Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  51

  Bolpur

  Saturday, 28 May 1892

  The cup of tea I had last evening was somewhat on the stronger side—on top of that, the letter I wrote you last night was also on a subject that had become somewhat inflamed with the heat of my thoughts, so it kept ringing in my head for a long time—as a result, after I went to bed I spent more than half the night completely sleepless. There are no church bells that sound at night over here—and because there is no human habitation anywhere nearby, the moment the birds stop singing the whole place is enveloped in the most complete silence from the evening onward—there’s not much difference between the first hours of the night and the middle of the night. In Calcutta, a sleepless night is like a large, dark river—it keeps flowing very slowly—you can lie flat on your bed and calculate its motion by its sounds—here, the night is like a vast motionless lake that is dreadfully still—there is no movement anywhere. However much I might turn on this side or that, a vast, humid want of sleep hung over me which had no trace of any flow in it. This morning, getting out of bed a little late, I sat in the downstairs room leaning against a cushion with a slate on my chest and with my feet up, one on top of the other, and began to try and write a poem in the midst of the morning breeze and the call of the birds. It was all just beginning to gel—pleased expression, eyes slightly closed, head swaying frequently, and a rhythmic humming recitation growing progressively clearer—when suddenly a letter from you, a copy of Sādhanā, a proof of Sādhanā and a Monist paper presented themselves. I read your letter and proceeded to race my eyes across the pages of Sādhanā at a brisk gallop. Then, with a renewed nodding of the head and an indistinct humming, I resumed my poetic occupation. Other things could wait until it was done. I’m wondering why there is so much more joy to be obtained from the completion of a single poem than in the writing of a thousand pages of prose. In poetry, one’s thoughts attain a completion, almost as if one can pick it up with one’s hands. And prose is like a sack, full of separate things—if you hold it in one place, all of it doesn’t come up so easily—an absolute specimen of a burden. If I could complete a poem every day then life would pass so pleasantly! But I’ve been pursuing it for such a long time now, and it still hasn’t quite been tamed yet—it’s not the sort of Pegasus that will allow you to put a harness on it every day. One of the chief joys of art is the joy of freedom—to take one’s self quite far away, and then even after one returns to the prison house of the world, there’s an echo in your ear, an elation in your mind, which stays with you for a long time. I’m unable to turn my hand to the play because these short poems keep coming up spontaneously. Otherwise, there were a few messengers from two or three future plays knocking at the door. I might not be able to attend to them before winter, possibly. With the exception of Citrāṅgadā, all my other plays are written in the winter. That is the time when the passion of lyric poetry cools down a bit, and one can sit down calmly and quietly to write plays.

  52

  Bolpur

  31 May 1892

  It’s not yet five o’clock—but it’s already light, there’s quite a breeze, and all the birds of the garden have woken up and started to sing. The cuckoo has outdone itself—nobody has yet been able to fathom why it calls so continuously—obviously it’s not just for our pleasure, nor to make the beloved feel the pangs of separation even more—it must surely have a personal ambition of its own—but it’s impossible to decide what that wretched ambition is! Nor does it let off—its cooo-o, cooo-o, goes on and on—and then, occasionally, as if its impatience had doubled, it coos more rapidly still. What does this mean? And again, a little further away, some other sort of bird is consistently repeating itself—kuk-kuk—in a very low tone, without the sting of the least bit of eagerness or enthusiasm—as if it were a man who was feeling quite despondent, all his hopes lost, but was still unable to give up the impulse to sit in the shade the entire day with its little bit of kuk-kuk, kuk-kuk. Really, these small, timid living things with wings, sitting in the shade of the trees with their intensely tender little necks and chests, running their individual households—we don’t know anything of their actual story. We don’t really understand why they need to call out in such a way. Some zoologists say it is to call out to their beloved. Their paramours too don’t seem to be far behind humans, I see—making the gentleman quite maddened at this early hour—if the cuckoo lady wants to come to him, she might as well come at a call or two—why is she making the lovelorn admirer call so frantically in this way?

  53

  Shilaidaha

  Sunday, 12 June 1892

  What you wrote yesterday in your letter about the duties of life is absolutely true. Our chief duty is to make the place where we have somehow arrived happier, brighter and more peaceful to the best of our ability. All of you do exactly that with your happy, beautiful faces, your selfless service, love and affection—there is nothing further to be done. Not everybody is able to do this. We are cursed beings, we are born accompanied by such a tremendous unhappiness that we are unable to make the world a happy, calm place in a natural and easy way; we keep struggling and kicking in the same place and we muddy everything around us—we don’t know how to make the world sweet—exactly the opposite. A hundred thousand curses on the race of men—there is no greater rubbish on the face of the earth.

  54

  Shilaidaha

  Monday, 13 June 1892

  I’m fed up with civilized behaviour—nowadays I often sit and recite—‘What if I were rather an Arab Bedouin!’ What a healthy, strong, free barbarism! Instead of allowing one’s judgement, behaviour, intelligence and thinking to make you decrepit in body and mind before time, caught up day and night in an ancient, worn-out set of rites, one could have enjoyed an intense, joyful life with a heart free of worries or hesitation. All one’s hopes and desires, whether good or bad, could have been fearless, unhesitant and commendable—no continual conflict between one’s brain and one’s customs, between the brain and desire, between desire and work. This closed life—if I could just let it run on in the most wild and lawless way, I would have created a storm and sent the waves crashing everywhere, riding one’s frivolity like a strong, untamed horse running with the joy of one’s passions!

  But I’m not a Bedouin, I’m a Bengali. I will sit in a corner and nitpick, I will judge, argue, turn my mind over once this way and then the other way—in the way one fries fish—you let one side splutter and sizzle in the boiling oil, then you turn it over to let the other side sputter. Anyway! When it’s impossible to be completely uncivilized, it’s politic to try and be absolutely civilized. No point setting up a fight between civilization and barbarism….

  As such by nature I’m uncivilized—I find the intimacy of people completely unbearable. Unless there’s a lot of empty space all around, I cannot completely unpack my mind, spread out my hands and feet, and settle down. All my blessings are with the human race—I hope it prospers—but let them not come up too close against me…. I’m sure the general populace will get on completely fine without me and find themselves a lot of good friends. They will not lack consolation.

  55

  Shilaidaha

  Wednesday, 15 June 1892

  Yesterday, on the first day of Āshāṛh, the coronation of the rains was conducted with much pomp and ceremony. After a very hot day, dark clouds rolled in with a lot of fanfare towards evening…. Yesterday I thought: it’s the first day of the rains, today it would be better to get drenched than spend the day inside a dark room—the year 1299 [Bengali Era] will not return a second time in my life—if you think about it, how many times will you experience the first day of Āshāṛh in your entire life—if you collect them all together and you have about thirty days, then you must concede that that’s a very long life. Ever since I wrote ‘Meghdūt’ the first day of Āshāṛh has had a special significance—at least for me. I often think, these days of my life that keep coming one after the other—some brilliant with sunrise and s
unset, some the calm blue of dense clouds, some shining like white flowers on a full-moon night—how lucky I am to have them! And how valuable they are! A thousand years ago, Kalidasa, sitting in the royal court of nature, had welcomed the first day of Āshāṛh by composing, in immortal rhyme, the song of man’s pain of separation from his beloved; in my life too, the same first day of Āshāṛh rises every year with its entire sky of wealth—that same first day of Āshāṛh of the ancient poet of ancient Ujjaini with its men and women with their multitude of joys and sorrows, separations and reunions, of many many ages ago! That first great day of that very old Āshāṛh will be subtracted by a day every year from my life, until a time will come when there will not be a single day remaining in my life of this day of Kalidasa, this day of Meghdūt, this first day of the rains in India for all of time past. When you think about this deeply, you feel like looking once again at this world very carefully—you want to greet the sunrise every day in your life fully and consciously and say goodbye to every sunset like a familiar friend. If I were a renunciate by nature I might have thought that life is transient, so instead of spending my days uselessly I should engage in good works and in taking the name of god. But that is not my nature, that’s why I sometimes think—such lovely days and nights are going from my life every day, and I’m unable to take them in fully! All these colours, this light and shade, this silent splendour spread across the sky, this peace and beauty that fills the entire space between earth and heaven—how much preparation all of this takes! Such a vast field of celebration! Such a huge and amazing affair happening every day outside, and we cannot find a proper response to it within us! We live at such a far remove from the universe! The light of a single star reaches us after travelling through the infinite darkness for millions and millions of years, from millions and millions of miles away, and it cannot enter our hearts, as if our hearts were a further million miles away! The colourful mornings and evenings are falling from the torn necklace of the horizon’s brides like so many gems into the ocean’s water. Not one of them enters our thoughts! That time on the way to England the unearthly sunset I had seen upon the still waters of the ruby-red sea—where has it gone! But thank god I had seen it, thank god that that one evening of my life had not been rejected and wasted—in all our endless days and nights no other poet in the world had witnessed that one amazing sunset except me. Its colours remain in my life. Each day of that sort is like an individual legacy. The few days I spent in that garden of mine at Peneti,* a few nights on the second-floor terrace, a few rainy days in the western and southern verandas, a few evenings by the Ganga at Chandannagar, one sunset and moonrise on the mountain peak at Sinchal in Darjeeling—it’s as if I have filed away a few brilliant, beautiful fragments of moments of this sort. Beauty, for me, is a real drug! It really and truly drives me mad. When I used to lie on the terrace on moonlit nights as a child, it was as though the moonlight was the white foam of liquor overflowing and drowning me in it…. The world in which I find myself is full of very strange human beings—they are all occupied night and day with rules and building walls; they carefully put up curtains just in case their eyes actually see anything—really, the creatures of this world are very strange! It’s a wonder they don’t cover up every flowering bush, or erect canopies to keep out the moonlight. These wilfully blind people, traversing the world in closed palanquins, what do they see as they go? If there is an afterlife in which one’s wishes and desires are taken into account, then I want to get out of this wrapped-up world and be born again in an open, free, beautiful and heavenly place. Those who are unable to truly immerse themselves in beauty are the ones who scorn beauty as merely the wealth of the senses, but those who have tasted it know that it has within it an unutterable depth—beauty is far beyond even the most powerful of the senses; forget about the eyes and ears, even if you enter it with your entire heart you will not reach the limit of its melancholy. Why do I come and go on the city streets dressed up like a gentleman? Why waste my life in polite conversation with neatly dressed gentlemen? I’m truly uncivilized, impolite—is there no beautiful anarchy for me anywhere? No festival of joy with a handful of madmen? But what’s all this poeticism I’m engaging in—this is the sort of thing that heroes of poems say—pronouncing their opinions on conventionality over the course of three or four pages, thinking they are bigger than the rest of human society. Really, it’s quite embarrassing to say such things. The truth within these thoughts has always been suppressed by talk over the ages. Everybody in this world talks a lot—and I’m foremost among them—I’ve suddenly realized this now after all this time….

  P.S. Let me finish telling you what I wanted to say to you at the start—don’t worry, I won’t take up another four pages—that is, it rained heavily in the evening on the first day of Āshāṛh. That’s all.

  56

  Shilaidaha

  Thursday, 16 June 1892

  The more time you spend in open spaces on the river or in villages, the more you realize every day that there is no greater or more beautiful thing than to be able to accomplish one’s everyday work with simplicity. Everything, from the grass on the field to the stars in the sky are doing precisely that; they’re not trying to aggressively take over domains that are not their own, that’s why nature is full of such deep peace and endless beauty—yet the little bit that each does is not a negligible amount at all—the grass expends all its energy to survive as grass, using its entire root up to the very tip to absorb nourishment. It is not trying in vain to exceed its own strength or neglect its own work in order to become a banyan tree—that’s why the world is so beautiful and green. Really, it’s not because of large schemes and boastful talk, but because human beings fulfil their small duties on a daily basis that human society has its share of ordered beauty and peace. Whether it is poetry you talk of, or bravery, none of these is complete in itself. But even the most minor duty done has a satisfaction and fulfilment about it. Nothing could be more ignoble than sitting and impatiently chafing, imagining things, thinking that no situation measures up to you and, in the meanwhile, watching time pass before you while all your big and small everyday duties flow by unnoticed. When you make a mental resolve that you will perform all your duties for the well-being and happiness of those around you truthfully and strongly, with all your heart, through all your joys and sorrows, only then does life fill up with joy, and all the small sorrows and pain are banished forever. Of course, every day and every moment of my life is not available in front of me, perhaps that’s why I’m getting quite carried away by the excitement of my imaginary hopes from this distance, managing to draw a rough picture of my future life by ignoring all the little details and minor complications of danger and conflict, but that’s not correct….

  57

  Shilaidaha

  Friday, 17 June 1892

  Nowadays in the evenings I get up onto the land and stroll around for a long time—when I turn towards the east I see one sort of sight, and another sort in the west—it’s as if there is peace dropping slow from the sky overhead, as if a golden stream of auspiciousness is entering my heart through my entranced pair of eyes. It’s as if this breeze, this sky and this light makes new leaves grow in my mind, and I am fulfilled by new life and a new strength. It has become very easy for me to perform my duties in society and to interact with people. Actually, everything is easy—there is only one straight road and it’s enough if you keep your eyes on that road and keep going; no point in looking for the clever short cut—there are joys and sorrows on every road—there’s no way you can avoid them on any road—but peace reigns only on this main road.