Tagore's 'In Memoriam'

Tagore’s ‘In Memoriam’

‘How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.’

Tennyson—In Memoriam-XCIII.

In ‘Smaran’ or ‘Remembrance’ which I prefer to call ‘In Memoriam’, Rabindranath commemorates his dearly loved wife. 1902 was the saddest year in the life of the Poet, for in the beginning of it he had the forebodings of separation from his wife; and when she took ill; he knew that the hour of separation was coming. And the hour did indeed come and deprived the Poet of his beloved, leaving him utterly desolate–with anxieties of various kinds treading on the heels of desolation. His feelings for the time being were such as are expressed in the following lines:

‘The world is dark without you,
Memory turns each thought to pain;
Home is vacant, life is weary,
Till we meet in heaven again.’

He left the world behind him and repaired to stay at Almora, in the Himalayas, with his youngest son, and a daughter dying of consumption.

It was there that he drank in beauty which is perennial in mountain, cloud, tree, and river among the Himalayas, even while pondering over his sorrow of ever-loving memory. It was there too that he composed the greater part of his ‘Katha’ ballads; while he wrote ‘Smaran’ of ‘extreme pathos and beauty’ as well as of ‘majestic solemnity’.

‘Smaran’ is a small book or collection of merely twenty-seven poems. The Poet probably did not or rather could not find the heart to make it longer, since the sorrow he felt at separation was ‘too deep for human tears’; or else, the Poet may have thought like Tennyson:

‘I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline, and no more.’

And great griefs are generally silent.

Though very reticent about the expression of grief, the Poet passes many sleepless nights and comes to meet many unhappy dawns. With one such, he begins his poem, which I have Englished as follows¹:

‘Even in this morn a heaviness
Presses my tired eyes very sore;
I passed the night in sleeplessness
On my bed in grief wrapped o’er.
The gardens burgeon newly in spring
The cool winds know their awakening,
But my heart and body weary
Find no joy in them any more.
Hide from me Thy morning glow,
O, hide it from my eyes today:
Take from me the colours that blow,
And take off all Thy sweet lay.
Tearing me from the heart of this dawn
Bind me in Thy darkness–withdrawn
Into Thy arms full of affection.
Be Thou mine one sole stay.’

This poem is a prayer to God; so is also the poem that follows this. This brings us to an examination of the structure of the book as a whole. The book is not a sonnet-sequence as Prof. Thompson supposes it to be, but rather a lyrical sequence, for the sonnets which are only eleven in number, are far outnumbered by poems of other kinds: it begins, moreover, with a lyric poem and ends with another. If we analyse the structure of the book, we shall find that the poems fall into five groups and not two, as supposed by Prof. Thompson. The book consists of two poems which are addressed to God; it contains one poem on Love and Death, and two poems, one of which is on, and the other addressed to, Spring; it has one poem which may be called ‘The Awakening’; the other poems and all the sonnets are addressed to the wife of the Poet. Prof. Thompson was greatly mistaken in regarding some of the poems as sonnets simply because they contain fourteen lines each. In spite of our grouping the contents of the book into so many sections we must remember that these, though independent compositions, contain a unity of thought, as all centre round the large grief of the Poet, and are interwoven into a developed whole.²

Thus it is, that in the next poem which is addressed to God, the Poet says: ‘I have now no time to repay the debt which I owe my beloved for all that she gave me during her life. Now her night has dawned, and Thou hast taken her today into Thine own self. And, it is therefore that I, in my gratitude, offer to Thee Thine own gift.’ The Poet’s mood is much like that of Tennyson when he wrote:

‘Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair,
I trust he lives in Thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.’

Thus it is that he would ask for forgiveness from his wife by falling at the feet of God, and will offer her his garland of love which he presents as an offering to Him.

Next, the Poet thinks of Love and Death. He mourns that Love came and went away; now it was the turn of Death to come to him and he sings in the following strain:

‘Love he came–but, he left ajar
My door, and he will ne’er return:
Now will come another guest’s turn
Who will come from some space afar,-
And will be my last acquaintance,
And will put out my lamp one day,
Lift me into his chariot gay,
And light up my countenance,-
And will take me homeless away
In the track that’s traversed by stars;
I’ll finish my endeavours,
And leave my door ajar alway.
Nothing will stand i’ his way when he
Will come to my door ; O, then I will
Receive him open-arm’d and tranquil,
And for my journey prepared be.
The love that’s left has called to say,
"Wipe thy tears, it is not yet:
Thy guest will come: for him wait;
But, he will never come to stay."
That love has said, "Thy work be done,
Pick out and fling away life’s thorns,
Weave thy garland that adorns;
Then to thy new home, homeless one."’

In the next poem the Poet addresses his wife and says: ‘It was midnight when you left our home, to walk on a path on which you had never walked before. At the time of parting you said not a word to me, and you did not bid farewell to any one. You went out all alone into a world steeped in deep sleep; and when I sought you, I did not find you.’ He thinks that his beloved must have vanished among the myriads of stars. He asks her whether she took away in her hands anything from this home of hers. And he says: ‘Have you thus left in my lap the burden of the weal and woe of the score of years of our married life?’ He reconciles himself to his fate, but finds consolation in the thought that his wife must have gone before him from this world, only to make and prepare his bed with her cooling and tender hands, for some eternal evening.

But, his sense of loss is not wholly gone; and in poem 5, we find him still looking for his beloved in his home where she is nevermore to be found. In his hopelessness, he addresses God, and thinks of the infinity of His home; for whatever he loses from his home, is never re-found by him; but nothing is lost in the eternal home of God. Therefore it is that he looks up to Him, and comforts himself with a prayer to God to immerse him in the nectar of His peace and to vouchsafe to him that touch in the world which he does not find in his own home. Thus:

‘No more is she to be found in my home:
I enter it hopeless, and out I roam.
O Lord, my home is of but little space,
Whatsoever is lost there leaves no trace:
Thy home is limitless, the world’s Thy home:
To seek her therein a Lord, do I come.
I stand today in the setting sun:
Towards Thee I look, my tears do run.
I bring my sick heart where nothing is lost,
No face, no happiness; no hope is crossed;
No thirst is lost there. O Thou, do drown
My sick heart in the nectar which’s Thine own,
The touch ambrosial which I so miss
At home, do I find in Thy world of peace.’

 The Poet’s house is empty, his beloved has departed into eternal space. So, he looks for her not only in the universal, but says: ‘When you were in my house, you called me there; but, now as you have gone into the world, call me thither with your plaintive voice.’

He deeply meditates on the blessed form of his beloved: to his mind his household Lakshmi (goddess of beauty and of wealth) has become transfigured as his comic Lakshmi ‘crowned with good’ and he wishes her good through the good of all.

When thou wert at home, thou didst call me there
With thy piteous voice so sweet, so fair.
But thou art gone out to the world today,
Call me there also, with thy voice as aye.
The door thou hast left for ever ajar
No one will ask me to shut up or bar.
Printing thy silent farewell in my mind
Thou didst show me the highroad to find.
Today at this great world’s great God’s feet
O my household Lakshmi, let me thyself greet
Like as the Lakshmi of this world without end.
Let stars their rubied rays do send,
And paint thy brow with vermeil: while I brood
Over thy good mingled with the whole world’s good.’

But, she was very reticent, very sudbued by temperament, very unobtrusive and it is this aspect of her character that surprises him most now. She was always behind her work, but, ever before the eye of God who inhabits the inmost heart.

But the grave cannot divide him from his wife. The Poet thinks that death has removed all obstacles in the way of the fuller union. And he thinks that after breaking the bonds of time and space, his beloved has entered in at his breast and brow and has made her union with him really perfect; she is a spirit in his spirit.

But his Lakshmi is now without a house of her own; and in poem 9, the Poet looks upon his Lakshmi transformed into Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, standing on the hundred-petalled lotus of his song. His feeling is very much like that of Tennyson when he wrote:

‘Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I can not guess;
But tho’ I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I Seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still and rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die;’

And he dreams of good and mingles all the world with his beloved.

Therefore the Poet who finds his beloved a soul within his soul, asks her to tell him all her inmost thoughts which remain unuttered through all her unobtrusiveness. And in poem 11, he imagines that his beloved has come from ‘that bourne from which no traveller, returns’ into his heart, dressed in her renewed bridal garments; his heart has lit the only lamp, and his song alone weaves the words of blissful reunion.

The heart of the Poet is widened by the love which he feels to be a vaster passion, now that he has lost his beloved; and he knows that this love embraces the love that he felt for his wife when she was alive. Today therefore, when he feels a commingling of the heart of his beloved with his own, he feels that his manly heart has been widened by the mixing up with it of the deathless womanly heart of his wife.

Therefore in the next poem the Poet sings that by her death his beloved has made death sweet to him, has tinged the western horizon of his life with the evening glow of death. She has with her arms held in a deep embrace the life and death of the Poet.

But yet the relics of his former earthly love remain–the love-letters written by him to his wife remain now with him, preserved carefully by her, to remind him of his former love. These now remain, but, with whom are they to find their shelter? This makes the Poet think that as these letters were preserved once by the affection of his beloved, so she herself too must have found shelter with Some One. But this beloved like a new bride had stood by him some day; was it merely by chance that she came to share her life with him? No; the Poet believes that it was not sheer chance that in this way brought them together in life: they had both of them hopes in their hearts throughout the ages to make their lives fuller by their union with each other. They had both in unison been building their hopes, but how can he finish by himself the unfinished work of both? And therefore it is that the Poet in poem 16 reflects on all the unrealised hopes of his beloved and hears their cry.

Now, death has dissolved all bonds of separation. The Poet’s beloved has now left all others of the world to be all the more his and his alone. She has lost her selfhood in death, only to mingle it the more intimately with the Poet’s, self. Now he loves her even more deeply than ever; and his regret is dead because he thinks that his beloved is 1iving now her life in his own.

But the beloved when she lived had adorned with her dearly loved presence the Poet’s world. Now, he asks her therefore to pick out and fling off the thorns of his life, and to wash his heart clean of all its spots and blemishes, so that both of them may sit on the same seat in prayer before their God.

Winter has passed, and Spring has come, proud Spring with all its sweet colours and sounds. The Poet looks to the days of his former life, when Spring came as ever and called, but he and his beloved deeply engrossed with their own world had paid no heed to the call of Spring. But now when Spring comes again it brings with it the wonderful looks of the Poet’s beloved, her inexpressible utterances; and her grief-laden heart is loud in the song-echoing bowers. Spring can now no longer be ignored and the Poet in his desolation cannot but pay heed to its irresistible call. And in poem 20 therefore, the Poet welcomes Spring and invites it to make its carousal of joy in the outside world so that he may get an answer to his call to his beloved in his inmost heart.

In poem 21, the Poet asks his beloved not to deprive him of the love that makes the many into one. He asks her to remain awake every evening to weave her golden dreams into the dark canvas of his sleep when, in the midst of the crimson of the evening glow, he may see the lac-dye of her feet. He asks her also to draw his life towards a full death in her house by her wink-less gaze and to beckon him thither by ‘the star-like sorrows of her immortal eyes’.

In the next poem the Poet explains the mysterious sweetness of woman which is due to the fact of God’s hiding His own sweetness in the shape of woman. God, the Joyful, the Goad, and the Beautiful has divided into two parts His own self, as the Upanishads declare, and the Poet believes that his beloved by her union with him, however short-lived, has filled his heart with that mystery which fills and Interpenetrates the created world through and through.

In poem 23, the Poet looks at his own life of fame and effort; but everything tires him, and everything earthly is burdensome without love and the companionship of the beloved. And, therefore, the Poet asks his beloved to keep her lamp of evening and of love lighted up in a secret corner of his heart and to remain hidden, like a bride, to ravish his soul which lies scattered now over the world of efforts. He hopes to come every evening to that secret corner of his heart after the close of his day’s toils to find the peace which is only in love. And in the following poem the Poet seeks to outlive his life of regrets, and looks forward to the union that lies ahead of him in the unwearying joy of God; there where the flame of the lamp of his beloved burns unmoved for ever.

As he thinks of the home of eternal union his grief vanishes completely; in his exultation he is aware of a great awakening of his heart. And, he asks his heart to awake and arise and not to bind itself to the fetters of the earth, but to embark its boat on the sea of life towards the peace of the eternal stars, to the home which is as much his as his beloved’s.

In poem 26, the Poet therefore asks his beloved to sleep contented in the house of his heart, for he will remain awake at the door. He will henceforth adorn and prepare himself for a union with her: she needs no longer adorn herself as she ever did. His beloved has finished her worship of him, and the Poet will now begin to worship her with his tears and songs.

Poem 27 which closes this exquisite book of lyrics is as follows:

'Thou didst love as thine own this earth:
And in the tide of the whole world
Was thy life with thy joy unfurled:
Thy laughter was e’er full of mirth.
Now thou dost turn thy beaming eye
Across the sky, the lonely mead:
With thy looks thou dost farewell bid
To all by the palms that there lie.
Now with me all thy well-pleased gaze
Thou hast left and I see alone
For both of us: the joy that’s grown
Is partaken by thee in amaze.
Today the light of winter plays
In the wood; Sirish leaves do fall:
My mind with thine does now carol
In the wood ’midst murmuring lays.
Live thou, O live, in my life, live:
Seek thou thine wishes through my heart;
So that I know thou wilt never part
From my self, O, do thou in me live.’

Thus ends the book of lyrics which embalms the sacred memory of the Poet’s wife Mrinalini Tagore whose maiden name was Miss Bhabatarini Roy Chowdhury who, born in 1882, in a noble Brahmin family at Dakshindihi in the district of Jessore, died on the 14th of Pousa, 1308 B. S. corresponding to 1902. She was never educated in school or college, but, after she entered the house of the Tagores as a new bride, her education was looked after by Mrs. Nipamoyee Tagore, the wife of the Poet’s third elder brother Hemendranath Tagore. She was very subdued in her temperament; was skilful in theatrical performances, as it is now known that on a certain occasion, she played very successfully the part of the Brahmin woman in Tagore’s play ‘The King and the Queen’ which was staged and acted entirely by ladies. She learnt Bengali and English, read Bengali and English novels with eagerness and learnt music too; and as her husband was a reputed author, she did not think it worth while to write anything herself. And when she died she was the mother of several children. After her death the Poet never married again, but has remained faithful to his love.

‘Smaran’, however, requires a little more consideration than has already been accorded to it. The book is small, but there is in it a great deal of positive poetic beauty in the midst of the great grief which it so exquisitely embodies. The Poet has not only adjusted the different sections to his general theme, but has also adjusted his medium to the different tones of the different sections. In the midst of the varieties of metres, the Poet has employed a monotone of temper and subject which in his hands,–the incomparable master of Bengali harmonics that he is–has never become unattractive or monotonous. The poems are full of noble thoughts, of a deeply passionate sentiment and of wonderfully beautiful pictures. But, it seems, as the poems are undated, that these are not all chronologically arranged. A strict chronology would probably require an arrangement in which the last poem, which is evidently written in winter, should have preceded the two spring-poems. But the arrangement must have been prompted by the requirement of sentiment which necessitates the placing of the last poem where it is. Yet the whole is a supreme threnody in our language, which through the personal easily rises to the universal. Like Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’, ‘Smaran’ is in no sense an ‘eirenicon between faith and scepticism’, as the Poet has never been faced with any doubts regarding the existence of God.

Finally, when everything is said, it remains to be added that this slim volume occupies the position of a landmark in the life of Rabindranath, for, after the death of his wife, he could not be the same man as he had been before. We see him in this book of poems a man lonelier yet greater and much more religious than ever–with eyes peering forth into the vastness of infinite space into which his beloved has disappeared. Poem 6 in the collection is very important as showing what thenceforward was going to be the Poet’s attitude towards the world. His heart broadened, he nevermore wholly belonged to one country and one language, but became more a cosmopolitan at heart and in outlook than ever–a true poet, for ‘indeed there are no times, or countries, or languages in the kingdom of poetry’. And love is the transfiguration of humanity.’

Love’s a virtue for heroes, as white
as the snow on high hills,
And immortal, as every great soul is
that struggles, endures, and fulfils.’

1 All renderings of Tagore’s poems used in this article have been made by me by kind permission of the Poet,–K.P.M.

2 This sense of separation gives him pain ever afterwards, and has been embodied in many pathetic songs, and in more than a dozen touching Poems of a latterly published book of poems ‘Purabi,’ a collection of eight years’ poems.