Tagore as Poet of Childhood

By PROF. T. VIRABHADRUDU, M.A.

Another great contribution that Tagore made to literature is his poetry of childhood. It may look strange to many that the little child can be a source of poetic pleasure, but there it is that many great philosophers drew their inspiration from the life of the tiny little child. In English poetry before the advent of Romanticism, i.e., before the time of Blake and Wordsworth, there was hardly a poem of childhood worth the name. Allusions to little children may be found here and there, but the desire to make the child the main object of poetic study, to interpret the child’s life and relate it to the past and future of man’s career is of comparatively recent growth in English literature. The Romantic Age brought about a widening of the poet’s heart, and a changed outlook on man and creatures below man, and Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality in which we have a mystical interpretation of childhood is worth remembering in this connection. The child is the subject of Rabindranath’s Crescent Moon. That sweet little book which is a collection of forty lyrics is one of the very best things that the poet has given to the world. In it we find a most beautiful description of the child-angel, his “silly” talk, his “absurd” questions,¹ his attachment to his mother and her joy at the sight of the baby who is the image of her hope and its fulfillment. It is a most sympathetic and imaginative rendering of the child’s ways, the place he occupies in the mother’s life and the message he conveys to humanity. It may be noted here that though the book in its English shape was first printed in 1913, most of the poems had appeared in their original Bengali for ten years earlier under the title of Sisu (The Child) and had been intended to entertain the poet’s youngest son in the months following his mother’s death. When the English translations are so delicious, how sweet the songs must be as composed by the poet in his mother-tongue, only those who are born to that language can say.

To Poet Rabindranath the child is a most lovely object. To be surrounded by children and to sing a song or relate a story to amuse them was a special delight to him when he was at Santiniketan, and he was fond of holding occasionally what he called “Our Children’s Durbar.” We know the child is naughty and there is a long list of his “misdeeds”. But the poet indignantly asks:

You tore your clothes while playing–is that why they call you untidy?

O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles through its ragged clouds?

The world in which the child wishes to live is that of Nature and the nourishment he lives upon is imagination. Trees and flowers, the moon and the stars or the rainbow in the sky give the child immense pleasure and here is an instance:

Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands with these jasmines, these white jasmines.
I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the river through the darkness of midnight;

Yet my memory is still sweet with the first white jasmines that I held in my hand when I was a child.

Also, the little child makes no distinction between the lights in the streets and the stars in the sky. The baby’s world is a Peculiar region,

Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms of kings of no history;

Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them and Truth sets Fact free from its fetters.

When the little fellow looks at the heavens, he thinks the folk in the clouds call out to him to join them. Death-dealing waves, which are a terror to us, seem tosing meaningless ballads to the children and sometimes, as in the case of Raicharan’s. “Little Master”, “the mischievous fairies of the river with their mysterious voices invite them to enter their playhouse.” ² It is this imaginative instinct which induces in the child a curious spirit of adventure. So the child in The Crescent Moon tells his mother how he can easily “cross the seven seas and the thirteen rivers of fairyland” and how he can without much difficulty discover the princess who lies sleeping on the far-away shore of the seven impassable seas. But all this is to make his beloved mother happy, for when he returns from his travels he will bring her baskets of flowers and heaps of gold!

The child, in Tagore’s opinion, is the image of innocence. He loves to look at the moon and beckon to it to come and play with him. He asks his Dada (elder brother), “When in the evening the round full moon gets entangled among the branches of the Kadam tree, couldn’t somebody catch it?” When it is shown how stupid is the thought of getting at the moon who is ever so far from us, the little one replies:

‘Dada, how foolish you are! When mother looks out of her window and smiles down at us playing, would you call her far away?’

Innocence and freshness of mind are characteristic of childhood, and emphasising the significance of joy in the life of man, Rabindranath points out how man needs these two qualities to appreciate the spiritual significance of many of our festivals. ³ Coupled with this innocence is a sense of wonder “which gives a child his right of entry into the treasure-house of mystery which is in the heart of existence.” ⁴ Natural phenomena and the world of the mysterious leave the common man unmoved. He either takes them for granted or tries to explain them away. His attitude is one of indifference or contempt or superstitious veneration based, of course, on fear. In the child, as in the poet, they awaken a feeling of awe and curiosity to know their secrets. This spirit which is generally associated with the medieval period in European culture is revived in England in the age of Scott, Wordsworth and Coleridge which is, for that reason, called the Renascence of Wonder. To Tagore, the world and life are “a source of perennial wonder, a perennial joy that has run up till this day.” ⁵ In the course of a New Year Message delivered at Santiniketan in April 1939, he says:

My mind travels to my boyhood….I have looked at the universe with “Wonder”–that “Wonder” has not vanished even today. If we look at this “Wonder” from the point of view of our daily needs, we shall not find any meaning in it, but we shall be able to solve its mystery if we enter its deeps. What is the source of the wonder of a moonlit night, of the joy of a lover’s meeting?

Thus the child and the poet are alike. They are dreamers and are both “of imagination all compact.”

Along with these qualities, the child possesses, surprisingly enough, an extraordinary sense of humour. Children often imitate the elders which is for their own amusement or for the pleasure of playing the fool with them. Sometimes they are not conscious of the humour, but their simple questions and answers supply any amount of fun. The little boy in The Crescent Moon who has been at his book a whole morning feels tired and wants to go out to play. When the mother tells him that it is not yet afternoon and that it is just twelve, the little rogue, who has been longing to be free, quietly asks:

If twelve o’clock can come in the night, why can’t the night come when it is twelve o’clock?

Seeing his mother in a serious mood and feeling that it is due to her not having any letter from the husband, the son consoles her by offering to write not one but all father’s letters, provided he has pens and sheets of paper. Assuring her of his knowledge of the alphabet from A right up to K, and of the beautiful big hand in which the letter will be written, the young letter-writer adds:

When I finish my writing, do you think I shall be so foolish as father to drop it into the horrid postman’s bag?

I shall bring it to you myself without waiting, and letter by letter help you to read my writing.

One day he asks he mother why his father–he is an author–is always writing and writing, and why he cannot understand those books. He is astonished that when he takes up his father’s pen or pencil and writes upon his book just as the father does,–a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i,–or takes only one sheet to make a boat with, she gets very angry while she does not open her lips when his father spoils sheet after sheet of paper scribbling all sorts of things on both sides. And he was reading to her the whole evening! Could she make out what he meant? Once when Rabindranath, on the invitation of the Andhra University, delivered at Waltair a course of four lectures, there was a young boy of twelve or thirteen who made it a point to attend every lecture and was also very punctual on each day. The lectures were in English and were also highly philosophical. A middle-aged gentleman, a College Professor, noticing the boy’s regularity and enthusiasm, asked quite casually, “Well, my young friend, you seem to be a great admirer of Rabindranath Tagore. How much of these lectures have you understood?” The boy, who was simplicity incarnate, replied, in all humility and the deference which a boy of his age should show his elders, “As much as all of you did.” Needless to say that the Professor did not pursue the matter further!

One aspect of childhood on which the poet has lavished his imagination is the relation between the child and his mother, and the nature of the attachment they have to each other is something very peculiar. One day the baby tells the mother that he is going and, lest she should miss him, assures the good lady that in the night he will, from his place in the starry sky, steal unobserved into her room and lie upon her bosom while she sleeps and if any one were to ask, “Where is our baby?” her reply would be, “He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and in my soul.” The child with his charming face and sweet smile is, as all of us know, an object of delight but wherefrom does the charm come?

The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby’s limbs–does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love–the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby’s limbs.

The child is the solace of the mother, the image of her heart’s yearnings, and the spiritual tie between the two can be gathered from the following. The baby puts a somewhat curious question to the mother, “Where have I come from, where did you pick me up?” and the latter, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast, replies that he had been all the while lying hidden in her heart as its desire:

When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it.

Heaven’s first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world’s life, and at last you have stranded on my heart.

As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all have become mine.

For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world’s treasure in these slender arms of mine?

To the mother, the child is God who has, to confer bliss on her, come into the house in the shape of a sweet little creature. Below are given the sentiments of a mother whose son, her only child, died three years after birth:

At the age of fifteen I had my child….Alas! my child–God came into my life, but His playthings were not ready for Him. He came to the mother’s heart, but the mother’s heart lagged behind. He left me in anger; and ever since I have been searching for Him up and down the world. ⁶

The son is so much a part of the mother’s being that she loves him, not because he is beautiful or good, but because he is her child. Of course she will now and then punish him for his faults but we have to remember that when he weeps she also weeps along with him! The idea of punishment comes out of depth of affection and the mother thinks it her privilege and no one else’s to caress or rebuke him. She proudly feels,

I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may chastise who loves.

If this is the intensity of feeling that the mother has towards her child, is he also not full of love for her? The baby is able to fly away to heaven but why does he not go? It is because “he loves to rest his head on his mother’s bosom, and cannot ever bear to lose sight of her.” Again, though he has plenty of gold and heaps of pearls,

This dear little naked mendicant pretends to be utterly helpless, so that he may beg for mother’s wealth of love.

He is a master of wisdom, yet,

The one thing he wants is to learn mother’s words from mother’s lips. That is why he looks so innocent.

Binoy-bhushan, in Gora, a modest, bright and highly educated young man looked upon Anandamoyi as mother and his affectionate regard for her was such that she was to him “the image of all the mothers in the world.” Once, feeling sorry for not having treated his visit to her as the very first thing to do on his arrival in Calcutta, he went to her place and prostrated himself at her feet with the cry, “Mother!” “Binoy!” she said, caressing his bowed head with her hands. And the poet asks,

Whose voice is like that of a mother’s? The very sound of his name uttered by Anandamoyi seemed to soothe his whole being.

On another occasion, when the lady was in a depressed state of mind–it was a gloomy afternoon also–with a view to distract her attention from sorrow, he took her to the verandah in front of his room , and, making her sit down on the mat and tell him stories of her childhood, cried:

Mother! I can’t even think that there was ever a time when you were not our mother! I believe that the students of your grandfather’s school used to look upon you as there tiny little mother, and that it was really you who had to bring up your grandfather!

He went a step further when, the next evening, lying on a mat with his head resting on Anandamoyi’s lap, he said:

Mother, I sometimes wish that I could give to God all my book learning and take refuge in this lap of yours as a child once more–with only you in the whole world, you and no one else but You.

A poet of devotion, a scholar well versed in all the Sastras (Branches of knowledge), and a most famous religious preacher, Sankara, assumes a similar child-like humility when he begs for the Mother’s blessing:

Annapurne sadapoorne Sankarapranavallabhe!
Jnana vairagya siddhyarttham bhiksham dehi cha parvati.

(Giver of Food, Goddess of Plenty, Great Siva’s Beloved Consort, Daughter of the King of Mountains, Dear Mother, give me food; give me the food of wisdom and the spirit of renunciation.)

Thus we have in The Crescent Moon, as elsewhere in Tagore’s works, a most exalted conception of the kinship existing between the child and the mother. But the poet, who is as alive to the realities of life as he is idealistic, knows that by and by the parents and their children should drift in the stream of the world. The latter will have, as time goes on, their new activities and new playmates and may not be able to spare time or thought for the old parents. It is pathetic, no doubt, but they have their consolation.

The river runs swift with a song, breaking through all barriers. But the mountain stays and remembers and follows her with his love. ⁷

Careless and ungrateful sons we have seen, but a parent without love it is hard to imagine. Sankaracharya pays his greatest tribute to the Eternal Mother when he implores Her forgiveness for any negligence on his part:

Vidher ajnanena dravinavirahena alasataya
Vidheyasakyatvat lava chliranyorya chyutir abhut
Tadetat kshantavyam janani sakaloddharini sive
Kuputro jayeta kwachidapi kumala na bhavati.

(Due to an error of Fate or my poverty, laziness, or inability to be ever devoted to you, there has been a slipping off thy holy feet. Beloved Mother, Auspicious One, Saviour of the world, pardon, pardon this remissness. There may be born in the world a wicked son but is there anywhere an unkind mother?)

Rabindranath not only gives us the charm and Sweetness of childhood but also reads a lot of meaning into it. In his poems and short stories dealing with children there is often an element of symbolism. In The Crescent Moon, the mother whose aim in life is to make her child happy by prodding him with all nice and attractive things says:

When I bring you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints–when I give coloured toys to you, my child.

When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands, I know why there is honey in the cup of the flower, and why fruits are secretly filled with juice–when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.

God is our mother and all the good things of life and all the pleasing sights and sounds in Nature are intended for our happiness and we would be fools not to avail ourselves of it. The little son, in the course of his talk, reveals to his mother his ambition:

Mother, if you don’t mind, I should like to become the boatman of the ferry when I am grown up.

Does this not mean that it is the child that enables the mother to cross the mighty ocean of life’s troubles? The child is the centre of the mother’s thoughts, the God whom she enthrones in her heart, and her love for the little angel is the only rock on which she can stand amidst the quicksand’s of life. In another place the child who sees through the open window the watchman walking up and down discloses to us the one great desire of his life:

I wish I were a watchman walking the streets all night, chasing the shadows with my lantern.

Did not Tagore the poet keep vigil over his nation’s activities and did not Mahatma Gandhi call him The Great Sentinel? Thus in Rabindranath’s work there is a deeper meaning than the average reader is aware of, and it is this spirituality that gives his poetry a unique place in the literature of the world. In The Post Office, Amal, a young boy whom Madhav adopted, is shut up in a room for he is “ill.” He is longing to go out of doors to see the green hills, the open meadows, the sugar-cane fields, the grazing cattle, the men crossing the river, and thinks he will be cured the moment this is permitted. He implores his uncle to allow him at least to sit in the window to see the boys at play, the girl selling flowers, and the dairyman crying, “Curds, curds, fine curds.” The unfortunate boy who, owing to the stupidity of his uncle and his medical adviser, cannot see the larger life outside gets worse day by day, and when he learns, from the watchman, who strikes up the gong of Time which waits for none but goes on for ever and of the land that none has seen, says:

Then I suppose no one has ever been there! Oh, I do wish to fly with the time to that land of which no one knows anything.

Words which remind us of Shakespeare’s “undiscovered country” and Marlowe’s lines in Edward II,

Weep not for Mortimer,
That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown.

And the freedom-loving little boy, who hears of the King’s Post Office planted in front of his house and eagerly looks forward to receive the King’s letter, obtains his deliverance when, on the advice of the Royal Physician, the room is darkened but for the star-light streaming in and he drops asleep and passes into the Infinite. The hero of one of his short stories, Phatik ⁸, is a young lad who, happening to be with his uncle, away from his own mother, does not feel quite at home in the new sphere, despite the uncle’s great affection. The aunt, however, not taking kindly to him, the boy longs for his sweet home and dear mother, but has to wait till the holidays come. His longing is so great that he falls ill and is plunged into a delirium which is unbroken but for his occasional question, “Uncle, have the holidays come yet?” At last the mother arrives in a state of sorrow whose depths it is not easy to fathom; and flinging herself on the bed, cries, “Phatik, my darling, my darling.” The boy, as though in response to it, opens his eyes for the last time, and murmuring, “Mother, the holidays have come,” shuts his eyes in eternal sleep. The reader cannot but be struck with the idea that this is symbolical of the career of the human soul, which sleeps after life’s fitful fever, and which is not at rest till it goes to its mother’s bosom–the place whence it came.

Childhood, in Rabindranath’s opinion, is synonymous with innocence and wisdom and that is why ‘God waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.’ ⁹ Man, however learned he may be, will have, if he wants to fulfill his mission in life, to shed his pride and follow the child’s ways. It was this message that was taught to humanity nearly twenty centuries ago by one of the greatest of the world’s prophets: “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Ruskin of nineteenth century England; the champion of the poor labourer and the opponent of capitalism, is so enthusiastic for this biblical message that he makes it the text of his address to the workers of England. ¹⁰ He thinks “wise work is cheerful, as a child’s work is.” And he analyses the child’s character into four things: Humility, Faith, Charity and Cheerfulness. Children are modest and are eager to learn, not to teach. In the next place, they have absolute trust in their parents, just as a true soldier offers implicit obedience to his captain. Thirdly, they are full of love. “Give a little love to a child,” says Ruskin, “and you get a great deal .” Lastly, Children are always ready for play, which is a lesson to the human being to do his work in the spirit of play and taking no thought for the morrow. So, men, whatever their eminence or station in life, will have “to repent into childhood, to repent into delight and delightsomeness.” Rabindranath intends to impress a similar truth on us when he makes the mother in The Crescent Moon exhort mankind thus:

They clamour and fight, they doubt and despair, they know no end to their wranglings.

Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child, and let your gentle eyes fall upon them, like the forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.

Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the meaning of all things; let them love you and thus love each other.

The poet is a great optimist and feels that in the birth of every new babe two truths are revealed to the world. To quote his own words,

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man;
God grows weary of great kingdoms but never of little flowers.

It must not, however, be forgotten that most of us cannot realise the truth of this, though is looks so simple. In The Fugitive there is an imaginary conversation between Mind and the Poet who were told that something great was to come. The former, with a view to accord a fitting reception to the new-comer, was making preparations without end by way of gathering things and building towers, and every one was eagerly looking forward to the coming. At last the herald appeared and, while Mind was worried that the building had not been quite finished, a voice from the sky said, “Pull down your building. Because today is the day of coming, and your building is in the way.” The construction which was huge was reduced to dust but what did they see? Only the morning star and the lily washed in dew. Also, a child running, laughing from its mother’s arms into the open light! Naturally Mind asked in astonishment:

And did they claim all the earth only for this?
but the answer was:

Yes. Mind, you build walls to imprison yourself. Your servants toil to enslave themselves; but the whole earth and infinite space are for the child, for the New Life.

There was a second question, “What does that child bring you?” to which the reply was, “Hope for all the world, and its joy.” That even “the wise” may not readily grasp the full meaning of this, the following will show:

Mind asked me, “Poet, do you understand?”
“I lay my work aside,” I said, “For I must have time to understand.”

Poetry of childhood has always been very popular in India. From the most ancient times, we have had poets and dramatists devoting their attention to the child’s life and, in many of the religious stories of Hinduism, Vishnu, the Ruler of the Universe, has been represented as Sri Krishna, the little, blue-coloured, cowherd boy. His childish tastes, tricks and games have so fascinated poets that one of them says:

Saiva vayam na khalu tatra vicharaniyam
Panchakshaijapapara nitaram tathaapi
Chela madiyam atasikusumavabhasam
Smerananam smarati gopavadhukisoram. ¹¹

(We were worshippers of Siva but why talk about it now? True, we used to recite with ardent devotion the five-lettered prayer. But my mind thinks now of none other than the cowherd’s charming little son with his face full of smiles and shining like the linseed flower.)

The beauty of that little form is so bewitching that the poet feels that his heart is drawn to it as a piece of iron to a magnet:

Madhuryaadapi madhuram Manmathatatasya kimapi kaisoram
Chapavaadapi chapalam chela mama harati hanta kim kurmaha.

(Sweeter than sweetness is the childhood which is beyond description. Swifter than swiftness as my mind is, it is stolen away. Alas! How helpless!)

We are told that Sri Krishna, like all little children, was specially fond of cream and butter, so much so that he has earned at the hands of his devotees a great title, Navaneetachora (Stealer of Butter). Butter is the essence of milk...man’s nourishment in life...and the softest thing on earth. Is not the title appropriate when we know that the Eternal Child is really the stealer of the softest thing in creation...the human heart?

In his interpretation of childhood, as in other things relating to his poetry, Rabindranath is a mystic. It is rather difficult to define mysticism exactly, for it is not a creed or a system of philosophy. Every great poet is a kind of mystic, and can dive into things the meaning of which the common man cannot see or appreciate. With Tagore, the universe is a garb of the divine. He says:

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. ¹²

Fools as we are, we generally think that, God being far from us, we must go in search of Him. The poet shows:

We do not have to run to the grocer’s shop for our morning light; we open our eyes and there it is; so we need only give ourselves up to find that Brahma is everywhere. ¹³

To him, as to every real philosopher of the world, the One remains, the Many change and pass. He is always anxious to see Unity amidst Diversity, for he prays that he may never “lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.” Like the sages of ancient India, he is able to realise God in himself when he says:

My poet, is it thy delight to see thy creation through my eyes and to stand at the portals of my ears silently to listen to thine own eternal harmony?

Thou givest thyself to me in love and then feelest thine own entire sweetness in me. ¹⁴

He shows how the greater part of the literature of India is religious, the reason being that God with us is not a distant God. He is in our homes as in our temples, and we feel his nearness to us in all our human relationships. “In the woman who is good we feel Him, in the man who is true we know Him, in our children He is born again and again, the Eternal Child.” ¹⁵

¹ V. Mini in the story of The Cabuliwallah asking her father:

What do you think, father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!
………………………………………………
Father! What relation is Mother to you?
² The story of The Child’s Return
³ Spoken in connection with the Maghotsava celebrated on January 25, 1938;
⁴ My life; A lecture delivered in China in 1924.
⁵ The poet was seventy-eight years old at the time.
⁶ The story of The Devotee.
⁷ The Crescent Moon.
⁸ The Home Coming
⁹ Stray Birds
¹⁰ The Crown of Wild Olive
¹¹ The prayer which reads Namassivaya consists of five letters in Sanskrit and its meaning is, “Salutations to Thee, O Siva!
¹² Gitanjali
¹³ Sadhana
¹⁴ Gitanjali
¹⁵ Personality