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Mysticism in Bengali Poetry
BENGALI
poetry was born some time towards the end of an era of decline in the
Indian consciousness, almost towards the close of what is called the
Buddhist period, but it was born with a veritable crown on its head.
For it was sheer mystic poetry, mystic in substance, mystic in manner
and expression. The poets were themselves mystics, that is to say
spiritual seekers, sadhaks -they were called Siddhas or
Siddhacharyas. They told of their spiritual, rather occult
experiences in an occult or oblique manner, the very manner of the
ancient Vedic Rishis, in figures and symbols and similes. It was a
form of beauty, not merely of truth-of abstract metaphysical truth
-that rose all on a sudden, as it were, out of an enveloping
darkness. It shone for a time and then faded slowly, perhaps spread
itself out in the common consciousness of the people and continued to
exist as a backwash in popular songs and fables and proverbs. But it
was there and came up again a few centuries later and the crest is
seen once more in a more elevated, polished and dignified form with a
content of mental illumination. I am referring to Chandidasa, who was
also a sadhak poet and is usually known as the father of Bengali
poetry, being the creator of modern Bengali poetry. He flourished
somewhere in the fourteenth century. That wave too subsided and
retired into the background, leaving in interregnum again of a
century or more till it showed itself once more in another volume of
mystic poetry in the hands of a new type of spiritual practitioners.
They were the Yogis and Fakirs, and although of a popular type, yet
possessing nuggets of gold in their utterances, and they formed a
large family. This almost synchronised with
the establishment and consolidation of the Western Power, with its
intellectual and rational
Page - 221 enlightenment, in India. The cultivation and superimposition of this Western or secular light forced the native vein of mysticism underground; it was necessary and useful, for it added an element which was missing before; a new synthesis came up in a crest with Tagore. It was a neo-mysticism, intellectual, philosophical, broad-based, self-conscious. Recently however we have been going on the downward slope, and many, if not the majority among us, have been pointing at mysticism and shouting: "Out, damned spot!" But perhaps we have struck the rock-bottom and are wheeling round. For in the present epoch we are rising on a new crest and everywhere, in all literatures, signs are not lacking of a supremely significant spiritual poetry being born among us. In order to give you a taste of what this poetry is and how it evolved I shall cite samples of the various waves at their crest as they rose from epoch to epoch till today.
The earliest Siddhacharya says:
That comes not down, nor does that go up; That has no second to its self, that has attained absolute fixity. Kanhu says where the mind never cracks, winds are stilled, there dwells the mistress of the house.
or again
This is the seed of Time out of which the Lotus has bloomed, O heroic enjoyer, even like a bee, take in with every breath of yours the honeyed fragrance.
This is mysticism in excelsis and beautiful mysticism. We dive down the centuries and when we come up we find Chandidasa thus greeting us:
There is a shore poised on a shore, Upon that a wave, Waves dwell upon waves -
But a few only know.
Page - 222 or again
It is the lover that knows the sweetness of love; And who is it that pours out this sweetness? Who is it that has abandoned all and become the two and dwells in the Home of Delight?
From sheer symbolism we rise into some kind of mental apprehension of the symbolistic experience. That mental element further gains ground and seeks even an intellectual illumination in the songs of the Bauls and Fakirs that form the next stage of the evolution. Lalan the Fakir says:
It is within this man that the other man dwells; It is Him that saints and sages through the ages had sought and pursued. As the moon is seen in the water But flees the touch of your fingers, Even so ever he dwells Apart and aloof.
In the lotus beyond is his abode, In the lotus with twin petals he is out and astir; One sees all this easily, only when one has ascertained the petals of his lotus.
Now, coming at last to the modern age, in Tagore we have the full-fledged intellectual mysticism. Here is the modem seer and prophet:
Within the finite, 0 Infinite, thou playest thy notes, That is why so sweet is thy manifestation in me.
or again
The incense yearns to melt into the perfume, And the perfume yearns to embrace the incense; The sound seeks to be caught in the rhythm
And the rhythm hastening runs into the sound.
Page - 223 or these lines
I dived into the ocean of forms seeking the pearl of the formless - Oh, I shall no more wander from port to port plying my worn-out bark -
There where rises eternally the song that ears do not hear Shall I go with the harp of my heart into the royal court in fathomless depths.
That is not the end or the nec plus ultra-nothing beyond - for there is a beyond and Sri Aurobindo has shown and taught what it can be like. Here is one daring poet:
Thy firm galaxies Are tracing their script on our forehead. This day, 0 Mother, all the terrestrial illuminations Weave a garland of lights that come from beyond.
or this one, more mystically mystic:
The Bard wheels onward in his sweeping march: He gathers in perfect the soul's obeisances, Urges secreted in the heart of the sun-flower, Hymns limned in her petalled gold!
or these almost surrealistic lines:
The Dark One has put on a golden garland, And on her delicate forehead burns the flame of red sandal - She, the Eternal Memory, from the forgetfulness of earth's depths Kindles the first spark of the word born of the churning -
One great characteristic of these mystics, particularly the older ones, is the conception of the spiritual or divine being as
Page - 224 a human being-the soul, "the man there within this man here," is a human person and the human form has a significant charm which none other possesses. The Spirit, the Divine individualised and concretised in an earth-made man is a blazing experience with the Siddhacharyas and the experience continues down to our days. The Siddhacharyas themselves have added a peculiar, rather strange form to the conception. The soul, the inmost divine being is a woman whom one loves and seeks: she is an outcaste maid who dwells beyond the walls of the city; one, that is to say, the conscient being in us, loves her all the more passionately because she is so. The city means this normally flourishing confine of outer consciousness where we dwell usually; the Divine is kept outside the pale of this inferior nature. To our consciousness that which is beyond it is an obscure, valueless, worthless, miserable non -entity; but to the consciousness of the sage-poet, that is the only thing valuable and adorable. These mystics further say that the true person, the divinity that lies neglected and even despised in our secular life is truly the idol of all worship and when she is accepted, when she puts off her beggarly robes, the obscurities of our mind and heart and senses, then she becomes the mistress of the house, the queen whom none thenceforth can disobey -all the limbs become her willing servitors and adorers. The divine Law rules even the external personality. The significance of the human personality, the role of the finite in the play of the infinite and universal, the sanctity of the material form as an expression and objectification of the transcendent, the body as a function of Consciousness-Force Delight are some of the very cardinal and supreme experiences in Bengali mysticism from its origin down to the present day.
A mysticism that evokes the soul's delights and
experiences in a language that has so transformed itself as to become
the soul's native utterance is the new endeavour
of the poet's Muse. Page - 225
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