Harindranath Chattopadhyaya

HARINDRANATH CHATOPADHYAYA

MAN AND POET

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, one of the great sons of India – poet, playwright, philosopher, actor and freedom-fighter – ­was born on April 2, 1898, in Hyderabad in a family known for rich cultural traditions and modern outlook. His father, Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya, was a man of science, teacher and litterateur “with a great white beard and the profile of Homer.” Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, and his sister Sarojini Naidu (known all over the world as the Nightingale of India) are a pair of passion flowers that blossomed on the stalk of the Indian Renaissance.

At the age of eleven his sister wrote her first poem, and he produced his first play “Valmiki” which was followed by “Abul Hasan” and “The Sleeper Awakes.” His juvenile composition, a poem entitled “Coloured Garden”, won Rabindranath Tagore’s praise: “I have genuine admiration for your poetry. I feel sure you have all the resources of a poet in a lavish measure.” His first collection of poems “The Feast of Youth” appeared in 1918 when he was nineteen years old. This brought him instantaneous fame. In his foreword, James Cousins, the celebrated writer, said: “He is, I am convinced, a true bearer of the fire – not the hectic and the transient blaze of youthfulness but the incorruptible and inextinguishable flame of the immortal youth which sustains the worlds, visible and invisible.” Sri Aurobindo hailed him as “the future poet of India” and in his review of the book commented: “Here perhaps are the beginnings of a supreme utterance of the Indian soul in the rhythms of the English tongue…..The genius, power, and newness of this poetry are evident. We may well hope to find in him a supreme singer of the vision of God in Nature and Life and the meeting of the divine and the human…..” His poetry is a pleasing cocktail of Sufi mysticism and Hindu Advaitism and a happy blend of the two cultures.

When he was 19 years old, he went to England where he was permitted by Cambridge University to work for a Ph. D., by writing a thesis on the basis of “The Feast of Youth” and two later publications “The Magic Tree” and the “Perfume of Earth”, the subject being “William Blake and his Eastern Affinities.” He was particularly attracted to William Blake for the ideas of the love of freedom and hatred of tyranny. Another foreign writer who exercised considerable influence on him was George Russell (1867-1952), the famous Irish poet and dramatist. The young poet was highly impressed with Russell’s revolutionary poems which were written when the Irish people rose in revolt against the English. In fact, Harindranath took his title of the poem “The Magic Tree” from Russell’s lines:

“And from the Magic Tree of Life
The fruit falls everywhere–”

He utilised the period of his stay in Great Britain to study Theatre Craft and to get acquainted with outstanding men of letters like Walter De la Mare, Harold Munroe and George Bernard Shaw. To the last-named celebrity he was introduced by Annie Besant.

He obtained thorough mastery of the writings of Sri Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Iqbal. He was offered a teaching assignment in Ceylon but he declined it. He did not stick to any position–teaching or research – because his mind was constantly churned by excitement, discontentment ant eternal quest for Truth.

The fecundity and variety of his literary output and his endless interest in poetic creation are astonishing. The more important titles are “The Magic Tree” (1922); “Poems and Plays” ( 1927), “Strange Journey” ( 1936). “The Dark Well” (1939), “Edgeways and the Saint” (1946), “Spring in Winter” (1956), “Masks and Farewells” (1951), “Virgins and Vineyards” (1967), “Life and Myself” written in 1948 is splendid, though a fragment, containing the core of his life. He describes his all-engrossing passion for poetry. He dwelt more and more in the innermost recesses of his heart from where poetry comes. Words and phrases became an obsession.

On an invitation from the Soviet Union in 1927, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, together with Jawaharlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru, visited Russia in connection with the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He was inspired by the new rhythm of life in the first socialist state of the world. This visit enabled him to make an intensive study of theatre craft under masters like Stanislavsky, Granovsky, and Meyerholdt. His rebellious soul caught fire in Moscow and on returning to India, he plunged headlong into the freedom struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.

The poet deals with poverty and the immanence of socialist revolution in India in some of his plays typical of the leftist literature of the ’Thirties. We find his identification with the lives of the poor and the fate of his motherland in his reference to “starving of babies, cruel masters, poor sad women, and people who are shot because they asked for bread.” His poems like “Lenin”, “The Red Army”, and “Stalingrad” show his friendly feelings towards the Soviet people who waged a relentless war against tyranny and poverty.

In the Satyagraha of 1930 Harindranath played a leading role by functioning as the 14th Dictator of the Bombay War Council. He was committed to rigorous imprisonment in Nasik Jail and suffered incarceration for a fairly long period. It was during this period that he wrote his patriotic songs one of which was translated into the Chinese language and sung by the Chinese army on its marches. He composed spirited and soul-stirring national songs like “Shuru Hua Hai Jung Hamara”, “Inquilab Zindabad,” “Nabhmay Patak Nachat Hae”, “Agaye Din Swadhinataka”, “Rakt Gulalse Bharkey Joli.” He could compose lilting music and sing in a charming voice. About his impressive voice Somerset Maugham, the great English writer. said: “His voice is the richest I have ever heard in the East.”

He was a multi-dimensional man. He is a great actor on the stage, screen, radio and television. He rendered many character roles in English, Hindi and Bengali. He played the role of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s “Othello”. His recent role in the T. V. Serial “Aeds Pados” is, indeed, memorable. In the General Elections held in India after Independence, he was elected as Member of the Parliament representing the Vijayawada Constituency (Andhra Pradesh).

In recognition of his versatility and literary achievement, the Andhra University conferred upon him honorary Doctorate. He won the prestigious Dr. B. C. Roy National Award for Literature in 1972. The Government of India honoured him by conferring “Padma Vibhushan” in 1972.

Some literary critics tried to label him and put him in a pigeon hole of narrow classification by calling him “the last of the romantics”. But he was all things to all people in the realm of poetry in which lies his forte. He was primarily a poet and essentially a mystic. He was not an ivory-tower philosopher with an inclination to moralise. His verse has no didactic tinge. However, some of his poetry has its social side. He composed short verses which were satirical of society, ironical in its tone and critical of human foibles. His gentle satire is like the Worm of Nilus “which kills but does not hurt”.

For example, in his popular “Curd Sellers” we find epigrammatic, versified sentences which may be regarded as wisdom in capsules – medicine in small and sweet doses. The following lines may serve as samples:

I am sure God above would
cease to feel a fool
If every temple would become
a hospital or school.

In dust and heat they stand and break
the stern and stubborn stone
But every hammer stroke foretells
the breaking up of thrones.

You fashion ships and aeroplanes
and huge machines of power
Fools, you never dared to make
a single summer flower.

“Prohibition has come to stay”
Is what we would like to think
But we are drunk with ignorance
Which is far worse than drink.

Behold thee the tower of silence
For vultures spread the feast
The graveyard feeds the jackal
And the temple feeds the priest.”

“Behold! the poet writes his rhymes
to suit the public’s harlot needs.”
“Merchants and ascetics both are
crying out their tinselled wares”.

PROLIFIC WRITER

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya was a prolific writer having an output of 200 volumes to his credit. This number is tentative and is by no means final, because many more are yet to be published. He handled every literary form – verse, drama, prose, short story, song, sonnet and biography – with remarkable facility and adroitness. 3000 lyrics and 5000 sonnets comprise his current poetic stock. Writing about him in the “Indian Writing in English” Prof. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar summed up with the comment “In the course of his life he has veered spasmodically between the extremes of Aurobindonian mysticism and Marxian materialism and he has sampled every variety of experience and exploited every possible mood, pose and stance ... And always he writes because he cannot help writing and also because poetry is man’s – the poet’s as well as the reader’s – elemental need; no expendable luxury but the very oxygen of existence”. When this writer interviewed Harin a few years ago on Hyderabad Television, he said : “I don’t write. It writes.”

In his sonnets “Foot Falls” and later lyrics we find that the poet had adopted a mystical and truly spiritual attitude to life. A deep transformation had taken place in his soul. The change is reflected in the following passages:

“Let me retire a while, I have sung long.
And now these lips are aching for the hush;
Withdraw, and leave me to myself  O’song!
Come not to me in such a ceaseless rush”.

“I have put out the lamp of my love and desire
For their light is not real”.

“I fix my sight upon a sure
Inevitable goal”

At last, this “world deserting wanderer”, the tireless traveller, got rid of “life’s brief ecstasies” of “Iampless years”. We hear about “new beginnings and forgotten ends”. He had achieved his “union with his highest self”.

He says: “I poet, dip my pen
In mine own blood to write my songs for men
Since every song is but a keen self-giving
To tired life which now and then
Seems but a drab apology for living”

(Prelude to “Edgeways and the Saint”)

It is interesting to note what some of the great writers thought about him because it is a rare privilege for any writer to win applause and accolades from his contemporaries. As Richard Steela said, “There is no pleasure like that of receiving praise from the praise-worthy”.

Rabindranath Tagore: “One marvels while reading Harin’s poetry. Storm clouds of intoxicated richness turn and wonder borne by strange whirlwinds, all night and day and out of them, cleaving through their collected glooms golden sunrises appear suddenly and spread from end to end” (Translated from Bengali). When someone asked Tagore who would succeed him, his ready reply was:

“My mantle falls on Harindranath”.

A. E. (George W. Russell) said in a letter dated 25th May, 1935:

“You have the root of poetry in you. Your poetry has changed in its character, and your mind and imagination, probably as the result of mystic concentration and meditation, now point only to the Great Spirit”.

Alice Meynell commented on his poetry: “It is exceedingly interesting to me to see such a meeting of Eastern and Western imagination, as I think your poetry brings about”.

HIS SONNETS

There are several of Harindranath’s Sonnets yet unpublished.

A good number of them were composed in his spiritual retreat at Pondicherry, the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo, over 55 years ago. It is an assortment of his Soul’s mystical and philosophical outpourings in the ’Thirties. It is just a fragment, though splendid. This cluster is culled from a lush creeper of perennial flowers in his literary garden. Harindranath says: “These sonnets may be considered as an expression of my union with my highest self, a sort of intimate journal of my experiences of a constant life within, which has always made me thirsty to reach the River of the Soul ever waiting for all who may care to quench such thirst. The highest self indwells everyone. Only some are conscious of it, while others are not. It may be described as the bride eagerly and patiently waiting to unite herself with her lover. I have been such a lover all my life.”

The sonnets reveal the poet and his faith in the supremacy of spiritual values and the futility of the evanescent pleasures of life which have a meretricious glitter but mean nothing. He says:

“I am an artist full of wondrous things;
My thoughts are boats arrived from many a shore
A rich sensation of unnumbered wings
Is mine for ever, that is why I soar ...
I never look behind. I look before
My inwardness with beauty is afire”
(Vol. I, 38)

His rich imagination, gift of art, vision of man and intimacy with the interior aspects of beauty (which is not skin-deep but soul-deep) are brought out very well.

He explains his contempt for the shows and shams of life (tremendous trifles) in the following lines:

“I cannot sing as other poets can
As other poets do, for wealth or fame.” (Vol. II, 142)

He knows that they are superficial and short-lived. He asserted, “I, authentic poet, sing at day’s opening, day’s close”. In one of his poems he said:

“A thousand gold bags of a Persian King
Are equally balanced with a grain of sand.”

As a seeker of truth, the poet realised that poetry progresses towards “silence” as the soul is impregnated with devotion. Eloquence is the symbol of fermentation of feelings en route to soul-transformation. The idea has been expressed with clarity and sincerity in the following lines:

“Song cometh not of fullness but, indeed
Out of a state that is a little less
Where there is yet an emptiness is need” (Vol. III, 208)
“How foolish of me trying to express
This inner happiness in outer words.”     (Vol. III. 240)

Yet the poet needs the medium of song to convey the fullness of his heart and the secret workings of his soul to the seekers. In spite of his seeking, fully aware of the inadequacies and limitations of poetry, he finds it to be an indispensable tool of communication to convey a message or an experience. So he declares:

“Song is to me no pastime, but a need” (Vol. III, 226)
“When have I ever sold my song or art

To a commercial hollow-world that pays? or

bartered in the loud competing mart?
My precious soul for man’s ephemeral praise?” (Vol. V. 491)

Finally, with supreme confidence in his role as Mother’s messenger and the still small voice of the inner spirit, the poet reveals himself in his full glory and panoply of power:

“I am eternal poet Thou didst crown
Before the centuries were handed down
To human Time, with all its fires and songs
And multi-coloured glories that have stirred.” (Vol, III, 343)

The transition of the poet’s love of Nature and Beauty to spiritual quest and “silence” was not sudden. This is aptly described by Sri Aurobindo, who wrote a Preface to his early poems– “Feast of Youth”. The sage-critic commented: “We may well hope to find in him a supreme singer of the vision of God in Nature and Life and the meeting of the divine and the human.” He also calls it the “spiritualising of the earth existence.”

Harindranath sings:

“Nature is calling me, and I must run
Responding to her call that sounds like wine.”

“Slowly O’ Nature! I grow more aware
of your minutest miracles and moods.”

After explaining his deep concern for the mystical aspects of Nature, we are treated to a delicious description of Nature, not “red in tooth and claw” but “to advantage dressed.”

“Wave-heaves of waters, cloud controls of air,
Echoes of mountains, painted calms of woods,
moon-glow, pale twilight shadow noon-day glare
combine in me their separate brotherhoods.”
(Vol. I, 72)

“I go forth into the wide open spaces
And dwell among the waters and the birds”
(Vol. I, 64)

Soon the poet became free from Nature’s chains and charms; he declared his freedom in the following lines:

“For Nature’s joys, I am no more athirst
I have forgotten sea and cloud and, space.”
(Vol. II, 165)

Then it becomes “denatured” Nature – Nature spiritualised and etherialised.

Although Harin liked to avoid the “red and juice of life”, he was not a coward to run away from the realities of life. He was not for “Cloistered and fugitive virtue”. He professed his scornful indifference to hypocrisy and subterfuge in the following lines:

“I do not understand penance or prayer
Nor interested in wise holy cant
Something in me can see Thee everywhere
From the tall mountain to the smallest ant.”
(Vol. III, 242)

“Not for ascetic glories am I here
But to declare Thy beauty in my song”.
(Vol. III, 251)

“Suppression of desires is not release.
Nor yet a life of piety which prays
Wearing a worship-robe of outer peace,
And moving through monotonies of days,
Nay, not to run away with failing breath
From life and its desires, but to control
The moral self, till it renounces death
And turns its myriad passions towards the soul”.
(Vol. V, 454)

Having said that inhibition or suppression of desires is not “release”, he expresses his own perception of what is “ release”. It is not “joy or peace”. It is not “some heaven lived on high”. He defines it in the following passage:

“Nay, it is a fullness, absolute, complete
A total transillumination wrought in body, soul and thought.”

“For God must be in every pulse and beat of every
fibre, else release is nought
I am grown conscious of a growing power
Working towards a wonderful release”.
(Vol. II, 102)

But the poet had to go through a period of loneliness and travail before he attained his release or liberation.

“What solitary cleansing hour is this
Of what eternal rapture, gripping earth
Which must, perforce, suffer dark nemesis
Before the golden spirit can have birth”.
(Vol. I, 13)

It is a loneliness that is refreshing and re-invigorating. It is a loneliness that looks down from the Himalayan heights.

“Ask no questions, let me be alone,
An eagle resting on a lonely peak;
The sea below rolls like an undertone
Of my dark silences that hardly speak”.
(Vol. I, 63)

“My heart is in a home-returning mood
Not any home builded of any brick and mud
But the great home of deathless solitude
Builded out of the rhythms of my blood”
(Vol. I, 64)

I move amidst a world of men and stones
Alone!
(Vol. II, 102)

“I bear a paradisal undertone
In thought and movements, flowing like a stream
All suddenly, I seem to be alone
Bearing the burden of an inner dream”.
(Vol. II, 115)

“I have so many lonely lifetimes”.                       (Vol. 4, 363)

“Now in this crowded hour I seem alone”.         (Vol. 5, 482)

Loneliness is the key-note of the above-quoted passages. It is not the crowded loneliness of the urban residents whose bodies jostle but minds feel forlorn. The poet’s loneliness has a spiritual touch. He is never less alone than when he is alone!

The poet gives a symbolic and metaphorical description of his spiritual journey:

“Calm is the ocean, blue and meaningful
The boat hath definitely now set sail
perhaps on its last voyage”.

Calmness of the mind develops into “stillness” and “silence” of the spirit. The stirrings of the mind need to be quietened. As Tagore said: “If intellect alone were sufficient, Bacon would have been honest and Napoleon just”.

Harin continues:

“The mind is the most mean of human masks
It shall not tempt me any more to trust”             (Vol. I, 66)
“For mind is after all a monkey-man
Gaudily turbaned with his monkey thought”.       (Vol. III, 257)
“And it is no use thinking with the mind
To understand Thy principles aright”.                 (Vol. III, 272)

In the pursuit of truth and the spiritual goal, the heart assumes greater importance than the mind. The mind is probing and questioning. The logician “peeps and botanizes over his mother’s grave”. The heart, on the other hand, watches, listens and remains receptive. Therefore the poet rates it hi her than the mind in his scale of mystical judgement. The scales can be tracked and tilted by the mind. As Jaimini said, reason (logic) is a lawyer who thinks that every case is arguable. It will prove anything we wish. For every argument it can find a counter argument. What we need is “insight” (not outsight) which makes us grasp at once the essential from the irrelevant, the eternal out of the temporary and the whole out of the part.

“Fie on all science, fie upon all art
That does not help to make this human heart
A home for you who are the total sum
Of wisdom and of knowledge and of Light.”
(Vol. V, 476)

“Let me not with pride of intellect
Grow completely inane with drunkenness”.
(Vol. V, 461)

When the heart wells up with divine love and is brimful with the presence of the Mother and “Consciousness”, words are weak and expression fails. The seeker is reduced to silence which is more eloquent than song. When song turns inward, it becomes “silence.” Like a veritable maestro who plays variations upon a musical note, the poet produces infinite shades of meaning from this word “Silence”:

“In this wide universe, I am alone
With thee, O’ Silence!”                                     (Vol. III, 237)

“Home, to Thy silence, I return at last
And there in calm exceeding rapture.”               (Vol. Ill, 295)

“A spirit whom no shadow ever haunts
A silence which no tempest ever daunts.”          (Vol. III, 298)

“I am the silence behind lilting birds
I am the silence behind poet’s words
I am the silence behind thunder-breaks
I am the silence that for ever wakes.”                (Vol. V, 432)

“There burns a marvellous silence in the breast”
(Vol. V, 433)

“In moments when I turn away from rhyme
A rhythmic silence starts from my breast.”         (Vol. V, 457)

Harindranath is more mystical than metaphorical, more romantic than religious, more individualistic than traditional and as much of an aesthetic as a spiritualist. There is himself in every word of his utterance. Let us see how he has depicted the changes in his attitude towards life as he journeyed along like a passionate pilgrim – a tireless traveller. Seeking to transform “the lingering hungers of the dust”, life must prepare to meet immortal life. “The beggar must prepare to accept the Crown.” In his own words, he is in a state of wide awake-fulness, asleep within a sleep forever wide awake.” Only a person who has actually experienced this state of restful alertness and God-intoxication can understand the poet’s lines wrapped in mysticism. It gives him invincible faith and inextinguishable hope:

“Though winds blow chill and loud
and might be black
My lantern burns with such a
steady flame ....”                                               (Vol. II, 111)

“My faith is like a ship that sails along
The roughest sea which rises, roars and raves
For it is builded very very strong
And understands the working of the waves.”

This passage oozing faith and optimism may be contrasted with what he said in his earlier poem:

“I know not where I am being driven
This barque of mine is very frail”.

He deplores the fact that this earth is inhabited by “songless souls”. However, he takes comfort in realising. He possesses a sensitive and singing soul:

“My soul keeps ever soaring like a bird
Above the crawling mists of time and change.”
(Vol. II, 119)

“Resting a little in the silent inn
Of meditation through the midnight hours
Another journey, we shall both begin.”

This must be a reference to his fellow-traveller and co-pilgrim, whom he calls “Comrade.” He made a brilliant discovery which he is prepared to disclose to his companion

“I have discovered new and sudden ways
Of inner life which is a mighty thing.”

He has understood the true value of self-surrender.

“Surrender has no suffering or care
It is a light that has never cast a shade”.             (Vol. III, 207)

“O God! it is so good to be alive
These days of sacred miracles that press
Everywhere. My God! do not deprive
Any of us of the rare consciousness”.                (Vol. IV, 327)

After all the difficulties and obstacles of life, he attains peace – peace “that passeth all understanding”.

“A giant reticence begins to come into
my life; ecstatic and sublime”.                            (Vol. IV, 363)

“This sense of kindled buoyancy foretells
A final liberation from the flesh”.                        (Vol. IV, 370)

“Great heights are calling me to greater heights”.

The Mother herself calls him. This is indeed a climactic experience.

“Thou callest me towards the Light of Lights
Thou callest, “Come” and I reply, “I come”.
The chains are truly fallen now,
One after one, in rapid wonderment.
I stand, each hand stretched like a quiet bough
Expectant of the beautiful descent”.                   (Vol. IV, 375)

He hails Her “I am your garden, queen, walk into me”.

Poetry with Mysticism and Advaitism

Writing about his poetry Sri Aurobindo said: “There is a ground in it of Hindu Vedantic thought and feeling ... It will be found repeatedly elsewhere and runs through the whole as undercurrent, but the mould of the thought, the colour and tissue of feeling betray a Muslim, a Persian, a Sufi influence ..” Something of the union of the two cultures is visible in all his poems including the sonnets.

The truth of Sri Aurobindo’s appraisal of Harindranath’s poetry is illustrated in the following passages which combine mysticism with Advaitism, and spiritualise what appears to be sensuality or eroticism on the surface:

“Our eyes met and the universe was last.”          (Vol. I, 93)

“Beautiful Comrade, hand in hand we go.”         (Vol. II, 122)
“Behind the veil of me there is a Me
Dwelling in intimatest touch with Thee.”             (Vol. II, 159)

“For everything I do or dream or say
There is a secret mystic counterpart.”                (Vol. II, 161)

“What was I but a silent thing of death
Until Thou didst accept me as Thy flute?”          (Vol. II, 175)

“Thou art the essence of all beauty, and
I am a hollow cup receiving Thee”.                    (Vol. II, 193)

“For human life to grow a perfect whole,
Body and soul must in perfection meet
Since body is the bride-groom of the soul. (382)
And there are certain moments when I do
Forget that I am I, and feel that I am you.” (391)

When the mood, the moment and the word coalesce, Harin writes wonderful verse:

“Behold! the hour is wonderful and ripe
Fire-blooms are breaking out of drowsy mind”. (449)

HIS MESSAGE

When the mood of philosophising, one of his rare moments, is upon him, he strikes the right note. Without consciously stepping into the role of a preacher he delivers the message:

“Brief are both human joy and human sorrow
What seems unbearable tragedy today
Becomes a hollow memory tomorrow.”

“Desires are birds of passage dusky-fired
Which for a moment, loom like interference
In the soul’s spaces – but they soon grow tired
A deeper light follows their disapperance.”
(Vol. I, 68)

“To all my brother-travellers, farewell
In separate forms, for now the time draws nigh
When in a single God-light we shall dwell.” (500)

Messages like this come from no printed page but from the book of life. All religions belonged to Harindranath. His poetry is not circumscribed by the sectarian touch. At 90 he wrote in the same strain, never reminiscing but looking forward. His mind was on things to come. His goal was “To Be, not to Have.” He uncorked the bottle of perfume hidden in his heart and sprinkled the contents over all those who came his way. His pen was free to stir men’s hearts and touch their souls in every corner of the earth. Struggle for human brotherhood was still more absorbing to his mind, although it would long remain unwon. There sat forever in his heart the “unfaltering angel of the dawn.” His intense patriotism was happily blended with world humanism. He belongs little less to his country than to the world.