Uma
Das Gupta’s intuitively selected and arranged collage
from Tagore’s English writings shapes an unforgettable portrait.
Excerpts
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MY
LIFE IN MY WORDS
Rabindranath Tagore
(Uma Das Gupta, ed)
Penguin Viking
396 pp; Rs 495 |
I still remember
the first magic touch of literature which I experienced when I was a
child and was made to struggle across my lesson in a first primer strewn
with isolated words smothered under the burden of spelling. The morning
hour appeared to me like a once-illumined page grown dusty and faded,
discoloured into irrelevant marks, smudges and gaps, wearisome in its
moth-eaten meaninglessness. Suddenly I came to a sentence of combined
words which may be translated thus:
It rains, the leaves
tremble.
At once I came to
a world in which I recovered my full meaning.
.............................
To employ an epic
to teach language is like using a sword to shave with — sad for
the sword, bad for the chin.
.............................
Does one write
poetry to explain something? Something felt within the heart tries to
find outside shape as a poem. So when, after listening to a poem, anyone
says he has not understood, I am nonplussed. If someone smells a flower
and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing
to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: ‘That
I know, but what does it all mean,’ then one either has to change
the subject, or make it more abstruse by telling him that the scent
is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.
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I want to roam about
and see all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered
nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast
sky for flight |
That words have
meaning is just the difficulty. That is why the poet has to turn and
twist them in metre and verse, so that the meaning can be held somewhat
in check, and the feeling allowed a chance to express itself.
This utterance
of feeling is not the statement of a fundamental truth, or a scientific
fact, or a useful moral precept. Like a tear or a smile, a poem is but
a picture of what is taking place within. If Science or Philosophy may
gain anything from it they are welcome, but that is not the reason of
its being…
The Echo was written
so long ago that it has escaped attention, and I am no longer called
upon to render an account of its meaning. Nevertheless, whatever its
other merits or defects may be, I can assure may readers that it was
not my intention in it to propound a riddle, or insidiously convey any
erudite teaching. The fact of the matter was that a longing had been
born within my heart, and, unable to find any other name, I had called
the thing I desired an Echo.
.............................
Nowadays I keep
repeating the line: ‘Much rather would I be an Arab Bedouin!’
A fine, healthy, strong, and free barbarity... If only I could set utterly
and boundlessly free this hampered life of mine, I would storm the four
quarters and raise wave upon wave of tumult all around; I would career
away madly, like a wild horse, for very joy of my own speed! But I am
a Bengali, not a Bedouin! I go on sitting in my corner, and mope and
worry and argue. I turn my mind now this way up, now the other —
as a fish is fried — and the boiling oil blisters first this side,
then that.
.............................
India has two aspects
— in one she is a householder, in the other a wandering ascetic.
The former refuses to budge from the home corner, the latter has no
home at all. I find both these within me. I want to roam about and see
all the wide world, yet I also yearn for a little sheltered nook; like
a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for flight.
I hanker after
a corner because it brings calmness to my mind. My mind really wants
to be busy, but in making the attempt it knocks so repeatedly against
the crowd as to become utterly frenzied and to keep buffeting me, its
cage, from within. If only it is allowed a little leisurely solitude,
and can look about and think to its heart’s content, it will express
its feelings to its own satisfaction.
.............................
I have nothing
to do directly with politics. I am not a Nationalist, moderate or immoderate
in my political doctrine or aspiration. But politics is not a mere abstraction,
it has its personality and it does intrude into my life where I am human.
It kills and maims individuals, it tells lies, it uses its sacred sword
of justice for the purpose of massacre, it spreads misery broadcast
over centuries of exploitation, and I cannot say to myself, ‘Poet,
you have nothing to do with these facts, for they belong to politics.’
This politics assumes its fullest diabolical aspect when I find all
its hideous acts of injustice find moral support from a whole nation
only because it wants to enjoy in comfort and safety the golden fruits
reaped from the abject degradation of human races.
