Some Recent Novels of Tagore

BY DR. JAYANTA KUMAR DAS-GUPTA, M.A., Ph.D. (LONDON)

For nearly twelve years after the publication of ‘The Home and the World’ Rabindranath did not write any novel. Many people thought that the veteran author had given up writing long works of fiction. In 1930 was published Tagore’s ‘Sesher Kabita’ (The Last Poem) which created tremendous enthusiasm in Bengal. It was a good retort of Tagore to the pseudo-realists and sentimentalists. Rabindranath proved that a really good work could be written without sex-craze being made the pivot of the story.

The hero of this novel, Amit Ray, an Oxford man and a Bar-at-Law, was stylish in everything–dress, taste and talk. He had what is called a distinguished air. He showed an interest in women but he was never keen about them. His relatives regarded him as a will-o’-the-wisp. Culture to Amit was not the same thing as it meant to his sisters. On the contrary, he used to speak against everything that was accepted in so-called decent society. Amit always praised new writers, while he would speak in disparagement of older ones. He was perfectly correct when he said: ‘Those poets who have no shame to live till sixty or seventy inflict punishment upon themselves by making themselves cheap. Imitators begin to jeer at them from all sides. The quality of their works deteriorates; they have to pilfer from their older works.’ People gave up all hopes of Amit and opined that he would pass his life with shadowy things.

At Shillong in Assam, following a motor accident, he met a young lady who changed the course of his life. Amit thought that Labanya (such was the name of this lady) was his ideal woman. Her voice reminded him of the thin smoke of the best Indian tobacco, without the fume of nicotine and with the scent of rose water. Then began real life for him. In Labanya’s mind there was also a new consciousness. These two seemed to have been made for each other. Amit’s love-making was carried on through poetry. They gave each other pet names. But Labanya felt that he would never settle down. To Amit marriage was something vulgar. Literature was more to his taste. So Labanya did not beguile herself with false hopes. She knew that Amit would not be able to retain anything after winning it. She was against her marriage with him, because in marriage nearness might tire him and he would find her totally different from what he had thought her to be. She would better remain in his life as a dream though short-lived. She was in a fix. The stir had come into her heart and she wanted to say that she loved, that her life, her world, had become perfect with the touch of love. Eventually it was settled that she should marry Amit.

Destiny, however, worked in another way. To Shillong came Amit’s sister Sissy with her friend Ketty, an erstwhile sweetheart of Amit at Oxford. Labanya persuaded Amit that it was proper for him to accept Ketty. Thus they separated and all that remained of their association was happy memory. She passed out of his life as suddenly as she had entered it. The remembrance of that which had vanished out of her life, ere it could become a reality, did not pain her. On the contrary, the memory of the past was to her a priceless treasure. Lavanya is the symbol of the eternal feminine who kindles a fire in the heart of man and makes his existence a poetic thing.

‘Sesher Kabita’ is partly a picture of ultra-modern society. Amit’s sisters smoked cigarettes. In everything, they are apart from the women that Rabindranath has depicted in his previous novels. They dance, drive cars, mix freely with men, sit on the arms of their chairs, and call men ‘naughty.’ They belong to a society which regards gossip as table-talk, smartness as fashion, Bohemianism as life, and their gay and light-hearted life is evident from the rustle of their silk saris and the brilliance of their meaningless chatter. Here Tagore is in one of hisbest satirical veins. Yet Labanya, Jogamaya, Sobhanlal and Jati Sankar belong to an altogether different society, the more conservative branch of Bengali life.

‘Sesher Kabita’ is not to be judged as an ordinary novel. It is poetry and fiction mixed together. It could have been made shorter, because there are occasions when it becomes slightly monotonous in spite of its graceful style and poetic idealism. ‘Sesher Kabita’ does not possess the larger ground of ‘Gora’ with its complex problems. It is a love-story pure and simple. The psychological complexities of ‘The Home and the World’ are absent from it. It might have been the swan-song of a distinguished literary career, yet it is not the last contribution of Tagore to modern fiction.

Strictly speaking ‘Dui Ben’ (The Two Sisters) which came in 1933 is more like a short story. The characters are few in number. The complication in the plot arises from Sasanka’s infatuation for his sister-in-law Urmimala. The real interest of the book is to be found in Tagore’s depiction of two different types of woman–the ‘mother type’ and the ‘lover type.’ Sasanka’s wife Sarmila, who was older of the two sisters, belonged to the former type, while Urmimala belonged to the latter class. The ‘lover type’ of woman charms and fascinates man but the motherly woman sustains him till the end, and she is strong in will and character. The former is impulsive, while the latter is firm, and she thus saves Sasanka’s life from wreck in every sense of the word. Of the two men, Sasanka, who is an engineer by profession, is more manly, but the physician Nirod is a sham. In fact, he is utterly despicable. He talked big but his selfish nature could not long be hidden.

‘Malancha’ (The Flower Garden) which was published early in 1934 contains three main characters–Aditya, Niraja and Sarala. Here also is the same complexity in Aditya’s wedded life as we find in that of Sasanka. Once he had loved Niraja very much and for ten years their love was the envy of friends. But with her illness everything was changed. Sarala had been his beloved years ago and the old love returned after many years. To save the situation Sarala went to prison as a picketer. But she was let off. Niraja wanted to see her married to Aditya, but just before her death she became unusually excited and hastened her end. Both these stories are weak. Their themes are curiously similar. The end in both is a patched-up affair. There is nothing remarkable in them excepting the style; but in a novel, surely, the style is not everything.

With the publication of ‘Char Adhyaya’ (The Four Chapters) towards the end of 1934, a furore was created in certain circles in Bengal which regard it unfortunate on the part of Rabindranath to have referred to a person who is no longer able to defend himself. It is certainly unfair to expose to the public ear something which was confided to Rabindranath in private by a man who is dead. ‘To speak or write lightly of departed genius is offensive,’ remarks a great thinker, and this act of indiscretion many people are not inclined to overlook as an instance of poetic license. The novel would have suffered in no way had the great writer discreetly left out the reference to the dead soul.

Politics forms an important ingredient of this novel. This is not the first time that Tagore has touched politics in his novels. Both ‘Gora’ and ‘The Home and the World’ contain references to political events. In fact, in this work he shows once more the futility of what he regards as subversive methods, as he had done previously in ‘The Home and the World.’ But while in that novel he was to some extent timorous, here he is far more frank and outspoken. In the intervening years he has grown more pronounced in his views. The ground of ‘The Four Chapters’ is the Terrorist Movement–that subterraneous and insidious current of life which has cast a slur on the fair name of Bengal, both in and outside India. The Movement receives the treatment that it rightly deserves and is exposed in all its horridness and luridity. We are, of course, more concerned with it as a work of art than anything else.

In the introductory chapter, or more accurately speaking, in the prelude to the story, we come across Ela who is the heroine of the novel. In the writer’s own words, she is the herald of the new age. Other characters gradually come in–Indranath, Atin, the hero, camp-followers like Kanai, etc. Indranath was a scientist, but somehow or other he formed an antipathy for the ruling class. Yet he regarded the English as the best of the Western nations. He was of opinion that the Englishman was spoiling himself by bearing other people’s burden. Indranath fretted against the stunted manhood of his country oppressed with servility. To be able to die like a hero was more to his taste. Yet he revelled in secret activities. Was this not an anomaly? He was the high-priest of the order of death and destruction. It is against that order that Rabindranath raises his voice of condemnation and he mercilessly lashes it.

Atin is a tragic figure. He is a failure in life. He was never a wholehearted anarchist. He wavered between a settled family life and a nomadic, uncertain existence. Atin regarded love as something barbarous and uncivilised but Ela would not marry him. She hesitated to drag him into the confusion of everyday life. She would rather have him as her ideal man than see him as an insignificant person in her daily life. In this hesitation of Ela there lay the tragedy of their lives. Atin revolted against what he regarded as the ‘Car of the Juggernat of patriotic duty.’ In this remark some critics have scented a gibe at some well-known political figure and a great national organisation. The poet or the thinker might not care for cheap popular applause, but when some thing or some one that stands high in the public estimation is concerned, it is wise to avoid any kind of misunderstanding. But probably Tagore was actuated by the idea that no great institution or no great man is above criticism.

The confederacy organised by Indranath disintegrated. Internal causes contributed to its decay and disruption. Atin was at the end of his tether. To the wretched hiding place where he was living as a rat in its trap came Ela, and the mess that they had made of their lives became apparent to them. Atin felt that his life had been in vain and that what was regarded as nationalism, and patriotism in his country was an utter negation of truth. The last meeting of these two who had always wanted each other, and whom nature had meant for one another, is extremely poignant. Atin confessed that he had committed the worst crime by stifling his own nature. ‘Life is a forgerer, it wants to copy the handwriting of eternal time,’ said he. The conclusion of the novel is tragic, no doubt, but the heroine, contrary to her usual self-confidence, is hysterical, thus revealing her weak woman’s nature.

Considered from the artistic point of view, ‘The Four Chapters’ stands far above its two immediate predecessors– ‘Dui Bon’ (The Two Sisters) and ‘Malancha’ (The Flower Garden). In ‘The Four Chapters’ there is practically no story element, the characters few in number,–a device that it shares in common with the two novels just mentioned,– the language is rhythmical, and there is a sense of compactness, a brevity in descriptions and an avoidance of all unnecessary details. Not being large in structure it is always constant in the reader’s mind, and it satisfies the standard required of a complete and rounded work of art.