<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
	<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8">
	<TITLE></TITLE>
	<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Namo WebEditor v4.0">
	<META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20040109;1371400">
	<META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20040217;21252000">
	
</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en-US">
<div align="center">
	<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
		<tr>
			<td>
<p align="center" style="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<b><font size="4">Tagore
– Poet and Seer</font></b></p>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">A GREAT literature seems to have almost invariably a
great name attached to it, one name by which it is known and
recognised as great. It is the name of the man who releases the
inmost potency of that literature, and who marks at the same time the
height to which its creative genius has attained or perhaps can ever
attain. Homer and Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare, Goethe and Camoens,
Firdausi in Persian and Kalidasa in classical Sanskrit, are such
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">names – numina, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">each being the presiding deity, the godhead
born full-armed out of the poetic consciousness of the race to which
he belongs. Even in the case of France whose language and literature
are more a democratic and collective and less an individualistic
creation, even there one single Name can be pointed out as the life
and soul, the very cream of the characteristic poetic genius of the
nation. I am, of course, referring to Racine, Racine who, in spite of
Moliere and Corneille and Hugo, stands as the most representative
French poet, the embodiment of French resthesis </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">par excellence.</span></I></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Such a great name is Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali
literature. We need not forget Bankim Chandra, nor even Madhusudan:
still one can safely declare that if Bengali language and literature
belonged to any single person as its supreme liberator and </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">fosterer
savita </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">and</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"> pusa – it </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">is Rabindra&shy;nath. It was he who
lifted that language and literature from what had been after all a
provincial and parochial status into the domain of the international
and universal. Through him a thing of local value was metamorphosed
definitively into a thing of world value.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The miracle that Tagore has done is this: he has brought
out the very soul of the race –its soul of lyric fervour and</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
197</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">grace,
of intuitive luminosity and poignant sensibility, of beauty and
harmony and delicacy. It is this that he has made living and vibrant,
raised almost to the highest pitch and amplitude in various modes in
the utterance of his nation. What he always expresses, in all his
creations, is one aspect or another, a rhythm or a note of the soul
movement. It is always a cry of the soul, a profound experience in
the inner heart that wells out in the multifarious cadences of his
poems. It is the same </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">motif </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">that finds a local habitation and
a name in his short stories, perfect gems, masterpieces among world's
masterpieces of art. In his dramas and novels it is the same element
that has found a wider canvas for a more detailed and graphic
notation of its play and movement. I would even include his essays
(and certainly his memoirs) within the sweep of the same master-note.
An essay by Rabindranath is as characteristic of the poet as any
lyric poem of his. This is not to say that the essays are devoid of a
solid intellectual content, a close-knit logical argument, an acute
and penetrating thought movement, nor is it that his novels or dramas
are mere lyrics drawn out arid thinned, lacking in the essential
elements of a plot and action and character. What I mean is that over
and above these factors which Tagore’s art possesses to a
considerable degree, there is an imponderable element, a flavour, a
breath from elsewhere that suffuses the entire creation, something
that can be characterised only as the soul&shy;-element. It is this
presence that makes whatever the poet touches not only living and
graceful but instinct with some&shy;thing that belongs to the world
of gods, something celestial and divine, something that meets and
satisfies man's deepest longing and aspiration.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">I have been laying special stress upon this aspect of
Tag ore's genius, because humanity is in great need of it 'today,
because all has gone wrong with the modern world since it lost touch
with its soul and was beguiled into a path lighted by false glimmers
and will-o'-the-wisps, hires of a superficial and infra-human
consciousness, or into the by-ways and backwashes and aberrations of
a sophisticated intellectualism.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Tagore is modern, as modern as reasonably and sensibly
one can be; he is a modern, but not a modernist. One is modern when
one is inspired and moved by the spirit of the Time, one 
</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
198</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">is
modernist when one is bound to the letter, to the external formulas
of the law of the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Zeit-Geist. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">You remain modern if the new
consciousness enters and dwells in your nature and character, you
become modernist as soon as it degenerates into a </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">tic </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">and a
mannerism.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The passage of mediaevalism to modernism can be defined
as the passage from the local and parochial to the general and
universal. The mediaeval consciousness is a segmented or linear
consciousness: it is the view, at a time, from one particular angle
of vision. The modern consciousness, on the other hand, is or tends
to be a global view-point, a circular consciousness. The unilateral
mentality proper to mediaevalism may be deep and penetrating and
far-reaching, extending to the hidden and high realities, even to the
highest and the most secret – to God and Soul and Immortality; it
would still be a one-sided vision and achievement. It is the
characteristic function of-the modern consciousness to survey things
not from a single point of view, but from all points of view, even
the most disparate and incommensurable. The relativity of all
experiences – not necessarily their illusoriness – is the great
modern discovery; it is the parent of modern (scientific) scepticism
and agnosti&shy;cism; it is also the basis of a large, a global
synthesis, which was never possible till now and which is the promise
of to-morrow.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Modernism implies a natural broadening of the mind and
life, a greater capacity to understand and endorse and ap&shy;preciate
divergent and even contrary and contradictory ex&shy;periences and
stand-points. Thus, brotherhood to the mediaeval man meant bringing
together mankind under the dominion of one cult or creed – it is
the extension of a tribal feeling. Brotherhood in a modern
consciousness would mean an inner union and commensurability that can
subsist even in the midst of a great diversity of taste and feeling
and experience.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Tagore is modern in respect of all these higher
aptitudes that man has gained today. He has the brilliance and
curiosity of an alert and strong intelligence, the refined
sensibility of a pagan and scientific intellect, he has an infinite
sense of irony and humour and, above all, he has that in him, – a
genial plasticity and sympathy and a warm sense of “wide
com&shy;monaltyâ€, – which makes him easily a citizen of the
world, feeling absolutely at home all over the world.</span></P>
<P ALIGN="center" STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
199</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The breath of modernism that Tagore has brought into the
life and letters of the Bengali race is, I repeat, suffused with a
soul-feeling – a sense of refinement and dignity, wideness and
catholicity and urbanity in the inner make-up of life-attitude and
consciousness, a feeling that one no longer lives in his village,
confined to its insular limits, but that one lives a life coterminous
with human life at large and at its best; one is cosmopolitan in the
noblest sense of the word and one has to move and act and speak in a
manner becoming such a position. A high sense of all the aristocratic
virtues, plus a certain sun&shy;shine of wit and playful intelligence
that prevents the serious and the lofty from becoming grim and
Dantesque are part of the gifts that Tagore has brought us and made a
living element of our literary and even social character.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Tagore is modern, because his modernism is based upon a
truth not local and temporal, but eternal and universal, some&shy;thing
that is the very bed-rock of human culture and civilisa&shy;tion.
Indeed, Tagore is also ancient, as ancient as the Upani&shy;shads.
The great truths, the basic realities experienced and formulated by
the ancients ring clear and distinct in the core of all his artistic
creation. Tagore's intellectual make-up may be as rationalistic and
scientific as that of any typical modern man. Nor does he discard the
good things </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">(preya) </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">that earth and life offer to man for his
banquet; and he does not say like the bare ascetic: </span><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman Baltic, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;">anyÄ
vÄco vimuncatha, </span></FONT></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">&quot;abandon every&shy;thing else&quot;.
But even like one of the Upanishadic Rishis, the great Yajnavalkya,
he would possess and enjoy his share of terrestrial as well as of
spiritual </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">wealth – ubhayameva. </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">In a world of modernism,
although he acknowledges and appre&shy;ciates mental and vital and
physical values, he does not give them the place demanded for them.
He has never forgotten the one thing needful. He has not lost the
moorings of the soul. He has continued to nestle close to the eternal
verities that sustain earth and creation and give a high value and
purpose to man's life and creative activity.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">In these iconoclastic times, we are liable, both in art
and in life, to despise and even to deny certain basic factors which
were held to be almost indispensable in the old world. The great
triads – the True, the Beautiful and the Good, or God, Soul and
Immortality – are of no consequence to a modernist</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:-0.03cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
200</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:-0.03cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">mind: these mighty words evoke no echo in the heart of a
contemporary human being. Art and Life meant in the old world
something decent, if not great. They were perhaps, as I have already
said, framed within narrow limits, certain rigid principles that
cribbed and cabined the human spirit in many ways; but they were not
</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">anarchic, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">they obeyed a law, a dharma, which they considered
as an ideal, a standard to look up to and even live up to. The
modernist is an anarchic being in all ways. He does not care for
old-world verities which seem to him mere convention or superstition.
Truth and Beauty and Harmony are non-existent for him: if at all they
exist they bear a totally different connotation, the very opposite of
that which is normally accepted.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">The modernist does not ask: is it good? is it beautiful?
He asks: is it effective? is it expressive? And by effectivity and
ex&shy;pressiveness he means something nervous and physical.
Ex&shy;pressiveness to him would mean the capacity to tear off the.
veil over what once was considered not worth the while or decent to
uncover. A strange recklessness and shamelessness, an unhealthy and
perverse curiosity, characteristic of the Asura and the Pisacha, of
the beings of the underworld, mark the movement of the modernist. But
I forget. The Modernist is not always an anarchist, for he too seeks
to establish a New Order; indeed he arrogates to himself that mission
and de&shy;clares it to be his and his alone. Obviously it is not the
order of the higher gods of Olympus: these have been ousted and
dethroned. We are being led back to the mysteries of an earlier race,
reverting to an infra-evolutionary status, into the arcana of Thor
and Odin, godlings of an elemental Nature.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="text-indent:0.34cm; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<span style="font-size:12pt;">In such a world Tagore is a voice and a beacon from over
the heights of the old world declaring and revealing the verities
that are eternal and never die. They who seek to kill them do so at
their peril. Tagore is a great poet: as such he is close to the heart
of Bengal. He is a great Seer: as such humanity will claim him as its
own.</span></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="border-bottom:1px solid black; text-indent:0.34cm; padding-top:0cm; padding-right:0cm; padding-bottom:0.07cm; padding-left:0cm; border-top-style:none; border-right-style:none; border-left-style:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<FONT STYLE="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page –
201</span></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN="right" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">
<a title="Home" href="-00_-Content"><img src="/Nolini/Volume-1/_Gif_Image/house01_green.gif" width="28" height="23" border="0" alt="house06_white.gif"></a></P>
<div align="right"> 
	<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0"> </div>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</table>
</div>
</BODY>
</HTML>