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Rabindranath the Artist (I) TO-DAY we just want to
study Rabindranath the man and not the poet Rabindranath. The poet may raise a
slight objection – he may say that if we want truly to evaluate him we must
consider him as a poet. What he has done or not done as a man is insignificant;
he has stored up in his poetry whatever eternal and everlasting was there in
him, in his true being and real nature. The rest is of no real significance or
value. In that respect he may not have a good deal of difference from others,
any marked speciality. The greatest recognition of a poet lies in his poetical
works. To give prominence to his other qualities is to misunderstand and
belittle him. But
in dealing with Rabindranath the man we are not going to concern ourselves with
his worldly and household life. We are going to study the real man in him whose
one aspect has manifested in the poet Rabindranath. Perhaps that real man may
have had his best and greatest manifestation in his poetry; still the truth,
the realisation, the achievement of the inner soul that wanted to reveal
themselves through that manifestation are our topic. Beauty
is the chief and essential thing in the poetic creation of Rabindranath. He
appreciates beauty and makes others do the same in a delightful manner. He has
made his poetical work the embodiment of all beauties culled from all places little
by little, whether in the domain of nature or in the inner soul, or in body,
mind and speech. Beautiful
Page – 147 Mellowness of word and the gliding rhythm have perhaps reached
their acme. Charming is his imagination. Varied and fascinating are the
richness and intricacy of thought and the fineness and delicacy of feeling. The
themes of his narratives are attractive in themselves. He has made them more
beautiful and decorative by clothing them in the most graceful words of subtle
significance. The mango buds fall in showers, The cuckoo sings. Intoxicated is the night, Drunk with moonlight. "Who are you that come to me, O compassionate one?" Asks the woman. The mendicant replies: "O Vasavadutta, the time is ripe To-night; so to you I
come." Or The stars drop in the lap
of the sky From the chain hanging down to your breast. The heart is overwhelmed
with ecstasy In the core of Man's being: Blood runs riot in his
veins. Suddenly your girdles give
way On the horizon, O naked
beauty! What
a visionary world of matchless and unique beauty is unveiled before the mind's
eye! That is the true Rabindranath, the creator of such magic wonders. Perfect
'perfection of beauty is inherent in the nature of his inner being. The
advance he has made in respect of knowledge and power has been far exceeded by
that of beauty. Knowledge and power have a subordinate place in his
consciousness.
Page – 148 They have been the
obedient servitors of beauty. Rabindranath's soul seems to have descended from
the world of the Gandharvas who are the divine Masters of music. This Gandharva
saw the light of day to express and spread something of real beauty in the
earthly life. His mission and performance were to manifest beauty in all
possible ways. Many have contributed to the creation of beauty in poetry and
there are works which are supreme in poetic beauty. There is no doubt that Tagore is one of the foremost among them. But the especiality of Rabindranath
lies in the fact that the poet in his inner soul permeated his whole being.
Even if he had not written any poetry his life itself
would have been a living work of beauty. He himself was handsome in person.
Sweet was his speech. Attractive was his decorous demeanour. Beauty was
stamped on his inner nature and outer activities.¹ He was all along creating
beauty around him and. proceeding from beauty through higher beauties towards
the supreme Beauty. It
has been already said that Rabindranath's inner Being was a creator of beauty.
But this beauty he has expressed more through the vibrations of rhythm than
through the modelling of form except in some of his supreme utterances. We
notice that the greater stress of his fine art has been laid on movement than
on static beauty and more on the gesture of limbs than on their limned outline.
We find that his poetic creation has been more akin to the art of music and of
the dance than that of sculpture and architecture. He has attained to sheer
beauty through movement and not through immobility, not so much through sight
as through sound. The poet eagerly wants to listen to and seize upon the tunes
of rhythms that overflow in a silent urge behind the external forms or
structures, the life-vibrations that have manifested in the creation echoing
with ¹ Here we are reminded of the
words that Rabindranath himself used in his eulogy of Ramendra Sundar Trivedi:
"O Ramendra Sundar! beautiful is your heart,
beautiful your speech and beautiful your smile."
Page – 149 sounds.
The poet wants to bring out the suggestiveness behind the significance of
words, the incorporeal import comprised in the sentence otherwise framed in
ordinary words. The poet says: His Face my eyes have not met, Nor have I heard his Voice. At each hush do I hear The sound of his
footsteps. Further: He who is beyond the
flight of mind, His Feet through my songs Do I barely touch, But myself I lose in the
ecstasy of melody. We note that even where he has given a definite form to
beauty he has not put it forward as a fixed point of concentration. He has set
forth beauty in its moving liquid form. For example – The showers come rushing to the fore, The tender paddy plants move to and fro With no respite. The
dance, the rhythmic movement have given whatever form beauty has. On the whole
we can describe the goddess of poetry of Kalidasa as standing, in his own
words, 'immobile like a movement depicted on a picture,' but in the creation
of Rabindranath we see that 'the singing nymph passes by breaking the trance –.' In every turn of all these'
varied forms of cadence and vibration there is an ecstasy, the dying curve of a
soft tune that gathers in its fall all the sweetnesses that the movement
Page – 150 was
carrying – the whole merging as it were into a sea of rich peace and silence.
The poet's eloquence is most intimately married to his silence. On one side,
his vital being, athirst for delight, is overwhelmed with the mass of Nature's
wealth, luxuriant in colours and smells, in peals of laughter and rhythms of
dance; his senses enamoured of beauty are eagerly prone to hug the richness of
external things; he wants to seize upon the Self, God, through the embrace of
the senses and the fivefold life-force. Still, there is the other side where
through all these varied vicissitudes, his aim finally settles in "the
vast peace that lies in the core of peacelessness." In
the midst of his play with the world of action and commotion in which gross
words play about loudly and ruthlessly, often he leaves them behind and in his
ideas and suggestions he climbs up to a subtler plane where the rhythm, the
tune, not the vocable comes to the forefront. The music, the pure music fills
up the background and is not overwhelmed by the concatenation of words and
phrases that lead perhaps to a physical preciseness but also to a certain grossness.
That music has in it a purity, serenity, lightness, sweetness and beauty that
uttered syllables have not. For,
there Unheard voices innumerable Exchange their whispers in
the void. In their silent c1amour Unformed thoughts move
forward Band by band. So the aspiration of the
poet is: I would go with the lyre Of my life to the One In
whose measureless halls
Page – 151 Songs not audible to the ear Are sung
eternally.¹ There is something here
like what the ancient Greeks used to call the music of the spheres. We
discover almost the primal urge of beauty and the fount of rhythm. It seems we
are at the point when the creation began to assume forms at the first
vibrations of life – all proceed from the vibrant life – Sarvam pranam
ejati
nihsrtam – this mantra of the Upanishad was very dear to
Rabindranath and he cited it very often. Rabindranath was a worshipper of
Brahman, but more of the Brahman as the primal sound, the original wave, the
vibrating note that is to manifest in creation. And the unique success he attained
in the cult of this Deity of his heart is the speciality and glory of his
poetical creation. In the following mantra Rabindranath depicts the image of
his Deity as experienced in trance: The note has ceased But it would linger still ceaselessly, The lute plays on although in silence, Although without
necessity. (2) There
is an inner discipline for the attainment of Truth and Good. Truth and Good
were the objects of sadhana to Rabindranath from the aspect of their beauty and
grace. He did not worship them so much for their own sake as because the real
Truth and Good are really and supremely beautiful. And they attracted him only
because of their beauty. ¹ Here we may recall: "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are
sweeter."
Page – 152 Love
is a main theme of his poetry and he is a loving personality. In the terms of
the Vaishnava sadhaka he is a graceful personality, 'Supurusha'. But his love
too is the quintessence of beauty. So his love speaks to him: You have taken me by the
hand to the Elysian garden of bloom, the
abode of immortality – to shine in my eternal youth there, like the Gods. Limitless is my beauty
there. Rabindranath
did not enjoy love for its own sake as did Chandidas. Beauty has found its
highest revelation and acme in love. So he had to become a lover. The ultramodern
experience has separated love from beauty, rather it
is trying to bring about a union with ugliness. In that sense Rabindranath is
very ancient, treading the Eternal Path. The beauty depicted by Rabindranath consists in harmony, synthesis, contentment, serenity and tranquillity. Wherever there is conflict, roughness, crudity, harshness, there no beauty is found, there a rhythm is broken, the flow is hampered, the tune is disturbed, here is some flaw in the movement. It is why Rabindranath's God is supremely beautiful, loving and graceful. And The
entire abode is flooded with the charm of His face. Therefore the daily prayer
to his Beloved is also: Make me pure, bright and beautiful, O
my Lord! And Let all things beautiful in life
resound to the melody of music.
Page – 153 God is God because He is
the golden thread running through all things of the universe. All are
unified in your consciousness wide awake. Rabindranath's
philanthropy or altruism is the outcome of this union; it is brought about by
the attraction of the beauty of this union. The whole creation is adorable, a
desired prize. "We live and move and have our being in the effulgent
delight of the ether." For a supremely sweet harmony pervades the
creation. Rabindranath's ideal of the vast human collectivity has also been
inspired by this sense of harmony. All the nations, all the countries of the
world, keeping' still their speciality and distinction, will stand united with
one another – the human society will thus attain to a flawless beauty. The
rivalry among equals, the tyranny of the superior over the inferior; again, the
slave-mentality of the low before the high – all such abject habits must be
renounced, because they are harsh, ugly and devoid of beauty. Peace, love,
generosity and friendship can make men beautiful individually and collectively. At
the root of Rabindranath's patriotism also there lies the same love for beauty.
The lack of beauty in slavery tortured him more than anything else. The
ugliness of poverty was more unbearable to him than the actual physical
destitution. If he could have viewed the wants of life at their own value like
Mahatma Gandhi then he would have at least once plied the spinning wheel. But
to him ease or affluence by itself has no importance. Affluence would have its
real value if it contributed to the rhythm of life. That is why his patriotism
laid a greater stress on construction than on destruction. To settle things
amicably, instead of attacking the enemy, instead of wrangling with the
foreigners, to put one's own house in order, to repair and beautify was
considered by him a real work to be- done. To build is to create. To create is
to fashion a thing beautifully. The
Page – 154 ideal
of his patriotic society has to foster all limbs of the collective life of the
entire nation, to make it a united organism, to endow it with the beauty of
forms and rhythm in action. So
we say that the beautiful poetry and the poetry of beauty written by him are even
surpassed by the beauty that he brought down into our life, particularly in the
life of Bengal. The whole contribution of Rabindranath is not exhausted by his
poetical works. Firstly, his was the inspiration that formed around him a
world of fine arts, a new current of poetry, painting, music, dance and
theatre. Secondly, his was the life-energy whose vibration created in our
country a refined taste and a capacity for subtle experience. Through his
influence a consciousness has awakened towards appreciation of beauty. Thirdly,
the thing which is, in a way, of greater value is this that if there has been a
gradual manifestation of order and beauty in our ordinary daily life, in dress
and decoration, in our conversation and conduct, at home and in assemblies, in
articles of beauty and their use, then, at the root of it all, directly or
indirectly the personality of Rabindranath was undoubtedly at work. Among
Indians, the Bengalis are supposed to have particularly acquired a capacity
for appreciation of beauty. That this acquisition has been largely due to the
contribution of the Tagore family can by no means be denied. We do not know how
we fared in this respect in the past. Perhaps our sense of beauty was concerned
with the movements of the heart or at most with material objects of art.
Perhaps, we had never been the worshippers of beauty in the outer life like the
Japanese. Yet whatever little we had of that wealth of perfection within or
without had died away for some reason or other. The want of vitality, the
spirit of renunciation, poverty, despair, sloth, an immensely careless and
extreme indiscipline made our life ugly. At length the influence that had
especially manifested around Rabindranath came to our rescue and opened a new
channel to create beauty.
Page – 155 Why
should we speak of our own country alone, why should we try to keep his
influence confined to Bengal or India only? I believe Europe, the West, have
honoured him so much not primarily for his poetry. The modern world, freed from
its life devoid of beauty due to the unavoidable
necessity of technology and machinery of utility and efficiency, was eager at
last to follow in the footsteps of Rabindranath to enter into an abode of peace
and beauty, a garden of Eden.
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