Category: nature

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“There is an irresistible force shaping the course of the world fighting and conquering mechanism”: Rabindranath Tagore

It is significant that the poet believes that in the heart of mechanism there is installed a power that can emancipate us from mechanism. He has compared mechanism to a tired mountain. There is a trepidation within, a slowly moving process of disintegration, as a result of which the gigantic mountain will gradually crumble down and slip into the valley. This is how Personality will re-assert itself. Mechanism, therefore, is a temporary eclipse of Personality and will disappear before the incoming tide of Personality.

The parallelism here between the poet’s thought and that of Bergson is remarkable. Bergson believes that it is when the Life-force suffers a check that mechanism makes its appearance. Mechanism, however, disappears again with the restoration of the Life-force. It, therefore, represents only a temporary slowing down or retardation of the Vital Urge. […]

It is in this faith in the ultimate triumph of Personality that the mysticism of Rabindranath lies. The central idea of this mysticism which runs through the plays, Post Office, King of the Dark Chamber, Cycle of Spring, Waterfall and Red Oleanders is that there is an irresistible force shaping the course of the world fighting and conquering mechanism. To the rule of law, which apparently seems to be the last word of Science, there is opposed a force which, though invisible, is gigantic. This force is the force of Personality. Science tries to crush it, but it refuses to be crushed.

RABINDRANATH AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PERSONALITY by SISIR KUMAR MAITRA in The Golden book of Tagore: a homage to Rabindranath Tagore from India and the world in celebration of his seventieth birthday, p. 145

~~~

The truth Tagore so clearly expresses to-day is one that some Westerners have proclaimed but which transcends all distinctions between East and West because it is a truth about man as man. Let me now select but one aspect of it for emphatic mention. Tagore speaks of an “inner faculty” of our own, which helps us to find our relationship with the supreme self of man; elsewhere he calls this”an inner source of divine wisdom,” or an “inborn criterion of the real.” This is, of course, closely related to the keen sensitiveness which he tells us characterized his mind from infancy. He is occasionally made intensely conscious of an all-pervading personality “answering to the personality of man.” The experience of this inborn criterion is not unlike the “intimate feeling a father has for his son,” in which he “touches an ultimate truth,” the truth of their relationship.

THE INBORN CRITERION by HAROLD E. B. SPEIGHT in The Golden book of Tagore: a homage to Rabindranath Tagore from India and the world in celebration of his seventieth birthday, p. 246

The Golden book of Tagore: A homage to Rabindranath Tagore from India and the world in celebration of his seventieth birthday | View or download the full version (PDF, 31 MB) | Alternative searchable edition >>

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How prehistoric societies were transformed by the sound of music

Amidst lively debates within and beyond India, 1 these perspectives on our shared legacy make interesting reading:

  • Savithri Rajan who believed that Tyagaraja, like these other great men, was always meditating, but his medium of expression was nādam, “sound”. 2
  • In the introduction to his unfinished yet voluminous magnum opus Karunamirtha Sagaram, titled “The dignity and Origin of music”, Abraham Pandither 3 entices readers to embark on a virtual journey through time and space; a discovery of nature that for him would have gone hand in hand with musical evolution if not advanced civilization itself.
  • A summary of findings by archaeologists titled “How prehistoric societies were transformed by the sound of music“. 4

Learn more

Read excerpts from Abraham Pandither’s work (Karunamirtha Sagaram, 1918 ed., pp. 4-5)

The devotees who worshiped the deity in such a manner, found Him, according to the several conceptions, either as a King, or as a parent, or as a Guru, or as a timely helper, or as one who relieved them from all difficulties, or as a loving son, or is the loving bride-groom, and gave vent to the feelings in singing His praises; some worshipped by prostrating themselves before Him; some prayed to Him to deliver them from all their troubles; some prayed for the gift of obtaining whatever they desired; some bewailed their fate owing to separation from the deity; some, who realized His presence in themselves, danced for joy; many who desired His presence sent messengers for enquiry; others, filled with love, praised Him fervently. They described His several virtues and told the others about them by means of verse. They deplored their own unworthiness; conscious of their own faults, they implored pardon; some, owing to intense love, were so taken up with the contemplation of His image that they completely forgot this world and their food. […] 

p. 5 

In the same manner, little children, playing in the streets, rolled the leaves of the Poovarasu tree [“Indian tulip” or “umbrella tree”], made the kind of reed out of the thinner end and produced music by blowing through it finding that the sound was in proportion to the size and the mouthpiece, they played together three or four such reeds and felt elated when they found a certain kind of harmony existing between them. Then they may reeds out of the stems of the leaves of the pumpkin and attached rolled up leaves to them and were delighted to find that the sound was either dull of bright in proportion to the length of the rolled up leaves. Of these, those those who had a special ear for Music when they advanced in age, made reeds of horns, conches and bamboo, and later on of wood, gold, silver and brass of various shapes. In the same way, they made progress in stringed instruments. They found that Music could be produced by tying the bent ends of a stick together, either by a rope or a string. They proceeded to bend big bamboos in the form of a bow by means of leather thongs, tied bells to them to keep time, and sang those particular songs used on the occasions of using  bows. Finding by that strings, either metallic or of catgut, sound better when passing through the medium of a vessel full of air or a box or a dried Sorakkai [bottle gourd] with its contents scooped out, made instruments like the […], adjusted the strings to suit their voices and send the praises of the deity. […] From these beginnings, music with its new with its few fundamental rules, is making progress. 

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Art © Arun VC
  1. increasingly so pertaining to religious (or caste) affiliation, ownership or cultural appropriation[↩]
  2. “Savithri Rajan believes that Tyagaraja, like these other great men, was always meditating, but his medium of expression was nādam, ‘sound’ – he was an aspirant who followed nādopāsana, the approach or worship by way of sound. She points out that Tyagaraja composed a song beginning with the word nādopāsana saying there is nothing higher than worship via sound, music is the best vehicle because Brahman is nādam – divine sound – which is the omnipresent, omniscient power, ‘call it Power with a capital ‘P’, call it God, call it Christ, call it Krsna, call it Rāma.'” – Excerpt from: Tyagaraja and the Renewal of Tradition: Translations and Reflections by William Jackson (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1994), pp. 174-175
    https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/878687716
    A longer excerpt titled “The greatest, most beautiful thing is compassion expressed through music” is found here:
    https://www.carnaticstudent.org/audio-dedication-to-her-guru-veena-dhanammal-by-savithri-rajan[↩]
  3. “Abraham Pandithar (1859-1919) was a Renaissance Man whose achievements, whether in traditional medicine, education, music, agriculture or photography, simply defy easy definition.” – Learn more: https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/The-Renaissance-Man-of-Thanjavur/article17008238.ece[↩]
  4. Frontline Magazine & Deutsche Welle on 20 June 2023, Learn more: https://frontline.thehindu.com/news/explained-how-prehistoric-societies-were-transformed-by-the-sound-of-music-archaeology-findings-israel/article66989021.ece[↩]
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Rabindranath Tagore on new creations: a fundamental human need

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

“It is not the distinctive quality of man to be a mere repetition of his ancestors. Animals cling to the nests of their effete habits; man expresses himself age after age in new creations.”– Rabindranath Tagore in 1931 1

More on and by Rabindranath Tagore >>

Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >>
The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).

“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.”2

  1. Tagore on Gandhi, New Delhi 2008, p. 31[↩]
  2. Sunil Khilnani quoted in a review by William Dalrymple in The Guardian, 14 March 2016[↩]
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True happiness according to Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

“True happiness is not at all expensive. It depends upon that natural spring of beauty and of life, harmony of relationship. Ambition pursues its own path of self-seeking by breaking this bond of harmony, digging gaps, creating dissension. Selfish ambition feels no hesitation in trampling under foot the whole harvest field, which is for all, in order to snatch away in haste that portion which it craves. Being wasteful it remains disruptive of social life and the greatest enemy of civilization.” | Read the full lecture >>

Source: Rabindranath Tagore in “Robbery of the soil” (Calcutta University, 1922), posted by Tony Mitra on a blog “Exploring citizens duty on food security, environmental sustainability, covid and freedom issues” (27 September 2015)
https://www.tonu.org/tag/robbery-of-the-soil/
Date visited: 12 January 2021

Worldcat lists compiled by Ludwig Pesch

Carnatic (South Indian classical) music 

Rabindranath Tagore: works by and about the influential writer, humanist and social reformer

Indian performing arts

History 

Publications, book chapters and articles by Ludwig Pesch