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
87 Elsewhere, vivid expression is lent to the tensions between a desire for good and beauty, and inevitable dejection in the face of brutal wars, and the consequent horrors of death and suffering, and between a craving for harmony, and the palpable lack of it in the actual world. How much sorrows and sufferings! How many battles and death! No end to them. Gradually darkness becomes denser, Silence more intense … From the depth Of the solitary earth arises a distressed question, A wearied tone: How long? 29 Poem 37 in Balaka provides an especially telling demonstration of Tagore’s acute sense of evil, of his grim awareness that ‘the clouds have blotted away the stars’: Do you hear the tumult of death afar, The call midst the fire-floods and poisonous clouds … All the black evils in the world have overflowed their banks, Yet, oarsmen, take your places with the blessing of sorrows in your souls! Whom do you blame, brothers? Bow your heads down! The sin has been yours and ours. The heat growing in the heart of God for ages – The cowardice of the weak, the arrogance of the strong, the greed Of fat prosperity, the rancour of the wronged, pride of race, and insult to man – Has burst God’s peace, raging in storm. 30 It is especially in the final phase of his poetic writings, which corresponded to the worsening political situation both at home and abroad, that Tagore’s awareness of evil in the world and his fears for the prospects of harmony is acute and explicit. In some of these poems, he gives voice to feelings akin to the ‘leaden-eyed despair’ of which Keats writes in his ‘Ode to a nightingale’. For example, in a poem significantly titled ‘This evil day’, Rabindranath describes a world which is wild with the delirium of hatred and conflict, one which has gone crooked and is taken over by greed. Here is how Tagore expresses his anguished perception of this world: Have I not seen secret malignance strike down the helpless under the cover of hypercritical night? Have I not heard the silenced voice of Justice weeping in solitude at night’s defiant outrages? Have I not seen in what agony reckless youth, running mad, has vainly shattered its life against insensitive rocks? Choked is my voice, mute are my songs. 31 It is evident, then, that Tagore fully recognizes the existence of evil in the world, and not as some accidental accompaniment to our life, but as something 88 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore pervasive and central to it. Even during his darkest periods, however, Tagore is able to translate his moments of despair into ones of hope. This becomes clear, for example, in poem 19 of Balaka. While appreciating that life is indeed haunted by the prospect of death, always there to upset the flow of life, he describes how, nevertheless, he has ‘kissed this world’ with his eyes and limbs, has wrapped it within his heart ‘in numberless folds’, and how he still loves his life ‘because I love the light of the sky so enwoven with me’. To be sure, despite this love of life, he knows that he will have to die one day, that his eyes will no longer see light, that his heart will no longer respond to the warm call of the sun. But, he adds, the final truth is not this seemingly terrible contradiction between life and death: If to leave this world be as real as to love it – then there must be a meaning in the meeting and the parting of life. If that love were deceived in death, then the canker of this deceit would eat into all things, and the stars would shrivel and grow black. 32 What is attested to, in these words, is the conviction that, at a deep level, there is a harmony that enables reconciliation between life and death. More generally, Tagore’s writings attest to the belief that the existence and experience of evil cannot override our faith in beauty, goodness and harmony. Far from ignoring evil, Tagore is at some pains to classify the various forms of evil. Evils, according to him, are of two general kinds: natural and moral. Natural evils are those which are caused by natural or physical factors, while moral evils are those that spring directly or indirectly from the exercise of human will. Evils of the first kind are subsumed under the headings of ‘suffering’ or ‘pain’, and those of the second kind under the heading of ‘sin’. ‘The evil which hurts the natural man is pain, but that which hurts his soul has been given a special name, it is sin.’ 33 Familiar examples of natural evil are poverty, disease, death and privation; while falsehood and selfishness, for instance, are identified as moral evils. Tagore also speaks of ugliness as an evil, since to tolerate ugliness is to be without that aesthetic sense which, we know, is such a central aspect, for Tagore, of a worthwhile human life. Ugliness, like selfishness, serves to confine a person, to prevent that expansion of consciousness and selfhood that should be a primary aim of an authentic human life. What matters most, for our present purposes, is not Tagore’s catalogue of the various kinds of evil, but the question of how he responds to the existence of evil. It is interesting and useful, in this context, to compare Tagore’s position with that of Keats. The English poet, as we know, is not only a worshipper of beauty, but famously equates beauty with truth. To preserve this equation, he had to narrow down the domain of truth by ignoring or marginalizing the types of truths or facts which could hardly be objects for the Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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