Two Tagore Essays

III TWO ESSAYS FROM SANGIT CHINTA Two Tagore Essays: “Inner and Outer” and “Music” Translated and introduced by MATTHEW PRITCHARD 2012 marked the close of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations: an appropriate time to mention two recent book-length publications on Tagore as a musician and the tradition of Rabindrasangit, Reba Som’s accessible biography Rabindranath Tagore: The singer and his song (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009), and the ethnomusicologist Lars-Christian Koch’s formidable 500-page monograph in German on the changes in Rabindrasangit performance over the twentieth century, My Heart Sings: Die Lieder Rabindranath Tagores zwischen Tradition und Moderne (Münster: LIT, 2012). Both help in different ways to illuminate the aesthetics of Tagore’s music for the non-Bengali reader (and listener). Som does so by concentrating on the genesis of the songs, Koch by investigating their performance and dissemination. Yet perhaps the most fascinating source of information on Tagorean musical aesthetics is the volume of Tagore’s own writings on music, Sangit Chinta, frequently reprinted in Bengali by Visva-Bharati university press but so far not translated into English. Although valuable summaries of the volume’s contents have been offered in the pages of this journal, in particular by Prof. Sitansu Ray,1 many further insights could, I believe, be gained from a complete translation. The two translated essays here are small steps toward that goal. Tagore wrote both essays just over a century ago, in 1912, a year that marks a turningpoint in his overt attitude both to Western music and to musical aesthetics generally.2 The change is made explicit in Tagore’s short “Essay on song” (Gaan samvandhe prabandha), written in April that year, in which he rejects the emotional realist aesthetic attitude expressed in “Music and feeling”, the text of his very first lecture, delivered at the Calcutta Medical College in 1881. In that lecture, the twenty-year-old Tagore, still fresh from sympathetic experiences Sangeet Natak Vol. XLVI, Nos. 1–4, 2012 208 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD of Western music in England and the excitement of composing his opera Valmiki Pratibha, had argued the need for more forceful expressivity and greater liveliness in Indian music in order to capture the dramatic changeability of human emotion. If the emotional character of a song’s text were to undergo transformation, then the emotion of its melody should change along with it. In the first short essay of 1912, Tagore recalls the content and circumstances of the lecture, before revoking its main tenets: But today I must confess that the opinion I expressed so boldly then was not right. The art of music has its own nature and its own task . . . Music has great riches of its own: why should it be a slave to language? Where language ceases, there music begins. In the indescribable lies the power of music. Music says what language cannot. For this reason, the less a song is disturbed by the words in its text, the better. The words of Hindustani songs are usually so trifling that the tune can easily pass over them and make its own appeal.3 As that quotation makes evident, Tagore’s aesthetic change of heart was bound up with a change in musical sympathies—in particular, a greater appreciation for the particular beauty embodied in Hindustani classical music, and a cooling (though not a complete closing-off) towards Western music. Rather than trying to transform Indian music along Western-derived lines, Tagore began to theorize the differences between East and West. Whereas emotional flexibility and forcefulness had been the musical watchwords of his youth, now Tagore sought out stability, restraint, and inwardness. The emotion of Indian music was something not as wholly human as that of European music, something more beholden to Nature. As he put it in one of the characteristic, deeply poetic metaphors of which these essays are full: “In European music man has lit the lamps of his own dwelling, of his festivals—chandeliers and lanterns of many colours. Into our music there falls the light of the moon far off on the horizon” (“Music”, p. 33). From contemplation of such aesthetic differences Tagore passes on to reflections on the social organization and cultivation of music in India and Europe, a theme continued in the essay “The Golden Wand” (Sonâr kâthi) of 1915. The two following essays, “Inner and outer” and “Music”, elaborate Tagore’s new view of music, weaving in fascinating descriptions of his own encounters with Western music on board ship from India to Europe in June and at the Crystal Palace Handel Festival in London later the same month. TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 209 INNER AND OUTER [ANTAR-BÀHIR]4 O n waking at dawn today in my cabin on board ship, from my bed I could see through the porthole the waves on the ocean, blown by a westerly breeze. As I listened to their lapping it seemed as though music were drifting up from some invisible instrument. The sound of that music was not powerful like the rumble of thunder, it was deep and slow; but just as the weighty tones of the mridanga are overflowed by a long-drawn-out melody on a single violin string that carries its sound within our hearts, so the unceasing flow of that deep, slow melody swelled up till it seemed to fill the secret centre of the morning heavens. What happened to it then?—The melody I was hearing in my mind I began to try and bring to my lips. But such an attempt could bring nothing but mischief, for through it the peace of that great melody was destroyed; and so I fell silent. A thought occurred to me—the song that was sounded on the strings of my mind by the morning ocean was not an echo of the sound of the breeze and the lapping of the waves. It could not in any manner be termed an imitation of the sound of the wind and water. It was something quite separate—it was a song, in which the strains of melody, like the petals of a flower, were being slowly unfolded, one by one, layer by layer. But then I thought—it is not really separate at all; it is the innermost reverberation of the sea’s great welling-up of sound; it rises and fills the air like the sweet-smelling incense smoke filtering out from the temple priest’s censer. What is exhaled with the ocean’s every breath is outwardly sound, but inwardly it is music. There is a relationship between inner and outer, certainly; but that relationship is not one of similarity—it can rather be seen as one of complete disparity. The two correspond, but no chance presents itself anywhere to seize the point of correspondence: it is something ineffable, not something directly provable. Our eyes are struck by certain vibrations and in our minds we see light; some substance touches our body and our consciousness awakens to beauty; externally some event occurs and inwardly we feel ripples of pleasure or of pain. The one has dimensions, it can be measured and analyzed; the other has no dimensions, and is indivisible. Seen from without, how many sounds, scents and touches, how many momentary thoughts and sensations there are in what I understand by “I”; and yet the thing within all this that manifests itself in its entirety—that is I, and not merely the reflection of an external form. Rather it is precisely by means of this contrast that a person comes into being [as such]. It is toward the manifestation of this wondrous inner essence of the world’s form that the eager endeavours of master artists and musicians are directed. Hence their attempts will never be successful through the use of imitation. Often through the illusions of habit an inertia will overcome our perceptions; and then we see only what is directly visible. When visible forms introduce themselves to us as ultimate [truths], then by accepting such an inert representation we make it impossible for it to awaken our [higher] consciousness. 210 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD Then we may come and go and work in the world, but we do not take in and comprehend the world consciously. The reason is that the proper object of our higher consciousness is the wondrous inner essence of this world. The task of poets and master musicians is to throw off the veil of habit and reveal the wonder that lies behind it. Thus by not imitating the familiar forms of things, artists shake the foundations of habit. By introducing one form within another they reject the original’s claim to finality. They make the visible stand in place of the audible, and the audible in place of the visible, transforming all things. In this way they make us see that the mundane forms of things are not a fixed truth, but an allegory; if we can penetrate their [symbolic] essence then we will be free from their ties, then we will find liberation in joy. Our master musicians compose melodies in Bhairav and Todi and call them morning songs. But do we see in them any imitation of the various sounds of the freshly awakening world during the morning? Not at all. Then what was the sense in calling Bhairav and Todi morning ragas? The sense is this—the musicians make us hear within our hearts the inner music of the morning, of its sounds and its silence alike. If one were to attempt to make this music fit some external aspect of morning, the attempt would be in vain. This peculiarity of our country’s music appeals to me greatly. Morning, midday, afternoon, evening, midnight, spring and monsoon ragas have all been composed in our country. Whether all of them will create the right effect on every listener, I do not know. I at least do not inwardly experience Raga Sarang as a midday raga. In any case—that from hour to hour and season to season new ragas are playing in the secret music room of the Lord’s private palace, this [knowledge] has penetrated the inner ear of our master musicians. Our Todi and Kanada ragas show us that there is a deep, interior revelation beyond the veil of external appearances. Certainly, the greatest of Europe’s composers have tried to reveal the messages of this interior sphere in one way or another in their music; and if we were equally well-acquainted with their compositions, then there could be discussion of the matter. For the time being, a few thoughts have occurred to me in relation to what little can be heard among the crowds of the common people, outside the doors of the European music societies. There are a few among the passengers on board our ship who like to make music in the evenings. When these concerts occur then I also go along and sit in a corner of the room. It is not that I am drawn by any natural liking for foreign music; but I know very well that effort plays a part if one is to like what is really good. Without effort, what enchants us is often only delusion, and what repels us is what is really sweet. Thus I make a habit of listening to European music. Even when I do not like it I do not lose faith and completely reject it. On this ship are one young man and one or two ladies who perhaps do not sing badly. I note that the listeners show particular appreciation for their singing. On the days that the audience is particularly enthusiastic, many songs will be sung in succession. One song may be in praise of England’s glory, another song the farewell lament of a disappointed TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 211 maiden, another a lover’s invitation to his love. In all of them I find one particular characteristic—at every moment a great effort is made to give emphasis, in both the melody and the singer’s rendition. This emphasis is not a force internal to the music, it is rather an effort coming as it were from outside; an attempt, in other words, to make as clear as possible the rise and fall of the heart’s passions by the inclinations of voice and melody. This is only natural. In keeping with the heart’s outpourings the flow of our vocal melody will sometimes become soft, and at other times powerful. But song is not mimicry of nature; for music and acting are not the same thing. If we make them converge, then the pure unblemished power of music will be overwhelmed. And thus as I sat in the ship’s saloon, listening to [the Europeans’] song, it seemed to me as though they wanted to show emotion by the equivalent of a shove and a poke in the eye. We, however, do not wish to view music so superficially. It is not my business to know exactly how a lover is feeling [at this or that moment]. What I want to discover through song is the music playing deep within his [passing] emotions. External appearance and inner revelation are entirely different classes of phenomena. For what is passion when seen from the outside is inwardly beauty. They differ from each other just as much as the vibrations of the ether and the appearance of light. We weep by shedding tears, and manifest our joy by laughter and smiles—that is natural. But if a singer has recourse to the aid of tears in a sorrowful song, or of guffaws in a song of happiness, then that is without question an insult to the goddess of music. In fact, the influence of music is felt wherever a tearful utterance is made without shedding a tear, or a comic utterance without breaking into laughter. Through human joy and sorrow such an infinitely expanded consciousness comes into being when, through the melody of our own joy and sorrow, the message of all the trees and plants, streams and springs is revealed. Then we can grasp the undulating rise and fall of our own spirits as the cosmic play on the ocean of the universal soul. But by emphasizing and leaning on the melody and its vocal inflections, in an attempt to imitate our emotions, the depth that music possesses will be obstructed. Like the sea’s ebbs and flows, music has its own rise and fall. But that is its own affair, and like poetry’s metres, it steps in time to its own dance of beauty; it is not the puppet-dance of our heart’s passions. Although acting, on the whole, tends more towards imitation than the other fine arts, it is nevertheless not entirely a matter of mimicry. It too undertakes to lift nature’s veil and show us the cosmic play [lîlâ] that lies behind it. If one leans too much toward the side of naturalism then the more inward side is obscured from view. On the stage actors can very frequently be seen forcing their voice and gestures for the sake of demonstrating human emotion more powerfully. There is a reason for that: someone who is not communicating the truth, but wishes to imitate it, will exaggerate, as a witness does when lying in court. He does not possess the boldness to preserve restraint. The same sweaty routine of false testimony can be daily observed in our nation’s theatres; but the most extreme example I witnessed abroad. There I went to see the famous actor Irving’s Hamlet and Bride of 212 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD Lammermoor.5 Irving’s furious display left me quite perplexed. Such immoderation and excess in acting entirely puts paid to any clarity or transparency [of communication], and in stirring up the surface alone, entrance into the depths was obstructed more completely than I have ever seen since. In artistic matters, restraint is more essential than anything. For restraint itself is the royal road to the inner personality. Those who want to realize spiritual truth in the discipline of human life [generally] also cut down on external appurtenances in order to preserve restraint. For this reason a strange and wonderful saying concerning spiritual practice runs: Tyaktena bhunjithah—enjoy through renunciation.6 In art too the highest discipline is divine; art’s true calling is not the emotional intoxication induced by powerful shocks. To lead us through restraint into the depths of inwardness is its true goal. It should not imitate what we see with our own eyes, tracing over it in coarse lines which exaggerate its contours and treat us [spectators] like children. This penchant for the forceful attempt to shock our mind is commonly seen in European art. In general, Europe wants to see what is material strictly as material. Thus when I look at devotional paintings I can see that, with hands joined, head raised up looking at the heavens and bewildered gaze, the external posture of devotion has been painted with an excessive clarity. All the students who try to copy European art in our country have fallen into this kind of mannerism. They think that artistic work is completed if one tends toward giving force to material reality. If they are to paint Sage Narada then they sit down and paint the Narada from a jatra [folk theatre group]—for to look with a contemplative gaze is not their concern, and where else will they find their Narada except in the the jatra? Once upon a time, in the Buddhist era in India, Greek artists carved a statue of Buddha as an ascetic. It was the exact image of Buddha’s starved and feeble body; you could count every rib in his ribcage. An Indian artist also created an image of Buddha the hermit, but in it there was no story of the facts of starvation. In this inner image of the hermit there was no reckoning up of the bones in his frame; it was no use as a doctor’s certificate. It was able to reveal truth just because it attached no importance at all to the material facts. The professional artist is a witness to material facts, the artist of [real] talent is a witness to the truth. I see the facts with my eyes, but there is no way of seeing the truth without the mind. If we are to see with our minds we must thwart the tyranny of visible things; we must boldly say to their outward appearance: “You are not the highest, you are not the absolute, you are not the goal—you are an insignificant pretext”. Arab Sea 8th June 1912 TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 213 MUSIC [SANGIT]7 We reached this country [England] towards the end of the summer season, just as the music societies here began to break up. Now there are no more concerts by great singers or virtuosi. In summer the birds cross the oceans to come to these groves, and when their gatherings are dissolved they fly away again. The music of man, too, is not to be heard here in every season; it has its own particular time, at which master musicians from various regions of the globe come to stay and celebrate here their pujas to Saraswati, the goddess of music. In our country too this sort of music festival happened once. On the great religious feastdays virtuosi of many lands used to come and assemble at the houses of the wealthiest men. At all such musical gatherings entry was free to the common people of the area. Then Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and Saraswati used to meet in one place, and music’s spring breezes would blow through the heart of the land. In every country, once, the old nobility used to shelter and preserve the art, literature and music of that country. Now in Europe the people have occupied the place of the old aristocratic class; what is done in our country through public subscription has been extended in Europe to everything. Here a great singer may be hired through public funds. Here by the favour of the public a starving poet may be freed from penury, and painters’ daubs win them the leftover offerings from Lakshmi’s altar. But in the India of today the wealth of the rich brings no such responsibility—through its expenditure the profits of the Lazaruses, Oslers, Hamiltons, Harmans, and the Mackintosh Burn Company are merely increased;8 and neither do the power nor the propensity of the general public lie in the direction [of art]. In India art is like a jilted bride: Lakshmi has renounced her, and even in Ganesh’s house she still finds no place.9 By chance, on this occasion a few weeks after my arrival in London the preparations for the Handel Festival were taking place in the Crystal Palace. The famous composer Handel was German, but spent most of his life in England. He set various portions of the Bible to music, and these are particularly well-loved in this country. These pieces are sung in the Handel Festival by hundreds of singers with the accompaniment of hundreds of instruments. On this occasion four thousand singers and instrumentalists performed in the Festival.10 It was this performance that I attended. In the gallery of the vast assembly hall were seated rank upon rank of singers and instrumentalists. It was such a gigantic affair that no-one [among the performers] could be seen clearly without the aid of a telescope; it seemed as though the multitudes of humanity had merged into a sort of cloud. Male and female singers sat divided into different groups according to their type of voice. Their clothes were all of one colour and one style. It was as if on a gigantic loom someone had knitted row after row of a vast woollen carpet. From four thousand throats and instruments the music sprang into being. Not one voice in the whole lost its way. Four thousand streams of sound emerged, dancing continually together, and one never blundered into another. And yet they did not carry the same melody, but an enormous assemblage of different melodies. I perceived with astonishment that there was a 214 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD colossal force which united this great variety in such immaculate, perfect fullness. Over a very large area, both within and without, this watchful power showed nowhere any signs of fatigue or apathy. From the seating and costumes up to the orderliness of the music itself, everywhere its infallible prescriptions adjusted and regulated each part in accordance with the whole. From time to time, opening the printed programme I tried to trace the words of the music along with the melody. But I must admit I was unable to follow them. I cannot doubt but that if one erects such a huge, such a gigantic structure, then it will take on the appearance of something mechanical. Its external proportions may be amazing, flawless; but the beauty of feeling is suppressed. I felt as if this music’s progress was like the movement of a vast army in battle array; there was power in it, but no play of feeling. But to say that all European music is substantially of this kind would not be fair. In other words, it cannot be credible to maintain that in European music the manipulation of form predominates, and the beauty of feeling is secondary. For it is quite apparent how Europe is intoxicated by the nectar of music’s emotional beauty. If one sees the eagerness of the honeybee for every flower one will soon realize that there is sweetness in those flowers, even though that sweetness may be beyond what we can perceive. Granted, between our music and the music of Europe there is one fundamental point of difference. Harmony, or the concordance of notes, is the main substance of European music; the chief support of our music is the system of ragas and raginis. Europe has concentrated its attention on the side of variety, we on the side of unity. In the music of the world we see different melodies overflowing in a thousand different streams; one never echoes another; each has its own particularity, yet all of them uniting together fill the sky. Harmony shows us through its voices the great, manifold, dancing activity of the cosmos. But at the centre runs a single song of a single raga, and the dance constantly circles round the melody and rhythm of that song, developing it with its own variety of motion. The music of our country tries to grasp that central song. It is deep, secret, it is the One—the goal of meditation, hanging motionless in the heavens. The European character is like an eternal flight, preserving as it moves onward the rhythm and the touch of diversity; and our nature is an eternally immobile quietus, a listening for and recollection of the One. Do we not feel this in our country’s music? In the music of Europe we can appreciate how rhythm and measure reflect all the vicissitudes of human life, how our musical perceptions affiliate themselves with the laughter and grief of humanity. Indian music does not emerge from within the play of human life, it flows in from outside. In European music man has lit the lamps of his own dwelling, of his festivals—chandeliers and lanterns of many colours. Into our music there falls the light of the moon far off on the horizon. For this reason we feel again and again that our music goes beyond our joys and sorrows. During our wedding nights they play Raga Sahana, but where in the melody of Sahana is the dance of merriment? In it there is nothing of the restlessness of youth; it is profound, there is pity in the plying of its meends. At modern weddings in India the playing of foreign bands alongside the shehnai is a piece of ostentatious barbarism, for the difference between the two is perfectly clear. In the melody of the foreign band TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 215 the pomp of man’s rejoicing makes the earth shake. Like a crowd of people, like an exchange of banter, like a full dress suit, like a splendid display of blossoms—the delight that overflows in the band’s tunes is of just this sort. But surrounding the joyful wedding party is the darkness of night, lying motionless all around, where the infinite celebrations of another world radiate their tranquil light in the silent company of the stars; and it is with a message from this realm that the melody of Sahana intrudes. Our music opens bit by bit the gates of mankind’s halls of pleasure, and summons the infinite into the midst of the throng. Our music is the song of the One, of aloneness—but it is not the singleness of the corner, it is single in a cosmic sense. [Such a] song will be overwhelmed if harmony becomes excessively powerful, and wherever song wishes to become absolutely independent it will not allow harmony to come near it. It is good if this separation between the two continues for some time. To achieve a fully mature form each should be given time and scope for independent development. But, having said that, I cannot think it preferable that they should remain single and unmarried for ever. As long as bride and groom have not achieved maturity then it is good for them to remain at home and apart, but if even after that point they cannot meet, then their lives remain unfulfilled. There is no doubt that the time has come to bring together song and harmony. The preparations for that meeting, too, have begun. In the villages, on one particular day every week a market takes place, and on one day every year a mela [fair]. On that day a reciprocal exchange of goods occurs, and whatever man lacks that he needs is taken and paid for. Likewise in the history of humanity every individual era has its own market day; on that day man adds some of his own articles to his basket and comes to collect [in return] the articles of others. On that day man understands that indigence cannot be kept at bay solely through products of one’s own making; he realizes that the only utility of his own treasures is that in them originates the right to obtain the goods of others. One such age in European history is known as the Renaissance. In the present age such a great global Renaissance market has been established that nothing previous can compare with it. The principal cause of this is that in today’s world roads in all directions have been opened as never before. A few days ago a man endowed with great intellect said to me that the time for an Indian renaissance had come to Europe [too]. The treasures collected in the historical storehouses of India had come to Europe’s attention, and Europe felt they could be of service to her. For such a long time the art and architecture of India had been the recipient of Europe’s scorn, but now Europe could appreciate their particular dignity and charm. A very short time ago the attention of Europe was drawn to Indian music. I have seen European listeners in India listening with rapt attention to an alap in Raga Bageshri performed on the vina. One time I saw an English listener sat in society listening to songs of the Sama Veda from two young Bengalis. The two singers combined classical melodies in Yaman-Kalyan, Bhairavi and so forth with the Vedic mantras and presented them to the Englishman as hymns from the Sama Veda. I had to explain to the gentleman that it would not do to accept this sort of thing as a Vedic hymn. It was apparent to me, however, that my warning him was entirely superfluous; for he knew a great deal more about the subject than I. On his asking me to recite 216 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD a Vedic mantra I recited what little I knew. At this he said, “That is a passage from the Yajurveda”. And in fact I had recited a mantra from the Yajurveda. Starting from Vedic song he had investigated thoroughly dhrupad, khayal and all the ragas and talas—there was no chance of hoodwinking him. He was writing books about Indian music.11 From time to time essays by Mrs Maude McCarthy have appeared in the magazine Modern Review. Since childhood she has possessed a remarkable talent for music. From the age of nine she astonished listeners in public with her violin playing. Unfortunately due to a nerve condition in her hand she has ceased to play. Being resident in India for some time, she has discussed the music in particular of South India; she too is engaged in writing books on the subject. One day in a letter of invitation from Dr Coomaraswamy I read that he wished me to hear the singing of Ratan Devi.12 I did not know who Ratan Devi was; I thought she might be some Indian lady. I saw however that she was an English girl, and the mistress of the house where I had been invited. Sat upon the floor with a tanpura on her lap, she began to sing. I was astonished. This was none of the usual amateur warbling; with proper alaps she sang Kanada, Malkoush, Behag.13 To them she applied all the difficult meends and taans, keeping time meanwhile with her fingers; the foreign scrubbing-brush had not erased from our music its Indianness. The difference from our ustads was that there was no resistance in her voice; neither her gestures nor her tone betrayed any hint of troublesome effort. The image of the song appeared completely untarnished, unaffected by fatigue. Those in this country who are engaged in discussion of Indian music do not do so merely to satisfy their curiosity; they have been able to see in it an unparalleled beauty, that rasa which they were once eager to receive as it was perhaps embodied in their own music. There is no doubt that their number is still extremely small, but if fire starts in one corner then by its own heat it will quickly spread everywhere. I have met here the principal of the London Academy of Music, Dr [Thomas] Yorke-Trotter. He had had something by way of an introduction to Indian music. He repeatedly demonstrated great eagerness to me that there be in London some means of discussing [this] music. If some wealthy Indian raja could send one or the other master of the vina to spend some time here then it might be, in his opinion, a very great help. It would be of the greatest help for us, indeed. For our art of music has lost all esteem in our keeping. Its connection with our life has become utterly enfeebled. When the tide ebbs in a river then all its silt and slime emerges. Because the high tide of music’s river is past we are today left wallowing in the filthiness of the river-bottom. To try and bathe in that is absurd. In house after house the gramophone plays any old melody, from the theatres we learn any old song; on hearing these we realize that the abomination of our mental poverty is not simply a nascent phenomenon, we already display it proudly as a finished ornament upon our body. No-one can wholly expel cheap, inferior things from the world; there is a group of people in every society who cannot rise above such things in their music—but when such people cover the entire nation then Saraswati becomes nothing more than a cheap puppet. Then our practice becomes weak and our skill likewise. Thus the country is covered within a short time with the weeds of TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 217 gramophones and concert parties—and the golden harvest which should be cultivated is gone to ruin. One day Dr Coomaraswamy said to me, “Perhaps the time will come when you will have to go to Europe to acquaint yourself with your music”. We have waited with outstretched hands to receive many things in our country from the hands of Europe. When we re-acquire our music too, after it has crossed the ocean, then perhaps we will receive it properly. We have spent a long time in the corner of our little room and so we are ignorant of the market price of anything. To evaluate our own produce where we will definitely find out its real worth—for that we lack we lack the strength. Where an abundant energy in all man’s efforts forces its way up into a multitude of forms, where man’s whole wealth has been invested in the vast commerce of life and is generating profits, if we do not bring our own goods there and join in with the business of the day then we will not come to know ourselves fully. In consequence we will simply waste much of our effort. We have all heard the fear expressed that we should not engage in relations with Europe lest we forget ourselves. But that is not true; the reverse is the case. At our first contact with that powerfully vital force we may for some time be disorientated, but in the end we will awaken to our own nature all the more. The spirit of European literature has spurred our literary endeavours on; the more powerful it is the more it causes us to shun imitation and leads us forward on the path of self-expression. At the root of the awakening which can be seen in our fine arts at present is also an impulse from the living spirit of Europe. My belief is that in music too these external relations of ours are useful. We must free [our music] from the iron safe of convention and exchange it on the world market. Once we are acquainted with European music then we will learn to use our music truthfully and well. What is sad is that music forms no part of the education of our educated class; in the factories of clerkship that go by the name of “colleges” art and music have no place; and the astounding thing is, that in every university we have titled “national” there is no seat for scholars of the arts either.14 With all our memorizing of notes and conferring of degrees, we have completely lost any understanding of what great service the arts perform in the social life of man. Consequently music has until now remained confined among uneducated people who lack any acquaintance with the wider world; who like weak women have made their gold into ornaments and kept it locked up; who can only pass it on, not make thorough use of it; who become terrified, indeed, at the very hint of any such use—thinking that that way they will lose their all.15 Therefore, if we have not been able to make good use of our treasure, then those who can will invest it in their own enterprises, will use it to supply the world’s needs—and we will be left waiting impotently. After that happens we may still be proud that no-one in the world has anything like what we have; but even that element of pride will have to be supplied us by others. November–December 1912 (Notes on pages 218–219) 218 RABINDRANATH TAGORE/MATTHEW PRITCHARD NOTES 1. Sitansu Ray, “Tagore on Music and Musical Aesthetics”, in Sangeet Natak 56 (1980), pp. 17– 43, “Tagore’s Thoughts on Music: Dimensions of Appreciation”, in Sangeet Natak 40 (1976), pp. 15–22; Tapash Kumar Roy Choudhury, “Tagore’s Concept of Music”, in Sangeet Natak 33 (1974), pp. 5–13. See also Sitansu Ray, “Tagore and Music Research”, in Journal of the Indian Musicological Society 23 (1992), 70–73. 2. See Ray, “Tagore on Music and Musical Aesthetics”, p. 21. 3. “Gaan samvandhe prabandha” (Essay on music), in Rabindranath Thakur, Sangit Chinta (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati Granthanbibhag 2004), p. 22. 4. Trans. by Matthew Pritchard from Rabindranath Thakur, Sangit Chinta (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati Granthanbibhag 2004), pp. 25–30. Grateful acknowledgements to Namita Acharya of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in London, and to Prof. Sitansu Ray, former principal of Sangit Bhavan, VisvaBharati, Santiniketan, for their assistance with the following translations. Parts of the text of both essays excluded in Sangit Chinta have been included here, translated from the texts available in Rabindra Rachanabali, Vol. X: Prabandha (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1961, pp. 893–7 and pp. 928–33). 5. The celebrated English actor Henry Irving (1838–1905) gained notoriety through his performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1874, revived in 1878 at his own London theatre, the Lyceum, where the seventeen-year-old Tagore would have seen it. On his later brief trip to England in 1890 Tagore must have also taken in Irving’s performance in Ravenswood, Herman Merivale’s dramatic version of Walter Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor. Though Irving received numerous plaudits—he was the first actor to be accorded a knighthood—his mannered style remained controversial, and Tagore’s concerns were certainly shared by many English critics at the time. 6. Tagore quotes from the opening verse of the Isha Upanishad: in full, Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat, tena tyaktena bhunjitha, ma gridhah kasyasvid dhanam. 7. Translated from Rabindranath Thakur, Sangit Chinta, pp. 31–38. 8. To suggest what the wealthy class of Britons and Anglo-Indians might have been spending their money on instead of patronizing music, Tagore quotes the names of some of Calcutta’s luxury retailers at the turn of the century: Lazarus and Co. (cabinet-makers and manufacturers of billiard-tables), F. & C. Osler (manufacturers of crystal chandeliers and luxury glass items), Hamilton & Co. (jewellers and silversmiths), Harman & Co. (tailors), and Mackintosh Burn Ltd (construction). 9. Tagore refers here to the fine arts (kala) as the jilted bride of Ganesh, creating a pun on Ganesh’s traditional consort Kalaba(dh)u, the ‘Banana Bride’ placed alongside him as part of the nabapatrika ritual in the Bengali festival of Durga Puja. The word kala in Bengali stands for both the fine arts and banana. 10. That Tagore was not exaggerating the size of the performing forces can be judged from the reproductions and descriptions in Michael Musgrave’s The musical life of the Crystal Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chapter 3 (“The Handel Festivals, 1857–1926”). One commentator quoted by Musgrave echoes Tagore’s later description in referring to the orchestra as “such an army” (p. 54). 11. It seems almost certain that this unidentified gentleman was Arthur Henry Fox-Strangways, who TWO TAGORE ESSAYS 219 visited Tagore in Calcutta during his six-month tour of India in 1910–11. Chapter 10 of his classic Music of Hindostan is devoted to the subject of Vedic chant, and demonstrates that he was capable of distinguishing on musical grounds between recitations of the various portions of the Vedas. 12. Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) was a Sri Lankan-born philosopher, art historian and curator, responsible in large part for introducing traditional Indian art to the West. Ratan Devi, an Englishwoman, was his second wife. 13. All three are major ragas of Hindustani classical music; Kanada and Behag in particular seem to have been favourites of Tagore, to judge from their frequent use in his own songs. 14. This situation Tagore attempted to rectify himself at Visva-Bharati, the university he founded in Santiniketan in rural West Bengal, where music and the arts were taught on an equal basis with academic subjects. 15. Tagore is referring to the family-based lineages of contemporary Muslim musicians, frequently accused of over-jealous guardianship of the traditions of Hindustani music.