Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  35

  Shilaidaha

  Monday, 19 October 1891

  Today is the day of the Kojagar full moon.* … I was walking slowly by the riverside and conversing with myself—one can’t exactly call it a ‘conversation’—perhaps I was ranting on all by myself and that imaginary companion of mine had no option but to listen quietly; the poor thing didn’t have a chance to put in a word in his own defence—even if I’d given him a completely inappropriate speech, he couldn’t have done anything about it. But how marvellous it was! What more can I say! I’ve said it so many times, but it can never be told in its entirety. The river had not a single line upon it—there, on the other shore of the sandbank where the Padma’s waters had reached their last horizon, from there to here, a wide line of moonlight was shimmering—not a single human being, not a single boat—not a tree to be seen on the new sandbank on the other side, not a blade of grass—it seems as if a melancholy moon is rising over a desolate earth—an aimless river flowing through the middle of an unpopulated world, a lengthy old story has come to an end over an abandoned world; today there is nothing left of all those kings and princesses and bridegrooms and their friends and golden cities, only the ‘boundless fields’ [tepāntarer māṭh] and the ‘seven seas and thirteen rivers’ of those stories stretch out in the wan moonlight…. I was walking as if I was the one and only last-remaining pulse of a dying world. And all of you were on another shore, on the banks of life—where there’s the British government and the nineteenth century and tea and cheroots. If I could lift somebody out of there on a small boat and bring him here to this uninhabited moonlight, we would stand on this high bank and look out at the endless water and sand, and the fathomless night would shimmer and hum all around us! So many others have over the years stood here like me, alone, and felt this way, and so many poets have tried to express this, but oh, it is ineffable—what is it, what is it for, what impulse is it, what does one call this lost peace, what does it mean—when will that tune emerge, splitting open the heart precisely through the middle, which will exactly express this musicality!

  36

  Shilaidaha

  Saturday, 21 November 1891

  Received a letter from Sholli.* She has written analysing my work in Bhagnahṛdaẏ and Rudracanḍā. Previously, she had taken the side of Bhagnahṛdaẏ and argued with me frequently—now she has come around to my point of view. That is, she has criticized it extensively. She said its poets, Murala, Chapala, etc., are inhabitants of an imaginary grove….

  37

  Shilaidaha

  Monday, 4 January 1892

  Just a short while ago, the engineer from Pabna turned up with his mem and kids. You know, Bob, I don’t find it easy to be a host—my head gets completely muddled—besides which, I never knew he was going to bring a couple of kids along. This time I was supposed to be living on my own, so I haven’t even brought too many provisions. Anyway, I’m trying to shut my eyes and ears and get through this somehow. Additionally, the mem drinks tea, and I don’t have any tea; the mem can’t stand dal right from her childhood, and due to the absence of other food, I have ordered for dal to be made; the mem doesn’t touch fish from year’s end to year’s end, and I have quite happily ordered catfish curry to be cooked. Thank goodness she loves country sweets, that’s why she managed with great difficulty to cut into a hard, dry sandeś with her fork and eat it. There’s a tin of biscuits left over from last time’s rations that’s going to come in handy. To top it all, I went and put my foot in it—I said to the saheb, your mem drinks tea, but unfortunately I don’t have any tea, I have cocoa. He said, ‘My mem loves cocoa even more than tea.’ I rummaged through the cupboard and found that there was no cocoa—it had all been sent back to Calcutta. Now I’ll have to tell him again: there’s no tea and no cocoa, only the Padma’s water and a kettle—let’s see what his face looks like then. I can’t tell you how mischievous and naughty the sahebs’s two sons look! The mem isn’t as awful-looking and short-haired as I thought she was—she’s sort of medium-looking. From time to time, the saheb and mem are getting into the most tremendous fights which I can hear from this boat. The boys crying, the servants shouting, the couple arguing—it’s driving me completely insane. I don’t see any chance of being able to read or write or get any work done (the mem is scolding her son: What a little śuẏār [pig] you are!). Tell me, why has all this trouble descended on my shoulders? And then again, the mem has said she wants to go for a walk this evening and she’s asking me to go with her—I’m sitting here in such a stunned state that if you saw me you would fall about laughing—I’m smiling a wry smile of sorrow myself, thinking about the state I’m in. I’d never dreamt I’d have to wander around the estates with a mem clasped under my arm. No doubt the tenants will be very surprised. If I can bid goodbye to them tomorrow morning then I might just survive; if they say they’re going to stay one more day then I’m going to die, Bob.

  38

  Shilaidaha

  Wednesday, 6 January 1892

  Evening has fallen. When I was on the boat in the summer, at this time I would sit by the boat’s window with my light out and lie there quietly; the sound of the river, the evening breeze and the silence of the star-filled sky would give the sweetest of forms to my imagination and surround me on all sides; the evening would pass till very late in the night immersed in a sort of intense, lonely sorrow and joy. In the winter the doors and windows are closed, shutting out all of nature, and my mind cannot run free in the boat’s tiny wooden cave of a room with one lamp burning—it’s as if one has to live in too close a proximity with one’s self, brushing up and knocking against yourself all the time. In this situation, it’s very difficult to live with one’s own mind…. Speaking of literature, I had brought just two storybooks with me, but such is my wretched fate that today, while taking her leave, the engineer saheb’s mem has taken both with her, and I have no idea when she’s going to return them. She picked up both the books, and in a shy, pleading tone, began: ‘Mr Tagore would you’—even before she could finish, I nodded vigorously and said, ‘Certainly.’ I’m not sure what one can make of this exchange. Actually, they were saying their goodbyes then, and I could have given them half my kingdom in my enthusiasm (not that the recipients would have profited greatly). Anyway, they’ve gone today, Bob—these last two days were a complete muddle—and it shall take me another two days to regain my equilibrium—I’m in such a foul mood that I’m afraid I might bark at someone unfairly without rhyme or reason—I’m being so careful that I’m speaking very diffidently to somebody I might have been sharp with in normal circumstances—this opposite outcome happens with me sometimes when I’m in a temper so that at this time if the boys are near me I’m afraid I might take them severely to task for the smallest of mistakes, so I don’t punish them at all, cultivating stoicism with great determination.

  39

  Shilaidaha

  Thursday, 14 January 1892

  For the last one or two days nature here has been vacillating between winter and spring—in the morning it could be the north wind blowing cold, making land and water shiver—in the evening, a south wind might stir up everything under bright moonlight. It’s quite apparent that spring is approaching and is quite near. After a long time, a cuckoo has begun calling nowadays from the garden on the other side. Human minds too are becoming slightly restless. These days in the evenings one can hear the sound of music and song from the village on that side—evidence that people are no longer that keen to close their doors and windows and go to sleep huddled under quilts. Tonight is full-moon night—exactly to my left, an enormous moon has risen above the open window and looks at my face—perhaps to see whether I’m criticizing him at all in my letter. Perhaps he feels that the people of this world gossip about the marks on his face far more than they talk about the light. A lone partridge calls out from the silent sandbank—the river is still—there are no boats—the dense woods on the other side, stunned, throw unmoving shadows upon
the water—the full-moon night looks slightly hazy, like sleeping eyes do when they are open. Tomorrow, once again, it will slowly begin to get dark in the evening—tomorrow, once the kāchāri’s work is done, when I begin to cross this small river, I will see that my beloved in these foreign lands has separated herself from me a little—she who had opened her mysterious, endless heart to me yesterday—as if she suspects today that she should not have revealed so much of herself last evening all at once, and so she begins to close her heart again, very slowly. Really, nature comes very close to one in the loneliness of foreign lands—I really have thought to myself these past few days—I will not get as much moonlight any more from the day after the full-moon night—as if I’ll go from a foreign land further into foreign territory; that the peaceful, familiar beauty that awaited me by the riverbank every evening after work shall not be there any more—I shall have to return to the boat in darkness…. But today is a full-moon night, the first full moon of spring this year, I’m writing it down here—perhaps many years later I’ll recall this silent night again—along with the cry of that partridge as well as the light that burns on the boat tied to the other side—this small bit of the brilliant line of the river, the coating of that little piece of dark forest there—and this aloof, disinterested, pale sky—

  40

  Shilaidaha

  Friday, 12 February 1892

  The other day I read a śloka from Kalidasa in a paper that I was quite surprised to read—

  ramyāṇi bīshya madhurgaca niamya abdn

  parayutsuk bhabati yat sukhitohapi jantuḥ.

  taccetsā smarati nūambodhprbaṃ

  bhābsthirāṇi jananāntarasauhṛdāni.

  Meaning: ‘Why is even the soul of a happy man rendered restless upon seeing a beautiful thing or hearing a sweet sound? It must be that he remembers, unbeknownst to himself, some friend from another life.’ It’s pretty apparent that Kalidasa’s mind would sometimes be weighed down quite without reason. In the Meghdūt too, the poet has said ‘meghāloke bhabati sukhinohapyanyathābṛtti cetaḥ’—seeing clouds, even the happy person turns absentminded. Beauty awakens in man the most deep and mysterious and limitless of desires, that attracts the mind and takes it from one birth to the next—it gave me great pleasure to read of this feeling in Kalidasa’s poetry….

  41

  Shilaidaha

  Thursday, 7 April 1892

  A lovely breeze has been blowing since morning. I’m not feeling like doing any work. It must be about eleven or eleven-thirty in the morning, yet I haven’t put my hand to any reading or writing till now. I’ve been sitting still on a chair since morning. There are so many fragments of lines and unfinished feelings coming and going in my head, but I don’t have the strength to tie them together or to give expression to them. I remembered that song of yours, ‘Pāẏeriẏā bāje jhanaka jhanaka jhana jhana–nana nana nana’—on this beautiful morning, in the sweet breeze in the middle of the river, my head resonates with that sort of jhana-nana sound of anklets, but only from this side or that—hidden—not letting itself be caught or seen. So I’ve been sitting quietly. Do you know what sort of place I’m at? Most of the river’s water has dried up, there’s no water anywhere that’s more than waist-deep, so it hasn’t been difficult to tie the boat almost in the middle of the river. To my right, farmers plough the fields upon the sandbank and sometimes bring their cows to drink from the water. To my left are Shilaidaha’s coconut and mango groves, women at the ghat washing their clothes, drawing water, bathing, and talking loudly to each other in the East Bengali dialect—the younger girls play in the water endlessly—they finish bathing and come out and then jump into the water again with a splash—it’s quite wonderful to hear their loud, carefree laughter. The men come seriously, immerse themselves once or twice, complete their daily ablutions and leave—but the women seem to have a special bond with the water. The two seem to be similar to and friendly with each other—both women and water have a simple, easy, bright way, a motion that’s quite flowing and rhythmical, with melody and undulation—they can establish themselves in any vessel—they may slowly dry up in the withering heat of sorrow, but they will not irrevocably break into two at a blow. They encircle this hard earth from all sides in an embrace; the earth cannot understand the deep mystery of her inner heart; she does not produce grain herself, but if she is not there within, not a single blade of grass would grow. Comparing women with men, Tennyson said: water unto wine. It seems to me today: water unto land. That’s why women get along so well with water—women are not suited to carrying many other sorts of loads, but to carry water—from the fountainhead, the well, the ghat—that has never been unsuitable when women do it. To wash their bodies, to bathe, to sit in waist-deep water at the riverside and talk to each other—all of this seems eminently suitable for women. I have seen that women love water, because both are of the same sort. Only water and women have this easy, endless flow and chatter, nothing else does. One could have shown many more similarities, but it’s getting late, and one thought shouldn’t be wrung excessively dry.

  42

  Shilaidaha

  Friday, 8 April 1892

  You must be quite surprised to hear that I’m reading so much of Elements of Politics and Problems of the Future after coming here. Actually, the thing is, I can never quite find a poem or a novel that’s appropriate for this place. Whatever I open has the same English names, English society, the roads and drawing rooms of London, and all sorts of meaningless complications. I never come across anything that is quite easy, beautiful, free or generous, brightly tender, and rounded like a teardrop. Just complications upon complications, analysis upon analysis—just attempts at crumpling, wringing and scrunching up human nature to spin it around forcefully in order to prise out newer and newer theories or ethics. If I try to read that stuff, it shall completely muddy what I have here—the calm current of this small summer-worn river, the flow of the indifferent breeze, the undivided expanse of the sky, the continuous peace of both shores and the silence all around. I almost never have anything to read that is appropriate for here, except for the shorter verses of the Vaishnava poets. If I knew a few good womanly fairy tales of Bengal, and could write them down in a simple, rhythmic and beautiful way, replete with the homely memories of childhood, then it might have been appropriate for this place. Quite like the sound of this small river, like the loud laughter and sweet voices and inconsequential conversations of the women at the ghat, like the coconut fronds that shiver and tremble in the breeze and the deep shadows of the mango orchards and the smell of the full-blown mustard fields—quite simple yet beautiful and peaceful—full of a lot of sky, light, silence and tenderness! Fighting, arguing, jostling and crying—all that is not of this shadowy Bengal, encircled by the embrace of its affectionate rivers. Anyway, Elements of Politics flows over the silent peace of this place like oil upon water, it doesn’t disturb or break it in any way…. I’m sitting here in the middle of the river, with the wind blowing through night and day, the banks on either side looking like two starting lines of the world, where life has only just suggested itself, has not yet assumed a clear, sharp shape—as if those who draw water, bathe, row boats, graze cows, and come and go across the field’s footpaths are not completely, really, alive. In other places, people crowd around, they interrupt your flow of thought if they are in front of you, as if their very existence seems to nudge you; they are all, each and every one, a positive human being; but here they come and go and talk and work in front of you—yet they do not push against your mind. They stand and stare at you out of curiosity, but that simple curiosity does not crowd you or overwhelm you. Anyway, I’m really liking it here.

  43

  Bolpur

  Saturday, 14 May 1892

  The universe has many paradoxes, one among which is that where there’s an extensive landscape, endless sky, dense clouds, a deep feeling, in other words in a place where the eternal is manifest, there its appropriate companion can be
only one person—too many people make it too petty and messy. Infinity and one person are both evenly balanced in relation to one another—both deserve to sit on their individual thrones face-to-face. And if you have many people staying together, they tend to cut one another down to size—if a person wants to spread out his entire inner soul, he needs so much space that there’s no room for five or six people near him. In my judgement, if you want a good fit, then in this wide world it is possible to fit only an intimate two—there’s no space for more—the moment you gather a number in excess of that, you have to lessen yourself in order to accommodate one another’s demands—you have to insert yourself into the available gaps. In the meantime, I am unable to receive—with hands cupped and arms extended in prayer—the blessings of nature’s deep, limitless expanse that is given so generously.

  44