Letters from a Young Poet (45 page)

Calcutta
Monday, 24 June 1895

After quite a few days of out-and-out rain and storm, the sun has appeared today from behind the clouds. I remember there was a time when days like these would quite overpower me. Such a
trembling feeling of joy would rise within me that it is impossible to express it properly. I was reminded of that today. I had gone to Park Street this morning to meet Bābāmaśāẏ. On the way to see him, I was reading the
Amrita Bazaar Patrika
as I went, but on the way back, I happened to suddenly look out on to the meadows of the
gaṛer māṭh
^*
—the world is much the same as it used to be, but I don't have the time any more—the youthful, graceful morning sunlight fell upon the field, covering its green beauty—so unruffled and succulent and clear and new—with a pensive peace, making it calm and beautiful. For a brief while, my heart resounded as it used to with the quiver of an unspeakably tender and beautiful rāginī's notes. These days there are so many things that tie me down, encircling me on all sides, that I no longer come face-to-face with the world—the intimate relation and everyday connection between my conscious self and the character of the world is slowly slipping away—the musician who plays upon the bīṇā of the world and wakes the waves in the rivers, who makes the flowers of spring bloom in a moment, who enlivens the land, water and air with the murmur and chatter and hum of birdsong—that musician's live, self-aware trembling fingers do not touch the strings of my heart any more. I'm afraid if too many days pass in this way then those heartstrings that used to resonate all the time may gather dust and become rusted, and the mind may become increasingly old and inert. Men who work without rest become hard and old. I realize that that hardness is necessary—that to be worthy of society it's absolutely necessary to be of a certain age too—but still, I really dislike it a great deal. But you must keep ślokas such as ‘
sukhaṃ bā yadi bā dukhaṃ priyaṃ yadi bā priẏaṃ
' [happiness or unhappiness, dear or not dear], etc., in mind and give up such futile regrets in the face of what will certainly be, and prepare yourself for all the work that is at hand and every situation that
confronts you. Nowadays, that has been accomplished to some extent—one has managed to bind one's mind quite firmly to the tree of circumscribed duties—and the blinkers are firmly in place over one's eyes too, so that one can keep going round and round in the circles of everyday routine in order to manufacture the maximum oil and become an indispensable animal for this world. Oil is much more useful than music—one needs it for cooking as well as for lighting the lamps at dusk. So I'd better stop now, Bob, and resume my circumambulation around the oil press—the kāchāri letters have been delivered, and the
proofs
of
S
ā
dhan
ā lie in a heap.

Shahjadpur
28 June 1895

I've been sitting and writing a story for
S
ā
dhan
ā; it's a bit far-fetched [ashadhe]. I was feeling really irritated and reluctant when I began, but that's not the case any longer. Now I've jumped midstream into the imagining of it—as I write a little at a time, the entire light and shade and colour of the scenery outside filters into my writing. This stream of rain and sun, the forests of reeds on the riverbank, this monsoon sky, the shady village, the fields of grain made happy with flowing water, all of it surrounds from every side the scenes and people and events that I imagine and make them come alive in truth and beauty—my own imaginings have become quite delightful for me. But readers will not get even the half of it. They get only the cut grain, but the sky and the breeze on the fields of grain, the dew and the cloud-like darkness, the green and gold and blue are all left out. Along with my story, if I could give them this small river and its riverbank bathed in sunlight from this cloud-free rainy-season sky, the shade of this tree and the peace of
this village, all complete and whole, then how sweet and alive my story would appear! How easily everyone would comprehend its inner truth! Then no one would have the courage to criticize it. A lot of the flavour stays within the heart, it's impossible to give it all to the reader. God has not even given us the ability to wholly give what we have to another.

Shahjadpur
2 July 1895

I've left the boat and come up to the Shahjadpur bungalow since yesterday. It's exactly as I thought. I'm really liking it. The ceiling is quite a bit above my head and because there are two open verandas on either side, immense quantities of light from the sky keep raining down upon my head—and it's a very sweet feeling to write and read and sit and think in that light. Another good thing is, while I work, every time I turn my face in any direction a section of blue sky mixed with green earth is present right outside my room. As if nature, like a curious village girl, was peeping in through my doors and windows all the time. Every part of my room and my mind—of my work and my leisure—is happy and satisfied, full of flavour and life, new and beautiful. The light of this sky free of rain, this village and the lines of water, this shore and that, the open field and the broken road are all a heavenly poem, enrapt in the notes of Apollo's golden lyre. How I love the sky and the light with all my heart! The sky is my
s
ā
qi
[wine bearer] holding an upturned clear-blue glass cup; the golden light enters my bloodstream like wine and makes me coeval with the gods. At the place where my sāqi's face is happy and free, at the place where this golden wine of mine is the most golden and clear, that is where I am a poet, that is where I am a king, that is where I have my thirty-two
thrones [
batriś siṃhāsan
].
^*
I feel the deep, silent, heartfelt love and endless peaceful consolation of this sky in every part of my body and mind. This storehouse of the sky, this light, this peace will never be depleted—if I can maintain this same uninterrupted felt connection with this calm, blue, light-filled limitlessness forever, my life will never be completely dry.

Shahjadpur
5 July 1895

Yesterday they were playing tunes from devotionals [kīrtan] at the nahabat long into the night—it felt quite wonderful, and very appropriate in this rural atmosphere—as simple as it was tender. There was a soft breeze and sparkling moonlight last night, and the nahabat was being played in lingering detail. I kept the windows open and went to sleep listening to that music. This morning I woke up to the same music. In the olden days, kings had court musicians who sang at specific hours by which you could tell the time; that aristocratic habit seems very desirable to me. In my childhood when we lived in the garden house at Peneti, the nahabat would play three or four times a day from the Dakshineshwar Shiva temple next door—I used to think then that the moment I grew up and became independent, I would employ a nahabat like it. The stone god who is deaf to the unbearable din of the brass bells does not need to hear the opening notes of the ragas of the nahabat four times a day. Far better if some pious soul made an arrangement for such a nahabat to play for gods [
ṭhākur
] like us, then the music would not be played in
vain.
^*
Then this daily inconsequential life would become so much more pleasurable, and the day's work and duties would not induce such feelings of unbearable weariness and renunciation. The moment I hear music or song I realize how thirsty I had been feeling all the while for music—that's why I really wish sometimes that someone close to me would learn how to play a musical instrument really well.

Shahjadpur
6 July 1895

Yesterday our annual ceremonial rituals here came to an end. A huge number of our tenants [prajā] had come. I was sitting and writing when suddenly they began to arrive in streams for an audience with their king [
rājdarśan
]—the room and the veranda filled up completely. I have an old devotee; his name is Rupchand Mredha—a real dacoit-like specimen—tall, muscular, truthful, tyrannical, and a devoted subject. He loves me like a very close relative—he touched my feet in greeting, stood up straight, and said, ‘I've come to see your beautiful moon-face [
chāňdmukh
].' On hearing this, ‘beautiful moon-face' perhaps began to blush a little. Rupchand said, ‘I'm seeing you after so long—it must be a year since I last saw you!' Women's love, of course, may feel very sweet, but this sort of simple, forceful man's genuine and unswerving devotion too has a wonderful charm—an absolutely pure and ancient empathy of man for man finds expression in it—the particular strength and hardness that accompanies it, and the sincerity and
directness
it conveys, perhaps make this full, beautiful love seem so much more
valuable. Bearded men, as simple as children and unable to express their inner feelings, came one by one to kiss my feet and take its dust—occasionally, some of them would literally kiss the feet. One day I was sitting on a chair in a field in Kaligram when a woman suddenly came up to me and put her head upon my feet and kissed them—I should of course mention that she wasn't a young woman. Many male subjects too kiss the feet. If I was the only jamidār these people had, I would have kept them very happy—and their love would have made me very happy too.

On the way to Pabna
9 July 1895

We're travelling through the winding Ichamoti River now. I've written so many letters to you while journeying through it, coming and going. This small whimsical river, with its green sloping banks on either side, deep and dense kāś forests, fields of jute and sugar cane, and rows and rows of villages—they are like the lines of a poem that I recite every time, and which feels new each time. Rivers like the Padma are so large that they cannot be learnt by heart. And this small, winding river of the rainy season seems to become especially my own—there are no steamers on this river, no crowd of boats, only my
boat
seems to lord it over this rural river as it passes. The sky has been overcast since yesterday. Everything is calm and green, both shores peaceful. Human settlements are insignificant to the Padma, but the Ichamoti is a river close to men—her peaceful stream of water merges beautifully with the flow of man's everyday work routines. She is a river for boys to fish in and women to bathe in—all the gossip that the women bring to it when they bathe mingles harmoniously with its laughter-filled babble. In the month of Āśvin, Menaka's daughter Parvati leaves
her mountain home at Kailash once to come and visit her parents and see if they are well; so too is the Ichamoti invisible throughout the year, but filled with joyful laughter in the rainy season when she comes to find out about her friends and relations in these settlements—then, after listening to the village news brought by the women to every ghat with the intimacy of a friend, she leaves again.

Shilaidaha
10 July 1895

It's almost evening—the sky is dark with clouds. Thunder rumbles and the jhāu trees on the shore sway in the stormy wind. Jackals call from the forests, there are no boats on the river—the women have abandoned the ghat and the riverbank is completely deserted—two or three cows walk homeward through the
b
ā
bl
ā forests. There is a darkness as black as ink in the bamboo forests on the shore, and the pale grey light of twilight falling upon the water appears like an unnatural excitement. In this weak light, I'm bent over a sheet, writing—all the papers on the
table
scatter in the wild wind and are ready to fly away. Then again the restless river is making the boat rock a little, which makes it difficult to maintain a straight line while I write. But I really love the splendid arrangement of the heavy rains upon this small river—I feel like sitting and writing a letter at this time. A letter that is like continuous low conversation in a small, secluded room in the cloudy, twilit darkness. But that is only a wish—I'm not sure how exactly to turn it into reality. That is, I don't have the ability to turn the letter into the stories told in that secluded room. Our simplest wishes are the ones that are really the most impossible to fulfil. Either they are fulfilled on their own or they are never fulfilled. It's sometimes easier to make war than to make stories work.

Calcutta
20 July 1895

There's a new idea in my ‘
p
ā
ñcabhautik
' this time that is at least worth thinking about, but I see that none of my readers have quite understood it.
^*
I've said that if there was no death, our imaginations would have been confined to the material world, and the world would not have had any
suggestion
of the eternal in it. The material world is an unshakeable
reality
—but our imagination and our spiritual sense are not satisfied by it. If we want to satisfy them, we need to create an
ideal
world, and where should we establish that
ideal
world? Where death has created a gap in this material world. It is in the space beyond death that we have our heaven, our gathering of gods, our completeness, our eternal existence. If the world kept us fenced in with an immovable, hard wall, and if death had not opened up windows in it from time to time, we would have been completely limited to only what is there. We would never even have imagined that something else could exist. Death has opened a doorway to endless possibilities. There is no end to what we may be after death, and it is because death removes the old that the limitless futurity of the new can nourish our
ideal
hope. The most important poetic quality in a good poem is
suggestiveness
. The way this world is made means that in it,
suggestiveness
is to be found in death—that's where we get to feel that there is much more, and that much more can happen. Just as we can see an indication of the immensity of the universe in the dark night sky alone—for in daylight it is only this world which is illuminated—so too do we
experience intimations of our relation with the eternal in death; if there were no death, we would have been strictly imprisoned within our meagre, poor existence; we would never have received even a hint or an indication of that space that contains the human soul's most noble poetry, the next world and the world of the gods, where our spiritual sense and appreciation of beauty are satisfied. Besides which, if our existence had not on occasion found a gap, it would have become dangerously ugly. True beauty is constructed at the confluence of clear
definiteness
on one side and endless
suggestiveness
on the other—just as the same death puts a limit to our lives on one side and also frees us from those limits on another. Looked at personally, death is terrible, and we gain no reassurance from it. But looked at from the point of view of the whole universe, death is very beautiful and the actual place of comfort for man's soul.

But I've seen again and again that the kernel of the questions I raise in my
p
ā
ñcabhautik
is usually not understood by anyone. Actually, perhaps that's because I cannot explain it very well—it is also very difficult to explain.