Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  190

  Shilaidaha

  18 February 1895

  It’s such a silent and lovely day today that I yearn to immerse myself in the complete rasa of idleness. But I still have to finish the ‘Brief Reviews’ for Sādhanā. I’ll have to read two unreadable books and write an unfavourable review. An absolutely worthless task—it’s wrong to have to do such work on a day such as this. But this is the irony of fate—in the lonely leisure of this tranquil Phalgun afternoon, sitting on this private boat upon the still waters of the Padma, with the golden sunlight, blue skies and ashen sandbanks before me, I’m having to embark upon a review of Dewan gobindarām published by Sri Yogendranath Sadhu. Nobody will ever read the book, nor will anybody read the review, but this precious day today will be wasted as a result. Just think about it, how many days like this does one get in one’s life! Most days, after all, are broken and fragmented and joined together—but the day today has blossomed completely and fully like a full-blown lotus upon this silent river, drawing my mind into its secret inner chamber of meaning. And then what’s happened is, a big, glossy, blue-coloured bee in a yellow cummerbund is flying around my boat with a buzzing sound in a restless way. I’ve always laughed at the saying that the humming of bees in springtime increases the pain of separation in a beloved’s heart. But I first discovered the real sweetness and meaning of the bee’s hum one afternoon in Bolpur. That day I was wandering wildly about on the south veranda like a vagrant—the afternoon had stretched itself out to lie upon the field and a peaceful, silent shadow had spread its reign across the dense, secret masses of the trees’ leaves—there was an ache in my heart—and just then, from a neem tree adjacent to the veranda, the lazy hum of a bee tied the entire melancholy of the vast afternoon into a melody. That was the day that I first properly realized that the fundamental tune of an aimless and tired afternoon is the hum of a bee. I quite understood then that it’s not at all impossible that the pain in a lover’s heart might increase even more on hearing it. Actually, the thing is—if a bee enters a room and instantly begins to buzz in your ear then that certainly will not increase anybody’s happiness or unhappiness, but the tune it composes among the trees and beneath the open sky hits exactly the right note. This golden mekhalā-wearing bee of mine today too is hitting the right notes—it’s certainly not reviewing a book, but why it keeps circling unceasingly round my boat on every side is beyond my grasp. There’d be some meaning to it if I were Sakuntala, perhaps, but even the most unbiased person will concede that I am not Sakuntala. Just this moment another boat passed by mine. One of its Muslim oarsmen was lying flat on his back with a book on his chest and loudly reciting from a poem. That man too has an appreciation for life—I’m sure you wouldn’t be able to sit him down to review Dewan gobindarām even if you beat him up.

  191

  Shilaidaha

  22 February 1895

  As a result, the day has passed today in some business-related work, some letter-writing, some newspaper-reading, and some editing of essays. It’s now past four, and I will go out for my walk as soon as the sun recedes. Days that you cannot devote entirely to either work or leisure are wasted days. Our Multān rāginī is for this time of the day—around four or five o’clock—and it expresses just that feeling—‘I have not done anything at all today’. Some ustad must have woken up after his afternoon nap and composed this rāginī. Today, in this shining afternoon light—on the water, the land, space, everywhere—I can see that Multān rāginī with its tender high notes of the antarā [second movement] visibly—it evokes neither happiness nor unhappiness, only the melancholy of inertia and its inner secret sorrow. Unhappiness has a particular sort of ache, but there is a certain rasa within even that. And there is another sort of ache that is beyond sorrow or feeling, inert and hidden—that’s very dry, without generosity or the beauty of imagination. There’s another big problem—lots of mosquitoes—which is really irritating. It’s impossible to preserve the sweetness of a feeling or the depth of a thought if you’re constantly slapping your hands and legs and body; the mind becomes prone to aggression and frustrated with failure. These sorts of small irritations—the mosquito’s bite, the helpful literary review, sand in the mohanbhog—do not teach men to be brave in any way, I can say that much. I can say it especially because there was sand in my mohanbhog today—and I can clearly recall how I felt then—such feelings were unworthy of a Christian or a Brahmo … or of a good Muslim too.*

  192

  Shilaidaha

  23 February 1895

  Now spring [basanta] has arrived. It would have been great if I hadn’t had any trying tasks on my shoulders at this time. I could have loosened the reins of my imagination and let it run free through the fullness of my leisure. I could have gone and relaxed by the window and given myself up completely to writing, reading and thinking. Nowadays, I get easily distracted while writing for Sādhanā, and my mind travels instantly towards anything happening outside—a boat passes by and I raise my head to watch it—the ferry crosses from this side to that and quite some time is spent looking at that too—on the shore, very near my boat, the slow-moving buffaloes fill their big mouths with grass and move about with much heavy breathing and sound of chewing, swishing flies from their backs with their tails as they walk—then a very small, thin, weak, almost naked boy comes along and prods this gentle giant of a beast on its back with a short staff, making a hut-hut sound—the animal glances at this tiny child of man once from the corner of its large eye, tears up a few more blades of grass and leaves, and calmly and slowly moves away a little—and the boy thinks he has done his shepherd’s duty. I’m yet to penetrate the mysterious psychology of these shepherd boys—exactly what they accomplish by shooing away a cow or a buffalo from a place where it’s contentedly eating food of its own volition to another spot a little distance away is quite beyond me. Perhaps it’s to establish their lordship over the animals. Perhaps it’s a habit with men to unnecessarily torture tame animals in order to feel powerful. But I get very angry with these shepherd boys. I like watching cows or buffaloes feed on dense, moist clumps of grass. It’s quite worthwhile to watch those who have no higher nature go about their business of eating, sleeping, sitting. It’s like the happiness you feel watching very poor people squat before their ordinary dal and rice and eat. But the lengthy thirty-six-course affairs that the rich and mighty organize are extremely annoying. Look what I started to say and what I’ve ended up talking to you about. What I was going to say was that just when I’m engaged in gathering all sorts of elevated resources for the readers of Sādhanā, my entire attention is attracted towards the ordinary sight of cows and buffaloes grazing on the grass and shrubbery by the river. I think I told you in a previous letter about a couple of bees that frequent my boat and how they’ve been flying restlessly around or inside my boat with a futile humming in an unsuccessful investigation. They appear every day at around nine or ten in the morning—quickly darting around my table, under my desk, on the coloured sash, by the side of my head, and then exit with a whoosh. I could quite easily think that this was the manifestation of some unfulfilled ghostly spirit in the form of a bee visiting everyday from the beyond to see me, circling around me once and then leaving. But I don’t think so. It is my firm belief that these are real bees, the black bee, which is sometimes in Sanskrit called the dvireph.

  193

  Shilaidaha

  Thursday, 28 February 1895

  I’m somewhat relaxed today after having completed a story for Sādhanā last evening. The afternoon too is very quiet and warm and peaceful and still—the feeling in my mind today is like the sort of melancholic yearning I felt as a very small child when school got over at one, and I sat in my empty classroom by the window looking out at the vacant, silent ranks of the terraces in Calcutta, listening to the sharp cry of the kite in the distant sky. I’m reminded of those deep, dreamlike, wild childhood imaginings of mine—it doesn’t seem like too long ago. Yet half of my mortal life is
already gone. We manage to come to the end of our lives treading across every moment and every day, but taken all together, it’s very brief. One could encompass it all within the space of two hours of solitary thought. Shelley spent thirty years of his life occupied with a thousand daily tasks and a thousand endeavours for his life’s story to be told in only two volumes, and that too with a lot of unnecessary talk and commentary from Dowden saheb interspersed in its pages—both may easily be read in the space of a week. Our thirty years would perhaps not even fill up two whole volumes. That’s all it comes to—such a brief affair, but such a lot of planning—so many arguments, so many battles and so much herculean effort! So many businesses, estates, and people just to provide it with supplies! I sit quietly on this one-and-a half-cubit-long chair—but I occupy so much space in this world in so many ways! If you edit out all of that, all you’re left with is just two hours of thought—and that too not for long. Today I was remembering that storehouse that in my childhood used to stand by the edge of the pond on the south side. Iru was very small then, but she too was part of our group. Think of how far Iru has travelled from that small centre-point of the storehouse, and of how far I too have come along another track.* And then if you keep drawing these lines straight outward from that south-facing Jorasanko storehouse, there’s no saying what sort of mysterious darkness you will have to enter. This feeling in me today on this afternoon alone on the boat, these thoughts, the languid fantasies of this one day—who knows where it falls upon that long track and where it disappears? Will this lonely, full afternoon upon the silent sands by the still Padma’s shore leave even a very tiny golden mark upon my eternal past and eternal future? There’s such a particular feeling of renunciation in the Indian sunlight that nobody has the power to evade it.

  194

  Shilaidaha

  Thursday, 28 February 1895

  I’ve received an anonymous letter today. It starts—

  To give up one’s life at another’s feet

  Is the utmost one can give!

  Then there’s an excess of admiration expressed. They’ve never seen me, but nowadays they can see me in Sādhanā. So they write—‘The sun’s rays [rabikar] have fallen upon your efforts [sādhanā], so however small or far away the seekers of the sun [rabi-upāsak] may be, the sun’s rays emanate for them too. You are a poet of the world, yet we think that today you are our poet too’, etc., etc. Man is so eager to love that in the end he begins to love his own idea. To think of the idea as any less true than reality is merely one of our illusions. What we get through our senses is something that philosophy and science tell us has been created by our senses, but nobody really knows what it is—and what we get through our ideas is constructed by our minds, and nobody can say what that really is either. Still, people believe in their senses’ creation more than they do in their mind’s creations. Yet those who know me through their senses by spending time in my company may still be very far from my real self—and this anonymous devotee of mine who knows me only through ideas may perhaps know me relatively more truly. Every person has an ideal person inside themselves; one can reach a little of that self only through love and devotion and affection; the endless ideal that resides within every boy can only be felt by his mother with her entire heart and soul—she cannot see that ideal self and that ineffable truth within other boys. Reality often hides that ideal self from view. Our imagination may enable us to feel affectionate towards children, but when we see a real boy’s shabbiness, ugliness and whining, we just cannot imagine what it is in him that could make his mother want to sacrifice her life for him—what makes her think of him as the most precious and most beautiful thing in the world! The thing which makes the mother think of her son in such a way that she can give up her life for him—is it false? And what I think about her son that makes me incapable of sacrificing my life for his—is that the greater truth? I say that there is something in every boy and every old man for which one can lay down one’s life. It is because we don’t have enough love in our nature that we cannot discover that ideal. Christ’s sacrifice of his life for mankind and for every man has just such a truth hidden within it. Every living thing is a treasure for eternal time and eternal care, and has a limitless appeal. Look how one thing has led to another. The fundamental thing is—in some respects I’m unworthy of receiving the gift of love my devotee gives me; perhaps if they had known me intimately in my everyday life, they would have been unable to offer me this sort of love; but in another reckoning I do have the right to receive this sort of love; in fact, maybe even much more than this. This is what is at the heart of the Christian and Vaishnava religions. This afternoon I sat and wrote a letter to you which had a lot of talk about renunciation, and now in the evening I’m writing another letter in which the talk is all about love!

  195

  Shilaidaha

  1 March 1895

  When you don’t receive a letter one day, and get one the next, you feel a very distinct new pleasure—the mind and its daily machinery of routine, which was temporarily out of order, suddenly begins to work enthusiastically again, creating a feeling of joy. When the world is not exactly as you desire it to be, you often feel despondent, but certain days arrive when you feel the world is just as it was before, and that makes the blood flow more rapidly through your heart. I liked the Christina Rossetti poem you sent me. But it’s only the first four lines that are good, and what it has to say is said in those four lines itself. After that, the rest of the poem is an add-on which doesn’t drive the feeling onward but, rather, weakens it. There are some songs, for instance, in which the āsthāẏī [first movement] is quite good, but the antarā is fake—the entire expression of the melody has been accomplished in the first part itself, but a second unnecessary antarā has been added only because the rules require it. Like my song ‘bājila kāhār bīṇā madhur svare’ [Whose bīṇā is played so sweetly]—in which the tune accomplishes its work right at the start, yet, because the poet still has something to say, the song is not allowed to stop where it wants to but is dragged on. Poems too have a melody, and in this poem of Christina Rossetti’s, the real melody is finished in its first four lines. You’ve written, ‘I don’t know to this day if I like a poem because it expresses a feeling well, or because of its “style”, the manner in which it turns pithily around, for its cleverness of language.’ Actually, the thing is that for us the majority of feelings are old; and the dharma of our minds is such that we are unable to appreciate the complete flavour and beauty of old and habitual things—that’s why when a poet attracts our attention by using language, metre and a new form of expression for an old feeling, we are able to taste the essential flavour of that thing again—then that eternal old thought resounds in our minds and in our ears in the form of a new song. One of the chief tasks of a poet is to always keep the world fresh for us—the green of the trees, the blue of the skies, the golden of the evenings, all of it would have become blanched and dull and wrapped in dust for us by now unless poets had used their imagination upon them. The mind of man becomes easily ripe with the heat of thought, so the poet’s task is to dampen it with a sprinkling of imagination’s nectar so it can stay alive and full of flavour for all time. He doesn’t give you anything new; he just tries to keep your thoughts new.

  196

  Shilaidaha

  6 March 1895

  There’s an argument in your letter today about whether to give the practice of beauty or the practice of convenience greater importance, Bob. That depends largely on the situation and the amount of inconvenience faced. For instance, the example you gave of riding a horse with an umbrella over your head doesn’t really address the issue of beauty in any way. Because while it might not be unbeautiful to ride a horse while holding an umbrella, it might actually be inconvenient. But to my mind, it’s unnatural. There’s an association between horse riding and manliness; that’s why people might automatically think, if you are riding a horse, why use an umbrella? Inconvenience, ugliness and unn
aturalness—it’s necessary to avoid all three, but perhaps the last most of all. Even if a man looks nice wearing a sari, and doesn’t find it inconvenient, still, it’s better not to embark upon so strange an endeavour. The shyness one has with regard to that is a natural one. Actually, one naturally feels timid about attracting too much attention to one’s self—the sort of behaviour that in English is called ‘loud’ is reprehensible for exactly these reasons, and true politeness is habitually reticent. The sort of unnatural or strange behaviour that attracts excessive attention to itself should make people feel ashamed—just as it’s not too much to ask that one should be very self-aware, so too, one should be disinclined to hurl one’s self violently upon someone else’s consciousness. If I go out to meet some gentlemen in my night clothes it might not create an upheaval of mythic proportions, and it might even look good, but it’s not exactly good manners to suddenly assault people with such unnatural behaviour. This sort of thing has a limit, but that limit is very distant. If I think of some prevalent custom—some countrywide practice—as wrong and harmful to most people or if I think that some new practice is good for us, then I mustn’t feel hesitant to assault the public forcefully on that issue; then the argument about what is natural or unnatural is a very minor one. But I must have a steady aim and high ideals. In our country, women do not carry umbrellas over their heads or wear shoes, so the woman who is the first to do so will have to face the disapproval of others—in that case it won’t do for her to bow down before general opinion. But, ordinarily, the convenience of behaving as most people do is that other people are not disturbed, and you yourself find it easier to go on your way—else, other people are inconvenienced and you too face unnecessary obstacles. If one has to fight with general opinion and habit even for the little conveniences of life, then it’s exactly like setting up a canon to fire at a mosquito—an unnatural and strange affair. One cannot then find an appropriate higher purpose that might mitigate the irritation or oddity of that unnatural act. In that case you might just venture out in civilized clothes in civil society and the moment you feel hot, take off your cāpkān and kamij and sit there happily barebodied—if one must philosophize: where’s the harm in that? Why should I bother about what people might say when the heat is making me feel ill? I might be lecturing, but I myself have indulged quite often in behaviour that goes against socially acceptable norms. But I don’t want to defend that—I know that that’s my whimsicality, my madness. I don’t think anybody could say that Baṛ-da’s wrong-side-up jobbā and tricycle-riding costume was very acceptable to received opinion, but since we’re arguing about principle, one shouldn’t bring up individual instances. The basic thing is—when it is a question of only one’s self, one needs to try and practise both convenience and beauty, but when one is talking about society, one needs to synchronize convenience, beauty and naturalness, all three things. The argument has almost filled up the letter—the good thing about small-size letter paper is that one has to restrict one’s argument as well, or this would have turned into a long essay.