Selected Poems (Tagore, Rabindranath)

by Rabindranath Tagore

  7 ‘with my hands on my heart’ – bakse juriyā pāi: ‘with my hands folded on my breast’, i.e. palms touching in the familiar Indian gesture of supplication or greeting.

  10 lit., ‘Am I so lakmī-chāā that I must sell my mother because of poverty?’ See Laksmī in the Glossary.

  19 ‘I roamed the world sannyāsī-beśe’ – ‘dressed as an ascetic’.

  20 ‘places’ – dhām: this word can connote a holy place, a place of pilgrimage.

  21 ‘in desert’ – bijane: in places empty of people rather than deserts in the technical sense.

  34 ‘the festival-carriage’ – rath-talā: the place where the rath, the chariot used in the annual Hindu chariot festival, is kept.

  35 ‘granary’ – nandīr golā: ‘Nandī’s granary’ (the name of the owner).

  53 ‘storm’ – jyaither jhae: a storm in the month of Jyaiha (see Glossary).

  70 ‘pukka’ – pākā: the word really means ‘ripe’.

  Day’s End (p. 57)

  dina-śee from citrā, 1896

  Many of the images and symbols in this poem obsessed Tagore throughout his career. ‘Buying and selling’ (1.32) often stands for worldly as opposed to spiritual endeavour: compare ‘Highest Price’ and ‘Freedom-bound’ 1.10, and the references to ‘the market’ in N64 and P107. Sunset, strangely beautiful girl, royal buildings, music combine to suggest an ideal world of beauty, drawing the speaker away from worldly concerns. But the mood is equivocal: the impulse to look beyond the world and the wish to stay within it were equal in Tagore. A key-word is udās, used in 1.25. The word means detached, the state of mind that is necessary for spiritual liberation; but in other contexts Tagore associates it with aloofness, an absence of human feeling (see notes to ‘Unyielding’, ‘Earth’, ‘In the Eyes of a Peacock’ for further mention of the word). The descending darkness in the poem, the stillness, the sleeping birds suggest a defeatist longing for oblivion, the same desire to escape from life that makes a sad conclusion to ‘Bride’. The static, luxuriant beauty of the royal city where the traveller wishes to moor can be compared to Alakā in ‘The Meghadūta’ and ‘Yaka’, where the ideal is similarly equivocal.

  2,30 ār beye kāj nāi taraī: ‘there is no point in rowing (beye) the boat any more’; but ‘rowing’ suggests a smaller boat than Bengal’s river-craft, which do, in any case, often have sails. See notes on ‘The Golden Boat’.

  15 lit., ‘the light of the clouds glitters on a golden trident’: presumably there is a Śiva-temple nearby, with its identifying trident; unless the phrase kanaker triśūle simply means ‘in the form of a golden trident’ and describes the shape of the sunlit clouds.

  22 the breeze is atidūr, ‘far-off, rather than the palace.

  24 lit., ‘The earth before me disappears somewhere, stretches out of sight’; but the meaning is linked to udās in the next line.

  On the Edge of the Sea (p. 58)

  sindhu–pāre from citrā, 1896

  This strange, uneasy poem is an example of Tagore at his most inspirational: imagination is let loose, unrestrained by moral or religious preoccupations. Tagore’s concept of jīban-debatā (‘life-god’) was a flexible one, so that people argue about what he meant by it. In RM96 it simply seems to be God, realized in one’s own human consciousness: a universal Being ‘shaping the universe to its eternal idea’, but a personal God too, ‘seeking his best expression in all my experiences, uniting them into an ever-widening individuality which is a spiritual work of art’. But in this poem, where the jīban-debatā takes on female form, the emphasis is not on a controlling harmony, but a driving destiny forcing the self through experiences whose meaning or logic is by no means clear: the pieces of one’s life may be part of a design, but one cannot know the design, one is merely aware of a mysterious compulsion leading one on from one experience or activity to another. The poem can be compared with one I have not translated, niruddeś yātrā in sonār tarī, in which a beautiful woman guides the poet in a golden boat towards the sunset, but refuses to tell him where she is taking him.

  The illusory or magical nature of the experience in the poem is emphasized by certain key-words in the Bengali. In 1.22 the speaker mounts the horse mantra-mugdha acetan-sama: ‘bewitched by a spell [mantra: see Glossary] and as if unconscious’; in 1.24 everything is miche, false, unreal; the things he passes as he rides may all be maner bhul (1.44: ‘mistakes of the mind’); in 1.94 he stands mohe, in a state of moha, illusion, ignorance, enchantment. All this suggests the māyā that in Indian tradition separates mortal existence from God. But the jīban-debatā reveals itself in this very māyā, and mocks the poet for being surprised. This is the paradox of khelā, the inseparable interplay of world and spirit: and khelā is used in 1.117. Compare ‘Last Tryst’, where the jīban-debatā also appears in a guise opposite to what one might expect.

  1 ‘winter’ – pau: the month of Paus (see Glossary).

  20 ‘with cold’ – not in the original, but the nakedness of the tree is emphasized: it is pallab-hīn, ‘leafless’, and has nagna-śākhā, ‘naked branches’.

  70 ‘tune’ – tān: the word is usually applied to the elaborate figurations that decorate tunes in Indian music. The same word is used in 1.121.

  82 ‘ritual grasses’ – dhānya-dūrbā: ‘paddy and grass’, used as symbols of auspiciousness.

  83 ‘forest-women’ – kirāt-nārīr dal: ‘a group of kirāt women’ (see Glossary).

  106,107 ‘bed’ – śayan: ‘bedding’ rather than a raised bed. I translated the word as ‘linen’ in 1.62.

  Love’s Question (p. 61)

  praay-praśna from kalpanā (Imagination), 1900

  This poem has a double irony: the far-fetched praise the lover gives his beloved is both untrue and true. Love between people is love between God and man in microcosm. Divine joy manifest in the abundance of creation (S104) is answered by creative works that are an expression of man’s own ‘surplus’ (RM57): extravagant poetic conceits are the counterpart of extravagance in the created world. Beauty in nature and art cannot be accounted for rationally or scientifically, and is therefore ‘untrue’; but it is real, an expression of divine or human joy, and therefore ‘true’. In P34 Tagore writes: ‘The poet says of the beloved: “It seems to me that I have gazed at your beauty from the beginning of my existence, that I have kept you in my arms for countless ages, yet it has not been enough for me”… Judged from the standpoint of reason these are exaggerations, but from that of the heart, freed from limits of facts, they are true.’

  2 ‘ever-loving friend’ – cira-bhakta: ‘eternal devotee’.

  9 ‘tree of paradise’ – cira-mandār. ‘the eternal mandāra-tree’ (see Glossary).

  15 ‘the breeze’ – adhīr samīr. ‘the impatient breeze’.

  30 hair (alak: a tress or fringe of hair) is also mentioned in the Bengali.

  33 ‘infinite Truth’ – asīmer tattva: ‘knowledge of the infinite’.

  Snatched by the Gods (p. 62)

  debatār gras from kathā (Tales), 1900

  Many of the poems in the two books of narrative poetry that Tagore wrote between 1897 and 1899 were on patriotic historical subjects, in keeping with the mood of the times. The Sedition Bill of 1898 shocked Tagore into making one of his most dramatic interventions into nationalist politics, reading a paper against the Government at a public meeting in Calcutta and raising funds for the defence of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who had been arrested. But there is nothing revivalist about ‘Snatched by the Gods’. The title, and the word debatā wherever it occurs in the poem, poses a translation problem: really only one god is being referred to, probably Varuna, the sea-god, god of boatmen. But ‘the god’ is awkward in English unless it has been specified, and ‘God’ needs to be preserved for 1.47 and 1.157 where Mokadā is clearly addressing a different sort of god altogether, a supreme yet personal God such as Tagore tried to define in RM, representing a much higher morality than the boatmen’s god. In 1.47 she uses the name nār
āya, an epithet meaning ‘son of man’ (the primeval man, Nara) that is sometimes applied to Visnu but which Tagore defines as ‘the supreme Reality of Man, which is divine’ (RM67); and in 1.157 she uses the term antaryāmī, which means ‘one who is able to know another’s antar, heart, mind’, i.e. the ‘Man of my Heart’ of CU78. To show the difference between the jealous god of the boatmen and the God manifest in Mokadā’s maternal love is one of the purposes of the poem, and the distinction has to be conveyed somehow in translation.

  The language of the poem is highly varied, ranging from the colloquial dialogue of 11.27–69 to the intense rhetoric of 11.81–93. The lines are rhymed in couplets, but run on with tremendous pace. An important word is sneha, love, tenderness, used in ll.41 and 49; also in 1.87 where Earth is described as sneha-mayī, full of love, the counterpart in Nature to human maternal love. Other key-words are raka, used in 11.134, 148, 150 and 154 of both ‘saving’ or keeping a promise and of ‘saving’ or sparing Rākhāl; and satya, used both of the ‘truth’ that has to be kept with the sea-god in 1.155 and the truth of Mokadā’s feelings in 1.159. The conflict between two kinds of ‘saving’, two kinds of ‘truth’, parallels the two kinds of god.

  8 ‘Dear Grandfather’ – dādā-thākur: not really her grandfather or dādā-maśay. The term is applied respectfully to a person of age and standing, or to a Brahmin by a non-Brahmin.

  17 ‘with his aunt’ – māsīr kāche: ‘with his māsī (maternal aunt)’.

  29 ‘pays respects to’ - praamiyā: ‘having done pranām to’ (see Glossary).

  65 ‘Annadā’ – Maitra actually uses the affectionate term bhāi, not her name.

  72 ‘womenfolk’ – kula-nārī: ‘married women, housewives’.

  98 ‘with hope of departure’ – āśār sambāde: ‘with a message of hope’; an ironic phrase in view of what follows.

  103 ‘says his prayers’ – debatāre smari: ‘remembering (the god’. See above.

  107 ‘four miles’ – dui kroś: ‘two kroś’ (a kroś is a distance of 8,000 cubits or just over two miles).

  New Rain (p. 66)

  naba-barā from kaikā (The Flitting One), 1900

  The poems in this book are marked by intense delight and energy, and an exuberant inventiveness of form. It was the first time that Tagore had used abbreviated, colloquial verb-forms in poetry: this opened up many new rhythmic and stylistic possibilities and was a revolution in Bengali poetry. The book also shows the influence of nursery-rhymes and folk poetry, a growing interest for Tagore: see Appendix B.

  Tagore’s love of rain has already been noted in connection with ‘The Meghadūta’: here it is the vitality, prā (used in 11.4 and 14), of the rain rather than its poignancy that is captured. Newness is stressed throughout: words for ‘new’ are used more than I have been able to manage in my translation, in 11.7, 13, 17, 24, 38; in 1.31 the boat is called tarun, an untranslatable word meaning new, youthful, fresh, shining. The poem is full of remarkable sound effects: 1.6 reads guruguru megh gumari gumari garaje gagane gagane, garaje gagane; and 1.27 jharake jharake jhariche bakul. Many lines are impossible to translate literally: 1.28 is (approximately) ‘her ācal (loose end of the sari) becomes eager in the sky’.

  Could the imagery of verses 4 and 6 owe something to ‘Moran’s Garden’, Tagore’s brother Jyotirindranath’s villa at Chandernagore, described in R210? Of the pictures in the sitting-room Tagore writes: ‘One of the pictures was of a swing hanging from a branch half hidden in dense foliage, and in the checkered light and shade of this bower two persons were swinging; and there was another of a broad flight of steps leading into some castle-like palace, up and down which men and women in festive garb were going and coming…’

  8 the original suggests streaming rain rather than rushing flood-water here.

  14 lit., ‘my life (prān) has awoken today, blooming in or with delighted nīp-groves’. kadam or kadamba is the more usual name for this flower. See Glossary.

  14 ‘coolly’ – snigdha: ‘cool’, but the Sanskrit root snih-, from which the word is derived, also means ‘to love’: cf. Bengali sneha, love, mentioned in my notes to ‘Snatched by the Gods’. So ‘coolly and lovingly’ would be a fuller translation.

  24 ‘jasmine’ – mālatī: see Glossary.

  26 ‘in the wilderness’ – nirjane: ‘in solitude, in a place where there are no other people’.

  29 ‘hair unplaited’ – the Bengali conveys a sense of hair becoming unplaited as the girl swings.

  The Hero (p. 68)

  bīr-purus from śiśu (The Child), 1903

  Tagore’s wife died in 1902, and as a result he had to look after his three youngest children. Soon his daughter Rani fell ill, and Tagore took her to Almora in the hills to try to save her life. ‘The Hero’ was among the poems that he wrote there to comfort and amuse her and the two youngest children, Mira and Samindra. śiśu consists of these, and some earlier poems about children.

  Tagore was never happier than when he was ‘giving his heart to children’ (R158), and felt that children have much to teach us. Compare ‘Highest Price’, ‘Grandfather’s Holiday’ and ‘New Birth’ 11.24–6. Certain linguistic details in ‘The Hero’ stress the contrast between the boy’s age and the braggadocio of his fantasy. In 11.32–4 he uses ‘low-grade’ imperative forms such as would never be used by a child to an adult; in ll.36 and 54, on the other hand, he is addressed as khokā, a term only used for a small boy. In 1.48 his mother takes him in her lap as one would take a small child; and in 1.53 he shows an endearing desire to brag to dādā, elder brother.

  An equivalently tight verse form seemed essential in translation, and I have sometimes had to compress or re-order the lines.

  8–9 lit., ‘evening comes, the sun is setting/we seem to have come to an area of open land adjoining a pair of ponds’.

  15 The land is covered with cor-kātā, lit. ‘thief-prickle’, a plant with burs that stick to the clothes of passers-by.

  19 two lines in the original: lit., ‘who knows where we are going/it is hard to see well in the dark’.

  21 ‘what’s that lantern?’ – oi-ye kiser ālo? ‘what is that the light of over there?’

  22,35 ‘shouts and yells’ – the Bengali gives the actual shouts: hāre re re re re.

  25–7 lit., ‘you, in fear, in one corner of the palanquin, are remembering a god (thākur-debatā) in your mind’. Only one god is implied: see notes to ‘Snatched by the Gods’.

  40 ‘you would faint’ – tomār gāye debe kāā: ‘there would be a prickling over your body’.

  50–52 lit., ‘every day there is so much that happens that is worthless, trivial (yā-tā);/Oh why do such (events) not occur truly?’

  Death-wedding (p. 69)

  mara-milan from utsarga (Dedications), 1914

  In 1903 Tagore published his poetical works to date, arranged according to theme, and for each section he wrote an introductory poem. These were eventually published as a separate volume in 1914, but in sañcayitā they were restored to their chronological position.

  ‘Death Wedding’ was first published in the journal bagadarśan in August-September 1902. There is disagreement about what could have inspired it. It has been related to the ideal of revolutionary martyrdom that was beginning to enter the air of Bengal; or to the death of Swami Vivekananda early in the year. Perhaps it can be taken as a premonition of the deaths of Tagore’s wife Mrinalini in 1902, his daughter Rani in 1903, his beloved assistant at Santiniketan the young poet Satischandra Ray in 1904, Tagore’s father in 1905 and his younger son Samindra in 1907. The poem is brilliant in structure and conception, but one may find an emptiness in it, as though Tagore yet had to face the full reality of death. In RM198 he writes of the four proper stages of life according to Indian tradition: the fourth, the pravrajyā, is ‘the expectant awaiting of freedom across death… Enriched with its experiences, the soul now leaves the narrower life for the universal life, to which it dedicates its accumulated wisdom, and itself ente
rs into relations with the Life Eternal, so that, when finally the decaying body has come to the very end of its tether, the soul views its breaking away quite simply and without regret, in the expectation of its own entry into the Infinite.’ To want Death to act according to one’s wishes is not compatible with this. Cf. ‘The Borderland –10’ where Tagore is also not ready for death, though for different reasons.

  The artifice of the verse and structure of ‘Death-wedding’ is paralled by an emphasis on form and style in its content. In 1.3 Tagore asks whether Death’s furtive approach is praayer-i dharan: ‘the (proper) form of love’; and in 1.19 he asks, milaner eki rīti ei: ‘is this the (right) style of union?’. Verse 4 describes Śiva’s appearance and trappings; in 1.40 there is the auspicious outward sign of Gauri’s happiness – the fluttering left eye; in 1.50 Tagore asks to be dressed naba rakta-basane, ‘in new blood-red robes’, suggestive of śakti (see Glossary).