Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895

by Rabindranath Tagore

  224

  Shilaidaha

  14 August 1895

  The more I put my hand to many different sorts of work, the more I respect this thing called work. Of course I already had a general idea that work was an excellent as well as a very superior thing. But all of that was textbook stuff. Now I see quite clearly that man’s ultimate worth lies in his work. Work engages quite a few of man’s faculties—you have to evaluate the worth of goods and of people, and maintain a relationship with the business field. A new kingdom has opened up for me now. I have plunged into the vast arena of commerce in which millions of people from many different countries are already striving to their limits—I have experienced for the first time the chains that tie man to man and the generosity of his work as it spreads across far distances. One feels quite a sense of pride in labouring and thinking as one learns and knows all this. One of the great things about the work men do is that when they work, they have to ignore and curtail their personal joys and sorrows and keep going. I remember, one morning in Shahjadpur when the khansama there turned up late for work I got very angry; he came and did his everyday habitual salaam and said, in a slightly constricted voice, ‘Last night my eight-year-old daughter died.’ Saying this, he put the duster on his shoulder and went off to dust my bedroom furniture. I felt horrible—there’s no time to stop for the most heartfelt grief in the hard workplace. But what’s the point of taking that time either? If work can free a man from the ties of futile regret and propel him forward, then what better education than that! What is not to be is beyond our reach, while what can be is quite enough and available ready at hand. I can do nothing but grieve for the daughter who has died, but for the son who is still alive I must work really hard. I look at this worldwide workplace of man through my mind’s eye—everybody is working hard on either side of the royal road of life—some are employed in offices, some do business, some are farmers, some labourers—yet, beneath this workplace, at every moment, secretly and hidden from view, there flows so much death, so much grief, sorrow and hopelessness—if these win the day, in a moment the wheel of work would stop spinning. Personal joys and sorrows flow on underneath us and above it all is constructed a bridge made of hard stone upon which the train of work chuffs on upon its steel tracks with a whistling sound with its millions of people—except for its designated stops, it doesn’t stop for anyone. There is a hard comfort in this cruelty of work.

  225

  Shilaidaha

  18 August 1895

  There’s one aspect of living in a hut that I don’t mind—though one can’t exactly call living with tables, chairs and camp-beds proper living in a hut. Still, to get up on to land and see the green world of the rains felt good. A lot of time was spent sitting for a long time watching the cows and goats grazing on the abundant wet grass, and in observing the accompanying shepherd girls. It feels very sweet to observe, from up close, those human situations in which men live right next to trees and crops and cows and calves and single-storeyed mud huts—absorbed in cropping grain, sailing boats, drawing water, washing clothes. Some say that the happiness we imagine them experiencing is not founded in fact. But that’s not true. They are a bit like children, that’s why they can experience happiness and satisfaction with their entire hearts. Our joys are terribly complicated and difficult to attain and in most instances have become quite artificial. Our minds are not easily charmed, we can’t easily forget ourselves completely, we can’t embellish the little we have with our simple imaginations—instead, our critical analysis reduces what we had in plenty. That doesn’t mean I want to become a farmer—I just want their satisfaction and their simplicity without letting go of my own reserves of intelligence or erudition.

  226

  Shilaidaha

  20 August 1895

  The cloud and the rain have given way since yesterday to the clear, bright, beautiful feeling of the śarat season. In the last few days the river water has decreased and the river has suddenly acquired a very calm, unruffled air—the fishermen near the sandbank on the other shore have got down into the waist-deep water to catch fish, and there are cows grazing by the riverbank on this shore—a very vast, beautiful, bright peace sits with its generous maternal lap extended over the land and water and air; it comes very close to me and kisses my head. On mornings such as this, all the sweet days of the past mingle with the present and appear as a complete whole. I’ve said to you once before, Bob, if I could stitch together all my letters, leaving out all the insignificant personal detail and selecting only my opinions, descriptions and enjoyment of beauty, I could then have access to a concentration of all the sweetness of a greater part of my lived life—that would be like a large, spread-out grove for me to wander in—if at any time the delicate ability for enjoyment ebbs away, if the new world begins to close its doors on me one by one, then that invaluable old world of mine would stay with me as my ultimate shelter. My thoughts on my most intimate relationship with the universe are truthfully there in these letters in a way that they are not to be found anywhere else—if I could access that part, my life would become that much larger.

  227

  Shilaidaha

  23 August 1895

  I was wondering why the monsoon river’s enormous torrent and unceasing murmur keep me so satisfied in their company. I can quite see why, but it’s difficult to express the thought. The river is like a huge living thing—a powerful stream of energy comes pouring proudly and carelessly down from a great distance. When we see this, our hearts respond with a tremor of intimacy. If one sees an unconquerable wild horse running with the powerful joy of freedom upon a field, our hearts are rocked with a feeling of power. I’ve thought about it many a time—the deep and secret joy we get from nature is only because we feel a great sense of relationship and familiarity with it—these ever-fresh, green and simple creepers, grasses, trees and bushes, this flowing water, moving air, the revolving, ceaseless shadow-world, this cycle of seasons, the stream of stars and constellations moving across the limitless sky, the numberless living things of this world—we have a connection of flowing blood and beating pulse with all of it—we are set to the same rhythm as the rest of the universe—when there is a caesura or a reverberation in this rhythm, our hearts respond in agreement from within—if we were not of the same family as every atom and molecule that the world is made up of, if eternity had not pulsed with life, beauty and a concealed joy, we would never have been able to feel this genuine pleasure when in proximity to the real world. We have a secret path that connects us to that which we unfairly term insensate; otherwise, there could never be such an irresistible tie of love between life and inert things, between the mind and material objects, between inside and outside. It is because there really is no caste division between me and the tiniest particle of this universe that we have all found a place in this world together—else, two different worlds would have been created for both of us. When I become earth of this earth, even then my tie with this eternal, living world will not be severed—I feel this with my own simple inner joy. I have no logical reason for it.

  228

  Shilaidaha

  24 August 1895

  The fact that we have a certain concealed, delightful relationship with this autochthonous, limitless, skyful of habitually pulsating and whirling atoms and molecules is a truth that sometimes fades from our minds and becomes near invisible—perhaps it stays written somewhere in my memory as a result of a very old habit, but I cannot feel it any more in my inner heart like a real and illuminating thing. Then one makes the mistake of considering it a poetic fancy. What better proof do we have of it than that we feel it within our own hearts? But the mind is often led astray by all sorts of work and all sorts of thoughts, so that the delicate ability of the imagination to feel dries up for the lack of nourishment, and consequently that calm, deep and fulfilled expansiveness of the inner self vanishes, in whose deep silence one could hear the distant footsteps of truth resonate clearly, just like one’s inner thoug
hts. Then it all gets mixed up and muddy, and one thinks of the outer confusion alone as the truth and keeps mistaking the heart’s eternal thoughts as dreamlike imaginings. If that were not so, if the living attraction of this endless universe could be exprienced absolutely clearly and truly at all times, then what else would’ve given me comparable peace and comfort? Then I could have embraced the earth of this world, so full of life, and held it close, extending my heart into its all-encompassing beauty. The sad thing is that unless you have a little peace, this unbroken peace outside cannot be reflected in you; unless you have some joy, you cannot connect with this whole and entire joy. That’s why occasionally when I come here to the mofussil this truth manifests itself before me suddenly in a single moment. But if with the passing of time this vitality of my imagination fades, if the material world appears inert due to my own mental inertia, then what I feel today as the most intimate truth will be thought of as the fancy of a certain time of my youth—as if it were quite a beautiful theory—perhaps it will evoke a dry smile when I am older. But this felt experience of intense joy is contained in so many of the letters I have written you—that perhaps when I see them my dry heart will gather sap from them—and I will regain that religion which is peculiar to my character.

  229

  Shilaidaha

  20 September 1895

  Today the storm has abated, and the sun has been trying to rise little by little this morning, although it hasn’t been completely successful yet. The clouds are scattered across the sky, the wind blows fiercely from the east. The blooming forests of kāś on the other shore tremble like flames in the wind. You can hear the distant Padma’s roar from here. Yesterday and the day before the scene was exactly as in that new song of mine—jharajhara barashe bāridhārā—

  Drops of water rain down—

  The wind moans

  In the deserted endless fields—

  The restless Padma’s waves cry out—

  Dense clouds fill the sky—

  And then, this wretched, homeless person got completely soaked from head to toe on the roof of the steamer and turned into mud. I was wearing that enormous silk ālkhāllā [long coat], and it began to fly about in every direction in a most laughable way—the spectacles in front of my eyes became blurred with water—the cover of the book in my hand began to shed continuous coloured tears. In the last couple of days I’d been singing that song quite frequently. As a result, the flow of the rain, the moan of the wind, and the sound of the Gorai River’s waves all assumed a new life of their own—their speech began to become clear on every side, and I too took up my stance as one of the main actors in this vast dance drama of storm and rain. There’s no greater magic than music in this world—it is a new lord of creation. I can’t decide whether music creates a new world of māẏā or if it unveils the wondrous, innermost, everyday kingdom of the old world. There are some things like songs that say to men, ‘However hard you try to explain everything in this world clearly and logically, its real essence is indescribable,’ and it is with that that the meaning of our existence has the most heartfelt connection—it is the cause of all this sorrow, this happiness, this yearning.

  230

  Shilaidaha

  21 September 1895

  I certainly know that if I can once force my head down and engage myself in composing something, the writing flows on speedily, and the more I immerse myself in it, the more I’m filled with pure joy. But the surprising thing is, just before I begin to actually start writing I don’t seem to be able to take my mind in hand. My mind says, ‘All my writing is done; and I don’t have anything to write about either; my ability to write too is almost spent—when I’m in this state don’t prod me to write and embarrass myself in front of the public.’ I say to it, ‘That’s what you keep saying, but you keep writing nevertheless.’ My mind is like a particular class of horse that begins to shy and kick and move backward the moment the reins are pulled, but once you manage to whip it and coax it and make it take a couple of steps forward it runs ahead on all four legs the rest of the way. Now it is bending towards its stables in Calcutta—but the moment it regains complete authority over its own ability to compose or imagine, the moment it goes forward a bit, it will think that the material world actually really exists in this imaginary world. As I write, I enter my own secret life of the mind more and more deeply, and once there, I see that the honey I collected from my life’s flowers of desire has mostly remained stored there. One doesn’t always manage to find the entrance to that everyday kingdom of the mind.

  The clouds have cleared since yesterday and the new śarat season has flooded my surroundings, that’s why I drown in my dew-wet memories this way.

  231

  Shilaidaha

  25 September 1895

  Men have, by their own hand, made this social world of theirs so complicated and entangled that it’s become a huge problem simply being happy or making others happy. But sorrow is perhaps a very necessary thing for man, perhaps more essential than war or striving or tolerance or sacrifice or being happy. Unhappiness turns a man into a man, and that humanity has some value somewhere or other. Those who peddle religion say that god makes those he loves suffer. That might often sound like devious ‘cant’, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely without foundation. Suffering is the one and only value of our souls, our loves, our most precious treasures…. The unfortunate thing is that we don’t have the wherewithal to alleviate another’s sorrow. That’s why making money doesn’t seem a small thing. If I can make some money through this business of ours then I’ll be able to quell many of my heart’s sorrows—one cannot deal with someone’s unhappiness in this material world by wishes alone.

  232

  Shilaidaha

  26 September 1895

  I see no signs of a storm coming, though—there are very few clouds in the sky, the river is very calm, the daylight is clear and bright—the boat races ahead in the current with a whistling sound and the breeze blows softly—a certain happy languor fills my heart. Today is the last day of my solitary existence; besides all my other work, from tomorrow I’ll have to concentrate on hospitality…. I still haven’t started writing for Sādhanā. I’ve kept up only a partial relationship with Saraswati through some discussion of music. Nature is so close to you here, her pulse and heaving breath can be felt from up close to such an extent that one doesn’t feel like expressing one’s self in anything that needs more effort than music. Nothing is closer to nature than song—I know for certain that right now if I look outside my window and begin to intone the Rāmkeli raga, this endless sun-coloured, greenish-blue scenery shall come into my inner essence like a mesmerized doe and begin to caress me. Every time it rains on the Padma, each time I think, let me compose a song for the rains in Meghamallār, but where’s the strength? And after all, the audiences don’t have this daily attraction of the rains in front of them; they’ll find it monotonous. Because the words are the same—it rains, it’s cloudy, lightning flashes. But its inner ever-new passion, its autochthonous, never-ending sorrow of separation [birahabedanā] can only be expressed partially in the melody of a song.

  233

  Shilaidaha

  30 September 1895

  I see you’re really annoyed with the writer of ‘Us and Them’ [‘Āmrā o tomrā’]. But the man is sitting there thinking, ‘What fun’. The problem is, you cannot explain rasa to a man who doesn’t understand it because the appreciation of rasa is sensory and has to be experienced. So much so, that even persons who have a sense of rasa may have differences of opinion when they evaluate good or bad. That’s why the task of reviewing seems like such a chore and the same goes for the work of writing. Still, the work of judging good or bad continues in the world, and not too badly either—although differences of opinion are not scarce, with the passing of time a certain unanimity is arrived at in public opinion. Somewhat like natural selection—variation manifests itself in many forms every day, but that which does not endure falls by t
he wayside for different reasons, and that which does attains a certain unity. If the seeds that we writers sow have a truly lasting worth in the minds of people, then however critical a reviewer may be, that seed will not go in vain. Actually, man’s mind is not something one can know well—I can say with some certainty what I will like or dislike for now, and can even speculate on what others will like or dislike, but the moment it becomes a little fine or complex, it’s only the most skilled or knowledgeable critic who can account for it. And even the most skilled critic can sometimes make mistakes. The mark of a good critic is that his understanding is as nuanced as his empathy is all-encompassing and his literary experience vast. He should be able to transcend his own likes and dislikes, and with the help of his powers of empathy access different tastes and different situations. That sort of person is very rare. Rather, one may find many good writers, but a real critic is very rare. But the surprising thing is—even then, it is only good writing that goes on to establish itself in the affections of the ordinary reader. So, whether there is anything like an ideal taste isn’t something one can conclude through nuanced argument; yet, ordinarily, a certain ideal of taste is constructed in human society through use and nothing that’s totally ugly ever survives as beauty—mistakes are made, and those are then corrected as well. If that were not so, the talented would not have been trying so hard through all time to achieve completeness in the creation of beauty—they cannot prove that there is an imperative ideal of taste, yet they devote their staunchest efforts to that truth.