M. Mizanur Rahman :
The particular aim in life for working out a great art is no less strenuous and adventurous. The person who works on art of poetry, song, and sketch or any other objects of art faculties has to tread hard on the particular subject concerned with utmost perseverance like constant working as worshiping towards its fruition.
The art of song as composed by Rabindranath Tagore is varied and thought-provoking and its sweet notes and tonal variations have great aesthetic beauty. Sometimes he takes love or romantic theme for achieving the ends to its means. On the other side his devotional themes are abound in divine orders towards his submission to infinite eternity.
“Longing for you in your absence, the hours
Had gone in idle irrelevant musings.
But ultimately all my thoughts had come
To meet and reflect in your beautiful eyes.
As I kept looking at you under a new light
Suddenly there was a thrill of revelation
And I saw a new world in a new universe
In the unified gaze of our vision.
(Keteche ekela biroher bela akas-kusum choyone
Sob poth eshe meele gelo seshe tomar dukhani noyone…)” Tr. Shafiuddin Ahmed*
Or
“Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full.
Thus it is that thou hast come down to me.
O thou Lord of all heavens,
where would be thy love if I were not?” (Song offerings LVI)**
Rabindranath Tagore has to work within the purview of its perceptible organic senses. Here pleasures of the artist work most but he is keen in his performance for readers’ interest. Tagore succeeds because the intellectual up-beats in almost all types of his songs move the listeners, even in some cases monotony pervades. While in the art of sketch we feel delighted by seeing and appreciating the works that wonder, about song our sense of hearing let us cherish our desire at heart and soul. Hence any song written by the lyricist must have dulcet music in organic sense of hearing. Poetry when turns into lyrics gives us pleasure for its art of rhyming and sweet sounding words. The musician feels suitable to bring its tone into the song.
In this context the great Western musician Beethoven thinks that “It is the province of painting to describe. Poetry, too, can esteem itself happy in that respect, in comparison with music…” Songs of Rabindranath Tagore have invariably tonal influence of the Western music that was unknown to Indian music earlier. The intellectual aspect of Tagore pervades Bengali musing from tonal gift of the English. He succeeds in such experimentation in full and none else could venture to do it hereafter. However, some modern artists and poets are apt to imitate Western music along with its tonal comprehension.
“This is my delight, thus to wait
and watch at the wayside
where shadow chases light
and the rain comes
in the wake of the summer.
Messengers, with tidings
from unknown skies greet me
and speed along the road.
My heart is glad within
and the breath
of the passing breeze is sweet.
From dawn till dusk I sit here
before my door and I know
that of a sudden
the happy moment will arrive
when I shall see.
In the meanwhile I smile
and I sing all alone.
In the meanwhile air is filling
with the perfume of promise.” (Song Offerings-XLIV)**
Rabindranath Tagore has his song magically inducted to English rhymes, rhythm and tonal fascination. This gained him wide acclamation around the globe within no time. In those days symbols and metaphors were seldom used in poetry or song like those of our time now-a-days.
“My mind escorts the clouds in joy,
Flying over all the points
Of the compass;
Across the endless void
In the rainfall sounds of Shrabon
‘Incessant, incessant, incessant’
My mind rides on the wild geese
flying in formation
here and there sometimes
even under a lightning flash
as the storm blows with thunder claps
in ruthless show.
And the raindrops gather
to fall in a deluge
emitting the noise of doom.
The wind is now blowing
from the Eastern sea,
dancing and splashing on
the wave-crests of rivers.
My mind rushes out to join
that wild gust of wind
blowing over the groves of Taal and Tomal:
in the frenzied shake of their branches.”
(Mono mor megher songi
urey choley dig-digonter paney…khubdho sakhar andoloney) Tr. Shafiuddin Ahmed*
English poet Pope says, “Music resembles poetry, in each are nameless graces which no method can teach, and which a master-hand alone can reach.” In Rabindranath’s case this has happened. His ‘master-hand’ touches and the magic of conjunctive Bengali words he could weave that has made his readers or listeners wavy like the songs of the river in the wild-wind.
(Soghono gohono ratri, jhoriche Shrabono dhara-
Ondho bivabori songoporoshara-
cheye thaki je sunye onyo money
sethai birohinir osru horon koreche oi tara
Osoth pollobey bristi jhoria mormor sobday
Nishither onidra dey je voria
Mayalok hotey chayatoroni
Vasai sopno parabarey-
Nahi tar kinara)
“Deep, dense and advanced in the night
Incessantly falls the Shrabon rain.
The darkness is blinding
Without a sense of touch and feel
I look at the emptiness
In a vacant mood,
Where, some estranged lover’s tears
Perhaps are stolen by the clouds.
The leaves of the Osoth-tree
are soaked with rain-drops.
In a murmuring sound
It pervades and fills the sleeplessness
of midnight.
From fantasyland a phantom boat
Is launched across the sea of dreams
a sea without a coast.
Tr. Shafiuddin Ahmed*
Rabindranath Tagore has to take a lot from the Western thoughts of musical mentors. In his works he never takes any excessive musical noise that can overpower his soft and mild but rich symphonic Bengali words of lyrics. However, even in case of melody one can perceive Western influence pervades Tagore. A sort of warble note is inducted in the song of Rabindranath Tagore that sounds simple with deep sense of heart-throbbing words which is charming to us.
Rabindranath Tagore believes in the freedom of art and as such his voice reaches flawlessly everywhere. His melancholy is his loneliness. While he feels pain and anguish his solitude cries out. He sings very painfully unveiling disappointment at last-
“I thought that
my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power, –
that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter
in a silent obscurity.
But I find that
thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words
die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth
from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country it revealed
with its wonders. (Song Offerings-XXXVII)**
Hence the old is gone replacing the new. This eternal philosophy exists in life that the poet does not forget. Nature controls us and thus we are the toy of nature. Thus Tagore underscores this eternity at last in his songs.
*1. Translator : . Shafiuddin Ahmed
**2. Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning anthology Song Offerings.
(The author of this article is a poet essayist, translator and columnist.)
