Tagore, Rabindranath (1861-1941),
Indian poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate, was born in
Tagore wrote primarily in Bengali, but translated many of
his works into English himself. He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in
literature, and in 1915 he was knighted by the British king George V. Tagore renounced his knighthood in 1919 following the Amritsar massacre of 400 Indian demonstrators by British
troops. His famous works were 'Balaka' , 'Sonar Tari', 'Chitali', and 'Gitanjali' etc. His selected poems 'Sanchaita', and selected short stories 'Galpagucha' were published in
Where The Mind is Without Fear
Rabindranath Tagore’s Poem
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
On the Nature of Love
From Chaitali (1896)
The night is black and the forest has no end;a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but whereor with whom- of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith- that a lifetime's blisswill appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songsbrush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!For your sake such miles have I traversed!'All those others who come close and moved offin the darkness- I dont know if they exist or not.
Translated from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson.
The Kiss
From Kadi O Komal (1886)
Lips' language to lips' ears.
Two drinking each other's heart, it seems.Two roving loves who have left home,pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of loveto break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each othermeet at last at the body's limits.
Love's writing a song in dainty letters,layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lipsperhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lipsis the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.
When and Why
When I bring you coloured toys, my child, I understand why thereis such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are
painted in tints- when I give coloured toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance, I truly know why there is musicin leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of
the listening earth- when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands, I know why thereis honey in the cup of the flower, and why fruits are secretly filled
with sweet juice- when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surelyunderstand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and
what delight the summer breeze brings to my body- when I kiss you
to make you smile.
GIFT
O my love,
what gift of mine
Shall I give you this dawn?
A morning song?
But morning does not last long -
The heat of the sun
Wilts it like a flower
And songs that tire
Are done.
O friend, when you come to my gate
At dusk
What is it you ask?
What shall I bring you?
A light?
A lamp from a secret corner of my silent house?
But will you want to take it with you?
Down the crowded street?
Alas,
The wind will blow it out.
Whatever gifts are in my power to give you,
Be they flowers,
Be they gems for your neck,
How can they please you
If in time they must surely wither,
Crack,
Lose luster?
All that my hands can place in yours
Will slip through your fingers
All fall forgotten to the dust
To turn into dust.
Rather,
When you have leisure,
Wander idly through my garden in spring
And let an unknown, hidden flower's scent startle you
Into sudden wondering -
Let that displaced moment
Be my gift.
Or if, as you peer your way down a shady avenue,
Suddenly, spilled
From the thick gathered tresses of evening
Turns your daydreams to gold,
Let that light be an innocent
Gift.
Truest treasure is fleeting;
It sparkles for a moment, then goes.
It does not tell its name; its tune
Stops us in our tracks, its dance disappears
At the toss of an anklet.
I know no way to it -
No hand, nor word can reach it.
Friend, whatever you take of it.
On your own,
Without asking, without knowing, let that
Be yours.
Anything I can give you is trifling -
Be it a flower, or a song.
QUESTION
God, again
and again through the ages you have sent messengers
To this pitiless world:
They have said, 'Forgive everyone', they have said,'Love
one another --
Rid your hearts of evil.'
They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days
We turn them away with hollow greetings, from
outside the doors of our houses.
And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,
No hope of redress.
I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,
In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail.
My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute:
Black moonless night
Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this
is why,
With tears in my eyes, I ask:
Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your
light,
Can it be that you have forgiven them? Can it be that you love
them?
Tagore and Einstein
Tagore and Einstein met through a common friend, Dr.
Mendel. Tagore visited Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of
TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr.
Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries, which tell us that in the realm
of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not
absolutely predestined in character.
EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say
good-bye to causality.
TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in
the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized
universe.
EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is.
The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in
the minute elements this order is not perceptible.
TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of
free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly
scheme of things.
EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds
look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves
as disorderly drops of water.
TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires
are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole.
Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements
rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the
physical world, which dominates them and puts them into an orderly
organization?
EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements
of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just
as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the
elements.
TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is
the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new
and living.
EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality;
it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.
TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some
freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It
is like the musical
system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our
composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic
arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He
must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give
spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation.
We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a
superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the
creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we
follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from
it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the
fullest self-expression.
EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition
in music to guide the people's mind. In
TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated
music. In
EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the
great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In
our country, the variations are often prescribed.
TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have
real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the
character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music
there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.
EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the
singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?
TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal
we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce
parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great
enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful,
spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.
EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?
TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the
singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed.
In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with
melody.
EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand
a song without words?
TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help
to act as carriers of the notes. In
EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?
TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and
adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the
imposition of harmony?
EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony
swallows up the melody altogether.
TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A
simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color
may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines,
create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.
EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than
color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours.
Japanese music also seems to be so.
TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western
music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is
great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own
music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music
is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.
EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer; we are
so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a
conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and
dissonance is natural, or a convention, which we accept.
TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.
EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music
on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.
TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some
classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the
piece.
EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the
East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.
TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer
is beyond himself.
EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything
fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in
TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation
between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.
A dedication to