Vivekananda, The Poet

Much has been said of Vivekananda’s greatness as saint and philosopher but, curiously enough, the fact that he is a poet of the first order does not seem to have received much attention. Perhaps the eminence of his saintly career has overshadowed the other. But in fact, long before the Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore, he delivered to the West the message of our spiritual bards of the bygone ages, festooned with fine flowers of poetry. His message is a bridge of goodwill between the Orient and the Occident, and his life an overall interpretation of the vision of the great Saint, Sri Ramakrishna, his Gurudev.

The content of all his poems is nothing but a synthesis of the poetic thought of the ancient saints and the saintly vision of kindred bards. Vivekananda is the name given to him by his Guru who gave him the vision too. The epithet has earned a name for him and proved itself to be an apt combination of terms on account of its association with him. All good poetry or great philosophy is the manifestation of ‘Viveka’ culminating in ‘Ananda’. In fact, that kind of philosophy and poetry are the spring of his inspiration.

“The cloud puts forth its deluge strength
When lightning cleaves its breast;
When the soul is stirred to its inmost depth
Great ones unfold their best.”

So observes the Swami in his “The Song of the Free.” True, it is the same with his own poetry.

All his poetry is a matter of some sixty-five pages and thirty-three pieces in all, out of which only two are translations. Eight pieces were originally composed in Bengali, his mother tongue, four in Sanskrit, one in Hindi and the rest in English. He is well versed in all these languages. The output is small but not the quality. His poems, if presented in suitable Sanskrit garb, appear like excerpts taken from Upanishadic texts. The feeling of a sublime spiritual vision or experience is the string that binds all the scattered beads.

Kindred souls, immersed in Bhakti and philosophy, are themselves at times overcome with a feeling of aesthetic pleasure, while writing poetry. Their statement looks like a gospel for others. When the poets intend preaching philosophy with poetic fervour, others derive the experience of an absolute bliss. Here lies the secret of all Mystic poetry. Some of our Vedic bards and the Sufi poetshave given us the key to Mystic experience and Swami Vivekananda stands on a par with them. Obviously we find a striking resemblance in the poems of all these men of God. It is not the result of any kind of mimesis on their part. They are independent monologues of individual experience and yet, all of them are members in the pilgrimage to the One Shrine Divine. Hence the natural coincidence.

One day during 1895, while he was staying in the Thousand Island Park at New York, he was lecturing to his pupils in his spiritual training camp on Sanyasa and its welcome experiences. Suddenly something struck him and he left the class quite unceremoniously and in no time a memorable melody came out of him and that is the famous ‘Song of the Sanyasin’. It begins as follows:

“Wake up the note! the song that had its birth
Far off, where worldly taint could never reach;
In mountain caves, and glades of forest deep,
whose calm no sigh for lust or wealth or fame
could ever dare to break, where rolled the stream
of knowledge, truth and bliss that followsboth.
Sing high that note, Sanyasin bold! Say
Om Tat Sat Om/”

This is nothing but what is contained in our sacred scriptures and nothing but the outburst of his own experience at the same time. “The ‘I’ has All become, the All is ‘I’ and Bliss; know thou art that….”–this is how he describes the situation when the soul, once for all, gets free from all bondage. He gives here the crux of the Mahavakyas–Sarvam khalvidam Brahma, Anando Brahmeti, Aham Brahmasmi, Tatvamasi, as if it were a commentary is brief on the way of life of our Maharshis.

He composed his song “Kali, the mother”, a brilliant spark of his poetic inspiration, in the earthly Paradise of Kashmir. He projected in it a colourful picture with a rich ground. Kali to him is not the three-foot idle idol at Dakshineswara, but something more, the Omnipotent power behind the three worlds and the Trinity. He understands her as Time-incarnate. He had the chance of her sight before, through the medium of his Guru. Sister Nivedita says, no sooner did he finish the song than he fell down to the ground in a fit of ecstatic emotion. He observes in another of his poems:

“Perchance the shining sage
Saw more than he could tell
Who knows, what soul and when
TheMother makes her throne?”

This aptly applies to him also.

He presents the document of his self-realisation as follows:

“Before the sun, the moon, the earth
Before the stars or comets free,
Before e’en Time had its birth
I was, I am and I will be.”

Here, in this: “The Song of the Free,” we clearly see thought and diction are well in a race with each other.

The resurgent notes of his song, “The Awakened India” had their echoes in our National movement afterwards. He is a patriot of the first order but his vision is unbounded. He celebrated the day of the American Independence too with a beautiful poem. He is an advocate of Freedom and an apostle of Love and Peace. He hears sermons in stones and books in running brooks; hears the music of the spheres and ably brings out the tempo of their being in a dynamic rythm of well-poised words of choice.

He sees God in man, nay, in the nerve of every living being and in one song proclaims the love of all beings to be the best worship:

“These are his manifold forms before thee,
Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God?
Who loves all beings, without distinction,
He indeed is worshipping best his God.”

In another, he warns the fools, who neglect the living God, worshipping mute idols:

“Ye fools! who neglect the living God,
And his infinite reflections with which the world is full,
While ye run after imaginary shadows,
That lead alone to fights and quarrels,
Him worship the only visible!
Break all other Idols!”

All this is not a mere platitude. It forms the very core of his nature. He is a man of action, a dynamic personality, Vivekananda is another name for philosophy practised. I describe the great ‘Sadhana’ he made, in his own poetic language, He pledged even life for gaining knowledge and devoted half his days on earth for the sake of love; even as one insane, he often clutched at lifeless shadows. For religion, he sought many creeds, lived in mountain caves, on cremation grounds and by the Ganges and other holy rivers and passed many days on alms, friendless, clad in rags, with no possession at all, and feeding, from door to door, on what chance would bring. His frame was broken under Tapasya’s weight. Thus having undergone such a tremendous hardship of effort, what could he achieve in the end? The Swami himself answers in the ebb of his own voice.

“Listen, friend, I will speak my heart to thee,
I have found in my life this truth,–
Buffeted by waves, in this whirl of live,
There is one ferry that takes across the sea,–
Formulas of worship, control of breath,
Science, philosophy, systems varied,
Relinquishment, possession, and the like,
All these are delusions of the mind;–
Love, Love–that’s the one thing, the Sole treasure.”

This is the net result of all the endeavour of the great saints, Vivekananda or another. This Sermon of love is their perpetual message to mankind.

The Swami has given us yet another sermon, the sermon of Peace in terms more clearly defined and with a better refinement of poetic setting. I quote a few lines here:

“It is not joy nor sorrow,
But that which is in between;
It is sweet rest in music;
And pause in sacred art;
Between two fits of passion
It is the calm of heart;
It is beauty never seen,
And love that stands alone,
The void whence rose creation,
And that where it returns;
It is the Goal of life,
And Peace-its only home!”

He is a devout pupil and a kindred teacher too. He hails, in Sanskrit, his Guru, Sri Ramakrishna as an ‘Avatar’ of Sri Krishna, the preceptor of the Gita. He blesses Sister Nivedita, his disciple, to be the mistress, servant and friend, all in one, to India’s future son. He addresses another Western lady-disciple from New York, as an ‘Early Violet’ and exhorts her in poetry, not to get disheartened at her unbecoming situation and give up her bloom and blossom. “Change not thy nature….ever pour thy sweet perfume, unasked, unstinted, sure!”–that is the ‘Upadesh’ of this great master.

I request the reader particularly to go through three of his poems, “My play is done”, “A song I sing to thee”, and “And let Shyama dance there”–which are replete with lyrical outpourings in a high pitch of poetic sublimity. Particularly in the last one, as a great devotee with a soul-stirring emotion, he prepares the stage for the dynamic rhythm of the Dance of the Divine Mother. He depicts the dual aspect of creation, the beautiful hues and the terrible horrors of wild Nature by a beautiful contrast. There he stands alone, all by himself, in the ‘Samadhi’ of his imagination, at the two ends of Universal Nature, namely Creation and Destruction.

He selected for translation only two pieces from Sanskrit–one is the Nirvana shatka, the famous Hymn of self-realisation of Sankaracharya, his own great counterpart, and the other is the Nasadiya Sukta from Rigveda, the greatest of the Hymns of creation ever heard. His selection itself marks him to be a true ‘Advaitin’ and his rendering them into English proves him to be a skilful architect of phrase. His style is remarkably lucid all through. He, in his turn, sang a beautiful Hymn of creation and saw the Transcendental Light beyond the Skies. He is a great seer and a rythmic being in one. Hail to Swami Vivekananda, whose penance flowered into poetry!