“Ritusamhara is clearly a work of Kalidasa’s immaturity. The youthful love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in Shakuntala and Kumara-Sambhava. “
Like this, on several occasions, I find stark disagreement with many of Rabindra Nath Tagore’s opinions while reading a book carrying ten of his poplar essays, including few I liked and enmeshed into, The Poet’s Religion, The Creative Ideal, The Religion of the Forest, East and West, The Modern Age, The Spirit of Freedom, The Nation and Woman and Home.
Furthermore, to some readers, several of his thoughts and philosophies may seem to be obsolete today, given the reason that the ideas and set of mind that ruled the era in which he lived approximately one hundred years back do not find much value today. Be it his opinion about religion, work of a poet, creativity, nation and nationalism, freedom, woman and differences between East and West, many of his ideas seem to be outmoded today.
Nevertheless, not even an iota of words and ideas written by him can be marginalised by such ruckus of my thinking. He remains one of the best writer, poet and philosophers that India has produced. He along with Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Indian prime minister, were two of the best writers in Indian pre-independence era. A while ago, I had a petite thought finding a comparison between the two.
What I find is that Tagore used Indian way of writing, while Nehru, whose acumen and skill of writing were astounding, used western approach in his writing. Speaking straight, Nehru was close to westernised way of writing (this is the inkling I got and can recall now of my past reading of his Discovery of India and some of letters written by him to his daughter, Indira Gandhi, during his trial in jail. His words and highly sophisticated sentences seem to be complicated to me), while Tagore concentrated on Indianization through his simple words and bout of thoughts easy to be comprehended. His Geetanjali (a collection of his verses, which fetched him Nobel Prize) is stark proof of it. Can any western writer be so close to spiritualism and purity of emotions in his/her writing one hundred years ago?
Reading the book with which I started the conversation and as I told you that it contains some of Tagore’s essays, is titled as Creative Unity, published by Rupa. I
Reading the book was like passing through oodles of new thoughts giving me a sense of creative orgasm in my mind. Often I got mesmerized and stunned thinking the way he used his set of thoughts and philosophies in his essays. It is amazing – an unparalleled discovery.
Is it possible for writers today to use the superfluity of emotions, chain of relevant thoughts and powerful words to attain the creative unity of writing, which he mastered a hundred year back?
While writing about Tagore, I would like to put here and share some of his ideas from his essays, which moved me greatly. I am typing below few of them I underlined while reading the book.
“Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternity unfinished.” (The Pot’s Religion)
“Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said that these did not belong to reality…There was a day when human reality was brutal reality. That was the only capital we had with which to begin our career. But age after age there has come to us call of faith, which said against all the evidence of fact: “you are more than you appear to be, more than your circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal.” (The Creative Ideal)
“We all have a realm, a paradise, in our mind, where dwell deathless memories of person who brought some divine light to our life’s experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names have no place in the pages of history.” (East and West)
“We must know that, as, through science and commerce, the realization of the unity of the material world gives us power, so the realization of the great spiritual Unity of Man alone can give us peace.” (The Modern Age)
“When we suffer as a result of a particular system, we believe that some other system would bring us better luck. We are apt to forget that all systems produce evil sooner or later, when the psychology which is at the root of them is wrong.” (The Nation)
“The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience. The man who sells his goods, or fulfills his contracts, is cheated if he fails to realize payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may never get his due and be full paid.” (Woman and Home)
