Abstract
This essay traces the impact of northeastern India in terms of a shaping influence on Tagore. The aesthetic rhythm that binds the works of Tagore marking a distinctive tradition in the Bengali literary imagination is the result of a confluence of associations from both the home and the world. Engaged as he was, in the search of influences that would help him give shape to an artistic and literary tradition, the Far East provided him a source of inspiration, as a critical counterpoint to the norms of European civilization. His reflections of the Orient comprise the core of his metaphysical formulations on the principles of art, literature, and the creative imagination. This essay follows an intertextual examination of a body of writings based on the history and culture of northeastern India, and through an analysis of the interplay of history, text, and context of certain metaphysical formulations comprising the world view of Rabindranath Tagore, the dialectics of human intellection and the specific nature of aesthetic reflection, distinct from other forms of cognition.
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Notes
- 1.
See “Asia’s Response to the Call of the New Age,” Rabindranath Tagore in Sisir Kumar Das (1996b: 659–664):
“Today we are born at the end of an epoch in the history of humanity. Perhaps in the drama of Europe the scene is being changed for the fifth act of the play. Signs of an awakening in Asia have slowly spread from one end of the horizon to the other. This glow of a new dawn above the eastern mountain ranges of humanity is indeed a great vision – it is a vision of freedom. Freedom, not only from external bondages, but from those of slumberous inaction and disbelief in one’s inner power” (p. 661).
- 2.
See Barman (2006), where the poet’s “prolonged association with the Maharajas and other royal dignitaries of the erstwhile Princely State of Tripura spanning the long period of about 55 years (1886–1941)” has been documented.
- 3.
See Paul (1997: 444).
- 4.
See Paul (1997: 446). In February 1937, in the introductory pamphlet distributed in the Excelsior Theater of Bombay during the staging of Chitrangada, the following note (pertinent to the dance form of the play and the discussion above) on Sangeet Bhavan, Shantiniketan was distributed:
Saved by a chain of difficult range of hills from the puritanical atmosphere of the Bengali Society, dancing existed in its pristine glory in the native state of Manipur to the east of Bengal. Rabindranath in his visit to Sylhet in 1917 [1919] had the occasion to see an exhibition of Manipuri dancing. He was charmed with the lyrical quality of these dances and a complete absence of any gross sensuousness in these rhythmic forms. He knew his chance had come and he brought along with him two Manipuri dance teachers for his school.
- 5.
See “At the Cross Roads,” Rabindranath Tagore in Sisir Kumar Das (1996b: 380–384):
“At the present moment the World Drama is at the change of its acts, and we do not know towards what denouement it is moving.
… This is an age of transition. The Dawn of a great tomorrow is breaking through its bank of clouds and the call of New Life comes with its message that man’s strength is of the spirit, and not of the machine of organization.
… The world is waiting for the birth of the Child, who believes more than he knows, who is to be the crowned King of the future, who will come amply supplied with provisions for his daring adventures in the moral world, for his explorations in the region of man’s inner being.”
This idea has a strident resonance in his writings on the Eastern civilizations as what he aims to give shape to is the notion of being in whom Santam, Shivam, and Advaitam reflecting the essence of Upanishadic philosophy resides in harmony as “He alone sees, who sees all beings as himself” (“The Centre of Indian Culture,” Rabindranath Tagore in Das (1996b: 491).
- 6.
Sir Virchandra Dev Varma in a letter to the poet dated Jaistha 18, 1296
T. E. (June 1882) sends him a copied version of Rajaratnakar to “set right the occasional deviations from history ” after reading both Rajarshi and Mukut. In the same letter, he also draws a distinction between the mythical and the historical and offers to collect information through popular folk narratives if required for his fictional rendering. See Barman (2006: 10–11).
- 7.
The term “Ima” in the Meitei language means mother. The feminine principle in terms of a governing cosmic force has its manifestations in the lived anthropological domain. It must be, however, mentioned that the conceptual lineage of the notion of the Imas within the Meitei cultural context shares similarities with the idea of “Prakriti” in the Hindu theological discourses as well as the practice of mother cults in Bengal.
- 8.
The custom of offering two goats as sacrifice to the mother goddess Kali, in lieu of an oath kept or as a form of ritual appeasement is popular in Bengal.
- 9.
In this context, Tagore’s letters to Prince Brojendra Kishore, dated Chaitra 24, 1308 B. S. (April 1901 AD) and Baisakh 7, 1309 B. S. (April 1902 AD) is particularly interesting as they are in the nature of instructions to the young, reminding them of their Kshatriya dharma. See Barman (2006: 27–30).
- 10.
See “Introduction” to Das (1994: 10–11), where a letter to his niece Indira Devi is cited as it provides an interesting insight into the context of why Tagore chose to undertake translation of a selection of his writings, particularly Gitanjali, for which he is known the world over today.
- 11.
See “Introduction” to Sisir Kumar Das (1996a: 25) where there is a discussion on the subject of what he chose to translate himself and what he commissioned to others and the nature of problems that he encountered.
- 12.
See Das (1994).
- 13.
This dialectical understanding of the colonial process is best reflected in the chapter “Colonial War and Mental Disorders” where through a series of case studies of psychic disorders he establishes the existential human condition of the “wretched”. See Fanon (1990).
- 14.
See “Sadhana: The Realization of Life,” Rabindranath Tagore in Sisir Kumar Das (1996a), where it appears in the form of an essay where he describes fundamentally the relation of the individual to the universe, not in the sense of truncated beings that we have learnt to appreciate following the terrain of discourses post ’68 France, but rather in absolute universals of the progressive edge of the enlightenment rationale. This notion has been best described by none other than José Martí in the following words:
“Trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches of stone. A cloud of ideas is a thing no armoured prow can smash through. A vital idea set ablaze before the world at the right moment can, like the mystic banner of the last judgment, stop a fleet of battleships.” (Letters from New York, “Our America,” January 20, 1891, 288). Like Martí, Tagore can hardly be quarreled with for his belief in absolute universals simply because post-’68 France the state of affairs is such that Humpty–Dumpty’s “Great Fall” shattered him to pieces which could not be put together again, and since the task of a polyvalent grand narrative of enlightenment seemed impossible, it was considered all right for the Lilliput’s to think that the parts of the shattered egg contained the “whole,” and thereby do away with “totalities” altogether, as if macrological processes influencing human intellection can be wished away.
- 15.
It appears as an essay in a section titled “Creative Unity” in Sisir Kumar Das Ed. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi: 2nd Rpt. 2001.
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Ghosh, A. (2015). Tagore and the Northeast: Dialectics of Human Intellection and the Nature of Aesthetic Reflection. In: Banerji, D. (eds) Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 7. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2038-1_14
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