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Masti Venkatesa Iyengar, the renowned Kannada author, in his illuminating English book, Rabindranath Tagore, has admirably defined a poet thus: “Speaking the finest thought, yet representing the common man and understood by him, a poet is the voice of civilization as no one else can be. At his best he speaks not only for his art but for all art, and not for art only but for philosophy and religion, for economics and sociology, for history and science. He is not lost in any of them, yet each of them has its place in him.� Of course, this profound observation in the context cannot but unmistakably point to the poet Tagore and his unique comprehensiveness of vision. Further, there is no doubt also that realisation of beauty is the essential objective of all art and all science.

The intense longing which, as a tei1der child, the poet felt for the rain-water dripping from leaves outside, led him to befriend nature from his earliest years and even roam the Himalayan forest alone while on a visit with his father to the mountains. To live in full communion with every form oflife in the universe, to inhale the breath of the seasons and to experience the living presence of God everywhere, became the poet’s prime occupation. The delight of touch, hearing and sight did not stop with his sensory enjoyment alone, but brought to him or bore him the delight of contact with the Immanent Being.

Tagore’s mystic cravings drove him to proclaim on every occasion that deliverance as conceived by him was not in renuncia­tion, but in the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. By natural transmutation, as it were, his physical enjoy­ment of beauty yielded place tospiritual experience. Reviewing his mind, one is sure to be struck by the range and spaciousness of his poetic inspiration. At any rate, the quest of the beautiful is reflected in his poetry as evident at different stages of human endeavour. Like his predecessors in his land, Valmiki and Kalidasa, he was easily en rapport with nature in all her moods and variety. Symbolical of personal experience, his ‘message of the forest� assumes the distinctiveness of Indian thought through the ages, from the Upanishads to the times classical poetry.

His devotion to a Supreme Power never dimmed his abiding faith in man. “The past is for men; the future is for man� were words oft on his lips. He loved his life and all life. He venerated Bharata-mataand all countries. He looked to Heaven for comfort and also to earth. He immersed himself in all life, lest he should be lost in his own.

It is evident indeed from even a cursory glance at the long life of Tagore and the main output of his genius that, unless he had been writing all the time, he could not have given birth to so many works. But it is also a fact that he had to his credit substantial achievement in other spheres, like the founding of the Visvabharati and Sriniketan. They were doubtless his attempts to translate his early dreams into actualities. But he was, even while employed in these stupendous tasks, aware of his own inalienable mission to be a poet and a poet alone.

He said that his God will love him only for his songs, thereby indicating that any other effort of his call only claim God’s appreciation and stop there. Again, he more than once referred to the tiny reed in his palm through the holes of which he could blow the breath of his poesy, or in his intimate musings even alter the imagery to denote that the breath was that of God which, through his frail frame, accomplished itself in song after song. In one of his letters he condemned himself for the unnecessary deviation he was guilty of, when taking to organisational work instead of remaining loyal to his main preoccupation � a writer’s role.

One gathers from all these how conscious he was of his responsibilities as a writer. To the last of his breath even on his sick-bed, he was found composing lines. He could lay down his pen only when the mortal mist gathered round him. People there were who felt his voluminous writings could have shown some restraint. Such critics forgot that he was not pouring out his heart for the sake of the convenience of his assessors. A sympathetic and understanding critic like Edward Thompson too shared the view that had Rabindranath written less, or in other words, had not certain of his works seen the light of day in between certain others which, according to him, marked the milestones of progress for a great artist like Tagore, he would perhaps have more conspicuously maintained his level of excellence as a writer. The poet in one of his wee-bits of poetic fancy, Stray Birds, answered such critics thus: “The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.â€� The analogy is effective in throwing the so-called critic into utter ridicule. On the other hand, Tagore was so much imbued with the beauty of life around that he expressed his inability to remain quiet without pouring himself out on all sides. The °­´Ç°ì¾±±ô’spurpose in flooding the entire woodland with its full-throated warblings was aptly drawn by way of comparison to prove how joyful the bird should be to fill its environment with melodies, however meaningless it all might be to uncaring ears. To imagine that, because all that the poet wrote was not equally enjoyable, he should have plied his pen with care to suit the intaking capacity of his readers, is like evaluating solar energy in space as a sheer waste, considering that a reduced quantity of it would be sufficient for the needs of life on earth. To echo once again Masti Venkatesa Iyengar, “to a writer who produced so much that pleased many, we may allow the privilege of producing a little even if it pleased no one but himself.â€�

To view Tagore, therefore, as one who arrogated to himself much that was beyond his reach is to represent him incorrectly. He never for once decried others because they did not produce anything. He never refused to mingle with his fellowmen because of his absorbing pre-occupation with poetry and his own literary career. On the other hand he was greatly impressed with the fact that it was unbecoming of anyone to give up any little of life or one’s own duties, in order that he might serve his God exclusively. To make room for God, he argued, man need not push a fellow creature away. Indeed, when the tiny heart yields space for God to enter it, simultaneously it makes room for the whole world. In his inimitably fascinating way he said that when earthly kings come to a place they bring guards to keep people away; but when the king of kings come to a heart he brings the world with him. The profundity of the observation can scarcely escape anyone of maturity of thought and conscious of responsibilities, as a writer, towards others. If a writer, true to his salt, searches for truth in everything he comes across, he will only become more and more expansive and ultimately nothing that gets integrated with his personality could be identified as bearing the stamp of separateness or narrowness.

Tagore was no exception to the general rule of poets. To him, as to others of his noble lineage, the face of nature and the he art of man alike produce genuine inspiration. Beauty in nature and love in man are counterparts of the same attraction, so far as poets are concerned. To him again who was so much immersed in life, no part in that vast palace could be closed. In his quest of the elusive thing called beauty, everyone is liable to forget that it is a simple fact of nature attainable without any great effort. The story goes that the poet sat one evening reading a book. His heart felt dry and he thought that beauty was a fraud which a trader of words had fabricated. He then closed the book, put out the lamp in the room, only to discover that the moment the light in the study went out, the moonlight that was all the time flooding the space around entered the place through the window. He wondered why such lovely moonlight was unable to make itself felt by him before such a small lamp in the room. He then pitied its voice, which kneads the heart of earth into ineffable tranquility, should have been obscured by the words of a book in his hands.

To ignore the realisation that life is too short to be little is a crime according to the poet. In one of his poems addressed to the earth, he extols its patience. This earth has never shown tiredness or exhaustion to fill the hunger of its children. It does everything in order to contribute to the joy of its children. The joy no doubt is there, but it is tainted with sorrow. The toys supplied to the children break, because so flimsy are they. Further, if the children crave for more and more, the earth is unable to cope with their demands, can we, therefore, abandon the earth? No, he says, the smile of the mother, tinged through with a shadow of pain, remains beautiful yet to her children. In so many ways he pleads thus for life on earth as capable of giving man everything.

There were detractors of the poet in Bengal as well as outside. There were many then, as there are also plenty today, to fling their remarks at the poet’s un-understandable thoughts. Robert Lynd, the essayist, once said that great poetry will cease to be written if poets cease to be men for whom an invisible world exists. But more carefully Tagore puts down in lines thus:          ­

“I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.�

He was obviously thinking of his erstwhile carping critics. Sensitive to criticism as a writer always is, Tagore wrote in one of his letters to a friend from abroad: “I must not feel too far above my critics. When I say ‘I don’t care� let nobody believe it� We know many a person either trades upon others� views as if his own, or begins to exaggerate his favourable reactions out of all proportion to the real value of any piece of writing. Tagore never for once shared with others such an outlook. He was just, where it was easier to be generous. A genuine writer, to him, can never forfeit his place in the scheme of life. When praise overwhelm­ed the poet he humorously recalled how, years , in his own case, praise and blame were of the proportions of land and sea respectively on the face of the earth. He only wished his over-enthusiastic admirers to remember the times when he was left severely alone with his ‘far-fetched allegories� and ‘baffling mystical outpourings�.

Alive as he was to the claims of the present, he never withdrew his glance from the past glories of the land. Thuswas he induced to go to the Upanishads, the early history of Buddhism and the tales of heroism of Rajputs, Maharattas and Sikhs. Being a born story-teller he could move hearts and keep them captive to the nobility of great deeds and the purity of selfless achievements, as embedded in old stories awaiting his magic touch to revive their significance to a wearied nation such as his, and a world plunged in utter materialism. Again, no other writer of eminence of the East or the West has produced so much concerning the child-mind. It is even doubtful, if child poetry anywhere else in the vast ocean of world’s literature, has sounded more exquisite. Indeed the modern sophisticated writer, who is in desperate search of a happy theme can take a lesson from Tagore whose pitcher, owing to constant observation of life, is ever filled with fresh themes to be poured out in an unending stream.

While on the modern writer, it may not be out of place to recall some of Tagore’s hard or even harsh words about him. Abnormality that sometimes attracts writers as a garb in which to appear utterly original, came in for his unequivocal condemna­tion. He hated being out of the ordinary in any of his thoughts. While being unique in his feelings which were never uncommon, he spurned the tricks to evoke surprises in his readers. To indicate what he exactly had in mind while speaking or abnormality, he once referred to the craze of a writer who described the sudden appearance of stars in the evening sky as the eruption of a disease in a bloated body. Lest he should be deemed or dubbed commonplace, the writer evidently resorted to something which, though from the point of realism may not be wholly inappropriate imagery, was yet, according to the poet, outrageously virile in its unshrinking incivility. This, the poet concluded, is not art but an attempt to create an illusion of forcefulness through over­emphasis on abnormality. He warned his readers against this tendency to be sensational at the expense of originality.

The variety of experience that was Tagore’s paved the way also for his expressing himself in a variety of literary forms. His genuineness never shrank at any bright innovation, on the mere ground of its unfamiliarity. At the same time his inner sense of rhythm and his wholesome imagination would not approve of the sensational and the bizarre, purely because of their unusualness. All forms of literary writing, songs, plays, essays, one-act dramas, dialogues, satires, short-stories, novels, letters, tiny epigrams and what not, engaged his scrupulous attention. He was so full of life, so conscious of his freedom amidst the plenty of God’s manifestations, that originality and imagination, like wings, carried him aloft to regions of rare experience.

To be true to his first love, namely writing, he remained loyal always to the cause of writers. It behoves all thinking men, and especially writers, wherever they be, not to forget the purposive­ness and determination of his choice in life. Because of his sympathy towards all forms of life, nothing was taboo to his interest. No nation came in for his unkindness. The entire universe spoke to him with one voice: “take me, take me all I am.� The writer in him never suppressed the naturalness that is the birthright of every sentient being. He loved the timid grass and he adored the waning moon, all for itself. He spared no unbecoming traits in others as well as in his own countrymen. His impartiality was misunderstood till people realised his full stature and his high proportions. His voice became vibrant when he talked of man’s power and God’s grace. His tone got strained when he found, in the grip of avarice and greed, man trying to molest his fellowmen and make his priceless soul his abject slave. He would yield to none his birthrights of freedom to live, freedom to think, freedom to act and freedom to serve his God. It was a sad reflection of his that the West, from which he once believed much good could issue forth for the regeneration of the world, was becoming bankrupt of all high ideals. He therefore turned with hope only to the East, from where the sun ever rises in the splendour of ceaseless striving towards peace and tolerance for the whole world.

What then is the sum-total of Tagore’s significance to writers the world over? One cannot improve upon the way he equipped himself to represent the best from life. That will be a most cherish­able lesson and a spontaneous directive for us to follow. The writer needs no greater ideal than to reach everyone through the medium of his own thoughts. If at all he wishes for profits, again his own thoughts and reflections will bring him untold harvests of experience the like of which he cannot afford to substitute by any other thing of value. To close then with one of his poems. Tagore will ever remain a shining beacon to generations who follow a literary life.

“Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world.

“It was my songs that taught me all the lessons ever learnt, they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.

“They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and at last, to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?�
(Gitanjali)

Need we have doubts of Tagore’s reaching the palace gates of immortality?

–Reproduced from Tagore a Master Spirit.
(Published by Triveni Publishers, 1964)