Dr. Moni Chowdhury (Ph. D)
Albeit the fact remains that writing a few lines about a single aspect of Rabindranath’s poetic philosophy or his panoramic creative acumen, specially, in relation to a given caption presupposes a very disciplined and neatly defined effort, I am making a lame attempt here, being unable to turn down the request of Shree Biswajit Sarkar, Secretary, Rabindra Mela Committee, Berhampore, to broach upon a few major aspects of Rabindranath’s profound love of Nature, to be more precise, his reception of autumn that comes in the wake of his favourite monsoon. To Tagore, as it is with Wordsworth, Nature is a living entity which manifests herself in many forms and hues in the cycle of seasons----sometimes she is harsh and unforgiving like a severe force, sometimes calm and serene like a mother and sometimes vibrant, jubilant and colourful like a bride. But all shades, all colours and all forms are interwoven, hence inseparable. Tagore enjoys the bounties of every season to his heart’s content but never does he so independent of one another. When he enjoys the song of the stray birds of summer, he does not miss the sigh of the yellow, worn out leaves of autumn which have no song:
“Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh”
[Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray ,2007. “Poems”, p.397, Atlantic Publishers and Dist]
The poet still listens to the music of summer even in autumn:
“The music of the far-away summer flutters around the autumn seeking its former nest” [Rabindranath Tagore (2007). “Stray Birds”, P. 19. Filiquarian Publishing, LLC]
Therefore, in Tagore’s perception, the seasons appear different only in their external manifestations but in essence there lies the same immanent spirit that leads to a harmoniously composite whole----a cosmic holistic perception, no doubt. The following sentences that Tagore wrote originally in a Bengali essay titled ‘Tapobon’ in 1909 [The English rendering titled ‘The Message from the Forest’ in 1919]showcase his firm spiritual belief in a spiritual harmony between man and universe: “The forest, unlike the desert or rock or sea, is living; it gives shelter and nourishment to life. In such surroundings the ancient forest-dwellers of India realised the spirit of harmony with the universe and emphasized in their minds the monistic aspects of truth. They sought the realisation of their soul through union with all” However, there is no impugning the fact that different seasons with their diverse shades inspire Tagore’s pied figments of imagination.
If, for Tagore, spring be the king of season, autumn is the white-clad goddess of bountifulness and abundance who remains engaged in shaping the process of renewal and regeneration despite her hidden sighs over the yellow leaves fluttering in the air. In fact, the dislocation of old yellow leaves from the trees brings the message of the sprouting of the young shoots of leaves and thus offers optimistic clue to the continuation of foliage, if not its expansion. In Tagore’s inclusive approach to life and nature or in his philosophy of synthesis, death and renewal or pestilence and fertility are no binary opposites but essential components of the harmonious macrocosmic reality.
Needless to say, the people of Bengal have their own ways of life, their own textures of weal and woe along with their own perceptions and intuitions which characterise their factual realism and their visionary domain as well. Therefore, the ways Blake, Keats, Shelley and Thomas hood treat of the cycle of seasons are expectedly different from those of Tagore, Bibhutibhusan, Jibananda and Nazrul, in spite of the fact that in respect of the perception of the manifestation of divinity in the flora and the fauna of the world, Tagore and Wordsworth may be a happy comparative study. It would not be an exaggeration to say that each season makes its presence more distinctly in Bengal than in any other place in the world. Therefore, the poetic psyche of the Bengali romantic poets spontaneously responds to and reflects on the luxuriant beauty, splendour and abundance of each season; especially with Tagore, each season delivers new message of God’s gift and renews his profound faith in the trinity of God, man and nature. Tagore does not have the extra responsibility like that of Keats to remind autumn of its inherent melody-- ‘thou hast thy music too’—simply because in the azure sky, the abundance of catkins and ‘shiulis’, the smell of the young shoots of rice and foliage, the auriferous glory of the coruscating sun and in the prevalent festive mood the prologue song of the autumn is heard in the air. The essence of autumn’s luxury unleashes the poet’s imagination. More importantly, in Bengal more than one festival comes off in every season and these seasonal festivals bring with them the respite from the yokes of drudgeries with the result that people feel the joy of freedom and respond spontaneously to the beckon of holidaying. In a number of Tagore’s poems, songs and plays the call for stepping out of the house to enjoy freedom in close companionship with nature is frequently heard. In autumn, in particular, the occasion of the home-coming of the married daughter popularly known as Durga Puja, the festival of light Known as ‘Diwali’ followed by the festival of fresh harvest evoke an ambience of joy and celebration. With the sailing cloudlets across the blue firmament the Bengali soul floats, as it were, towards the wonderful domain of freedom. The festive mood, the spirit of holidaying along with the promise of pristine joy which set off the monotony of work-bound, time-bound and drudgery-bound life certainly shapes the essence of autumn in Bengal. And whose mind’s lyre sings of this autumnal essence more impressively in Bengal than Tagore’s?
Now let us take up a few of Tagore’s songs and his symbolic play, ‘The Fest of Autumn’ to see Tagore’s aesthetic as well as philosophical reception and his internalization of the spirit autumn on a sub-tropical backdrop.
The Sun smiles today on the lap of the Clouds, and the rains have stopped
Oh! how beautiful is the day! Today is our holiday O Friend, holiday is today
How wonderful is the day! What should we do today? What should we do?
In which forest should we lose our way? ...
In which Field should we run about gathering other Boys?
How wonderful is Nature today!
I will make a Boat with the leaves of Keya and bedeck it with flowers, ... Then float it on the Pond embraced by palm trees
It will move forward swinging gently I will tend the Cows with the shepherd boy today, and play the flute with him
I will smear my body with the pollen of flowers in the champak bower
What a fun it’ll be!
Even a casual or desultory reading of the abovementioned song-lyric reveals the poet’s idyllic mood inspired by the cosmic play of the blue welkin and the auriferous sunrays. The day is a holiday connotating a break from the monotony caused by the compulsion of sweating labour---a day to break away from tight grip of rules and regulations. The expression of joy is to be discerned in every line of the song. The poet will do whatever his mind dictates him to do---losing way in some forest---minding the herd of cows with the shepherd boy….playing flute with him---floating the boat made of ‘keya’ leaf on the pond and rolling in the champak grove to be smeared with the pollens of the flowers. All these closely intertwined audio-visual, olfactory and tactile images have been employed to denote joy in its entirety. The swinging movement of the leaf-boat symbolises the swing of the poet’s mind from one object of joy to another and from one marvel to another. Being backed by the indulgent spirit of nature the poet’s mood of holiday articulates itself with unsurpassable lyrical grace. What is worth observing in this connection is that the celebration of holiday is going on in close custody of nature. In the following song-lyric the same joy, the same ecstasy of holidaying and the same freedom from work continue.
Over the rice field today the sunlight and shade are playing hide-and-seek I wonder! who has floated the white cloud-boats in the blue Sky?
Today the bees have forgotten to suck honey from the flowers,
They are just flying about intoxicated by the light,
For what reasons are the flock of swans crowd the banks of the river? O my bro, today I will not go home, Today I feel like defying the sky and plundering the space beyond As if the foamy flakes on the high-tide in a river are smilingly flying with the breeze, Today I will spend the whole day playing flute and doing no work.
On a sunlit autumn day every object of nature seems to have drunk the wine of joy and feel intoxicated. They correspond to the jubilant mood of the poet. The fleecy cloudlets, the hive of bees, the flock of swans and the zephyr kissing the foamy tops of the river-waves induce the poet to celebrate in his heart the communion of nature’s festive mood and his own mood of losing his way into some forest. He is so emotionally stimulated that he wishes to ransack the sky and make a foray into the limitless and wants to beguile the day in his own preferred way of playing flute and doing no routine-bound job for earning mere subsistence. However, rambling in some forest or playing flute is a happy engagement that nourishes his heart and provides pabulum for his mind. This song under review also, like many other ‘autumn’ poems of Tagore, sets the key to an uninhibited holiday temper.
In fact, the whole gamut of nature is deeply rooted in Tagore’s emotion and consciousness which is why his heart celebrates the purging sun of summer (Let the earth be purified in the fiery bath), perceives the face of All-Pitiful God in the monsoon showers that quench the thirst of the scorched earth (On the sweltering bed lay stretched the thirsty earth / Thou sent to her the message of ambrosia of rain from the pantheon) and welcomes autumn’s irresistible call of the festivity of leisure, her message of the joy of rapprochement with the near and dear ones and her invitation to relish the flavour of new harvest. The chill in the wind of late autumn and the dreary winter cannot inhibit the poet’s spirit because they are, to him, merely the different manifestations of nature with their own immanent beauty. The season of spring whom he fondly calls the king of season stimulates the poet’s sensibilities with all its colourful livery and youthful warmth. What really interests in this connection is that each season delivers to this high priest of nature the message of break from that pattern of life which is heavily punctuated by work and rigorous routine and which tends to supress man’s natural proclivity to enjoy freedom. In Tagore’s monolithic domain of diverse creation, each season articulates this message of freedom in their own characteristic ways.
Now let us dwell upon one of his celebrated symbolic plays which has won much acclaim in the international dramaturgy, ‘The Fest of Autumn’ to appreciate Tagore’s internalization of man’s simultaneous inward-outward odyssey as well as his unflinching belief in nature being the means of man’s spiritual illumination and the feel of delectation. He wrote this play to be staged by the ashram boys at Shantiniketan to celebrate autumnal recess and rendered the same into English after a few years. The play abounds in symbolic nuances and offers an insight into Tagore’s responses to autumn not only in terms of holidaying but also of repaying debts with a good harvest. Here in the play the boy, Upananda’s heartiest attempt to pay off his master Surosen’s debts, to the crass materialist, Luckeswar by writing and illuminating scripts may be taken as a symbol. In Bengal it was a very common social picture that the poor and marginal farmers would pay off the debts to their ruthless as well as blood-sucking masters with the new harvest. However, what warrants one’s attention is that Tagore realizes that the phenomenon of ‘debt-paying’ also exists in the world of nature. In this context, Sudeshna Majumder’s illuminating observation is worth quoting:
“Besides foregrounding the theme of festive celebration, the play calls for a look within, deep into the inner-world of the mind for contemplation, which is also the message behind autumn’s gifts to mankind. It is as if the season itself participates in the Earth’s annual ‘debt-paying’ to the sun through bounties of corn and water.” (Rupkatha Journal Vol 2 No 4, P. 530) In fact, the play is interspersed with passages that tangibly suggest the joy of debt-paying through sacrifice:
“The first breath of the autumn has sent a shiver through the white crest of flowering grass and the shiuli blossoms have offered their fragrance to the air, as if in the joy of reckless sacrifice [……...]” (Thakurdada)
Or
“If I can lay down my life to pay his debts for him, this beautiful day of October will then have its full due from me.” (Upananda)
Or
“I know why this world is so beautiful, ---simply because it is ever paying back its debt.” (Sanyasi)
The quoted extracts from the play under review buttress the fact that the debt-paying motif is central to the three seemingly different manifestations of autumn--- the spirit of work represented by Upananda, the spirit of freedom represented by Thakurdada and the ascetic spirit by Sanyasi. In fact, the romanticist in Tagore rhapsodises over the white crest of fragrant shiuli blossoms, the gauzy veils of clouds and the invitation to abstain from work but at the same time the sensibilities of the patriotic poet as well as the pragmatic mindset of the reformist cannot accommodate indolence, like old Gonzalo in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Tennyson’s lotos eaters.
To cook up any insightful as well as erudite treatise on Tagore’s reception of autumn presupposes a wider space because his other autumnal songs, poems and essays in which he has seen autumn as pristine feminine beauty or goddess of prosperity or the manifestation of ‘Mata Banga’ should be taken into serious consideration. For Keats autumn is a season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ for Shelley, it is a requiem of the year and for Thomas Hood, it is an aged male figure with ‘coronet of golden corn’ or a lonely woman who wears ‘a coronal of flowers faded’ and shakes her dewy locks. For most of the Western poets, autumn is a season of ‘shadowy despair’. But to Tagore, autumn appears with its variegated manifestations. The poet explains how autumn in the West comes hiding her face beneath the veil of mist as opposed to the autumn in Bengal that lowers her fair face to the Earth removing the veil of clouds (Sharat 777). In Bengal, autumn appears floating on the boats of soft clouds, purifies herself in the golden sunshine and gets her hair perfumed with the aroma of shiuli flowers. In the Northern hemisphere the climatic condition is not as serene and mellow as that in the sub-tropical region with the result that in the Western poetry nature appears a bit exacting and coarse (Wordsworth being an exquisite exception). In Tagore’s imagination autumn comes removing the veil of clouds whereas in the West she is imagined to be trapped in the prison of clouds; autumn invites Tagore to step out of house to enjoy freedom and autumnal glory, while in the West decadence permeates the core of autumn. However, the joy of new harvest makes autumn more or less enjoyable, East and West.
About Writer
Dr. Moni Chowdhury (Ph. D) is a well wisher of Rabindramela Berhampore
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