The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
Self, Art, Evil and Harmony
89 contemplation of beauty. On several occasions Tagore expressed his appreciation of Keats’s equation, but it is one that he appropriates in his own distinctive way. Unlike Keats, he is not willing to exclude anything belonging in the domain of truth, not even – and especially – the dark fact of death. For Tagore, there need not, and should not, be anything morbid in concentrating upon death. Indeed, for him, it is a symptom of true morbidity simply to ignore death, to treat it as an inconvenient and disagreeable subject that sensible people set aside. Tagore would doubtless agree with Heidegger’s criticism, in Being and Time, of those who seek to persuade themselves that death is what happens to other people. 34 And he would agree with Heidegger’s further point, reinforced by many psychologists and biologists in recent years, that anticipation of one’s own death, far from being something to suppress, plays a central role in bringing home to a person a sense of his own individuality as a human being. One reason, arguably, why an animal lacks self-awareness is that it is without a sense that it will one day die. The rational person, therefore, will not ignore death but, so to speak, include it as part of his or her life. It is not what comes, like an Afterword, once the story is over, but is instead the conclusion of the story. In Heidegger’s famous expression, as a being-in-the-world, a human being is also a ‘being-towards-death’. What is required, then, is a proper understanding of death, from the right perspective, as an integral part of the whole of life. It is the call to this type of understanding which, in effect, is Tagore’s response to the existence of all those evils that might appear to contradict the existence of goodness and harmony. Consider the following important remark: a man, who by his profession, is concerned with any particular aspect of life is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stress upon facts, he looses his hold upon truth. A detective may have the opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses his sense of their relative place in the whole social economy. 35 Our familiar and erroneous tendency, Tagore maintains, is to consider and evaluate evils in isolation from the wider context of life. If, for example, we keep the ‘searchlight of our observation turned upon’ death, he says, the world will appear to us like a ‘huge charnel house’. But it will only appear this way if we fail to keep in view the wholeness of life of which death is part. Only when we isolate the fact of death, do we experience its blankness, become dismayed, and morbidly brood over it. The point is brought out by Tagore with the help of a useful analogy. A piece of cloth looks beautiful to us even though, were we to look at it through a microscope, we would find it full of ugly, jagged holes. These holes are indeed parts of the cloth, but they in no way spoil its beauty when the cloth is viewed from an appropriate standpoint. Only when they are unduly magnified do they interfere with enjoyment of the whole piece of material. As Rabindranath himself puts it: 90 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore We lose sight of the wholeness of a life of which death is part. It is like looking at a piece of cloth through a microscope. It appears like a net, we gaze at the big holes and shiver in imagination. But the truth is, death is not the ultimate reality. It looks black as the sky looks blue; but it does not blacken existence, just as the sky does not leave its stain upon the wings of the bird. 36 To appreciate the harmony and beauty of the world, then, it is not necessary to deny or ignore such evils as death. Rather we must nurture the capacity to regard the world as a whole, within which even these ‘blemishes’ have their place. To regard the world in this way, we need to achieve what might be called the appropriate aesthetic distance from phenomena. If, to vary the cloth example, we stand very near to a tree, we will be aware only of the wrinkles on the bark of its trunk. But viewed from an appropriate distance the tree as a whole will look stately, balanced and beautiful. To maintain the appropriate aesthetic distance from such objects of nature is not, generally, something difficult. It is much more difficult to achieve this distance from the situations of life in which we are involved. In connection with these, we tend to be in the position of an actor who, preoccupied with his particular role, is unable to grasp the total structure and narrative of the play. Standing in the midst of life, with all its dramas, sorrows and sufferings, it is not easy to step back and to attain to a perspective on the whole. Tagore elaborates the point as follows: Since human beings are very near to us, we are always prone to magnify their limitations or smallness. Since we are in the human world very intimately, the terrible steam arising out of different conflicts and tumults of human life suffocates us. We attend only to poverty, disease, famine, different acts of barbarism, but not to the infinite harmony which is there by appropriating all the evils of life. 37 Difficult as it may be to achieve appropriate aesthetic distance, it is something, Tagore firmly believed, that is possible with suitable training and preparation. We do have the capacity to view both nature and human world from this distance, to cultivate a frame of mind that enables us to discern a harmony that is beyond the surface discord. This conviction is expressed in a poem written after the premature death of his wife, where he solicits her help in developing just that distance and attitude of transcendence. Dark clouds have blotted all lights from above; and we caged birds cry And ask you: My friend, is it the death moment of creation? Has God Withdrawn his blessings from the sky? Times were when the sudden breath of April would waft the distant Fragrance of hope into our hearts, and the morning light would gild The iron bars of our prison with its golden spell and would bring the Gladness of the open world into our cage. But, see, it is all dark in the hills yonder, and not a thinnest rift has been Self, Art, Evil and Harmony 91 Made by the scimitar of light cutting through the massive gloom. Our chains today sit heavy on our feet, and not a flush of glow is left in The sky with which to build an illusion of joy. But let not our fear and sorrow pain you, my friend! Come not to sit at the door of our cage to cry with us, Your wings are unfettered, Far away from us you soar beyond all clouds, And from there send us the message in song: ‘The light is shining for ever. The lamp of the sun is not out’. 38 That we can learn to see that ‘the lamp of the sun is not out’ in spite of the darkness of our life was Tagore’s unwavering conviction, one that enabled him to take calmly the many sorrows and sufferings he experienced, including the tragic deaths of his wife, his sister-in-law, his daughters Madhrilata and Renuka, and his son Shamindranath. What we have just been describing is the response to evils by, one might say, Tagore the poet. But there is a different kind of response he also makes – that of a man of action. For Tagore, as we have seen, a person’s identity is Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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