O.
M. GOPALA RAO
“Bliss
was in that dawn to be alive
And
to be young was very heaven,”
wrote
the highly excited leader of the romantics on witnessing the French
Revolution, that shook the foundations of the monarchies in the European
continent. After nearly a century and a half, in the far off
“Into
that heaven of freedom
My
father let my country awake.”
It
was a curious similarity in different points of time and place,
there were almost identical forces at work in political, social and religious
spheres, in the continents of Europe and
It
was a climate that impelled the new poets to break away from traditional and
conventional cliches and seek new values and
directions expressive of the urges of the changing
Naturally,
Tagore, the most prominent and even prophetic of this new generation of poets,
gave the call for freedom, reform, and return to nature, in the political,
religious and cultural life of the Asians.
While
it is true that Tagore’s finest poetry is written
under an impelling urge for the divine, the manner of it is strikingly
proximate to and sometimes even identical with that of the leading poets of the
romantic movement like Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley and Keats. The content of Tagore’s major work is kindred to and expressive of the Hindu
Vedantic thought as gleaned from the Upanishads and
the Vaishnava cult as expounded by Jayadeva and Chandi Das. Even
from a superficial perusal of his poetry, the elements that characterise
the English Romanticism, are to be found in no small
degree in his Gitanjali, the Gardener
and other poetical works. Love, a sense of beauty and wonder, the cult of
nature, the contempt for convention, the glory of
freedom are things that find expression in his poetry. The impact
of nature on man, the spiritual kinship of one object to the other in creation,
seldom fail to draw the all-absorbing interest of the poet.
Wordsworth,
more than any other of the period, seems an abiding influence, with the poet.
There is a close parallel in their approach, to the Divine or the Spirit in
nature that something “that impels all thinking things and rolls through all
things.” Tagore himself acknowledges this influence of the romantic poets in
general and of Wordsworth in particular on more than one occasion in his
writings. In 1924, under the title “My Life” Tagore delivered an address in
which he mentions the unique atmosphere at home which was permeated with the
spirit of creation. He goes on to add “I had a deep sense, almost from infancy,
of beauty of nature, an intimate feeling of companionship with the trees and
clouds and felt in tune with the musical touch of the seasons in the air. At
the same time I had a peculiar susceptibility to human kindness.” In the same
address he says, “I had been able to maintain the faith that in all my
experience of nature or man, there is the fundamental truth of spiritual
reality.”
These
extracts would serve for us as the meeting ground for Tagore’s
poetry and the romanticism of the age of Wordsworth. We have from him, his
insight into an underlying spiritual reality, between man and nature, a feeling
of wonder, childlike almost on watching the “first pink flush of the dawn
through the trembling leaves of the cocoanut trees which stood in a line along
the garden boundary while the grass glistened as dew drops caught the first
tremor of the morning breeze,” and a sense of “mystery” which is in the heart
of existence. Love, the sole sustenance of Shelley and his poetry, has an equal
influence on the poet. He exclaims, “...What a great power is this love!…For love is the higheest human
truth, and truth gives fulness of life.” And he
bewails the sad history of man: “I had sighed with that great poet Wordsworth,
who became sad when he saw what man had done to man... “Men are ever the
greatest enemy of man.” Like Shelley he is at once an eloquently
public-spirited and intensely personal man.
Tagore’s poetry shares
in great measure, the inspiring strains of romantic poetry. We have, the
sedative and what
“The
morning will surely come,
the darkness will vanish and
thy voice pour down in golden
streams breaking through the
sky,”
How
prophetic too like a Shelley!
Again
“That
vague Sweetness made my heart ache
with longing and it seemed to me that it
was the eager breath of the summer seeking
for its Completion.”
Is this feeling any
different from Wordsworth’s,
“Through
primrose-tufts in that sweet bower,
The
periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And
’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys
the air it breathes.”
The
poet’s interest in the lowliest and the lost is as keen as the great romantics.
Take these lines from Gitanjali:
“Here
is thy foot stool and there rest thy feet
Where
live the poorest, and lowliest and lost”
or
“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
path-maker is breaking stones Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come
down on the dusty soil.”
While
these passages express his ardent love for and intense interest in the
forsaken, they at the same time reval his strong
revulsion to formal religion and ritual, and his impatience and disgust for the
shams, social or religious. How aptly do the following lines from “The
Leach-Gatherer” of Wordsworth, fit in with the context;
“God”
said I, “be my help and stay secure;
I’ll
think of the Leach-gatherer on the lonely moor.”
The
love of nature and an insight into the inner harmony of creation, despite the
jarring external, the spirit that animates nature and men alike–here again,
there is an extraodinary affinity between the two
poets. From Gitanjali,
“The
light of thy music illumines the world. The
life breath of thy music runs from sky to
sky. The
holy
stream of thy music breaks through all stony
obstacles
and rushes on.”
So
does the older poet feels when he says,
“...and
there are times
I
doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic
tidings of invisible things;
of
ebb and flow and ever during power;
And
central peace, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.”
The
capacity to convey the thought with almost biblical simplicity and force, is
evident in both the poets,
Here
is Tagore, confident of the vision profound,
“From
dawn till dusk I sit here before my door,
and
I know that of a sudden, the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.”
So is Wordsworth
confident,
“While
with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we
see into the life of things.”
Again
something of that mysticism of Blake, with that power of prayer, is what
pervades the leaves of Gitanjali.
“I
came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light,
and
pursued my voyage through the wilderness of worlds, leaving my track on many a
star
and planet.”
Or
again in lines,
“What
emptiness do you gaze upon! Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air,
with the notes of the far away song floating from the other shore?” The whole
of Gitanjali and the Gardener is
replete with this mystic strain, wherein symbolism is much used to convey the
spiritual urge and destiny of man. Symbolism, the facile transmutation of an
object into a general idea, is a familiar method with the poet and in it, no
less in the music of his poetic creations, he is a kindred spirit to Shelley.
“For true creation,” says Tagore, “is realisation of
truth through the translation of it into our own symbols.” Thus it is, life
often is a boat or a light or “a song” or an “ocean” and living is a voyage
over disturbed seas or a “flight” in a troubled sky. This feeling has not,
however, deprived the poet of his zest for life, nor has it driven him into
seclusion.
While
there is considerable identity of interests and faith, in their attitude to the
Infinite, Truth, Beauty and Nature, even in the mode of expression and imagery,
Tagore not infrequently compels comparisons with the romantic poets. Who could
not
remember at a first glance of these lines, the happy felicity and the happier
imagery of a Keats?
In
the deep shadows of rainy July, with secret steps,
thou
walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers.
How typically romantic
in spirit and expression these following lines:
“The
noon day air is quivering, like the gauzy wings of a dragon fly.”
With
a characteristic sympathy and observation of a Wordsworth, the poet watches the
melancholy clouds which complain,
“The
sky gazes on its own endless blue and dreams.
We
clouds are its whims. We have no home. The stars shine on the Crown of
Eternity.”
Watch the way the buds
bloom in the glory of the spring:
“The
spring flowers break out like the passionate pain of unspoken love.”
Or
this vision of a windy dawn,
“The
winds still moan through the fields and the
tear-stained
cheeks of dawn are pale.”
Or
this picture of Autumn’s agony,
“I
am like the tree that at the end of flowering
summer,
gazes at the sky, with its lifted branches,
bare
of their blossoms.”
Tagore
is indeed so full of this romantic splendour of colour and content that it is almost an instinct
with him, of which he is conscious right from boyhood.
If
then romanticism of the 19th century England meant curiosity and the love of
beauty, a subtle sense of mystery, and an instinct for the elemental
simplicities of life, Tagore’s poetry is one which
embraces with delightful ease these and other aspects of romanticism. He is one
with the great romantic visionaries in his insight into the inner spirit and
life, that runs through the individual entities in creation, in that burning
optimism of visualising a celestial glow while
grouping through a thick darkness of despair and death, that stalk the human
existence, in capturing the spirit of Beauty, Truth and Love, “while ignorant
armies clash by the night.” In the words of Wordsworth,
“Rapt
in still communion that transcends
The
imperfect offices of prayer and praise
His
mind was thanks-giving to the power
That
made him; it was blessedness and love.”
The
thought in Tagore’s language,
“Early
in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and
never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and
to no end. In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently
listening smile, my songs would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all
bondage of words”
There
is, however, a significant difference, which cannot be lost sight of. While the
poets of the romantic period rise now and then to certain spiritual heights and
make excursions into the unknown, with Tagore the burden of his song is a deep
and profound spiritual concern, expressing now as lover, now as a friend,
another time as a mother that sweet longing for the Divine, for that blessed realisation of Infinite in his finite being. Hence there is
that high seriousness and a purity of thought and expression that flow like a
clear stream through the pages of his works. This, however, should not be
construed as a didactic literature for religious or spiritual propaganda. They
are no sermons on the mount. Instead, this theme of the here and hereafter, of
life and death, of love and beauty, calls forth the best of expression, which
responds with such felicity and naturalness like the fragrance that follows
its flower.