Tagore’s Humanistic Concept of Literature

BY PRABAS JIBAN CHAUDHURY (Viswabharati)

Tagore did not elaborate a theory of aesthetics for himself. All the same, a careful reading of his critical works would seem to reveal certain fundamental principles of art which inspired all that he wrote on the subject. The first of these principles is unity. It is not merely a unity of man with his fellow beings which Tolstoy, we remember, set down as the function of all good art, but it is one that unites man with the vaster universe, the life and nature around him. Starting from the principle of unity, Tagore goes on to another, which is that literature must express man, the inmost and the real in him,–not the actual person who is yet struggling to transcend himself, but the ideal one that lives in our heart and draws us above. To Tagore, the real is the ideal. This, again, leads him to a third principle, that literature a help to self-realisation our self is the self at one with all the rest of the world and it is the ideal we perceive we have still to realise. Literature, we have seen, expresses these two aspects of our higher self, and so it must help in self-realisation.

We have already said that Tagore never stated his principles of art and literature schematically like professional philosophers. The principles we have mentioned above have to be isolated from his critical writings (which are more literary than philosophical) and their inter-relations established after carefully finding our way through the mazes of his dazzling literary arguments. These have a charm of their own, rich in metaphors and similes, bright with happy concrete instances which illumine no less than they confuse the bewildered reader.

Let us take up his first principle of literature, that of unity. One evening when he was on the river Padma and observing from his boat the colours of the setting sun reflected on the clear waters, a fish jumped up into the air quickly dived into the water again. The poet then thought of the of the joy of the silent world of living beings under the liquid curtain, but his boat heaved a sigh and said, “Ah, what a big fish it was.” We can well understand his feelings. Tagore says–“It may be said that his union with nature was broken. His greed kept him pulled to the hollows of his stomach. One cannot unite unless he forgets himself.”

“Man has many desires; one of them is to desire the fish for eating. But there is a higher kind of desire–that to want sahitya or union with the universe, to want to combine the ending day, gloriously lit by the setting sun at the river’s side, with his mind and soul. This wish is the wish to bring oneself out of his own inner obstacles.” (S.P.* Pp. 66-67). The Bengali (also Sanskrit) word for literature is Sahitya. The root of this word is sahit which means ‘to be with’. Tagore writes,

“From sahit arises the word Sahitya. So, if the root meaning is considered, we can find a sense of union in the word Sahitya.” (S. p. 109).

So Tagore set it down that literature is the expression of man’s innate desire to unite with the rest of the world. He writes, “The consciousness of animals is mainly limited to biological living; man’s consciousness is opening up paths of liberation in the universe; it is spreading itself over the universe. Literature is one of these great paths.” (S. P. p. 67).

When man uses the world to serve some biological need, he desires a part of it and rejects the rest, so that he disintegrates it. “Gain comes from disintegration of the integral; true (aesthetic) delight comes from integrating it.” (S. P. p. 16). Since literature is an expression of this disinterested contemplation of things for their own sake, which serves to unify man’s soul with, the world soul, an author should not be led by his sensations only; he must have imagination. Tagore speaks of imagination thus:

“This imagination makes the path of union one which is our own; it is through this imagination that a feeling of oneness is made possible for us with that which is not our own; our spirit, entering even into that, can make it all spiritual. This is man’s play (lila) and this is his joy (ananda). (S. P. Pp. 70-1) The principle may be ultimately traced to the Upanisadic teaching, “Thou art That”. The soul and the world are not external to each other but they are essentially one and the same. As we gradually realise this fundamental identity, we feel the comprehension of our so expanding and we are naturally delighted. “The function of our soul is to fraternise (with others)”, says Tagore (in Panchabhut p. 32); due to this fraternising, the soul is more and more at home with the rest of the world. Literature is the expression of this rich experience made up of a feeling of self-expansion (through assimilating to it more of the apparently alien world of matter and life) and a feeling of joy that comes from self-realisation.

Now we come to Tagore’s second principle. It can be deduced from the first. Since literature is the expression of our self-expansion through assimilating to it more of what seems external to us, it can also be said to the expression of our realisation of objects of this world as our own, that of our intuitive vision of them in which we are one with them. Thus only, one wins over nature bit by bit and comprehends it within his greater self. In this realisation of a particular thing, since there is a close union of the mind or spirit of man with the object, the truth about the object is not different from that about the subject that knows it. “Here the revelation of object and the revelation of my mind mean the same thing” (S. P. p. 45). So that in literature we have the expression of man’s self along with the impression of the things he intuits and expresses. “Science is engaged in knowing some object. Science seeks to keep human personality apart from this knowledge. Literature is engaged in man’s self-knowledge. Its truth depends on man’s own realisations, not merely on the truth of objects.” (S. p. p. VIII). The outer world is humanised by the artist’s mind which mixes its own feelings of joy and sorrow, surprise and terror, with the manifold qualities of colour, sound etc. of the world (see S. P. p. I). This nature humanised becomes the fit material for literature (S. p. 2). Literature can thus be regarded as the representation of man. Tagore writes:

“The main indication of literature lies in its relations with human life. Where is the mental life of man? It is there where our intelligence and feelings, desires and experience, all melted into one, have achieved a perfect unity of being; where our intelligence, instincts and tastes work harmoniously together, in a word, where the real man is. It is there that literature takes its birth.” (S. P. p. 163). Literature reveals this real man. But the real in man cannot always be quite inferred from his actual state; he has many weaknesses of which he is ashamed and which he fights to overcome. His ideals and aspirations must also be considered as parts of his personality. His potentiality or the nisus in him for the higher man must be held as characterising the real in him. Again, the real is the ideal. Tagore loved man and he respected him. He could never think of man as essentially weak and degraded; he was ever an optimist with regard to man’s future. And he believed that man expresses his purest aspirations and ideals, that is, real self, in his arts and literature. He wrote:

“Thus it is that whatever is great in man, whatever is permanent and cannot be exhausted through his action, is captured in literature, and this naturally builds up the greater aspect of mankind.” (S. p. 63).

Again, “The picture of himself nearest to his heart’s aspirations is in literature and arts–through this shape he can have the comprehensive truth about himself in the midst of a multi divided life; he can recognise himself. In great epics and dramas man has been collecting knowledge of his own self and, transcending himself, he has been searching for the object of his satisfaction. This is his art, his literature. In every countryman has been protecting his true nature from the hands of his untrue degradation. Man, even though he knows his destitution and distortion as facts, does not yet believe as true. He establishes his truth in his creations.” (Sahityer Svarup. p. 63).

Thus Tagore offers us an exalted conception of literature. It has far deeper significance than what Matthew Arnold, for example, could discover as ‘criticism of life’, ‘disinterested contemplation’ or ‘expression of sweetness and light’. In this respect Tagore’s conception of literature may only be compared with Shelley’s idea of poetry. But Shelley’s thought could not move beyond conceiving a poet as a prophet, the happiest of men. Tagore regards a poet as some kind of Yogi who realises his higher self and expresses this to his fellow men, one whose self is at one with the universal soul. The poet places before his readers the highest ideals to which man is moving and thus makes them conscious of the goal of life.

So we pass on to Tagore’s third principle of literature. This lays down that literature is not merely a light-hearted play of imagination; it is also a sadhana, a mental and spiritual discipline which leads one to self-realisation. “When my individual self realises the infinite Self by uninterrupted intuition, realises through my heart, mind and soul, he realises in Him his own self also. This principle of spiritual discipline can be brought down to the field of literature.” (S. P. p. 53). This infinite Self, which is dear to us, and which we seek to recover in us, finds its expression in literature. Self-expression is thus a kind of self-realisation. And since the self is the highest truth about man, literature may be said to express this human truth.

“Since the function of literature and the fine arts is to express, therefore its main task is to give us a taste of truth, making facts its medium. ‘I am an individual,’–this speaks of my limitations; here I am separated from the extensive one. ‘I am a Man’,–this speaks of my direction towards the Infinite; here, united with the great One, I am self manifested.” (S. P. p. 20).

Thus it is that to Tagore literature has a great significance with regard to the spiritual culture of mankind; it is more than an instrument of social good, so dear to moralistic or political minded authors. It is a means in the hands of a true prophet of bringing about a spiritual awakening through the revelation of man’s higher self to man, a means that is an end in itself. And this literature is optimistic, accompanied with a delight that comes from the revelation of the real human self, which is to be achieved and which is the ideal. This is at once our individual and social objective, and so, literature, where it best fulfils its proper end, serves at once the individual and social interests of man. It will not be incorrect to characterise Tagore’s conception of literature as humanistic. Some may object to this and would like to call it mystic. But it must be said that his mysticism is not that of a pure philosopher or a Yogi, a mysticism that borders on an abstract nihilism; it is that of a poet who rejoices in man and who has the vision of higher and nobler human self, towards which man is reaching slowly, over-coming the barriers of his lower self. It is a mysticism that is full of hope and courage and is inspired by a feeling of love for man. For Tagore, man is the primary truth; and if he believes in God and other spiritual entitles not given in direct experience, he does so only for man, to know and love man better. Tagore’s conception of literature, we repeat, is essentially humanistic.

* Abbreviations are used for two titles of books. From these books (and others, all written in Bengali) passages are quoted after translating them into English. Abbreviations are : - S. P. stands for Sahityer Pathe, S stands for Sahitya.