(41) _The Steamer Hulk_
Lured by an advertisement in some paper my brother Jyotirindra went off
one afternoon to an auction sale, and on his return informed us that he
had bought a steel hulk for seven thousand rupees; all that now remained
being to put in an engine and some cabins for it to become a
full-fledged steamer.
My brother must have thought it a great shame that our countrymen should
have their tongues and pens going, but not a single line of steamers. As
I have narrated before, he had tried to light matches for his country,
but no amount of rubbing availed to make them strike. He had also wanted
power-looms to work, but after all his travail only one little country
towel was born, and then the loom stopped. And now that he wanted Indian
steamers to ply, he bought an empty old hulk, which in due course, was
filled, not only with engines and cabins, but with loss and ruin as
well. And yet we should remember that all the loss and hardship due to
his endeavours fell on him alone, while the gain of experience remained
in reserve for the whole country. It is these uncalculating,
unbusinesslike spirits who keep the business-fields of the country
flooded with their activities. And, though the flood subsides as rapidly
as it comes, it leaves behind fertilising silt to enrich the soil. When
the time for reaping arrives no one thinks of these pioneers; but those
who have cheerfully staked and lost their all, during life, are not
likely, after death, to mind this further loss of being forgotten.
On one side was the European Flotilla Company, on the other my brother
Jyotirindra alone; and how tremendous waxed that battle of the
mercantile fleets, the people of Khulna and Barisal may still remember.
Under the stress of competition steamer was added to steamer, loss piled
on loss, while the income dwindled till it ceased to be worth while to
print tickets. The golden age dawned on the steamer service between
Khulna and Barisal. Not only were the passengers carried free of charge,
but they were offered light refreshments _gratis_ as well! Then was
formed a band of volunteers who, with flags and patriotic songs, marched
the passengers in procession to the Indian line of steamers. So while
there was no want of passengers to carry, every other kind of want began
to multiply apace.
[Illustration: My Brother Jyotirindra]
Arithmetic remained uninfluenced by patriotic fervour; and while
enthusiasm flamed higher and higher to the tune of patriotic songs,
three times three went on steadily making nine on the wrong side of
the balance sheet.
One of the misfortunes which always pursues the unbusinesslike is that,
while they are as easy to read as an open book, they never learn to read
the character of others. And since it takes them the whole of their
lifetime and all their resources to find out this weakness of theirs,
they never get the chance of profiting by experience. While the
passengers were having free refreshments, the staff showed no signs of
being starved either, but nevertheless the greatest gain remained with
my brother in the ruin he so valiantly faced.
The daily bulletins of victory or disaster which used to arrive from the
theatre of action kept us in a fever of excitement. Then one day came
the news that the steamer _Swadeshi_ had fouled the Howrah bridge and
sunk. With this last loss my brother completely overstepped the limits
of his resources, and there was nothing for it but to wind up the
business.
(42) _Bereavements_
In the meantime death made its appearance in our family. Before this, I
had never met Death face to face. When my mother died I was quite a
child. She had been ailing for quite a long time, and we did not even
know when her malady had taken a fatal turn. She used all along to sleep
on a separate bed in the same room with us. Then in the course of her
illness she was taken for a boat trip on the river, and on her return a
room on the third storey of the inner apartments was set apart for her.
On the night she died we were fast asleep in our room downstairs. At
what hour I cannot tell, our old nurse came running in weeping and
crying: "O my little ones, you have lost your all!" My sister-in-law
rebuked her and led her away, to save us the sudden shock at dead of
night. Half awakened by her words, I felt my heart sink within me, but
could not make out what had happened. When in the morning we were told
of her death, I could not realize all that it meant for me.
As we came out into the verandah we saw my mother laid on a bedstead in
the courtyard. There was nothing in her appearance which showed death to
be terrible. The aspect which death wore in that morning light was as
lovely as a calm and peaceful sleep, and the gulf between life and its
absence was not brought home to us.
Only when her body was taken out by the main gateway, and we followed
the procession to the cremation ground, did a storm of grief pass
through me at the thought that mother would never return by this door
and take again her accustomed place in the affairs of her household. The
day wore on, we returned from the cremation, and as we turned into our
lane I looked up at the house towards my father's rooms on the third
storey. He was still in the front verandah sitting motionless in prayer.
She who was the youngest daughter-in-law of the house took charge of the
motherless little ones. She herself saw to our food and clothing and all
other wants, and kept us constantly near, so that we might not feel our
loss too keenly. One of the characteristics of the living is the power
to heal the irreparable, to forget the irreplaceable. And in early life
this power is strongest, so that no blow penetrates too deeply, no scar
is left permanently. Thus the first shadow of death which fell on us
left no darkness behind; it departed as softly as it came, only a
shadow.
When, in later life, I wandered about like a madcap, at the first coming
of spring, with a handful of half-blown jessamines tied in a corner of
my muslin scarf, and as I stroked my forehead with the soft, rounded,
tapering buds, the touch of my mother's fingers would come back to me;
and I clearly realised that the tenderness which dwelt in the tips of
those lovely fingers was the very same as that which blossoms every day
in the purity of these jessamine buds; and that whether we know it or
not, this tenderness is on the earth in boundless measure.
The acquaintance which I made with Death at the age of twenty-four was a
permanent one, and its blow has continued to add itself to each
succeeding bereavement in an ever lengthening chain of tears. The
lightness of infant life can skip aside from the greatest of calamities,
but with age evasion is not so easy, and the shock of that day I had to
take full on my breast.
That there could be any gap in the unbroken procession of the joys and
sorrows of life was a thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see
nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as all in all. When of a
sudden death came and in a moment made a gaping rent in its
smooth-seeming fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the trees,
the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, remained as immovably
true as before; and yet the person who was as truly there, who, through
a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and heart, was ever so
much more true for me, had vanished in a moment like a dream. What
perplexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as I looked around!
How was I ever to reconcile that which remained with that which had
gone?
The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me through this rent,
continued to attract me night and day as time went on. I would ever and
anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what
there was left in place of what had gone. Emptiness is a thing man
cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is _not_, is untrue; that
which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something, where we see
nothing, are unceasing.
Just as a young plant, surrounded by darkness, stretches itself, as it
were on tiptoe, to find its way out into the light, so when death
suddenly throws the darkness of negation round the soul it tries and
tries to rise into the light of affirmation. And what other sorrow is
comparable to the state wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way
out of the darkness?
And yet in the midst of this unbearable grief, flashes of joy seemed to
sparkle in my mind, now and again, in a way which quite surprised me.
That life was not a stable permanent fixture was itself the sorrowful
tidings which helped to lighten my mind. That we were not prisoners for
ever within a solid stone wall of life was the thought which
unconsciously kept coming uppermost in rushes of gladness. That which I
had held I was made to let go--this was the sense of loss which
distressed me,--but when at the same moment I viewed it from the
standpoint of freedom gained, a great peace fell upon me.
The all-pervading pressure of worldly existence compensates itself by
balancing life against death, and thus it does not crush us. The
terrible weight of an unopposed life force has not to be endured by
man,--this truth came upon me that day as a sudden, wonderful
revelation.
With the loosening of the attraction of the world, the beauty of nature
took on for me a deeper meaning. Death had given me the correct
perspective from which to perceive the world in the fulness of its
beauty, and as I saw the picture of the Universe against the background
of Death I found it entrancing.
At this time I was attacked with a recrudescence of eccentricity in
thought and behaviour. To be called upon to submit to the customs and
fashions of the day, as if they were something soberly and genuinely
real, made me want to laugh. I _could_ not take them seriously. The
burden of stopping to consider what other people might think of me was
completely lifted off my mind. I have been about in fashionable book
shops with a coarse sheet draped round me as my only upper garment, and
a pair of slippers on my bare feet. Through hot and cold and wet I used
to sleep out on the verandah of the third storey. There the stars and I
could gaze at each other, and no time was lost in greeting the dawn.
This phase had nothing to do with any ascetic feeling. It was more like
a holiday spree as the result of discovering the schoolmaster Life with
his cane to be a myth, and thereby being able to shake myself free from
the petty rules of his school. If, on waking one fine morning we were to
find gravitation reduced to only a fraction of itself, would we still
demurely walk along the high road? Would we not rather skip over
many-storied houses for a change, or on encountering the monument take a
flying jump, rather than trouble to walk round it? That was why, with
the weight of worldly life no longer clogging my feet, I could not stick
to the usual course of convention.
Alone on the terrace in the darkness of night I groped all over like a
blind man trying to find upon the black stone gate of death some device
or sign. Then when I woke with the morning light falling on that
unscreened bed of mine, I felt, as I opened my eyes, that my enveloping
haze was becoming transparent; and, as on the clearing of the mist the
hills and rivers and forests of the scene shine forth, so the dew-washed
picture of the world-life, spread out before me, seemed to become
renewed and ever so beautiful.
(43) _The Rains and Autumn_
According to the Hindu calendar, each year is ruled by a particular
planet. So have I found that in each period of life a particular season
assumes a special importance. When I look back to my childhood I can
best recall the rainy days. The wind-driven rain has flooded the
verandah floor. The row of doors leading into the rooms are all closed.
Peari, the old scullery maid, is coming from the market, her basket
laden with vegetables, wading through the slush and drenched with the
rain. And for no rhyme or reason I am careering about the verandah in an
ecstasy of joy.
This also comes back to me:--I am at school, our class is held in a
colonnade with mats as outer screens; cloud upon cloud has come up
during the afternoon, and they are now heaped up, covering the sky; and
as we look on, the rain comes down in close thick showers, the thunder
at intervals rumbling long and loud; some mad woman with nails of
lightning seems to be rending the sky from end to end; the mat walls
tremble under the blasts of wind as if they would be blown in; we can
hardly see to read, for the darkness. The Pandit gives us leave to close
our books. Then leaving the storm to do the romping and roaring for us,
we keep swinging our dangling legs; and my mind goes right away across
the far-off unending moor through which the Prince of the fairy tale
passes.
I remember, moreover, the depth of the _Sravan_[55] nights. The
pattering of the rain finding its way through the gaps of my slumber,
creates within a gladsome restfulness deeper than the deepest sleep. And
in the wakeful intervals I pray that the morning may see the rain
continue, our lane under water, and the bathing platform of the tank
submerged to the last step.
But at the age of which I have just been telling, Autumn is on the
throne beyond all doubt. Its life is to be seen spread under the clear
transparent leisure of _Aswin_.[56] And in the molten gold of this
autumn sunshine, softly reflected from the fresh dewy green outside, I
am pacing the verandah and composing, in the mode _Jogiya_, the song:
In this morning light I do not know what it is that my heart desires.
The autumn day wears on, the house gong sounds 12 noon, the mode
changes; though my mind is still filled with music, leaving no room for
call of work or duty; and I sing:
What idle play is this with yourself, my heart,
through the listless hours?
Then in the afternoon I am lying on the white floorcloth of my little
room, with a drawing book trying to draw pictures,--by no means an
arduous pursuit of the pictorial muse, but just a toying with the desire
to make pictures. The most important part is that which remains in the
mind, and of which not a line gets drawn on the paper. And in the
meantime the serene autumn afternoon is filtering through the walls of
this little Calcutta room filling it, as a cup, with golden
intoxication.
I know not why, but all my days of that period I see as if through this
autumn sky, this autumn light--the autumn which ripened for me my songs
as it ripens the corn for the tillers; the autumn which filled my
granary of leisure with radiance; the autumn which flooded my unburdened
mind with an unreasoning joy in fashioning song and story.
The great difference which I see between the Rainy-season of my
childhood and the Autumn of my youth is that in the former it is outer
Nature which closely hemmed me in keeping me entertained with its
numerous troupe, its variegated make-up, its medley of music; while the
festivity which goes on in the shining light of autumn is in man
himself. The play of cloud and sunshine is left in the background, while
the murmurs of joy and sorrow occupy the mind. It is our gaze which
gives to the blue of the autumn sky its wistful tinge and human yearning
which gives poignancy to the breath of its breezes.
My poems have now come to the doors of men. Here informal goings and
comings are not allowed. There is door after door, chamber within
chamber. How many times have we to return with only a glimpse of the
light in the window, only the sound of the pipes from within the palace
gates lingering in our ears. Mind has to treat with mind, will to come
to terms with will, through many tortuous obstructions, before giving
and taking can come about. The foundation of life, as it dashes into
these obstacles, splashes and foams over in laughter and tears, and
dances and whirls through eddies from which one cannot get a definite
idea of its course.
(44) _Sharps and Flats_
_Sharps and Flats_ is a serenade from the streets in front of the
dwelling of man, a plea to be allowed an entry and a place within that
house of mystery.
This world is sweet,--I do not want to die.
I wish to dwell in the ever-living life of Man.
This is the prayer of the individual to the universal life.
When I started for my second voyage to England, I made the acquaintance
on board ship of Asutosh Chaudhuri. He had just taken the M. A. degree
of the Calcutta University and was on his way to England to join the
Bar. We were together only during the few days the steamer took from
Calcutta to Madras, but it became quite evident that depth of friendship
does not depend upon length of acquaintance. Within this short time he
so drew me to him by his simple natural qualities of heart, that the
previous life-long gap in our acquaintance seemed always to have been
filled with our friendship.
When Ashu came back from England he became one of us.[57] He had not as
yet had time or opportunity to pierce through all the barriers with
which his profession is hedged in, and so become completely immersed in
it. The money-bags of his clients had not yet sufficiently loosened the
strings which held their gold, and Ashu was still an enthusiast in
gathering honey from various gardens of literature. The spirit of
literature which then saturated his being had nothing of the mustiness
of library morocco about it, but was fragrant with the scent of unknown
exotics from over the seas. At his invitation I enjoyed many a picnic
amidst the spring time of those distant woodlands.
He had a special taste for the flavour of French literature. I was then
writing the poems which came to be published in the volume entitled
_Kadi o Komal_, Sharps and Flats. Ashu could discern resemblances
between many of my poems and old French poems he knew. According to him
the common element in all these poems was the attraction which the play
of world-life had for the poet, and this had found varied expression in
each and every one of them. The unfulfilled desire to enter into this
larger life was the fundamental motive throughout.
"I will arrange and publish these poems for you," said Ashu, and
accordingly that task was entrusted to him. The poem beginning _This
world is sweet_ was the one he considered to be the keynote of the whole
series and so he placed it at the beginning of the volume.
Ashu was very possibly right. When in childhood I was confined to the
house, I offered my heart in my wistful gaze to outside nature in all
its variety through the openings in the parapet of our inner
roof-terrace. In my youth the world of men in the same way exerted a
powerful attraction on me. To that also I was then an outsider and
looked out upon it from the roadside. My mind standing on the brink
called out, as it were, with an eager waving of hands to the ferryman
sailing away across the waves to the other side. For Life longed to
start on life's journey.
It is not true that my peculiarly isolated social condition was the bar
to my plunging into the midst of the world-life. I see no sign that
those of my countrymen who have been all their lives in the thick of
society feel, any more than I did, the touch of its living intimacy. The
life of our country has its high banks, and its flight of steps, and, on
its dark waters falls the cool shade of the ancient trees, while from
within the leafy branches over-head the _koel_ cooes forth its ravishing
old-time song. But for all that it is stagnant water. Where is its
current, where are the waves, when does the high tide rush in from the
sea?
Did I then get from the neighbourhood on the other side of our lane an
echo of the victorious pæan with which the river, falling and rising,
wave after wave, cuts its way through walls of stone to the sea? No! My
life in its solitude was simply fretting for want of an invitation to
the place where the festival of world-life was being held.
Man is overcome by a profound depression while nodding through his
voluptuously lazy hours of seclusion, because in this way he is deprived
of full commerce with life. Such is the despondency from which I have
always painfully struggled to get free. My mind refused to respond to
the cheap intoxication of the political movements of those days, devoid,
as they seemed, of all strength of national consciousness, with their
complete ignorance of the country, their supreme indifference to real
service of the motherland. I was tormented by a furious impatience, an
intolerable dissatisfaction with myself and all around me. Much rather,
I said to myself, would I be an Arab Bedouin!
While in other parts of the world there is no end to the movement and
clamour of the revelry of free life, we, like the beggar maid, stand
outside and longingly look on. When have we had the wherewithal to deck
ourselves for the occasion and go and join in it? Only in a country
where the spirit of separation reigns supreme, and innumerable petty
barriers divide one from another, need this longing to realise the
larger life of the world in one's own remain unsatisfied.
I strained with the same yearning towards the world of men in my youth,
as I did in my childhood towards outside nature from within the
chalk-ring drawn round me by the servants. How rare, how unattainable,
how far away it seemed! And yet if we cannot get into touch with it, if
from it no breeze can blow, no current come, if no road be there for
the free goings and comings of travellers, then the dead things that
accumulate around us never get removed, but continue to be heaped up
till they smother all life.
During the Rains there are only dark clouds and showers. And in the
Autumn there is the play of light and shade in the sky, but that is not
all-absorbing; for there is also the promise of corn in the fields. So
in my poetical career, when the rainy season was in the ascendant there
were only my vaporous fancies which stormed and showered; my utterance
was misty, my verses were wild. And with the _Sharps and Flats_ of my
Autumn, not only was there the play of cloud-effects in the sky, but out
of the ground crops were to be seen rising. Then, in the commerce with
the world of reality, both language and metre attempted definiteness and
variety of form.
Thus ends another Book. The days of coming together of inside and
outside, kin and stranger, are closing in upon my life. My life's
journey has now to be completed through the dwelling places of men. And
the good and evil, joy and sorrow, which it thus encountered, are not to
be lightly viewed as pictures. What makings and breakings, victories and
defeats, clashings and minglings, are here going on!
I have not the power to disclose and display the supreme art with which
the Guide of my life is joyfully leading me through all its obstacles,
antagonisms and crookednesses towards the fulfilment of its innermost
meaning. And if I cannot make clear all the mystery of this design,
whatever else I may try to show is sure to prove misleading at every
step. To analyse the image is only to get at its dust, not at the joy of
the artist.
So having escorted them to the door of the inner sanctuary I take leave
of my readers.
Printed in the United States of America
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A jingling sentence in the Bengali Child's Primer.
[2] Exercises in two-syllables.
[3] Roofed colonnade or balcony. The writer's family house is an
irregular three-storied mass of buildings, which had grown with the
joint family it sheltered, built round several courtyards or
quadrangles, with long colonnades along the outer faces, and narrower
galleries running round each quadrangle, giving access to the single
rows of rooms.
[4] The men's portion of the house is the outer; and the women's the
inner.
[5] These Bustees or settlements consisting of tumbledown hovels,
existing side by side with palatial buildings, are still one of the
anomalies of Calcutta. _Tr._
[6] Corresponding to "Wonderland."
[7] There are innumerable renderings of the Ramayana in the Indian
languages.
[8] A kind of crisp unsweetened pancake taken like bread along with the
other courses.
[9] Food while being eaten, and utensils or anything else touched by the
hand engaged in conveying food to the mouth, are considered ceremonially
unclean.
[10] The writer is the youngest of seven brothers. The sixth brother is
here meant.
[11] Obsolete word meaning bee.
[12] The lane, a blind one, leads, at right angles to the front
verandah, from the public main road to the grounds round the house.
[13] God of Death.
[14] Goddess of Learning.
[15] The Jupiter Pluvius of Hindu Mythology.
[16] The King of the Yakshas is the Pluto of Hindu Mythology.
[17] Corresponding to Lethe.
[18] Krishna's playground.
[19] Correspondence clerk.
[20] Spices wrapped in betel leaf.
[21] It is considered sinful for non-brahmins to cast glances on
neophytes during the process of their sacred-thread investiture, before
the ceremony is complete.
[22] Two novices in the hermitage of the sage Kanva, mentioned in the
Sanskrit drama, Sakuntala.
[23] The text for self-realisation.
[24] Bards or reciters.
[25] The Cow and the Brahmin are watchwords of modern Hindu Orthodoxy.
[26] An instrument on which the keynote is strummed to accompany
singing.
[27] A large proportion of words in the literary Bengali are derived
unchanged from the Sanskrit.
[28] Servants call the master and mistress father, and mother, and the
children brothers and sisters.
[29] Name of Vishnu in his aspect of slayer of the proud demon, Madhu.
[30] Nirada is a Sanscrit word meaning _cloud_, being a compound of
_nira_ = water and _da_ = giver. In Bengali it is pronounced _nirode_.
[31] Betel-leaf and spices.
[32] Father of the well-known artists Gaganendra and Abanindra. _Ed._
[33] In Bengali this word has come to mean an informal uninvited
gathering.
[34] Systems of notation were not then in use. One of the most popular
of the present-day systems was subsequently devised by the writer's
brother here mentioned. _Tr._
[35] The new bride of the house, wife of the writer's fourth brother,
above-mentioned. _Tr._
[36] It may be helpful to the foreign reader to explain that the expert
singer of Indian music improvises more or less on the tune outline made
over to him by the original composer, so that the latter need not
necessarily do more than give a correct idea of such outline. _Tr._
[37] This would mean "the genius of Bhubanmohini" if that be taken as
the author's name.
[38] Gifts of cloth for use as wearing apparel are customary by way of
ceremonial offerings of affection, respect or seasonable greeting.
[39] The old Vaishnava poets used to bring their name into the last
stanza of the poem, this serving as their signature. Bhanu and Rabi both
mean the Sun. _Tr._
[40] The dried and stripped centre-vein of a cocoanut leaf gives a long
tapering stick of the average thickness of a match stick, and a bundle
of these goes to make the common Bengal household broom which in the
hands of the housewife is popularly supposed to be useful in keeping the
whole household in order from husband downwards. Its effect on a bare
back is here alluded to.--_Tr._
[41] There was a craze for phrenology at the time. _Tr._
[42] Latterly Sir Tarak Palit, a life-long friend of the writer's second
brother. _Tr._
[43] Saraswati, the goddess of learning, is depicted in Bengal as clad
in white and seated among a mass of lotus flowers. _Tr._
[44] With Indian music it is not a mere question of correctly rendering
a melody exactly as composed, but the theme of the original composition
is the subject of an improvised interpretative elaboration by the
expounding Artist. _Tr._
[45] Valmiki Pratibha means the genius of Valmiki. The plot is based on
the story of Valmiki, the robber chief, being moved to pity and breaking
out into a metrical lament on witnessing the grief of one of a pair of
cranes whose mate was killed by a hunter. In the metre which so came to
him he afterwards composed his _Ramayana_. _Tr._
[46] Some Indian classic melodic compositions are designed on a scheme
of accentuation, for which purpose the music is set, not to words, but
to unmeaning notation-sounds representing drum-beats or plectrum-impacts
which in Indian music are of a considerable variety of tone, each having
its own sound-symbol. The _Telena_ is one such style of composition.
_Tr._
[47] Reciters of Puranic legendary lore. _Tr._
[48] The Goddess of Wealth.
[49] As distinguished generally from different provincial styles, but
chiefly from the Dravidian style prevalent in the South. _Tr._
[50] Many of the Hindustani classic modes are supposed to be best in
keeping with particular seasons of the year, or times of the day. _Tr._
[51] The world, as the Indian boy knows it from fairy tale and folklore,
has seven seas and thirteen rivers. _Tr._
[52] This is addressed to Yashoda, mother of Krishna, by his playmates.
Yashoda would dress up her darling every morning in his yellow garment
with a peacock plume in his hair. But when it came to the point, she was
nervous about allowing him, young as he was, to join the other cowherd
boys at the pasturage. So it often required a great deal of persuasion
before they would be allowed to take charge of him. This is part of the
_Vaishnava_ parable of the child aspect of Krishna's play with the
world. _Tr._
[53] A Busti is an area thickly packed with shabby tiled huts, with
narrow pathways running through, and connecting it with the main street.
These are inhabited by domestic servants, the poorer class of artisans
and the like. Such settlements were formerly scattered throughout the
town even in the best localities, but are now gradually disappearing
from the latter. _Tr._
[54] One of Bankim Babu's brothers.
[55] The month corresponding to July-August, the height of the rainy
season.
[56] The month of Aswin corresponds to September-October, the long
vacation time for Bengal.
[57] Referring to his marriage with the writer's niece, Pratibha. _Tr._
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=Songs of Kabir=
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75.
"Tagore has given his songs their melodic English translation and Miss
Evelyn Underhill has prepared an excellent preface for the volume which
outlines the life and philosophy of 'Kabir.'" _Review of Reviews_.
* * * * *
"No one in the least sympathetic to spiritual aspiration can read these
outpourings without catching fire at their flame and getting a sense of
supernal things. Tagore, a kindred spirit, has done a service in making
this old mystic, whose soul experiences did not make him abstract, whose
high song was that of the ascetic, but of a weaver who trod the common
ways of man, known to English readers." _Bellman, Minneapolis, Minn._
"Upon the reality of life he erects his faith, and buttresses it with
whatever of devotional good he may find in any religion. No ascetic,
Kabir pictures the mystic world of his belief with a beautiful richness
of symbolism." _Philadelphia Public Ledger_.
"Not only students of Indian literature or of comparative religions will
welcome this striking translation of a fifteenth-century Indian mystic.
Every one who is capable of responding to an appeal to cast off the
swathings of formalism and come out into spiritual freedom, every one
who is sensitive to poetry that, while highly symbolical, is yet clear
and simple and full of beauty, will read it with interest and with
heart-quickening." _New York Times_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=The Cycle of Spring: A Play=
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75._
This, the latest and richest of the author's plays, was recently
performed in the courtyard of his Calcutta home by the masters and boys
of Shantiniketan. The success was immense: and naturally, for the spirit
of the play is the spirit of universal youth, filled with laughter and
lyric fervour, jest and pathos and resurgence: immortal youth whose
every death is a rebirth, every winter an enfolded spring.
"All the joy, the buoyancy, the resilience, the indomitable and
irrepressible hopefulness of Youth are compacted in the lines of the
play. The keynote is sounded, with subtle symbolism, in the Prelude, in
which the King ranks above all matters of State or of Humanity the
circumstances that two gray hairs had made their appearance behind the
ear that morning.... Dramatic power, philosophy and lyric charm are
brilliantly blended in a work of art that has the freshness and the
promise of its theme." _New York Tribune_.
"A more beautiful play than 'The Cycle of Spring' by Sir Rabindranath
Tagore it would be hard to find in all literature. It embodies the
spirit of youth, and one can almost hear in it the laughter of the
eternally young.... Not only the glamor of the Orient but the breath of
Undying Youth is in this work of Tagore, a genius so peculiar to India,
so utterly inartificial, so completely of imagination all compact that
his colossal power begotten of Fairyland and the World of Visions makes
us poor Occidentals look very small indeed." _Rochester Post Express_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=The Hungry Stones and Other Stories=
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.35. Leather, $1.75._
"These short stories furnish a double guaranty of the Hindu Nobel Prize
winner's rightful place among the notable literary figures of our
times." _New York Globe_.
"Imagination, charm of style, poetry, and depth of feeling without
gloominess, characterize this volume of stories of the Eastern poet.
This new volume of his work which introduces him to English readers as a
short-story writer is as significant of his power as are the verses that
have preceded it." _Boston Transcript_.
"A book of strange, beautiful, widely varying tales. Through them all,
the thread on which the beautiful beads are strung is the poet's mystic
philosophy." _New York Times_.
"The unutterable fascination of the Orient will be found in all these
beautiful tales. Exquisite art unlike that of any other living writer.
Rabindranath Tagore is one of the magicians of modern literature--a
transcendently great genius who brings to mammon-worshipping Western
minds the fantasy, the enchantment, and the wonder of the Orient."
_Rochester Post Express_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=Stray Birds=
Frontispiece and Decorations by Willy Pogany
_12mo, $1.50._
Written during his present visit to America, this book may be said to
contain the essence of all Tagore's poetry and philosophy, revealed by
many aphorisms, epigrams and sayings.
Here is the kernel of the wisdom and insight of the great Hindu seer in
the form of short extracts. These sayings are the essence of his Eastern
message to the Western world. The frontispiece and decorations by Willy
Pogany are beautiful in themselves, and enhance the spiritual
significance of this extraordinary book.
"Each reflects some aspect of beauty, in thought or in nature, or some
of the many-sided philosophical reflections of the author. In one sense
these stray birds are tiny prose poems, a fact which makes the
dedication of the volume to 'T. Hara, of Yokohama,' peculiarly
appropriate, for they all suggest the delicacy and minuteness of
Japanese poetry as it is known to us in translation." _Philadelphia
Public Ledger_.
"Pleasing and inspiring." _Boston Daily Advertiser_.
"His utterances have something of the elusive delicacy of memories of
moral experiences out of a remote past." _Nation_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913. Author of "Gitanjali," "The
Gardener," "The Crescent Moon," "Sadhana."
=Chitra=
=A PLAY IN ONE ACT=
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.00. Leather, $1.75._
"The play is told with the simplicity and wonder of imagery always
characteristic of Rabindranath Tagore." _Cleveland Plain Dealer_.
"All the poetry of Tagore is here." ... _Poetry Journal_.
"Beautiful and marked by skilful rhythm." _Newark Evening News_.
"A clear portrayal of the dual nature of womankind." _Graphic_.
"The play is finely idyllic." _Chicago Daily Tribune_.
"A pretty situation, prettily worked out. And there is something piquant
in the combination of the old Hindu metaphorical style, half mystical in
allusion, with what is really a plea for the emancipation of women."
_The Nation_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=Fruit Gathering=
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Leather, $1.75._
"A shining pathway up which we can confidently travel to those regions
of wisdom and experience which consciously or unconsciously we strive to
reach." _Boston Transcript_.
"Quaintly lovely fragments." _Chicago Herald_.
"Exquisitely conceived and with all the distinctive grace which marked
'Song Offerings.'" _San Francisco Chronicle_.
"Exotic fragrance." _Chicago Daily News_.
"The songs have the quality of universality--the greatest quality which
poetry can possess." _Chicago Tribune_.
"As perfect in form as they are beautiful and poignant in content." _The
Athenæum, London_.
"Nothing richer nor sweeter.... Something of Omar Khayyam and something
of Rabbi ben Ezra, expressed more at length and more mystically. In
smoothly flowing rhythms, with vivid little pictures of life's
activities, the poet sings of old age, the fruit gathering time, its
sadness and its glory, its advantages and its sorrows." _The Boston
Globe_.
* * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=The Post Office=
Cloth, 12mo, $1.00; leather, $1.75.
"... filled with tender pathos and spiritual beauty. There are two acts,
and the story is that of a frail little Indian lad condemned to
seclusion and inaction by ill health. He makes a new world for himself,
however, by his imagination and insatiable curiosity, and the passersby
bring the world of action to him. The play has been presented in England
by the Irish Players, and fully adapts itself to the charming simplicity
and charm which are their principal characteristics." _Phila. Public
Ledger_.
"A beautiful and appealing piece of dramatic work." _Boston Transcript_.
"Once more Tagore demonstrates the universality of his genius; once more
he shows how art and true feeling know no racial and no religious
lines." _Kentucky Post_.
"One reads in 'The Post Office' his own will of symbolism. Simplicity
and a pervading, appealing pathos are the qualities transmitted to its
lines by the poet." _N. Y. World_.
"He writes from his soul; there is neither bombast nor didacticism. His
poems bring one to the quiet places where the soul speaks to the soul
surely but serenely." _N. Y. American_.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
=The King of the Dark Chamber=
By
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913; Author of "Gitangali," "The
Gardener," "The Crescent Moon," "Sadhana," "Chitra," "The Post-Office,"
etc. Cloth 12 mo, $1.25; leather, $1.75.
"The real poetical imagination of it is unchangeable; the allegory,
subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast into the form of a dramatic
narrative, which moves with unconventional freedom to a finely
impressive climax; and the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds
his intelligence more and more engaged until, when he turns the last
page, he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds not
realized, and communing with great if mysterious presences."
_The London Globe_.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
OTHER WORKS BY
=RABINDRANATH TAGORE=
_Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913_
=GITANJALI= (Song Offerings). A Collection of Prose Translations
made by the author from the original Bengali. New Edition $1.25
=THE GARDENER=. Poems of Youth $1.25
=THE CRESCENT MOON=. Child Poems. (Colored Ill.) $1.25
=SADHANA: THE REALIZATION OF LIFE=. A volume of essays $1.25
All four by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by the author from the
original Bengali.
Rabindranath Tagore is the Hindu poet and preacher to whom the Nobel
Prize was recently awarded....
I would commend these volumes, and especially the one entitled
"Sadhana," the collection of essays, to all intelligent readers. I know
of nothing, except it be Maeterlinck, in the whole modern range of the
literature of the inner life that can compare with them.
There are no preachers nor writers upon spiritual topics, whether in
Europe or America, that have the depth of insight, the quickness of
religious apperception, combined with the intellectual honesty and
scientific clearness of Tagore....
Here is a book from a master, free as the air, with a mind universal as
the sunshine. He writes, of course, from the standpoint of the Hindu.
But, strange to say, his spirit and teaching come nearer to Jesus, as we
find Him in the Gospels, than any modern Christian writer I know.
He does for the average reader what Bergson and Eucken are doing for
scholars; he rescues the soul and its faculties from their enslavement
to logic-chopping. He shows us the way back to Nature and her spiritual
voices.
He rebukes our materialistic, wealth-mad, Western life with the dignity
and authority of one of the old Hebrew prophets....
He opens up the meaning of life. He makes us feel the redeeming fact
that life is tremendous, a worth-while adventure. "Everything has sprung
from immortal life and is vibrating with life. LIFE IS IMMENSE." ...
Tagore is a great human being. His heart is warm with love. His thoughts
are pure and high as the galaxy.
(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.) Reprinted by permission from the _New
York Globe_, Dec. 18, 1913.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
* * * * *
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Notes: |
| |
| Page 49: One instance of Govinda and one instance of |
| Gobinda: discrepancy retained |
| Page 53: Hindusthani _sic_ ("Hindustani" |
| _sic_ in Footnote 50.) |
| Page 137: Closing quotes added after "...Singha;" |
| Page 179: appetities amended to appetites |
| Page 196: muscial amended to musical |
| Page 219: Himayalas amended to Himalayas |
| Page 235: cardamum _sic_ |
| Page 236: casuarianas amended to casuarinas |
| Page 270: cooes _sic_ |
| Advertisements at close of book (unpaginated): |
| transcendently _sic_ and Gitangali _sic_ |
| |
| Footnote 50 had a double reference in the original text, |
| which has been retained here. |
| |
| Small discrepancies such as capitalisation between the |
| List of Illustrations and the illustration captions have |
| been retained. |
| |
| Inconsistent hyphenation has been retained. |
| |
| Inconsistent spelling of colours/colors has been retained. |
| |
| Sanskrit and Sanscrit are used interchangeably in the |
| original. |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *