Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  204

  Calcutta

  20 March 1895

  Do you know why one particularly likes Shelley more than many other important people? His personality was not prone to doubt; he never analysed himself or others—his character was, in a way, whole. That’s why one has a special affection for children or, in many instances, women—they’re easy, natural; they haven’t deconstructed and then constructed themselves around their own debates or theories. The beauty of Shelley’s character is that there’s no trace of any arguments, disputes or discussions in it. He has become what he has through his own inexorable creative strength. He’s not responsible for himself at all—he’s not even aware of when he has hurt someone or when he’s made someone happy—and others too cannot be sure that they know him with any certainty. Just this much is clear—he is what he is—there was no way he could have been anything else. He’s characteristically generous and beautiful, like outdoor nature, and his personality too is naturally without doubt or hesitation with regard to himself as well as others. There’s an immense attractiveness about people with this completeness of character. Such people are always forgiven and indulged—no fault seems to stick to them with any degree of permanence. Their nature seems naked, like Adam and Eve were at the dawn of time, and, for that very reason, by another reckoning they seem eternally mysterious. They have not yet tasted the fruit of knowledge from the tree and so they live in a constant age of truth. It is very difficult to easily fall in love with those who think, who discuss, who exercise their judgement before they act, who know what good and bad are. Such people may be respected, looked up to, and trusted, but they are not readily loved. They may be able to sacrifice themselves, but others don’t sacrifice their lives for them. I have written this in many of my essays, that man’s mind is worthy of respect, but it is not an object of love—the real, genuinely important people are unthinking and spontaneous: they attract people towards themselves without effort, without logic, simply because they’re irresistible.

  205

  Calcutta

  2 April 1895

  I was stuck with that lecture the whole day today as well. It’s so difficult to express one’s self in Bengali exactly as you want that writing becomes a form of wrestling. It’s difficult not only because the language is inadequate—those who’re going to hear it are the sort who have generally never thought about anything in depth, that’s why it becomes necessary to unpack all the layers and explain everything at length. As a result, something that would have shown its originality and its brightness had it been written with more economy and brevity is diluted and over-worked, and this makes it completely worthless—making me feel terribly dissatisfied. I have repeatedly seen that Bengalis cannot easily follow a thread of argumentation, they just want to revel in the excitement of feeling—there’s no account of the hundreds of things that are lost in transition between an essay and a lecture.

  206

  Calcutta

  4 April 1895

  Nowadays, impelled by work, I’ve descended to the first floor. The wooden nest bounded by a balcony that I had constructed for myself in one corner of the south veranda has now become my āddā [rendezvous]. There’s no furniture in the room, only that Chinese desk you people had given me at the centre of it, and just one chair. You might say that this is a new discovery for me—I’ve never been able to put my mind to writing in my second-floor room, and I’ve always thought it was Calcutta’s fault, but now, ever since I’ve moved to this room, I see that there’s no problem with writing and that I can concentrate quite well…. Also, not having any furniture in the room is a great help. I see that there’s a great necessity for plain living, high thinking—one must tear up one’s ties with material objects as far as possible. Material objects do not establish any cerebral relation with the mind, they don’t bring any news to it that’s new—the furniture remains in the same shape and form forever, only becoming shabbier with time, functioning unnoticed as weighty obstructions to the mind. If one collects as much of the sky and light as one can and lets them occupy as much space as possible around the furniture, then the mind completes its work freely and enthusiastically. Gagan’s garden being located right in front is also a great help. If I could have a garden next to the Ganga, and in a corner right next to the river, a neat and tidy room of paved stone, clear and calm, with a couch to sit and lean back upon and a desk to write on, and all the rest only garden and sky and water—the fragrance of blossoming flowers and the call of birds—then I could quietly keep doing my duty as a poet. One can make do with far less than this in the world, and far more than this often brings not an iota of happiness to many.

  207

  Calcutta

  6 April 1895

  You know how I cite the breezes of India as an excuse for rebellion against undertaking my duties? There’s a deeper significance to that, Bob. There is a type of work which is composed in part of leisure, which sucks out the juice of leisure in vast quantities, or it cannot grow. My entire education and personality make me feel that I was born for that kind of work—if I labour on and on at work every moment, then the natural and proper duty of my life may suffer. One shouldn’t judge work or duties with a measuring tape—if that were the only criterion of evaluation then the job of ploughing the land would have received the first class prize above all others. While working for Sādhanā, for my family, for the welfare of society, my innate character sometimes presents its own demand; it says, ‘Let your work be done later; for the time being, extract as much flavour as you can from the sky and the light and the earth in a most leisurely way.’ That might seem like laziness and neglect of duty to the outsider, but he whose mind it is knows that this enjoyment of leisure is the food required by his nature—without this little bit, all his leaves, flowers and fruits will not be able to flourish. Trees are of use for lighting ovens even when they become dry wood, but their most important work is to stay alive and bear flowers and fruits, and if they have to do that work they need a lot of leisure, sky and light. Now the question is just this: if I may accomplish something greater than just earning my wage, then is it not my duty to do so? Great work, by its very nature, demands, like a great tree, a lot of time and space—that is exactly what I call leisure, renunciation, meditation.

  208

  Calcutta

  9 April 1895

  The clock strikes ten with a clanging sound. Ten o’clock on a Caitra morning is quite late—the sun is blazing away; I don’t know why the crows are making such a din; the locket-orange and sweet-and-sour mango-wallah is passing by our main gate, calling out loudly in a sing-song voice as he goes; my mouth is a bit dry—I feel like drinking a glass of cold curd sarbat with some ice…. I feel like going to some foreign country or the other. A country that’s quite like a picture—with mountains, waterfalls, dense green moss on rocks, with cows grazing on the undulating hillside far away, the blue of the sky very calm and deep, the slow and rich sounds of birds, insects and leaves all mixed up rising in a languid, wavelike motion to the head. Oh, to hell with it—I don’t think I’ll put my hand to any more work today—I’ll take myself off to Dwipu’s room on the south side and sit there all alone stretched out with a travel book, a travel book with lots of pictures and new, uncut pages. There’s a travel book on China at hand, but I’ve read about China in lots of books. There’s a Persian travel book written by a woman, but women are not good travellers, and it doesn’t have a sufficient number of pictures. I’ve finished reading Tibet, and I’m done with Africa. If I had a good book on South America with lots of pictures, then I’d read that. But I couldn’t find anything I really liked in Thacker’s. There are thousands of books in the world that are good for a discussion, for moral upliftment or for imparting an education. But books to be lazy with are very few in number. You need a special talent to write that sort of book, and that’s a very rare talent. It’s quite difficult to achieve both sides—to write so that you don’t destroy the leisureliness of leisure—instead
make it a little more colourful, a little more flavoursome—and at the same time to stoke the fire of reading. It shouldn’t cut your mind with a steel nib, but fly over it with a feather quill—that creates a spread-out country, time, colour and flavour all around your mind. A good travelogue is the most weightless thing and the best thing to read in your free time. But one doesn’t feel like picking up such books in Calcutta—because one never has that sort of wonderful uninterrupted leisure in Calcutta. I keep such books in store to take with me to the mofussil. It’s very relaxing to sit down with that kind of thick book in hand on a completely secluded afternoon or evening—such princeliness [nabābiānā]is very rare in this world. Satya used to say that there’s something of the nabab in my character—that there is.

  209

  Calcutta

  14 April 1895

  Yesterday I had to travel around a lot the entire day…. If it had been any other day I would have been half-dead, but yesterday it was very cool—the sky was overcast, with the occasional drizzle—I was enjoying it. Although there’s nothing in the least bit poetic about honouring invitations and going about presiding over meetings, still, yesterday in the time between travelling from one place to another a keen poetic ache filled my heart—exactly as if I were listening to a song—and I couldn’t quite gauge the meaning of the indescribable feeling that rose up within me. The essential flavour of all the poetry I have read over the years, all the songs I’ve heard, and everything I’ve imagined is stored away somewhere in some corner of my mind. Why its alluring, intoxicating fragrance escapes on certain days or occasions I really don’t know, nor do I know what to do with it, how to use it and where—I don’t comprehend what its spiritual meaning or spiritual fulfilment may be. But its limitlessness, its depth and its mysterious plaintive note fills the mind with unrest, and it’s impossible to think that this is in any way untrue or impermanent—even its impatient restlessness seems to be good. The material comfort and satisfaction of life in Calcutta seems very lowly in comparison with it. Last night at Jyo——’s place, A—— sat down with an esraj—outside it was raining, and the breeze was full of the sound of the leaves on the trees. First I sang ‘Bharā bādar’ [Rain clouds]. After that I sang ‘Āmāẏ bāňśite dekeche ke’ [Who calls me with a flute]—my voice was in good form, my heart too was full and the new year sympathetic, everything seemed to fall into place—and I wondered—this amazing realm of melody and feeling—is this only in my mind? Is there nothing like it anywhere else? Is it just a mirage?

  210

  Calcutta

  24 April 1895

  Today I’ve been afflicted with the deepest inertia since morning … I’ve just been wandering around in circles through the empty first-floor rooms of our Jorasanko house like a vagrant. All the joints of my body seemed to have been loosened, and I didn’t have the strength to put my mind to any writing or reading. And then in no time at all the entire sky was suddenly overcast with clouds, thunder began to rumble, and a strong wind made all the large and small trees in the south garden sigh and moan. The afternoon became calm and shadowy and very intimate. An inexplicable restlessness made me inwardly agitated—whatever work my mind was given was rapidly flung out…. The mind’s ways are like the sky’s—unpredictable. For twenty-nine days in the month it works perfectly well with all the minor everyday work it has to do—no fuss—but suddenly, on the thirtieth day, it wants to kick that work away. It says, ‘Give me something that’s very large—in which all my days and nights, all that is big and small, the past and the present, can be swallowed up in a single gulp.’ At that moment, what can one give it from what’s near at hand—one can only keep wandering around the rooms and verandas at will. We say the mind is healthy when it is made to jump around among the scattered fragments of social duties, and when it wants to impatiently engage in a larger enterprise with the utmost fervour so that it may achieve a self-forgetful singleness of purpose, we consider it sick! But I think that man’s true and natural state is attained when he wants to give up his entire life to be tied in chords of unity with that one strong passion—not everybody can achieve that unity, and for them, the scattered mechanical jobs of society are appropriate—but the deepest aspirations of the mind are towards that larger unity. That’s the reason why, while living every day in this society, on certain days one thinks—

  Āmẏ bẏňśite dekeche ke!

  [Who calls me with a flute!]

  211

  Calcutta

  2 May 1895

  Today the sound of the nahabat playing somewhere can be heard. The morning nahabat makes the mind terribly pensive. To this day I’ve been unable to determine what the significance is of the indescribable feeling created in the mind when you hear music. Yet, the mind tries to analyse and understand this feeling every single time. I’ve seen that as soon as the melody of a song unfolds fully, as soon as the wine hits the palate, this social world of life and death, this country of coming and going, this workaday world of light and shade, all move very far away—as if to stand on the other shore of some immense Padma River—from where everything appears like a picture. To us, our everyday life is not exactly proportionate—some insignificant part may seem immoderately large, and every present moment may be made thorny with the smallest of things, minor details, petty squabbles, hunger and thirst, work and rest; but music, through some irresistible attraction it exerts because of its own inner beauty and proportion, seems in a moment to give such a particular perspective to this life that those small, impermanent irritations become invisible to the eye—the world seems whole and vast and harmonious like a picture, and man’s life and death, tears and laughter, past and future, all seem to sound upon the ear like the tender rhythm of a poem. At the same time, our own individual forcefulness or sharpness relaxes, and we loosen up, so that we can drown ourselves easily in a music-filled expanse. The inconsequential and artificial ties of society are particularly useful for society, yet music, or any of the higher Arts, reminds us of their insignificance in a moment—that is why Art by its very nature has a certain amount of social destructiveness within it—that’s why our hearts become restless when we hear a good song or poem, the social fabric of our ties in this world is pierced, and our mind makes futile war for the freedom to enjoy the beauty of the everyday—the experience of beauty results in an inner war within us between the daily and the eternal, creating a sorrow beyond reason.

  212

  On the way to Patishar

  1 June 1895

  Returning again to my secluded boat after a long time, I’m feeling very much at ease. It feels as if I’ve returned home from abroad and someone is saying to me from time to time, ‘You’ve come, I’m very happy to see you.’ Solitude seems to stroke my head, my face, my body. It wasn’t too hot today during the day—the sun was up, but the cool breeze felt very sweet. The river is small—the fields on either side are green as they roll towards the shore, there are cows grazing, women drawing water or bathing, and naked boys calling loudly to their distant companions upon catching sight of the boat. Small and big villages of all types, all with different sorts of names—as I watch them go past, I think, these villages are merely a momentary image for me, but for so many people they are their entire world. The people who descend to the water to bathe or sit on the shore scraping wood, will, at the right time, go to their homes hidden somewhere behind those dense trees. That is the stage upon which they will enact their everyday lives and work. The unknown and unremarkable people of that place are their most familiar and influential neighbours. I can’t say that these thoughts are terribly wonderful or unique, but still, if you think along these lines, you see things in a new way—all of us are so big to ourselves, yet so small to most other people—that’s what primarily comes to mind. It’s evening now—those in the villages on both sides have lit their lamps in their homes and are sitting down by themselves without any work to be done, conversing, smoking, sleeping—only this solitary boat of mine goes on its way through
the middle, the sound of its oars making a jhup-jhup splashing sound; I have no relation at all with the people on either side.