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Rabindranath’s Gitanjali
‘Like a flute of reed for Thee to fill with music’
A.U.M. Fakhruddin
Perhaps no other modern poet has enunciated the inconceivable spiritual world as well as the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Supreme High — the Almighty as lucidly as Rabindranath Tagore did. He discovered poetry in all people’s hearts; and it is necessary for them, as he says, “as much as possible to express their feelings.” For this they must have a “medium, moving and pliant, which can refreshingly become their own, age after age.” In his words, beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the universal being; truth, the perfect comprehension of the universal mind.
COSMIC ORDER: In the circuitously winding notions of ‘there is no cosmic order’, ‘there is cosmic order but no cosmic ordering power’, and ‘there is cosmic order and ordering power, but the power is not divine’, Tagore was an unwavering and resolute theist having belief in ‘there is cosmic order and divine power.’ A master of mystic poetry himself, he had profound adoration for Sufism and the great Persian poets like Hafiz. This adulation for spirituality Tagore inherited from his father Maharshi Devendranath Tagore. He looked for the universality of humanity in the Upanishad and other scriptures and religious texts. In the pursuit for knowing the inner self, Tagore turned to Upanishads time and again. The Upanishads are based not upon theological reasoning, but on experience of saintly life.
It is natural for contemporary readers to be confused and perplexed at the baffling use of ‘affianced’, ‘fiancée’, ‘flame’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘betrothed’ and so on suggesting sensuous images perceived by senses, not felt by intellect or spirit.
Tagore repeatedly resorted to the Upanishads whose basis is experience of spirituality, not theological reasoning. His adulation is passionate and extreme; in supplication he supplicates and prostrates seeking God’s blessing —- Tagore touches God’s ‘feet’. In Gitanjali we come across ‘thy feet’ more than seven times. For instance, “In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.” Again, “My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for Thee to fill with music.”
Liberal in thought and ideals, Tagore extended affability to the intellectually oriented personalities. A many-splendoured personality possessing a liberal mind, Tagore embraced all that is heart-warming. Inclusive in frame of mind and deportment he was n quintessence of coalescence, a synthesis. Notwithstanding disapproval of some green-eyed writers, contemporary of the revolutionary poet Kazi Nazrul Islam who appeared in the Bengali literary firmament, Tagore extended his profound affection thus: “Our literature claims you (Nazrul)”, dedicated his verse play Vasanta and quite robustly argued in favour of Nazrul’s bold and potent style of poetry hitherto unknown. Poet Dr Allama Iqbal and Tagore were close friends. No wonder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah —- whose favourite writers were Shakespeare and Alexandre Dumas —- wrote one of the most remarkable condolence messages on Tagore’s death.
When it comes to theism vis-à-vis faith in divinity or a supernatural Being or omnipresence of omnipotent God, modern enlightened individuals encounter enquiry based on logic distinguishing acceptable forms of argumentation from those that are not, as they search for empirical evidence. That is an eternal discourse involving a labyrinth of complex obscurity relating to the Big Bang theory, atheism, deism, monotheism, pantheism, polytheism, henotheism, agnosticism and so forth. The concept of theism —- denoting the belief in an all-powerful “perfectly good immaterial person, who has created the world and humans in his own image” including animate and inanimate objects —- does survive and dominate. Despite arguments adherents of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and theistic varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism far outnumber those who negate them religion has its sway on man.
SEARCH FOR THE GREAT UNKNOWN: Take for instance a great scientist’s passionate theistic search. In the March, 2002, issue of Bible Code Digest, author Michael Drosnin wrote that Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived, searched for codes in the Bible. The greatest scientist until today, Albert Einstein wrote in his letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”; Einstein believed in a ‘personal God’, not in the conventional sense of God.
A self-effacing and reclusive figure, Isaac Newton studied the Bible daily and believed that God created everything, including the Bible. He believed that the Bible was true in every respect. Throughout his life he continually tested biblical truth against the physical truths of experimental and theoretical science and never observed a contradiction, according to his many biographers.
On Tagore’s Gitanjali (Song Offerings), so wrote W.B. Yeats: “We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics—-all dull things in the doing—-while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity. He often seems to contrast life with that of those who have loved more after our fashion, and have more seeming weight in the world, and always humbly as though he were only sure his way is best for him: `Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.”
In Gitanjali the poet says:
“Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the clothes of the humble among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest company with the companionless among the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost.
There is passionate quest for the connotation of humanity’s universality in the following song:
“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.”
Tagore was known to Europe and to mankind in 1912 when the English translation of Gitanjali was published. He found a second homeland in the consciousness of the West and the entire mankind. It was at Rothenstein’s home were his Song offerings was read with enthusiasm by Yeats to an audience which included Ernest Rhys, May Sinclair, and C. F. Andrews.
REFLECTING ON THE HEREAFTER: Composed in the form and diction of songs the Gitanjali poems are distinctly devotional with a mystic overtone. It was this period (1910-1014) in which the Gitimalya and the Gitali were produced. For the poet the time was one of bereavement: soon after the death of his wife in 1902 his second daughter died in 1903 and four years later his youngest son also passed away. Thinking deeply about the world hereafter, the poet persistently practised planchette for some time and invoked the spirit of his son Shamindranath, his wife and other deceased members of the family, may be obtained by inward honesty and cultivation of inner life. Secondly, he yearned for a holy or whole development of life. Finally, the poet felt that there should be a positive attitude of sympathy for all.
Though a profound sense of religion permeated through the entire life of Rabindranath, he was not orthodox in his religious views. Devendranatih Tagore was a serious student of the Upanishads and the Sufi mystics. It was the period when Persian was widely rea and the family was acquainted with the Persina poets. Even Raja Rammohan Roy’s Tohfatul Muahhidin (1803) was written in Persian language with an introduction in Arabic. At any rate the poet imbibed from his father the values of the monotheistic Brahmo dharma and a deep sense of the unity of life.
From his early boyhood he was able to discover the relation of man with nature which afforded him an opportunity to leave a treasury of uncommon lyrics and lyric poetry. His domestic environment in a sense shaped his mind and served as the binding principle of his life. Mysticism is the experience by which a person achieves knowledge of God through direct aware ness or personal intuition. Believing that religion is founded on intuition the mystic sys that all attempts to prove the existence of God through logic and scientific reasoning lead finally to objects in time and space thus leaving the fundamental question unanswered.
Some years ago Abu Sayeed Ayub, said in a speech with a note of sarcasm that unless “Tagore is removed from the mind of West Bengal, Marxism can not be effectively established here. (Jijnasa, Vol. 3, No. 1) We should remember that Tagore did not express himself in hymns mystic poem and lyrics alone. His greatness as well as his vastness is literally immeasurable. Few poets of the world have been so widely honoured and celebrated throughout the globe.
The writer is Associate Editor of the Holiday.
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