Rabindranath Tagore - Poet and Dramatist

Edward Thompson

Description

Originally published in 1926. Contents Include: Early Life and Poetry 1861-1886 The Shileida and Sadhana Period 1887-1897 Unrest and Change 1898-1905 The Gitanjali Period 1905-1919 Internationalism 1919-1941 Appendix

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528761000
• Langue: English

Extrait

RABINDRANATH TAGORE AT THE AGE OF SIXTY
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Poet and Dramatist
EDWARD THOMPSON
The exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation of the world.
T HOMAS H ARDY
One may then laudably desire not to be counted a fool by wise men, nor a knave by good men, nor a fanatic by sober men. One may desire to show that the cause for which he has lived and laboured all the best years of his life is not so preposterous, intellectually and morally, as of late it has been made to appear by its noisier and more aggressive representatives; that he has never been duped by the sophistries and puerilities of its approved controversialists, but has rested on graver and worthier reasons, however ill-defined and ill-expressed; that even if his defence of it should have failed, he has not failed in courage or candour or sincerity; nor has he ever wittingly lent himself to the defence of folly or imposture.
G EORGE T YRRELL ,
Through Scylla and Charybdis , viii.
TO
RANI AND PRASANTA MAHALANOBIS
Kindest and most unselfish of friends, courageous and steadfast through the years, loyal through all detractions and anger
PREFACE
O VER twenty years ago, I published a short study, Rabindranath Tagore , then, in 1926, a quite different longer book, Tagore, Poet and Dramatist ; both have long been out of print. It is the later book which is now brought up to date with the poet s death.
A book, as someone has observed, never completely shakes off its first draft, and my own opinions and critical judgements have changed very greatly. But rewriting has been drastic enough (some 35,000 words have been excised, and much added and changed) to make this in essentials a new examination, and a reasonably close representation of what I now feel. I have remembered always that Tagore (though his work, having to get past the concealment of an Indian language, came to judgement in the age of the First World War and of T. S. Eliot) as a writer was the contemporary of the later Tennyson and Browning and of Robert Bridges. In fairness, he must be judged as the Victorian poets are judged, whose world has passed away.
Milton s English verse is less than 18,000 lines. Tagore s published verse and dramas amount to 150,000 lines or their equivalent. His non-dramatic prose, novels, short stories, autobiography, criticism, essays of many kinds, is more than twice as much, and there is also a mass of uncollected material. I make no apology for omissions. Paper stocks are rationed, and the poet s Bengali admirers, who may feel disappointment that favourite pieces are not mentioned, must accept my assurance that I have cut down ruthlessly from necessity. I have also cut out my bibliography. I think mine was the first, but a bibliography is of value chiefly to students of Bengali literature; I have only 350 titles, and an inclusive list is in process of compilation. My own work is nearly finished, and I am able to do, not what a younger man might do but only what is still possible.
We ourselves know little of India, while Indians know a great deal about us and even about our inmost thought. Of what we have hardly cared to know, yet which many are at last anxious to know, there is evidence enough if we take some trouble. Gandhi s uniquely frank revelation of his experiments with truth ; Jawaharlal Nehru s Autobiography , which carries the impress of his candour and integrity; and Tagore s writings and public activities-if we know these, we are not likely to be surprised by events as they presently unfold. Norway breaking from thy hand, O King , answered Einar Tamberskelve at the Battle of Stiklestad, when Olaf turned inquiringly at the snapping of his bowstring. After the lapse of a millennium, the world heard a sound as full of meaning, from Singapore and Burma. There will be no restoration of the empire we have known. But there may well be a nobler and stronger reconstruction, with friendship and understanding, instead of dominion and subservience, as its solvents. The connexion of Britain and India stretches over more than three centuries, and provides the common ground on which East and West can come into a civilized relationship.
John Keats , said his brother George, was no more like Johnny Keats than he was like the Holy Ghost . When Tagore s first English book appeared, and was seen to be mystical and religious, expectation was pleased. Oriental literature was known to be like that; the West had made up its mind about the East , and a few stereo-typed generalizations were applied to cover the most diverse facts. Tagore, however, was not in the least like what he was supposed to be. He wrote, with a skill and virtuosity hardly ever equalled, in a tongue which is among the half-dozen most expressive and beautiful languages in the world, and the circumstances of his life afforded him leisure and opportunity, as well as ability, to observe the world outside India. I hope that my reader will see that his work was varied and vigorous and had more than a soft Wistful charm, deadened by repetition; and that his spirit was brave and independent.
Finally, I have a debt to three persons: to Prasanta Mahalanobis, F.R.S., the final authority on all Tagore s work-his help, in letters and discussions, was generous beyond my power to express; to Noel Carrington, who examined in detail my book s earliest draft, to its great gain; and to my wife.
Oriel College
Oxford
E.T.
3 March 1946
CONTENTS
BOOK I. 1861-1886.
EARLY LIFE AND POETRY
1 Prolegomena
2 Early Days
3 Juvenilia
4 The Heart-Wilderness
5 Emergence: Dramatic Beginnings
6 Last Poems of Youth
BOOK II. 1887-1897.
THE SHILEIDA AND S DHAN PERIOD
7 Maturity
8 Poems on Social Problems
9 First Dramas of Maturity
10 Residence at Shileida
11 The Jibandebat
12 Last Dramatic Work of the S dhan Period
13 The Last Rice
BOOK III. 1898-1905.
UNREST AND CHANGE
14 A Turning Back to the Past-Drama and Verse Narrative
15 New Measures: Religious Poetry
16 Santiniketan
BOOK IV. 1905-1919.
THE GIT NJALI PERIOD
17 Growing Symbolism-New Dramas
18 The Second Emergence , into World Reputation
19 Ph lguni . Nationalism and Internationalism
BOOK V. 1919-1941.
INTERNATIONALISM
20 After the War
21 Last Years
22 Epilogue
APPENDIX
A Rabindranath s Knowledge of English Poetry
B Comparison of English and Bengali Books
C Thompson s Letters to Tagore: A Few Relevant Extracts
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rabindranath Tagore at the Age of Sixty
Santiniketan: M. Sylvain L vi Teaching
Facsimile of the Poet s Writing: An Unpublished Poem
BOOK I
1861-1886
EARLY LIFE AND POETRY
1
PROLEGOMENA
T HE earliest Bengali literature takes us into a different world from the Hindu one of today. The Brahmanic influence was for centuries at a very low ebb , 1 and Buddhism reigned. Though long since replaced by Hinduism, Buddhism has clung tenaciously to the mind of the people and its influence still works, out of sight yet hardly out of sight. Fragments from an extensive literature which was Buddhist and magical and popular in character survive, some of them recovered from Nepal by Pandit Haraprasad Sastri; these are tentatively ascribed to the tenth or eleventh century. Almost as ancient are hymns discovered by Dr Dineshchandra Sen, which in language of the quaintest simplicity tell the adventures of their hero, the Sun-God, and express a wonder less imaginative but as real as that of the Dawn hymns of the Rigveda:

The Sun rises-how wonderfully coloured!
The Sun rises-the colour of fire!
The Sun rises-how wonderfully coloured!
The Sun rises-the colour of blood!
The Sun rises-how wonderfully coloured!
The Sun rises-the colour of betel-juice!
We are taken a stage beyond these pious ejaculations by rhymed aphorisms ascribed to D k and Khan , personages probably as historical as King Cole. These are the delight of the Bengali peasant today; and they are accepted as a guide by millions. The books serve as infallible agricultural manuals . 2

If rain falls at the end of Spring,
Blessed land! Blessed king!
Spring goes;
The heat grows.
Khan says: Sow paddy seeds
In sun; but betel shelter needs.
About 1200 A.D ., the political control of Bengal passed out of the hands of the Sen dynasty. A well-known picture by Surendranath Ganguli 1 shows Lakshman Sen, the last independent king of Nadiya, descending the gh t to his boat with the painful steps of decrepit age, as he fled before the Musalman invaders. With him went into exile, till another handful of invaders gradually brought it back, the nationality of Bengal. Seven hundred years of foreign rule began, and Bengali thought and literature suffered not only because the newcomers were alien in race and religion but still more because of the disintegration resulting from faction and warring courts and the existence of little semi-independent states such as Vishnupur. Bengal was far from the centre of Musalman rule, and about 1340 its government became practically independent of Delhi, and continued so till 1576, when Akbar reconquered the province. During these two hundred years it was cut off from the life of the rest of India, and the people suffered from local oppressors whom its Musalman rulers were unable to control. The seventeenth century was a time of comparative prosperity; but the eighteenth was the period of the decay of the Mogul Empire and the Maratha raids. Till the British rule was established, there was rarely any strong unifying Power, but a series of ex