Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  113

  Patishar

  Monday, 19 February 1894

  The bank on which we have moored the boat is very isolated—no villages, no dwellings, the ploughed fields stretching desolately, just some buffaloes tearing up the dry grass by the riverside as they graze. And, we have a couple of elephants who also come to graze on this side of the river. It’s great fun to watch them. They raise one leg and kick gently at the grass roots, then they pull at them with their trunks, and immediately large chunks of soil and grass come up together. They use their trunks to wave the chunks in the air till all the soil falls off, and then they stuff it into their mouths and eat it up. And then again, sometimes they suddenly feel like doing something else, so they take some dust in their trunks and blow it all over their backs and stomachs with a whoosh—such are the ways in which elephants accomplish their toilette. Large bodies, enormous strength, ungraceful proportions, extreme placidity—I quite like watching these enormous beasts. It’s as if you feel a special affection for them exactly because of their largeness and their ugliness—its awkwardness of body makes it seem like a huge baby—and one feels more tenderness towards it than for the cat, dog or horse. Besides which, the creature has a very generous nature, like the simpleton god Shiva Bholanath—when it gets crazy, it gets really crazy; when it’s calm, there is a bottomless peace. At times I was thinking that the sort of affectionate, compassionate feeling I have towards the elephant is perhaps similar to what women think of the male sex. The ungracefulness that accompanies largeness is not repulsive to the heart, but rather attracts it. If you compare the portrait of Beethoven I have in my room to many other beautiful faces, it may well seem not worth looking at, but when I look at it, a strange attraction draws me to it—what a large, silent universe of sound existed within that dishevelled head! And what a strange, boundless pain whirled constantly within that man like an enclosed storm. When I look at B—— a similar sort of respectful pity rises up in me—all his untidy distractedness expresses a restless, incomplete, troubled talent. All men are not Beethoven or B——, and it’s not as if Beethoven or B—— have a woman’s love, but I can see a great beauty in them. Men usually have a certain awkward helplessness along with their strength, and a large quantity of oafishness mixed with brains, which makes women feel partially respectful, and to a large degree motherly, with regard to them. I think boys can attract more motherly love towards themselves than girls do. Anyway, all this talk is a bit vague—based largely on the feminine side of one’s own character.

  114

  Patishar

  Monday, 26 February 1894

  Sometimes it becomes cloudy, sometimes it clears up—from time to time, suddenly a strong wind comes and rattles my boat to its joints, so that it lets out strange groaning and grunting and moaning sounds—the afternoon today has been passing in this way….

  It’s now one in the afternoon—all of you must have routinely lunched and looked at accounts and retired behind the closed doors of your bedrooms to sleep. The village afternoon’s quacking of ducks, calling of birds, sounds of clothes being washed, the lapping sound of water on which boats ply, the distant noise of the crossing of herds of cows, and the melancholy, lazy soliloquy of song within one’s own heart here is unimaginable in Calcutta’s chair-table-infested, monotonous, colourless everyday routine. Calcutta is very polite and very heavy, like a government office. Every day of one’s life seems to emerge in the same shape, with the same stamp, freshly cut one after another in the mint—dead, lifeless days, but very civilized, and all of the same weight. Here I am an outsider, and every day here is my own day—it has no relation with the wound-up machine of everyday routine. I take my own mind’s thoughts and all my leisure in hand and go out in the fields to walk—there are no impediments of time and place here. The evening grows dense on the land and water and sky; I keep walking slowly, my head lowered.

  115

  Patishar

  Saturday, 17 March 1894

  The moonlight has been blossoming every night little by little. So nowadays I walk outside for quite a while even after dark. The fields on this side of the river have no trees, no horizon marked anywhere—the ploughed fields don’t have a single blade of grass, the only grass by the river has turned yellow and dried up in the intense sun. The desolate, empty field looks quite amazing in the moonlight—the sea looks endless in the same way, but it has a ceaseless motion and sound—this sea of soil has no motion, no sound, no variety, no life anywhere—just a very melancholy, dead emptiness—among things that walk I am the lone living being walking around on one side, and, near my feet, a shadow walks with me. Far away in some places fires have been lit by the farmers where the remnants of the dried roots of last year’s crops were, and occasionally the only thing to be seen are the rows of fires they form. When the faint light of the moon comes and falls upon such a vast, spread-out lifelessness, a sorrow of separation as large as the universe fills the mind—as if an almost fainting woman clad in white lies silently, her face hidden, upon a vast desert grave.

  116

  Patishar

  21 March 1894

  My affection for the peasants of this place is really overwhelming—one doesn’t want to give them any sort of trouble at all—when you hear their simple childlike demands, made with such genuine affection and pleading, the mind really softens with empathy. When they address me familiarly, slipping from the formal tumi to the informal tui, when they give me a telling-off, it feels very sweet. Sometimes I laugh when I hear what they have to say, and when they see that, they too start to laugh. The other day during my evening walk one of them came up to me and said, ‘Just stand still for a second’—I was somewhat surprised, but I stood quietly as he said. He took the dust from my feet, put it upon his head and heart, and said, ‘My life is fulfilled now.’ He said he had been suffering from a cough and cold, so had not eaten for three days, and now, after arranging for a meal, had come to touch my feet in obeisance. I can’t say if his simple faith may make the dust of my feet perform any miracles. When love, devotion and affection fall upon even the most undeserving recipient in unwarranted quantities they have such an astonishing beauty—my peasants here are made beautiful by the complete simplicity of their devotion. There is a childish look of youthfulness even on their worn and lined old faces. But I’ve told you all this plenty of times before in my previous letters—so from afar all of this will seem very repetitive to you. But to me it seems new every time and every day. In this ancient world, it is only beauty and the things of men’s hearts that never become old in any way, that is why the world is still fresh and the poet’s poetry will never disappear from it entirely.

  117

  Patishar

  Thursday, 22 March 1894

  I spent the entire morning today with an essay called ‘Love of Animals’ that Bolu had sent me. Yesterday I was sitting in the boat by the window looking out towards the river when I suddenly saw some sort of bird frantically swimming to the other shore, and behind it, a massive catch-catch-kill-kill hue and cry. Finally I saw that it was a hen—it had escaped from approaching death in the boat that serves as my kitchen and, managing to free itself somehow, had jumped into the water and was trying to flee, but just as it reached the shore the human messengers of death chasing it managed to grab hold of it by the neck and bring it back to the boat. I called Phatik and said that I didn’t want chicken today. Just then, Bolu’s ‘Love of Animals’ essay arrived by post; I was not a little surprised at that. You know, I don’t feel like eating meat any more, Bob. It’s because we don’t think about how wrong and how cruel we are being that we can shove meat down our gullets. There are many things in the world that have been polluted by man alone, and the positive or negative aspect of those things depends upon the rites and habits and customs of a particular society—but cruelty is not one of those. This is an absolutely ancient wrong—about that you cannot argue or have any doubt; if our hearts are not hardened, if we do not tie up our hearts wi
th blindfolds and make them blind, then we can hear the order forbidding us to be cruel with a crystal clarity. Yet we are all very easily cruel—all of us are casually and blithely so; in fact, we think those of us who are not cruel to be a little strange. Man has such an amazing artificial notion of good and evil. I think that the greatest dharma of all is that which enjoins us to have pity for all living things. Love is the foundation upon which all religions are built. Let me not create unhappiness in this world, but give happiness. I must understand the joys and sorrows and pain of all living creatures and not hurt anything for my own selfish motives—this is the true dharma—this is what making yourself in the image of god means. The other day I read in an English newspaper that fifty thousand pounds of meat had been sent from England to some army establishment in Africa—the meat had spoiled so it was sent back—and then that meat was auctioned off at Portsmouth for five or six hundred rupees. Just think about it, Bob, what a colossal waste of life, and how cheap life is! When we host a dinner, think of how many living things sacrifice their lives just in order to fill up our dishes; and quite possibly those dishes may make the rounds and return, nobody takes them. As long as we are unconscious of it and commit cruelty unconsciously, nobody can blame us. But when we feel pity, and then strangle that pity by the neck and continue with our cruelty along with ten others, that really is an insult to our better selves. I’ve been thinking, Bob, of trying to become vegetarian once again….

  I’ve found a good friend in this solitude—I had borrowed a copy of Amiel’s Journal from Loken—now whenever I find the time I sit and turn over its pages.* It’s exactly as if I’m sitting face-to-face with him and talking—I’ve very rarely found such a close friend in any other printed book. Many other books are better written than this and it may have many faults, but this book is after my own heart. There are times when one touches upon book after book but discards them all; none of them seem to give any comfort—just as often, when one is ill, it is difficult to find a comfortable position upon the bed, and one has to keep turning over in order to test every position, sometimes piling pillow upon pillow, sometimes throwing all the pillows away—in that sort of mental framework, whichever part of Amiel I open to, the head finds the right position, the body finds some rest. That close friend Amiel has written about the cruelty of men towards animals in one place—I’ve added it all as a note on Bolu’s piece. Taken all in all, I didn’t really like this particular piece of Bolu’s—it seems to have been stretched and padded while being written. It’s as if he hasn’t written it with his full attention—he’s drawn it out and overextended the argument, making it up as he’s gone along—it’s not sounding a note of truthful simplicity, of empathy without exaggeration…. Made-up things are not always wrong in all places, but if this sort of thing is not genuinely felt, one becomes both averse to it and angry with it. I’ve told Bolu to translate from Kādambarī the portion describing the hunt. Birds are a bit like us—there is a place where there is no difference between them and us—their soft-hearted love for their children is like ours—Banabhatta has felt and expressed this with his own sympathetic imaginative powers—that touch of nature makes the whole world kin!

  118

  Patishar

  24 March 1894

  Nowadays I’ve been missing my lone companion on my evening walks, none other than our Śuklapaksha [the bright fortnight] moon. It’s disappeared since yesterday. It’s most inconvenient, it gets dark very quickly and then it becomes difficult to walk…. Nowadays at dawn I can see the Venus star from my open window the moment I open my eyes; I find her very sweet—she too keeps looking at me, exactly like one of you, like someone I’ve known all my life. I remember that in Shilaidaha, after a day’s work when I crossed the river on the boat in the evening, seeing the evening star in the sky every day would provide me with a feeling of great comfort—it used to seem exactly as if the river was my home and that the evening star was the gṛhalakshmī [presiding deity of one’s home], dressed up brightly to wait for me to return home from work. She had such a look in her eyes, such an affectionate touch! The river used to be silent then, the breeze cool, no sound anywhere, my peaceful home full of a deep intimacy. I often recall that crossing of the river at Shilaidaha every evening in the silent darkness with great clarity. Every morning at dawn when I see the lone Venus the moment I open my eyes, I can’t help but think of her as a very familiar and pleasant companion—she seems to radiate pleasure and affection upon my sleeping face like an ever-wakeful well-wisher.

  Today when I returned to the boat after my walk I saw that there were so many light insects around the lamp that it was impossible to sit at the table. That’s why I put out the light and sat outside in the dark on my easy chair—the entire lit-up sky and all the world and its beyond seemed to be looking at me like groups of women from behind the wooden shutters of the upper floors—I knew nothing about them, and wasn’t sure that I would ever know anything about them—yet what an eternal history of variegated life flows through that constellation of light. I couldn’t get down to writing to you in the evening, therefore I’m writing now. What time of the night do you think it is now—eleven. You must be in bed and fast asleep—when you get the letter in the stark light of day, you will be alert and restless, busy with lots of work—then where will this sleeping silent night have gone, with its silent message of light from the endless universe! Such a sharp difference! It’s difficult to recall the way it was exactly—so limited are man’s abilities. When you close your eyes you can’t remember every line of the image of even those closest to you—that which is the most important for you at one time becomes difficult to access with your memory at another. During the day we forget about the night, at night we forget the day. You’ll realize the moment you read this letter that it has been written in the middle of the night….

  A fragment of the moon has risen a while ago—it is absolutely silent and sound asleep all around—only a couple of village dogs bark from the opposite shore—there is just one light burning on my boat, all other lights have been put out everywhere. There’s no motion in the river at all, which makes me feel that the fish must sleep at night. The village sleeps by the water and the water reflects the shadow of the sleeping village.

  119

  Patishar

  Wednesday, 28 March 1894

  It’s getting quite hot here as well. But I don’t pay much attention to the heat of the sun—I think you know that. The hot wind howls and runs along, making the sandy dust and bits of straw fly—suddenly somewhere a queer whirling wind stands in one place sucking up dried leaves, and a veil of dust whirls round and round in a dance until it disappears—it’s quite interesting to watch. The birds call out very sweetly from the garden next to the river—it feels like spring indeed, but served up piping hot after peeling its skin. Except, it’s a bit too hot; there would have been no harm done if it had been allowed to cool down a bit before serving. This morning, though, it was suddenly quite cool—in fact, almost like winter—one didn’t feel too enthused about taking a bath. It’s difficult to gauge exactly what’s happening when in this large affair called nature—something happens in some remote corner of it somewhere and suddenly the feel of everything around you changes. I was thinking yesterday that man’s mind too is mysterious—exactly like the immense natural world. There’s a ceaseless jugglery going on in all directions within the veins and arteries, nerves and brains and marrow—the flow of blood rushes along furiously, the nerves tremble, the heart beats with a rising and falling motion, and the seasons change within the mysterious character of man. We never know from which direction the wind will blow and when. One day I think I’ll be able to cope with life quite well—I have quite a bit of strength, I’ll leap right over all the sorrow and suffering of life. So I get a programme of life printed and bound in hardback and sit back calmly with it in my pocket—when the next day I see that some other wind is blowing from some unknown underworld and the entire intention of the sky seems to have
changed, and then I don’t feel at all that I’ll ever be able to tide over such inclement weather. Where does all of this originate? There’s been some sort of movement within some vein or nerve, and I’m caught in the middle, unable to cope with it despite all my strength and intelligence. One feels very apprehensive when one thinks about the boundless mystery that is within one’s self—one can’t speak with any conviction about what one might do or not do—and one thinks, what is this enormous burden that I carry around on my shoulders every day without understanding any of it—I cannot control it, yet I cannot avoid its reach—I don’t know where it will take me, or where I will take it—was it really necessary to add this enormous weight to my shoulders in this way? What happens in the heart, what runs in the veins, what moves inside the head—so many thousands of things ceaselessly obscure my view that I can’t see, and they don’t consult me either, yet I take all of it and stand up straight like a masterful personality and think that I am what I am! ‘“You”, what do you know of “you”—you hardly know anything about yourself.’ After a lot of thought I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know myself at all. I’m like a living piano, with lots of wires and mechanical bits inside me in the dark; I never know who comes and plays it, and it is difficult to completely comprehend why as well, I can only know what is playing—whether it’s happiness or sorrow, soft note or sharp, in rhythm or not—just that much. And I know how far up or down my octave will extend. No, do I know even that much? I’m not even sure if I’m a sympathetic grand piano or a cottage piano.