Letters from a Young Poet (42 page)

Shilaidaha
1 March 1895

When you don't receive a letter one day, and get one the next, you feel a very distinct new pleasure—the mind and its daily machinery of routine, which was temporarily out of order, suddenly begins
to work enthusiastically again, creating a feeling of joy. When the world is not exactly as you desire it to be, you often feel despondent, but certain days arrive when you feel the world is just as it was before, and that makes the blood flow more rapidly through your heart. I liked the Christina Rossetti poem you sent me. But it's only the first four lines that are good, and what it has to say is said in those four lines itself. After that, the rest of the poem is an add-on which doesn't drive the feeling onward but, rather, weakens it. There are some songs, for instance, in which the ā
sthāẏī
[first movement] is quite good, but the antarā is fake—the entire expression of the melody has been accomplished in the first part itself, but a second unnecessary antarā has been added only because the rules require it. Like my song ‘
bājila kāhār bīṇā madhur svare
' [Whose bīṇā is played so sweetly]—in which the tune accomplishes its work right at the start, yet, because the poet still has something to say, the song is not allowed to stop where it wants to but is dragged on. Poems too have a melody, and in this poem of Christina Rossetti's, the real melody is finished in its first four lines. You've written, ‘I don't know to this day if I like a poem because it expresses a feeling well, or because of its “style”, the manner in which it turns pithily around, for its cleverness of language.' Actually, the thing is that for us the majority of feelings are old; and the dharma of our minds is such that we are unable to appreciate the complete flavour and beauty of old and habitual things—that's why when a poet attracts our attention by using language, metre and a new form of expression for an old feeling, we are able to taste the essential flavour of that thing again—then that eternal old thought resounds in our minds and in our ears in the form of a new song. One of the chief tasks of a poet is to always keep the world fresh for us—the green of the trees, the blue of the skies, the golden of the evenings, all of it would have become blanched and dull and wrapped in dust for us by now unless poets had used their imagination upon them. The mind of man becomes easily ripe with the heat of thought, so the poet's task is to dampen it with a sprinkling of imagination's nectar
so it can stay alive and full of flavour for all time. He doesn't give you anything new; he just tries to keep your thoughts new.

Shilaidaha
6 March 1895

There's an argument in your letter today about whether to give the practice of beauty or the practice of convenience greater importance, Bob. That depends largely on the situation and the amount of inconvenience faced.
For instance
, the example you gave of riding a horse with an umbrella over your head doesn't really address the issue of beauty in any way. Because while it might not be unbeautiful to ride a horse while holding an umbrella, it might actually be inconvenient. But to my mind, it's unnatural. There's an
association
between horse riding and manliness; that's why people might automatically think, if you are riding a horse, why use an umbrella? Inconvenience, ugliness and unnaturalness—it's necessary to avoid all three, but perhaps the last most of all. Even if a man looks nice wearing a sari, and doesn't find it inconvenient, still, it's better not to embark upon so strange an endeavour. The shyness one has with regard to that is a natural one. Actually, one naturally feels timid about attracting too much attention to one's self—the sort of behaviour that in English is called ‘
loud
' is reprehensible for exactly these reasons, and true politeness is habitually reticent. The sort of unnatural or strange behaviour that attracts excessive attention to itself should make people feel ashamed—just as it's not too much to ask that one should be very self-aware, so too, one should be disinclined to hurl one's self violently upon someone else's consciousness. If I go out to meet some gentlemen in my night clothes it might not create an upheaval of mythic proportions, and it might even look good, but it's not exactly good manners
to suddenly assault people with such unnatural behaviour. This sort of thing has a limit, but that limit is very distant. If I think of some prevalent custom—some countrywide practice—as wrong and harmful to most people or if I think that some new practice is good for us, then I mustn't feel hesitant to assault the public forcefully on that issue; then the argument about what is natural or unnatural is a very minor one. But I must have a steady aim and high ideals. In our country, women do not carry umbrellas over their heads or wear shoes, so the woman who is the first to do so will have to face the disapproval of others—in that case it won't do for her to bow down before general opinion. But, ordinarily, the convenience of behaving as most people do is that other people are not disturbed, and you yourself find it easier to go on your way—else, other people are inconvenienced and you too face unnecessary obstacles. If one has to fight with general opinion and habit even for the little conveniences of life, then it's exactly like setting up a canon to fire at a mosquito—an unnatural and strange affair. One cannot then find an appropriate higher purpose that might mitigate the irritation or oddity of that unnatural act. In that case you might just venture out in civilized clothes in civil society and the moment you feel hot, take off your cāpkān and kamij and sit there happily barebodied—if one must
philosophize
: where's the harm in that? Why should I bother about what people might say when the heat is making me feel ill? I might be lecturing, but I myself have indulged quite often in behaviour that goes against socially acceptable norms. But I don't want to defend that—I know that that's my whimsicality, my madness. I don't think anybody could say that Baṛ-da's wrong-side-up jobbā and tricycle-riding costume was very acceptable to received opinion, but since we're arguing about
principle
, one shouldn't bring up individual instances. The basic thing is—when it is a question of only one's self, one needs to try and practise both convenience and beauty, but when one is talking about society, one needs to synchronize convenience, beauty and naturalness, all three things. The argument has almost
filled up the letter—the good thing about small-size letter paper is that one has to restrict one's argument as well, or this would have turned into a long essay.

Shilaidaha
7 March 1895

I was thinking after reading your letter yesterday that it's true that women are far more vigilant than men about keeping their surroundings beautiful, but does that really mean that they are somehow more appreciative of beauty than men? One generally cannot come to any conclusion on these sorts of issues; because individual men and women have different talents according to who they are—when we speak on issues like these we usually think of ourselves as representative of our genders. I might want to keep everything around me beautiful, but I'm frequently unmindful about it for a variety of reasons—often everything becomes quite untidy and it's not as if I always keep myself very neat either. But I have no doubt at all about the fact that beauty makes me crazy—nothing else can make me feel its endless depth with all my heart as beauty and love can, and when one is really immersed in such a feeling then one's own personal appearance and neatness don't matter so much—when the mind is filled with the rasa of beauty, then just that is sufficient. I remember Biharilal; the man might have been unadorned and loose and untidy—but if you read his writing, you would have had no doubt about the fact that he was drunk on beauty. There's also no doubt about the fact that at one time Baṛ-dada, like a true poet, used to enjoy every aspect of beauty, but there's also no doubt that he never ever kept his surroundings or himself beautiful. It's natural for women to want an
association
between their own things and beauty. Whenever you recall her,
her fragrance, her appearance, her neatness must be evoked—it's very necessary to notice the golden lotus alongside the goddess Lakshmi. If you have to make yourself the ideal of beauty, your surroundings too must be beautiful. Women have a tender affection for all sorts of lovely things such as flowers—it's as if all of those things were their own, special things, to which they are tied in a relationship. But men feel differently about beauty—for us the attraction of beauty is much stronger, and the meaning of beauty much deeper. I might not be able to express myself properly, and if I do, it might sound like unworldly poetry—beauty for me is a felt divinity—when my mind is not troubled and I look properly, a
plate
full of roses are to me a particle of that most abundant delight about which the Upanishads have said:
etasyaibānandasyānyāni bhūtāni mātrāmupajībanti
[on a particle of this very bliss other creatures live].
^*
The endless deep spirituality within beauty is something only men have experienced. That's why for men there is a universality about women's beauty. The other day I was reading a book of poetry called Śankarācharya's
Ānandalaharī
in which he was looking at the entire universe in the form of a woman—the sun, moon, sky, earth—all of it was encompassed by the beauty of woman—until he transformed all the description and all the poetry into a single line expressing a single exalted thought. Biharilal's book of songs, the
Sāradāmaṅgal
, too is of that class. Shelley's
Epipsychidion
too has the same implication. Most of Keats's poetry brings a similar feeling to mind. One realizes the true meaning of beauty when it actually touches, not only the eye or the imagination, but one's soul, like a felt experience. When I'm alone I feel its evident touch every day, and I quite understand what a living truth it constitutes in the eternity of space and time—and even a quarter of what I have understood I cannot make others understand.

Shilaidaha
8 March 1895

When I reach Shahjadpur, I'll find a heap of letters accumulated there. There are lots of valuable gifts in this world, but the insignificant letter is not a small thing. The invention of the
post office
is a new addition to men's happiness. This is a new type of happiness. I'm not talking about convenience here, that's there of course. But letters have created a new joy in the world. They connect men to one another in a novel bond. We gain something by seeing people, and we gain by speaking to them, but now when we receive letters we gain another sort of insight into them. It's not just that we compensate for face-to-face conversation through letters, by talking to each other even in our absence—there's an additional flavour in them that is not exactly there in everyday conversation and meetings. We express ourselves in conversation in a manner that we don't in our writing, but again, the opposite is also true. Both situations have an element of incompleteness in them that can become complete only when the two come together. That's why, in men's relations with men, letters convey a new pleasure and communication that was not there before. It is as if a new sense has been added to enable us to see men, to find them. When ordinary conversation and discussion are caught within the frame of a letter, they assume a new aspect—the thing which evades us in conversation and which becomes artificial in essays is easily captured in letters. I think that those who are always in each other's company twenty-four hours, who haven't had the opportunity to write letters to each other, know each other incompletely—they don't have any way of knowing many
delicate
, many true and deep things about each other's characters. Just as the cow's udders fill with milk as soon as the calf comes
near, so the mind fills up with particular flavours only at the instance of a particular excitement and not any other—the exact spot in your heart that this four-page letter is able to touch cannot be reached through conversation or essays. I think the envelope has a particular attraction—the envelope is an important part of the letter—it's a major discovery. Perhaps we need to thank the French for that.

Shilaidaha
10 March 1895

This time I've decided that when I go to Calcutta I won't enter into any arguments—I'll read and write quietly with a calm and peaceful heart. There's no greater happiness than that. It is perhaps the thirteenth day of the lunar fortnight today—there will be a lot of moonlight—in these three or four days I will have to take my moonlit sandbank by the Padma and load as much of it as I can into my heart to take back with me. Quite possibly, when I return again the next time this spread-out, white sandbank will no longer be there. In its place will be either the waters of the Padma or ploughed land. Nowadays I don't manage to walk alone any more. I'm often accompanied by Shai—— and Tha—— babu. In the middle of their conversation suddenly sometimes the entire moonlit peaceful scene and the endless silence filling up the sky come and stand in front of me for a little while—they pull that old, familiar curtain of mine to one side and reveal themselves to me from time to time. Then my whole heart fills with an amazing fulfilment—as if a very big, soft, deep embrace has wrapped around my whole body, and a soundless, still, intense love comes from the stars and envelops me. To suddenly experience such a serious
and momentous arrival in the middle of all that dry, work-related talk astonishes even me, and my two companions on either side appear completely out of place. The three of us are walking together, but for a while I am not in their presence as they walk. My serious, silent, moonlight-drowned world suddenly lets me know in the momentary break of conversation, ‘Don't think you have only two companions, we too are by your side today as we have always been before—'

I sit here day and night,

Come when you remember me.

I've written about the comic [
kautukh
ā
sya
] in
S
ā
dhan
ā. On these moonlit, desolate sandbanks by the Padma, as I keep listening to the seresta's reports from Tha—— babu, and in the gaps between those reports when the star-filled sky keeps playing hide and seek, sometimes I feel it's joking with me—somebody's sweet smile of mischief is within it somewhere.