Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  145

  Shilaidaha

  16 August 1894

  It’s the Śuklapaksha fortnight now, you see, so I get bright moonlight during my walks—then I return to the boat and sit down on the easy chair with my legs stretched out. After that little bit of bodily exertion, that chair, that moonlight, that sound of the water, are all bearers of the joys of heaven to me. The river has swollen to the point where its line merges with the shore, so that sitting on the boat it is possible to see the entire landscape of shore and river spread out right in front of my eyes. To my south is the expanse of a large field with autumnal rice crops in some places—most of it is green grass, on one side is a narrow path composed by the signs of treading feet, in front of me to the east is the bazaar’s barn in front of which hay is piled up in heaps—that worn-out hut and the heaps of hay look very beautiful in the moonlight. The evening—above my head, in front of my eyes, under my feet, all around me—rises with such a beautiful, peaceful, solitary yet full silence, standing close to me like a person with such human intensity, that the entire scene, from the stars in the sky to the distant shadows of the Padma’s shores, surrounds me on all sides like a small secret room made for my own secluded comfort—and the two living things within me, me and my inner soul, we occupy the entire room and sit there—and all the animals, birds and living things in this scene are incorporated into the two of us—the murmuring sound of the water reaches the ears all the time, the bright hands of the moonlight keep stroking the face, the head, with its affectionate touch, the cakor bird in the sky calls out and leaves, the fisherman’s boat slips easily through the middle of the Padma on a strong current without any effort, the softly spread-out sky enters my every pore and ever so slowly cools down my heated body—I lie there with my eyes shut, my ears pricked, my body extended, as though I’m the one and only thing that nature cares for: all her hundreds of handmaidens look after me. The imagination too has no boundaries, she too decorates a ceremonial plate with both her hands and comes and stands by my side encircled by a host of shadowy, magical servant girls—I feel the soft touch of her fingers along with the slow breeze running through my hair.

  146

  Shilaidaha

  19 August 1894

  This time I have brought the Bengali works of Rammohun Roy with me—it has about three Sanskrit Vedanta books and their translations; I’ve found them very helpful. Many people are quite convinced by the account of the world and its origins that’s found in the Vedantas. As important and highly intelligent a person as Rammohun Roy was a Vedantic, and Doyson saheb too has praised the Vedantas throughout, but none of my doubts have been dispelled. In some respects, what the Vedanta says is simple compared to many other opinions; because one is simpler than two. The words ‘creation’ and the ‘lord of creation’ may sound quite consistent and simple, but there’s no problem more complex than that for the mind of man. The Vedanta sits there having torn through the Gordian knot and brought the two together; whatever else it has achieved, it has certainly reduced the problem by half. There is no creation at all, and we are not there either—there is only one Brahma and perhaps we too are there. The surprising thing is that man can make room in his mind for such a thought—even more strange is the fact that this thought is not actually as odd as it sounds. In fact, it is very hard to prove that anything exists. That Vedantic opinion is nowadays spreading in Europe too, but it’s doubtful if it will survive in the water and air of that place. Or maybe it will assume a new incarnation there. Whatever it is, nowadays in the evenings when the moon rises and I sit outside on the boat on my easy chair with my legs stretched out and my eyes half shut, and the soft evening breeze keeps touching my overwrought, heated forehead, then this water, land and sky, this murmuring river, the occasional wayfarer upon the shore and the coming and going of the occasional fisherman’s dinghy on the water, the obscure edges of the field in the moonlight and the distant, almost asleep villages surrounded by rows of trees—all of it appears like a shadow, like māẏā, yet that māẏā embraces life and the mind more truly than truth itself—and then it seems that it cannot be that the salvation of the human soul lies in freedom from the hands of this māẏā. The philosopher may say, the measure in which the world seems to be experienced as māẏā at twilight is the measure of freedom, and the fact that I continue to derive pleasure from it is actually the pleasure of freedom—that is, that the ties that bind me during the day because I perceive of this world as real become very loose in the evenings when everything becomes shadowy; it is only when I’ll be convinced from within that this world is completely and absolutely false that I’ll attain a full independence and within that independence attain brahmmatva. This is something I understand and feel only very fractionally; maybe one day, before I’ve reached old age, I’ll see that I’ve achieved freedom from this world.

  147

  On the way to Kushtia

  24 August 1894

  Over here the river waters have increased until they’ve reached the limit—in fact, crossed it by about half a foot—land and water are almost on the same level. The Padma is looking very grand now, absolutely strutting onward, chest extended—the other shore is visible like a single blue line of kohl. Looking out of the window on my right I see dense green fields of crop extending as far as the eye can see, from the window on my left, an endless, generous expanse of water. There is a gentle swaying in the fields of grain on my right, and on my left, from top to bottom, a tremendous, vast, flowing motion. I look at the water and think quite often that if one wants to experience movement as motion alone, separated from its material manifestation, one can find it in the river current. In the movement of humans, animals or plants, there is some movement and some rest, movement in some parts and rest in others. But the river moves from top to bottom—that’s why it’s possible to compare it to the movement of our minds, our consciousness. Our bodies move partially—the legs move the body—but our minds habitually move in their entirety. That’s why the Padma in this month of Bhādra seems like a strong current of mental energy—it moves, builds and breaks like mind’s desire; like it, it tries to express itself in a myriad ways through the breaking of the waves and an indistinct sound of song. The fast-flowing, single-minded river is like the desires of our minds—and the still, calm, outspread, diversely green and pleasant land is like the thing of our desires. I am in the middle with my boat; dividing the strong current and lament of desire on my left and the calm beauty of fruition and its gentle rustle to the south. Our boat has started off. It runs upon the face of the current. The shore is on the left now—how shall I tell you how beautiful it looks! Very dark blue vaporous rows of clouds bend, with motherly affection, over a very dense quantity of luscious green. Occasionally the clouds rumble with a guru-guru sound. One is reminded of the description of the Jamuna in the rainy season in the Baishnabpadābalī—many scenes of nature bring the Vaishnava poets’ resonant rhymes to my mind—mainly because all this beauty all around is not an empty beauty for me—it is full of the ancient songs of love and togetherness in the history of mankind, as if the līlā of an everlasting heart were being enacted there, as if the eternal Vrindavan of the Vaishnava poets were still extant in this beauty. Those who have internalized the true meaning of the Vaishnava poems will hear the resonance of those poems within all of nature. But most readers do not read the Vaishnava verses in that way—they analyse each verse and each line from the outside in the most critical way, that’s why they find fault with them all the time. Those are things that should never attract our attention—the stranger sees many things that the close relative does not, so too what the relative sees is not discernible to the keen eye of the stranger.

  148

  Calcutta

  29 August 1894

  This morning I was sitting and composing a tune for a new song of mine—it’s not as if the tune is a very new one, it’s a sort of kīrtan-type Bhairabī. But still, singing along to a particular rhythm, the intoxication of song
slowly infuses all the blood of one’s body—the entire body and the entire mind from end to end seem to vibrate and hum like a musical instrument and the beat of the tune seems to travel from my body and mind towards the outer world into which it spreads, and a connection of sound is established between me and the universe. Just as the vibrating string of the bīṇā is a blur when you look at it while it is being played, so too the melody of song fills the whole world with vapour and musical resonance. But as I continued to sing in this way, the time for work passed by, the proofs remained lying there, the clock struck afternoon, the sun’s heat and light began to get sharper and penetrate the head—nothing else was accomplished today. On the other side I can hear Renu and Khoka playing on the west veranda with a reverberating toy that makes a cracking, creaking sound, the sound of the crows and sparrows and many other birds are getting mixed together into a directionless sound in the sky, on Madan-babu’s lane the hawkers are peddling their wares with a plaintive cry—an unhurried south wind enters and touches me on my back—the myriad different melodies and sounds of Calcutta express a deep melancholy and peace in the afternoon sun. I don’t know why my rice hasn’t arrived yet—who knows whether the Brahmin cook had discarded the rice ladle this morning to compose a tune—but I can’t hear anybody anywhere—it seems as though the servants, their masters and the entire universe have all taken a holiday today.

  149

  Shahjadpur

  5 September 1894

  After a long time spent living on the boat, it feels quite wonderful to suddenly alight at the house in Shahjadpur. Large doors and windows, and the light and air entering unrestrained from every side—in whichever direction I look I see the green branches of trees and hear the sound of birds—the moment you step out into the south veranda the smell of kāminī flowers overwhelms you, filling every pore in your head. I suddenly realize that all these days there was a thirst inside me for a vast expanse of sky which I have quenched to my heart’s content after coming here. I am the sole owner of four large rooms here—I keep all the doors open. The desire to write and the mood for writing come to me here in a way that they don’t anywhere else. The outside world seems to enter freely through these open doors like a living influence—the light, the sky, the breeze, the sounds, the smells, the undulating green and my intoxicated mind all come together to keep creating many different kinds of stories. The afternoons here, particularly, are full of a very intense attraction. The sun’s heat, the silence, the solitude, the call of birds, especially the crow, and the long, beautiful leisure—all of it entangled together makes me very detached and yet emotional. I don’t know why, but it seems as if the Arabian Nights had been created on afternoons filled with golden sunlight such as these—that is, those Persian and Arabian countries, Damascus, Samarkand, Bukhara—the bunches of grapes, the groves of roses, the song of the bulbul, the wine of Shiraz—the desert paths, rows of camels, travellers on horseback, the sources of clear water in the shade of dense date palms—towns, sometimes narrow roads hung with awnings, shopkeepers by the road in turbans and loose clothing selling watermelons and pomegranates—a large royal palace by the road, inside, the smell of incense, a large bolster and a brocade throw next to a window—Amina Zubaidi Sufi in puffed pyjamas, gold-embroidered slippers and coloured bodice, a wound-up hookah’s pipe rolling on the floor near her feet, a dark eunuch in gaudy clothes guarding the door—and in this mysterious, unknown, far-off land, this rich, beautiful, yet terrible palace, so many thousands of possible and impossible stories about human joys and sorrows and hopes and fears taking shape. These afternoons of mine in Shahjadpur are afternoons for stories—I remember writing the story ‘Postmaster’ on exactly one such afternoon, on this very table at this exact time, completely absorbed in my own self. I wrote, and as I wrote, the light, the breeze, the trembling branches of the trees all around me, all added their language to it. There are very few pleasures in the world that compare with the happiness of being able to suspend one’s self entirely in one’s surroundings and to sit and write something after your own liking. This morning I sat down to write a piece on ‘chaṛā’ [children’s rhymes]—I was able to immerse myself in it quite completely—and it felt good. Children’s rhymes exist in an independent kingdom of their own where there are no rules and regulations—like a kingdom of clouds. Unfortunately, that material domain which has an excess of edicts and laws always follows not far behind. As I was writing, suddenly in the middle, a delegation of clerks and officials arrived like a calamity, making my cloud kingdom fly off in a storm. By the time all their business was dealt with, it was time to eat. There’s nothing more inertia-inducing than eating one’s fill in the afternoon, it completely overpowers man’s powers of imagination and all his heart’s propensity towards the higher arts. It is because Bengalis eat so much at lunchtime that they cannot enjoy the intense feel of the beauty of the afternoons—all they do is close their doors, puff on their tobacco and chew on their paan while making satisfying and substantial arrangements for a siesta. With that they grow quite unctuously smooth and plump in the process. But nowhere else in the world does the desolate, tired afternoon spread itself out more silently and immensely upon the monotonous, endless, level fields of crop as in Bengal. These afternoons have made me fervent with feeling from my very childhood. In those days there would be no one about outside on the second floor, and I would lie there quite alone by the open door in the hot wind upon the curved couch—and in what imaginings, what unspoken anxieties would the entire day pass!

  150

  Shahjadpur

  7 September 1894

  I receive letters in the evenings, and I write them in the afternoons. I want to write about the same thing every day—the afternoons over here. Because I just cannot surmount the attraction they hold for me. This light, this air, this silence enters my pores and mixes with my blood—this is newly intoxicating for me each day, I cannot say enough to exhaust the tender intensity of it. Each śarat afternoon rises up in the same way for me every day—the old appears newly to me every day, and exactly the same feeling I had yesterday wakes in me again today. Nature does not feel the slightest embarrassment in repeating itself every day. It is we who feel embarrassed; we think our language does not have the endless generosity that will allow it to express the same feeling in a new way each time. Yet every poet has always said the same thing in different ways and it is the same thing that has assumed a thousand different forms. Some minor poets have occasionally tried forcibly to be novel—all that proves is that their tiny imaginations cannot experience the everlasting newness that exists within the old, that’s why they wander around in search of an outlandish novelty. There are many undiscerning readers who like novelty merely for being new. But real thinkers despise such tricks of novelty for being worthless deceptions. They know for certain that what we really feel can never become old in any age. But the moment a thing is separated from our feeling and comes to us only as knowledge—then and there it becomes inert. Then nobody can rescue it from the hands of certain death. That’s why those who say something is beautiful from the vantage point of knowledge, without actually feeling it completely, are wont to exaggerate, and use a lot of force or a lot of novelty when they try to say something—but what they say isn’t really new or really forceful. I don’t see the need to discuss whether I am a major or minor poet—but I’ve repeatedly seen that there is nothing in the world that I’ve been able to put aside. Whatever I once find attractive seems so always, and its newness is intensely surprising to me every day. Nothing is worn out for me if I touch it repeatedly; instead, its brightness keeps increasing each time, yet there is nothing imaginary or unreal about that brightness—I despise artificial imaginings terribly. I see the materiality of all things quite clearly; yet, within that, within all its smallness and its self-dividedness, I see the hint of an indescribable heavenly mystery. With age and experience, the wonder and joy of that mystery increases rather than diminishes for me—it is what makes me realiz
e every day that that which gives me joy is not false in any part, it is not at all negligible, it has an endless truth and joy. If I say this clearly then most people are surprised, but how am I to explain this in words to those who haven’t felt these things in their own lives the way I have! They have built small fences of hard and fast rules and sit there quite happily thinking that the little bit of land enclosed by those fences is the entire universe, the light of eternity has never made a dent on their unimportant arrogance. No doubt they’re happy, but if there is anything called a soul, then surely such happiness is not desirable, and when I perceive that that rigid worldly happiness is insignificant and I see that sorrow has a certain genuine freedom, I realize that there is such a thing as a soul, separate from all other things.

  151

  Shahjadpur

  7 September 1894

  When my writing grows in this way as I keep writing, and when the moment I get out of bed in the mornings I think of the point at which I had left off writing yesterday and from where I should begin again today, then I feel really good—the days seem like an earthenware pitcher full to the brim with my writing that I take home every evening to keep, and that writing’s resonating sounds and their echoes linger and keep playing in my entire body and mind. Nowadays, as I journey in the land of children’s rhymes, there’s no end to the number of scenes and the different joys, sorrows and other emotions that I touch upon as I go. So much so that as I write, sometimes my eyes fill up with tears, and then again sometimes I find myself smiling. Today as I walked I thought to myself: why is there so much joy in this for me? The real thing is that it is when we feel that we express our heart’s powers—when I feel a pain in my heart at some old memory, the pleasure in that pain comes from this much, that I can experience that memory, that it comes to me—my heart’s ability to grasp is extended from the real to the immaterial, from the present to the past. In fact, we feel able to understand more when we are unhappy than when we are happy, the thought that hurts us appears in front of us more clearly and deeply—that is why it is sorrow that is more prevalent in the domain of art. Pity, the appreciation of beauty, love—these are the faculties of our hearts that enable us to attract others; that’s why any sorrow or suffering they might embody too has a certain joy; but becoming distressed due to imagined contempt or cruelty makes us hostile, obstructing the free motion of our hearts, that’s why those emotions bring no pleasure to us. It is the little bit of tenderness in Othello that attracts us, but towards the end, his barbaric cruelty creates an aversion towards him—it seems to almost exceed the boundaries of art. But just as dissonance may sometimes be inserted into the harmony of a large musical composition to make it more bright and give it variety, so too in the larger works of poetry there are portions that may be unpoetic; as a result, on the whole perhaps the poetic part may derive more energy—that’s why you cannot base your comments on a section of that sort. But still, speaking of myself, I can say that in the higher echelons of literature, I simply cannot make myself want to reread Othello or Kenilworth.* The question arises here about whether the joys and sorrows of the material world and the joys and sorrows and pleasures of the poetic world are very different from each other, and if so, why? That’s because—the joys and sorrows of the real world are very complex and mixed up. Many things, such as self-interest, physical effort, etc., are entangled with it. The joys and sorrows of the poetic world are purely cerebral; they bear no other responsibilities, self-interest, material obstacles, no bodily satisfaction or tiredness. Here our hearts are able to find the time to feel independently, completely, unadulteratedly—our pleasure in poetry is absolutely immediate; we don’t have to arrange an interview with it because we want something or because of our sensuality—although we are subjugated humans imprisoned within our bodies, with the help of our hearts alone we can roam freely in the world of the mind. That’s why the pleasure of poetry doesn’t take us to the limits of our pleasure in order to return rebuffed, but imparts an un-tired, unsatiated and endless flavour to every pleasure….