Readers consulting the Visva-Bharati edition of Tagore’s complete works will sometimes find discrepancies, as poems sometimes appeared again in later books (‘Broken Song’, for example, was reprinted in the combined volume kathā skāhinī, 1903). The edition published by the West Bengal Government in the 1980s restores the poems to their chronological position.
1882–1913
Brahmā, Visnu, Śiva (p. 45)
s
i sthiti pralay from prabhāt-san
git (Morning Songs), 1883
The poems in this book followed the religious experience described in R217: as the sun rose, ‘all of a sudden a covering seemed to fall away from my eyes, and I found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side’. The vision liberated Tagore from the adolescent egoism, ‘the contemplation of my own heart’ (R200), that had dominated his writing hitherto.
The poem I have chosen was originally much longer: Tagore shortened it when he came to include it in sañcayitā, the selected poems that I have used for the first two-thirds of my book. The original title means ‘Creation, Preservation, Destruction’, the main attributes of the three deities featured in the poem (see Glossary for further information). Tagore’s most characteristic addition to the mythology is his image of Vis
u as Poet: in 1.34 he is called jagater mahā-bedabyās, ‘the great Vedavyāsa of the world’ (Vedavyāsa, often known simply as Vyāsa, was the legendary author of the Mahābhārata, the great primary epic of India); in 1.43 the Law that he imposes is called mahā-chanda mahā-anuprās (‘great metre, great alliteration’). The metaphor recurs in 1.78, where the dissolving world is described as chanda-mukta, ‘free of metre’. 11.44–54 emphasize that beauty can only emerge after the imposition of Law. See S98: ‘Law is the first step towards freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond, the law and the liberty.’ rūp (1.46,54) means ‘form’ and ‘beauty’ in Sanskrit and Bengali.
The poem also shows the influence of science (especially in 11.56–60 and 81–5). Tagore did not believe that science described Reality as he understood it (see notes to ‘Deception’, ‘The Wakening of Śiva’, ‘The Sick-bed – 21’ and ‘On My Birthday – 20’), but he was always keenly interested in it and felt that India had to learn from the science of the West. Four years before his death he published bisva–paricay, an introduction to modern science for Bengali readers.
9 ‘growing’ – prā–pūrna: ‘full of prān, life’ (and therefore growth).
10 āśsā-pūra atptir prāy: ‘like dissatisfaction that is full of hope’.
16 lit., ‘from the gangotrī-crest ofthe world’. The Himalayan source of the Ganges (Gangotri) is used here as a metaphor for a Primary Source
27 ‘conch – mangal-sankha: ‘conch of welfare’. The Pāncajanya, conch of Visnu and his chief incarnation Krsna, is important in Indian mythology. See Conch in the Glossary.
44–7 The writing is vague here. Vi§nu may be floating on the water, or looking into it from the edge of the lake. There is no traditional link between Visnu and the Mānasa lake, and the ālok-kamal-dal (‘light-lotuses’) of 1.47 comes from Tagore’s imagination, not mythology.
70 ‘three eyes’ – tin-kāl-tri-nayan: ‘three-ages-triple-eye’, i.e. looking into past, present and future.
badhū from mānasī (The Lady of the Mind), 1890
I have chosen three poems from what is regarded in Bengal as Tagore’s first book of genius. It was written over three years, an unusually long time for Tagore. Dissatisfaction with city life was growing in him, and his wife and two young children were subjected to many changes of abode during this period: Darjeeling, Sholapur and Poona in Bombay Presidency, Ghazipur in western U. P., Shelidah in north Bengal, and Santiniketan, where ‘Bride’ was written. Preference for the rural over the urban became one of Tagore’s dominant ideas, inspiring his experiment at Santiniketan. Modern man’s alienation from nature ‘is the product of the city-wall habit and training of mind’ (S5; see also CU116 and RM170 for Tagore’s dislike of Calcutta). Tagore’s feelings about cities have their roots in his own sense of constriction as a child (see R1 1,45); and this is perhaps why he is able to realize the Bride’s unhappiness with such intensity.
‘Bride’ is also about the devaluation of women, caused by faults in Indian social traditions as well as by modern, urban, male-dominated civilization. In 11.49–50 the Bride is made to feel that she is up for sale, like a garland. But the poem reveals Tagore’s loyalty to the positive aspects of Hindu social life: the Bride is prevented by her situation from exercising the qualities of love and devotion that her mother shows (11.55–62).
The Bride is young, in her teens probably, but not a child. Child-marriage, which Tagore had attacked in a paper on Hindu marriage in 1887, is satirized in another poem in mānasī.
The word that I have translated as ‘gaiety’ in 1.54 and ‘playing’ in 1.77 is khelā: see notes to the next poem.
3 ‘shade’ – chāyā sakhī: the shade that was also sakhī, a friend or companion. Some readers say there should be a comma after chāyā, making sakhī an imaginary confidante to whom the bride is addressing her monologue.
5 ‘I sit alone with my thoughts’ – and also grha-kone: ‘in the corner of a room’ (cf. 1.46).
19 ‘oleanders’ – karabī: see Glossary.
35 ‘open path’ – udār path-ghāt: ‘the generous, open-hearted path and steps’.
61 ‘temple’ – śib-ālay : ‘home of Śiva’, Śiva-temple.
Unending Love (p.
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