The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
The Prospects for Harmony
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
The Prospects for Harmony
It is evident from the preceding discussion, and indeed from this whole book, that the central aspiration of Rabindranath is one for harmony. Some readers are bound to question how realistic this aspiration is. How aware was Tagore of the many obstacles – evil, sorrow, suffering, disease, death and so on – which threaten any ideal of harmonious existence? What, these readers may ask, would be his response, for example, to Baudelaire, who expresses the conviction that there is no harmony to be found in the world? For Baudelaire, as we have already seen, almost everything is ugly and abominable. His heart, unlike Tagore’s, emphatically does not dance when the rain patters on the new leaves of summer: rather, ‘the rain spreading its immense trails / Imitates a prison of bars’. For Baudelaire, the sky is not blue, but black as pitch: Can you illuminate a grimy, black sky? Can we pierce shadows denser than pitch, with no morning or evening, with no stars, without even gloomy flashes of lightning? Can you illuminate grimy black sky? … The devil has snuffed the light at the windows of the Inn. Baudelaire’s world is ‘an enormous corpse’ which we live upon like worms and parasites whose squirmings will soon cease. This is why, in his poem ‘The Voyage’, his intense craving is for ‘Anywhere! Anywhere! As long as it be out of the world.’ If there is anything beautiful, it is not to be found in this world. Addressing the figure of death, Baudelaire declaims, ‘This country bores, O Death! Let us set sail.’ The new land to which he will sail may turn out to be as ugly as the one he is leaving, but no matter: the immediate goal is not the destination, but to get away from a world he finds abominable. 86 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore To drive into the gulf, Hell or Heaven … What matter? Into the unknown in search of the new. 24 Clearly Rabindranath’s perception of the world was entirely different from Baudelaire’s. In his writings, we encounter no longing to escape the world, but instead the love of a world that he had found beautiful ever since childhood: ‘I don’t want to leave this beautiful world / I want to live among men.’ 25 And this love never waned, it seems, even for a moment. The worry may then be that Tagore simply refused to recognize the ugliness and disharmony that, at some level, he must nevertheless have been familiar with – or perhaps that, while recognizing them, he chose simply to ignore them. Tagore himself was well aware of this worry on the part of his readers, such as W.B. Yeats once his initial enthusiasm for Gitanjali, in particular (see Chapter 1), had subsided. Rabindranath observes in the preface of his poetical work Chitra: ‘It is said against me that I have attended only to beauty or harmony, while anything contrary to it [has always escaped my notice].’ 26 He considered this charge to be an unfair one, and in this he was surely justified. It is certainly not true that he failed to recognize or refused to accept the existence of evil, ugliness and other aspects of life antithetical to harmony. His poetical works conspicuously testify to such a recognition and acceptance. In Kadi o Komal, which was published after the death of his sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi, we encounter a poignant expression of his shocking experience of death. Here we find him searching in the darkness of night for bright sunshine, but all in vain: Oh! where is the luminous world! Where I can move without fear! The poet receives no answer to his questions. Who will respond to the call of the heart? The night is mute. 27 In Manasi, especially in the poems ‘Nishthur Srishti’ and ‘Shunya Grihe’, we encounter similar expressions of despair, the feeling that our life is without any hope, that suffering alone is real. In Sonar Tari, particularly the poem ‘Niruddesh Jatra’, dejection and disillusion seem to be even more pronounced. Indeed, the poem reminds one of Baudelaire’s ‘The Voyage’, with its fear that our faith in the boatman to take us to the shore of a bright new land amidst storms and darkness has no real ground: Dense blue water full of apprehension, Nowhere is found any shore, Infinite wailing pervades the world. 28 Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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