Discussion on excerpt from Gitanjali

Excerpt From Gitanjali

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening

Thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

1.Penury: Synonyms: pennilessness, destitution, indigence, neediness. Deprivation, impecuniousness

Antonym: wealth

The word ‘Penury’ in the above verses is to be taken in its metaphoric sense. It indicates the moral and intellectual impoverishment that had seeped into the Indian society during the colonial rule. It is an effect of subjugation of the natives by a foreign race. His verse is to be read in the framework of the colonial ignominy that evoked the National pride and the consequent Swadesi movement and National struggle for freedom.

2. The ‘clear stream of reason’ offers a contrast to the dreary desert through which it goes and which can engulf it, if habit is allowed to supercede inquisitiveness natural in man. ‘Reason’ is implicitly compared to a stream. The metaphor of ‘stream’ that connotes movement, progress and fecundity highlights the possibility of life in a ‘dead’ zone. The epithet ‘dead’ for habit seems to be a transferred epithet. This is because it deadens the senses of those it afflicts. People who are trapped in routine are callous and insensitive- almost dead. It is the vivacity in the people that dies and not the habit.

3. Dreary Desert’ is an alliterative phrase that evokes an image of a vast arid desert where wanderers are prone to losing their way. The ‘desert’ here, however, is not a landscape but a mindset and the metaphor refers to unquestioning submission to habit and tradition. It highlights the irrationality of following the conventions blindly. He followed Raja Ram Mohan Roy in upholding the enlightenment ideal of reason and in eulogizing science and had been bred on Brahmo Samaj discourse and ideas.

4. Words…..truth: As discussed in Tagore’s essays in Sadhana, for Tagore ‘words’ are Maya or appearance. They may be misleading as appearances are deceptive. One should look for the spirit or the idea behind the words and that is truth. The words together contribute to this comprehensive idea but it can be perceived only if one goes beyond appearances. Tagore was an erudite scholar and well- versed in Upanishads. Here is an excerpt from Sadhana to illustrate the point: ‘Everything has this dualism of maya and satyam, appearance and truth. Words are maya when they are merely sounds and finite, they are satyam where they are ideas and infinite. Our self is maya where it is merely individual and finite, where it considers its separateness as absolute; it is satyam where it recognizes its essence in the universal and infinite, in the supreme self, in parmatman’(“ The Problem of Self”.Sadhana. Tagore Omnibus IV.129).

5. Father in these verses may refer to Brahma, the creator in the Hindu scriptures.

6. The error of regarding avidya as ‘knowledge’ is common and Tagore warns against it. Avidya is not to be mistaken for Knowledge. In Sadhana, Tagore conveys the meaning through this example: ‘Imagine some savage who, in his ignorance, thinks that it is the paper of the banknote that has the magic, by virtue of which the possessor of it gets all he wants. He piles up the papers, hides them, handles them in all sorts of absurd ways, and then at last, wearied by his efforts, comes to the sad conclusion that they are absolutely worthless; only fit to be thrown into the fire. But the wise man knows that the banknote is all maya, and until it is given up to the bank it is futile. It is only avidya, our ignorance, that makes us believe that the separateness of our self like the paper of the banknote is precious in itself, and by acting on this belief our self is rendered valueless. It is only when the avidya is removed that this very self comes to us with a wealth which is priceless’ (“The Problem of Self”.125)

7. The term ‘love’ in this verse poem is not profane. It is the love for humanity but it is even greater- it is a manifestation of Brahma. Tagore asserts: ‘In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time’(“ The Realization in Love”.148).

8. Freedom: Tagore was living in vibrant times. India was realizing the value of freedom it had lost. Tagore did not take ‘freedom’ to be equivalent to ‘freedom’ from British rule. He went beyond and talked in terms of universal phenomenon. He says,‘Similarly, when we talk about the relative values of freedom and non- freedom, it becomes a mere play of words. It is not that we desire freedom alone, we want thraldom as well.// It is the high function of love to welcome all limitations and to transcend them. For nothing is more independent than love, and where else, again, shall we find so much of dependence? In Love, thralldom is as glorious as freedom’(“The Realization in Love”.148-149).

9. ‘the world has not been broken up into fragments by/ narrow domestic walls’: domesticity may inculcate a kind of ‘selfishness’. A family may come to be regarded as a self-contained system. However no system can really be self-sustaining. The same is true for a country. Exclusionary practices prove to be the most lamentable aspect of Indian life. This may also point to Tagore’s idea of the Visva-Bharati or a national university- an intellectual haven in India with a global character. Tagore elaborates: ‘Man must realize the wholeness of his existence, his place in the infinite; he must know that hard as he may strive he can never create his honey within the cells of his hive, for the perennial supply of his life food is outside their walls’ (“The Relation of the Individual to the Universe”. Sadhana. Tagore Omnibus IV.80).