Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 9: Essay by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

I conclude this series of posts about Rabindranath Tagore on his 150^th birth anniversary with the essay of the philosopher, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the first Vice President of the Indian Republic. It is in the same volume from which Jawaharlal Nehru's essay is taken:

http://kochiread.blogspot.com/2011/04/rabindranath-tagores-150th-birth.html

namely, the Centenary collection of essays published in 1961 on the occasion of the poet's 100th birth anniversary by the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi.

Radhakrishnan observes that Tradition is not only concord with the past but also freedom from the past. Tagore, says Radhakrishnan, perceived relationships hitherto unnoticed and gave humanity his vision of one world. “His great gifts of imagination and art were used for fostering faith in the unity of man and forging bonds of kinship with others.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

He quotes Tagore about The Spirit India: ‘I love India, not because I cultivate the idolatry of geography, ... but because she has saved through tumultuous ages the living words that have issued from the illuminated consciousness of her great sons.'

On Rabindranath's philosophy Radhakrishnan says the poet “did not claim to produce an original philosophy. His aim was not to analyse or speculate about the Indian tradition. He expressed it in his own vivid phrases and homely metaphors and showed its relevance to modern life.”

In a previous post dealing with Tagore's religious attitude,

http://kochiread.blogspot.com/2011/04/rabindranath-tagores-150th-birth_20.html

his own statements show that Tagore claims no original insight, but merely confirms what the best minds have thought centuries before. Yet, each in his own time must attain that realisation herself/himself. Tagore's words affirming a poet's receptiveness to God in the delight of the world and its creatures is recorded in these words:

if ever I have somehow come to realise God, or if the vision of God has ever been granted to me, I must have received the vision through this world, through men, through trees and birds and beasts, the dust and the soil.

In conclusion, Radhakrishnan quotes a letter to Gandhi the poet wrote on 12 April 1919, with the following invocation:

Give me the supreme courage of love, this is my prayer, the courage to speak, to do, to suffer at thy will, to leave all things or be left alone. . .

Read Radhakrishnan's entire essay by clicking below.

Poetry Session May 6, 2011: Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 8

Rabindranath Tagore as a young man

Although the attendance was sparse the celebration of the anniversary of Rabindranth Tagore was central to this Poetry session.

Thommo & Priya before the Poetry reading

Private translations were provided. Besides, translations by poets like William Radice added a new verve to the poetry of Rabindranath; his copious notes enhance the appreciation of certain poems.

Soma read Sonar Tori (The Golden Boat) by Rabindranath

Even the lyrics of a song (Rabindrasangeet) were adduced as worthy poetry, combining the musical and poetic genius of Rabindranath for an unforgettable effect.

Thommo, Priya, and Bobby follow Soma's reading

Here are the readers posing, happy as a flock of mynas, at the end.

 The Happy Six (Soma, Priya, Joe, KumKum, Thommo, Bobby) at the end of the reading

For a full account read the record that follows.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 7

Gora by Rabindranath Tagore

Novel lovers display their enthusiasm in many ways. They hold seminars and non-stop reading sessions, or they enact the story on stage, and go on tour. Enthusiasts of Moby Dick, for example, hold a Marathon non-stop reading of the novel in New Bedford, Massachusetts, annually on Jan 3 starting at noon and ending next evening. It is sponsored by the New Bedford Whaling Museum:

http://www.whalingmuseum.org/prog/marathon.html

The dates celebrate the anniversary of Herman Melville's departure from the port of New Bedford aboard the whaleship Acushnet in 1841. About 150 readers take part, including several in non-English languages:

For the Tagore 150th birth anniversary a band of readers in Bengali have chosen to read the novel Gora by Rabindranath Tagore individually to pay tribute to the unique manner in which the novel reflects the ethos of a period when a nationalism was being reborn in India. At the same time it reflects Rabindranth's considered political, moral and educational ideas, so well articulated in his essays, through real dialogue among characters set in the era. The novel also reflects the beginnings of women's liberation from male patriarchy.

In what follows individual readers set down their appreciation of Gora, and reflect on what makes it so distinctive a work in the oeuvre of Rabindranath.

The first response is by KumKum Cleetus which you can read below; Padmanabha Dasgupta and Soma Kanjilal have added theirs. More will follow.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 6

Tagore meets Einstein

A conversation took place in Caputh, Germany, on July 14, 1930

Rabindranath Tagore had a clear belief in the need for human reason to moderate received practices, religious faith and its rituals. Tagore was explicit in his disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi on this score:

We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its cost with the obscuration of our mind and destiny.

With such a background it is natural that when he met Einstein in Germany in 1930 the conversation turned to the theory of knowledge: how do we come to know truth.

The conversation was edited after transcription by Amiya Chakravarty, Tagore's secretary at the time. It sounds as if Chakravarty eliminated all the small talk, pleasantries and jokes (if there were any) and wrote down only a wooden dialogue, as though the event was a seminar for the public, not a private meeting.

Tagore was far more loquacious (542 words, versus 329 for Einstein) and didactic. Einstein is more like a Socrates, understanding the point being made, raising questions, and interjecting alternate viewpoints which belong to the scientific-rational sphere of thought. Einstein speaks mostly in single sentences, until the very end.

There was one theme in the whole debate, which is stated by Einstein as follows: "The problem is whether truth is independent of our consciousness."

And in the end it becomes clear that Einstein says, Yes, truth is independent of human consciousness of truth. Rabindranath says, No, there is no truth independent of human consciousness. When Einstein remarked, “If there were no human beings any more, would the Apollo Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?” Tagore simply replied, “No.” Einstein nevertheless admits that scientists who posit the existence of a physical reality, independent of human consciousness, are making a working hypothesis.

And then the conclusion at the end is recorded thus:

EINSTEIN: If nobody were in this house the table would exist all the same, but this is already illegitimate from your point of view, because we cannot explain what it means, that the table is there independently of us. Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack—not even primitive beings. We attribute to truth a superhuman objectivity. It is indispensable to us—this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind—though we cannot say what it means.

TAGORE: In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!

It's worth noting this topic of reality and human consciousness has nothing to do with the effect of experimental observations on sub-atomic events; that is quite another matter, first noted by Heisenberg and other quantum physicists.

The transcript of the conversation follows.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 5

Translating a Poem — The Year 1400

 

The first stanza of the poem by Rabindranath Tagore

 

In a poem from the collection, The Gardener, Rabindranath imagined a poet reading his poems a hundred years later:

The Gardener (LXXXV)

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring,
  one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished
  flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one
  spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

Later on in 1896 he wrote a poem titled “The Year 1400” in which he returned to the theme more expansively. This poem was recalled exactly a hundred years later by many people and it was widely recited in 1996.

The Year 1400 was written in 3 stanzas of 13, 16, and 10 lines. In the first Rabindranath sends his wishes forward in time to a poet a hundred years hence who is reading his poems. In the second stanza Rabindranath wonders if the poet of the future will be able to sense the passion that flowed in his veins when he wrote this poem for him. In the third stanza Rabindranath acknowledges the song of the future poet filling the house, and dispatches his joyful greetings laden the sounds of the earth from a hundred years ago.

I will give you three versions. 

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 4

Tagore's Poetry in Translation

Tagore could not resist the urge to simplify when he translated some of his poems into English. The Gitanjali translation, which he made himself first and then got some help from WB Yeats in redaction, is taken by modern critics as an example of the disservice he did himself as a poet. To quote Fr Pierre Fallon (a Jesuit who taught Comparative Literature in JadavpurUniversity when I was in college at St Xavier's): “The Western Gitanjali loses much of the musical beauty and evocative power of the original poems.” Yet he calls it a 'jewel' in the category of English religious poetry.


Rabindranath was not unaware that he cut corners when it came to translating his own poetry. He wrote to his friend Rothenstein who introduced him to London, ” I send you some more of my poems translated into English. They are too simple to bear the strain of translation.” What he meant, I think, was that he could not bear the strain of translating his poems and therefore he simplified them. Another critic says Rabindranath wished to present himself as a devotional poet in English and avoided the mass of his poems of landscapes and first-hand observation, and so on which could not be presented in that vein. In his next volume of translation, The Gardener, “the poet is carried away by the idea of simplicity and clarity, for which he sacrifices whatever was intense or complex in his original poetic texture.” (Subhas Sarkar, in Studies in translation By Ed. Mohit K. Ray). 

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 3

Tagore as a Religious Thinker

 Rabindranath Tagore, as 'Baul' by Abanindranath Tagore

Tagore was not a religious thinker primarily, yet it is appropriate to delve into the question of what was his religious thinking, because he wrote books, if not on religion, then at least on the artist’s philosophy. I lay myself open to a rash opinion here or there in this piece, but bear with me a while. I shall base myself on Tagore’s copious writings, taking the liberty of quoting extensively from them.

“My religion,” Tagore says, “is a poet’s religion, not that of an orthodox man of piety, or that of a theologian.” He lacked any religious inclination in his boyhood, in spite of the fact the Tagore was born into a Brahmin family. His father was deeply involved in the Brahmo Samaj movement, the monotheistic religion based on the Upanishads, which sought to reform certain aspects of the received Hinduism, perhaps much as Sankaracharya did many hundred years before.

When Tagore underwent the rites of initiation at his coming of age as a Brahmin, the Upanayanam (thread ceremony), he got to reflecting on the Gayatri mantra which youngsters are first taught at that age. Appropriately enough, he dates the growth of his religious awareness from that time. Meditating on the mantra he awoke to the infinite consciousness that unites the external world with the person’s mind.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 2

Rabindranath Tagore, Drypoint by Mukulchandra De

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

In Bengal it is not unusual for boys to think of writing poetry. The Tagore family cultivated the arts within their home and Tagore was nourished in the fold. But he struck out on his own and started writing poetry at the age of eight.

He espoused no poetic camp. He was self-taught in the school of nature; he observed and played, had tons of leisure, and spoke with his own voice of innocence. Attempts were made to educate him at a regular school; he was sent at age thirteen to my alma mater, St Xavier’s in Calcutta, where a huge portrait hangs of this illustrious dropout.

He filled notebooks and scrapbooks. Sailing in country boats on the river Padma, the great tributary of the Ganges that runs through what is now Bangladesh, I can imagine him seated up front, the oarsmen rowing the craft, birds dipping and diving into the water, the river banks sailing past, flowers of every kind growing wild ashore, and hearing the sounds of nature and the songs of the boatmen. Later Tagore came to these places in Shelidah, again and again, to recoup his energies and translate his best known work, the Gitanjali, into English.

Rabindranath Tagore's 150th Birth Anniversary - 1

Bust of Rabindranath Tagore by Jacob Epstein

The anniversary falls on May 7, 2011. In preparation there are many functions being organised all over the world. The celebrations were set in motion a year ago at the start of the 150th year with India and Bangladesh deciding to celebrate the occasion jointly. Rabindranath is, after all, the author of the national anthems of both countries, and the people of Bangladesh consider him as much their poet as the Bengalis on this side of the border.


Rabindranath's ceaseless experimentation is manifest in diverse forms. In his own estimation it was the songs he composed, Rabindrasangeet, by which he will be remembered:

I know for certain that the Bengali race must needs accept my songs, they must all sing my songs in every Bengali home, in the fields and by the rivers.

Fortunately, the work of a dedicated lover of Rabindrasangeet, Dr Purnendu Sarkar, has made all 2213 songs of the Gitabitan available on a single DVD, sung by various artists. See http://www.gitabitanarchive.net/englishhome.html

Rabindranath's collected works are spread over 29 volumes. A collaborative endeavour was begun in 2009 to make all his works available on the Internet, since the copyright has expired on most of it. See
http://tagoreweb.in/


Rabindranath changed the literary language, as well as ordinary discourse in Bengali by his writing. He wrote, spoke and debated regarding every sphere of the nation's life. Travelling extensively to many parts of the world, he met fellow artists and persuaded them to come and spend time establishing his vision of universal education at Santiniketan.

Aspects of Rabindranath will be touched upon in this and succeeding blogs as a tribute and remembrance. Only once or twice in the entire history of a language and its literature could there be place for someone of his stature. As Jawaharlal Nehru noted, when it came to discharging his duty to write a preface to the centenary volume on Rabindranath:

reluctance seizes me and perhaps a sense of humility, even though I do not normally suffer from this feeling.

One can do no better in the 150th year than re-read Nehru's words from that volume to get under way with the celebration. Watch this blog for more on Rabindranath. Please click below. 

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce — Apr 8, 2011

 First edition

Joyce's first novel challenges but does not intimidate. Several of the Joycean devices that became hallmarks of his style are on display in this book, but not in their extreme form.

James Joyce as a child in sailor outfit

One of the outstanding features of this novel is that Joyce changes the diction as the novel progresses from innocent memories of childhood, through the rigours of a Jesuit training, to the young artist in budding revolt. Those changes of style lend an artistry to the novel that would be missing in a pure recollected biography.

Young James Joyce aged 22

Naturally, some found the patina of Catholic pietism repellent. A debate on this was a running theme of the discussions initiated by Indira. 
 

Talitha, Priya, Zakia, Thommo, and Mohan

There is much to discover in this novel, even though the story line is thin: kissing, moocows, epiphanies, passion, reveries, poetry, flight, Thomist philosophy, and more. Joyce rewards readers by presenting a lyrical drift that has gone quite out of fashion with modernism. Plenty of dialogue, it may have, but feeble it is not! (sorry Mr Nabokov).

 Amita, KumKum, and Indira

At the end Talitha gave readers great delight by reciting an ode she wrote for KRG members. She said it was a response to the sonnet Joe wrote for her and Amita, when they announced they were leaving for other parts. Click on the images below to read the full ode in her hand, testifying to the various oddities of the readers in our group.

 

 For a full account of the discussions and readings, click below.