object:30.14 - Rabindranath and Modernism
book class:Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
Rabindranath the Artist The Language of Rabindranath
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On Art and LiteratureRabindranath and Modernism
Rabindranath and Modernism
(I)
BENGALI literature has reached the stage of modernism and even ultra-modernism. This achievement is, we may say point-blank, the contribution of Rabindranath. Not that the movement was totally absent before the advent of Rabindranath. But it is from him that the current has received the high impetus and overflooded the mind and the vital being of the Bengali race. We can recall here the two great artists who commenced modernism - Madhusudan and Bankim. But in their outlook there was still a trace of the past, in their ideas and expressions there was an imprint of the past. The transition from Ishwar Gupta and Dinabandhu to Bankim and Madhusudan - not from the viewpoint of time but from that of quality - is indeed a revolution. Within a short span of years the Bengali way of thinking and the refinement of their taste have taken a right-about turn. It was Bankim and Madhusudan who have placed Bengali literature on the macadamized road of modernism. Still, while walking on that road, somehow we were not able to shake off completely the touch of clay under the feet and the smell of swampy lands around. It was Tagore's mastercraft that enabled Bengali literature to drive in coachand-four through the highways. Not only so, in addition he has enriched and developed it to such an extent that we feel, pursuing the image, as if we could safely drive there the motor car or even the railway train.
The term modern, no doubt, relates to the present time, but there is in it a factor of space as well. It is the close communion among the different countries of the world that has made modernism modern. The relation of give-and-take among many and various countries and races has given each country a new atmosphere and a new character. The newness that has thus developed is perhaps the fundamental feature of modernism. Bankim and Madhusudan were modern, for they had infused the European manner into the artistic consciousness of Bengal. Europe itself is indeed the hallowed place, the place for pilgrimage of our epoch. Humanity in the modern age plays its great role in Europe. So to come into contact with Europe is to become modern - to take one's seat at the forefront in the theatre of the world. Thus it is that Japan has become modern in Asia. And China lagged behind for want of this contact. In India it was the Bengalis who first of all surpassed all others in adopting European ways. That is why their success and credit have no parallel in India. From Bharatchandra, Ishwar Gupta even up to Dinabandhu the genius of Bengal I was chiefly and fundamehtal1y Bengal's own. The imagination, experience and consciousness of the Bengalis had been I till then confined to the narrow peculiarities of the Bengali race. Bankim and Madhusudan broke the barrier of provincialism and cast aside all parochialism and narrowness of Bengalihood and brought in the imagination, consciousness, manners and customs of other lands.
Rabindranath too has done the same, but in a subtler, deeper and wider way. Firstly, at the dawn of modernism, the two currents, foreign and indigenous, though side by side did not get quite fused. They stood somewhat apart though contiguous. There was a gulf between - a difference, even a conflict - as of oil and water. In Madhusudan these two discordances were distinct and quite marked. It was in the works of Bankim that a true synthesis commenced. Still, on the whole, the artistic creation of that age was something like putting on a dhoti with its play of creases and folds, and over it a streamlined coat and waistcoat and necktie. Both the fashions are beautiful and graceful in their own way. But there is no harmony and synthesis in, their combination. It was Tagore's genius that brought about a beautiful harmony between the two worlds. In the creation of the artistic taste of Bengal he has opened wide the doors of her consciousness so that the free air from abroad may have full play and all parochialism blown away. Yet she has not fallen a prey to foreign ways to become a mere imitation or a distant echo; it is the vast and the universal that has entered. True, Tagore's genius belonged intimately to Bengal, but not exclusively; for it has been claimed also by humanity at large as its own. The poet's consciousness has returned home after a world-tour, as it were. It has become the Bengali consciousness in a wider and deeper sense. So the poet sings:
My own clime I find in every clime,
And I shall win it from everywhere.
Thus, for example, the ideas and movements that have taken shape in Swinburne and Maeterlinck have induced some echoing waves in the works of Tagore here and there. Some of the things, specially characteristic of the West, were fused into his inspiration, became his own and formed part of the being of the pure Bengali race: these have grown now its permanent assets. Rabindranath's experience has, so to say, travelled across space to embrace the universe. On the other side, in the matter of time too his experience has far exceeded the present to climb to the lofty past. At times he soared high to the experiences ofthe seers of the Upanishads or the Vaishnava devotees, and came down with them into the widely extended domain of universal experience. The modernism of his poetic creation, developed on the wings of these two aspects, and its keynote is the harmony and synthesis of the East and the West, the present and the past. Thus the oriental and the occidental thoughts, ideas, experiences and realisations of the present and of by-gone times, that possess any value or special significance, have combined and are fused in the delightful comprehension of the poet giving birth to a new creation in which a great diversity vibrating in a common symphony blossomed with immaculate beauty.
How the two original streams of thought, oriental and occidental, were synthesised in Tagore's work is a subject that demands a deep study. I do not propose to deal with the subject in its entirety, but I shall try to point out a few salient features. The European consciousness, especially modern, is centred on this physical world, this living body endowed with the ardent senses, on the undeniable reality of the outside world where, after all, things are transitory; and of the dualistic life it espouses, this consciousness lays more stress on death than on life, on misery than on happiness, on shadow than on light; it seeks beauty and fulfilment in contrast and conflict in human life and consciousness. Inspired by this idea our poet sings:
Not for me liberation through renunciation.
or,
Is the Vaishnava's song only for Vaikuntha1
Again,
Where is the light, O where?
Kindle it with the fire of separation.
I do not say the indulgence of the lower nature, the physical propensities and the sense-objects is less prevalent in our country. The teeming wealth of sensuality that is found in Kalidasa and Jayadeva has hardly any parallel in the literature of any other country. But the oriental approach is quite different from the occidental. The consciousness and the attitude with which Europe has accepted and embraced the sense-world or the material world are profane, pagan - the enjoyment of pleasure in the grossest and the most materialistic way, pleasure for the sake of pleasure. The fount of tears pent up in the core of every transient object ("sunt lacrymae rerum"),so said Virgil, the great poet of Europe. The artistic mind of Europe derives its inspiration from there. The Indian consciousness even after accepting the material objects could not completely exhaust itself in the earthly relation only. As the Upanishad says, the husband, the wife or the son is dear to us not because of their own sake but for the delight of one's soul. It is not that the spiritual basis of consciousness is directly or actively manifest in all Indians or even all creative artists of India. But this perception permeates the atmosphere, the firmament, the air, land and water of India. And this idea, on the whole, brought about a special outlook and tone in the style of her creative arts. The works of Vaishnava poets are replete with earthly love, at places only nominally associated with God; and yet even this nominal or tacit association is a very characteristic and special feature. And it cannot be put in the category of mere earthly and human outlook as known to us. At least earthly things and sense-objects have not been presented solely with their own norms and values. They have been assessed in relation to the values of something else, their truth has been' determined as a help or an impediment to some other truth. Not that artists of this type are totally absent in Europe. There also - although it is the exception rather than the rule as here - we come across a few who have the experience of the Imperishable in the perishable, and the realisation of Consciousness in Matter. The experience of silence, for example, was in some so overwhelming as to render names and forms secondary - insignificant - and to reduce them to mere shadows. Thus to Wordsworth all natural truths and beauty are inherent in the power that presides over Nature which he calls Spirit.
Tagore wanted to seize the object as a real object and touch the body physically, with the sense of touch. Unlike the spiritual seers he could not remain content with embracing the object in and through the soul alone and the person through the impersonal. As a mortal he sought to taste the delight of-mortal things. And yet he established the Immortal in the mortal. He looked upon the body as body and yet was united with it in and through something of the formless soul. The uniqueness of his realisation consists in the synthesis of the duality, the contrary. Like the pagan he maintained intact the terrestrial enjoying, even made it more intense, yet he brought down into it something of the supraphysical. And for this harmonisation he resorted to the consciousness of the Upanishads which is innate to his country. The thing that has bridged the gulf between the physical and the supra-physical, between the body and the soul, between the inmost within and the outmost without is the heart of the devotee - the emotional fervour of the Vaishnavas, adorers, lovers and those who have the fine sense of beauty and delight.
Rabindranath has the intuition of the Brahman, the infinite Bliss, the One without a second, which is beyond all limits and is the support of all, as the vital principle. He has, at every step, sung the victory and glory of this vital aspect of the Brahman. He has often cited this aphorism of the Upanishad:
All created things are moved by the pranicpower.
Inspired by this idea he too had sung:
Deep I dive into the ocean of life and breathe it in to my heart's content.
The rhythm of life flowed out into movement and dynamis. Here again another feature of the modern mentality, characteristic, for example, of the vitalists, is found in him. But the difference is that he has not assigned the highest place to it, though he has emphasized it considerably. He has endeavoured to posit something of immobility within or behind the moving and to make all stirrings terminate in a wide peace. Although he gave himself to the duality, the many, the swirling flood-tide of the external world, he was in close touch with the inner being, the profundity which is filled with the calm and silence of the One.
No doubt, he says:
Away with your meditation,
Away with your flower-offering,
Let your clothes get torn and soiled.
But what he meant to say is this:
Then you may rush out to the wide world
And remain unsulIied
In the midst of the dust,
And walk about freely.
With all chains on the body;
Until that day dawns
Remain in the depths of your heart.
The life that was the object of Rabindranath's worship was no other than the Brahman in Its aspect of Prank Energy. On the one hand the sense of this Prana-Brahman impelled him towards the world as such and, on the other hand, a gesture and glimpse of the Transcendent Brahman served to give a poise and measure, cadence and contour to that Immeasurable Energy.
We lay so much stress on this aspect of Tagore, because herein lies the main secret of man's modernity and his immediate future.
What is required of man is to realise and establish the supra-physical even in the physical without losing the reality of the latter, to convert the supra-physical into the physical. Though the physical was not lost in oblivion, yet its own forms and ideas were brought under the pressure of the supra-physical and tinged with the colour of the same, so that it could be seen in a new light as an image of the supra-physical - such has been the trend of ancient spiritual tradition. But the modernity of to-day wants to keep the nature and the essence of the physical intact and, keeping its speciality unimpaired, endeavours to manifest the supra-physical in the physical. Man's universal urge to-day finds expression in the immortal line of Tagore:
O Infinite, Thou dwellest in the finite.
We believe that the entire future of humanity depends on this line of spiritual practice and its realisation in this life. And in this respect Rabindranath the poet has almost become to us the seer Rabindranath.
(2)
In the consciousness of the artist of the past each concept, each thought, each sentence or word appeared as a well-defined, separate entity. Artistic skill lay in harmonising the different and separate entities. The criterion of beauty in that age consisted in the proportionate, well-built formation of the constituents - a symmetry and balance. In the modern consciousness and experience nothing stands in its own uniqueness. The lines of demarcation between things have faded, are almost obliterated - no faculty or experience has its separate existence, everything enters into every other thing. In the consciousness and experience of men and in the sphere of artistic, taste there is now a unification and an assimilation just as men want to unite, irrespective of caste and creed and national or racial boundaries. We want to replace the ancient beauty of proportion by a complex system of sprung rhythm and a play of irregularities and exceptions.
So we may say that the difference between the past and the present is something like the difference between melody and harmony. The ancients used to playas it were on a one-stringed lyre accompanied with a melodious song, or carried on a symphony comprising the same kind of melodies. The moderns like polyphonic movements, conglomerations of many heterogeneous sounds.
From this standpoint it will be no exaggeration to say that Rabindranath Tagore has modernised the Bengalis and Bengali literature and the Bengali heart. Madhusudan brought in Blank Verse. But by creating and introducing the metre of stresses Tagore brought about a speciality in modernism. In words, rhythms and concepts he has brought in a freedom of movement and swing, a richer, wider and subtler synthesis and beauty.
A poet of the olden times sings:
Who says the autumnal full moon can be compared to her face?
A myriad moons are lying there on her toe-nails.
Or take the famous line that received ample praise from Bankimchandra -
The fair lady leaves, imparting overwhelming pangs of separation.
How far away have we come when we listen to the following lines of Tagore:
"Who art thou that comest to me, O merciful one?"
Asks the woman. The mendicant replies,
"The destined hour is come to-night."2
Or,
Thy feet are tinged red with the heart's blood of the three worlds,
O Thou, who hast left thy hung-down plait uncovered,
Thou hast placed thy nimble feet on the central part.
Of the bloomed lotus of world-desires.
After sharpening and heightening the intellect by the urge of inspiration, after magnifying and diversifying his imagination by the intellect infused with the delight of the inner soul, Rabindranath's experiences at different levels of consciousness synthesised them all in a free and vivacious metre embodied in waves of poetry. He created a Utopia in which the modern world with all its hopes, aspirations and dreams have found the reflection of its own deeper nature.
The sweetness, skill and power of expression that are found in the Bengali literature of today were merely an ideal before Tagore bodied them forth. We, the moderns, who are drawing upon the wealth amassed by him for over half a century and we who are using it according to our capacity often think that it is the outcome of our own genius.
We are swept by the giant billow caused by Tagore. But being placed at the crest of it we can hardly conceive how far we have come up. Again forgetting all about the wave we claim all the credit for ourselves. One of the signs of the rich and mature language is that every writer has at his command a ready-made tool of which he has to know only the proper manipulation. In the literature of that language no writer falls below a particular standard or a level of tune. The writer, who imbibes the genius of a language, and literature and its ways of expression, is carried on by them in spite of himself. Of course, we do not claim that Bengali literature has already reached the acme of perfection. But the growth and the development amounting to a full-fledged youth have been the contribution solely of Rabindranath. Again, in this respect his indirect thought-influence has far exceeded his direct contribution.
We have used the word "modern". Now the question is whether the term "modern" should include the ultra-modern also. The ultra-moderns have gone one step forward. The movement of eternal youth and the overflow of youthful delight in Rabindranath are apt to march towards the ever-new, to commune with the novel, to accord a cordial welcome to the ever-green. There it is quite natural that he should have sympathy and good-will for the ultra-modern also. Nevertheless, it must be kept in view that above all he was the worshipper of the beautiful and of beautiful forms and appearances. However soft and pliant might have been the frame of his poetry, in the end it remained a frame, after all, a delicate and harmonious shape of beauty. It is doubtful whether the ultra-moderns have retained anything like the frame-work of beauty. In fact, under their influence, the frame-work has not only got dissolved but also practically evaporated. Not to speak of rhyme, they have banished the regulated rhythm and pause. They have adopted a loud rhetoric and an over-decorated personal emphasis. Of course, we may detect a reflection or have a glimpse of ultramodernism in the following lines of Tagore's Purabiand Balaka:
Behold, by what a blast of wind,
By what a stroke of music
The waters of my lake heave up in waves
To hold speechless communications between this bank and the other!
(Purabi)
The mountain longs to become an aimless summer cloud.
The trees want to free themselves from their Moorings in the earth
And to be on the wing and to proceed in pursuit of the sound
And become lost in their search for the farthest of the sky in a twinkling.
(Balaka)
But still here we do not come across the note of a reversal, dissolution, revolution. It seems the poet retains an inner link with the heart of the hoary past in spite of so much of his novelty and modernism. And he did not like to cut asunder that link.
This deep conservatism alone made Tagore the worshipper of symbols and did not allow him to be a revolutionary iconoclast. Indeed one can draw one's attention to the speciality of his unique skilfulness. Many a time he held firm the structures and forms almost in a sportive mood and created under strict restrictions. The play of freedom and lightness found expression not so much in his words as in his metres, still more in his concepts, and above everything else in his ideas and attitudes. In connection with his delineation he gave expression to a unique softness and delicacy in the midst of firmness. He placed the formless in the body and brought the Infinite into the finite and gave us the taste of liberation amidst innumerable bondages.
Further, in spite of close intimacy and familiarity, there is an aristocracy and glory in the manners and movements of his poetry; this too became a stumbling-block on the way of his becoming an ultra-modern.
The highest heaven.?
The mendicant came to nurse the deserted woman whose allurement he had once rejected and to whom he had promised to come in proper time.
***
Rabindranath the Artist The Language of Rabindranath
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