Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  197

  Shilaidaha

  7 March 1895

  I was thinking after reading your letter yesterday that it’s true that women are far more vigilant than men about keeping their surroundings beautiful, but does that really mean that they are somehow more appreciative of beauty than men? One generally cannot come to any conclusion on these sorts of issues; because individual men and women have different talents according to who they are—when we speak on issues like these we usually think of ourselves as representative of our genders. I might want to keep everything around me beautiful, but I’m frequently unmindful about it for a variety of reasons—often everything becomes quite untidy and it’s not as if I always keep myself very neat either. But I have no doubt at all about the fact that beauty makes me crazy—nothing else can make me feel its endless depth with all my heart as beauty and love can, and when one is really immersed in such a feeling then one’s own personal appearance and neatness don’t matter so much—when the mind is filled with the rasa of beauty, then just that is sufficient. I remember Biharilal; the man might have been unadorned and loose and untidy—but if you read his writing, you would have had no doubt about the fact that he was drunk on beauty. There’s also no doubt about the fact that at one time Baṛ-dada, like a true poet, used to enjoy every aspect of beauty, but there’s also no doubt that he never ever kept his surroundings or himself beautiful. It’s natural for women to want an association between their own things and beauty. Whenever you recall her, her fragrance, her appearance, her neatness must be evoked—it’s very necessary to notice the golden lotus alongside the goddess Lakshmi. If you have to make yourself the ideal of beauty, your surroundings too must be beautiful. Women have a tender affection for all sorts of lovely things such as flowers—it’s as if all of those things were their own, special things, to which they are tied in a relationship. But men feel differently about beauty—for us the attraction of beauty is much stronger, and the meaning of beauty much deeper. I might not be able to express myself properly, and if I do, it might sound like unworldly poetry—beauty for me is a felt divinity—when my mind is not troubled and I look properly, a plate full of roses are to me a particle of that most abundant delight about which the Upanishads have said: etasyaibānandasyānyāni bhūtāni mātrāmupajībanti [on a particle of this very bliss other creatures live].* The endless deep spirituality within beauty is something only men have experienced. That’s why for men there is a universality about women’s beauty. The other day I was reading a book of poetry called Śankarācharya’s Ānandalaharī in which he was looking at the entire universe in the form of a woman—the sun, moon, sky, earth—all of it was encompassed by the beauty of woman—until he transformed all the description and all the poetry into a single line expressing a single exalted thought. Biharilal’s book of songs, the Sāradāmaṅgal, too is of that class. Shelley’s Epipsychidion too has the same implication. Most of Keats’s poetry brings a similar feeling to mind. One realizes the true meaning of beauty when it actually touches, not only the eye or the imagination, but one’s soul, like a felt experience. When I’m alone I feel its evident touch every day, and I quite understand what a living truth it constitutes in the eternity of space and time—and even a quarter of what I have understood I cannot make others understand.

  198

  Shilaidaha

  8 March 1895

  When I reach Shahjadpur, I’ll find a heap of letters accumulated there. There are lots of valuable gifts in this world, but the insignificant letter is not a small thing. The invention of the post office is a new addition to men’s happiness. This is a new type of happiness. I’m not talking about convenience here, that’s there of course. But letters have created a new joy in the world. They connect men to one another in a novel bond. We gain something by seeing people, and we gain by speaking to them, but now when we receive letters we gain another sort of insight into them. It’s not just that we compensate for face-to-face conversation through letters, by talking to each other even in our absence—there’s an additional flavour in them that is not exactly there in everyday conversation and meetings. We express ourselves in conversation in a manner that we don’t in our writing, but again, the opposite is also true. Both situations have an element of incompleteness in them that can become complete only when the two come together. That’s why, in men’s relations with men, letters convey a new pleasure and communication that was not there before. It is as if a new sense has been added to enable us to see men, to find them. When ordinary conversation and discussion are caught within the frame of a letter, they assume a new aspect—the thing which evades us in conversation and which becomes artificial in essays is easily captured in letters. I think that those who are always in each other’s company twenty-four hours, who haven’t had the opportunity to write letters to each other, know each other incompletely—they don’t have any way of knowing many delicate, many true and deep things about each other’s characters. Just as the cow’s udders fill with milk as soon as the calf comes near, so the mind fills up with particular flavours only at the instance of a particular excitement and not any other—the exact spot in your heart that this four-page letter is able to touch cannot be reached through conversation or essays. I think the envelope has a particular attraction—the envelope is an important part of the letter—it’s a major discovery. Perhaps we need to thank the French for that.

  199

  Shilaidaha

  10 March 1895

  This time I’ve decided that when I go to Calcutta I won’t enter into any arguments—I’ll read and write quietly with a calm and peaceful heart. There’s no greater happiness than that. It is perhaps the thirteenth day of the lunar fortnight today—there will be a lot of moonlight—in these three or four days I will have to take my moonlit sandbank by the Padma and load as much of it as I can into my heart to take back with me. Quite possibly, when I return again the next time this spread-out, white sandbank will no longer be there. In its place will be either the waters of the Padma or ploughed land. Nowadays I don’t manage to walk alone any more. I’m often accompanied by Shai—— and Tha—— babu. In the middle of their conversation suddenly sometimes the entire moonlit peaceful scene and the endless silence filling up the sky come and stand in front of me for a little while—they pull that old, familiar curtain of mine to one side and reveal themselves to me from time to time. Then my whole heart fills with an amazing fulfilment—as if a very big, soft, deep embrace has wrapped around my whole body, and a soundless, still, intense love comes from the stars and envelops me. To suddenly experience such a serious and momentous arrival in the middle of all that dry, work-related talk astonishes even me, and my two companions on either side appear completely out of place. The three of us are walking together, but for a while I am not in their presence as they walk. My serious, silent, moonlight-drowned world suddenly lets me know in the momentary break of conversation, ‘Don’t think you have only two companions, we too are by your side today as we have always been before—’

  I sit here day and night,

  Come when you remember me.

  I’ve written about the comic [kautukhāsya] in Sādhanā. On these moonlit, desolate sandbanks by the Padma, as I keep listening to the seresta’s reports from Tha—— babu, and in the gaps between those reports when the star-filled sky keeps playing hide and seek, sometimes I feel it’s joking with me—somebody’s sweet smile of mischief is within it somewhere.

  200

  Shilaidaha

  11 March 1895

  There are a number of things that never grow old for me—perhaps when I’m far away their brightness may dim under the pressure of other material things, but then, as soon as I come face-to-face with them again, immediately all the old feelings are refreshed in my mind. There are times when my exile in the mofussil becomes a faded memory in Calcutta, and then I may think that my Padma’s shores have perhaps grown old—but the surprising thing is that the moment I come here I see that everything is still bright
and full of wonder, like that first glance at each other on your wedding day [śubhadṛshti]. Every day in the evening as I walk on the sand I think of this—that which I found novel the other day still feels new to me today—exactly the same feeling fills my heart in exactly the same way, as if I had come here for the first time today. This is a thing of great joy and wonder for me. I think that perhaps all the letters I have written you from all these places for such a long time have the same feeling in them. Again and again I’ve said the same thing, expressed the same enthusiasm in the same language. I can’t help it—it’s because I experience the same feeling in a new way every time. I often wish I could take all the letters I’ve written you and, reading them, travel again through the narrow path of my letters’ old familiar landscapes gathered over the mornings, afternoons and evenings of so many days. I have tried to hold on to so many days and so many moments—these must be captive in your box of letters—the moment I set my eyes on them, those old days will surround me on every side. The stuff in them that’s to do with my personal life is not that valuable—but the things that I have gathered from outside, which are each an item of rare beauty or invaluable enjoyment, are the incomparable earnings of my life—those are things which perhaps nobody else but I have seen, and which are kept only within the pages of those letters, and nowhere else in the world—nobody will perhaps appreciate their value more than me. Give me your letters once, Bob, and I’ll copy out just the experiences of beauty from them into an exercise book. Because if I live for a long time then I’m sure to grow old; then all these days will become things of remembrance and consolation. At that time I will want to walk slowly in the evening light within the accumulated beauty of the days of my past life. Then this Padma’s sandbank of today and the soft, peaceful, spring moonlight will return to me afresh in exactly the same way. My days and nights of joy and sorrow are not woven together like this anywhere else in my poetry or prose.

  201

  Calcutta

  15 March 1895

  I’m not exactly sure what I’ve been doing this morning. I haven’t done any work at all, perhaps I haven’t thought very much either. There was a bit of breeze from the south, and every joint of the body had loosened with the warmth; I was lying quietly by myself, rolling around, turning the pages of the newspaper, knowing all the while that there were letters to be written, proof-sheets to be corrected, writing to be done for Sādhanā, kāchāri work to be completed, accounts to be presented to Bābāmaśāẏ, and yet I felt no regret at all for this laziness—perhaps the body and mind lacked the energy for regret. But this basanta morning breeze really wastes me. Just letting this generous warm wind caress the whole body seems like a duty worth doing—it seems as though the flow of this sweet breeze is a conversation that nature holds with me. That I was born in this world, that the spring breeze came and touched me, that the smell of the kanakcāňpā flower filled my head, that occasionally a morning such as this came to me in obeisance like a message from the gods—in the brief life of a man how can this be insignificant! Not just the writing of poetry or the editing of Sādhanā—all these forgotten, unconscious moments too are an important part of a successful life. That’s why sometimes this sort of overflowing laziness doesn’t give rise to any regret. If this time had been spent listening to a good song one would not have regretted that either. On some days, for me, nature functions exactly as a song does. This breeze, this light, all these small sounds, make me completely inert. Then I can quite comprehend that there is a pleasure in merely ‘being’—that ‘I am’ is in itself a tremendous affair—in all of nature this is the most ancient and all-encompassing joy of all. It is when your mind is completely relaxed in this way that your relation with the outside is the most intimate.

  202

  Calcutta

  16 March 1895

  The argument about good and bad is an endless one, Bob. Based on what must we judge the good or bad in men: the contour of their mind or the results of their work? If we were to judge only from the results, then someone who has hurt a man accidentally and someone who has done so intentionally will both be found equally guilty—we would give the same punishment to the man who has done the deed in a fit of anger and one who has calmly planned it. Of course, whether an act is good or bad is one thing, and whether a certain man is good or bad is quite another. We aren’t all-knowing; it’s true that we sometimes judge a man by his work. And that’s exactly why we don’t always judge correctly. But the example you give from Shelley’s life is entirely different—it proves that even if a man may be good at many things, in some contexts he may be morally unresponsive; that he may, in a particular scenario, be blind to the hurt he causes others because he is so immersed in his own pleasure—that’s not a quality that deserves praise. There’s no legitimate reason to sit down and try to turn Shelley’s faults into good qualities. But just because he had a fault doesn’t mean he did not have any talents. Many much less talented people might not have hurt other people like he did. Shelley’s life does not prove in any way that depending on the person a bad deed may become a good one. But it does prove that no man is completely good. The good and the bad in every man are weighed and he’s labelled good or bad according to the weight of the good in relation to the bad. Depending on their own character, some people praise Shelley highly and some people criticize him—but only god knows the real Shelley. Since man’s relation with man is temporary, it is natural that men should judge each other on the basis of their impermanent lives alone—he with whom man is tied in an eternal relationship has a completely different method of judgement. Quite possibly, many reprobates will find a higher seat in heaven than many saints. St Paul, St Augustine—if they had died young, who would have known of their real greatness? But that doesn’t mean one should deceive one’s self by saying these things. A wrongdoing is a wrongdoing—since we have come to this world for a short time it is better if we can leave it after trying our best to make each other happy and by creating a permanent source of happiness. We have all gathered together in this guest house for just one evening—if I spend that little bit of time making others happy by helping them, comforting them, and so on, only then will I be a good man. If, in pursuit of my own pleasure, I torture somebody else needlessly, that person will call me a bad man, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to sit and disprove that by any sort of sophistry.

  203

  Calcutta

  Monday, 18 March 1895

  A majority of readers generally really liked that story published in Sādhanā in Māgh—that’s why a lot of people are very annoyed with the review in Sāhitya. It’s impossible to gauge why people like or dislike something—and even if you do, you cannot shape your talent in response. That’s why I think that the assessment of those on the outside is completely useless and often harmful for me. A man’s polestar and refuge is the ideal that he has within him. It’s necessary to elevate that ideal as far as one can by reading, listening, thinking and practising literature. The manner in which literary analysis is engaged with in our country is completely uneducated. There’s no point in hearing: ‘I liked it’ or ‘I didn’t like it’. That only gives you a particular person’s opinion; it doesn’t give you the truth of that opinion. If that opinion comes from somebody who is sufficiently capable of appreciation or experienced in literary affairs then even that might make you think a little. But just any person’s opinion has no value at all. Our country lacks good reviewing skills—and the primary reason is that the people of our country do not have an intimate acquaintance with literature. They don’t exist in the midst of literary creativity. They don’t have any real experience of what’s easy, what’s hard, which is genuine and which made-up, what is impermanent and what is permanent, which is sentiment and which sentimentalism. Until a great variety and quantity of good literature is published in our country, the time for literary analysis will not arrive. First we must create an ideal, then analysts can begin their education from that ideal. Just as you cannot swi
m if there is no water, so too you cannot have good criticism without good literature. I’ve noticed that the older I get, the less dependent I become on the opinions of others—praise or criticism doesn’t create as much of an impact—perhaps one has gotten used to both to a great extent. Trust in my own judgement too is perhaps gradually becoming firmer and more deep-rooted.