Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  164

  Bolpur

  18 October 1894

  We arrived in Bolpur yesterday in the evening. This morning, I woke up at dawn, had a bath, and came and sat in the south room; all the lassitude in my heart seems to have been dispelled. The mornings are so deeply quiet and beautiful and bright that I feel as if my mind has been completely immersed in a clear and cool light and emerged clean and cured. A plate heaped with śiuli flowers as new as childhood and as expressive as youth has been kept by my side—the śarat sun falls upon the veranda, the bed sheet is a glimmering white, everything is clean and empty, no crowds, no everyday chores, bird call to be heard, and where the row of trees up ahead ends, a great deal of green expanse can be seen. Sitting in the south room over here it feels like it used to in the sun-warmed veranda at Simla, where the deep blue, leaf-covered landscape seemed to appear right in front of your eyes, your breast and your body as you stood there. It’s not exactly alike, but the same peace and beauty descends slow upon the mind. It’s as if all of you are present in the next room as you were there, with your affection and your care ready and waiting for me. For me, that affection of yours has now melted into the landscape—this śarat morning’s slow, cool breeze contains your caring, affectionate touch. It’s so completely silent all around, Bob! It’s as if this endless, clean, refreshing blue sky silently embraces my inner soul alone. And the soft, plump whiteness of the śiuli flowers seem to rain down tenderness upon my eyes. If my god separates me from all the chains of my routine to exile me here, I can calmly, quietly and completely immerse myself in the sky outside and my own inner self and get on with my own work…. I feel like throwing myself down upon the mattress in ——’s room with a pencil and an exercise book and begin some piece of writing. The morning is quite calm and new, perhaps its best to start now…. My mind is so replete that it seems I can almost touch her, hear her tone of voice very close by.

  165

  Bolpur

  Friday, 19 October 1894

  Yesterday all I did was lie down flat upon my stomach on the bed to write a small poem and to read a book about travels in Tibet. I really love to sit alone in secluded spots like this one and read travel books. I can’t touch novels in places like these. Alone in this first-floor room with all the doors and windows open and a mattress laid out, amidst such empty fields and forests of śāl, the tender sound of birds filling the dreamlike śarat afternoon, an English novel is so completely out of place. The great convenience of travel books is that they have a continuous motion, yet no plot—the heart finds an unfettered freedom there. Here the desolate field has a red road running through it—when two or three people or a bullock cart or two move very slowly down that road, all of it has a great pull for me, perhaps because that little bit of motion seems to make the completely motionless desolation all around even more sharply evident—the fields seem to stretch away even more endlessly, and there seems to be no address towards which these people travel. Travel books too seem to similarly draw a faint line of flow and motion in my emptiness of mind—as a result I seem to be able to feel my mind’s spread-out, silent, lonely sky even more keenly. The traveller is a Frenchman, that’s why he knows both how to travel and how to write. In one place, the man comes from the mountains suddenly upon a desert, and this gives rise to a feeling he calls the ‘sensation of the desert’—there he says he prefers this sort of vast desert to mountains and hills:

  Solitude is a true balm, which heals up the many wounds that the chances of life have inflicted; its monotony has a calming effect upon nerves made over sensitive from having vibrated too much; its pure air acts as a douche which drives petty ideas out of the head. In the desert too the mind sees more clearly, and mental processes are carried on more easily.

  In society or at work the mind disciplines its full strength to assume a much smaller form. But when it wants rest it becomes necessary to provide it with a huge bed extending up to the horizon for it to sleep on; it wants to occupy an entire country all on its own; then it does not find enough space for itself in the entire city, it cannot make do without a free sky and meadows and seas. I doubt that any English traveller would have found this ‘sensation of the desert’ exactly happiness-inducing. Almost all the English travel books I have read display their proud, brutish nature and their arrogance. They’re unable to do justice to other races or love them. Yet god has given them the responsibility of looking after a greater variety of races than he has to almost any other.

  166

  Bolpur

  Saturday, 20 October 1894

  Clouds have gradually been accumulating since last night. But there’s also some sun. Heaps of black clouds have gathered on the margins of the sky, and in the light of the sun their borders have turned a silvery white. All around the fields the new crop of āman rice has assumed a dark and luscious green colour, and the cool lustre of the clouds above it looks lovely. I remember when I first came to Bolpur with Bābāmaśāẏ I was about nine or ten years old—I had never seen rice fields before, and I was very curious to see them. We reached Bolpur at night; while travelling to the house in a palanquin I didn’t look out properly on either side in case my curiosity was dispelled to some extent in that unclear evening light. The moment I woke up at dawn I came outside and looked—but there were only fields all around, no sign of any rice plants anywhere. In places, the ground had been dug up; I heard that was where crops had been grown. At that time, I had so much curiosity bottled within me like corked champagne—now I’ve seen more or less everything of the world, yet the joy has not lessened, rather its intensity has increased even more. That first sight of Bolpur—I remember so many things about it. I used to write poetry even then. I had an idea that if you wrote poetry under a tree with the open sky above you, you were accomplishing something truly poetic. That’s why I woke up at dawn and with an old Letts’ Diary and pencil in hand, sat under a small coconut tree in one corner of the garden and wrote a heroic poem called ‘Pṛthvīrājer parājaẏ’ [The Defeat of Prithviraj]. It took me about seven days to write it. Where’s that diary, and where’s the poem now! I don’t remember a single line of it. I only recall that Baṛ-dada had liked that poem. I was very particular in those days about exactly how a poet should be—in the afternoons I would sprawl in the shade of a cave in the khoẏai region across the fields, a faint trickle of water flowing across the sand in front of me, and I would feel like a real poet. Small clusters of dates would be ripening on wild date trees—you couldn’t possibly enjoy eating them, but still, to think that I was plucking wild dates from wild date trees by myself at the edge of the desert and eating them made me feel very proud. There was a small pond in the khoẏai called Amanidoba which had small fish in it—I’d take off my clothes and go and jump into it and believe that I was bathing in a waterfall. No people around anywhere, no regulations, no discipline; I would spend the entire day playing the poet by myself in those caves within the fields—some days I would feel scared of dacoits, but there was poetry even in that fear. It’s true that I still write poetry, but I don’t think of myself any more as a poet described in history or in novels—in fact, when I read my own poetry I don’t feel as if I’ve written it; almost as though I write good poems by accident, not because I want to. Whatever else may happen, it’s impossible for me sit under a tree and write poetry any more; I get distracted too easily.

  Anyway, if I ever find that Letts’ Diary, I’d like to sit once more at dawn under that coconut tree in the garden and reread ‘Pṛthvīrājer parājaẏ’.

  167

  Santiniketan

  Tuesday, 23 October 1894

  It’s become progressively cooler since day before yesterday, making everything all around even more pleasant. That tired air the breeze had seems to have gone. In the mornings when I come and sit here after a bath in clean clothes and this cool morning breeze touches my body, it is as if it collects a little more calm—the light that comes and falls upon the eyes seems anointed by refreshing dew
and full of the cool smell of śiuli flowers. The skies are blue, the plants and trees shimmer, the green rice fields in between seem wrapped in the soft, pale light of the sun, there’s no saying from how far away the wind comes unobstructed across the fields, kissing the dew-wet tips of grass—one cannot say where the desolate red road winding across the middle of the empty fields came from or where it is going—in the midst of all this, I’m sitting here overjoyed, submerged in a flood of ice-clean hemanta [autumn] light, greeted in body and mind by the dew-wet breeze, a plate piled high with śiuli flowers in front of me—there’s no one to disturb me here, all three rooms on the first floor are entirely my own and all eight hours of daylight are for my independent use alone. The large, clean white bed with its pillows and bolsters in the bigger middle room seems to be waiting for my convenience—I feel like a proper nabāb. Remember Satya had said to me, ‘There’s an air of luxury about you, like the Muslim nababs’? That’s not entirely true; in the sense that my nabābi is a mental nabābi—there, in my own kingdom, I don’t want any restrictions on me, I want an unchecked right in my domain. But the sort of nabābi that the nababs indulged in was something that obstructed mental nabābi; it required so many possessions and trappings and people and foot soldiers and equipage and outfits that that entire heap of material things simply smothered the mind and killed it. I try and escape the tyranny of things at every opportunity—if it’s constantly excited and amused, my inner self becomes secretly rebellious; there seems to be somebody there within myself who becomes jealous the moment I’m seen in proximity with the outside.

  168

  Santiniketan

  Wednesday, 24 October 1894

  Truth be told, when you concentrate properly on managing an estate, its intoxication slowly takes over. One then gets completely absorbed in many different sorts of inquiries, instructions and planning for the future. I would perhaps have been ashamed to admit to such an unpoetic fact at the time when I used to sit in the coconut groves with my torn Letts’ Diary, writing ‘Pṛthvīrājer parājaẏ’. But the expression of emotion and the work of business have a certain unity, and that’s where they give pleasure. There’s a great happiness in turning the incipient into the realized, the incomplete into the complete, in creating order and design from chaos. If, despite all the obstacles, you can express your thoughts in a well-rounded way, you experience the pleasure of creation; and in a large jamidāri estate, if you can exercise certain rules and impose some sort of order, that too gives you a similar feeling of pleasure. There’s a certain satisfaction, of course, in the increase in revenues, but the greater pleasure is in the fact that the job is being done well.

  I firmly believe that if I had come back as a barrister or a civilian, I would have been immersed in my designated work, and wouldn’t have felt it necessary to pay any attention to literary writing. My entire attention would have been constantly occupied with the nitty-gritty of the finer points of the law, with cutting through the arguments of the opposing side, with constructing an organized history and opinion from disorganized witness statements, and I would have derived a particular pleasure and self-forgetfulness from these things. Thank god I didn’t come back as a barrister!

  169

  Bolpur

  25 October 1894

  There has been intense rain since last night. There was fierce wind and pounding rain all night—this morning the wind has abated, but the skies are clouded over and it’s raining. As it is Bolpur is deserted, but on top of that a dark curtain of cloud has been drawn across the stage of the sky, making it seem even more deeply solitary. You can hear the running sound of rain upon the leaves of the trees. On such a day as this, does one feel like writing a political essay on the Hindu–Muslim riots! I’ve been sitting here since early morning with a restless, absent air, turning over the leaves of the Padaratnābalī, and in an imagined kingdom of separation and togetherness called Bṛndāban I can see—

  Daylight has been submerged in the sky

  One cannot tell if it is day or night

  The trees sway in the wind on every side

  Fine drops of rain fly clamouring through the air everywhere

  The fair maid walks on the city path

  In temple after temple, the doors close.

  On a rainy day, every house has shut its doors as Gauri walks on an empty, cloud-covered road through Bṛndāban—the trees and plants sway in the restless breeze, and drops of rain scatter and fly in the air across the universe—there is no sign of where the sun has sunk to, and day and night are as one. I’ve been wanting to write an essay explaining exactly where the attraction of Vaishnava poetry lies, but let it be today—today I have to finish a half-completed political essay…. God alone knows of what use writing it will be. The Bhāgabat Gītā says that we have a right only to action, not to the fruits of action—that is, we must work without thinking about the results we may or may not obtain from it. In our country we must work knowing we’ll never get any results.

  The rain is pressing down harder with the passage of morning—in the darkness of the cloud and rain it’s difficult to tell whether the morning is moving on or not, it’s as if time has taken the entire day off today. In my childhood when I used to study at the Normal School the teacher would stop teaching on rainy days such as this when the room would become too dark—though we couldn’t leave the classroom, still, we’d shut our books and joyfully take pleasure in the sound of the rain and the clouded darkness. Perhaps it’s because of that old habit that even today on a rainy day such as this I feel like taking leave from the hard schoolmaster named duty and shutting all the manuscripts and books to be free to follow my own whims in my own way. But the publishing deadline for Sādhanā looms, and I simply must try and finish the political essay today as best I can.

  170

  Bolpur

  Friday, 26 October 1894

  You’re completely wrong if you think from far away that nowadays by mingling freely with people, conversing and socializing, I’ve become quite the swaggering public man. Ducks and fish are two different species altogether, although the duck may occasionally dive into the water and the fish may leap up to gulp down a mouthful of air. From a distance I sometimes think that this time I’m going to really mix with people and go around participating in all their work and political agitation, but all of that stays only in the imagination. Just like imagining that one is cutting across a choppy sea with sails aloft and breeze behind—yet of course all one’s nerves go for a toss in an instant when you are on choppy seas—similarly, my soul is afflicted the moment I spend time in the agitations of a sea of people, and then I have to return to my own solitary space with twice as much eagerness as before…. You’ve written that if I mix with people I could achieve some good by virtue of my personal influence. But personal influence is disseminated differently by different people—some may take people along the desired path by being present, by speaking to people and by dint of character, others may capture people’s hearts by staying out of sight and by expressing the best part of their nature as beautifully as they can. Those minds that are sensitive to all sorts of impressions, those whose nerves vibrate and resound with every blow, big or small, are people who can never be influential by living in the midst of people—in fact they do more harm than good, and so destroy their power to influence—they need to run away from society and conceal their own joys and sorrows and pain within themselves completely so that they can spend their lives working safely in solitude and calm—only then will the glory of their work be safeguarded. Otherwise, why should anybody be bothered with trying to understand their real nature after dealing with all the hundreds of problems and obstacles in their lives! It is those who can be aloof and unresponsive to a great extent when in the midst of people who can be influential. That song from ‘Māẏār khelā’ [The Play of Maya] works in this context as well—

  tāre kemane dharibe, sakhi, yadi dharā dile!

  (How shall you catch him, friend, if you are ca
ught yourself?)

  171

  Bolpur

  Saturday, 27 October 1894

  As it is we’re Indian Hindus, and then on top of that if you become fat I suppose you’ve accomplished a corporeal nirvana! I’ve observed that one has to constantly try and snub thoughts of renunciation and indifference in one’s mind. Quite often, a meditative state will come and ruin whatever enthusiasm for work one has. But again, the problem lies in the fact that renunciation is a very logical thing in this world. It is true that everything is transient, that death mocks every effort of life with a calm smile—it’s doubtful whether a race, going against the tradition of its ancestors, can fight against nature and manage to make a success of a very large and ambitious enterprise. All this philosophy comes up in the mind on its own.

  172

  Bolpur

  28 October 1894

  It isn’t eight o’clock yet, but it feels like midnight—everything is very silent and deep asleep—only the sound of the crickets can be heard. I don’t know what all of you are doing now and I can’t guess either. All those whom we know in the world we know like a dotted line; that is, there are gaps in the middle which we need to fill in as best we can. Even those we feel we know best have to be made complete by our own imaginative powers. There are so many breaks in between, the footsteps on the road are lost, things remain uncertain, unclear and obscure, but still the creative mind wants to put together all the broken pieces and make a whole of it so that it can be kept within one’s possession. If even the most familiar people remain as fragmented pieces sown together by our imagination, then with whom or what may we say we are fully acquainted—and, on the other hand, who can say that they know me wholly? Every man is known completely only to his god and disconnected from everybody else. But perhaps because they’re at a remove there is space to add our own imagination to them—and that’s exactly why in some respects they are even closer to us, perhaps that is why we manage to come together with each other to a great extent. Otherwise, as impure individuals, we are perhaps impermeable to everybody except god. Our own selves too we know only partially, we merely turn ourselves into the heroes of a self-composed story in our imagination—god has kept these gaps so we can use these fragmented materials to construct ourselves by ourselves.