I Won't Let You Go (41 page)

‘dalliance-lotus’ (stanza 2): a lotus held in the hand in dalliance, possibly used in flirtatious gestures like a hand-fan.

‘conch-shell and wheel’ (stanza 6): auspicious symbols, both associated with the god Vishnu. The
Meghaduta
mentions the conch-shell and the lotus (also associated with Vishnu). Some seem to think that those two symbols on the door in the
Meghaduta
may stand for the wealth of the householder, signifying a huge sum with many digits. Whatever the validity of that assumption, I am sure that in Tagore’s poem the conch-shell and wheel are simply auspicious marks on the door and not an indication of the material affluence of the
dream-woman
.

‘pet doves’ (stanza 7): The original word can mean either dove or pigeon, and doves and pigeons belong to the same family. This was an instance when I had to make a local decision to suit the sonic needs of the English poem. I wanted ‘doves’ so that I could have ‘dovecot’ in the next line and achieve some sort of assonance with ‘golden rod’ later.

‘incensed hair’ (stanza 8): hair perfumed by burning incense; ‘tracery of sandal’ (stanza 8): decorative patterns made with sandalwood paste to adorn and
aromatise
the skin.

For the flower-names and the other names in the poem see the Glossary.

In this translation I have taken more liberty than I usually take with regard to line-lengths and stanza-breaks vis-à-vis the original. A single line of the original is often broken into two lines in the English poem, and I have
introduced
extra stanza-breaks. I felt that a slightly different arrangement was
necessary
to make the English version effective both rhythmically and from the point of view of the pictures evoked.

139-40.
What the Scriptures Say
(
Kshanika
, She Who is Momentary): This poem is a rollicking rejection of the traditional concept of
vanaprastha
or retreat into the forest, the supposed third stage of life for the good Hindu. The four stages of life were more like an ideal to follow or a theoretical framework to live by than a mandatory code of conduct. They were: the stage of the celibate student, that of the married householder, that of the forest hermit, and lastly that of the wandering ascetic unattached to any earthly possessions or ties. In the third stage, supposed to start after the age of 50, a man was expected to hand over his family responsibilities to the next generation and retire with his wife into a forest hermitage, living a frugal and contemplative life in preparation for the final stage of total detachment. But, contends the poet, a sylvan retreat would surely be more appropriate in youth than in middle age! Note how the lack of privacy for young couples within the extended family strengthens his case.

142-43. Spiritual concerns predominate in the poems and songs of
Naibedya
(Offerings), which are said to have pleased Tagore’s father so much that he
paid for the publication of the collection. Dedicated to Debendranath Tagore, the book was accordingly first published in a handsome edition on expensive paper.

144. The poems of
Smaran
(Remembering) remember Tagore’s wife, who died on 23 November 1902. In No. 14 he writes about the moving experience of discovering, among her things, some of his own letters which she had carefully preserved. Poem no. 5 was probably written in Calcutta in the fortnight after her death (Pal, vol. 5, p. 99).

145-47. The shadow of the dead Mrinalini also falls across many of the poems of
Shishu
(The Child). After the death of his wife, Tagore took his ailing second daughter Rani to the hills of Almora. Many of the poems in this collection were written there. The focus is often on the mother-child relationship, and the mood is usually a mingling of playfulness and pathos. It is as though Tagore is trying to tell his children that their mother has not really gone away. Seen in this context, a poem like ‘Hide-and-Seek’ becomes a comment on death, suggesting an oscillation between visibility and invisibility. The little boy
proposes
such a game of oscillation to tease his mother; could it be that a mother can also play such a game with her children? One can also make a connection between ‘An Offer of Help’ and poem no. 14 of
Smaran:
an extra dimension is added to this poem of
Shishu
when one remembers how Mrinalini cherished her husband’s letters.

148. The two dates given after the title
Utsarga
(Dedications) need an
explanation
. All the poems of this book were first published in an edition of Tagore’s poems in nine volumes edited by Mohitchandra Sen (1903-4).
Smaran
and
Shishu
were first published in book-form in this edition.
Utsarga
was not
published
as a separate collection till 1914. In Tagore’s collected works
Utsarga
is always placed where it belongs chronologically, immediately after
Smaran
and
Shishu
, and I have followed that practice. (
Rabindra-rachanabali,
vol. 10, Granthaparichay section.)

149-50.
The Auspicious Moment
and
The Renunciation
(
Kheya
, The Ferry): MS. evidence indicates that these two poems were conceived of as one poem in two parts and were written on the same day (13 Srabon 1312). (MS. 110 (i) pp. 3-4, Rabindra Bhavana archives.)

150-54. The three poems from
Gitanjali
(Song-offerings) have been discussed in detail in the Preface to this edition. In poem no. 106 the phrase ‘awesome vina’ translates the word ‘rudravina’. While the word may refer to a version of the musical instrument – there is indeed a musical instrument of this name – I wonder how many Bengalis reading this poem would interpret it in that sense. I think most of them would understand
rudra
, the first component of this compound word, to refer to a name of Shiva associated with his fierce aspect, and thence to mean, adjectivally, ‘fierce, terrifying’. Thus the
compound
word can be interpreted as ‘Rudra’s vina’ or ‘fierce vina’, suggesting an awesome music accompanying Shiva’s dance of destruction, the
destruction
of the cosmos. I would also associate this word with the compound word ‘agnivina’ (fire-vina) which Tagore uses to open another of his songs,
referring
clearly to an imagined fiery music of the stars.

Also in this poem,
Om
is a sacred monosyllable which probably originated as a solemn way of saying ‘Yes, so be it’, rather like ‘Amen’; it came to be
regarded as an amalgamation of the three sounds,
a, u,
and
m,
signifying the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma (and standing for the functions of
preservation
, destruction, and regeneration), and was finally identified with the
philosophical
concept of the Absolute or Ultimate Reality (Brahman), worthy of the most solemn contemplation and meditation.

Further down in the same poem, the word ‘mother-bird’ perhaps deserves a comment. The original word is simply
janani
, one of the words for ‘mother’, but I felt that it would be worthwhile to bring over the underlying image, which is that of a mother-bird watching over her brood in a nest, staying awake through a difficult night. But that nest is
bipul
or vast, which tells us that it refers to the entire population of the land. This idea of the vast nest ties with Tagore’s subsequent conceptualisation of the university he founded as a place where the world might become one nest. The mother-bird thus merges with the ‘Mother’ of the last stanza, the mothering spirit of the country, or the homeland imagined as a mother.

154-57.
No. 6
of
Balaka
(A Flight of Wild Birds): This poem remembers Kadambari Devi and was probably inspired by an old photograph of hers. As the poem was written in Allahabad, ‘this river’ could refer to the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna by which that city is situated.

157-59.
No. 36
of
Balaka
:
Tagore has confirmed that a flight of wild birds he witnessed one evening brought home to him the mobility of all things, even when they were apparently still. He calls the birds wild ducks (
buno haans
).
Haans
is derived from
hamsa
, which has been discussed at length in the note on ‘Death-dream’. This is a loose, non-specific description, and I do not think it is possible to identify them in any strict sense. What is clear is that they were migratory birds (
Rabindra-rachanabali,
vol. 12, Granthaparichay section). The image of a bird or birds in transit is a recurrent one in Tagore’s poetry and is often charged with a great deal of symbolic significance. See, for instance, ‘Death-dream’ and ‘A Stressful Time’ in this collection.

159.
No. 39
of
Balaka:
This poem was written for the approaching third
centenary
of the death of William Shakespeare in 1916. The devotion of
English-educated
Bengalis to Shakespeare was almost proverbial. ‘The native
generation
who have been brought up at the Hindu College are perfectly mad about Shakespeare. What a triumph it is for him, dear creature!’ (Emily Eden,
Letters from India,
1872, vol. I, p. 186.) My own grandfather could recite whole scenes of Shakespeare from memory, earning for himself the epithet of ‘Shakespeare Kushari’, and the cult of Shakespeare was very much alive in my student days at Calcutta.

160-61.
The Last Establishment
(
Palataka
, She who is Fugitive): I would be tempted to make a connection between this poem and the death or at least the impending death of Tagore’s eldest daughter Bela. Bela, the tiny heroine of ‘I Won’t Let You Go’, died of tuberculosis (like her sister Rani) after
protracted
suffering on 16 May 1918, the year in which
Palataka
was published. This is the last poem of the book, the title of which means ‘the fugitive one’ in the feminine gender. Kripalani (p. 285) is of the opinion that the poems of
Palataka
‘bear unmistakable traces’ of this bereavement, and Professor Sankha Ghosh agrees with me that a connection between Bela’s death and ‘The Last Establishment’ is highly likely.

160. The other poem of
Palataka
which I have translated,
Getting Lost,
is also charged with a sense of loss. Is Bami, the little girl of this poem, a
surrogate
of Tagore’s second daughter Rani, dead for some fifteen years?

161-64. The success of the poetic prose of the English
Gitanjali
encouraged Tagore to experiment with the possibility of similar composition in Bengali. The result was a group of “prose poems” which form the first section of the book
Lipika
, from which I have translated four examples. The title
Lipika
can be translated as ‘Writings’, with a suggestion, perhaps, of the diminutive
dimension
: ‘Little Writings’. Extra spaces used in printing to indicate pauses are in keeping with the poet’s intentions. Many bereavements have gone into the making of these fine poems which seem a distillation of the essence of grief.

I have wondered if
One Day
remembers the days Tagore spent with
Jyotirindranath
Tagore and Kadambari Devi at a villa in Telenipara, Chandernagore, ‘the villa of the Banerjees’ where he set to music several lyrics of the medieval Baishnab poet Vidyapati, including a celebrated one particularly charged with monsoon-melancholy which could well be the song he has in mind here. (See Pal, vol. 2, 1st edition, pp. 140-1, or 2nd edition, p. 107. See also Tagore’s
Chhelebela
(
Rabindra-rachanabali,
vol. 26, pp. 623-34.)

In
The Question
the little boy is seven when his mother dies. Tagore’s own youngest son was just a few days away from his sixth birthday when
Mrinalini
Devi died. Note also the terrace which figures in the second section of the poem. There was a terrace overlooking the room where Mrinalini Devi slept and died (Rathindranath Tagore, p. 52), and when she died Tagore spent the whole night on the terrace, ‘walking up and down, having given strict orders that no one was to disturb him’ (Kripalani, p. 203).

166.
Remembering
(
Shishu Bholanath
): This is another poem in which the accumulated sorrows of personal bereavements have been distilled into poetry.
Shishu Bholanath
can be translated as ‘The Child Bholanath’, ‘Bholanath’ being an epithet of Shiva, meaning ‘the lord of the self-forgetful/absent-minded ones’. The title suggests the un-selfconscious nature of children.

167-68.
Gratitude
(
Purabi
): The collection is named after an evening
raga
. Written on 2 November 1924 on board the
Andes
, as Tagore was on his way to South America, this poem is haunted by the memory of a dead woman,
someone
with whom he seems to have had an intimate relationship (‘On that day’s kiss…’). Could she not be his wife, who had died on 23 November 1902? There is some similarity between the description of the opening lines and
Rathindranath
Tagore’s description of his last meeting with his mother: ‘The last time when I went to her bedside she could not speak, but on seeing me, tears
silently
rolled down her cheeks’ (
On the Edges of Time,
p. 52). The phrase ‘charged with your smothered vermilion’ refers to the powdered vermilion (red
crystalline
mercuric sulphide) used on the forehead and hair-parting by a Bengali Hindu married woman as long as her husband is alive.

168-69.
The Apprehension
(
Purabi
): This poem was written at the villa
Miralrío
in San Isidro, a suburb of Buenos Aires, where Tagore, accompanied by his honorary secretary, Leonard Elmhirst, was staying as the guest of Victoria Ocampo, to recover from the effects of an influenza caught on board the
Andes
. Tagore had come to South America to visit Peru, where he had an invitation to attend the centenary of Peru’s liberation from the imperial rule of Spain. But illness upset his plans, and he accepted the hospitality offered by Victoria
Ocampo, a 34-year-old Argentine woman who was an ardent admirer of his works in translation and who was beginning to make herself a name as an emerging writer. In the end Tagore stayed in Argentina for about two months and did not go to Peru at all. A triangular relationship developed between Tagore, Elmhirst, and Ocampo, which was fairly stormy during the San Isidro days, but settled into a mellowed long-distance friendship afterwards. Tagore dedicated the collection
Purabi
to Victoria, who eventually had a long and
distinguished
career as a writer, editor, and publisher, especially as the founder and director of the magazine
Sur
and of the publishing-house of the same name. She died only in 1979. For the story of the Tagore-Ocampo friendship and their influence on each other’s work, the curious are referred to my study listed in the beginning of this Notes section. Tagore did a free English re-creation of this poem and after a great deal of hesitation and consultation with Elmhirst gave it to Ocampo. Those who are interested can find it in my book (p. 135).