TAGORE’S CONCEPTION OF LITERATURE
Prof. JOGESH CHANDRA BHATTACHARYA
Director,
The infinite variety and richness of
Rabindranath Tagore’s literary creations make us exclaim, as the poet himself
does in relation to his Maker. “I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever
listen in silent amazement.” But our concern here is not so much with his
literary output, great as it really is, hut with his pronouncements on the
nature of poetry, or, for that matter, of all literature.
Rabindranath has said so much on the main
principles of literary creation that it is not possible for us in course of one
single lecture or within the brief space of an article to deal with them
minutely. But we can discover an underlying unity in his scattered remarks on
literature throughout his works and in his systematic discussions in books like
Sahitya (Literature), Sahityer Pathe (On the Way to Literature)
and Sahityer Svarup (The Nature of Literature). Great artists may not
always be great critics. It must be said in regard to Rabindranath; however
that, with the unerring instinct of a master-artist, he has always been able in
his literary criticism to catch the very heartbeat of aesthetic creations.
Tagore in his essay entitled ‘Bamla Jatiya
Sahitya’ (National Literature in Bengali) read at an annual function
of the Vangiya Sahitya Parishat goes to the very root of the word Sahitya (literature)
which has been derived from the
word sahita which means ‘along
with others’. (Sahitya, Visva-Bharati, 1958. p. 112) Creation of literature is not merely for personal
enjoyment, but for the enjoyment of humanity at large. It is this desire of
sharing our feelings and emotions with others which, according to Tagore, is
the basic conception behind literary creations. To quote from his ‘Sahityer
Samari’ (Materials of Literature): “Human feelings endeavour to impress
myriads of minds through years and years. It has been due to this earnest
desire that from time immemorial we have so many gestures, so many languages
and alphabets, innumerable carvings on stones, moulding on metals and binding
in leather – how many marks and signs on the barks and
leaves of trees as well as on paper, with the brush, the pointed stick, the
pen, how many attempts at writing, from left to right, from right to left, from
the top to the bottom, from one row to another! Why? Only because what I have
thought, what I have felt must not perish, it must flow on from mind to mind,
from time to time, being thought out and felt.” (Op. cit.p. 14)
The poet has been taken by Rabindranath as a
representative of the entire humanity. In his poem ‘Ami’ (1) in the
book Syamali he says that his expression in poetry no more remains
Personal. He says everything as a representative of the human face. In the Upanishad
the word kavi (‘poet’ in common talk) has been applied to the Creator of
the universe Himself. There it means one whose vision transcends space and
time. The human poet, too, is a creator in a limited sense and therefore he,
too, has something of this quality of universalization – the universalization
of human emotions in his case. In his poem ‘Sadhana’ (in the book Citra)
Tagore addresses the Muse of Poetry and says: “O Goddess, I have sung many
songs in this life, and reaped their harvest. But I have given them to all, to
the universe of men; I have filled the world with my songs.”
In his poem ‘Paricay’ (in the book Senjuti)
Rabindranath wants to be known as one of us: “Let my name be known as one
of you. I want nothing else. Let this be my last testament to you.”
In his essay ‘Sahitye Adhunikata’ (Modernity
in Literature), Rabindranath tells us that a piece of literature which has no
generosity (dakshinya), which is not calculated to appeal to all hearts,
is indeed very narrow and is not fit to be called great. (Sahityer Svarup, Visvavidyasamgraha
Series, p. 16) That is why he found fault with some of the twentieth century
English poems, because by virtue of their exclusiveness they can only be
enjoyed by a limited circle of readers.
In the Dedication of his book Sahityer
Pathe (On the Way to Literature) addressed to Amiya Chakraborty, Tagore
accepts the definition of poetry (and for that matter, all literature) as given
in Sanskrit Poetics: Vakyam rasatmakam kavyam. Poetry is the creation of
rasa through language. This was the definition offered by Visvanatha, an
authority on Sanskrit Poetics, in his Sahityadarpana, Chapter 1. Rabindranath believes in the creation of rasa as the essential aim of the artist. The
reader’s endeavour, again, will be to enjoy the rasa that has been so
created. To take a few lines from Tagore’s ‘What is Art’:
“Our emotions are the gastric juices which
transform this world of appearances into the more intimate world of sentiments.
On the other hand, this outer world has its own juices, having their various
qualities which excite our emotional activities. This is called in our
Sanskrit Rhetoric Rasa, which signifies outer juices having their
response in the inner juices of our emotions. And a poem, according to
it, is a sentence or sentences containing juices, which stimulate the juices
of emotion. It brings to us ideas, vitalized by feelings, ready to be made into
the lifestuff of our nature.”
Let us briefly explain the theory of rasa in
Sanskrit Poetics. Abhinavagupta, a great scholar who flourished towards the end
of the tenth century A. D., defines rasa as the relishing of the
delightful consciousness of one’s own: Sabda samarpyamana hrdayasamvada
sundara vibhavamtbhava samuditaprannivista ratyadi vasananuraga sukumarasvasamvidananda
carvana vyapara rasaniyarupo rasah. The causes and effects of our emotions
in real life take a new shape altogether when they are expressed in words by
the poet. In this new form they are called vibhava and anubhava respectively,
and they develop a power to appeal to all hearts. These vibhavas and anubhavas
again rouse the emotions (e. g., the erotic emotion) which are already
there at the heart of the reader, and the consciousness becomes enjoyable as it
is tinged by these emotions.
Viswanatha explains rasa in the
following mariner in his Sahitya-darpana (III. 1): Vibhavenanubhavena
vyaktah sancarina tatha; /
Rasatameti ratyadih sthayi bhavah
sacetasam (The permanent emotions like the erotic sentiment, in
the heart of a fit appreciator, are transformed into the rasa state
through the agency of the vibhavas, anubhavas and sancari bhavas).
Vibhava is defined as Ratyadyudbodhaka loke vihhavah kavyanatyayoh. (The
objects in the world of reality which arouse emotions are called vibhavas when
they are placed in poetry and drama). (Ibid. III. 32) Anubhava is
explained in the following manner: Udbuddham karanaih svaih svairbahirbhavam
prakasayan; /
That Tagore has accepted the creation and
enjoyment of rasa as the essential factor in literature is clear from
his numerous statements scattered throughout his critical writings. Thus, in
his essay ‘Sahityer Matra’ (The Extent of Literature) in the book Sahityer
Svarup he tells us that the fundamentals of literature are eternal, i.e.,
the rules guiding the enjoyment of rasa are integral to human nature
itself. In the same essay Rabindranath says: “Expression of human emotions is
a source of eternal joy.” (Op. cit. p. 12) In his article ‘Kavya O Chanda’
(Poetry and Metre) in the same book (p. 25) Tagore says: “Language having rasa
as its soul has an easy access to the heart.” Again, to quote from the same
article (p. 25): “The essence of poetry is rasa; the metre only
incidentally points towards that rasa.” In his article on gadyakavya
(prose-poems) in the same book (p. 29), Rabindranath clearly states that
his striving for a long time has been to create rasa.
In his article ‘Sahitya’ in the book Sahityer
Pathe, Rabindranath recognises three different manifestations of the human
soul, following the characterization of the Absolute in the Taittiriya
Upanishad as Satyam jnanamanantam brahma, Brahman is truth,
knowledge and infinite (II. 1. 1). The entire human soul consists of ‘I am’, ‘I
know’ and ‘I express.’ Literature, which is an expression of the human soul, is
included within the Illimitable aspect of the Absolute. When man remains alone,
circumscribed within his own limited self, he has no expression. It is only
when he is inspired with a desire for union with other selves that he comes to
artistic creation. It is this impersonal character of the creation as well as
enjoyment of rasa which has been recognized in Sanskrit Poetics:
Sattvodrekadakhanda svaprakasananda cinmayah:
Vedyantara sparisasunya brahmanandasahodarah
(Sahitya-darpana, III. 1)
The enjoyment of literature is akin to that of
the Absolute where the distinction between the knower and the knowable vanishes
altogether. It is a state of rapture where we are lifted up for the time being
from our ‘sole self’, our trammelled existence of day-to-day life. This is why
Keats has said that the poetical character has no self. While engaged in the
act of creation, “It is everything and nothing, living at all levels – high and
low, mean and elevated. But all kinds come equally and easily to him. It has as
much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.” (Letter to George and
Thomas Keats. 22 December, 1817).
Literature, through the creation of rasa, offers
us a “fellowship divine”, “ a fellowship with essence” to quote the words of
Keats in his “Endymion.” This state of pure unearthly rapture has been
recognized by Benedetto Croce when he describes the process of creation as the
passage “from troublous emotion to the serenity of contemplation.” This is
actually nothing but the transformation of our emotions in real life into rasa.
Tagore recognizes a three-fold connection
between man and the universe. The one is that of intellect, another of utility,
and the third is that of enjoyment. We have to do with the first two in our
daily life. It is only when we step out of these relations, and establish the
connection of joy with the world, that we express our personality–we have art
or literature. Literature, therefore, is always beyond the practical
utilitarian life of the real world. Let us take a few lines from Rabindranath’s
article on “Creative unity”; “To detach the individual idea from its
confinement of everyday facts and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the
universal; this is the function of poetry.”
Croce, too, includes the aesthetic activity
within the theoretic forms of the spirit, thus distinguishing it from the
practical. Throughout his literary creations as well as art-criticisms Tagore
laid stress on the search of unity in diversity, on the illimitable within the
limited. This sense of unity, including the enjoyment following its perception,
is the soul of artistic truth and artistic beauty. And it is in this sense,
according to Tagore, that Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty.
Such a conception of literature, however,
gives it an idealized character to which the realists might object. But, after
all, the real can only be the subject of literature. The ultimate product can
never be real in the sense of an exact reproduction or real life. In that case
there would be no necessity of artistic creation, for do we not have enough of
so-called real life around us? The realist’s contention is a corrective for
escapists in art, for after all art grows out of life and draws from life. Cut
off from life it becomes a hothouse plant having only a thin and pale
existence. The whole of life is the subject-matter of art, and in that sense it
is always vitally connected with life. But is not real life everywhere
transmuted by the genius of the poet before it comes home to us as a thing of
beauty which is a joy for ever? It is always ‘homo additus Naturae’–man
added to Nature – real life tinged by the artist’s emotion. This is the reason
why Tagore in his poem ‘Manasi’ (in the book Caitali) describes
the woman as half the real woman and half the fancy of the poet. It is this
idea that finds expression in his poem ‘Ami’ (1) in the book Syamali:
“It was through the colour of my consciousness that the emerald was green
and the ruby red. I cast my eyes in the sky, and lo! the light was there from
east to west. I looked at the rose, and exclaimed “beautiful”, the rose grew
beautiful. You may say, “This is philosophy, not the words of a poet.” I will
answer, “This is truth and therefore it is poetry.” This naturally leads us to
the distinction between factual truth and poetic truth. In his poem ‘Bhasha
O Chanda’ (Language and Metre), Rabindranath introduces Valmiki, the
author of the Ramayana, who is asked by the divine sage Narada to
compose the great epic about Sriramachandra. Valmiki hesitates, for he does not
know all the facts of the life of the hero. Narada exhorts him saying:
“Whatever you create will be truth: all that happens is not true.”
Tagore has no objection against taking up
even the filthy objects of life in literature. But, then, these objects must
not remain filthy in the ultimate analysis. A wineshop, says Tagore, has every
right to be a subject-matter of literature, but the production must be
literature and nothing but literature. To quote from his Sahityer Svarup (p.
5): “A realistic poem is a poem not by virtue or its realism but by virtue of
its being a poem. “His pronouncements on poems written in free verse are of the
same kind. A poem in free verse will be a poem, not because of its free verse,
but, only when it is a poem. In his essay ‘Sahityer Svarup’ he tells us
that it is perfectly possible to write a poem with the list of dirty clothes
sent to the washerman as its subject. In the so-called language of realism, one
can introduce in this poem bagfuls of the erotic, the pathetic and the horrible
sentiments. The clothes of a husband and wife between whom there is no love lost,
are getting cleaned together under the beatings of the washerman at the same
tank, and then are carried along on the back of the same donkey – this may be
very suitable for the new verse of fours. But the realism does not consist in
the choice of the subject-matter; it is in the magic of composition. In that,
too, there must be much of selection.
Summing up, we might say that Rabindranath
had a very high conception of literature which, while never losing its contact
with the frailty that flesh is heir to, yet aspires after bringing out the
infinite in man, thus contributing to the enrichment of human life through the
creation of joy. And his own literary creations, where we come across ‘God’s
plenty’, testify to this. They will be a permanent source of aesthetic
enjoyment for mankind. Thus we may say, as Ben Jonson said about Shakespeare,
Rabindranath ‘was not of an age, but for all time.’
(Abridged version of a lecture delivered in
June, 1985 at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta)
- Courtesy Bulletin
of the R. K. M. Institute of Culture.