The flowers blossom, the birds fly again, and
the sky is resonant with the music of the
spheres. The waves of life rise and fall on
all sides as the sunbeams dance on them.
"The gentle breeze blows and light smiles on
all sides, and the boundless sky watches over
them all. I look again all around me to see
the marvellous manifestation of nature.
"Some come near me, some call me 'friend/
and others want to play with me. Some smile,
others sing; some come, others go, oh, what a
panorama of inexpressible joy!
IMPOSING MUSIC 79
"I understand quite well, mother nature, that
after such a long time you have again dis-
covered me, your lost child. That is why you
have taken me in your affectionate embrace, and
have begun to sing your imposing music, rich in
harmony and melody. That is why the gentle
zephyr rushes towards me and embraces me
repeatedly; that is why the sky in its exuber-
ance of joy showers the very morning itself on
my head; that is why the clouds from the eas-
tern gate of the horizon gaze on my face so
intently; that, again, is why the entire universe
is beckoning me again and again to hide my
head in her bosom, hers alone."
Whenever they experience anything super-
natural, the Hindus are wont to turn ascetic.
Prince Gautama heard the call, left the world
and all that it held for him, became an ascetic,
and afterwards the Buddha; Chaitanya Dev
heard the call, left his dear mother, wife and
child to gain salvation by renouncing the world.
8o
But Rabindranath heard the call and clung to
the world more closely than ever, and his at-
tachment for the world ripened into selfless love
for the oppressed and suffering millions of
famine-stricken India. He sings in Gitan-
jali:
"Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand
bonds of delight.
Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught
of thy wine of various colours and fragrance,
filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
My world will light its hundred different
lamps with thy flame and place them before the
altar of thy temple.
No, I will never shut the doors of my senses.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch
will hear thy delight.
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumina-
tion of joy, and all my desires ripen into fruits
of love." *
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
"THEY ARE GOD" 81
The contrast between the idea of renuncia-
tion and the non-dualistic philosophy he most
exquisitely brings out in a poem which he thus
translates:
"At midnight the would-be ascetic an-
nounced :
'This is the time to give up my home and
seek for God. Ah, who has held me so long
in delusion here?'
God whispered, T, but the ears of the man
were stopped.
With a baby asleep at her breast lay his
wife, peacefully sleeping on one side of the
bed.
The man said, 'Who are ye that have fooled
me so long*?'
The voice said again, They are God,' but
he heard it not.
The baby cried out in its dream, nestling
close to its mother.
God commanded, 'Stop, fool, leave not thy
home,' but still he heard not.
82 WALT WHITMAN
God sighed and complained, 'Why does my
servant wander to seek me, forsaking me1?' '
Compare with this these lines of Walt Whit-
man, the American Vedantist :
I have said that the soul is not more than the
body,
And I have said that the body is not more than
the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than
one's self is."
So instead of being an ascetic Tagore be-
came a pragmatist, for he held, as he holds to-
day, that the "greater cannot be great with-
out the small, the infinite is only the fullest
expression of the finite, and that there is no lib-
eration without love. Wherever love is there
dwells the Infinite within the finite." What
Henry James says of Browning may be said of
Tagore with more appropriateness: "The
meeting point of God and man is love. Love,
in other words, is, for the poet, the supreme
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
LOVE IS SUBLIME 83
principle both of morality and religion. Love,
once for all, solves that contradiction between
them, which, both in theory and in practice,
has embarrassed the world for so many ages.
Love is the sublimest conception attainable by
man; a life inspired by it is the most perfect
form of goodness he can conceive; therefore,
love is, at the same moment, man's moral ideal,
and the very essence of Godhood. A life actu-
ated by love is divine, whatever other limita-
tions it may have. Such is the perfection and
glory of this emotion, when it has been trans-
lated into a self-conscious motive and become
the energy of an intelligent will, that it lifts
him who owns it to the sublimest heights of
being.
" Tor the loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his world, I will dare to say.' '
Holding that the soul finds its fullest ex-
pression in work well done, for, as Carlyle says :
84 WORK IS RELIGION
"All true work is religion," he thus writes in
Sadhana: "It is only when we wholly submit
to the bonds of truth that we fully gain the joy
of freedom. And how? As does the string
that is bound to the harp. When the harp is
truly strung, when there is not the slightest lax-
ity in the strength of the bond, then only does
music result; and the string transcending it-
self in its melody finds at every chord its true
freedom. It is because it is bound by such hard
and fast rules on the one side that it can find
this range of freedom in music on the other." *
Compare this with what he wrote about
twenty years ago in a letter : "The more I take
varied work on my hands, the more I learn
to love and respect work. That work was a
great thing, I knew only as a copy-book maxim.
Now I am realising in life that man's true ful-
filment is in his work. It is through work that
I know things and people, and stand face to
face with the world of action. I have landed
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
NO TIME FOR SORROW 85
in that realm where men meet, even though
they live far apart. I am realising in life the
vast liberality of the sphere of action and with
it the union of man in a chain of mutual help-
fulness. The superb grandeur of work is this :
that for the sake of duty one has to sacrifice his
personal joys and sorrows. I remember one
day while I was living at Sajadpur our butler
was late in getting to his work in the morning
and I rebuked him for that. He saluted me as
usual and said in a mournful accent : 'My eight-
year-old daughter died last night'; and he at
once began his morning duty. In the hard
field of duty there is not even time for sorrow.
What good would it do even if we had the
time1? If duty can take one's mind away from
Maya and lead him onward to a higher plane
of thought, good and well. . . .
"In this world a bridge of hard stone is arch-
ing over joys and sorrows, and over it the ex-
press train of duty loaded with myriads of men
and women are following its iron rail with
86 "I LOVE THIS WORLD"
lightning rapidity. Except at appointed sta-
tions, it never stops anywhere for anybody. In
the cruelty of duty lies the terrible consolation
of man."
His father, the Maharshi Debendranath
Tagore, was busy solving the problems of the
next world, but the poet Tagore, all through
his life of varied experiences, has striven to help
evolve this world to the status of heaven — to
unite heaven and earth. He loves the world
as passionately as a miser loves money.' He
even doubts the ability of heaven to supply the
blessings of life which this dear earth provides
her children with. He thus expresses his love
for the world: "Oh, how I love this world
that is lying so quietly! I feel like hugging
it with all its trees and flowers, rivers and
plains, noise and quiet, mornings and evenings.
I often wonder if heaven itself could give us
all the blessings we are enjoying in this world.
How could heaven give us anything like this,
the treasure of such human beings in the mak-
DAUGHTER OF DIVINITY 87
ing, so full of tenderness, weakness and love*?
"This earth-mother of ours has carried us
in her arms, and presented us with her fields
full of golden crops, her affectionate rivers and
rivulets, her homesteads, where smiles of joy
and tears of sorrow mingle to make them per-
fectly lovely. . . .
"Oh, how I love this world! I see on her
forehead the furrows of pathos, and she seems
to whisper in my ear: 'I am the daughter of
Divinity, but I have not his power ; I love, but
I cannot protect; I can begin but never com-
plete; I give birth, but cannot rescue from the
hands of death.' This helplessness, this im-
potency, this incompleteness, and this consum-
ing anxiety inseparable from love make me
jealous of heaven, and I love the world all the
more."
And again, he thus speaks of his more in-
timate relationship with the world : "This world
is always new to me. I feel as if we are like
friends who have loved each other through
88 PRIMORDIAL PAST
many births and re-births. Our friendship is
deep-seated and far-reaching. I well remember
those days of the primordial past, when this
new-born earth first lifted its head from above
the deep and began to worship the young sun
overhead, and I, in exuberance of this earth's
energy, came into this new planet as a budding
tree. There was no other animate thing in the
entire world. The vast ocean was restless and,
like a love-frenzied mother, every now and then
was wont to devour the whole body of the
newly-born earth-babe with a passionate em-
brace. I, then, used to drink the sun's rays
to my heart's content, and like a baby, my
whole body laughed in joy, but knew not why;
and like a tree with a thousand roots, used to
suckle at the breast of this my dear earth-
mother. My internal joy blossomed to the out- *
side world as flowers and foliage. The shadow
of the clouds in the sky used to touch these
flowers and the buds with the gentle touch of
a loving friend. Many a time after that, in
"SHE LOVES ME" 89
new ages, I have been incarnated on this earth.
When we two look at each other, the faithful
memories of the dim past crowd our minds. . . .
She loves me like her son, but now that she
has so many sons and daughters she cannot
bestow her entire time and affection on me alone,
as she used to do when I was the only child
in the family; but I still kiss her feet and em-
brace her as ever."
That is why he loves to "plunge in quietness,
as the music of the river, the gentle breeze of
the evening, the splendour of the starry firma-
ment help his fancy to weave garlands of raptu-
rous joy, and he thus spends hours together,
wrapped within himself rather lost in the uni-
verse."
At the time of the vision which helped him
to find himself, Tagore was about thirty years
old. With the change in the man, changed the
tone of his poems. Now, filled to the brim
with the love of God, and looking upon this
universe as the visible expression of God's
90 YEATS
love, he touches nothing, he writes nothing, that
he does not saturate with the thought of divine
love, of spiritual life, and of eternal beauty.
The sun, the moon, the stars in heaven, and the
trees and flowers on earth speak a language of
love for the Supreme Being whose handiwork
they are. William Butler Yeats speaks of the
spirituality of the songs in the Gitanjali in these
words: "In all his poems there is one single
theme : the love of God. When I tried to find
anything western which might compare with
the works of Tagore, I thought of 'The Imita-
tion of Christ,' by Thomas a Kempis. It is
like, yet between the work of the two men there
is a world of difference. Thomas a Kempis
was obsessed by the thought of sin; he wrote in
terrible imagery. Mr. Tagore has as little
thought of sin as a child playing with a top.
His poems have stirred my blood as nothing has
for years."
It is after this that his career as a true artist
began. Things of permanent nature began to
RABIXDRANATH TAGORE, AGE THIRTY.
SONGS OF DEVOTION 91
pour out from his mind and pen with perfect
spontaneity. His Brabmo Sangits (religious
songs) became deeper in thought and more uni-
versal in character — songs that every morning,
noon and night draw tears from the eyes of
many devotees. They are songs not so much to
sing as to feel. Many a soul is suffused with
devotional emotion by reciting a single passage
from any one of them. To translate three from
the most popular of his Brahmo songs :
I
"My (rod! why does my benumbed soul
grovel in the dust all the time, and not awake to
the fullest consciousness of its potentiality*?
"Myriads of watchful stars are wide awake
in the dark-blue of the night. The birds sing
sweet, and flowers blow fragrant in the forest,
and lo ! how the moon smiles in joy. And yet,
and yet, why does not thy grace dawn upon my
soul? why do I not see your face lit with love
divine*?
92 FLEETING GLANCE
"I receive the unsolicited love of mother and
the blessings of a home sweetened by the pres-
ence of dear ones. You are ever near me in so
many forms, and still why does my soul crave
to stray far away from you*?"
II
"I can see you just once in a while. Why
can I not see you all the time1? Why do the
clouds of passions and idle desires in my heart
obscure the full view of your face divine?
"When I catch a fleeting glance of you, I
tremble lest I lose you again; but — and this is
strange — to my sorrow you pass away instantly,
even as you appeared, like the lightning.
"Tell me, Beloved, what can I do to keep you
permanently before my eyes — yes, just before
my eyes, for how can I have so much love as
to hold you in my heart*?
"If you so command, I will sacrifice every-
thing for the sake of your blessed self."
THE POLAR STAR 93
III
"I have made you the polar star of my exist-
ence, never again can I lose my way in the voy-
age of life.
"Wherever I go you are always there to
shower your beneficence all around me. Your
face is ever present before my mind's eyes. I
almost lose my mind, if I lose sight of you even
for a moment.
"Whenever my heart is about to go astray,
just a glance of you makes it feel ashamed of
itself."
In the religious songs of the Gitanjali,
Tagore reaches the summit of his lyric and
spiritual genius, and it is necessary to incorpo-
rate here at least one or two of them. These
songs have moved not only the heart of Yeats,
but the warm hearts of the people df chilly
Sweden, and has given the Bengalee poet the
status of a world poet. These songs from a
94 RAINY JULY
"heathen" poet are to-day being read in Chris-
tian lands from pulpits, and sung by children
in Sunday schools, and by artists in concerts.
Without placing these poems above the
writings of Dante and St. John of the Cross,
Shelley and Swinburne, Wordsworth, Milton,
and the whole gamut of poets of insular and
continental Europe, as an English woman nov-
elist has been pleased to do, it may safely be
asserted that the lyrics of the Gitanjali are some
of the rarest treasures of poetic and mystic lit-
erature of the world. Here follow two of such
poems. In the first he thus addresses God as a
passer-by :
"In the deep shadows of the rainy July, with
secret steps, thou walkest, silent as night, elud-
ing all watchers.
"To-day the morning has closed its eyes, heed-
less of the insistent calls of the loud east wind,
and a thick veil has been drawn over the ever-
wakeful blue sky.
"The woodlands have hushed their songs, and
THOU ART THE SKY 95
doors are all shut at every house. Thou art the
solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh,
my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are
open in my house — do not pass by like a
dream." *
In the second he dwells on the mysteries of
the final home of the soul :
"Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as
well.
"O thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy
love that encloses the soul with colours and
sounds and odours.
"There comes the morning with the golden
basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of
beauty, silently to crown the earth.
"And there comes the evening over the lonely
meadows deserted by herds, through trackless
paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her
golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
"But there, where spreads the infinite sky for
the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
96 BRAHMO SOMAJ
white radiance. There is no day nor night, nor
form nor colour, and never, never a word." *
Though Tagore's religious songs are superb
in form and thought, yet it must be confessed
that they are not the religious songs of the
masses of Bengal. The masses have no compre-
hension of the Brahmo Somaj — the religious
Unitarians of Hindusthan. It is the songs of
Ramprosad, the Kirtans of the Vaishnavas, and
the padabalis of the Vaishnava poets, that move
the masses as nothing else can do. The masses
of Bengal sing of Radha, Krishna, and Kali.
Just "You" or "Thee" or "Brahma" does not
have any tangible effect on the minds of the
people at large. One might sing Tagore's re-
ligious songs to a Bengali farmer, either a
Vaishnava or shakta, but he would listen un-
moved; and might even ask the singer to stop
if he happened to detect it to be a Brahmo song.
The orthodox hatred for Brahmo disregard for
Hindu mythology is very intense. But a song
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
DINESH SEN 97
on Radha, or Krishna or Kali will send him
into ecstasies. The popular mind seeks to shun
the abstract. It wants visible imagery of God.
It cannot love what even the imagination of
poets cannot comprehend.
Dinesh Chandra Sen tells us in his book on
Bengali literature how once he heard a seventy-
year-old Vaishnava devotee sing the following
song of Chandi Das :
"Dark is the night and thick are the clouds.
How could you, my beloved, come by the path
in such anight*?
There in the garden, I see him standing in
the rain.
My heart breaks at the sight thereof."
"I say to you, my maidens, for many virtues
of mine, my love has graciously come here to
meet me.
"Within the house are the elders, and my
sister-in-law is very cruel ; I could not immedi-
ately run out to meet him.
98 HINDU DEVOTEE
"Alas, what anguish and pain have I not
caused him by beckoning him to come !
"When I see how earnestly he loves me, fain
would I bear the load of infamy on my head
and set fire to my house.
"He takes as happiness all the troubles he
has suffered for my sake; and he is only sorry,
if he sees me sad."
Mr. Sen says: "While the old man was
singing, I suddenly heard his voice become
choked with tears, and he could not proceed any
more. On his coming to himself after this dis-
play of feeling, I asked him the cause of his
tears. He said it was the song. The song, I
said, described an ordinary love-affair, and
where could be the pathos in it that gave occa-
sion for such an outburst of feeling in an old
man*?
"He explained that he did not consider it an
ordinary love-song. Here is his interpreta-
tion:
"DARK IS THE NIGHT" 99
I am full of sins. My soul is covered with
darkness. In deep distress I beckoned Him to
come to me. The merciful God came. I
found him waiting for me at the gate of my
house. It cannot be any pleasure to Him to
come to a great sinner like me, — the path is
foul, but by supreme good fortune the merciful
God took it. The world I live in has left no
door open for Him. Relations and friends
laugh, or even are hostile, but remembering His
great mercy what can a sinner do, except desert
his house and all, court any abuse of the world,
and turn a S 'any asm! The thought of his
mercy choked my voice — Oh, dark is the night,
and thick are the clouds, how could you, my
beloved, come by the path1? But he exposes
himself to the rain because in order to help the
sinner He is ready to suffer.' '
And again, the different songs telling the
stories of love between Radha and Krishna as
are shown in the following quotation from Mr.
Sen's book, move the masses :
loo PLEASANT REVENGE
"Krishna comes in the guise of a woman-
physician and touches her hand to feel the pulse.
He comes as a magician and the women of the
village assemble behind the screens to witness
his feats. His labours are rewarded by one
stolen glance of Radha's face. He comes to
her as a barber-wife and obtains a minute's
interview ; as a nun, and on the pretext of giving
a blessing, whispers a word of love to her.
Radha also goes to meet him in disguise of a
shepherd boy."
Whether the orthodox Bengalees admire Ta-
gore's religious poems or not, it admits of no
doubt that they are superb in their transparent
beauty. Now a chance presented itself to the
poet to take a pleasant revenge on his father.
Many years before this the Maharshi read one
of the boyhood religious songs of his son and
laughed. Tagore remembered that all these
years. All of a sudden, the Maharshi called
Rabindranath to the city where he was residing
GOD IS EVERYWHERE 101
at that time, just to hear a particular song,
freshly composed, from the mouth of its author.
When asked, young Tagore began to sing:
"Nawyawn tomarah payna dekhitay,
Tumi rawyacho nawyawnay nawyawnay!
Hridawai tomarah payna janitay,
Hridaway rawyacho gopawnay !" etc.
The song, in part, translates as follows:
"My eyes cannot see you, yet you are always
before my eyes. My mind cannot comprehend
you, yet in silence you make me feel your pres-
ence all the time.
"Like that of a madman, my mind rushes
hither and yon, charged with the worldly long-
ings of my heart. But I can see your loving
eyes ever keeping watchful vigilance on me in
sleep or in dream.
"The friendless and the forlorn can always
feel sure of yourself, and of your love. Even
the homeless vagabond has the consolation of
102 THE FIRST "NOBEL PRIZE"
having his home in the one you have built for
us all."
"I know that I cannot live without you, for
you are the life of my life. The more I get of
you, the more I want; the more I know about
you, the less I know of you.
"But I know that in age after age and in
recurring births you will always stand by me;
• for there is nothing to stand between you and
me — you and I are one."
The song over, the Maharshi said with a sig-
nificant tremor in his voice: "Unfortunately
for the country, our English rulers do not ap-
preciate or encourage our arts, our industries
and our culture, but here is an humble recog-
nition of your genius by your father; the song
is superb." And the old man handed him a
slip of paper. The poet-singer opened it to
find a check for 500 rupees (about $165.00)
for a poem of twenty-four lines. This was
Tagore's first "Nobel Prize" for poetry.
CHAPTER IV
AT SILAIDAH
DWIJENDRANATH TAGORE, the eldest brother
of Rabindranath, is a philosopher. He has no
idea of business or the business world. He,
however, was sent to manage the country estate
of the Maharshi. No sooner had he reached
his place of business than he noticed the pov-
erty of the farmers, many of whom came to
him and told the story of their sorrow. The
philosopher-manager was moved, and he at once
telegraphed to his father to send money to help
the poor farmers. The Maharshi thought that
a good manager should manage things from
within in such a way that things would be satis-
factory to both the zamindar and the rayat.
So, the philosopher was called back, and the
Maharshi decided to send his youngest son,
whom he trained to keep accounts during his
103
104 THE PADMA
boyhood trip to the Himalayas, to take charge
of the management of the family Zamindary in
Bengal villages. The young poet accepted the
offer, and for years, off and on, lived in a house-
boat on the Padma and its branches in closest
touch with nature. He observed, studied,
loved and caressed nature in all its aspects. In
two different letters from Silaidah, he thus
plainly speaks of his life in the house-boat and
of his love for the Padma River:
"I am in my house-boat now. Here I am the
supreme master of myself and of my time.
The boat is like my old dressing-gown — it is so
comfortable. Here I think as I like, weave my
fancies according to my own patterns, read and
write as much as I like. I sit on a chair and
place my legs on a table, and take a mental
plunge in the sky-embroidered and light-
diffused lazy days. . . . Truly, I love this
Padma River very dearly, it is so wild, so undo-
mesticated. I feel like riding on its back and
patting it caressingly on its neck. ... I no
NATURE 105
more like to take a part before the footlights of
the stage of publicity. I rather feel like doing
my duty in silent solitude amid these trans-
parent days that we have here. . . . Here man
is insignificant, but nature great and imposing.
The things we see around us are of such a na-
ture that one cannot create to-day, mend to-mor-
row and throw them off the day after. These
things stand permanent, amidst birth and death,
action and inaction, change and changelessness.
When I come to the countryside I do not look
upon man as anything separate from nature.
Just as rivers flow by through many strange
lands, similarly the current of humanity, too, is
incessantly following its zig-zag path through
dense forests, lonely meadows, and crowded
cities, always accompanied by its divine music.
It is not quite right to make the river sing, 'Man
may come, man may go, but I go on forever' —
for man, too, is going on forever with his thou-
sand branches and tributaries. He has his one
end attached to the root of birth, and the other
io6 MELODY OF NATURE
to the ocean of death — both enveloped in the
mysterious darkness; and between these two
extremes lie life, labour and love."
And again, Tagore writes : "Before entering
on a journey on the Padma, I feel nervous lest
she, on account of constant company, look unat-
tractive to me. But the moment I float on the
river, all my apprehensions vanish into nothing-
ness. The kul kul noise of the ripples, the
gentle tremor of the boat, the light-bathed sky,
the vast expanse of soft blue water, the fresh
foliage of trees albng the banks of the river —
an ensemble of colour, music, dance and beauty
lend radiance to the superb melody of nature.
All these awaken a keen interest and a deep de-
light in my mind."
The profound influence of this daughter of
the Ganges and the vast plains that stretch
away from its banks, is reflected in all his sub-
sequent writings. Here he imbibed the spirit
which made him clothe his "golden Bengal" in
an idealistic garb, and gave him a deeper sense
ON THE GORAI 107
of the presence of the Infinite in the basic reali-
ties of life. In one of his letters he thus speaks
of his love for Bengal : "Every day after tak-
ing my evening bath I take a long walk along
the river. Then I make a bed on my jolly
boat, and lie down flat on my back in the silent
darkness of the evening, and ask myself : 'Shall
I again be able to be born under such starry
skies'? Shall I ever again in another life, be able
to lie down this way on a jolly boat on the river
Gorai in our "golden Bengal"?' I am always
afraid that I may never have a chance to enjoy
such an evening again. I may be born in dif-
ferent environments and with a different turn of
mind altogether. I may get such an evening,
but the evening may not lie so affectionately on
my breast, covering me with her dark dis-
hevelled hair. But I am afraid most of all that
I may be bom in Europe. For there, I shall
not be able to lie down this way with my whole
body and soul looking upward. There I may
have to drudge in a factory, in a bank or in a
io8 "GOLDEN BENGAL"
parliament. As the streets in the European
cities are made of hard stone, brick and mortar,
to be made fit for commerce and transportation,
so the human heart becomes hardened and best
suited for business. In the hard pavement of
their heart there is not the slightest opening for
a tender tendril, or a single blade of useless
grass to grow. Everything is made bare and
strong. I think that in comparison to that, this
kind of fanciful, lazy, sky-filled and self-search-
ing mind is not a jot the less glorious or praise-
worthy."
Thus Tagore sings his superb song — "Golden
Bengal" — which is being sung with renewed
fervour ever since the inauguration of the new
nationalist movement in India :
"I love you, my golden Bengal, for your sky
and your air always play on the harp of my
heart.
"In the spring, your mango groves breathe
forth the maddening perfume of the blossoms,
"GOLDEN BENGAL" 109
and in the autumn your harvest fields smile
in the bliss of fruition. Mother darling! O,
how inexpressibly sweet is your love which has
clothed the banks of rivers, and the shades of
trees in such a superb attire. Mother, nothing
sounds sweeter in my ears than the woods that
are sanctified by the touch of the breath of your
lips. And my eyes begin to float in tears when
I notice the least trace of pathos on your face.
I have enjoyed my childhood days in your play-
house, and now I feel fortunate whenever I
touch a particle of your dust.
"At dusk when the lamps are lit in the
homes, I leave my toils and games, and rush to
your loving lap. In the village where cattle
graze gently in the fields on the way to the
ferry, where birds sing joyously on trees — trees
that cast their shadows to soothe the burning
heat of the day, and where the courtyards are
radiant with the sheaves of harvested rice, I
pass the days of my life, feeling fraternal with
your cowherds and peasants.
no HEALS THE SICK
"Mother, reverence bows my head to be hal-
lowed by the dust of your feet, which I hold
more precious than the dust of diamonds and
emeralds; and I am prepared to make an offer-
ing of all I have at thy feet."
This is the Bengali counterpart of,
"I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above," etc.
In the farming communities, he came in
touch with the illiterate but intelligent, high-
thinking and devout Indian peasants, and was
inspired by their simplicity of spirit and devo-
tional idealism. In return, he looked after
their material needs, and administered justice
"tempered with mercy." To help them in sick-
ness, he privately took up the study of harmless
homeopathy, and at any hour of the day or
night would visit the sick and give medicine.
SOCIALISM 111
But the tax-created poverty and absolute help-
lessness of the farmers made him uneasy in his
waking hours and haunted him in his dreams.
Tagore thus expresses his sorrow for the farmer :
"I feel a heart-felt sorrow when I look at the
Indian farmers. They are so helpless, as if they
were babies of mother earth. They suffer from
hunger unless she feeds them with her own hands.
When her breast is dry, they just cry; and again
if they get a little to eat, they forget all about
their past sorrows in a moment. I do not ex-
actly know whether the socialist's demand for
the distribution of wealth is possible or not.
But if it is absolutely impracticable, then God's
laws must be exceedingly cruel, and men hope-
lessly unfortunate. If sorrow has to remain in
this world, let it stay, but there must be some
glimpses of possibilities by which the higher
nature of man may strive and hope for the
amelioration of such conditions. They state a
very cruel theory who claim that it is a dream
to think of the possibility of distributing the
112 MERCY
bare necessaries of life amongst mankind, and
that some men are predestined to starve without
any way out of it. It is a cruel theory to say
the least."
In a letter written on July 4, 1893, from his
house-boat, he says: "There is a flood here.
The rayats are carrying home unripe rice in their
boats. I hear their sighs and tales of sorrow.
The rice fields were all but ripe when this dis-
aster befell them. The unhappy farmers only
hope that there may be a few good grains in the
sheaves.
"In the work of the universe, mercy there
must be somewhere, otherwise how could we get
it? But it is pretty difficult to locate it. The
complaints of thousands of innocent and un-
fortunate men and women are reaching no high
tribunal. The rain is falling just as it pleases,
the river is flowing just as it wishes, no one can
petition and secure redress from nature. We
have to console our minds by saying that the
problem is beyond comprehension — but we have
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 113
to realise just the same that there is mercy and
justice in inscrutable laws of Providence."
Twenty years later, in the summer of 1913,
lecturing in London on the Problem of Evil,
Tagore thus offered a solution to the riddle of
evil in the world: "We exaggerate the impor-
tance of evil by imagining it at a standstill.
Could we collect the statistics of the immense
amount of death and putrefaction happening
every moment in this earth, they would appal
us. But evil is ever moving; with all its in-
calculable immensity it does not effectually clog
the current of our life; and we find that the
earth, water, and air remain sweet and pure for
living beings. All statistics consist of our at-
tempts to represent statically what is in motion ;
and in the process things assume a weight in our
mind which they have not in reality. . . .
Within us we have a hope which always walks
in front of our present narrow experience; it is
the undying faith in the infinite in us; it will
never accept any of our disabilities as a peraia-
114 JOY IN TROUBLE
nent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it
dares to assert that man has oneness with
God. . . . Evil cannot altogether arrest the
course of life on the highway and rob it of its
possessions. For the evil has to pass on, it has
to grow into good ; it cannot stand and give bat-
tle to the All. If the least evil could stop any-
where indefinitely, it would sink deep and cut
into the very roots of existence. . . .
"Man's freedom is never in being saved
troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble
for its own good, to make the trouble an ele-
ment in his joy. It can be made so only when
we realise that our individual self is not the
highest meaning of our being, that in us we have
the world-man who is immortal, who is not
afraid of death or sufferings, and who looks
upon pain as only the other side of joy. He
who has realised this knows that it is pain which
is our true wealth as imperfect beings, and has
made us great and worthy to take our seat with
the Perfect." *
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
DISPLEASES THE BRITISH 115
Amidst the joys and sorrows of the farmers,
Tagore so re-organised the estate, and so influ-
enced the officers with a healthy moral tone that
corruption soon became a thing of the past. A
few years ago one of the officers of the Tagore
estate accepted a bribe of one rupee (thirty-five
cents), and soon after he felt so repentant, that
he voluntarily made a confession of his act, and
was readily forgiven. Tagore's endeavours to
uplift the condition of the farmers made him
very popular with the people, and he so won
their hearts that the British magistrate of the
district grew jealous, suspicious and nervous
about it, and began to harass him in various
ways, as Lord Hardinge, the present Viceroy of
India, and his lieutenants harassed him about
three years ago for employing a certain patriotic
young poet in his school as a teacher. At
Silaidah Tagore wrote most of his short stories
and the bulk of his poems.
CHAPTER V
TAGORE THE FEMINIST
RAJA RAM MOHUN ROY, the father of modern
India, introduced an age of reform in India.
Well versed in the literature xof the East and of
the West, he strove to unite the cultural life of
both for mutual benefit. With his towering
genius he handled the social, political, religious
and literary life with the hand of a master.
By lectures, newspapers, and pamphlets, debates
and discussions he infused a new life in India,
especially in Bengal. Even to-day, eighty
years after his death, the social and religious re-
formers are working to carry out his plans. At
his death, he left a unique worker as his intel-
lectual descendant, Debendranath Tagore, the
father of Rabindranath. Beside the help of
men like Keshubchandra Sen, Shibanath Shastri,
116
SEX EQUALITY 117
Protapchandra Mozoomdar and Rajnarayan
Bose, Debendranath found one of his best sup-
porters and workers in the person of his young-
est son Rabindranath. Rabindranath, with his
keen insight into sociological problems, wielded
his pen and his tongue for social, religious and
political reform.
One of the very first things that he gave his
attention to was the elevation of the status of
the women of India by education. He never
believed in the inferiority of woman. He has
always believed in what Comte says: "Each
sex has what the other has not; each completes
the other and is completed by the other; they
are in nothing alike, and the happiness and per-
fection of both depends on each asking and re-
ceiving from the other what the other only can
give."
Long before the advent of the modern femi-
nist movement Tagore was a staunch feminist.
Even though he does not believe in uncon-
ditional woman suffrage ; he thinks that if men
ii8 WOMAN'S LIFE
did their duty in politics, women would not
have to vote at all. But when men cannot gov-
ern well, it is justified that women should claim
the vote and even fight for it. The strong
feminist flavour of the following translation
from one of his letters written more than twenty
years ago, is worth attention: "After due
thought, I have come to the conclusion that
in the life of man there is not the ful-
ness that characterises the life of woman.
There is a continuity of unity in woman's lan-
guage, dress, deportment and duty. The chief
cause of this is that nature through centuries has
fixed their realm of activity. So far no change,
no revolution, no transformation of ideals of
civilisation have led women away from their
path of continuity. They have, all along,
served, loved, comforted and have done nothing
else. The skill and beauty of these functions
have charmingly mingled in their form, in their
language and in their carriage. Their sphere
of activity and their nature have blended one
MAN IS DEFECTIVE 119
into the other as flower and its perfume. So,
nothing but harmony prevails in them.
"There is a great deal of unevenness in the
life of man. The marks of their passage
through various changes and functions are no-
ticeable in their form and nature. The abnor-
mal elevation of the forehead, the ugly protrud-
ing of the nose, the ungraceful development of
the jaws are common things in men, but not in
women. Had man followed the same course
all through ages, had he been trained to perform
the same function, then there might have grown
3. mould for men, and a harmony might have
evolved between his nature and function. In
that case, they would not have had to think and
struggle so hard to perform their duty. Every-
thing would have gone on very smoothly and
beautifully. Then they would have developed
a nature, and their minds could not have been
tossed away from the path of duty at the least
possible provocation.
"Mother nature has moulded women in a
120 WOMAN IS PERFECT
cast. Man has no such original tie, so he has
not evolved to his fulness around a central
idea. His diverse, untamed passions and emo-
tions have stood in the way of his harmonious
development. As the bondage of metres is the
cause of the beauty of poetry, so the bondage of
the metre of fixed law is the cause of the all-
round fulness and beauty of woman. Man is
like unconnected and uncouth prose, without
any harmony or beauty. That is why poets
have always compared woman with song,
poetry, flower and river; and have never
thought of comparing man with any of these.
Woman, like the most beautiful things in na-
ture, is connected, well-developed . . . and
well-restrained. No doubt, no irrelevant
thought and no academic discussion can break
the rhythm of a woman's life. Woman is
perfect."
The relative status of woman in the East and
in the West has been a constant theme of ani-
mated discussion. The Christian missionary,
© Photograph by Krank Wolcott
TAGORE IN DEVOTIONAL POSTURE
EAST VS. WEST 121
with his profound ignorance of the spirit of
Hindu social organism, sees nothing but abject
misery in the lot of the Hindu woman. The
orthodox Hindu on the other hand, with his
equally profound ignorance of the outside
world, looks upon the lot of the Hindu woman
as nothing short of blissful. But Tagore, with
his practical knowledge of both the societies,
realises that there is good and bad in both, and
that proper education will cure the ills and
strengthen the good. Thus he speaks of the
position of woman in the Orient and the Occi-
dent:
"Judging from outside, I feel that in propor-
tion as European civilisation progresses, woman
is being rendered increasingly unhappy.
Woman acts in society as the centripetal force
does in the planets. But in Europe this centrip-
etal force of woman's energy is proving fruit-
less to counterbalance the centrifugal force of
the distracted society. Men are seeking shelter
in distant nooks and corners of the earth, men
122 A LONG WAIT
who are bowed down by the crushing struggle
for existence which is partly due to wants arti-
ficially created. In Europe man is getting to be
quite unwilling to burden himself with a family,
consequently woman's family obligations are
decreasing. The fair maid has to wait long for
a groom, and the wife has to suffer from love-
sickness while her husband is away to earn a
livelihood for the family. The grown up son
does not hesitate the least to leave his mother's
home. Even though her training, tradition and
nature are opposed to it, yet woman in the West
has to go out and work and struggle for exist-
ence.
"This discord in social harmony, I think, is
the principal reason why woman in the West is
fighting for equal rights with man. The fe-
male characters in many of the plays of Ibsen
show impatience with the existing state of af-
fairs, while the male characters support them.
This leads one to think of the inconsistent po-
sition of woman in the present-day European
SUPPORTS MILITANCY 123
society. There man is loath to build a home
for woman, and at the same time is stubborn
in refusing her equal rights to enter the arena of
fruitful work. At the first thought, the num-
ber of women in the Nihilistic armies of Russia
may seem appalling, but mature reflection con-
vinces one of the fact that the time is about ripe
for militancy in the women of Europe.
"Strength is the watch-word of European so-
ciety of to-day. There is no place for the
weak, male or female. That is why women are
getting ashamed of their femininity, and are
striving to prove their strength, both of body
and of mind. . . .
"It is impossible for a woman in an European
family to attain to the varied perfections which
a woman can in a Hindu home. It is for this
reason that it is deemed to be a grave misfor-
tune to be a spinster in England. Her heart
becomes sour, and she finds consolation in nurs-
ing puppies or in doing 'charity* or 'social' work.
As the milk from the breast of the mother of a
124 HOMES ARE DISAPPEARING
still-born babe has to be artificially pumped out
to keep the mother in health, so the milk of ten-
derness from an European spinster's heart has
to be artificially pumped out for charity organ-
isations; but it fails to contribute to the innate
satisfaction of her soul.
"I am afraid that the present-day civilisation
of Europe is imperceptibly extending the arid
zone in its social life. The super-abundance
of luxuries is smothering the soul of the home —
home that is the very abode of love, tender-
ness and beneficence — a thing that is, above all,
most essential for the healthy development of
the human heart. In Europe homes are disap-
pearing and hotels are increasing in number.
When we notice that men are happy with their
horses, dogs, guns and pipes and clubs for gam-
bling, we feel quite safe to conclude that
women's lives are being gradually broken up.
Heretofore the male bees used to gather honey
outside and store it in the hive, where the queen
bee ruled supreme. Now the bee prefers to
THE BEE HIVE 125
rent a cell and live by himself, so that he alone
may drink all the honey in the evening, which
he gathers during the day time. Consequently
the queen-bee is obliged to come out in the
world of competition to gather honey, so that
she may live. She has not yet been able to get
accustomed to the changed conditions of life
and society. The result is uneasiness and
buzzing. . . .
"Such, in short, is the present status of
woman in the West. And when the English
philanthropists shed crocodile tears over the
'wretched condition of the women of India,' I
feel mortified at such a waste of sympathy,
especially when it is such a rare thing with
Englishmen.
"Our women make our homes smile with
sweetness, tenderness and love. . . . We are
quite happy with our household goddesses,
and they themselves have never told us of their
'miserable condition.' Why then should the
meddlers from beyond the seas feel so bad about
126 FISH PHILANTHROPISTS
the imagined sorrows of our women? People
make mistakes in imagining too much as to what
would make others happy or unhappy. If per-
chance, the fishes were to become philanthro-
pists, their tender hearts would find satisfaction
only in drowning the entire human race in the
depths of water.
"No doubt when an English lady sees the
small rooms with crude furniture and old fash-
ioned pictures in the zenana, she at once con-
cludes that men have made slaves of Hindu
women. But she forgets that we all live to-
gether the same way. We read Spencer, Rus-
kin and Mill; we edit magazines and write
books, but we squat on a mattress on the floor,
and we use an earthen oil-lamp for study. We
buy jewels for our wives when we have the
money, and we sleep inside a string-tied
mosquito net, and on warm nights fan ourselves
with a palm-leaf fan.
"We have no sofas or highly upholstered
chairs, yet we do not feel miserable for not hav-
WOMAN 127
ing them. But at the same time we are quite
capable of loving and being loved. The west-
ern people love furniture, entertainments and
luxuries of life so much that many amongst
them do not care to have wives or husbands, and
if married, positively no children. With them,
comfort takes precedence of love, whereas love
and home are the supreme things in our life.
It is for this that quite often we have to sacrifice
comforts, so that we may enjoy home life and
love."
So Tagore sings on the Hindu "Woman" ; the
song in translation reads:
"The strifes and the struggles of the battle
are over. Come, beauteous woman, come to
wash me clean, to heal my wounds, to comfort
and bless me with your soothing presence.
Come, beauteous woman, come with your golden
pitcher.
"The day in the mart is over. I have left
the crowd and built my cottage in the village.
128 BLISSFUL WOMAN
Come, noble woman, come with a celestial smile
and a vermilion line on the parting of your hair,
to bless and grace the lonesome home. Come,
noble woman, come with your jar of sacred
water.
"The sun shines sultry at noon, and an un-
known wayfarer is at our door. Come, bliss-
ful woman, come with your pitcher of nectar
and with the pure music of your bridal bracelet,
to welcome and bless the unknown guest.
Come, blissful woman, come with your pitcher
of nectar.
"The night is dark, and the home is quiet.
Come, devout woman, come dressed in white
with the sacrificial water, and in dishevelled
hair light the candle at the altar; and then open
the gates of your heart in secret prayer. Come,
devout woman, come with your sacrificial
water.
"Now, the time for parting is at hand.
Come, loving woman, come with your tears.
Let your tearful look shower blessing on my
ON LOVE • 129
way away from here. Let the anxious touch
of your blessed hand hallow the last moments
of my earthly existence. Come, sorrowful
woman, come with your tears."
And on love, which is the "woman's all,"
Tagore has this to say: "I believe that to love
is to worship the mysterious one. Only we do
it unconsciously. Ever}7 kind of love is the di-
rect outcome of a universal force that tries to
express itself through the human heart. Love
is the temporary realisation of that bliss which
is at the very root of the universe. Otherwise
love has no meaning. In the physical world
the all-pervading attraction of gravitation at-
tracts the large and the small alike. Similarly,
in the realm of the spirit, there is an universal
attraction of joy. It is by virtue of this at-
traction that we perceive beauty in nature and
love within ourselves. The Iftnitless bliss that
is in the heart of nature plays on our hearts. If
we look upon the love in our hearts independ-
130 CHITRA
ently of the love in the universe it becomes
meaningless. Love is bliss."
Tagore's philosophy of feminism as embod-
ied in the realistically idealistic poetic drama
"Chitra" may seem too radical even to the radi-
cal feminists of the West. And it is curious
that the plot is taken in toto from an episode
in the Mahabharata, the Hindu epic that dates
back to 2000 years before the Christian era.
CHAPTER VI
AS POET OF INDIAN NATIONALISM
UNIVERSALISM
ONCE a Bengali friend of the Maharshi wrote
him a letter in English, and he simply returned
the letter in reply. Why should a Bengali
write letters to a Bengali in English? This
was nationalism. Tagore was taught to love
India and Indian culture. In his early boyhood
he was initiated into the tenets of Indian na-
tionalism by men like Rajnarayan Bose and
Jyotirindranath Tagore. In secret, as he tells
us himself, they used to meet behind "closed
doors, and talk in whispers" about the ways and
means of the industrial and political regenera-
tion of India. To cultivate the spirit of brav-
ery Tagore used to go out on hunting trips, at
times subjecting himself to invited hardships.
131
132 NATIONALISM
He wrote poems on patriotism and self-sacrifice.
He worked with enthusiasm when his brother
Jyotirindranath started a steamship line be-
tween Khulna and Barisal to compete with an
English company. He went out lecturing on
the need of organisations to preach the gospel of
nationalism. As a young man he realised the
truth of the statement that "Nations are de-
stroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry,
painting, and music are destroyed or flourish."
Abanindranath Tagore took charge of art re-
vival in India, and Raja Sowrindramohun
Tagore that of music. Rabindranath took
upon himself the task of regenerating India by
poetry.
It has rightly been said that Tagore is the
poet of Indian nationalism. For if by a natural
disaster all of Tagore's thoughtful essays, pro-
found philosophical dissertations, learned his-
torical interpretations, soul-stirring short sto-
ries, powerfully allegorical dramas, carefully
wrought novels, and exquisite books of ballads
NATIONAL SONGS 133
and lyrics are destroyed forever from the face
of this earth; still as long as men live in India
he will be remembered as one of India's greatest
poets, for they could never forget the message
of his national songs. His songs have made
such an indelible mark on the life of the na-
tion that they will continue to shower their
beneficent influence as long as the name of India
will endure. Imagination itself is at a loss
to comprehend, and language feels its in-
adequacy to express, the real usefulness of his
patriotic songs in the up-hill task of nation
building in India. The Philippics of the polit-
ical agitators and the diatribes of the caustic
editorial writers are mere pin-pricks when com-
pared with the majestic sweep of the patriotic-
fire songs of our poet. These deep appeals are
lashing the little ripples into mountainous
waves of unalloyed nationalism that in the
India of to-day are dashing against and engulf-
ing the rocks of selfishness and provincialism
and thus helping to form a mighty, homogene-
134 NATIONAL SONGS
ous nation out of a multitude of conflicting in-
terests.
Unlike in the West where the epic and
lyric feeling does not penetrate into the masses
as it did when poetry was still transmitted
by oral tradition, his patriotic poems are
sung everywhere. In the morning when the
rising sun darts its rays of liquid gold we hear
his songs being sung in the bathing ghats and
in sankirtan parties that go about in the street
to wake people up from sleep to join at the serv-
ice of God and Motherland. At scorching
noon-tide, under the shade of the spreading
banyan trees in lonely maidans when the shep-
herds play the King, they sing the same songs
to themselves, to the birds on the trees and the
cattle in the fields. And again, when the In-
dian landscape is bathed by the vermilion rays
of the setting sun, and as the boatmen go down
the river or as the village peasants flock home-
ward— they all sing the national songs of
Rabindranath. They are sung in the national
SOFT APPEALS 135
congresses and conferences, they are sung by
the athletes in the gymnasiums, the princes in
their palaces, the beggars in their begging excur-
sions, and the washermen in the dhobi khanas,
yes, they are sung at weddings and at times of
religious ceremony.
There are critics who claim that Tagore's
national songs are too gentle, too effeminate, to
suit the present requirements of India. It is
true that he has not the fire of Hem Chandra
Bandopadhya, nor the masculine force of Nabin
Chandra Sen or Dwijendra Lai Roy. It is
also true that he appeals to the softer emotions,
and they to the sterner, and it cannot be denied
that the latter also is needed in India. Apart
from the unique importance of the "Bande-
mataram" of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya;
the "Sleep no More" of Hem Chandra Bando-
padhya, the "Banga Amar Janani Amar" of
Dwijendra Lai Roy, and some of the stanzas of
"Pallashir Judho" (The Battle of Pallasy)
of Nabin Chandra Sen are mighty factors in the
136 AWAKE, ARISE!
present crisis in India. Yet, in spite of all, it
must be acknowledged by those who know any-
thing about the imaginative and speculative na-
ture of the Hindu, that of the two sentiments —
"Awake, arise, conquer and dash to earth the
oppressor's rod," and "Your motherland is
struggling, she is suffering, O! she is starving,
who else but a dutiful son can assuage the sor-
rows of the mother!" — the latter appeals to the
Hindu soul more strongly and has a more endur-
ing influence. Rabindranath decidedly follows
the latter path. He idealises the motherland,
he speaks of her in a thousand different ways,
arousing in the hearts of his readers as many
different shades of passionate emotion. He
speaks of her waving rice fields, her smiling
blossoms, perfumed flowers, singing birds, talk-
ing streams, and inspiring mountains, noisy
bazars, sweet homes, her granaries, and her play-
grounds full of dear little children — and he
clothes them all with the hallowing love of the
CONSECRATION 137
motherland — Bharat Mata, as she is called in
India. Over and above that, with his charac-
teristic insight into Hindu traits and tempera-
ments, he gives some of his best national songs
a touch of colloquialism and the cadences of
Baul and the Ramprasadi religious songs.
Both of these have peculiar tunes that appeal
to Hindu higher emotions and devotional na-
ture. Incessantly he pleads the cause of India
in a hundred different ways, and always in his
inimitable style. Thus he sings of Consecra-
tion:
"To Thee, my motherland, I dedicate my
body, for thee I consecrate my life; for thee my
eyes will weep; and in thy praise my Muse will
sing.
"Though my arms are helpless and power-
less, still they will do the deeds that can only
serve thy cause; and though my sword is rusty
with disgrace, still it shall sever thy chains of
bondage, sweet mother of mine."
138 GOD SLUMBERS NOT
When Lord Curzon and Lord Minto, as
India's Viceroys, were trying to strangle the
nationalist spirit in Bengal by the Russian
methods of partition, suppression, deportation
without a trial, or strangulation on the gallows,
Tagore's songs kept up the spirit of the patriots.
His songs inspire our young men to suffer and
to sacrifice and to die smiling for the "Mother."
One of the young Emmets of India died singing
the following song-message of Tagore, begin-
ning:
"Bharsha na charish Kabhu
Jagay achen Jagat-prabhu," etc., etc.
Here is the song in translation: —
"Brother, do not be discouraged for God slum-
bers not nor sleeps.
The tighter the knot, the shorter will be your
period of bondage.
The louder the growl, the sooner you will wake
from your lethargic sleep.
"FOLLOW THE GLEAM" 139
The harder the stroke of oppression, the sooner
their flag will kiss the ground.
Do not be discouraged, brother, for God neither
slumbers nor sleeps."
And again when young patriots of India find
themselves deserted on all sides, when their
friends, relations, alas! even their own parents
disown them for the crime of patriotism, they
find a mine of inspiration in the song, "Follow
the Gleam."
"If nobody responds to your call, then follow
the path all alone, all alone; if every one is
afraid and nobody wants to speak to you, then,
O, you unfortunate ! speak to yourself the story
of your own sorrow; if while travelling in the
wilderness, everybody deserts you and turns
against you, mind them not, but trample the
thorns and bathe your feet with your own blood,
and go all by yourself. If again in the stormy
night you do not find a single soul to hold the
light for you, and they all close their doors
140 RAKHI SONG
against you, be not faint-hearted, forlorn
patriot, but take a rib out of your side and light
it with the fire of lightning, and then follow the
gleam, follow the gleam."
Tagore wants his people to follow the gleam,
because he wants to see Mother India elevated
to a high pinnacle of glory and success from
her present state of national degradation and
chronic poverty. So he offers the following
two prayers for his country. The poems read
thus in his own translation :
I
"Let the earth and the water, the air and the
fruits of my country be sweet, my God.
Let the homes and marts, the forests and fields
of my country be full, my God.
Let the promises and hopes, the deeds and
words of my country be true, my God.
Let the lives and hearts of the sons and daugh-
ters of my country be one, my God."
HEAVEN OF FREEDOM 141
And a nobler prayer still :
"Where the mind is without fear and the head
is held high ;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into
fragments by narrow domestic walls ;
Where work comes out from the depth of
truth;
Where tireless striving stretches the arms
towards perfection ;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost
•
its way into the dreary desert of dead
habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into
ever-widening thought and action —
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let
my country awake." *
And he thus urges all to help to attain this
heaven of freedom : "Friends, there is not time
to dream any more, the time for united action
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
142 "GIVE YOUR LIVES"
has come" ; "if you expect to live and to com-
mand respect in this world, first be prepared to
give your lives for your Mother."
Love, pathos, encouragement, and the spirit
of sacrifice inspire his patriotic poems, but in
them there is not even a suggestion of anger,
jealousy or hatred for anybody in the world.
It is in this that he differs from the radical na-
tionalist of "blood and iron." The radical in
his morbid hatred for the British and in his at-
tempt to drive them out of India after keeping
their bags and baggages, loses much of the bal-
ance which is needed for clear thinking. So he
always looks outside, and in the process forgets
to take cognisance of the internal causes which
give rise to political diseases. He is a poor
doctor who would only apply soothing ointment
on the skin of a small-pox patient.
"But," retorts the radical, "if outside atmos-
phere and environment cause the internal
troubles that result in a disease, you may cure
the patient, but he will be subjected to it again.
NO MORE BEGGING 143
If this one patient dies, let him die, but purify
the environment that a thousand more may
live."
"Yes, you are right," replies Tagore, "but if
the inside is not healthy it will breed disease, no
matter how pure the outside may be. But I
am one with you when you want to rely on
yourself for reforms both internal and ex-
ternal."
The "moderate" — the constitutional agitators
of India expect to secure all kinds of reforms by
petitioning the government. Tagore has all
along been opposed to this "policy of mendi-
cancy." Beggars, he thinks, do not deserve
much. Kicks and cuffs are their best reward.
So he sings :
"Mother, should you send your children as
beggars to the doors of strangers, who, at the
sight of begging bowls, begin to hate and throw
stones at them in contempt1?"
In one of his essays, he elaborates this idea
by saying: "Some of us think that when we
144 SELF-HELP
get all the reforms from the government, we
shall be fully contented and there is no founda-
tion to this fact. There cannot be any end to
the situation when one side asks all the time,
and the other only gives. Fat can never extin-
guish fire. It is the nature of the beggar to ask
for more, when he gets what he wants. This
increases the dissatisfaction of the beggar.
When the attainment of an ideal does not de-
pend on our own efforts, but upon the charity
of others, it is injurious to us, and becomes dis-
advantageous to the giver. ... So I say that
if we can give our motherland the most, we can
get from the government the utmost; our claim
to receive increases in proportion as we are
ready to give. ... I will never accept that
we have no hope but in the begging bowl. I
have faith in my country — I respect self-
help. . . .
"What a pity that we (three hundred and
fifteen millions of human beings) shall not be
INDIA'S DUTY 145
able to bear the burden of our own country!
Has it come to this that foreigners from beyond
the seas shall give us alms as food, drink and
clothing, and we should only complain and cry
if the doles of charity do not happen to be ex-
actly what we would like them to be? No,
never, that cannot be. Each and every one of
us must bear the burden of our own mother —
and that all the time. This is our duty and this
our glory."
On the British domination of India Tagore
has this to say: "One section of the human
race cannot be permanently strong by depriving
another section of its inherent rights. Dharma
(righteousness) depends on adjustment. When
the adjustment is dislocated, righteousness be-
gins to decline. The British are getting strong
by the possession of the Indian Empire, and if
they wish to render India weak, then this one-
sided advantage can not last long. It is bound
to defeat its own purpose. The weakness of
146 ENGLAND'S AVARICE
disarmed, famine-stricken and poverty-ridden
India will be the cause of the destruction of the
British Empire.
"But very few people can take a broad view
of political outlook. The vision of a people
becomes dimmed by cupidity. If the avaricious
British politicians begin to ponder over the im-
possible task of holding India in subjection for-
ever, then he would at the same time begin to
forget the means of holding India for a long
time. To hold India forever is an impossibil-
ity, it is against the law of the universe. Even
the tree has to part with its fruits. The at-
tempt to retain India tied by the chain of
slavery only loosens the knot and shortens the
period of possible retention." In the conclud-
ing sentences of his splendid essay on "The Sit-
uation and the Prescription," written about ten
years ago, Tagore thus sums up the philosophy
of Indian nationalism: "We do not want en-
couragement, we shall gain strength by antago-
nism. Let none fan us into sleep again, let none
3-0
ONE OF TAGORE'S DEVOTIONAL POEMS IN HIS OWN
HANDWRITING, IN THE ORIGINAL BENGALI
CHARACTER.
"OPPRESSION," "INSULT" 147
increase the dose of the opium of our servitude
— luxury and comfort are not for us — the fear-
ful aspect of the Godhead is the easiest way for
our national liberation. 'Oppression,' 'Insult,'
and 'Want' are the three great lashes which
arouse the inert. We can never attain our goal
by being patted on the back or by any policy
of mendicancy."
Some may uphold, and others may condemn,
the philosophy of Tagore's nationalism, but
none can doubt his sincerity of purpose. He is
second to none in patriotic fervour. Critics look
down upon his abrupt retirement, at the time of
the worst persecutions, from active politics, and
call him a "turn-coat." A Hindu student in
America once told the author: "I don't care
to see Tagore's face, I wouldn't go across the
street to meet him. Even an illiterate dealer in
Indian goods, who has been sent to prison under
false charges, is superior to the great poet — a
moral coward, who swallowed his own words
and then went into retirement."
148 SWADESHI SOMAJ
But those that know him as intimately as the
author does, know full well that love of God
and love of the motherland are the two dom-
inant notes of his life. God is his constant
companion, and India is the object of his con-
stant thought. After talking with the poet ortj
the subject and reading his writings, I feel that
the true explanation of his retirement from ac-
tive and direct political propagandism lies hid-
den in the following passages from his "Swa-
deshi Somaj" (Indian Society) : "The life
force of different nations is located in different
parts of their social organism. The heart of a
nation is there where is focussed the public good.
Hurt a nation at that point and you wound it
mortally. If the political power in Europe is
disorganised then the entire national life is dis-
organised. It is for this reason that politics is
such a vital issue with the Europeans. In In-
dia, if the society is hurt, then the entire nation
is paralysed. That accounts for the fact that
so long we have not concerned ourselves with
DHARMA 149
political right as we have to preserve our social
freedom. In Europe charity, religion, and edu-
cation are all in the hands of the state — in our
country they rest on the sense of public duty.
So Europeans take special care of the state, and
we of Dharma. The Europeans are always
anxious to keep the state wide awake. Receiv-
ing our education in English schools, most of
us have come to think that to attack the gov-
ernment, without any reference to existing con-
ditions, is the first duty of the Indian patriots.
They do not understand that by applying blis-
ters on other persons' bodies one cannot cure
himself of his disease."
Again, in a letter written in the winter of
1913 from Urbana, 111., Tagore says: "The
present problem of India is not political. We
shall never be able to fit ourselves for higher
privileges unless we can do away with the nar-
rowness of our mind and the weakness of our
^character. All the poison of ignorance, indif-
ference and disunion that are in the very mar-
150 "OUR FIRST DUTY"
row of our society are standing in the way of
our fullest development. Our warfare is with
these. We have to train ourselves to extend
our vision from the family and from the village
to wider circles. We have to eradicate the
hedges of effete customs and plough our social
soil for higher purposes than mere truck garden-
ing.
"Let us first liberate our society from the
tyranny of hide-bound customs and dedicate it /
to a spirit of liberality. This is our first duty." ;
It was to "plough the social soil" and to liberate
the Indian "society from hide-bound customs"
through enlightenment that he walked out of
the spot-light and went into retirement, not to
spend his days in idleness but to make men for
the service of the motherland.
Tagore is more than a mere Indian national-
ist, he is a universal nationalist — a representa-
tive of world-wide humanity. His universal-
ism has reached the very height of perfection.
He, as a twentieth century idealist, believes in
UNIVERSALISM 151
the unity of the human race — unity in the rich-
ness of its diversity. He holds that above all
nations is Humanity. He holds also that the
presence of the national, the racial, the creedal
and the continental elements and their co-opera-
tion in human society are essential for the har-
monious development of the universal; just as
the presence and the co-operation of the distinct
organs of the body are essential for the normal
development of the man. He thinks that as the
mission of the rose lies in the unfolding of the
petals which implies distinctness, so the rose of
humanity is perfect only when the diverse races
and the nations have evolved their perfected
distinct characteristics, but all attached to the
stem of humanity by the bond of love. That
is the reason why he believes that the East and
the West have their special lives to live, and
their special missions to fulfil, but that their
final goal is the same. That is why he does
not, as no sensible man any longer does, believe
in the cynic charlatanism of
152 HOLY WEDLOCK
"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never
the twain shall meet."
Thus he spoke in a banquet in London where
the master minds of Great Britain and Ire-
land gathered to welcome him in their midst:
"I have learned that, though our tongues are
different and our habits dissimilar, at the bot-
tom our hearts are one. The monsoon clouds,
generated on the banks of the Nile, fertilise
the far distant shores of the Ganges; ideas may
have to cross from East to Western shores to
find a welcome in men's hearts and fulfil their
promise. East is East and West is West — God
forbid that it should be otherwise — but the
twain must meet in amity, peace and mutual
understanding; their meeting will be all the
more fruitful because of their differences; it
must lead both to holy wedlock before the com-
mon altar of Humanity."
The story of his love for the universal, for
things both great and small, he describes in the
following poem :
"THE SMALL" 153
"The myriads of human beings that inhabit
the globe of ours enter my heart and find un-
speakable joy in each other's company, there
lovers enter and look at each other, and children
stand and laugh in merriment. . . . My heart
is full to the brim with transcendent joy, and I
find the world without a single human soul in
it. It is all empty. Oh, I know. How can
it be otherwise when all have entered into my
heart?"
Exactly in the same strain he writes his
dainty little poem — "The Small," which, in the
poet's prose translation, is as follows:
" 'What is there but the sky, O Sun, which can
hold thine image*?
I dream of thee, but to serve thee I never can
hope,'
The dewdrop wept and said;
1 am too small to take thee unto me, great
lord,
And thus my life is all tears.'
K 154 "HERE IS THY FOOTSTOOL"
" 'I illumine the limitless sky,
Yet I can yield myself up to a tiny drop of dew/
Thus said the sun and smiled ;
'I will be a speck of sparkle and fill you,
And your tiny life will be a smiling orb.' " *
And again his humanism finds perfect expres-
sion in the following song of Gitanjali :
"Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet
where live the poorest, and lowliest, and
lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance can-
not reach down to the depth where thy
feet rest among the poorest, and lowliest
and lost.
Pride can never approach to where thou walk-
est in the clothes of the humble among the
poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
My heart can never find its way to where thou
keepest company with the companionless
among the poorest, the lowliest, and the
lost." *
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
CHAPTER VII
TAGORE AND HIS MODEL SCHOOL AT BOLPUR
ON MUSIC
LONG before Tagore ultimately cut off his con-
nection with active politics in 1907, a change
was dawning in his inner consciousness, a
change that demanded a fuller sacrifice for na-
tional regeneration. And after reconnoitring
the entire field of politics, economics, and soci-
ology, he came to the conclusion that if there
was a panacea for all of India's evils it was edu-
cation, liberal education full of freedom and
love — an education that would develop not only
intellect and morals, but more than that,
spiritual personality. Referring to the preva-
lent system of education from which Tagore
suffered so much, and so successfully revolted,
he says: "Education is imparted under con-
ditions that make it an infliction on young boys
i55
156 BRAHMO VIDYALAY
innocent of any crime that makes them deserve
the punishment. Let not education defeat its
own ends by its methods, but make the whole
process as easy and natural as possible, as also
the least painful," To make this possible,
Tagore decided to open a school at Bolpur.
The Maharshi gave his unconditional approval
to the scheme. When once his conscience spoke
for it, neither debt nor adverse public criticism
could daunt the spirit of Tagore. The school
was accordingly started in 1902 with three or
four children. Tagore's son was in the first
batch of students. Tagore's idea in opening
this Brahmo Vidyalay may best be expressed in
his own words: "To revive the spirit of our
ancient system of education I decided to found a
school where the students could feel that there
was a higher and a nobler thing in life than
practical efficiency — it was to know life itself
well. I meant to banish luxury from the ash-
rama and to rear boys in robust simplicity. It
is for this that there are neither classes nor
CHILDREN AND PLANTS 157
benches in our school. Our children spread
mats under trees and study there ; and they live
as simple a life as possible. One of the princi-
pal reasons for establishing this school in a vast
plain was to take it far away from city life.
But more than that, I wanted to see the children
grow with the plants; there would thus exist a
harmony of growth between both. In the cities
children do not see much of trees. They are
confined within the walls. Walls do not grow.
The dead weight of stones and bricks crush the
natural buoyancy of child nature. . . .
"I do not get the best kind of boys in the
school. The public look upon this as a penal
settlement. Mostly those whom their parents
cannot manage are sent here." And still,
under the love and guidance of Tagore and his
co-workers, the boys get ready for the matricu-
lation in six years, whereas, in the schools
owned or controlled by the British-Indian gov-
ernment they take eight years for the same pre-
paration.
158 ROUTINE
The day's routine is quite different from any
that is followed in any other residential school,
excepting the Gurukul Academy of the Arya
Somaj. The students and the teachers get up
with the morning bell at 4:30. They make
their own beds, and all come out sing-
ing songs and chanting hymns in praise of
the Lord of the Universe — "who is in the wood
and in fire; in medicine and in food; who
is inside and outside, who pervades and perme-
ates the universe with his living spirit." The
birds on the trees wake up and join in
the imposing chorus. After washing, they
put on white silk robes and sit down for in-
dividual meditation and prayer. Then they
take breakfast of luchi, lialua, puffed rice, milk
or any other light food. The school begins at
7:30. The students fetch their individual
pieces of mat for seats, spread them under the
trees, and without any books begin their class
lessons in literature, history, or geography.
Only at times of experimental sciences they re-
SMALL CLASSES
159
pair to the physical or chemical laboratories.
The lessons are given orally, as the sun shines,
the breeze conveys the sweet odour of flowers,
and the leaves rustle to supply the music. No
teacher is allowed to have more than ten stu-
dents in a class. At times only one makes up a
class. And the classes are not definitely fixed.
So a student who is advanced in English may
have his English with the senior boys of the high
school, and he may have his mathematics with
students in the final year in the grammar school,
so to speak. By a special arrangement with the
Calcutta University, the students from the
Bolpur School may appear in the matriculation
examination of that university.
At 10:30, i.e., after three hours' intensive
study, the classes disperse as appropriate songs
are sung. Soon after the students and the
teachers go to take their daily bath. Some go
to the stream, in the rainy season, to swim,
others gather near the wells, where the
older boys draw water for the younger chil-
160 NO PUNISHMENT
dren, give them their bath and dress them
as a mother would. After this, the older
boys bathe. Bathing over, the boys chant
hymns in praise of God and the Ashram Janani
(Mother-Hermitage). The second meal is
served at about 1 1 .'30. Boiled rice, vegetable
dishes, pure butter and milk from the school
dairy make up this meal. Then the boys study
books or magazines in the library, or study their
own lessons or spend the time just as they like
till school time. At two the classes assemble
again under the trees. In the class the teachers
are not allowed to use canes nor inflict any kind
of corporal punishment.
The school closes at about four. The boys
then take a light lunch and rush to the play-
grounds to play football, cricket, hockey, tennis,
hadu-gudu, or other games as the case may be.
In games, as in studies, the Bolpur boys excel.
In football, they have defeated many Calcutta
college teams. In cricket they have done the
same. In military drill they can vie with the
SPARTAN TRAINING
best drilled boys in many military academies.
To temper the boys in heat and cold they are
made to run for miles in hot days and are accus-
tomed to dodge no showers when it is cold. At
times they are out walking twenty miles at a
stretch. This Spartan training has made the
Bolpur boys perfect in health. The wretched
condition of the health of Bengali students is
deplored on all sides. But Tagore has shown
what can be accomplished by care and devo-
tion to an ideal. Unless sick, boys are never
allowed to use shoes or stockings, nay not
even in the winter. Of course the winter at
Bolpur is very mild and lasts only for two
months.
Many older boys, inspired by the life of
Tagore, deprive themselves of the games, but
run to the neighbouring villages, where the San-
tal tribes live in crudest superstitions and piti-
able unsanitary conditions, to do good to their
depressed brothers and sisters. These students
on entering a village pretend to begin a game,
162 SOCIAL SERVICE
and crowds of the Santals gather round. The
boys stop their game and begin to preach to the
populace. The latter respond quickly, for these
young Hindu missionaries from Bolpur do not
go with any sense of superiority, or preach one
form of religion or decry others, but they go
with a feeling of brotherhood, a sense of equal-
ity which Tagore always inculcates in his school.
These simple people are in many ways more
truly civilised than the people living in the most
complex civilisation of New York, Paris, or
London. In this spirit of "give and take" the
Santals are approached. The students have
now started day and night schools for the Santal
children. In case of sickness they nurse them as
they would the members of their own family.
The Bolpur boys are so unselfishly devoted to
the cause that even on hot summer days they do
not hesitate to work as a common coolie, without
any remuneration, to build a cottage for a San-
tal in need.
It is the wish of Tagore that his boys should
ASVINI KUMAR DATTA 163
combine in life the spiritual tendencies of India
with the spirit of social service so characteris-
tic of Western society. Of course, many years
before the establishment of Bolpur School, the
same idea acted through Asvini Kumar Datta,
the noted philanthropist and educator of
Barisal, who established in connection with his
school and college, Brojomohun Institution,
what is still known as the "Little Brothers of
the Poor." They are doing splendid work in
Barisal.
Games over, the brahmacharins (students)
take full baths or wash themselves clean and put
on their white silk dhotis, and spend about
thirty minutes in prayer and meditation. Then
the evening meal is served. The meals at Bol-
pur have to be strictly vegetarian ; such was the
wish of the Maharshi that none should be al-
lowed to use wine, meat or indecent language
at Bolpur, nor should any religious controversy
be allowed to disturb the divine harmony of the
Shantiniketan. After the evening meal, the
164 HE LOVES MUSIC
students and the teachers engage themselves in
various intellectual entertainments.
Contrary to the custom prevalent in India,
Tagore teaches music to the students. He loves
music and believes in its uplifting and ennobling
influence. He has some definite ideas on the
comparative merits and demerits of Indian and
occidental music, which we cannot help incorpo-
rating here in translation by way of parenthesis :
"In India our best thoughts," says Tagore,
"are engrossed in the devotion to song, and we
have to overcome the difficulties mainly in the
song; in Europe devotion to voice is their first
concern, and they perform most complicatedly
wonderful feats with it. An appreciative audi-
ence in India are content to listen to the beauty
of the song alone; but in Europe they listen to
the singing of the song. . . .
"I hold that the provinces of Western and
Eastern music are distinctly separate : They do
not lead through the same gates into the same
chambers of the heart. European music is, as
ROMANTIC MUSIC 165
it were, strangely entwined with the actualities
of life, so it becomes easy to connect the air of a
song with the multiform experiences of life.
An attempt to do the same with our music would
be fatuous and the result most unwelcome.
"Our music transcends the precincts of every-
day life, so there is to be found so much of ten-
derness and indifference to worldly joys and sor-
rows— as if it is ordained to reveal the story of
the innermost and inexplicable mystery that sur-
rounds the soul of man and of the universe.
That mystery world is very quiet and solitary
with its bowers of delight for lovers and hermit-
ages for worshippers of God, but there is no pro-
vision made for the world-wrapped pragmatists.
"It would be impertinent on my part to say
that I have been able to enter into the very heart
of European music; but I must confess that
judging as a layman it has made a profound im-
pression on only one side of my nature. It is
romantic. It is hard to explain what the word
romantic really means, but broadly speaking,
166 INDIA'S MUSIC
it represents the spirit of variety and exuber-
ance,— the spirit of the dashing waves of the
ocean of life, the spirit of the reflection of light
and shade over things that are in incessant mo-
tion. And there is still another aspect of the
romantic : it is that of vastness which reflects the
calm blue sky, suggesting the presence of the
infinite in the dim, distant horizon. It may be
that I have failed to express my idea, but it is
certain, nevertheless, that every time I listen to
western music I think within myself — 'it is ro-
mantic, it is exquisitely romantic, indeed.' It
practically translates the various experiences of
human life into musical notes. It cannot be
denied that there are attempts in our music
towards the achievement of the same thing, but
they have not yet ripened into robust fruition.
Our songs sing of the starlit night and the radi-
ant glow of the gold-embroidered dawn; as they
also sing of the universal pangs of separation
felt in rainy July, and the consuming ecstasy
of the spring in its youth. . . .
MUSIC IS SPEECHLESS
167
"Our music differs from the European in
being a single strain of melody, not the harmony
of various voices and instruments. Also we
have numerous scales, and the melodies written
in each scale are appropriate to a certain range
of emotions. For example, certain airs are al-
ways sung in the morning, others at twilight,
others at night; so that their strains are associ-
ated in our minds with those hours.
"In the same way a certain range of melodies
is consecrated to the emotion of love, another to
that of heroic valour, another to repose, and
so on.
"Music, on the whole, is not dependent on
words. It is majestically grand in its own
glory. Why should it condescend to be sub-
servient to words'? When it is inexpressible
then music is at its best. What words fail to
convey to human mind music does with perfect
ease. So the less there is of verbosity in a song,
the better it is for the song itself. Music begins
when words end."
168 SHISHU
The music classes assemble in the evenings,
when singing and playing on different instru-
ments are taught with enthusiasm, and as a re-
sult the Bolpur School has turned out some first-
class singers and players. The astronomical
classes go out star-gazing. The dramatic clubs
rehearse seasonal plays written by Tagore.
The dramatic clubs must produce every year at
least two plays. Tagore himself trains the
boys, and takes part in the plays to add to the
dignity of the occasion.
At night the boys also edit their newspapers,
of which they have four in the school. They
are all written by hand, and illustrated by hand.
The best paper is the Skishu, conducted by
children between six and ten. They write
poems and even literary criticisms. The Bol-
pur students read and make summary of impor-
tant articles in the magazines of England and
America for different Calcutta monthlies. The
day's work ends when the students go to bed
between nine and ten.
ALL ALONE 169
Tagore himself lives alone in a house. He
gets up with the morning bell, sometimes before,
and takes his morning bath, goes on the roof and
loses himself in meditation for hours at a time.
In this house he quite often cooks his own meals
in an "economic cooker." He does not eat
much. Boiled rice, boiled potatoes, cauliflow-
ers or beans, enough of butter are all that he
cares to eat. He is not fond of milk or sweets.
He takes long walks for exercise and is fond of
gardening. Plain living and high thinking is
the key-note of his life at Bolpur. He
preaches to the boys and the teachers twice a
week in the temple. His love for the children
is of an idealistic nature. At times one of them
will steal into his room and watch him smile and
move his head to and fro as he writes or thinks
over a poem. One such boy startled him by
exclaiming, "That's how the mad men do."
"Yes, my child, poets are worse than mad men.
When did you come into the room*?"
Once a boy of six summers was playing with
170 BURDEN OF POETRY
Tagore's beard as he lay in the poet's lap. All
of a sudden the child said: "Gurudev, you
write so many poems, why don't you teach me
how to write poems?"
"My child," replied Tagore, "the burden of
poetry is exceedingly heavy, I feel smothered at
times. I don't want to burden you with it."
"All right," said the child gravely, "I shall
learn to write poems myself. They all seem to
• like your poems, even though you are burdened
a little." That boy is now about ten years old,
and he has written some beautiful poems in Ben-
gali. He is a constant contributor to the school
papers.
In other schools the teacher is an object of
terror. The students are afraid to go near him.
But in Bolpur the teacher and the students are
friends, — like older and younger brothers.
There are in all about twenty teachers for 190
boys, and there are no places assigned to them.
There is no head-master. Every year the teach-
ers select one from amongst them as their leader.
MANAGEMENT 171
The present leader, Nepal Chandra Roy, a good
friend of the author, has been elected for the
last three years consecutively. Tagore, the
teachers and the students speak of the school
as "our school." They all feel that they own
the school, or that the school owns them all.
To teach students leadership and self-govern-
ment, the internal management of the school is
left to the students. Every Tuesday the stu-
dents elect a captain for a week. He is the
chief magistrate. Every house elects its own
leader. The leaders take note of acts of mis-
behaviour in class or outside. The cases are not
brought before Tagore or before the teachers,
but before the students' court, which sits in the
evening on appointed days. The prosecuted
student defends himself or engages a brother
student to defend him. If he is found guilty
the judge asks the convicted to choose his own
punishment. The punishment is generally in
the form of depriving oneself of games for a
day or so, or to do some extra work to keep
172 OBSERVATION
the houses and the gardens clean. Unkind
words, like corporal punishment, are strictly
prohibited in the school.
Besides the spiritual training the entire system
of education is planned to develop the imagina-
tion and the faculty of observation in the stu-
dents; whereas in other schools all over India,
cramming is most systematically encouraged.
Here boys are made to observe a single insect,
or a single flower from birth to death. Tagore
publishes these interesting observations in his
own magazine, Tattwabodhmi Patrika.
To watch the daily life of the Bolpur boys is
exceedingly fascinating. Here a few boys are
talking poetry and literature; there another
group is watching the growth of an insect, or
of a plant; a third group is busy feeding the
birds and the animals; a fourth nursing
the flower bushes as if they were their own
brothers. If perchance a boy passes away,
the bereaved family at Bolpur would raise
a monument of bricks, bricks that are ce-
PATRIOTISM 173
mented with tears. Like fawns these boys
frolic about in their new home full of love and
saturated with freedom. Many of Tagore's
pupils refuse, at vacation, to go home to their
parents, may be the parents that punished these
boys to make them good, while others who go
home, are anxious to return to Bolpur before the
vacation expires. This no doubt is due to the
attraction of love which Tagore uses to make
the children good and happy.
The thought, the culture — in fact, the entire
atmosphere at Bolpur, are all Indian; truly
nationalistic and universal. And as most of the
students are from Eastern Bengal, patriotism
plays a prominent part in the school. The
teachers and students are saturated with patri-
otic fervour. Though isolated in a kind of in-
tellectual and geographical oasis, still the stu-
dents are wide awake and are in touch with all
the world movements. Tagore is a voracious
reader. Every month he buys many books on
literature, philosophy, economics, politics, soci-
174 HIRALAL SEN
ology and history. He reads them all and then
presents them to the school library where the
boys and the teachers read them. There are to
be found books on feminism, socialism, and even
single-tax does not escape the attention of
Tagore and his students. He himself inflicts
no particular system of political or economic
theories on the students, as is done in other
schools in India, and even in American univer-
sities, but asks them to read on all sides and
then decide for themselves.
This kind of tolerance and the patriotic na-
ture of the school have made the British-Indian
government pi ace this school on the "black list."
About three years ago Sir Lancelot Hare, 'the
then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, issued
circular letters to the government officers to take
their children out of that school, and asking them
not to send their children there. It was appar-
ently done because Tagore employed in his
school a young patriotic poet, Hiralal Sen, as a
teacher. Sen was forced out of the school by
MEN OR MACHINE? 175
the government; but Tagore employed him in
his own estate at a higher salary. The govern-
ment, to gain control of the school, offered a
monthly allowance. But though the school was
never in a sound financial condition, Tagore
detecting the motive of such kindness, flatly
refused any financial help from the British-
Indian government. Tagore has given the
Nobel Prize money to the school, and the royal-
ties on his books has been consecrated for the
same purpose.
Just a few days before his departure from
America, in course of a conversation, Mr.
Tagore said to the present writer: "There are
many at home who do not realise the far-reach-
ing and deep-seated influence of my school ; but
you know how, every year, I am turning out so
many men, whereas in the government schools
they turn out mostly machines." Whether the
educational institutions of both the East and
the West should turn out men or machines or
just operators of machines is one of the gravest
176 SIMPLE LIFE
problems of the world that needs immediate so-
lution. Tagore is trying to solve it in his own
idealistic way.
Since settling at Bolpur, Tagore's lyric genius
has reached its height in "Gitanjali" and his
mysticism, in his drama "Raja," now published
in translation as "The King of the Dark
Chamber." Here, fourteen miles from the
home of Chandidas, and fifteen miles from that
of Joydev, (two of India's greatest poets), he
lives a life of unalloyed simplicity, thinking ex-
alted thoughts, writing poems and plays, loving
children in the school and the birds in the woods.
Thus he spends his days in his quiet spot, in con-
stant communion with the Godhead, and radiat-
ing calmness all around his modern hermitage.
CHAPTER VIII
TAGORE'S PHILOSOPHICAL MESSAGE
THE spiritual ideals embodied in Tagore's poet-
ical and prose writings are the truths of
Hindu philosophy. The Hindu is essentially
of a philosophical turn of mind. Through
ages of meditation on the deepest prob-
lems of life and death he has developed a sys-
tem of metaphysical philosophy that has elic-
ited admiration from many well-informed
Western scholars of distinction. Lecturing be-
fore the Cambridge university in 1882, the late
Professor Max Miiller paid a high compliment
to India and its thought, saying : "If I were to
look over the whole world to find out the coun-
try most richly endowed with all the wealth,
power, and beauty that nature can bestow — in
some parts a very paradise on earth — I should
point to India. If I were asked under what sky
177
178 PEERLESS INDIA
the human mind has most fully developed some
of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered
on the greatest problems of life, and has found
solutions of some of them which well deserve the
attention even of those who have studied Plato
and Kant — I should point to India. And if I
were to ask myself from what literature we,
here in Europe, we who have been nurtured al-
most exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and
Romans, and of one Semetic race, the Jewish,
may draw that corrective which is most wanted
in order to make our inner life more perfect,
more comprehensive, more universal, in fact
more truly human, a life, not for this life only,
but a transfigured and eternal life — again I
should point to India."
The climax of Hindu thought is in the
Vedanta (end of knowledge) philosophy of the
Upanishads. Victor Cousin, the eminent
French historian of philosophy, thus said in
1828 in Paris : "When we read with attention
the poetical and philosophical monuments of the
UPANISHADS 179
East, above all, those of India which are begin-
ning to spread in' Europe, we discover there
many a truth, and truths so profound, and which
make such a contrast with the meanness of the
results at which the European genius has some-
times stopped, that we are constrained to bend
the knee before the philosophy of the East, and
to see in this cradle of the human race the na-
tive land of the highest philosophy." And
again, Schopenhauer speaks of the same Hindu
philosophy as follows: "In the whole world
there is no study so beneficial and so elevating
as that of the Upanishads. It has been the
solace of my life, it will be the solace of my
death." "If these words of Schopenhauer's,"
adds Professor Max Miiller, "required any en-
dorsement, I should willingly give it as the re-
sult of my own experience during a long life
devoted to the study of many philosophies and
many religions.
"If philosophy is meant to be a preparation
for a happy death, or Euthanasia, I know of no
i8o WORDSWORTH VS. TAGORE
better preparation for it than the Vedanta Phi-
losophy."
It is of this philosophy of the Upanishads
that Tagore sings in his philosophical poems,
and writes in his exquisite essays in "Sadhana."
It deals with the oneness of the universe — the
fundamental unity in the diversity of the phe-
nomenal world, and the divinity of it all.
Wordsworth is a wonderful nature-poet. He
is intense, but at times vague in his thoughts of
the spiritual in nature. His famous "Ode" is
singular in its poetical charm, but it depicts the
world as if it was made of woe. He thinks
that "there hath past away a glory from the
earth," that "our birth is but a sleep and for-
getting," that "the shades of prison-house begin
to close upon the growing Boy." Ten years
after the completion of this "Ode," Wordsworth
wrote his "Invocation to the Earth," and there,
too, he addresses her as "the doleful mother of
mankind."
Tagore's philosophy is altogether different.
TAGORE'S "ODE" 181
To him the world is full of joy and love, and
an undying bliss dances throughout the uni-
verse. Sorrows there are in this world, but they
are like the flitting clouds of Indian autumn —
clouds that intensify the glory of the moon.
In another chapter of this book also we have
dealt with Tagore's views on the earth and his
philosophy of work. Here we can not but
translate his wonderful "Ode to the Earth," and
take another peep into his philosophy of life,
love and action. The "Ode" reads thus in
translation :
"O my most enchanting Earth-Mother, how
often I have lovingly looked at you, and sung
out of my heart in unalloyed happiness ! After
diffusing the essence of my being into thy own
self, you have incessantly whirled round the dis-
tant stars through eternity. And your tender
grass blades have grown on me, flowers have
blossomed in profusion and trees have show-
ered their fruits and flowers on me, yes, on me.
So, sitting alone by the River Padma I can
182 TAGORE'S "ODE"
easily feel, yes I do feel, how grass seeds thrill
to germinate ; how the elixir of life is being per-
ennially supplied to your heart; how joyfully
the flowers bloom from beautiful stems; how
trees and creepers vibrate with joy at the touch
of the youthful rays of the sun, even as babies
are happy when they are tired of nursing on
their mothers' breast.
"That is the reason why when the rays of the
autumn moon fall on the golden harvest fields,
and when the cocoanut leaves dance in joy that I
feel a kind of nervous joyousness, and think of
the time when my mind pervaded the water,
the earth, the foliage in the woods and the blue
of the sky. The entire universe seems silently
to call me a thousand times to come to its bosom.
And from the wonderful playhouse of the cos-
mos I hear the faint, but familiar and joyous
voice of my playmates of old.
"O Earth-Mother, do take me back to your
heart — a heart whence emanates life in a thou-
sand different forms, and where songs are being
© Photograph by Frank Wolcott
TAGORE AT FIFTY
VEDANTA 183
sung in a thousand different notes, and dances
are being danced in as many ways, and where
mind is ever thoughtful, and you stand self-
effulgent and all-beneficial.'*
Tagore, no doubt, believes with William
Blake that "Man has no body distinct from his
soul" ; but he goes a step further, and unlike his
father, who was a dualist (Daitabadi), believes
in the Adaita (Monistic) doctrine of the
Vedanta that this world is not only made by
God, but is made of God as well.
Once a Hindu philosopher thus taught his
disciple : "The world is not only made by God,
but it is made of God as well."
"How can that be*?" inquired the pupil.
"Look at the spider," replied the teacher,
"who with the utmost intelligence draws the
threads of its wonderful net out of its own
body."
Some of the Western theologians "related
that the God of the Hindus was a large black
spider sitting in the centre of the universe, and
184 SADHANA
creating the world by drawing it out like threads
from its own body."
It is from such misunderstandings that there
has developed a gulf between the East and the
West. Philosophy, like science, is universal.
It knows neither East nor West. It transcends
all physical limitations. In this respect Tagore
by his lucid elucidations of complex metaphysi-
cal problems in the essays of "Sadhana," has
rendered an invaluable service to humanity.
The style is simple and direct. There is no at-
tempt at metaphysical pedantry. The unal-
loyed elegance of style, loftiness of its thought,
and the sublimity of its subject-matter would
have equally thrilled Emerson, Browning and
Meredith. And Bacon would have been jeal-
ous of the succinct potency of these essays —
essays that deal with the realisation of life by
love and right action.
Anandadhyeva Khalvimani jay ante. In
other words: "From the everlasting joy do all
objects have their birth." "This joy," says
JOY IS EVERYWHERE 185
Tagore in his essay on "Realisation in Love,"
"whose other name is love, must by its very
nature have duality for its realisation. When
the singer has his inspiration he makes himself
into two; he has within him his other self as the
hearer, and the outside audience is merely an ex-
tension of this other self of his. The lover
seeks his own other self in his beloved. It is the
joy that creates this separation, in order to
realise through obstacles the union. . . .
"Want of love is a degree of callousness; for
love is the perfection of consciousness. We do
not love because we do not comprehend, or
rather we do not comprehend because we do not
love. For love is the ultimate meaning of ev-
erything around us. It is not a mere sentiment ;
it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all
creation. It is the white light of pure con-
sciousness that emanates from Brahma. . . .
And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's
green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of
the sky ; in the reckless exuberance of spring ; in
186 SUPREME LOVER
the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the liv-
ing flesh that animates our bodily frame ; in the
perfect poise of the human figure, noble and up-
right; in living; in the exercise of all our pow-
ers ; in the acquisition of knowledge ; in fighting
evils; in dying for gains we never can share.
. . . Joy is the realisation of the truth of one-
ness, the oneness of our soul with the world and
the world-soul with the supreme lover." *
"From love the world is born, by love it is sus-
tained, towards love it moves, and into love it
enters." This truth of the Upanishads, Tagore
further develops in his essays on "Realisation
in Action." "We must remember," says Ta-
gore, "that as joy expresses itself in law, so the
soul finds its freedom in action. It is because
joy can not find freedom within itself that it
wants external action. The soul of man is ever
freeing itself from its own folds by its activity;
had it been otherwise it could not have done any
voluntary work. The more a man acts and
makes actual what was latent in him, the nearer
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
FREEDOM 187
does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In that
actualisation man is ever making himself more
and yet more distinct, and seeing himself clearly
under newer and newer aspects in the midst of
his varied activities, in the state, in society.
This vision makes for freedom.
"Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vague-
ness. There is no bondage so fearful as that of
obscurity. It is to escape from this obscurity
that the seed struggles to sprout, the bud to blos-
som. It is to rid itself of this envelop of
vagueness that the ideas in our mind are con-
stantly seeking opportunities to an outward
form. In the same way our soul, in order to
release itself from the mist of indistinctness and
come out into the open, is continually creating
for itself fresh fields of action, and is busy con-
triving new forms of activity, even such as are
not needful for the purpose of its earthly life.
And why"? Because it wants freedom. It
wants to see itself, to realise itself." *
This message of love and of right action has a
by The Macmillan Company.
i88 HARMONY NEEDED
special significance at a time when so many na-
tions of Europe are at war seeking each other's
destruction. These fighting nations are prac-
tising civilised cannibalism with a vengeance.
Christian brotherhood, humanitarian ideals, and
the vision of universal peace have been cast to
the winds. Hatred, jealousy and distrust seem
to be the order of the day. Here the pacifist
philosophy of life as inculcated in India by her
seers like Tagore may render a great service for
shaping the destiny of the nations and the races
of the world. Too much meditation and meta-
physical speculations have ruined India; and
too much materialism shall be the undoing of
the nations of the West. A harmony between
the two would bring about an ideal state of
affairs: The message of the war and the mes-
sage of Tagore will help this cause — a cause
which, when fructified, will bring permanent
peace, eternal prosperity and unalloyed liberty
on earth.
CHAPTER IX
TAGORE AND THE NOBEL PRIZE HIS PLACE IN
BENGALI LITERATURE
IT was in one of those January (1913) days
when the sun, defeated at the hands of tiny
drops of befogged water, hides its face in shame
and leaves the world to weep for its own folly
that I stood in the presence of the poet Rabin-
dranath Tagore in the city of Urbana, 111.,
where his son was in school to learn modern
methods of farming. After exchange of saluta-
tions we sat in his cosy parlours and at once
plunged into a conversation.
"How do you like the country*?" I asked.
"Very well. Oh ! the sunshine, the beautiful
sunshine even when the thermometer goes below
zero, and the reflection of sun's rays on the white
snow, I love it all. In England we cannot
enjoy the blessings of such days. To-day it is
189
igo
AMERICAN CULTURE
exceedingly gloomy here, but I feel sure that
to-morrow will bring one more of those en-
chanted American days." Talking about na-
ture Mr. Tagore's face was lit up as with a halo.
"How do you like the people?" I inquired.
"They are all right in their own way. They
are unrivalled business men, splendid organisers
and agriculturists, and matchless engineers, but
there is no culture, they lack that innate refine-
ment which characterises the people of older
countries. I wish they had more culture even
though agriculture suffered a little," said Mr.
Tagore in a rather pathetic tone.
"But you know," I said, "America is such a
vast country the cultured people are scattered
all over. They are not focussed in one place as
in Paris, Berlin or London. And then you have
not met many people worth meeting, along your
line of interest — you are living in Urbana, Illi-
nois."
After talking about various national prob-
lems of India, I said : "I have come all the way
BENGALI BOMBS 191
from Chicago to see you, of course, but princi-
pally to entreat you to translate more of your
works, so that the Western world may appreci-
ate the beauty of our Bengali literature. Ben-
gal is not all 'bomb' and 'sedition' as the world
at large is made to understand by the English
papers."
"Yes, I am translating," said Mr. Tagore, as
his eyes were looking at the carpet, "more of
my works. I am really glad to see that Gitan-
jali, my first book in English, has been so well
received."
"I have another idea," I said, "in requesting
you to translate more of your works. It is this :
when known, I feel absolutely certain that you
will sooner or later win the Nobel Prize for
poetry. No other man in India or Asia has won
that laurel. It will not only give India an
international status, but will be a step forward
for international brotherhood and world peace."
"Are the Asiatics eligible for the prize*?" in-
quired Mr. Tagore.
192 PREJUDICE
"Yes, most decidedly so, and you must win
it," I said.
"When Kipling could get that prize, I am not
prepared to say whether I deserve it or not.
But you know the prejudice — the prejudice
against the Asiatics. If Asiatics are eligible
then why has not our Dr. Jagadis Chandra
Bose, India's greatest scientist of modern times,
received it yet?" said Mr. Tagore in an indig-
nant way as his luminous eyes flashed.
"As for prejudice," I replied, "the Americans
and the British are the worst sinners. The con-
tinental Europeans have no such prejudice, and
the smaller but more humane powers like Nor-
way, Sweden and Denmark, on account of the
tyranny of the larger powers have a special
sympathy for the oppressed nations of Asia.
And you may rest assured that when the Nobel
Prize Committee comes to know of the inherent
quality and beauty of your writings, they will
not hesitate a second to honour themselves by
"TOO IMAGINATIVE" (?) 193
honouring you. Now our first duty is to make
them know about you."
"You seem to be bent," said the poet as a
faint smile flashed on his lips, "on awarding me
the Nobel Prize. You are the first man to sug-
gest it to me. All right, if I get it, I shall at
once start an industrial department in connec-
tion with my school at Bolpur." Mr. Tagore
laughed and continued : "We are getting to be
too imaginative this afternoon." And we all
laughed.
Within ten months of this conversation Mr.
Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for poetry.
Not only India, or Asia, but the whole world
has reason to rejoice over the award of the Nobel
Prize for "idealistic literature" to Rabindra-
nath Tagore. "The award," to use the words
of an American writer, "will spur the men of the
West to inquire what the men of the East have
said and have to say. It will interpret the East
to the West as the East has never before been
194 THE GREAT DISCOVERY
interpreted. It thus becomes a historic event, a
turning point in the understanding of one hemi-
sphere by the other." It also inaugurates the
dawn of a new era of friendliness between the
East and the West, so long at odds on account
of the age-long struggle for material supremacy
and territorial aggrandisement. The mutual
appreciation of the literature, arts and ideals of
the East and the West will dispel the dark
clouds of international animosity and help bring
that day when international peace and interna-
tional good-will will reign supreme on earth.
If the goal of world peace is ever reached, as
we believe it must be, then it will be reached by
the path of cultural concourse between the
Orient and the Occident, that will lead to the
realisation of the fundamental unity of the
human race.
When the West discovers the East, and the
East discovers the West humanity will discover
itself automatically. Then the illumination
will come to "break the walls," and this world
* 195
will be "one luminous whole," "one perfect
music."
"For many centuries no such poet and
musician has appeared in India." This extrav-
agant language is used by an English missionary
admirer of Tagore in a leading English review.
This statement elicited some harsh criticism
from the Bengalees. I remember that when
that passage was read before a group of edu-
cated young Bengalees in America they became
furious. One of them shouted in true Ameri-
can fashion : "D — n it."
A second said: "Was there ever a greater
poet in Bengal than Madhusudan Datta*? His
'Meghnath Badh Kabya' still stands unrivalled
as a piece of poetic composition."
A third literary Bengali commented as fol-
lows : "Yes, Rabi Babu is a great poet, but to
call him our greatest poet in many centuries is
to betray one's ignorance of Bengali literature.
If Mr. Tagore had ever attempted to write pro-
found books like 'Raibatak' or 'Kurukshefra' of
196 •?
Nabin Chandra Sen, his lyric brain would have
burst before finishing even one canto of either.
There are no such books in Bengali literature."
A devotee of Dwijendra Lai Roy, Tagore' s rival
poet and dramatist, remarked sarcastically:
"Rabi Babu knows well how to begin a poem,
but he cannot even keep up a high standard of
excellence in a single lyric. As a dramatist he
is a failure, and is nowhere near Dwijendra Lai
Roy. His love lyrics are poor imitations of the
poems of our Vaishnava poets of old, and his
philosophy is the philosophy of the Upanishads.
Let the Europeans and the Americans rave over
Tagore. But there is nothing new for us in his
writings."
In the corner was seated an admirer of Rabi
Babu. He was hurt to the core, but most
quietly asked the critics:
"Has there ever been another literary man in
Bengal, besides Mr. Tagore, who has reached
such heights of excellence in all the subjects like
COQUETTE 197
poetry, drama, essays and novels? Yes, in all
of these, can you name one?"
For a minute or so you could have heard a
pin drop. Not a word was uttered. There
was nothing to say, for no other literary man in
Bengal has done so well in so many things.
Even the most adverse critics of Tagore are
bound to admit that he has adorned every de-
partment of Bengali literature by his transcend-
ent genius. Though one cannot but admire the
fecundity and versatility of Tagore's genius, it
cannot be denied just the same, that he has, like
Ruskin, dabbled with too many things, and has
written too much. He himself pleads guilty of
making love with all the different branches of
art. The passage in which he makes a frank
confession on the subject, translates:
"I am like a coquettish lady that wants to
please all her lovers, and is afraid to lose a
single one. I do not want to disappoint any of
the Muses. But that increases the work, and in
198 POETRY ABOVE ALL
the long run I cannot master one fully and com-
pletely. ... I have a voracious appetite for all
kinds of art. When I compose songs, I feel
that I ought to stick to it. When I am engaged
in writing a play I get so intoxicated with the
subject that I begin to feel that I should devote
my whole life in this pursuit ; and again, when I
join in the crusade against early marriage 1 and
illiteracy, I feel that the art of social reform
ought to be the noblest work in life. At times I
even paint, but for painting I am too old. . . .
"But poetry is the favourite theme of my
life . . . whatever I do — edit the Sadhana or
manage Zamindary, the moment I begin to write
poems I discover myself and enter into my own
self. I at once realise that I am in my element.
In life, consciously or unconsciously I may play
false, but that is utterly impossible with my
1 Once a friend asked Mr. Tagore his opinion on early
marriage. The poet was at that time suffering from rheu-
matism in his waist. So he replied: "Suffice it to say for
the time being that if anybody wants to marry early let him
do so, but let nobody suffer from rheumatism."
TAGORE'S PROSE 199
Muse. In poems the deep truth of my life finds
its final lodgment."
"I find," says Tagore in another place, "in-
finitely more pleasure in writing a single poem
than in writing a thousand prose pieces. In
verse-writing thought assumes a definite form,
and it is easy to handle it. Prose is hard to
manipulate, it is so cumbrous. If I can write
one poem a day, I can pass my days in happi-
ness." And yet, Tagore's prose is declared by
many whose opinions deserve attention, to be his
best contribution to Bengali literature. It is
claimed that in his prose writings Tagore is more
thoughtful, more natural and more original.
Once a visitor at Bolpur told Tagore that his
prose was far superior in intrinsic value and
originality to his poetic compositions. Ta-
gore answered in silence. Of course silence did
not mean the acceptance of the statement.
Tagore does not like to hear that. It is not
necessary to agree with this school of thought to
say that Tagore's prose is simply superb in the
200 "GORA"
grandeur of its thought and subtlety of its com-
position. He has added a fragrance to Bengali
prose which is at once rich and rare. As the
father of "short stories" in Bengali he has given
us a treasure which would be a cherished acqui-
sition to any language. As an essayist, he is
unsurpassed. As the author of "Gora," a novel,
he has ranked himself as one of our best novel-
ists. His letters are perfect pieces of prose-
poems.
Like Milton and Matthew Arnold, had he
written not a single poem, still his prose writings
would have ranked him as one of the brightest
luminaries in the firmament of Bengali letters.
What Swinburne says of the style of Rossetti's
poetry may as well be said of Tagore's prose
style: "It has the fullest fervour and fluency
of impulse, and the impulse is always towards
harmony and perfection. It has the inimitable
note of instinct, and the instinct is always high
and right. ... It has all the grace of perfect
force and all the force of perfect grace."
OTHER CELEBRITIES 201
Whatever may be said about the towering
genius of Tagore, it cannot, however, be gain-
said that as a poet of love and life, he is a direct
intellectual descendant of the Vaishnava poets
of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, and
as a poet of mysticism of the Rishis of the
Upanishads who lived between 2000 and 1000
years before the Christian era, and of the
mystic poets like Kabir and Ramprosad.
Bengali literature may well be proud of the
blank verse of Mahusudan Datta and Nabin
Chandra Sen, the novels of Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhya, the essays of Akshoy Koomar
Datta, the dramas of Girish Chandra Ghose,
Dwijendra Lai Roy, and Khirode Chandra
Bidyabinode, and the crystalline lyrics of Rabin-
dranath Tagore; but the love literature of the
Vaishnavas, the Krishna cult, is its rarest
treasure.
The different stages of love are thus divided
into five main divisions :
"Purba Raga, the dawn of love; Daufya,
202 CHANDI DAS
message of love; Abhisara, secret going- forth;
Sambhog-Milan, physical union of lovers;
Mathur, final separation, and Bhava-sanmilan^
union of spirit.
"In Bhaktiratnakara 360 different kinds of
the finer emotions of a loyer's heart are minutely
classified. Each of these groups has hundreds
of songs attached to it by way of illustration."
Chandi Das thus wrote about the love be-
tween Radha and Krishna in the beginning of
the fifteenth century. Mr. Dinesh Chandra
Sen translates the passage as follows :
"Among men such love was never heard of
before. Their hearts are bound to each other
by their very nature. They are in each other's
presence, yet they weep, fearing a parting. If
one is absent from the other for half a second,
they both feel the pangs of death. Just as a
fish dies when dragged from the water, so do
they if parted from one another.
"You say that the sun loves the lily, but the
lily dies in the frost, but the sun lives on hap-
RADHA AND KRISHNA 203
pily. You say the bird chataka and the clouds
are lovers, but the clouds do not give a drop of
water to the bird before their time. The flower
and the bee, it is said, adore each other, but if
the bee does not come to the flower, the flower
does not go to the bee. It is foolish to describe
the bird char oka as a lover of the moon — their
status is so different. There is nothing, says
Chandi Das, to compare to this love of Radha
and Krishna."
And again, when the separation came about
between Radha and Krishna and the former
felt that she was about to die from the pangs
of separation the poet Govinda Das (1537-
1612) makes her sing:
"Let my body after death be reduced to the
earth of those paths which will be touched by
the beautiful feet of Krishna. Let it be
melted into the water of the tank where
Krishna bathes. When I shall have expired,
let my spirit live as the lustre of the mirror
in which Krishna sees his face. O, let me be
204 A JOKE
turned into a gentle breeze for the fan with
which he cools himself. Whenever Krishna
moves like a new-born cloud, may I become the
sky behind, to form the background of his
beautiful form."
Rabindranath used to read these Vaishnava
poets from his early boyhood and was saturated
with the spirit of Vaishnava devotional love
poems. At the age of eighteen he wrote some
most beautiful poems (padabali) after these
poets. Tagore tells us of an interesting anec-
dote about these poems. The story reads thus
in translation:
"I once told a friend of mine that going
through different books and manuscripts in our
Brahmo Somaj library I had discovered and
copied some poems by a hitherto unknown
Vaishnava poet, Vanusingh by name; and I
read the poems to him. My friend was startled
and said : 'I must have that manuscript. Even
Chandi Das and Vidyapati could not write such
poems. I want to give it to Akshay Babu for
VAISHNAVA INFLUENCE 205
publication along with our other ancient liter-
ary treasures.'
"Then I proved from my own original manu-
script that such poems could never have been
written by Chandi Das or Vidyapati, for they
were from my own pen. My friend assumed
a serious attitude and gravely said : 'These are
not very bad.' '
Tagore thus speaks of the influence of the
Vaishnava* poets on his life and work: "Our
boat is moving now. The shore is on our left.
On the rich green verdure of the rice fields has
stooped, motherlike, the deep blue of the thick
and moist clouds. Thunder roars Gur-Gur at
intervals. I am reminded of the description
of the Jamuna in the rainy season as given by
the Vaishnava poets. Many phases of nature
remind me of the poets of old ; the cause of this
lies in the fact that the beauty of nature is no
empty beauty for me — therein lies hidden the
eternal playfulness of a mysterious heart, —
here resides limitless Brindabana. Those that
206 QUITE ORIGINAL
have entered into the very heart of the Vaish-
nava poems, hear their echoes as I do, in the
voices of nature."
Even though in the poems of Tagore the love
fervour of the Vaishnava poets fades a little,
yet they assume a newer and a nobler colour in
their universality of application. "There is
nothing new under the sun" ; but he is an artist
who can create new ideas and new imageries to
cloak the old in ever new forms. Judging
from this standpoint — Tagore, with all his in-
debtedness to the poets of the Krishna cult, is
yet an original poet of the highest rank.
And in his philosophy of the Sadhana —
though the basic principles of the Upanishads
are known even to the children of India —
Tagore has modernized them, and made com-
plicated problems as clear as crystal.
In his devotional and mystic poems and
songs, Tagore combines the simplicity of
Ramprosad of the eighteenth century with
Kabir, the mystic poet of the fifteenth century.
RAMPROSAD 207
Ramprosad sang in Bengali and Kabir in
Hindi. Of the simplicity of Ramprosad, Mar-
garet E. Noble (Sister Nivedita) enthusiastic-
ally, but truly, says : "No flattery could touch
a nature so unapproachable in its simplicity.
For in these writings we have, perhaps alone in
literature, the spectacle of a great poet, whose
genius is spent in realising the emotions of a
child. William Blake in our poetry strikes the
note that is nearest his, and Blake is, by no
means, his peer. Robert Burns, in his splendid
indifference to rank, and Whitman in his glori-
fication of common things, have points of kin-
ship with him. But to such a radiant white
heart of childlikeness, it would be impossible
to find a perfect counterpart. Years do noth-
ing to spoil his quality. They only serve to
give him a self-confidence and poise. Like a
child he is now grave, now gay, sometimes pet-
ulant, sometimes despairing. But in the child
all this is purposeless. In Ramprosad there is
a deep intensity of purpose. Every sentence
208 SONG OF RAMPROSAD
he has uttered is designed to sing the glory of
his Mother." In Mr. Sen's translation he thus
sings one of his most popular songs :
"No more shall I call you by that sweet name,
'Mother!'
You have given me woes unnumbered and re-
served many more for me, I know !
I once had a home and family, and now you
have made me such that I am disowned
by all.
What other ills may yet befall me I cannot
tell.
Who knows but that I may have to beg my
bread from door to door. Indeed, I am
expecting it.
Does not a child live when his mother is dead*?
Ramprosad was a true son of his mother; —
but you, being the mother, have treated
your son like an enemy.
If in the presence of his mother, the son can
suffer so much, what is the use of such a
mother to him1?"
KABIR 209
Kabir, unlike Ramprosad and like Tagore,
did not sing to any particular God or Goddess.
He was a universalist, not in its creedal sense,
but in the significance of the term. He found
God everywhere. Like Paul the tent-maker
and Bunyan the tinker, Kabir was an artisan
who made his living working at the loom. He
had no education — he was not even literate.
But it is not necessary to be able to read or
write to produce true poetry. Kabir sang out
of his heart, and his songs are now sung by mil-
lions of his countrymen. When one reads
Kabifs songs, one cannot but think of Gitan-
jali, and we do not wonder why some superficial
critics are prone to call Tagore an accomplished
imitator at best. To quote a few of Kabir's
songs as translated by Tagore :
"O servant, where dost thou seek Me?
Lo I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor mosque: I am
neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash.
210 SONGS OF KABIR
Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in
Yoga and renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see
Me : thou shalt meet Me in a moment of
time.
Kabir says, O Sadhu ! God is the breath of all
breath." *
In Tagore's translation he thus sings of Di-
vine love :
"How could the love between Thee and me
sever?
As the leaf of the lotus abides on the water:
so Thou art my Lord, and I am Thy
servant !
As the night-bird Chakor gazes all night at the
moon: so Thou art my Lord and I am
Thy servant.
From the beginning until the end of time,
there is love between Thee and me: and
how shall such love be extinguished?
* Copyright by The Macmillan Company.
SONGS OF KABIR 211
Kabir says : 'As the river enters into the ocean,
so my heart touches Thee.' "
And again, the following reminds us of the
pragmatic poems of Tagore. The poem as
translated by Tagore reads as follows :
"It is not the austerities that mortify the flesh
which are pleasing to the Lord,
When you leave off your clothes and kill your
senses, you do not please the Lord;
The man who is kind and practises righteous-
ness, who remains passive amidst the con-
cerns of the world, who considers all
creatures on earth as his own self, he at-
tains the immortal Being: the True God
is ever with him.
Kabir says : 'He attains the true Name whose
words are pure, and who is free from
pride and conceit.' '
The critics of Tagore may well remember
that the songs like those of Kabir might as well
212 MACAULAY'S BLUNDER
have been sung by a St. Francis or a David. As
Browning was profoundly influenced by Shel-
ley, Tennyson by Keats and Byron, and Arnold
by Wordsworth, similarly Tagore has been pro-
foundly influenced by Kabir, Chandidas and
Joy Dev. Tagore is not an imitator, he is a
creator and that of the highest order.
Tagore was born at a supreme moment of
our history. He was needed in India as Dante
was needed in Italy, Shakespeare in England
and Goethe in Germany. After the strife and
the stress of English domination of Hindu-
stan, the people longed for quiet. Laissez
faire theory was practised with a vengeance.
English culture threatened the indigenous; and
soon the question arose for a momentous de-
cision, whether English, Sanskrit or Bengali
should be the medium of instruction. Macau-
lay with his profound ignorance of Sanskrit or
Bengali literature wrote his merciless anathema
on the former in his notorious Minute of 1835.
The British-Indian government voted for Eng-
THE ENGLISH TIDE 213
lish, and the people have to suffer still from
such a stupendously stupid blunder. In the
Calcutta University, English is still the first
language and Sanskrit or Bengali the second
language. Here, it may be mentioned, by the
way, that, like the Irish nationalists the Indian
nationalists are at work to regenerate the spirit
of our own language, and Tagore is a par-
amount leader of the movement.
But when the tide of English culture and lit-
erature was about to swamp the classical cul-
ture of the country, there rose a man whose
transcendent personality was strong enough to
stem the smothering influence of too much par-
tiality to an alien culture. This was Raja
Ram Mohun Roy, who is so deservedly called
the Father of Modern India. But though it
received a great many set-backs, the modern
renaissance in Bengal truly began not at the
time of Raja Ram Mohun, but in the "six-
teenth century when Vaishnavism preached the
equality of all men, when the Sudra — the helot
214 RAM MOHTJN ROY
of the ancient Hindu — preached shoulder to
shoulder with the Brahmin who welcomed and
encouraged it, when the God of the Hindu was
for the first time worshipped with hymns com-
posed by a Mohammedan, when Ram Das de-
clared that man was free and he could not be
subjected by force, and when the Brahmin ac-
cepted the leadership of the Sudra in attempt-
ing to found a Hindu state." Through many
contributing causes the reformation was in
abeyance for centuries, and Raja Ram Mohun
had to begin the work anew. But he realised
the tremendous energy of the western culture
and the virility of its literature, so he stood
for a compromise — rather a harmony. He, on
the one hand, strongly advocated the introduc-
tion of western culture, and on the other, fer-
vently preached the gospel of the revival of
Indian culture and Sanskrit literature. The
time was ripe, and he set the ball rolling, which
is still moving on through "zig-zag paths and
juts of pointed rocks."
VIDYASAGAR 215
Raja Ram Mohun Roy introduced into liter-
ature the use of modern Bengali. There was
still a struggle as to whether Bengali should be
Anglicized or Sanskritized. Pandit Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar in his "Sitar Banabash"
dealt a death-blow to the former by writing this
exquisite book in chaste Sanskritized Bengali.
That book still remains as one of our best books
that embody pure diction.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya decided once
for all that Bengali was to be Bengali without
as much direct influence either from Sanskrit or
from English, and he succeeded tremendously.
He combined classical Bengali with the com-
mon language of the people, and yet preserved
a high standard of literary excellence.
What Bankim did for Bengali prose, Tagore
has done for Bengali poetry. Tagore's path
has been made easy, for the great literary
geniuses who preceded him in the nineteenth
century struggled hard to eradicate the thorns
on the way. But fortunately for Bengali
216 BENGALEE RENAISSANCE
literature, it was left for a genius of as high an
order as Tagore's to proclaim to the world at
large its richness and wealth of thought. Ta-
gore combines in his writings the rich inherit-
ance of his predecessors and the wealth of vast
literature produced by the masters who were his
contemporaries. The contemporaries acted and
re-acted one on the other for mutual enrich-
ment. What Walter Pater says of the
Mediaeval Renaissance in Europe, is equally
true for the age in Bengal in which Tagore had
the good fortune to be born: "There come,
from time to time, eras of more favourable con-
ditions in which the thoughts of men draw
nearer than is their wont, and many interests of
the world combine in one complete type of gen-
eral culture. The fifteenth century in Italy is
one of these happier eras, and what is some-
times said of the age of Pericles is true of that
of Lorenzo; it is an age productive in personal-
ities, manysided, centralised, complete. Here
artists and philosophers and those whom the
FORTUNATE TAGORE 217
action of world has elevated and made keen do
not live in isolation, but breathe a common air,
and catch light and heat from each other's
thoughts. There is a spirit of general eleva-
tion and enlightenment in which all alike com-
municate."
Born in such a propitious time and in a com-
paratively wealthy family, rich with the intel-
lectual inheritance of generations, Tagore, un-
like most poets, never had to struggle to earn
his daily bread. And, living in ease all his life,
he has served his Muse, and served her faith-
fully and well ; as he also has served his country
and Humanity, conscientiously. And he has
served all these to serve God with "all his
heart, and with all his soul, and with all his
mind." Rich in its spiritual wealth, resplen-
dent in its exalted emotions, the personal-
ity of Rabindranath Tagore is a living lyric of
the rarest quality; and when he "crosses the
bar" India will be like England ever since the
death of Tennyson. In his poem, "The Infinite
218 "INFINITE LOVE"
Love," Tagore, who combines in his poetry the
idealistic flights of Shelley, the luxuriant
imagery of Keats, the exalted beauty of Tenny-
son and Chandidas, and the spiritual fervour
of Thomas a Kempis and Chaitanya Dev,
strikes the dominant note of his life and work,
both of which have been tremendously influ-
enced by the sublime philosophy and the elo-
quent natural beauties of India. The poem as
translated by the poet himself reads :
"I have ever loved thee in a hundred forms and
times,
Age after age, in birth following birth.
The chain of songs that my fond heart did
weave
Thou graciously didst take around thy neck,
Age after age, in birth following birth.
"When I listen to the tales of the primitive
past,
The love-pangs of the far distant times,
"INFINITE LOVE" 219
The meetings and partings of the ancient
ages—
I see thy form gathering light
Through the dark dimness of Eternity
And appearing as a star ever fixed in the mem-
ory of all.
"We two have come floating by the twin cur-
rents of love —
That well up from the inmost heart of the
Beginningless.
We two have played in the lives of myriad
lovers.
In tearful solitude of sorrow
In tremulous shyness of sweet union,
In old, old love ever renewing its life.
"The enrolling flood of the love eternal
Hath at last found its perfect final course.
All the joys and sorrows and longings of
heart,
All the memories of the moments of ecstasy,
220 LOVE INFINITE
All the love-lyrics of poets of all climes and
times
Have come from the everywhere
And gathered in one single love at thy feet."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
There have been three important editions of
Tagore's Bengali works. The first edition was
just as the poet himself arranged and named
the volumes. The second edition was by
Mohit Chandra Sen, a friend of the poet. Mr.
Sen gathered the poems into volumes by simi-
larity of thought, and named them accordingly.
The India Publishing House of Calcutta has
recently issued a new edition. It goes back to
the old volumes and their titles as they were
published in the beginning. Many poems of
biographical interest that were left out in the
Sen edition have reappeared in this new one.
We mention below some of Tagore's major
works:
POETICAL WORKS
Sandhya Sangit. Kshanika.
Probhat Sangit. Kanika.
221
222 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bhanusingher Padabali. Kahini.
Chabi o Gan. Sishu.
Kari o Komal. Naibadya.
Prakritir Pratisodh. Utsharga.
Sonartari. Kheya.
Chaitali. Gitanjali.
Kalpana. Gitimalya.
Katha.
DRAMAS AND POETIC DRAMAS
Raja. Bisharjan.
Raja o Rani. Sharodotshab.
Dakghar. Balmiki Prativa.
Chitra. Bidaya Abhishap.
Malini. Gorai Galad.
NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES
Gora. Rajarshi.
Nowkadubi. Galpa Gucha.
Chokherbali. Projapatir Nirbandha.
Bowthakuranir Hut.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 223
ESSAYS
Bichitra Probandha. Swadesh.
Prachin Sahitya. Somaj.
Lok Sahitya. Siksha.
Sahitya. Shanti Niketan Series.
Adhunik Sahitya. Bhaktabani.
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