7/29/2019 23030814 http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/23030814 1/16 An Aspect of Tagore-Criticism in the West: The Cloud of Mysticism Author(s): Nabaneeta Sen Source: Mahfil, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1966), pp. 9-23 Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23030814 . Accessed: 21/09/2013 02:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new form of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and exten access to Mahfil.
Transcript
7/29/2019 23030814
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/23030814 1/16
An Aspect of Tagore-Criticism in the West: The Cloud of MysticismAuthor(s): Nabaneeta SenSource: Mahfil, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1966), pp. 9-23Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new form
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and exten
When Tagore was visiting Europe in 1921, a Parisian newspaperwrote of him:
Le type ideal du pofete, si cher aux imaginations
romanesques, si rarement approche par nos grandeshomraes a lunettes et en redignole, il le realise
pleinement: une taille haute et mince, des mains
fines, des yeux inconnus en Occident, pleins de mystere.
The next year, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer wrote in Le Gaulois:
Ceux qui ont vu des portraits de Tagore ont certainement
ete frappes par le caractere biblique de ce masque auxtraits nobles et doux, aux yeux a la fois pleins de
franchise et de mystere....^
Two years later, even Romain Holland, was expressing the same
sentiments: "le grave visage du Poete-prophete, cette imposante figure,
envelopee de mystere."^
Mystery was the first thing that the West found in Tagore, in his
eyes, and in his vision as a poet. It was the general view in Europethat anything Eastern must be different, enigmatic, inexplicable to
what is known as "the Western mind," just because it was from the East.The fame of the Mysterious East had to be justified by all its produc
tions. Unhappily therefore, mysticism was not only the first thingto be expected in an Eastern poet, but more often than not, it iias alsothe last thing.
Mysticism as an approach to the truths of life has always been
subject to various criticisms in a rational society. But at the same
time it has its own magic of attracting the irrational in the human
mind. Hence it was only to be expected that the "mysticism" in Tagore's
poetry would arouse conflicting opinions once it had the limelight.
The criticism of Gitanjail's mystic nature consisted either in
9
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
complete praise or in a total rejection of the "scientific mind." of the
West. There were very few critics who had an approach without preconceived notions about what to find in an Easterner. Age-old ideas were
channeling their interests in one direction: either in praise of the
wise old Orient, or in condemnation of the unscientific Eastern platitudes. Tagore was even offered the ultimate distinction for a mystic,
namely, being mistaken for a fortuneteller on several occasions, which
proves the great distance that one's fame as a "mystic" can take a
person in the West.
Tagore was introduced to the Western public as a "marvellous" manof the East. Yeats, more than Pound, insisted on the mystic element of
Tagore's poetry, since Yeats himself had always been more interestedin Eastern mysticism than Pound had been. In fact Pound's attitude wasmuch more that of an unbiased Western literary critic than that of mostothers that ever reviewed Tagore's work — except a handful like E. M.Forster or Leonard Woolf. But even Pound contributed to the myth of
"Tagore, the great Mystic." It was probably his article in The Fortnightly Review which started off the thesis, which was soon widelyspread, about Tagore's poetry having a Biblical quality. Tagore's namewas given an indirect religious association which it could never getrid of. It appeared again and again in different disguises in theWestern reviews of his works. But religious association was preciselywhat Pound did not wish the world to find in Tagore; rather he foundin his poems "a sort of ultimate common sense.... There is the samesort of common sense in the first part of the New Testament, the same
happiness in some of the Psalms, but these are so apt to be spoiled forus by the association...that it is pleasant to find their poetic ququality in some work which does not bring into the spectrum of our
thought John Calvin, the Bishop of London, and the loathly images ofcant."5
But the jargon was used by other reviewers, also in praise. ThusThe Times Literary Supplement wrote, "As we read his pieces we seem tobe reading the Psalms of a David of our own time,"6 and The New Statesman, talking of Tagore's creative impulse, referred to "the Psalmic
1dayspring from on high'.The Nation found the same quality ofmysticism present in Tagore's work, "in the past history of mysticism,...in such diverse types of spiritual genius as St. Paul, Ruysbroeck,William Blake, among Christians, Jalaluddin and Kabir in the East.""And finally, in The New Leader it reached a culmination when his flatlyrealistic sociological novel Gora was reviewed as "a wonderful series of...visions of the Indian soul....It kneels in prayer, like some gauntsaint in an early Flemish painting.... If Thomas a Kempis had writtena novel, it might have been something like this gracious and beautifulbook of Tagore's."9 This reviewer, in his unlimited devotion to the'sacred East,' has missed the whole point of the novel, which, as
Leonard Woolf dryly points out, "is the social, political and psychological problems which confront the educated Bengali in Calcutta
today."10
Ezra Pound called Gitan.jali a "series of spiritual lyrics,"11 andconfessed "to find fitting comparison for the content of the volumebefore us, I am compelled to one sole book of my acquaintance, theParadlso of Dante.But even that was not fitting enough, because
10
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
"The voice of the Brama Sumaj /sic/ is different, its mysticism is calm
rather than fervid. Such phrases as Poi che furono a^iocond i della
faceia di Dio seem likely to break the stillness of this Oriental
thought."13 The path is paved for the future reviewers to take up the
"mystic" approach to Tagore's "Oriental thought." A special standard is
immediately set up for judging his work -- not a new standard, but a
typical, worn-cut, and often misleading standard of regarding the
Oriental mind as opposed to the Occidental. This becomes clear from the
reviews that followed the publication of Gitan.jali and other books by
Tagore.
These reviews can be roughly divided into three categories. One
sang the traditional song of the strange, exotic, inaccessible eastern
mystical thoughts — the impenetrable enigma which is nevertheless
enchanting for its foreign flavor. Another claimed Tagore's mysticismis not the so-called eastern mystical renunciation of life, but the
strong affirmation of life, giving it a new meaning, a new light of
personal interpretation. The third line was that of the utterly self
confident We sterner who claimed Tagore was only returning what he hadlearned from the West, and that the genuine Western mystics knew their
jobs better. This, however, is only a special interpretation of thesecond view, that is, Tagore's mysticism is not x^hat one knows as the
typical Eastern attitude. Almost all the reviews of Tagore's poetical
works can be put into one of these categories.
Grace Ellison, in L'Eclair, for example, wrote about "un Brahmane
spiritualise," where she described "un homme ayant le visage de Jesus
Christ," and who, in her opinion, is "le grand artiste qui semble porteren lui tout le fatalisme et tout le mystere du pays ou .il est ne,"^-uF. Roger-Cornaz, translator of Tagore's Home and the World into French,wrote an article on T.qgore in the same issue of L' Eel air where he remarked generally about the Easterners:
On a traduit et imite les poetes de le Perse et de I'Inde.ceux meine de la Chine et du Japon. Ces tentatives ont etSrarement heureuses. Les &mes orientales restent etrangeres
aux notres: etrangers et etrangere: et tout au plus peuvent elles nous seduire par la charme raerae de cette etrangetS.
This was true of a large number of Tagore1s Western readers. In The
Sunday Times there was a joint review of Tagore and the Japanese poet,Yone Noguchi. The title was, for Tagore, "A Mystic World." The reviewer
began:
In The Fugitive the lovers of Tagore will not be disappointed.He has all his powers still undimmed. Indeed, the poet never,in our judgment, has surpassed this, his latest work.... He
... is Eastern in his manner of response to nature and to
humanity and to God. Everywhere the reader is in the presenceof a
mystic world,with
eternity in its heart....It is a world
of shadows, and at any turn there may open glimpses of the
reality, for which the Eastern seers for ever hunger....This is the pure mystic strain.16
11
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
The reviewer included Noguchi only because he was another man from the
East, like Tagore, who also lived "in such a haunted world, the singerlost in reveries and reflecting upon the eternal mysteries! "1?
The Fugitive was reviewed in The Manchester Guardian in the same
vein of mysticism. But the reviewer's reactions to it were somewhat
different. About Tagore's poetry, The Manchester Guardian critic's
opinion was that
their fundamental tone or colour, has, at least for us
Western readers, far more significance than any details of
incident or action....We well remember the delight with
which... we read his Gitan.jali . Their message was remote,it was often strange or unintelligible, but the refined,
melodious, incense-laden prose in which it was delivered
had the perfect hallmark of art....We treasure the volume
as we treasure a Persian carpet or a Japanese print; the
colour is good, but we do not understand the thoughts of
those quaint figures. ... Or better, we may compare the
effect of Mr. Tagore's verse to that of Ossian ....But aswe know his incense more we like it less. It is as if the
spirit of poetry came before us muffled and veiled.1"
But when Tagore first gained his Western audiences, he was hailedfor doing exactly the opposite service to humanity. The Nation, while
reviewing The Crescent Moon, The Gardener, and Sadhana in 1913. re
cognized them as "the rich and various artistic achievement of the one
great mystical poet of our own day." But their "temper is at once
individual, national, yet also universal; accepting all the naturallinks of our closely woven humanity, not as fetters, but as supports tothe soul,"19 it quoted from Sadhana where Tagore wrote about the
realization of the fundamental unity of the world "in feeling and in
action." According to the reviewer, "It is the crown of mystic endeavour when this synthesis is achieved."^0 He compared The Crescent Moonto the vision of childhood as found in William Blake and summed up:"None who come in solemn search of 'spiritual meanings' will discover
the secret of these poems; for here, the thing _i_s the meaning, the^illuminated texture of existence reveals, does not veil, reality."^lPie had started the article by pointing out that the "common way of mis
understanding the mystic — and the so-called 'revival' of mysticismwhich we are now witnessing has not seriously affected it — is to
regard him as a being set apart from the common life: living in contactwith the eternal only because he has managed to escape from, or ignore,the flux.But the mystic, he held, was
not more withdrawn from life than other men, but more deeplyimmersed in it. The reality of which they tell us is notremote: it is our own reality, the uninterrupted music ofour own soul's life, which they are trying to interpret tous
.3This is probably what Yeats meant when he said of Gitan.jali;
we are not moved because of its strangeness, but because we
12
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
...our own civilisation, patent as its defects may be, isan advance on theirs:...We admire Mr. Tagore greatly as
an artist to whose voice the world listens, and as one who
is already bringing to his fellow-countrymen, as none buta great poet can do, the seed of certain ideas on whichWestern life is founded, and which Eastern life has on thewhole overlooked. It is because he is nearer to ourselvesthan other Indian poets are that he has so deeply touched
us, and we have the right to say that, if he is nearer to
us, it is because he has ... assimilated something of our
standards and of the spirit of our literature.
Many of his readers ... are probably unaware thatthe essence of what he has to say has been said, andmore fruitfully said, by V/ordsworth -- more fruitfullybecause in wider and more worldly contexts, with less
mystification and more of easy humanity.
The criticism that The Athenaeum made of Rhys' approach,was made a few years earlier "by The Westminster Gazette about
approach of Yeats to Tagore's poetry:
By prescribing them as an antidote against Western folly
and. vanity, Mr. Yeats seems to suggest that Mr. Tagore'spoetry is essentially different in kind and intention fromthat of poets and mystics nearer home. That would be noreal service....It is in their resemblance to the poemsof comparatively modern Western poets rather than in theirdifferences from them, that they are most significant.^1-'
Then the reviewer gives parallel examples to prove his thesis:
'Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes,ever comes! ... 'That is the theme of 'The Hound of Heaven'.
'On the shores of endless worlds children meet...'that inevitably recalls Wordsworth. 1When I bring to youcoloured
toys, my child...1 the germ of one of Patmore'sbest-known odes is in there;... Even Walt Whitman isrecalled by the lines — '0 Thou, the last fulfilment ofLife, Death, my death, come and whisper to me! ' And overand over again th^ book echoes with Traherne, with Herbert,and with Vaughan.
31
To be able to find a parallel theme to that of "The Iiound ofHeaven" in any poem of Gitan.jali is quite an ingenious task! However,the critic does not touch upon the problem whether the 'similarities'were accidental, or direct influences; wisely, too, since it is a rathervague and difficult area to tread upon without elaborate research. In192-6, Edward Shanks contributed to the same idea that Tagore' s realworth lies in what he owes to Europe, and not in what Europe owes to him.
He had to devote a whole page in The Queen to Tagore, due to circumstances
which resulted from one of his casual remarks about Tagore in that magazine:
Some weeks ago I remarked on this page that the recepin this country of Sir Rabindranath Tagore as an example
14
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
of Eastern mysticism was not without its comic side. Since
then I have been inundated with correspondence on the
subject... I am quite ready to explain what I meant
by it....There is very little that is strange or disturbing
in the work of Sir Rabindranath Tagore. Those who wish
to be impressed by glimpses of a life that is different
from our own, by revelation of the Eastern mind which
works in a way we can never understand, would do far
better to go to Mr. Kipling for what they want....I am inclined to believe that the mystery of Sir
Rabindranath can be explained in another way. He is
not a typical Eastern poet; he is not a messenger bring
ing to the materialistic West the unknown doctrines of
the mystical East. He is rather one of the first resT.ilts
of the modern Europeanised education of the intelligentHindu.
/He is/ one who returns to us what we have already lent;...his translated works do not justify the disturbance
that was created when he was first introduced to the
English public.32
The Church Times echoed the words of Shanks a few years before
Tagore died. It said that Tagore1s reputation "was largely based ona misapprehension and the departure of the misapprehension may be partly
responsible for a certain decline in his fame." It asserted that Tagorewas not really a "typical representative of Eastern thought." but merely,as Shanks had also pointed out, an obvious "product, not of India butof Anglo-India.... All his works show traces of Western and Christian
influences."33 The magazine went further than Shanks in Its claims.
This quality of instinctive rationality, the common sense, and a
feel for the real, which was either overlooked in Tagore by the ardent
admirers of Eastern mysticism, or interpreted as essentially a Westerninfluence on the privileged Easterner, was noticed by another group of
readers who tried to establish a balance between the realism and the
mysticism in Tagore's work. Paris-Soir remarked on the death of Tagore,"Tagore etait un curieux melange de realisme et de mysticisme." It
elaborated the statement by saying:
Rabindranath Tagore etait un poete mystique, lumineux
et passionne. Sans cesse, il exaltait la puissance de la
divinite que dans tout l'univers il sentait repandue. Mais
il a ecrit aussi de tres beaux vers d'amour ou il jouit avec
delices du spectacle des choses. II a dit quelque part:"J'ai invite a la fete du monde, et, ainsi, ma vie a ete
benie."C' est-a-dire qu'il ne faut pas chercjier
chez lui le
pessiinisme radical des penseurs hindous. 3
P. Roger-Cornaz had quoted an Indian on Tagore, in 1921, "quine se soit pas refuse k vivre, mais qui ait chante la vie elle-meme:
c'est pourquoi il nous est si cher," then he added his own comment,"St c'est aussi pourquoi, sans doute, sa poesie a su conquerer les
15
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
This quality was perhaps first noted by Pound, and then by several
English newspapers. Pound quoted, "Thus it is that thy joy in me is so
full" (Gitan.jali) , and commented:
If we take these poems as an expression of Buddhistic
thought, it is quite certain that they will change the pre
vailing conception of Buddhism among us. For we usuallyconsider
itas a sort of ultimate
negation, while theseunoiuwi, _i_> au <z*. u v_/x w l ux ux j.ua l/w iiu
^,ot wa.wj.Ajmi 1 x .1. ^ uurio^ ,
poems are full of light, they are full of positive statement.-'
The New Statesman introduced Tagore, the "Great Indian Poet" as a
notable exception from the usual type of Indian intellectual. "Unlike
...the more static Indian poet-philosophers,...•Deliverance,' saysMr. Tagore, 'is not for me in renunciation,'...His prose-lyrics,.,are genuine and familiar, like the earth."37 The reviewer visualized
"the vast panorama of life and death and their tremendous melodies" in
lines like "because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well"
(which Pound also quoted in The Fortnightly Review). This critic ends
his piece by■saying that "there are no blurred outlines....All the
great mystics have this sharpness and transparency of effeet....Let
your mystic be vague and nebulous, and he is usually second rate and
worthy of your mistrust."3°
Some readers of Tagore did think, later on, that Tagore was vagueand nebulous, and the rest followed — as in the criticism of Red Olean
ders in The Times Literary Supplement.39
Or, we can take a reviewer of Edward Thompson's book on Tagore,Rabindranath Tagore. His Life and Works (London, 1921), who complainedthat he was tired of the monotonous nature of Tagore's writings. He
believed "this monotony was more prejudicial to them because of the
tone of exalted spirituality in which they were cast." But Thompson'sbook had corrected his previous impression, and he found out that
"Tagore was not, as his earliest readers in this country fondly imagined,
a fastidious and eclectic artist who distils the hard-won experience offive ascetic years into one lyric. He is, on the other hand, a writer
of amazing fecundity.
The idea of Tagore's being an ascetic and. a sage was quite widely
spread. along with his fame of mysticism in the early years of his
appearance in the Western world, and his physical bearing helped it to
live on. But there were friendly voices to be heard every now and then,
warning the general reader against the danger of mystification and
spiritualization of everything that came from Tagore. In fact, as earlyas October, 1913. The Nation commented upon the love-poems of
The Gardener:
There is no need to sublimate them into allegories ofthe soul. There is a frame of mind that cannot rest content
with the "Vita Nuova" until it is transferred into a theological
treatise, and that kind of mind will, no doubt, set to work
upon this volume of Rabindranath in the same sanctifying
spirit. The task would not be difficult, we can only repeat
16
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
The Manchester Guardian also came to Tagore1s rescue at one stage, by
declaring: "A mystic? :ihat kind of a mystic is this who hymns the
passion of love, youth, motherhood, in an ecstasy of the senses? He
feels the sharp sting of life. He sings its praises."^
The Nation
continued its campaign against the 'holy-minded' readers of Tagore.
The discovery of
spiritualmeanings in
everysentence
which he pens, is a proceeding calculated to embitter the
most sweet-tempered of poets; and, if prosecuted with suf
ficient vigour and tactlessness, it will end by obscuringthe true merit and character of his poems. Uncritical
disciples of the 'new mysticism* please note. 3
This prophecy, in fact, was not far from the truth. Edward Thompsonrecords an occasion when he found Tagore quite upset by "an enthusiastic letter of praise from a distinguished English lady-writer;" thisextracted a desperate note from T»gore, "You know, she insists on
seeing mysticism in all I write." ^
Among those who tried to save Tagore from the role of a wise old
sage was E. M. Forster. In reviewing Chitra, he wrote in 191^:
But to drag allegory from its retirement, and proclaimit has importance in itself is to brutalize the atmosphereand pay no real honour to the author. Tagore is a poet,who, like any other, must contrive some substructure onwhich to exhibit beauty, and, being an Indian poet, he hasturned to general ideas more readily than does his Englishbrother. That is all. He is not a seer or a thinker. Heis not to be classed with Nietzsche,or Whitman, or othersof whom he occasionally reminds us. 5
But the 'sanctifying spirit' of the mystically disposed reader
already at work. Ezra Pound had once predicted:
If these poems have a flaw -- I do not admit theyhave -- but if they have a quality that will put themat a disadvantage with the 'general reader', it is that
they are too pious.Yet I have nothing but pity for the reader who is
unable to see that their piety is the poetic piety of
Dante, and that it is very beautiful. °
The piety did have its disadvantage both ways. On one hand it put offcommon readers like the reviewer of Thompson's book, by its highspiritual tone, and on the other hand it drew theologians to him and
brought him the fame of a poet-prophet. Even Tagore's friend, Mrs.Harriet Moody, referred to him as "the poet, prophet, our master."^'
Frank Crane wrote an enthusiastic article in The New York Globe"the Hindu poet and preacher," referred to his "depth" and "insight"
17
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
and "quickness of religious apperception" and concluded that "his
spirit and teaching come nearer to Jesus as we find him in the Gospels,than any modern Christian xtfriter I know."^8
In Germany, this priest-prophet aspect of Tagore was played up to
the maximum limit. When he delivered his lecture on East and West at
Count Keyserling's School of Wisdom at Darmstadt, "the impact of his
words was enormous, because he spoke like a prophet with an inner
enthusiasm, and at the climax of his speech his voice assumed a tone of
sanctitylike the voice of a
high priest."^The
prophet's garbwas
already upon him, and the halo, too, was not missing. Once, when
Tagore had given a speech in English and "Count Keyserling wanted to
translate his words, the whole crowd cried out: 'Don't translate. We
have understood everything.'" The reporter believed that the reason
for this was not, as one would imagine today, a wide knowledge of
English among the listeners, but a kind of inner communication which is
independent of linguistic barriers. "This spontaneous understanding,"he explained, "was perhaps the greatest homage that the people could
pay Tagore I'50 Paul Natorp also states that "a little girl explainedthat one could understand much better what Tagore meant when he spokein his own language rather than listening to the German translation."51
This, again, is mentioned by Natorp not as it might be thought, as a
case of having poor translators, but as a unique example of Tagore's
universal appeal.
Tagore1s image in the West was quickly reaching that state where
intellectual appreciation became secondary. He was already a fantasy,all the human dimensions were wearing off from his personality.
By 1919» Tagore was such a familiar name in Brazil that he had
reached the status of "ancient classics" -- some people seem to have
confused his identity with other Eastern poets of the old.
Both Tagore and Gandhi were permanently hovering between the
human and the mythological state. I recall on occasion when
Tagore's poetry was being discussed and a fairly famous person
was calmly heard to announce, 'But Tagore isn't alj,ve today...he's a very old poet, far away back in the past.'^
Tagore would have soon achieved contemporaneity with Homer but for his
trip to Brazil in 192^. But even his physical presence had failed to
create the impression of a living human being breathing in the twen
tieth century. "In speech and in bearing there tvas something eternal
about Tagore that made him somehow unreal with neither beginning nor
end, like a beautiful apparition, a splendid spectre."53 it is evident,
however, that 'with neither beginning nor end' is not a helpful
expression for describing a human being. This phrase just about sums
up the vagueness and imprecision characteristic of the Western appreciation of Tagore.
Whatever the nature of Western reaction to Tagore's mysticism mighthave been initially, during the Thirties it was bringing him nothingbut disrepute. In the latter half of the Twenties one started noticinga general disgust with Oriental ambiguity; being enigmatic was not.
charming any longer. The reviews of Red Oleanders were almost unani
18
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
mously unfavourable; they all complained of incomprehensibility.
The Times Literary Supplement, for example, reviewed the Red Oleanders
in this scathing manner:
A fair amount of Tagore's dramatic pcetry is of tenuous
substance. The saints and herces of his plays are often
lacking in recognizable human qualities.... The symbolismof their thoughts and actions, however, sometimes atones forthe weakness, or insignificance of the dramatist's actual
theme. Eut it is frankly difficult to make anything of the
symbolism of 'Red Oleanders.' It is a short play writtenin rather undistinguished prose in which Tagore seems to
depend on the very vagueness of his style for whatever
meaning the drama can support. For the greater part of the
time, it is quite impossible to discover what is happening....The characters of the play are sufficiently lifeless to compelone to wonder what intellectual or moral purpose they can
possibly serve.... The most acute of Tagore's literary
failings is perhaps a rather unbridled passion for metaphor.In 'Red Oleanders' the profusion of metaphor is particularly
trying....The entire dialogue is persistently sententious.But it is not profound..../It7 leave/s7 the reader both
unimpressed and regretful.
The Times Literary Supplement had been one of the earliest papersto express unbridled admiration for Tagore a decade earlier. In
November, 1912, one year before the awarding of the Nobel Prize, it hadintroduced the poet of Gitan.jali as "a David of our own time." Thetimes were now changed.
A year after publishing the review of Red Orleanders, The Times
Literary Supplement was reviewing Edward Thompson's book on Tagore.Fourteen years ago, Tagore's main attraction was that his poems were
utterly unlike anything any English poet had said, or even
could say; an attraction which began to lose its power when.with the appearance of numerous volumes, it was perceivedthat their difference from other works was only less re
markable than their resemblance to one another.... As soon,
therefore, as Tagore was found to be constantly presentingthe same ideas in different, or not so very different,garments, we concluded, that when he seemed high abovewas perhaps merely that he was very far away..., Mr.
Thompson's study makes it clear that his reputation in
country is now as much below as it was once above his
genuine merits.55
It is a sharp contrast to find this picture of.monotony and all
pervading mysticism to be the Western image of Tagore, when one thinksof what his own country saw in him. Twenty long and hectic years afterhis death he still reigns there as the greatest writer of modern India.The unique national prestige that was attached involuntarily to Tagorein his country can only be parallelled by Dante in Italy, Shakespeare
19
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
in England, Goethe in Germany, and Tolstoy in Russia. But there is no
doubt that Tagore did not leave any serious followers outside his own
country. Rabindranath only became a temporary craze, but never a se
rious literary figure in the Western scene. He was intrinsically an
outsider to the contemporary literary tradition of the West, and after
a short, misunderstood visit to the heart of the West, he again became
an outsider. "In this playhouse of infinite forms," to put it in his
own words, "I have had my play."-5"
NOTES
1F. Roger-Cornaz, »Le Tolstoi Hindou Voyage en '^uronP
'Eclair. June 20, 1921.
s en --urope.
2July 3, 1922.
3 11Introduction" to Tagore, A Quatre Voix, tr. Madeleine Rolland
(Paris, 192^), p.3.
4See, on this, Victoria Ocampo, "Tagore on the Bank of River
Plate," Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1961. A Centenary Volume (New Delhi,1961), p7 36. Also, Rabindranath's own article "East to West,"The Atlantic Monthly. June, 1927, p. 732.
^Ezra Pound., "Rabindranath Tagore," The Fortnightly Review, Vol.XCIII
(January-June, 1913)» 575-6.
^The Times Literary Supplement, November 7. 1912.
7The New Statesman. April 19, 1913.
oThe Nation, December 13. 1913.
9H.N.B., The New Leader. February 15. 192^.
10The Nation and. Athenaeum, February 9, 192^.
-*-■*The Fortnightly Review, p. 573*
12ibia.. p. 57^.
20
This content downloaded from 123.49.60.210 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 02:26:20 AM
