_13th August 1893._
Coming through these _beels_[1] to Kaligram, an idea took shape in my
mind. Not that the thought was new, but sometimes old ideas strike one
with new force.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Sometimes a stream passing through the
flat Bengal country encounters a stretch of low land and spreads out into
a sheet of water, called a _beel_, of indefinite extent, ranging from a
large pool in the dry season to a shoreless expanse during the rains.
Villages consisting of a cluster of huts, built on mounds, stand out here
and there like islands, and boats or round, earthen vessels are the only
means of getting about from village to village.
Where the waters cover cultivated tracts the rice grows through, often
from considerable depths, giving to the boats sailing over them the
curious appearance of gliding over a cornfield, so clear is the water.
Elsewhere these _beels_ have a peculiar flora and fauna of water-lilies
and irises and various water-fowl. As a result, they resemble neither a
marsh nor a lake, but have a distinct character of their own.]
The water loses its beauty when it ceases to be defined by banks and
spreads out into a monotonous vagueness. In the case of language, metre
serves for banks and gives form and beauty and character. Just as the
banks give each river a distinct personality, so does rhythm make each
poem an individual creation; prose is like the featureless, impersonal
_beel_. Again, the waters of the river have movement and progress; those
of the _beel_ engulf the country by expanse alone. So, in order to give
language power, the narrow bondage of metre becomes necessary; otherwise
it spreads and spreads, but cannot advance.
The country people call these _beels_ "dumb waters"--they have no
language, no self-expression. The river ceaselessly babbles; so the words
of the poem sing, they are not "dumb words." Thus bondage creates beauty
of form, motion, and music; bounds make not only for beauty but power.
Poetry gives itself up to the control of metre, not led by blind habit,
but because it thus finds the joy of motion. There are foolish persons who
think that metre is a species of verbal gymnastics, or legerdemain, of
which the object is to win the admiration of the crowd. That is not so.
Metre is born as all beauty is born the universe through. The current set
up within well-defined bounds gives metrical verse power to move the minds
of men as vague and indefinite prose cannot.
This idea became clear to me as I glided on from river to _beel_ and
_beel_ to river.