I Won't Let You Go (42 page)

Note the image of the anchoress and the association between love and
penance
/ asceticism in the last stanza of the poem. Figures like Parvati and
Mahashweta
are lurking here. See the note on the poem ‘The Victorious Woman’ above.

169-70.
The Skeleton
(
Purabi
): This poem was written during a brief holiday which Tagore and Elmhirst had with Victoria Ocampo in Chapadmalal near Mar del Plata in Argentina. It was suggested by a bovine animal’s skeleton lying on the grass, a common sight in the pampas, and possibly also in
reaction
to Charles Baudelaire’s poem ‘Une Charogne’ from
Les Fleurs du Mal,
a book which Ocampo was trying to introduce to a somewhat reluctant Tagore. This poem could have been Tagore’s answer to Baudelaire’s vision of
corruption
and decay in that poem. Tagore did an English version of this poem as well for his hostess. For a full discussion of the episode and for Tagore’s
English
version of the poem, see my book (pp. 163-66).

170-71.
The Exchange
(
Purabi
): Written on board the ship that took him away from Argentina towards Italy, this poem would seem to be about the encounter with Victoria Ocampo which Tagore had just had.

171-72.
The Identity
and
Disappearance
(
Mahua
): The history of how the poems of
Mahua
came to be written is interesting. Tagore’s admirers wanted an anthology of his love poems suitable for presentation at weddings and wanted him to write a few new poems to go with the old ones. In no time at all the 67-year-old poet wrote a whole set of new love poems, which had to be issued as a new collection. Personally, I would connect a number of poems in this book, including the two translated by me, with his encounter with Victoria Ocampo. ‘Mahua’ is the name of a tree and its flowers from which an
intoxicating
drink is made. See the Glossary.

In ‘The Identity’, stanza 4, l. 1, the original of the word ‘friend’ is in the feminine gender. Unlike several other European languages, English has no corresponding word.

173-75.
Kopai
(
Punashcha
, Yet Again, or Postscript): In this collection Tagore made his second set of experiments with the possibility of prose poetry in
Bengali
– the first being in
Lipika
– this time daring to break up the lines, so that the line arrangement on the page looks like that of poetry. In ‘Kopai’, which is the first poem in the collection, he uses the river Kopai, which flows close to Santiniketan, as an analogy to his own experiments in a form that reconciles
poetry and prose. In Bengali the word
chhanda
stands for both ‘metre’ and ‘rhythm’; I have translated according to the context. Tagore seems to be
implying
that his prose poetry may not have formal metre, but it will have a rhythm of its own. What is interesting is his complete mastery over the new form: from the word ‘go’, as it were, he uses his new instrument with superb ease,
continuing
the style in several other subsequent collections with total confidence.

The indigo factory’s ruined foundations in the second stanza take us back to the time when British planters planted large areas of land with indigo for the manufacture of dyes.

176-78.
Dwelling
(
Punashcha
): A letter to Pratima Devi, Tagore’s
daughter-in-law
, written from Berlin two years ago on 18 August 1930, describing an imaginary studio by the River Mayurakshi, may be called the first draft of this poem (
Rabindra-rachanabali,
vol. 16, Granthaparichay section). See the entry on
Mayurakshi
in the Glossary to appreciate the aptness of the name in the context of the poem and especially the associations of the name in the last stanza.

178-79.
Memory
(
Punashcha
): The town remembered in this poem is most likely to be Ghazipur, now in Uttar Pradesh, where Tagore spent some time as a young man with his own nuclear family. Ghazipur is the location of three poems from
Manasi
translated in this volume. The phrase ‘in the west country’ refers to the region west of Bengal, generally to Bihar and the old United Provinces. The same town seems to be remembered in poem no. 4 of
Arogya
, which was written in Santiniketan on 31 January 1941. The names ‘Bhajiya’ and ‘Girdhari’ are appropriate for Hindi-speaking people.

183-85.
The Last Letter
(
Punashcha
): In a poem like this one cannot but see the shadow of Tagore’s own bereavements. For instance, Tagore’s second
daughter
was just two months away from her twelfth birthday when her mother died, and herself died nine months after her mother’s death. ‘Amli’ is a shortened and familiar version of ‘Amala’. The ‘Agra shoes’ (stanza 1) were presumably embroidered and with turned up toe-ends. See the Glossary for
B
ethune School
and the place-names.

186-90.
Camellia
(
Punashcha
): Tagore had very probably seen the camellia plant in the Indian hills (see the entry on it in the Glossary), but the idea of using it in a poem could have occurred to him via Verdi’s
La Traviata
, a
performance
of which he attended at La Scala in Milan in 1925 on his way back from Argentina. The libretto of that opera was based on a play entitled
La Dame aux Camélias,
and Tagore may well have read about it in his theatre programme.

190-91.
A Person
(
Punashcha
): ‘Dhoti in wrestler-style’ (stanza 1): i.e. with the folds tucked front-to-back between the legs. The dhoti is the unstitched drapery worn by men, the male equivalent of the sari.

‘merchants from Kabul’ (last stanza): travelling traders from Afghanistan who also acted as moneylenders. One such man is the hero of one of Tagore’s short stories.

191-92.
Writing a Letter
(
Punashcha
): In the last stanza the obligation to serve a meal to her husband’s young nephew shows the young woman’s duties within the extended family.

192-93.
No. 1
of
Shesh Saptak
(The Last Octave): It is quite possible that this poem, written in mid-November 1932, remembers Tagore’s wife, who died on 23 November 1902. Note that the word
saptak
in the title, though meaning, strictly speaking, a set of seven notes, has to be translated ‘octave’ in English. The
saptak
of Indian music is effectively the octave of Western music; it is just that the eighth note of the octave is not taken into account in the Indian term.

193-94.
No. 2
of
Shesh Saptak:
The eighth line of the second stanza is an attempt to render one single word of the original,
meed
, which is a technical term of Indian music. I thought that to do justice to the musical metaphor it was better to translate the word in this way than to introduce it physically into the text, for the word by itself would not be comprehensible without a gloss and the metaphor would therefore be stillborn.

194-95.
No. 3
of
Shesh Saptak:
See the entries on
Valmiki
and
Tamasa
in the Glossary to appreciate the comparison in the first stanza. From Valmiki the poem moves on to the memory of a dear one who is dead.

195-97.
No. 9
of
Shesh Saptak:
The phrase ‘seven seas’ in the first stanza is an exact translation of the original phrase, which is an idiomatic expression signifying great distances.

199-200.
No. 13
of
Shesh Saptak:
This poem is a play of metaphors from the philosophical songs of the itinerant Baul singers of Bengal. The Bauls are a fascinating religious-philosophical sect special to Bengal, incorporating both Hindu and Muslim (especially Persian Sufi) elements. The word
baul
literally means ‘mad, crazy’. The Bauls are essentially rebels: against caste, dogma, and all kinds of convention. In their songs they like to probe deep and go to the heart of the matter. Their contribution to the religious and social thinking of Bengal and to the region’s folk poetry, music, and dance is considerable. They like to give the impression that they are simple and unsophisticated, but in reality their conceptual finesse is quite remarkable. Concepts like ‘the
unfamiliar
bird’ or ‘the uncatchable’ are characteristic Baul concepts. Tagore was himself a notable collector of Baul songs and was deeply influenced by them. The district of Birbhum has always had many Bauls and they still congregate in large numbers during certain fairs. Modern Bauls have composed many new songs, – exciting, innovative, clever, – using images drawn from contemporary life. Baul buskers can often be heard twanging their instruments and singing in their characteristic shrill and passionate style (not unlike the
cante jondo
or ‘deep song’ of Spanish gypsies) on long-distance buses and railway trains. The curious might like to look at
The Mirror of the Sky,
an anthology of Baul songs translated by Deben Bhattacharya (Allen & Unwin, London, 1969).

200-01.
No. 22
of
Shesh Saptak:
The expression ‘earth-ridge-bound’ in stanza 5 refers to the earthen ridges which are built by Indian farmers to act as
boundaries
between fields. One can walk on them.

202-03.
No. 27
of
Shesh Saptak:
‘The green-forest-enamelled valley’s/ cup of blue sky’ (stanza 2): the image of the blue sky as a cup from which one can drink light is a recurrent one in Tagore. He says elsewhere: ‘I love the sky and light so cordially! The sky is my cup-bearer, holding a transparent cup of blue crystal upside down, and the golden light, mingling with my blood like wine, is making me equal to the gods’ (letter written from Shahjadpur, 2 July 1895,
Chhinnapatrabali
, p. 312, my translation). Compare with No. 7 of
Patraput
(‘I have accepted in my body and mind/ the juice of creation’s fountain dripping from skies’) and No. 8 of the same collection where the flowers of the wild plant of unknown name, nicknamed ‘Peyali’, are ‘like crafted cups of a violet hue/ for drinking the light’.

203-04.
No. 29
of
Shesh Saptak:
‘image-immersion rituals’ (stanza 1): in a number of Hindu festivals clay images of deities are made annually. At the end of the festivals the images are ceremonially cast into rivers or lakes.

‘contest between bards’ (stanza 2): referring to the tradition of contests where poets and singers tested their skills in oral composition and improvisation. The two contending parties would engage in a dialogue which they would make up as they went along.

‘peacock-neck-coloured’ (stanza 4): the original word
dhupchhaya
literally means a mingling of sunshine and shade, from which the connotation of ‘peacock-
neck-coloured’
has evolved. In textile weaving the term is applied specifically to certain colour combinations in the warp and woof of a fabric.

205-07.
No. 31
of
Shesh Saptak:
This poem, put in the mouth of a widower, seems to spring from the inmost depths of Tagore’s loneliness. The domestic incident at the centre of the poem could well be from his own married life.

210.
The Indifferent One
(
Bithika
, The Avenue): Personally, I think that in this poem and in poem no. 11 of
Patraput
Tagore is writing in veiled terms about his relationship with Victoria Ocampo.

211-13.
No. 5
of
Patraput:
The title of this collection means a plate or a
cone-shaped
container made from leaves. The Vedic words saying that this earth’s dust is honeyed (stanza 4) are from the
Rigveda
. The ‘red-dyed feet’ (stanza 5) would have been coloured with a lac dye, used to both adorn the feet and keep the skin from getting chapped. For Bauls (last stanza), see the note on poem no. 13 of
Shesh Saptak
above. For other items, including the
nut tree
(stanza 8), see the Glossary.

214-16.
No. 7
of
Patraput:
Note the word ‘juice’ used three times in stanza 5. In the original it is the important word
ras
. Its first meaning is ‘juice’, but a technical term of Indian aesthetics has developed from that, connoting aesthetic enjoyment – in a highly refined state, passing into ecstasy or bliss.

In stanza 6, the phrase ‘ascents and descents’ renders a technical term of Indian music,
murchhana
.

The last stanza of the original poem harbours some intriguing poetic
ambiguities
, which heighten the sense of haze and nocturnal mystery. The trees silhouetted in the night’s light seem to be siblings sitting together
as well as
their whimsical brushwork. Or is the night’s light also a sibling of the trees, the night landscape being also their joint whimsical composition?

Lines 15 and 16 of the last stanza could be literally translated as follows: ‘It was as if I had gone off to a neighbouring planet of the earth,/ one can see it through a telescope.’ Line 16 is surprisingly vague and loose in the original. What is the ‘it’ that can be seen through a telescope? Is the poet watching a neighbouring planet from the earth, through a telescope, or physically
transported
to another planet which is normally only known through a telescope, or watching the earth through a telescope from another planet? Interestingly, what the poet is getting at, that what was quite familiar has suddenly acquired
a distance, an unfamiliarity – a common idea in Tagore – remains roughly the same in each case. The way I have translated line 16 seemed the most natural way to say it in English; it blocks the possibility of interpreting it in the second of the three ways mentioned above, but leaves the two other suggestions intact.

216-17.
No. 8
of
Patraput:
The flower Tagore writes about in this poem has not been definitively identified. It has been suggested that it could be the
morning-glory
,
Ipomoea pulchella,
Roth., Convolvulaceae. The name ‘Peyali’ is made up from the word
peyala
, meaning ‘cup’. See the note on song no. 20 below.