Letters From a Young Poet 1887 1895
Page 39
234
Shilaidaha
4 October 1895
With the rain and the clouds gone, it’s turned out to be a very beautiful day. Today the śarat season has been properly established. The word ‘beautiful’ is used often for many different purposes—that’s why the word has become almost unusable; yet there aren’t that many words that one can use instead of it. Whatever it is, today is a precious and rare day—my heart is completely full with this light, this silence, this clear, white, transparent sky. Some unknown magician has stroked a nectar-filled intoxicant upon my eyes with tender hands, so that this still river in mid-afternoon and the sandbank on the other shore embroidered with glad kāś flower forests seem to me as pleasurable as a distant memory. I’m filled with a very selfish regret when I think that I will not be able to access these deep śarat days as completely as this when other people arrive on the boat. Perhaps it’s in anticipation of that impending interruption that today’s enjoyment of silence and solitude is all the more intense. It’s as if the hurt and proud companion of my exile, with her tender, steadfast gaze, has come to bid me farewell. It’s as if she says to me, ‘What’s the point of this domesticity and these ties with your relatives—I am what you have been meditating upon for all time, I am the beloved of all your past lives, your only familiar acquaintance among all the numberless fragments of your eternal lives—do not, for any reason, neglect my precious company, for your inner soul does not receive the ultimate fruits of beauty, happiness or sorrow from any other hand than mine.’ But all these words will sound unreal and baseless before the present workplace and the real world—although if you look at it from a distance and review the matter a little deeply, you will see that it’s not such an invalid thought after all. It is no small thing for me to keep the layers of my soul watered in the abundant peace of this śarat. If I go and stay at some inaccessible place in the interests of the jute business, people will praise me, and my sense of duty too will be at peace, but if I disappear for a few days without any work, then it’s difficult not to make either myself or others anxious. All that gives me the deepest satisfaction and pleasure in this life is stored in this sort of moment of solitude and beauty alone—it’s become impossible for me to gather that in a fragmentary or diluted way from the social world. A new truth is rising gradually from the depths of my heart—I get only its merest hint. For me, it is a permanent everyday resource, the pure liquid gold extracted from the mines of my entire life experience—the crop of nectar within all my sorrow, grief and pain—if I can obtain it in a clear, expressive and dependable form, it is more to me than all my money, status, fame, happiness—even if I don’t obtain it completely, just orienting the natural and necessary flow of my heart in that direction is something of a major accomplishment. If I were always happy, if I had attained all that I wished for after having completed all the work of my days to spend my days in ease, how little would I have got out of this human birth—what would I have known!
235
Shilaidaha
4 October 1895
Nowadays the days have turned extremely sweet—the breeze is cool, the sky is bright, the shoreline is green, the river is calm, the heart is a refuge for dreams, there’s little work, all my writing has ceased, the holidays are all around, and beauty flows both within and without. The gurgle of the water seems to have somebody’s very tender tones of love mixed in it; the clear blue sky too is bent with the weight of affection, and the calm waters are full of queries of love; all these colours—this deep brownish-orange [geruā] of the water, the white of this shore, the green of the other shore, the blue of the sky, the gold of the sun—all this shines in the rays of śarat in so many outfits and with such smiling glances! The entire sky, like an infinite heart, seems to hold me in its embrace. The astonishing thing is that day after tomorrow when there will be a crowd of people over here, all this will seem to not be here at all—when men arrive, nature seems not to find a place in nature any more. Man takes up so much space, wastes so much!
236
Kushtia
5 October 1895
Who is it who tells me to look at everything with depth and seriousness, who inclines me towards listening to the ancient music of this world with so much attention and absorption, who recites a mantra of melancholy over me so that all my restlessness fades away day by day, allowing me to experience all my finest and most forceful connections with the outside in this secluded, silent, alive and self-conscious way! I have starved often and for long periods in this life to keep penance—it’s a result of this tapasyā [meditation] that the world’s limitless and mysterious depth is almost always spread like an ocean before me. No good is done to man if his heart is gratified at every moment—that only produces a limited amount of happiness and wastes an unnecessary number of ingredients, and more time is spent on the preparation rather than the enjoyment. But if you live your life by practising austerity, you will see that even a little bit of happiness is a lot, and that happiness is not the only pleasurable thing on earth. If you want to keep the heart’s faculties of sight, sound, touch and thought vigilant, if you want the ability to receive all that you can receive to remain sharp, you must keep the heart always hungry—you have to deprive yourself of abundance. I have kept something Goethe said always in mind—it sounds simple, but to me it seems very deep—
Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren.
Thou must do without, must do without.
Not only food for the heart, outer pleasures and comforts and things too make us inert—it is only when everything outside is scant that you can find yourself. That’s why the relative comfort of Calcutta begins to prick me after a short while, as if its small pleasures and enjoyments were making it difficult for me to breathe.
Yet tapasyā is not something I have wanted of my own will, happiness is very dear to me, but since god has forcibly created in me an inclination towards tapasyā, maybe he wants some special results from me; at the end of it all—dried, ground-to-dust, burnt, scattered—perhaps something hard will remain from this life that will endure. Sometimes I can feel a shadowy premonition of this. The dharma we get from the śāstras never becomes my dharma; it is only a sort of habitual bond with it that develops over time—for me it’s only the dharma that is crystallised in the unbearable heat within my life that is the real thing. I can’t explain this to anybody else, and there’s no need to either—they will not be able to understand the inner meaning of it, and even if they do they’ll distort it—but to take that and allow it to grow within one’s self is man’s best evidence of his humanity. You give birth to it in the greatest pain, give your own blood to make it live—and then, even without having been completely happy in this life, it might be possible to die contented:
Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren.
237
Kushtia
6 October 1895
I’m letting my days float away one by one in a stream of laziness like Rathi’s paper boats. Only occasionally do I compose a song or half a song, and then I sit on the chair in an idle way, humming the tune; I keep forgetting the tune and I make it again, and then I remain lying there, curled up in this sweet-memory-filled, melancholy-soft śarat season. I don’t quite know when I’ll be able to tighten my belt and get down to some serious work. A breath rises from this vast water and riverbank and falls upon my body—a very intimate and live presence full of life and love and feeling has attached itself to me, both within and without, and I just cannot tell it to go. This unbounded, light-filled blue sky seems to be bent over my heart, the light has entered my blood, the all-enveloping silence has embraced my breast with both hands, a tender, tear-wet calm kisses my eyes, my forehead—I’m encircled by an all-encompassing yet secluded beauty. Everybody has left their work and come home for the Puja holidays, and this is my home too—my home-body snatches away my exercise books and says, ‘You’ve worked a great deal, now stop for a while.’ I too comply and stop without protest; after this, work will
get a hold of me at some time and grab me by the throat—then this home-body of mine, this mistress of my holidays, will have disappeared and it will be impossible to find any trace of her. Nowadays, I frequently think to myself that I shall sink the Sādhanā, monthly and quarterly, in the waters of the Padma and leave. But I know that even if I sink it, it shall drag me along in its wake.
238
Shilaidaha
10 October 1895
I cannot say that I have attained what is ordinarily called religion in a very clear or firm way within me, but, increasingly, there are times when I can feel the living thing that has gradually been created in the interiors of my mind. This is not a specific belief of any kind but a secret awareness, a new inner sense. I can quite see that gradually I will be able to establish a certain proportionate balance of my own within myself; I will be able to give my life—my joys and sorrows, outside and inside, beliefs and behaviour—a certain totality. I can’t say whether what they write in the śāstras is true or false, but those truths are often completely inapplicable to me—really, it’s fair to say they have no relevance for me whatsoever. My ultimate truth is that which I will be able to construct with my entire life in a complete form. When we experience all of life’s joys and sorrows in a scattered and evanescent way, we don’t quite understand this limitless mystery of creation within us—just as one cannot understand the unity of feeling and meaning in a verse if you begin to spell each word aloud separately. But once you experience the unbroken source of unity of this creative power within yourself, you can feel your connection with this eternal, created universe; then I comprehend that just as the planets and stars and moon and sun have been created as they whirl around through time, there is a certain creation going on within me as well from the beginning of time—my joys and sorrows, desires and pain have taken their own place within it—I don’t know what will come of it, because we don’t know even a single particle of dust, but when I connect my own flowing life with the eternal life that is outside of me, I can see that all of life’s sorrow too may be collected within a larger source of joy—I am present, I am functioning, I am going on—these are the things I then understand as a large, vast affair. I am and, along with me, everything else is; without me not even an atom or molecule could exist in this limitless world; the connection I have with this calm, beautiful śarat morning is no less than the intimate connection I have with my relatives; that’s why this light-filled space soaks up my inner soul in this way—otherwise, would it have been able to touch my heart even fractionally? Would I have been able to feel its beauty? Would I have been able to see all my dreams and desires reflected so completely within it? The everlasting secret connection between me and this life of the world is evidenced in the diverse language of colour, smell and song—all around us, the never-ending manifestation of this language rocks our hearts in seen and unseen ways—the conversation continues day and night.
239
Shilaidaha
15 October 1895
The sun is blazing down, the water shimmers, there’s a slight winter breeze blowing, the river water is as still as a mirror, occasionally one or two boats pass by with a splashing sound. If I were alone I would be lying, engrossed, on a long armchair near the window—I would daydream, I would be able to hear the deep notes of the Bilāwalī rāginī that is within this sky so bright with sunlight, and I would feel my own existence dissolved, spread across, rocked in the waves of this sunlight, water and breeze—I would experience myself lying down on a bed of unfragmented, endless time—I would feel myself flow in the chatter and gurgle of the ever-rippling waterfall of life that wells up in the form of grass and shrubs, leaves and creepers, birds and animals throughout this world—my own personal envelope of personhood would dissolve in this śarat sunshine and become a part of this clear sky, and I would be beyond time and place. But, right now, in this situation, it is difficult to quite immerse myself in such a self-forgetful feeling. That I am who I am, that is, someone’s father, someone’s husband, someone’s friend, Mr so-and-so—all sorts of evidence to that effect is present everywhere.
240
Shilaidaha
16 October 1895
Last night, I couldn’t sleep till very late, and lay on the jolly boat for a long time—after that I came to the boat and sat on a bench at the bedroom window and spent a night all alone after a long time. The river water was as still as a mirror—the light from the stars had made the night’s darkness transparent; it was as if the entire universe could be seen through a dark glass. Although it was very late, the night was not completely silent because the two women who were in my neighbouring boat were talking and laughing as they lay on the bed, and a couple of boats had arrived and were creating a commotion—the other shore looked peaceful under the cover of the calm darkness—the tall coconut trees in the garden of our wooden bungalow were standing still like sentries, and you could hear the sound of a kīrtan being sung far away. There was no breeze at all. The clusters of the white flowers of kāś on our deserted sandbank seemed to softly nod off to sleep—eventually, after sitting there for a long time, when my head too seemed to bend down with the weight of sleep, I went to bed. This morning, after having had my bath, I feel as if I haven’t slept enough. The ennui my body feels is pleasant—I can quite see that right now if I could stretch myself out on the bed and pick up a travel book and feel this slow winter breeze on my body, I should find it very relaxing. That’s why I really like this feeling of slight tiredness in the morning—one can abandon all one’s work without regret and take a holiday for half a day. Nowadays my holidays are rationed—but I don’t like this state of uselessness. When the body is fully fit, it searches out work on its own, making men restless. But today it’s quite calm, feeling its own spinal cord to be a bit of a weight, and will be relieved if it can be spread out upon the bed.
241
On the way to Patishar
22 November 1895
My boat makes its way through this small river—I’ve been alone the whole day, not having had to say a single word to anybody. The river here has almost no current, and the floating moss emits a new sort of fragrance. The sails fill with a gently pleasant breeze—the boat is moving very slowly, a particular soft light upon the water, and on the near shore, a succession of many different vivacious green colours and scenes of secluded villages all ranked together gradually draw me out of my own ego, untying life’s complicated knots one by one and calming the sharp edges of my self-absorbed heart. The reverberation of all the rough handshakes of Calcutta still courses jarringly through my nerves—but I can feel that gradually all of it will come to a stop, and I will know the world as eternal and vast, and all my connections with the world will become simple and easy. When you first jump into this calm, deep solitude, you feel the pull of your many ties to the world and, for a while, it hurts—but then, when I feel the embrace of a limitless affection within this deep comfort, when I feel myself intimately bound in this extremely intense, private, heartfelt relationship, the accumulated warmth in my innermost self breathes a deep sigh and attains freedom; then I understand that ‘happiness is very simple and easy’, that true fulfilment resides in the depth of one’s own heart, and that no unkind fate can deprive me of it. The moment you step out of your ego you can see the vast, joy-filled world spread out before you, full of life, youth, beauty—then I feel I am blessed to have been born in this world, I am blessed that I shall be in this world for eternity—all that I know, all that I have got, all that I have felt, is such an astonishing amount for this one heart!
242
Patishar
25 November 1895
We’re such domesticated animals that the moment we take a couple of steps outside of Calcutta and arrive at Kaligram, we think we’ve accomplished something really great. Our feet are tied to the peg of our homes on such a short leash that the slightest movement pulls you back—what’s the point of all this writing of letters and waiting for letters! No doubt my
family hasn’t fallen into a bottomless ocean the moment I’ve come away. God has not given the sons of Bengalis the right to wander about freely and joyfully across the vast universe, we are all cows in cowsheds—at the most, the village field is the outer limit of our wanderings—and even then the cowherd is always behind you, stick in hand. Last evening I was reading an essay on Goethe by Dowden—there I saw that Goethe had left everything behind to go and spend two years in Italy in order to immerse himself in art analysis and the appreciation of beauty and had gained something of a new life and new riches in the process, and how this experience had instantly produced amazing results, transforming his talent and endowing his entire temperament with immense peace and a great sense of worth. Reading this agitates the hearts of prisoners like ourselves—then one thinks one has not managed to be even the half of what one could have been, that there is a lot to learn and prepare for yet. I think—if I had the good fortune of Goethe, if I hadn’t been born in Bengal, if there were appropriate food for the soul to be found here, then I would have attained immortality in the entire world—at present I am largely an object of pity, and poor. If I can, I too shall set out into this world at some point—that’s what I really desire.