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(37) Nature's Revenge
Here in Karwar I wrote the Prakritir Pratishodha, Nature's Revenge, a dramatic poem. The hero was a Sanyasi (hermit) who had been striving to gain a victory over Nature by cutting away the bonds of all desires and affections and thus to arrive at a true and profound knowledge of self. A little girl, however, brought him back from his communion with the infinite to the world and into the bondage of human affection. On so coming back the Sanyasi realised that the great is to be found in the small, the infinite within the bounds of form, and the eternal freedom of the soul in love. It is only in the light of love that all limits are merged in the limitless.
The sea beach of Karwar is certainly a fit place in which to realise that the beauty of Nature is not a mirage of the imagination, but reflects the joy of the Infinite and thus draws us to lose ourselves in it. Where the universe is expressing itself in the magic of its laws it may not be strange if we miss its infinitude; but where the heart gets into immediate touch with immensity in the beauty of the meanest of things, is any room left for argument?
Nature took the Sanyasi to the presence of the Infinite, enthroned on the finite, by the pathway of the heart. In the Nature's Revenge there were shown on the one side the wayfarers and the villagers, content with their home-made triviality and unconscious of anything beyond; and on the other the Sanyasi busy casting away his all, and himself, into the self-evolved infinite of his imagination. When love bridged the gulf between the two, and the hermit and the householder met, the seeming triviality of the finite and the seeming emptiness of the infinite alike disappeared.
This was to put in a slightly different form the story of my own experience, of the entrancing ray of light which found its way into the depths of the cave into which I had retired away from all touch with the outer world, and made me more fully one with Nature again. This Nature's Revenge may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole of my future literary work; or, rather this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt—the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite.
On our way back from Karwar I wrote some songs for the Nature's Revenge on board ship. The first one filled me with a great gladness as I sang, and wrote it sitting on the deck:
Mother, leave your darling boy to us, And let us take him to the field where we graze our cattle.[52]
The sun has risen, the buds have opened, the cowherd boys are going to the pasture; and they would not have the sunlight, the flowers, and their play in the grazing grounds empty. They want their Shyam (Krishna) to be with them there, in the midst of all these. They want to see the Infinite in all its carefully adorned loveliness; they have turned out so early because they want to join in its gladsome play, in the midst of these woods and fields and hills and dales—not to admire from a distance, nor in the majesty of power. Their equipment is of the slightest. A simple yellow garment and a garland of wild-flowers are all the ornaments they require. For where joy reigns on every side, to hunt for it arduously, or amidst pomp and circumstances, is to lose it.
Shortly after my return from Karwar, I was married. I was then 22 years of age.
(38) Pictures and Songs
Chhabi o Gan, Picture and Songs, was the title of a book of poems most of which were written at this time.
We were then living in a house with a garden in Lower Circular Road. Adjoining it on the south was a large Busti.[53] I would often sit near a window and watch the sights of this populous little settlement. I loved to see them at their work and play and rest, and in their multifarious goings and comings. To me it was all like a living story.
A faculty of many-sightedness possessed me at this time. Each little separate picture I ringed round with the light of my imagination and the joy of my heart; every one of them, moreover, being variously coloured by a pathos of its own. The pleasure of thus separately marking off each picture was much the same as that of painting it, both being the outcome of the desire to see with the mind what the eye sees, and with the eye what the mind imagines.
Had I been a painter with the brush I would doubtless have tried to keep a permanent record of the visions and creations of that period when my mind was so alertly responsive. But that instrument was not available to me. What I had was only words and rhythms, and even with these I had not yet learnt to draw firm strokes, and the colours went beyond their margins. Still, like young folk with their first paint box, I spent the livelong day painting away with the many coloured fancies of my new-born youth. If these pictures are now viewed in the light of that twenty-second year of my life, some features may be discerned even through their crude drawing and blurred colouring.
I have said that the first book of my literary life came to an end with the Morning Songs. The same subject was then continued under a different rendering. Many a page at the outset of this Book, I am sure, is of no value. In the process of making a new beginning much in the way of superfluous preliminary has to be gone through. Had these been leaves of trees they would have duly dropped off. Unfortunately, leaves of books continue to stick fast even when they are no longer wanted. The feature of these poems was the closeness of attention devoted even to trifling things. Pictures and Songs seized every opportunity of giving value to these by colouring them with feelings straight from the heart.
Or, rather, that was not it. When the string of the mind is properly attuned to the universe then at each point the universal song can awaken its sympathetic vibrations. It was because of this music roused within that nothing then felt trivial to the writer. Whatever my eyes fell upon found a response within me. Like children who can play with sand or stones or shells or whatever they can get (for the spirit of play is within them), so also we, when filled with the song of youth, become aware that the harp of the universe has its variously tuned strings everywhere stretched, and the nearest may serve as well as any other for our accompaniment, there is no need to seek afar.
(39) An Intervening Period
Between the Pictures and Songs and the Sharps and Flats, a child's magazine called the Balaka sprang up and ended its brief days like an annual plant. My second sister-in-law felt the want of an illustrated magazine for children. Her idea was that the young people of the family would contribute to it, but as she felt that that alone would not be enough, she took up the editorship herself and asked me to help with contributions. After one or two numbers of the Balaka had come out I happened to go on a visit to Rajnarayan Babu at Deoghur. On the return journey the train was crowded and as there was an unshaded light just over the only berth I could get, I could not sleep. I thought I might as well take this opportunity of thinking out a story for the Balaka. In spite of my efforts to get hold of the story it eluded me, but sleep came to the rescue instead. I saw in a dream the stone steps of a temple stained with the blood of victims of the sacrifice;—a little girl standing there with her father asking him in piteous accents: "Father, what is this, why all this blood?" and the father, inwardly moved, trying with a show of gruffness to quiet her questioning. As I awoke I felt I had got my story. I have many more such dream-given stories and other writings as well. This dream episode I worked into the annals of King Gobinda Manikya of Tipperah and made out of it a little serial story, Rajarshi, for the Balaka.
Those were days of utter freedom from care. Nothing in particular seemed to be anxious to express itself through my life or writings. I had not yet joined the throng of travellers on the path of Life, but was a mere spectator from my roadside window. Many a person hied by on many an errand as I gazed on, and every now and then Spring or Autumn, or the Rains would enter unasked and stay with me for a while.
But I had not only to do with the seasons. There were men of all kinds of curious types who, floating about like boats adrift from their anchorage, occasionally invaded my little room. Some of them sought to further their own ends, at the cost of my inexperience, with many an extraordinary device. But they need not have taken any extraordinary pains to get the better of me. I was then entirely unsophisticated, my own wants were few, and I was not at all clever in distinguishing between good and bad faith. I have often gone on imagining that I was assisting with their school fees students to whom fees were as superfluous as their unread books.
Once a long-haired youth brought me a letter from an imaginary sister in which she asked me to take under my protection this brother of hers who was suffering from the tyranny of a stepmother as imaginary as herself. The brother was not imaginary, that was evident enough. But his sister's letter was as unnecessary for me as expert marksmanship to bring down a bird which cannot fly.
Another young fellow came and informed me that he was studying for the B.A., but could not go up for his examination as he was afflicted with some brain trouble. I felt concerned, but being far from proficient in medical science, or in any other science, I was at a loss what advice to give him. But he went on to explain that he had seen in a dream that my wife had been his mother in a former birth, and that if he could but drink some water which had touched her feet he would get cured. "Perhaps you don't believe in such things," he concluded with a smile. My belief, I said, did not matter, but if he thought he could get cured, he was welcome, with which I procured him a phial of water which was supposed to have touched my wife's feet. He felt immensely better, he said. In the natural course of evolution from water he came to solid food. Then he took up his quarters in a corner of my room and began to hold smoking parties with his friends, till I had to take refuge in flight from the smoke laden air. He gradually proved beyond doubt that his brain might have been diseased, but it certainly was not weak.
After this experience it took no end of proof before I could bring myself to put my trust in children of previous births. My reputation must have spread for I next received a letter from a daughter. Here, however, I gently but firmly drew the line.
All this time my friendship with Babu Srish Chandra Magundar ripened apace. Every evening he and Prija Babu would come to this little room of mine and we would discuss literature and music far into the night. Sometimes a whole day would be spent in the same way. The fact is my self had not yet been moulded and nourished into a strong and definite personality and so my life drifted along as light and easy as an autumn cloud.
(40) Bankim Chandra
This was the time when my acquaintance with Bankim Babu began. My first sight of him was a matter of long before. The old students of Calcutta University had then started an annual reunion, of which Babu Chandranath Basu was the leading spirit. Perhaps he entertained a hope that at some future time I might acquire the right to be one of them; anyhow I was asked to read a poem on the occasion. Chandranath Babu was then quite a young man. I remember he had translated some martial German poem into English which he proposed to recite himself on the day, and came to rehearse it to us full of enthusiasm. That a warrior poet's ode to his beloved sword should at one time have been his favourite poem will convince the reader that even Chandranath Babu was once young; and moreover that those times were indeed peculiar.
While wandering about in the crush at the Students' reunion, I suddenly came across a figure which at once struck me as distinguished beyond that of all the others and who could not have possibly been lost in any crowd. The features of that tall fair personage shone with such a striking radiance that I could not contain my curiosity about him—he was the only one there whose name I felt concerned to know that day. When I learnt he was Bankim Babu I marvelled all the more, it seemed to me such a wonderful coincidence that his appearance should be as distinguished as his writings. His sharp aquiline nose, his compressed lips, and his keen glance all betokened immense power. With his arms folded across his breast he seemed to walk as one apart, towering above the ordinary throng—this is what struck me most about him. Not only that he looked an intellectual giant, but he had on his forehead the mark of a true prince among men.
One little incident which occurred at this gathering remains indelibly impressed on my mind. In one of the rooms a Pandit was reciting some Sanskrit verses of his own composition and explaining them in Bengali to the audience. One of the allusions was not exactly coarse, but somewhat vulgar. As the Pandit was proceeding to expound this Bankim Babu, covering his face with his hands, hurried out of the room. I was near the door and can still see before me that shrinking, retreating figure.
After that I often longed to see him, but could not get an opportunity. At last one day, when he was Deputy Magistrate of Hawrah, I made bold to call on him. We met, and I tried my best to make conversation. But I somehow felt greatly abashed while returning home, as if I had acted like a raw and bumptious youth in thus thrusting myself upon him unasked and unintroduced.
Shortly after, as I added to my years, I attained a place as the youngest of the literary men of the time; but what was to be my position in order of merit was not even then settled. The little reputation I had acquired was mixed with plenty of doubt and not a little of condescension. It was then the fashion in Bengal to assign each man of letters a place in comparison with a supposed compeer in the West. Thus one was the Byron of Bengal, another the Emerson and so forth. I began to be styled by some the Bengal Shelley. This was insulting to Shelley and only likely to get me laughed at.
My recognised cognomen was the Lisping Poet. My attainments were few, my knowledge of life meagre, and both in my poetry and my prose the sentiment exceeded the substance. So that there was nothing there on which anyone could have based his praise with any degree of confidence. My dress and behaviour were of the same anomalous description. I wore my hair long and indulged probably in an ultra-poetical refinement of manner. In a word I was eccentric and could not fit myself into everyday life like the ordinary man.
At this time Babu Akshay Sarkar had started his monthly review, the Nabajiban, New Life, to which I used occasionally to contribute. Bankim Babu had just closed the chapter of his editorship of the Banga Darsan, the Mirror of Bengal, and was busy with religious discussions for which purpose he had started the monthly, Prachar, the Preacher. To this also I contributed a song or two and an effusive appreciation of Vaishnava lyrics.
From now I began constantly to meet Bankim Babu. He was then living in Bhabani Dutt's street. I used to visit him frequently, it is true, but there was not much of conversation. I was then of the age to listen, not to talk. I fervently wished we could warm up into some discussion, but my diffidence got the better of my conversational powers. Some days Sanjib Babu[54] would be there reclining on his bolster. The sight would gladden me, for he was a genial soul. He delighted in talking and it was a delight to listen to his talk. Those who have read his prose writing must have noticed how gaily and airily it flows on like the sprightliest of conversation. Very few have this gift of conversation, and fewer still the art of translating it into writing.
This was the time when Pandit Sashadhar rose into prominence. Of him I first heard from Bankim Babu. If I remember right Bankim Babu was also responsible for introducing him to the public. The curious attempt made by Hindu orthodoxy to revive its prestige with the help of western science soon spread all over the country. Theosophy for some time previously had been preparing the ground for such a movement. Not that Bankim Babu even thoroughly identified himself with this cult. No shadow of Sashadhar was cast on his exposition of Hinduism as it found expression in the Prachar—that was impossible.
I was then coming out of the seclusion of my corner as my contributions to these controversies will show. Some of these were satirical verses, some farcical plays, others letters to newspapers. I thus came down into the arena from the regions of sentiment and began to spar in right earnest.
In the heat of the fight I happened to fall foul of Bankim Babu. The history of this remains recorded in the Prachar and Bharati of those days and need not be repeated here. At the close of this period of antagonism Bankim Babu wrote me a letter which I have unfortunately lost. Had it been here the reader could have seen with what consummate generosity Bankim Babu had taken the sting out of that unfortunate episode.
PART VIII
(41) The Steamer Hulk
Lured by an advertisement in some paper my brother Jyotirindra went off one afternoon to an auction sale, and on his return informed us that he had bought a steel hulk for seven thousand rupees; all that now remained being to put in an engine and some cabins for it to become a full-fledged steamer.
My brother must have thought it a great shame that our countrymen should have their tongues and pens going, but not a single line of steamers. As I have narrated before, he had tried to light matches for his country, but no amount of rubbing availed to make them strike. He had also wanted power-looms to work, but after all his travail only one little country towel was born, and then the loom stopped. And now that he wanted Indian steamers to ply, he bought an empty old hulk, which in due course, was filled, not only with engines and cabins, but with loss and ruin as well. And yet we should remember that all the loss and hardship due to his endeavours fell on him alone, while the gain of experience remained in reserve for the whole country. It is these uncalculating, unbusinesslike spirits who keep the business-fields of the country flooded with their activities. And, though the flood subsides as rapidly as it comes, it leaves behind fertilising silt to enrich the soil. When the time for reaping arrives no one thinks of these pioneers; but those who have cheerfully staked and lost their all, during life, are not likely, after death, to mind this further loss of being forgotten.
On one side was the European Flotilla Company, on the other my brother Jyotirindra alone; and how tremendous waxed that battle of the mercantile fleets, the people of Khulna and Barisal may still remember. Under the stress of competition steamer was added to steamer, loss piled on loss, while the income dwindled till it ceased to be worth while to print tickets. The golden age dawned on the steamer service between Khulna and Barisal. Not only were the passengers carried free of charge, but they were offered light refreshments gratis as well! Then was formed a band of volunteers who, with flags and patriotic songs, marched the passengers in procession to the Indian line of steamers. So while there was no want of passengers to carry, every other kind of want began to multiply apace.
Arithmetic remained uninfluenced by patriotic fervour; and while enthusiasm flamed higher and higher to the tune of patriotic songs, three times three went on steadily making nine on the wrong side of the balance sheet.
One of the misfortunes which always pursues the unbusinesslike is that, while they are as easy to read as an open book, they never learn to read the character of others. And since it takes them the whole of their lifetime and all their resources to find out this weakness of theirs, they never get the chance of profiting by experience. While the passengers were having free refreshments, the staff showed no signs of being starved either, but nevertheless the greatest gain remained with my brother in the ruin he so valiantly faced.
The daily bulletins of victory or disaster which used to arrive from the theatre of action kept us in a fever of excitement. Then one day came the news that the steamer Swadeshi had fouled the Howrah bridge and sunk. With this last loss my brother completely overstepped the limits of his resources, and there was nothing for it but to wind up the business.
(42) Bereavements
In the meantime death made its appearance in our family. Before this, I had never met Death face to face. When my mother died I was quite a child. She had been ailing for quite a long time, and we did not even know when her malady had taken a fatal turn. She used all along to sleep on a separate bed in the same room with us. Then in the course of her illness she was taken for a boat trip on the river, and on her return a room on the third storey of the inner apartments was set apart for her.
On the night she died we were fast asleep in our room downstairs. At what hour I cannot tell, our old nurse came running in weeping and crying: "O my little ones, you have lost your all!" My sister-in-law rebuked her and led her away, to save us the sudden shock at dead of night. Half awakened by her words, I felt my heart sink within me, but could not make out what had happened. When in the morning we were told of her death, I could not realize all that it meant for me.
As we came out into the verandah we saw my mother laid on a bedstead in the courtyard. There was nothing in her appearance which showed death to be terrible. The aspect which death wore in that morning light was as lovely as a calm and peaceful sleep, and the gulf between life and its absence was not brought home to us.
Only when her body was taken out by the main gateway, and we followed the procession to the cremation ground, did a storm of grief pass through me at the thought that mother would never return by this door and take again her accustomed place in the affairs of her household. The day wore on, we returned from the cremation, and as we turned into our lane I looked up at the house towards my father's rooms on the third storey. He was still in the front verandah sitting motionless in prayer.
She who was the youngest daughter-in-law of the house took charge of the motherless little ones. She herself saw to our food and clothing and all other wants, and kept us constantly near, so that we might not feel our loss too keenly. One of the characteristics of the living is the power to heal the irreparable, to forget the irreplaceable. And in early life this power is strongest, so that no blow penetrates too deeply, no scar is left permanently. Thus the first shadow of death which fell on us left no darkness behind; it departed as softly as it came, only a shadow.
When, in later life, I wandered about like a madcap, at the first coming of spring, with a handful of half-blown jessamines tied in a corner of my muslin scarf, and as I stroked my forehead with the soft, rounded, tapering buds, the touch of my mother's fingers would come back to me; and I clearly realised that the tenderness which dwelt in the tips of those lovely fingers was the very same as that which blossoms every day in the purity of these jessamine buds; and that whether we know it or not, this tenderness is on the earth in boundless measure.
The acquaintance which I made with Death at the age of twenty-four was a permanent one, and its blow has continued to add itself to each succeeding bereavement in an ever lengthening chain of tears. The lightness of infant life can skip aside from the greatest of calamities, but with age evasion is not so easy, and the shock of that day I had to take full on my breast.
That there could be any gap in the unbroken procession of the joys and sorrows of life was a thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as all in all. When of a sudden death came and in a moment made a gaping rent in its smooth-seeming fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the trees, the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, remained as immovably true as before; and yet the person who was as truly there, who, through a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and heart, was ever so much more true for me, had vanished in a moment like a dream. What perplexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as I looked around! How was I ever to reconcile that which remained with that which had gone?
The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me through this rent, continued to attract me night and day as time went on. I would ever and anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what there was left in place of what had gone. Emptiness is a thing man cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is not, is untrue; that which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something, where we see nothing, are unceasing.
Just as a young plant, surrounded by darkness, stretches itself, as it were on tiptoe, to find its way out into the light, so when death suddenly throws the darkness of negation round the soul it tries and tries to rise into the light of affirmation. And what other sorrow is comparable to the state wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way out of the darkness?
And yet in the midst of this unbearable grief, flashes of joy seemed to sparkle in my mind, now and again, in a way which quite surprised me. That life was not a stable permanent fixture was itself the sorrowful tidings which helped to lighten my mind. That we were not prisoners for ever within a solid stone wall of life was the thought which unconsciously kept coming uppermost in rushes of gladness. That which I had held I was made to let go—this was the sense of loss which distressed me,—but when at the same moment I viewed it from the standpoint of freedom gained, a great peace fell upon me.
The all-pervading pressure of worldly existence compensates itself by balancing life against death, and thus it does not crush us. The terrible weight of an unopposed life force has not to be endured by man,—this truth came upon me that day as a sudden, wonderful revelation.
With the loosening of the attraction of the world, the beauty of nature took on for me a deeper meaning. Death had given me the correct perspective from which to perceive the world in the fulness of its beauty, and as I saw the picture of the Universe against the background of Death I found it entrancing.
At this time I was attacked with a recrudescence of eccentricity in thought and behaviour. To be called upon to submit to the customs and fashions of the day, as if they were something soberly and genuinely real, made me want to laugh. I could not take them seriously. The burden of stopping to consider what other people might think of me was completely lifted off my mind. I have been about in fashionable book shops with a coarse sheet draped round me as my only upper garment, and a pair of slippers on my bare feet. Through hot and cold and wet I used to sleep out on the verandah of the third storey. There the stars and I could gaze at each other, and no time was lost in greeting the dawn.
This phase had nothing to do with any ascetic feeling. It was more like a holiday spree as the result of discovering the schoolmaster Life with his cane to be a myth, and thereby being able to shake myself free from the petty rules of his school. If, on waking one fine morning we were to find gravitation reduced to only a fraction of itself, would we still demurely walk along the high road? Would we not rather skip over many-storied houses for a change, or on encountering the monument take a flying jump, rather than trouble to walk round it? That was why, with the weight of worldly life no longer clogging my feet, I could not stick to the usual course of convention.
Alone on the terrace in the darkness of night I groped all over like a blind man trying to find upon the black stone gate of death some device or sign. Then when I woke with the morning light falling on that unscreened bed of mine, I felt, as I opened my eyes, that my enveloping haze was becoming transparent; and, as on the clearing of the mist the hills and rivers and forests of the scene shine forth, so the dew-washed picture of the world-life, spread out before me, seemed to become renewed and ever so beautiful.
(43) The Rains and Autumn
According to the Hindu calendar, each year is ruled by a particular planet. So have I found that in each period of life a particular season assumes a special importance. When I look back to my childhood I can best recall the rainy days. The wind-driven rain has flooded the verandah floor. The row of doors leading into the rooms are all closed. Peari, the old scullery maid, is coming from the market, her basket laden with vegetables, wading through the slush and drenched with the rain. And for no rhyme or reason I am careering about the verandah in an ecstasy of joy.
This also comes back to me:—I am at school, our class is held in a colonnade with mats as outer screens; cloud upon cloud has come up during the afternoon, and they are now heaped up, covering the sky; and as we look on, the rain comes down in close thick showers, the thunder at intervals rumbling long and loud; some mad woman with nails of lightning seems to be rending the sky from end to end; the mat walls tremble under the blasts of wind as if they would be blown in; we can hardly see to read, for the darkness. The Pandit gives us leave to close our books. Then leaving the storm to do the romping and roaring for us, we keep swinging our dangling legs; and my mind goes right away across the far-off unending moor through which the Prince of the fairy tale passes.
I remember, moreover, the depth of the Sravan[55] nights. The pattering of the rain finding its way through the gaps of my slumber, creates within a gladsome restfulness deeper than the deepest sleep. And in the wakeful intervals I pray that the morning may see the rain continue, our lane under water, and the bathing platform of the tank submerged to the last step.
But at the age of which I have just been telling, Autumn is on the throne beyond all doubt. Its life is to be seen spread under the clear transparent leisure of Aswin.[56] And in the molten gold of this autumn sunshine, softly reflected from the fresh dewy green outside, I am pacing the verandah and composing, in the mode Jogiya, the song:
In this morning light I do not know what it is that my heart desires.
The autumn day wears on, the house gong sounds 12 noon, the mode changes; though my mind is still filled with music, leaving no room for call of work or duty; and I sing:
What idle play is this with yourself, my heart, through the listless hours?
Then in the afternoon I am lying on the white floorcloth of my little room, with a drawing book trying to draw pictures,—by no means an arduous pursuit of the pictorial muse, but just a toying with the desire to make pictures. The most important part is that which remains in the mind, and of which not a line gets drawn on the paper. And in the meantime the serene autumn afternoon is filtering through the walls of this little Calcutta room filling it, as a cup, with golden intoxication.
I know not why, but all my days of that period I see as if through this autumn sky, this autumn light—the autumn which ripened for me my songs as it ripens the corn for the tillers; the autumn which filled my granary of leisure with radiance; the autumn which flooded my unburdened mind with an unreasoning joy in fashioning song and story.
The great difference which I see between the Rainy-season of my childhood and the Autumn of my youth is that in the former it is outer Nature which closely hemmed me in keeping me entertained with its numerous troupe, its variegated make-up, its medley of music; while the festivity which goes on in the shining light of autumn is in man himself. The play of cloud and sunshine is left in the background, while the murmurs of joy and sorrow occupy the mind. It is our gaze which gives to the blue of the autumn sky its wistful tinge and human yearning which gives poignancy to the breath of its breezes.
My poems have now come to the doors of men. Here informal goings and comings are not allowed. There is door after door, chamber within chamber. How many times have we to return with only a glimpse of the light in the window, only the sound of the pipes from within the palace gates lingering in our ears. Mind has to treat with mind, will to come to terms with will, through many tortuous obstructions, before giving and taking can come about. The foundation of life, as it dashes into these obstacles, splashes and foams over in laughter and tears, and dances and whirls through eddies from which one cannot get a definite idea of its course.
(44) Sharps and Flats
Sharps and Flats is a serenade from the streets in front of the dwelling of man, a plea to be allowed an entry and a place within that house of mystery.
This world is sweet,—I do not want to die. I wish to dwell in the ever-living life of Man.
This is the prayer of the individual to the universal life.
When I started for my second voyage to England, I made the acquaintance on board ship of Asutosh Chaudhuri. He had just taken the M. A. degree of the Calcutta University and was on his way to England to join the Bar. We were together only during the few days the steamer took from Calcutta to Madras, but it became quite evident that depth of friendship does not depend upon length of acquaintance. Within this short time he so drew me to him by his simple natural qualities of heart, that the previous life-long gap in our acquaintance seemed always to have been filled with our friendship.
When Ashu came back from England he became one of us.[57] He had not as yet had time or opportunity to pierce through all the barriers with which his profession is hedged in, and so become completely immersed in it. The money-bags of his clients had not yet sufficiently loosened the strings which held their gold, and Ashu was still an enthusiast in gathering honey from various gardens of literature. The spirit of literature which then saturated his being had nothing of the mustiness of library morocco about it, but was fragrant with the scent of unknown exotics from over the seas. At his invitation I enjoyed many a picnic amidst the spring time of those distant woodlands.
He had a special taste for the flavour of French literature. I was then writing the poems which came to be published in the volume entitled Kadi o Komal, Sharps and Flats. Ashu could discern resemblances between many of my poems and old French poems he knew. According to him the common element in all these poems was the attraction which the play of world-life had for the poet, and this had found varied expression in each and every one of them. The unfulfilled desire to enter into this larger life was the fundamental motive throughout.
"I will arrange and publish these poems for you," said Ashu, and accordingly that task was entrusted to him. The poem beginning This world is sweet was the one he considered to be the keynote of the whole series and so he placed it at the beginning of the volume.
Ashu was very possibly right. When in childhood I was confined to the house, I offered my heart in my wistful gaze to outside nature in all its variety through the openings in the parapet of our inner roof-terrace. In my youth the world of men in the same way exerted a powerful attraction on me. To that also I was then an outsider and looked out upon it from the roadside. My mind standing on the brink called out, as it were, with an eager waving of hands to the ferryman sailing away across the waves to the other side. For Life longed to start on life's journey.
It is not true that my peculiarly isolated social condition was the bar to my plunging into the midst of the world-life. I see no sign that those of my countrymen who have been all their lives in the thick of society feel, any more than I did, the touch of its living intimacy. The life of our country has its high banks, and its flight of steps, and, on its dark waters falls the cool shade of the ancient trees, while from within the leafy branches over-head the koel cooes forth its ravishing old-time song. But for all that it is stagnant water. Where is its current, where are the waves, when does the high tide rush in from the sea?
Did I then get from the neighbourhood on the other side of our lane an echo of the victorious paean with which the river, falling and rising, wave after wave, cuts its way through walls of stone to the sea? No! My life in its solitude was simply fretting for want of an invitation to the place where the festival of world-life was being held.
Man is overcome by a profound depression while nodding through his voluptuously lazy hours of seclusion, because in this way he is deprived of full commerce with life. Such is the despondency from which I have always painfully struggled to get free. My mind refused to respond to the cheap intoxication of the political movements of those days, devoid, as they seemed, of all strength of national consciousness, with their complete ignorance of the country, their supreme indifference to real service of the motherland. I was tormented by a furious impatience, an intolerable dissatisfaction with myself and all around me. Much rather, I said to myself, would I be an Arab Bedouin!
While in other parts of the world there is no end to the movement and clamour of the revelry of free life, we, like the beggar maid, stand outside and longingly look on. When have we had the wherewithal to deck ourselves for the occasion and go and join in it? Only in a country where the spirit of separation reigns supreme, and innumerable petty barriers divide one from another, need this longing to realise the larger life of the world in one's own remain unsatisfied.
I strained with the same yearning towards the world of men in my youth, as I did in my childhood towards outside nature from within the chalk-ring drawn round me by the servants. How rare, how unattainable, how far away it seemed! And yet if we cannot get into touch with it, if from it no breeze can blow, no current come, if no road be there for the free goings and comings of travellers, then the dead things that accumulate around us never get removed, but continue to be heaped up till they smother all life.
During the Rains there are only dark clouds and showers. And in the Autumn there is the play of light and shade in the sky, but that is not all-absorbing; for there is also the promise of corn in the fields. So in my poetical career, when the rainy season was in the ascendant there were only my vaporous fancies which stormed and showered; my utterance was misty, my verses were wild. And with the Sharps and Flats of my Autumn, not only was there the play of cloud-effects in the sky, but out of the ground crops were to be seen rising. Then, in the commerce with the world of reality, both language and metre attempted definiteness and variety of form.
Thus ends another Book. The days of coming together of inside and outside, kin and stranger, are closing in upon my life. My life's journey has now to be completed through the dwelling places of men. And the good and evil, joy and sorrow, which it thus encountered, are not to be lightly viewed as pictures. What makings and breakings, victories and defeats, clashings and minglings, are here going on!
I have not the power to disclose and display the supreme art with which the Guide of my life is joyfully leading me through all its obstacles, antagonisms and crookednesses towards the fulfilment of its innermost meaning. And if I cannot make clear all the mystery of this design, whatever else I may try to show is sure to prove misleading at every step. To analyse the image is only to get at its dust, not at the joy of the artist.
So having escorted them to the door of the inner sanctuary I take leave of my readers.
Printed in the United States of America
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A jingling sentence in the Bengali Child's Primer.
[2] Exercises in two-syllables.
[3] Roofed colonnade or balcony. The writer's family house is an irregular three-storied mass of buildings, which had grown with the joint family it sheltered, built round several courtyards or quadrangles, with long colonnades along the outer faces, and narrower galleries running round each quadrangle, giving access to the single rows of rooms.
[4] The men's portion of the house is the outer; and the women's the inner.
[5] These Bustees or settlements consisting of tumbledown hovels, existing side by side with palatial buildings, are still one of the anomalies of Calcutta. Tr.
[6] Corresponding to "Wonderland."
[7] There are innumerable renderings of the Ramayana in the Indian languages.
[8] A kind of crisp unsweetened pancake taken like bread along with the other courses.
[9] Food while being eaten, and utensils or anything else touched by the hand engaged in conveying food to the mouth, are considered ceremonially unclean.
[10] The writer is the youngest of seven brothers. The sixth brother is here meant.
[11] Obsolete word meaning bee.
[12] The lane, a blind one, leads, at right angles to the front verandah, from the public main road to the grounds round the house.
[13] God of Death.
[14] Goddess of Learning.
[15] The Jupiter Pluvius of Hindu Mythology.
[16] The King of the Yakshas is the Pluto of Hindu Mythology.
[17] Corresponding to Lethe.
[18] Krishna's playground.
[19] Correspondence clerk.
[20] Spices wrapped in betel leaf.
[21] It is considered sinful for non-brahmins to cast glances on neophytes during the process of their sacred-thread investiture, before the ceremony is complete.
[22] Two novices in the hermitage of the sage Kanva, mentioned in the Sanskrit drama, Sakuntala.
[23] The text for self-realisation.
[24] Bards or reciters.
[25] The Cow and the Brahmin are watchwords of modern Hindu Orthodoxy.
[26] An instrument on which the keynote is strummed to accompany singing.
[27] A large proportion of words in the literary Bengali are derived unchanged from the Sanskrit.
[28] Servants call the master and mistress father, and mother, and the children brothers and sisters.
[29] Name of Vishnu in his aspect of slayer of the proud demon, Madhu.
[30] Nirada is a Sanscrit word meaning cloud, being a compound of nira = water and da = giver. In Bengali it is pronounced nirode.
[31] Betel-leaf and spices.
[32] Father of the well-known artists Gaganendra and Abanindra. Ed.
[33] In Bengali this word has come to mean an informal uninvited gathering.
[34] Systems of notation were not then in use. One of the most popular of the present-day systems was subsequently devised by the writer's brother here mentioned. Tr.
[35] The new bride of the house, wife of the writer's fourth brother, above-mentioned. Tr.
[36] It may be helpful to the foreign reader to explain that the expert singer of Indian music improvises more or less on the tune outline made over to him by the original composer, so that the latter need not necessarily do more than give a correct idea of such outline. Tr.
[37] This would mean "the genius of Bhubanmohini" if that be taken as the author's name.
[38] Gifts of cloth for use as wearing apparel are customary by way of ceremonial offerings of affection, respect or seasonable greeting.
[39] The old Vaishnava poets used to bring their name into the last stanza of the poem, this serving as their signature. Bhanu and Rabi both mean the Sun. Tr.
[40] The dried and stripped centre-vein of a cocoanut leaf gives a long tapering stick of the average thickness of a match stick, and a bundle of these goes to make the common Bengal household broom which in the hands of the housewife is popularly supposed to be useful in keeping the whole household in order from husband downwards. Its effect on a bare back is here alluded to.—Tr.
[41] There was a craze for phrenology at the time. Tr.
[42] Latterly Sir Tarak Palit, a life-long friend of the writer's second brother. Tr.
[43] Saraswati, the goddess of learning, is depicted in Bengal as clad in white and seated among a mass of lotus flowers. Tr.
[44] With Indian music it is not a mere question of correctly rendering a melody exactly as composed, but the theme of the original composition is the subject of an improvised interpretative elaboration by the expounding Artist. Tr.
[45] Valmiki Pratibha means the genius of Valmiki. The plot is based on the story of Valmiki, the robber chief, being moved to pity and breaking out into a metrical lament on witnessing the grief of one of a pair of cranes whose mate was killed by a hunter. In the metre which so came to him he afterwards composed his Ramayana. Tr.
[46] Some Indian classic melodic compositions are designed on a scheme of accentuation, for which purpose the music is set, not to words, but to unmeaning notation-sounds representing drum-beats or plectrum-impacts which in Indian music are of a considerable variety of tone, each having its own sound-symbol. The Telena is one such style of composition. Tr.
[47] Reciters of Puranic legendary lore. Tr.
[48] The Goddess of Wealth.
[49] As distinguished generally from different provincial styles, but chiefly from the Dravidian style prevalent in the South. Tr.
[50] Many of the Hindustani classic modes are supposed to be best in keeping with particular seasons of the year, or times of the day. Tr.
[51] The world, as the Indian boy knows it from fairy tale and folklore, has seven seas and thirteen rivers. Tr.
[52] This is addressed to Yashoda, mother of Krishna, by his playmates. Yashoda would dress up her darling every morning in his yellow garment with a peacock plume in his hair. But when it came to the point, she was nervous about allowing him, young as he was, to join the other cowherd boys at the pasturage. So it often required a great deal of persuasion before they would be allowed to take charge of him. This is part of the Vaishnava parable of the child aspect of Krishna's play with the world. Tr.
[53] A Busti is an area thickly packed with shabby tiled huts, with narrow pathways running through, and connecting it with the main street. These are inhabited by domestic servants, the poorer class of artisans and the like. Such settlements were formerly scattered throughout the town even in the best localities, but are now gradually disappearing from the latter. Tr.
[54] One of Bankim Babu's brothers.
[55] The month corresponding to July-August, the height of the rainy season.
[56] The month of Aswin corresponds to September-October, the long vacation time for Bengal.
[57] Referring to his marriage with the writer's niece, Pratibha. Tr.
The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Personality
Cloth, 12mo.
Herein are brought together some of the lectures which Sir Rabindranath Tagore delivered while in this country. Among those included are found: What is Art? The World of Personality, The Second Birth, My School and Meditation. Many of the thousands of people who heard Sir Rabindranath speak on these different subjects will doubtless be glad of the opportunity here presented for further study of his thoughts and philosophy.
Songs of Kabir
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75.
"Tagore has given his songs their melodic English translation and Miss Evelyn Underhill has prepared an excellent preface for the volume which outlines the life and philosophy of 'Kabir.'" Review of Reviews.
* * * * *
"No one in the least sympathetic to spiritual aspiration can read these outpourings without catching fire at their flame and getting a sense of supernal things. Tagore, a kindred spirit, has done a service in making this old mystic, whose soul experiences did not make him abstract, whose high song was that of the ascetic, but of a weaver who trod the common ways of man, known to English readers." Bellman, Minneapolis, Minn.
"Upon the reality of life he erects his faith, and buttresses it with whatever of devotional good he may find in any religion. No ascetic, Kabir pictures the mystic world of his belief with a beautiful richness of symbolism." Philadelphia Public Ledger.
"Not only students of Indian literature or of comparative religions will welcome this striking translation of a fifteenth-century Indian mystic. Every one who is capable of responding to an appeal to cast off the swathings of formalism and come out into spiritual freedom, every one who is sensitive to poetry that, while highly symbolical, is yet clear and simple and full of beauty, will read it with interest and with heart-quickening." New York Times.
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The Cycle of Spring: A Play
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75.
This, the latest and richest of the author's plays, was recently performed in the courtyard of his Calcutta home by the masters and boys of Shantiniketan. The success was immense: and naturally, for the spirit of the play is the spirit of universal youth, filled with laughter and lyric fervour, jest and pathos and resurgence: immortal youth whose every death is a rebirth, every winter an enfolded spring.
"All the joy, the buoyancy, the resilience, the indomitable and irrepressible hopefulness of Youth are compacted in the lines of the play. The keynote is sounded, with subtle symbolism, in the Prelude, in which the King ranks above all matters of State or of Humanity the circumstances that two gray hairs had made their appearance behind the ear that morning.... Dramatic power, philosophy and lyric charm are brilliantly blended in a work of art that has the freshness and the promise of its theme." New York Tribune.
"A more beautiful play than 'The Cycle of Spring' by Sir Rabindranath Tagore it would be hard to find in all literature. It embodies the spirit of youth, and one can almost hear in it the laughter of the eternally young.... Not only the glamor of the Orient but the breath of Undying Youth is in this work of Tagore, a genius so peculiar to India, so utterly inartificial, so completely of imagination all compact that his colossal power begotten of Fairyland and the World of Visions makes us poor Occidentals look very small indeed." Rochester Post Express.
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The Hungry Stones and Other Stories
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"These short stories furnish a double guaranty of the Hindu Nobel Prize winner's rightful place among the notable literary figures of our times." New York Globe.
"Imagination, charm of style, poetry, and depth of feeling without gloominess, characterize this volume of stories of the Eastern poet. This new volume of his work which introduces him to English readers as a short-story writer is as significant of his power as are the verses that have preceded it." Boston Transcript.
"A book of strange, beautiful, widely varying tales. Through them all, the thread on which the beautiful beads are strung is the poet's mystic philosophy." New York Times.
"The unutterable fascination of the Orient will be found in all these beautiful tales. Exquisite art unlike that of any other living writer. Rabindranath Tagore is one of the magicians of modern literature—a transcendently great genius who brings to mammon-worshipping Western minds the fantasy, the enchantment, and the wonder of the Orient." Rochester Post Express.
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Stray Birds
Frontispiece and Decorations by Willy Pogany
12mo, $1.50.
Written during his present visit to America, this book may be said to contain the essence of all Tagore's poetry and philosophy, revealed by many aphorisms, epigrams and sayings.
Here is the kernel of the wisdom and insight of the great Hindu seer in the form of short extracts. These sayings are the essence of his Eastern message to the Western world. The frontispiece and decorations by Willy Pogany are beautiful in themselves, and enhance the spiritual significance of this extraordinary book.
"Each reflects some aspect of beauty, in thought or in nature, or some of the many-sided philosophical reflections of the author. In one sense these stray birds are tiny prose poems, a fact which makes the dedication of the volume to 'T. Hara, of Yokohama,' peculiarly appropriate, for they all suggest the delicacy and minuteness of Japanese poetry as it is known to us in translation." Philadelphia Public Ledger.
"Pleasing and inspiring." Boston Daily Advertiser.
"His utterances have something of the elusive delicacy of memories of moral experiences out of a remote past." Nation.
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Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913. Author of "Gitanjali," "The Gardener," "The Crescent Moon," "Sadhana."
Chitra
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. Leather, $1.75.
"The play is told with the simplicity and wonder of imagery always characteristic of Rabindranath Tagore." Cleveland Plain Dealer.
"All the poetry of Tagore is here." ... Poetry Journal.
"Beautiful and marked by skilful rhythm." Newark Evening News.
"A clear portrayal of the dual nature of womankind." Graphic.
"The play is finely idyllic." Chicago Daily Tribune.
"A pretty situation, prettily worked out. And there is something piquant in the combination of the old Hindu metaphorical style, half mystical in allusion, with what is really a plea for the emancipation of women." The Nation.
* * * * *
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Fruit Gathering
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"A shining pathway up which we can confidently travel to those regions of wisdom and experience which consciously or unconsciously we strive to reach." Boston Transcript.
"Quaintly lovely fragments." Chicago Herald.
"Exquisitely conceived and with all the distinctive grace which marked 'Song Offerings.'" San Francisco Chronicle.
"Exotic fragrance." Chicago Daily News.
"The songs have the quality of universality—the greatest quality which poetry can possess." Chicago Tribune.
"As perfect in form as they are beautiful and poignant in content." The Athenaeum, London.
"Nothing richer nor sweeter.... Something of Omar Khayyam and something of Rabbi ben Ezra, expressed more at length and more mystically. In smoothly flowing rhythms, with vivid little pictures of life's activities, the poet sings of old age, the fruit gathering time, its sadness and its glory, its advantages and its sorrows." The Boston Globe.
* * * * *
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The Post Office
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00; leather, $1.75.
"... filled with tender pathos and spiritual beauty. There are two acts, and the story is that of a frail little Indian lad condemned to seclusion and inaction by ill health. He makes a new world for himself, however, by his imagination and insatiable curiosity, and the passersby bring the world of action to him. The play has been presented in England by the Irish Players, and fully adapts itself to the charming simplicity and charm which are their principal characteristics." Phila. Public Ledger.
"A beautiful and appealing piece of dramatic work." Boston Transcript.
"Once more Tagore demonstrates the universality of his genius; once more he shows how art and true feeling know no racial and no religious lines." Kentucky Post.
"One reads in 'The Post Office' his own will of symbolism. Simplicity and a pervading, appealing pathos are the qualities transmitted to its lines by the poet." N. Y. World.
"He writes from his soul; there is neither bombast nor didacticism. His poems bring one to the quiet places where the soul speaks to the soul surely but serenely." N. Y. American.
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The King of the Dark Chamber
By
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913; Author of "Gitangali," "The Gardener," "The Crescent Moon," "Sadhana," "Chitra," "The Post-Office," etc. Cloth 12 mo, $1.25; leather, $1.75.
"The real poetical imagination of it is unchangeable; the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with unconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence more and more engaged until, when he turns the last page, he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds not realized, and communing with great if mysterious presences."
The London Globe.
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OTHER WORKS BY
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913
GITANJALI (Song Offerings). A Collection of Prose Translations made by the author from the original Bengali. New Edition $1.25
THE GARDENER. Poems of Youth $1.25
THE CRESCENT MOON. Child Poems. (Colored Ill.) $1.25
SADHANA: THE REALIZATION OF LIFE. A volume of essays $1.25
All four by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by the author from the original Bengali.
Rabindranath Tagore is the Hindu poet and preacher to whom the Nobel Prize was recently awarded....
I would commend these volumes, and especially the one entitled "Sadhana," the collection of essays, to all intelligent readers. I know of nothing, except it be Maeterlinck, in the whole modern range of the literature of the inner life that can compare with them.
There are no preachers nor writers upon spiritual topics, whether in Europe or America, that have the depth of insight, the quickness of religious apperception, combined with the intellectual honesty and scientific clearness of Tagore....
Here is a book from a master, free as the air, with a mind universal as the sunshine. He writes, of course, from the standpoint of the Hindu. But, strange to say, his spirit and teaching come nearer to Jesus, as we find Him in the Gospels, than any modern Christian writer I know.
He does for the average reader what Bergson and Eucken are doing for scholars; he rescues the soul and its faculties from their enslavement to logic-chopping. He shows us the way back to Nature and her spiritual voices.
He rebukes our materialistic, wealth-mad, Western life with the dignity and authority of one of the old Hebrew prophets....
He opens up the meaning of life. He makes us feel the redeeming fact that life is tremendous, a worth-while adventure. "Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating with life. LIFE IS IMMENSE." ...
Tagore is a great human being. His heart is warm with love. His thoughts are pure and high as the galaxy.
(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.) Reprinted by permission from the New York Globe, Dec. 18, 1913.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes: Page 49: One instance of Govinda and one instance of Gobinda: discrepancy retained Page 53: Hindusthani sic ("Hindustani" sic in Footnote 50.) Page 137: Closing quotes added after "...Singha;" Page 179: appetities amended to appetites Page 196: muscial amended to musical Page 219: Himayalas amended to Himalayas Page 235: cardamum sic Page 236: casuarianas amended to casuarinas Page 270: cooes sic Advertisements at close of book (unpaginated): transcendently sic and Gitangali sic Footnote 50 had a double reference in the original text, which has been retained here. Small discrepancies such as capitalisation between the List of Illustrations and the illustration captions have been retained. Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. Inconsistent spelling of colours/colors has been retained. Sanskrit and Sanscrit are used interchangeably in the original.
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