bana-bāī was dedicated to Tagore’s friend the plant-physiologist J. C. Bose, who did pioneering work on the life-reactions of plants. The blending of science and poetry in, for example, 11.35–53 is comparable to passages in ‘Brahmā, Viu, Śiva’ and ‘Earth.’
7 ‘by mixed magic’ – miśra-mantre: ‘with mixed mantras’.
16–25 The rather obscure imagery of these lines appears to come from Tagore’s imagination, rather than mythology. The relationship between Earth and Spirit is seen in human terms, which is in keeping with the poem as a whole.
34 ‘code’ – panthā: ‘(religious) path or system’.
42 ‘prismatic tune’ – gāner indra-dhanu: ‘a rainbow of songs’.
48 ‘celestial’ – indrer. ‘Indra’s’.
49 ‘shattering līlā-nrtye: ‘with the dance of their līlā (see Notes to ‘The Wakening of Śiva’).
57 ‘to learn the art of peace’ – śānti-dīkā labhibāre: ‘to be initiated into peace’. dīksā is religious initiation.
65–6 There is ritual imagery here, of the homāgni, the sacred fire used in Hindu ceremonies, and of the yajna (sacrifice) of creation in the sun’s fire.
Last Honey (p. 93)
śes madhu from mahuā, 1929
In 1928 a group of admirers in Calcutta asked Tagore for an anthology of his love poems, for use as a presentation at weddings. The request stimulated Tagore into writing an entirely new collection, which he named after the mahuā-flower (see Glossary).
The book is particularly admired in Bengal for its sensuousness, its musicality of imagery and verse, its resurgent youthfulness combined with maturity of vision. I have not attempted to translate the love-poems in the book; but ‘Last Honey’ is typical of it in other ways. The ‘end of the year’ – the Bengali year, that is, which ends in mid-April – evokes Tagore’s own advancing age, and in each verse there are images of death, barrenness or departure. But the poem is not depressed or pessimistic: there is vigour in its deft verse structure; the passing of spring brings sudden, short-lived abundance and delight. There is an implied link with Tagore’s own creativity: the passing of his youth has produced a sudden fecundity – he must make the most of it. But it would be wrong to liken its mood to European carpe diem: the spring breeze is a sannyāsī (ascetic, 1.1), willingly renouncing the world for spiritual gain. See RM198 on the Four Stages of Life: ‘Last Honey’ could be described as a poem of the Third Stage, in which ‘the decline of the bodily powers must be taken as a warning that it is coming to its natural end. This must not be taken dismally as a notice of dismissal to one still eager to stick to his post but joyfully as maturity may be accepted as the stage of fulfilment.’ On the other hand, we have seen in previous poems – ‘A Half-acre of Land’, ‘The Wakening of Śiva’ – that Tagore had mixed feelings about renunciation; hence the strange, ambiguous, bitter-sweet tone of this beautiful poem.
4 lit., ‘the tired languorous earth spreads out her añcal (loose end of the sari) beneath the trees’.
6 ‘lays its welcoming bed’ – ray āsan pete: ‘remains having laid out (its) seat’. āsan means anything for sitting on, not necessarily a raised seat; but āsan pātā is also an idiom meaning to offer hospitality.
9–10 lit., ‘I seem to hear in the forest-branches the flute of the end of the day being played; smear today (your) wings with memory-laden fragrant pollen’.
15–16 lit., ‘I know that the dolan-cāpā buds trembling in the Caitra breeze will bloom today in the fierce heat and sun of Baiśākh. You will now finish all that they have to give.’ The original thus speaks of the immediate flowering of the dolan-cāpā buds with the onset of summer; but the general drift of the poem suggests that the heat will quickly wither them – hence my translation.
20 The year or Caitra is described here as maraer svayambarā, ‘one who has herself chosen death as a bridegroom’. In ancient India, svayam-vara was the election of a husband by a high-born girl at a public assembly of suitors.
Sea-maiden (p. 94)
sāgarikā from mahuā, 1929
This poem was written on a tour of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies in 1927. It was published in a slightly longer form in the journal prābasī, with the title bālī. It is generally assumed to be an allegory on the Indian relationship with South-East Asia. L1.1–40 evoke the golden days of Indian influence on Bali. The poet speaks for India personified as Kā ma (see Glossary): he arouses the sea-maiden (Bali) to love and to the worship of Śiva. The relationship between them becomes the counterpart to the divine love of Śiva and Pārvatī (which is also manifest in the beauties and the balancing of opposite forces in Nature – 11.19–20, 39–40). Ll.41–6 describe the breaking off of that relationship through the ‘shipwreck’ of Indian civilization – its long centuries of decline and stagnation. In 11.47–68 Tagore speaks for modern India, ‘broken in fortune’ (1.47): the vīā of 1.67 may possibly associate him with Nārada, divine inventor of the instrument; but it is frequently just a symbol of Tagore’s own poetic calling (cf. ‘The Borderland – 10’ or ‘Unyielding’. Sarasvatī, goddess of the arts, carries a vinā). By this stage in his career, Tagore could think of himself as India’s ambassador to the world. He sees in Balinese religion, music and dance many legacies of its earlier contact with India, and asks whether the ‘sea-maiden’ still recognizes him.
Beyond this basic allegoric structure, the images of the poem should not be given too precise a significance. Each of them has a long history in Tagore’s poetry and song, reading and experience. The sea-maiden has something of the mermaid about her at the beginning; later, something of the Hindu Bride image that is behind so many of Tagore’s ideal females (see R101).
9 ‘majestically’ – rāj-beśt: ‘in royal attire’.
16 ‘jasmine’ – yūthī: see Glossary.
19–20 lit., ‘light filled the sky, revealing Pārvatī smiling at the face of Dhūrjaī (Śiva)’.
Question (p. 96)
praśna from pariśes (The End), 1932
Tagore quite wrongly imagined that this would be his last book of verse. The political background to it was sombre: ‘Question’ was written just after the arrest of Gandhi following the failure of the Second Round Table Conference in London. A Tagore Festival, organized in Calcutta at the end of 1931, was cut short by the news. But it would be wrong to link this grand, impassioned poem too closely to any one time or people. The youthful terrorists who had been periodically active in Bengal for the last twenty years may be behind 11.11–12; but youthful torment at injustice and futile or misguided attempts to remedy it are as perennial as the contradiction described in 11.5–6. The vulnerable, bewildered human being in Tagore was increasingly to be the subject of his late poetry; but he never lapsed into self-pity. The precision and vigour of the rhythm and phrasing of this poem belie its content. A famous reading of it by Tagore himself on record conveys strength not weakness, courage not despair. There is even a note of wryness in his voice.
12 ‘dashing their heads against stone’ is a metaphor for fruitless effort in Bengali, like English ‘beating one’s head against a brick wall’.
Flute-music (p. 96)
bāśi from punaśca (The Postscript), 1932
In the passage on the progress of art in P29, quoted in my notes to ‘In Praise of Trees’, Tagore writes: ‘The classical literature of the ancient time was only peopled by saints and kings and heroes. It threw no light upon men who loved and suffered in obscurity. But as the illumination of man’s personality throws its light upon a wider space, penetrating into hidden corners, the world of art also crosses its frontiers and extends its boundaries into unexplored regions.’ ‘Flute-music’ is a prime example of Tagore’s tireless effort throughout his life to extend his artistic range; the humdrum background, the ordinariness of the speaker of the poem are matched by the informal diction and the abandonment of rhyme. But in technique it is not quite the gadya-kabitā (prose-poetry) of most of the poems that Tagore wrote over the next fo
ur years: there is great concentration in the short lines and laconic phrasing. The achievement of the poem is to show that deep human feeling and spiritual or artistic perception can co-exist with urban squalor. Tagore himself had an urban childhood – privileged maybe, but cramped and confined in other ways: and Haripada’s discovery of perfect beauty in Kāntabābu’s amateurish playing is akin to Tagore’s own youthful ‘vision’ from his brother’s Sudder Street house, described in R217, and his discovery that, far from being confined to the Himalayas, ‘He who is the Giver can vouchsafe a vision of the eternal universe in the dingiest of lanes, and in a moment of time.’ The maturity of the poem lies in its ironies (in 11.27–35, for example), and its closeness to the ridiculous. But it never becomes ridiculous: even Kāntabābu, a failed Romantic perfectly sketched in five lines, is redeemed by the impression his music makes on Haripada the clerk.
4 decaying’ – lonā-dharā: ‘full of lonā’, which is dry rot or wet rot due to excess salt in mortar or bricks.
7–8 The reference is to the crude, often gilt paper markers bearing the symbol of a mill stuck on the end of a bale of cloth.
30 The ‘auspicious moment’ (lagna) for a Hindu wedding has to be fixed astrologically: the speaker says ironically that the auspiciousness was proved by the fact that he ran away.
47 A typical Vaiava name is given: ‘like Gopīkānta Gōsāi’s mind’. See Glossary.
58 It has been suggested to me that Tagore meant ‘clarinet’ rather than cornet. It would not be easy to play Indian rāgas on a cornet.
78–81 The Dhaleśvarī river (see Glossary); the tamāl-trees, and the Dacca sari (a handwoven sari such as would be worn at a wedding) all evoke Haripada’s East Bengali origins.
Unyielding (p. 98)
udāsīn from bithikā (The Avenue), 1935
The mystery and the questioning that dominate this book appear lightly and gracefully in this poem, but its implications darken on close examination. The title means ‘detached, indifferent’, but it is one of the most elusive of Indian words (udās and udāsīn are the same: see notes to ‘Day’s End’). For those whose aim is to liberate the soul ‘from the bond of personality which keeps it in an ever-revealing circle of limitation’ (RM202) it is an ideal state of existence: but Tagore never subscribed to so absolute an ideal. He was a dualist, whose ideal was ‘a fulfilment in love within the range of our limitation which accepts all sufferings and yet rises above them’ (RM203). So far him audāsya, indifference (used in 1.22) was an equivocal state, serene maybe, but exclusive of human feeling and personal relationship. This is what we have in this poem. One can take it to be simply an account of unrequited love; or one can read it as a jīban-debatā poem (see notes to ‘The Golden Boat’, ‘On the Edge of the Sea’, ‘Last Tryst’). Tagore wrote many songs in which that complex amalgam of God, Nature and (usually female) personality that he called his jīban-debatā remains aloof, unresponsive to his gifts or questions. Perhaps here, as in ‘The Golden Boat’, this is because the speaker remains self-interested: he is proud of his artistry (verse 3), wants to be applauded for it.
7 ‘perfectness’ – pūratā: ‘fullness, completeness, ripeness’.
20 ‘right time’ – lagna: ‘auspicious moment’.
27 lit., ‘that there was still some rhythm (chanda) in your anklets’.
28 ‘moon’ – malin śaśī: ‘dull, glum, sorrowful moon’.
30–31 lit., ‘Did my vīā’s lament give you some companionship, raise waves on the shore of sleep?’
Earth (p. 99)
pthibī from patra-pu (Cup made of Leaves), 1936
This majestic poem sets the tone for the book in which it occurs. The poems are largely about the natural world, and manage by their scale and sweep to articulate natural processes more powerfully than any poetry Tagore had written since balākā. Rich, Sanskritic diction is combined with the free, metre-less verse technique that Tagore had developed primarily for more domestic subject matter.
‘Earth’ is a disquieting poem, because the unity and harmony that Tagore felt were inherent in the natural world (see S6 or CU4) appear here in such a harsh and inhuman form. The poem is poles apart from the ‘harmony of the stars’ of ‘Guest’. Compare it with a passage in S96: ‘We have what we call in Sanskrit dvandva, a series of opposites in Creation; such as the positive pole and the negative, the centripetal force and the centrifugal, attraction and repulsion… There is a bond of harmony between our two eyes, which makes them act in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity of relation in the physical world between heat and cold, light and darkness, motion and rest… That is why these opposites do not bring confusion in the universe, but harmony.’ dvandva is the main theme of ‘Earth’, but it is a balance of conflict, of power, not a serene harmony. The word occurs in 1.6, with the adjective duhsaha, unbearable, unendurable. The poem up to 1.43 might appear to be an essentially scientific view of Earth, hence its callousness (see notes to ‘The Wakening of Śiva’, ‘Deception’, ‘The Sick-bed – 21’), for though it uses mythological symbolism, its view of the earth’s development seems to owe something to Darwin and Freud. But by the end of the poem one is convinced that it is a complete picture of Reality as Tagore understood it. In P4 he writes: ‘The world of science is not a world of reality, it is an abstract world of force.’ But all the elements of reality that Tagore felt were beyond the reach of science are present in the poem: prā, the life-force, in 1.25; śānti, peace, in 1.31; beauty and abundance in 1.56; ānanda, joy, in 1.60; love in 1.71. All the poem does is take us deeper into that Reality, show us the struggle and conflict on which its harmony is based. The key-line of the poem is 1.85: the poet says that he has not come before Earth today Kono moha niye, ‘with any illusion’. The ruthless vision of personal extinction in 11.94–5 is a consequence of this realism. One can take this as undermining the philosophy of S or RM if one likes, but what meaning does the ‘true value’ of 1.88 or the ‘scrap of success’ of 1.92 have without that philosophy? The poem is about Earth not Brahman, and though Brahman may be immanent in the earth, he is not Earth itself. It is Earth who is udāsīn (1.96), not necessarily God.
1,98 ‘homage’ – pranati: ‘pranām’. See Glossary.
17 lit., ‘the victory-gate (jay-tora) of civilization rises on the foundation of your cruelty’.
19,26 Demons/Gods: the grammar seems to suggest a singular Demon and God, but I have taken this as a ‘generic singular’ (as in English ‘The snake is a dangerous animal’).
31 ‘dispensing peace from her chalice’ – māthāy niye śānti-ghat: ‘carrying a pitcher of peace on her head’.
33 ‘primal barbarity’ – the original is more concrete: ādim barbar, ‘the primeval savage’.
58 lit., ‘where the happy morning sun rubs out the dew-drops every day by brushing them with its sunbeam-scarf.
60 lit., ‘this unspoken message: “I am joyful” ’.
71 ‘rhapsodies and soliloquies of love’ – biraha-milaner svagata-pralāp: ‘the self-absorbed delirium of separateness and union’.
79–81 These lines evoke quite precisely the stratification of earth’s history in its soil.
93 ‘sign’ – tilak: Hindu sectarian mark, painted or printed on the forehead.
Africa (p. 102)
āphrikā from patra–pu, second edition, 1938
There are at least four versions of this poem, including two texts in ‘rhymeless metrical’ verse before Tagore arrived at his final free version. I have followed the text (originally published in the journal prabāsī in 1936) that appears in the current standard sancayitā, on the editors’ assurance that it was ‘the poet’s final version’. But the text in the second edition of patra-pu (the poem did not appear in the first edition) does contain one significant difference: in 1.44, instead of yugānter kabi, ‘poet of the end of the age’, it prints yugāntarer kabi, ‘poet of the beginning of the age, the new age’.
‘Africa’ can be linked to Tagore’s shock at
Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, but its scope is much wider. An interest in primitive cultures – in Africa, South America and Melanesia – had been growing in Tagore for some time, and tribal art influenced his paintings. This poem does not romanticize or idealize African native culture: it depicts pre-civilized savagery, the dark continent (11.8–9). Passages in RM make it clear that for Tagore the tragedy of imperialism in Africa was that natural development towards civilization had been thwarted. Tribal rituals, dances, warpaint might be savage: but they express dissatisfaction with human limitations, sublimation of the individual into a larger community, an embryonic sense of a transcendent power: ‘However crude all this may be, it proves that Man has a feeling that he is truly represented in something which exceeds himself. He is aware that he is not imperfect, but incomplete. He knows that in himself some meaning has yet to be realized’ (RM59). In primitive religion he ‘tried to gain a perfect communion with the mysterious magic of Nature’s forces through his own power of magic’ (RM74: cf. 11.10–14 in the poem). In other words, tribal culture contains the seeds of higher culture and religion. Imperialism is the true barbarity, because it stamps out human potential. It is self-destructive as well as destructive. In CU103 Tagore writes: ‘The blindness of contempt is more hopeless than the blindness of ignorance; for contempt kills the light which ignorance merely leaves unignited.’ The poem ends with a terrifying and ever more pertinent vision of the consequences of ‘the blindness of contempt’, of modern civilization killing its own light.