topics: |  essays

A good selection from the extensive body of Tagore's English work, see
Sisir K. Das, ed, English Writings of Tagore v.3 for a comprehensive
collection.

The essay "What is Art?" is particularly interesting, converting the
economic notion of surplus to human creative endeavour.

Civilization and Progress p.42

[lecture delivered in China, 1924]

The word ‘civilization’ being a European word, we have hardly yet
taken the trouble to find out its real meaning. For over a century we
have accepted it, as we may accept a gift horse, with perfect trust,
never caring to count its teeth. Only very lately, we have begun to
wonder if we realize in its truth what the Western people mean when
they speak of civilization. We ask ourselves, ‘Has it the same
meaning as some word in our own language which denotes for us the
idea of human perfection?’

Civilization cannot merely be a growing totality of happenings
that by chance have assumed a particular shape and tendency which we
consider to be excellent. It must be the expression of some guiding
moral force which we have evolved in our society for the object of
attaining perfection. The word ‘perfection’ has a simple and definite
meaning when applied to an inanimate thing, or even to a creature
whose life has principally a biological significance. But man being
complex and always on the path of transcending himself, the meaning
of the word ‘perfection’, as applied to him, cannot be crystallized
into an inflexible idea. This has made it possible for different
races to have different shades of definition for this term.

The Sanskrit word dharma is the nearest synonym in our own
language that occurs to me for the word civilization. The specific
meaning of dharma is that principle which holds us firm together and
leads us to our best welfare. The general meaning of this word is the
essential quality of a thing.

Progress in the West

We have for over a century been dragged by the prosperous West
behind its chariot, choked by the dust, deafened by the noise,
humbled by our own helplessness, and overwhelmed by the speed. We
agreed to acknowledge that this chariot-drive was progress, and that
progress was civilization. If we ever ventured to ask, ‘Progress
towards what, and progress for whom,’ it was considered to be
peculiarly and ridiculously oriental to entertain such doubts about
the absoluteness of progress.

Progress, Hospitality and Humanity: Afghanistan

Lately I read a paragraph in the Nation — the American weekly
which is more frank than prudent in its espousal of truth —
discussing the bombing of the Mahsud villages in Afghanistan by some
British airmen. The incident commented upon by this paper happened
when ‘one of the bombing planes made a forced landing in the middle
of a Mahsud village,’ and when ‘the airmen emerged unhurt from the
wreckage only to face a committee of five or six old women, who had
happened to escape the bombs, brandishing dangerous-looking knives.’

The editor quotes from the London Times which runs thus:

	‘A delightful damsel took the airmen under her wing and led them to a
	cave close by, and a malik (chieftain) took up his position at the
	entrance, keeping off the crowd of forty who had gathered around,
	shouting and waving knives. Bombs were still being dropped from the
	air, so the crowd, envious of the security of the cave, pressed in
	stiflingly, and the airmen pushed their way out in the teeth of the
	hostile demonstration...

	They were fed and were visited by neighbouring maliks, who were most
	friendly, and by a mullah (priest), who was equally pleasant. Woman
	looked after the feeding arrangements, and supplies from Ladha and
	Razmak arrived safely… On the evening of the twenty-fourth they were
	escorted to Ladha, where they arrived at daybreak the next day. The
	escort disguised their captives as Mahsuds as a precaution against
	attack… It is significant that the airmen’s defenders were first
	found in the younger generation of both sexes.’

In the above narrative the fact comes out strongly that the West
has made wonderful progress. She has opened her path across the
ethereal region of the earth; the explosive force of the bomb has
developed its mechanical power of wholesale destruction to a degree
that could be represented in the past only by the personal valour of
a large number of men. But such enormous progress has made Man
diminutive. He proudly imagines that he expresses himself when he
displays the things that he produces and the power that he holds in
his hands. The bigness of the results and the mechanical perfection
of the apparatus hide from him the fact that the Man in him has been
smothered.

The measure of civilization: Bombs or Humanity?

Those people who went to bomb the Mahsud villages measured their
civilization by the perfect effectiveness of their instruments which
were their latest scientific toys. So strongly do they realize the
value of these things that they are ready to tax to the utmost limit
of endurance their own people, as well as those others who may
occasionally have the chance to taste in their own persons the deadly
perfection of these machines. This tax does not merely, consist in
money but in humanity. These people put the birth-rate of the toy
against the death-rate of man; and they seem happy. Their science
makes their prodigious success so utterly cheap on the material side,
that they do not care to count the cost which their spirit has to
bear.

On the other hand, those Mahsuds that protected the airmen — who
had come to kill them — were primitively crude in their possession of
life’s toys. But they showed the utmost carefulness in proving the
human truth through which they could express their personality. From
the so-called Nordic point of view, the point of view of the would-be
rulers of men, this was foolish.

According to a Mahsud, hospitality is a quality by which he is
known as a man and therefore he cannot afford to miss his
opportunity, even when dealing with someone who can be systematically
relentless in enmity. From the practical point of view, the Mahsud
pays for this very dearly, as we must always pay for that which we
hold most valuable. It is the mission of civilization to set for us
the right standard of valuation. The Mahsud may have many faults for
which he should be held accountable; but that, which has imparted for
him more value to hospitality than to revenge, may not be called
progress, but is certainly civilization.

We can imagine some awful experiment in creation that began at
the tail end and abruptly stopped when the stomach was finished. The
creature’s power of digestion is perfect, so it goes on growing
stout, but the result is not beautiful. At the beginning of the late
war, when monstrosities of this description appeared in various
forms, Western humanity shrank for a moment at the sight. But now she
seems to admire them, for they are fondly added to other broods of
ugliness in her nursery.

Progress, Hospitality and Humanity: Indian village

Once there was an occasion for me to motor down to Calcutta from
a place a hundred miles away. Something wrong with the mechanism made
it necessary for us to have a repeated supply of water almost every
half an hour. At the first village where we were compelled to stop,
we asked the help of a man to find water for us. It proved quite a
task for him, but when we offered him his reward, poor though he was,
he refused to accept it. In fifteen other villages the same thing
happened. In a hot country where travelers constantly need water, and
where the water supply grows scanty in summer, the villagers consider
it their duty to offer water to those who need it. They could easily
make a business out of it, following the inexorable law of demand and
supply. But the ideal which they consider to be their dharma has
become one with their life. To ask them to sell it is like asking
them to sell their life. They do not claim any personal merit for
possessing it.

--
aggressive like a telegraph pole that pokes our attention with its
hugely long finger

--

Lao-tze said: Those who have virtue attend to their obligations;
those who have no virtue attend to their claims. In this saying he
has expressed in a few words what I have tried to explain in this
paper. Progress which is not related to an inner ideal, but to an
attraction which is external, seeks to satisfy our endless
claims. But civilization which is an ideal gives us power and joy to
fulfil our obligations.

Production, Power: Strength is the companion of death

About the stiffening of life and hardening of heart caused by the
organization of power and production, he says with profound truth:
The grass as well as the trees, while they live, are tender and
supple; when they die they are rigid and dry. Thus the hard and the
strong are the companions of death. The tender and the delicate are
the companions of life. Therefore, he who in arms is strong will not
conquer. The strong and the great stay below. The tender and the
delicate stay above.

Our sage in India says, as I have quoted before: By the help of
anti-dharma men prosper, they find what they desire, they conquer
enemies, but they perish at the root.

Construction Versus Creation 59

What is Art?

(p.77, also in collected Prose v.2: essays)

[These excerpts constitute a precis...]

One of [our relations to the world] is the necessity we have to live, to till
the soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get materials from nature.
We are always making things that will satisfy our need, and we come in touch
with Nature in our efforts to meet these needs.  Thus we are always in touch
with this great world through hunger and thirst and all our physical needs.

Then we have our mind; and mind seeks its own food.  Mind has its
necessity also.  It must find out reason in things.  It is faced with
a multiplicity of facts, and is bewildered when it cannot find one
unifying principle which simplifies the heterogeneity of things.
Man's constitution is such that he must not only find facts, but also
some laws which will lighten the burden of mere number and quantity.

There is yet another man in me, not the physical, but the personal
man; which has its likes and dislikes, and wants to find something to
fulfill its needs of love.  This personal man is found in the region
where we are free from all necessity, -- above the needs, both of the
body and mind, -- above the expedient and useful.  It is the highest
in man, -- this personal man.  And it has personal relations of its
own with the great world, and comes to it for something to satisfy
personality.

The world of science is not a world of reality, it is an abstract world
of force.  We can use it by the help of our intellect but cannot
realize it by the help of our personality.  It is like a swarm of
mechanics who though producing things for ourselves as personal
beings, are mere shadows to us.

But there is another world which is real to us.  We see it, feel it;
we deal with it with all our emotions.  Its mystery is endless because
we cannot analyse it or measure it.  We can but say, "Here you are."

This is the world from which Science turns away and in which Art takes
its place. And if we can answer the question as to what art is, we
shall know what this world is with which art has such intimate
relationship.

It is not an important question, as it stands.  For Art, like life itself,
has grown by its own impulse, and man has taken his pleasure in it without
definitely knowing what it is.  And we could safely leave it there, in the
subsoil of consciousness, where things that are of life are nourished in the
dark.

when a man tries to thwart himself in his desire for delight, converting
merely into his desire to know, or to do good, then the cause must be that
his power of feeling delight has lost its natural bloom and healthiness.

The rhetorician in old India had no hesitation in saying, that enjoyment is
the soul of literature, -- the enjoyment which is disinterested.  But the
word 'enjoyment' has to be used with caution.  ...

The most important distinction between the animal and man is this, that the
animal is very nearly bound within the limits of its necessities, the greater
part of its activities being necessary for its self-preservation and the
preservation of race.  Like a retail shopkeeper, ... most of its resources
are employed in the mere endeavour to live.

But man, in life's commerce, is a big merchant.  He earns a great deal more
than he is absolutely compelled to spend.  Therefore there is a vast excess
of wealth in man's life, which gives him the freedom to be useless and
irresponsible to a great measure.  There are large outlying tracts,
surrounding his necessities, where he has objects that are ends in
themselves.

The animals must have knowledge, so that their knowledge can be
employed for useful purposes of their life.  But there they stop. ...
Man also must know because he must live.  But man has a surplus where he can
proudly assert that knowledge is for the sake of knowledge.  There he has the
pure enjoyment of his knowledge, because there knowledge is freedom.  Upon
this fund of surplus his science and philosophy thrive.

Then again, there is a certain amount of altruism in the animal.  It
is the altruism of parenthood, the altruism of the herd and the hive.
This altruism is absolutely necessary for race preservation.  But in
man there is a great deal more than this.  Though he also has to be
good, because goodness is necessary for his race, yet he goes far
beyond that.  His goodness is not a small pittance, barely sufficient
for a hand-to-mouth moral existence.  He can amply afford to say that
goodness is for the sake of goodness.  And upon this wealth of
goodness, -- where honesty is not valued for being the best policy,
but because it can afford to go against all policies, -- man's ethics
are founded.

Man has a fund of emotional energy which is not all occupied with his
self-preservation.  This surplus seeks its outlet in the creation of
Art, for man's civilization is built upon its surplus.

A warrior is not merely content with fighting which is needful, but,
by the aid of music and decorations, he must give expression to the
heightened consciousness of the warrior in him, which is not only
unnecessary, but in some cases suicidal.  The man who has a strong
religious feeling not only worships his deity with all care, but his
religious personality craves, for its expression, the splendour of the
temple, the rich ceremonials of worship.

When a feeling is aroused in our hearts which is far in excess of the
amount that can be completely absorbed by the object which has
produced it, it comes back to us and makes us conscious of ourselves
by its return waves.  When we are in poverty, all our attention is
fixed outside us, -- upon the objects which we must acquire for our
need.

Our emotions are the gastric hiuces which transform this world of
appearance into the more intimate world of sentiments. ...

It is said in the Upanishad, that
	Wealth is dear to us, not because we desire the
	fact of the wealth itself, but because we desire ourselves.

There is the world of science, from which the elements of personality
have been carefully removed.  We must not touch it with our feelings.

Man's energies [are] running along two parallel lines, -- that of utility
and of self-expression.

How utility and sentiment take different lines in their expression can
be seen in the dress of a man compared with that of a woman.  A man's
dress, as a rule, shuns all that is unnecessary and merely decorative.
But a woman has naturally selected the decorative, not only in her
dress, but in her manners. She has to be picturesque and musical to
make manifest what she truly is, because, in her position in the
world, woman is more concrete and personal than man.  She is not to be
judged merely by her usefulness, but by her delightfulness.  Therefore
she takes infinite care in expressing, not her profession, but her
personality.

[There is a] confustion in our thought that the object of art is the
prduction of beauty; whereas beauty in art has been the mere instrument and
not its complete and ultimate significance.
... the true principle of art is the principle of unity.

When we want to know the food-value of certain of our diets, we find [it] in
their component parts; but its taste-value is in its unity, which cannot be
analysed.

... poetry tries to select words that have vital qualities, -- words
that are not for mere information, but have beome naturalized in our
hearts and have not been worn out of their shapes by too constant use
in the market.
     For instance, the Englsih word 'conciousness' has not yet outgrown the
     cocoon stage of its scholastic insertia, therefore it is seldom used in
     poetry; whereas its Indian synonym 'chetana' is a vital word and is of
     constant poetical use.
On the other hand the English word 'feeling' is fluid with life, but its
Bengali synonym 'anubhuti' is refused in poetry, because it merely has a
meaning and no flavour.  And likewise there are some truths, coming fom
science and philosophy, which have acquired life's colour and taste, and some
which have not.  Until they have done this, they are, for art, like uncooked
[food, not suitable].

The world and the personal man are face to face, like friends who
question one another and exchange their inner secrets.  The world asks
the inner man, -- 'Friend, have you seen me?  Do you love me? -- not
as one who provides you with foods and fruits, not as one whose laws
you have found out, but as one who is personal, individual?'

The artist's answer is 'Yes, I have seen you.  I have loved and known
you, -- not that I have any need of you, not that I have taken you and
used yourlaws for my own purposes of power.  I know the forces that act
and drive and lead to power, but it is not that.  I see you, where you
are what I am.'

	If you ask me to draw a tree and I am not artist, I try to copy every
	detail, lest I should otherwise lose the peculiarity of the tree,
	forgetting that the peculiarity is not the personality.  But when the
	true artist comes, he overlooks all the details and gets into the
	essential characterization.

But the artist finds out the unique, the individual, which yet is in
the heart of the universal.

The greatness and beauty of Oriental art, especially in Japan and in
China, consist in this, that there the artists have seen this soul of
things and they believe in it.  The West may believe in the soul of
Man, but she does not really believe that the universe has a
soul. Yet this is the belief of the East, and the whole mental
contribution of the East to mankind is filled with this idea.  So, we,
in the East need not go into the details and emphasize them; for the
most important thing is this universal soul, for which the Eastern
sages have sat in meditation, and Eastern artists have joined them in
artistic realization. ...

Woman has realized the mystery of life in her child more intimately
than man.  She has known it to be infinite, not through any reasoning
process, but through the illumination of her feeling.

a song of an Indian poet who was born in the fifteenth century:

    There fall the rhythmic beat of life and death:
    Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light.
    There the unstruck music is sounded; it is the love music of three
    	    	worlds.
    There millions of lamps of sun and moon are burning;
    There the drum beats and the lover swings in play,
    There love songs resound, and light rains in showers.

[Is this better:	   ... moon are alight;
There the drum beats and the lover eases into dance ...]

Take, for instance, our delight in eating.  It is soon exhausted, it
gives no indication of the infinite.  Therefore, though in its
extensiveness it is more universal than any other passion, it is
rejected by art.

This building of man's true world, -- the living world of truth and
beauty, -- is the function of Art.

Man is true, where he feels his infinity, where he is divine, and the
divine is the creator in him. ...

'Hearken in me, ye children of the Immortal, dwellers of the heavenly
worlds.  I have known the Supreme Person who comes as light from the
dark beyond.'
   [shr.nvantu vishve amr.tasya putrA
    Aye dhAmAni divyANI itastahu
   vedahametaM purushaM mahAntaM
   AdityavaraNaM tamasa parAstAt
   tvameva viditvA mrityumeti
   nAnyaha panthA vidyate ayanAya]

[In Creative Unity, p. 536, he revises this as:
    "Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, who dwell in the Kingdom of
    Heaven.  I have known, from beyond darkness, the Supreme Person, shining
    with the radiance of the sun."  which is definitely weaker in its attempt
    to pander to the biblical sensibility of the West.  ]

So we find that our world does not coincide with the world of facts,
because personality surpasses facts on every side.  It is conscious of
its infinity and creates from its aundance; and because, in art,
things are challenged from the standpoint of the immortal Person,
those which are important in our customary life of facts become unreal
when placed on the pedestal of art.  ...

In these large tracts of nebulousness Art is creating its stars, --
starts that are definite in their forms but infinite in their
peronality.  Art is calling us the 'children of the immortal,' and
proclaiming our right to dwell in the heavenly worlds.

In Art the person in us is sending its answers to the Supreme Person,
who reveals Himself to us in a world of endless beauty across the
lightless world of facts.

Contents

My Life 1
My School 18
Civilization and Progress 42
Construction Versus Creation 59
What is Art ? 77
Nationalism in India 101
International Relations 122
The Voice of Humanity 137
The Realization of the Infinite 148

v.3 :
Tagore, Rabindranath; Sisir Kumar Das; Sahitya Akademi;
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: A Miscellany
Sahitya Akademi, 1996, 1020 pages
ISBN 8126000945, 9788126000944