The Last Days of Rabindranath
Record of a visit to Santiniketan
Buddhadeva Bose
A Rainbow of Song
'I Sing of the New'
THE last chapter of Rabindranath's life was fit material for an epic poem. We saw in him a king who, after having conquered the world and spent the days of his life in the fullness of opulence, had been deprived of all by one stroke of crooked fate. The kingdom was still his and his spirit was ever a king's, but all means of communication between the king and his kingdom were being closed down. He had all, and yet he had nothing. His genius was tirelessly active and his creative impulse urgent, but those little mechanisms of the body without whose help no art can take tangible shape were refusing to co-operate. The poet who had refused to close the doors of the senses and sit in meditation had to feel those very doors being closed one after another. His sight was very weak, and when he read, which he did with great difficulty and greater persistence, he had to hold up the page very close to his eyes. His hearing was feeble and his fingers were so exhausted that he could no longer hold a brush, and even the pen refused to obey. Friends told us that on one occasion he had remarked, 'There was no end to the gifts I received from the hand of God, and now He is taking them back one by one. I had hoped to spend the last days of my life in painting pictures but that, too, has been taken away.' Crowds of pictures haunted him, but he could not give any of them a local habitation and a name, the phantoms returned to limbo. The mind was glowing but the fingers were numb. From his heart rose tunes which the voice could not capture - the stream of music was wasting itself in the same lethal waters where his unborn paintings were drowned. Of all the arts he had practiced his best-beloved was the art of song, and his singing days seemed at last to have been over. One afternoon it rained and after the shower we went to see the Poet in the evening. On entering Rathi Babu's drawing room we noticed many records of Rabindranath's songs lying scattered and were told that the Poet had just been listening to them. We found him in the little back room reclining on his usual easy-chair, looking ill and weak, which he seldom did. 'I was just trying to evoke a song of the rains', he said. 'But I can't do it any longer'.
The Lord of Life
WHEN we arrived Rabindranath had just finished writing a short story. Many other stories - new both in form and content - might have come from him if there were a process by which one could write as one thought. The second part of Yogayoga lay completely thought out in his mind, and it was thrilling when he told us the story one morning. This wonderful story never crossed the limits of the world of thought, and a great novel perforce remains unfinished. For it was not possible for him to undertake a long work, and so he was making rhymes and yarns for children and working at poems and literary essays, while a short story was suddenly released or a malediction against this war-torn insane civilization came down in terrific fury. And this was how he satisfied, as best as he could, the infinite yearnings of tremendour power. How much more cruel than physical suffering was this conflict of flesh and spirit! His was a tormented life during the last months, intolerable in its contradiction between thought and action, imagination and performance. At any rate, it should have been so, though no trace of it appeared on the surface. On the country, he was the picture of perfect peace. He had nothing of the catastrophic agony of a deaf Beethoven. You would have found him completely self-contained, but not at all indifferent. His eyes were always open to the first to challenge the insolence of power when it threatened to violate truth and justice. But, as regards himself, he seemed to have accepted all inflictions with a luminous serenity. He never complained. He never sighed. It was with an elfin touch of humour or with a fairy-nke gentleness that he mentioned his own infirmity. If his heart was lacerated by agony, his heart alone was aware of it, and none else. 'Give me, oh, give me My kingdom, my power, my glory, Not the daily bread alone' -
Cried D. H. Lawrence. It is possible that the tormented Lawrence would at last have been content if he had come to Santiniketan, for here, in the person of Rabindranath, he would have seen the true image of the lord of life.
Leave-Taking
WE had not seen him in his youth and were born when he was middle-aged, and so we hungrily listen when our elders talk about those vanished days. As a race, we do not care to write autobiographies or memoirs, but luckily Rabindranath's childhood and youth have been preserved for us in some of his own books. A day will come when these works will be minutely read and people with beating hearts will search those pages for a glimpse of him. Little bits will be put together, reconstructed, and thus a final image of him will be stamped on the minds of future generations of Bengalis. But we who have seen him, and were able to go and sit at his feet - how are we to measure this incomparable good fortune! One got drunk on his greatness. He was one of the world's greatest men; he towered far above any other figure in the present-day world, and in the whole world's history how many are there who may rank with him! One's first reaction to seeing him was a feeling of enchantment. One gazed at him and pondered over all that he had written and done, and one was so overwhelmed that the breathing seemed to stop. Who else could put us into this ecstasy of adoration! In whom else could we taste human greatness in so full a measure!
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Monday, May 17, 2010
[ALOCHONA] The Last Days of Rabindranath - Record of a visit to Santiniketan
The Last Days of Rabindranath
Record of a visit to Santiniketan
Buddhadeva Bose
A Rainbow of Song
'I Sing of the New'
THE last chapter of Rabindranath's life was fit material for an epic poem. We saw in him a king who, after having conquered the world and spent the days of his life in the fullness of opulence, had been deprived of all by one stroke of crooked fate. The kingdom was still his and his spirit was ever a king's, but all means of communication between the king and his kingdom were being closed down. He had all, and yet he had nothing. His genius was tirelessly active and his creative impulse urgent, but those little mechanisms of the body without whose help no art can take tangible shape were refusing to co-operate. The poet who had refused to close the doors of the senses and sit in meditation had to feel those very doors being closed one after another. His sight was very weak, and when he read, which he did with great difficulty and greater persistence, he had to hold up the page very close to his eyes. His hearing was feeble and his fingers were so exhausted that he could no longer hold a brush, and even the pen refused to obey. Friends told us that on one occasion he had remarked, 'There was no end to the gifts I received from the hand of God, and now He is taking them back one by one. I had hoped to spend the last days of my life in painting pictures but that, too, has been taken away.' Crowds of pictures haunted him, but he could not give any of them a local habitation and a name, the phantoms returned to limbo. The mind was glowing but the fingers were numb. From his heart rose tunes which the voice could not capture - the stream of music was wasting itself in the same lethal waters where his unborn paintings were drowned. Of all the arts he had practiced his best-beloved was the art of song, and his singing days seemed at last to have been over. One afternoon it rained and after the shower we went to see the Poet in the evening. On entering Rathi Babu's drawing room we noticed many records of Rabindranath's songs lying scattered and were told that the Poet had just been listening to them. We found him in the little back room reclining on his usual easy-chair, looking ill and weak, which he seldom did. 'I was just trying to evoke a song of the rains', he said. 'But I can't do it any longer'.
The Lord of Life
WHEN we arrived Rabindranath had just finished writing a short story. Many other stories - new both in form and content - might have come from him if there were a process by which one could write as one thought. The second part of Yogayoga lay completely thought out in his mind, and it was thrilling when he told us the story one morning. This wonderful story never crossed the limits of the world of thought, and a great novel perforce remains unfinished. For it was not possible for him to undertake a long work, and so he was making rhymes and yarns for children and working at poems and literary essays, while a short story was suddenly released or a malediction against this war-torn insane civilization came down in terrific fury. And this was how he satisfied, as best as he could, the infinite yearnings of tremendour power. How much more cruel than physical suffering was this conflict of flesh and spirit! His was a tormented life during the last months, intolerable in its contradiction between thought and action, imagination and performance. At any rate, it should have been so, though no trace of it appeared on the surface. On the country, he was the picture of perfect peace. He had nothing of the catastrophic agony of a deaf Beethoven. You would have found him completely self-contained, but not at all indifferent. His eyes were always open to the first to challenge the insolence of power when it threatened to violate truth and justice. But, as regards himself, he seemed to have accepted all inflictions with a luminous serenity. He never complained. He never sighed. It was with an elfin touch of humour or with a fairy-nke gentleness that he mentioned his own infirmity. If his heart was lacerated by agony, his heart alone was aware of it, and none else. 'Give me, oh, give me My kingdom, my power, my glory, Not the daily bread alone' -
Cried D. H. Lawrence. It is possible that the tormented Lawrence would at last have been content if he had come to Santiniketan, for here, in the person of Rabindranath, he would have seen the true image of the lord of life.
Leave-Taking
WE had not seen him in his youth and were born when he was middle-aged, and so we hungrily listen when our elders talk about those vanished days. As a race, we do not care to write autobiographies or memoirs, but luckily Rabindranath's childhood and youth have been preserved for us in some of his own books. A day will come when these works will be minutely read and people with beating hearts will search those pages for a glimpse of him. Little bits will be put together, reconstructed, and thus a final image of him will be stamped on the minds of future generations of Bengalis. But we who have seen him, and were able to go and sit at his feet - how are we to measure this incomparable good fortune! One got drunk on his greatness. He was one of the world's greatest men; he towered far above any other figure in the present-day world, and in the whole world's history how many are there who may rank with him! One's first reaction to seeing him was a feeling of enchantment. One gazed at him and pondered over all that he had written and done, and one was so overwhelmed that the breathing seemed to stop. Who else could put us into this ecstasy of adoration! In whom else could we taste human greatness in so full a measure!
__._,_.___
[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
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