M.Mizanur Rahman :
The lustrous myriad-minded genius of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) has its reflection in his century-old poetry and prose Bangla literature. There are fountains of shade and light along with the appropriate imageries and sublime metaphors at every nook and corner of his literary works. Above all those have covered mostly different traits of human character and their characteristics abound in pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, disappointment and despair, and hopes and aspirations. He had his absolute willpower in the work of arts behind attaining laurels world-wide. Those are evident in his powerful words and rhymes used in poetry and prose writings seem to have been fraught with ingenious texture of vast rich experience of life and nature. Similarly his composed songs attuned with notes of his own creation are dulcet. He was an excellent lyricist and an innovator of Bengali musical notations. Nonetheless his art of painting during the last twenty years of his life ended by enriching cultural arena of Bengal profusely. As if the sun has just set leaving behind its glamorous and enviable shades and colours. The diction could be found when he expressed as saying…when negativity turned into the illusive incantation of positive factor of lines and colors…towards the painting of an artist one has to be enamored. When the shadow of an object before the light becomes the art in black and white, it has its relative form in the sketch of picture or portrait. This is said to be the creation of an artist in the art of printing. Here is the scratches of the manuscript of Tagore’s poem where he said – the scratches in my manuscript cried like sinners for salvation-
Thou art a glimmer of dawn/on my life’s shore,/a dew drop at the lips/of my thirsty autumn flower, /the secret of mine; /enriching the sky there’s rainbow, /the crescent moon cradled in a / white cloud, /a secret whisper of paradise,/ my poet’s vision stayed away/ from the days of my forgotten birth, /the word that is beyond utterance,/ a bond that leads to the freedom/ of a living light.
Even the scratches in the poem have been taken into the form of art of expressing a lot by the poet. This appears to be a powerful means of expression. That’s why the famous artist Jaminy Ray said, “I have every regard for the powerfulness of the art works of Rabindranath due to its rhymes where I find the symbol of a great sense of beauty…Once I had a discussion with him about art. It would not be out of place to describe here. He told me, “I have no education of art school, for that my art works do not take the complete shape.” In reply I told him, “Even a student after studying for eleven years in the school remains ignorant while a boy would have attained knowledge without ever attending any school and that’s what happened about you.”
Every artist rides on imagination. Like any poet artist’s imagination has no end in itself. He /She has to make his brush working according to imagination. It has its wide area to expand. Rabindranath is one of the greatest poets of the world and his imagination in such case ought to have been far reaching. In a letter to William Rothenstein Rabindranath wrote on 22nd February, 1929, “If I ever have an opportunity I should like to show you some pictures that I have done myself with the hope of once again being startled with your appreciation as in the case of Gitanjali” During this period perhaps he wrote to Nirmal Kumari Mahalnabish, “When I am not in a good mood I used to drawing pictures but my pictures are of lines and colors and not of any idea. For the idea of imagery of thoughtful words I have sketched a lot of pictures. Now I have every mental attraction for lines than that of words. Because lines go straight away to my heart through the eyes but not through the ears while words must be meaningful and lines need beauty. The thing of beauty enamors meaninglessly and it has no other factors except show business.”
Rabindranath Tagore had a very favourable family conducive to his literary environ. Not only literary environ he had the opportunity to come in contact with the great artist like Abanindranath Tagore also. He delivered lecture in London Society in 1930 “… the modern art movement, following the line of oriental tradition, was started by Abanindranath. I watched his activities with an envious mood of self-diffidence being thoroughly convinced that my fate had refused passport across the strict boundaries of letters. But one thing which is common to all arts is the principle of rhythm which transforms inert materials into living creations. My instinct for it and my training in its use led me to know that lines and colours in art are no carriers of information, they seek their rhythmic incarnation in pictures. Their ultimate purpose is not to illustrate or to copy some outer fact or inner vision, but to evolve a harmonious wholeness which finds its passage through our eyesight into imagination. It neither questions our mind for meaning nor burdens it with unmeaningness, for it is, above all, meaning. Desultory lines obstruct the freedom of our vision with the inertia of their irrelevance. They do not move with the great march of all things. They have no justification to exist and therefore they rouse up against them their surroundings; they perpetually disturb peace. For the reason the scattered scratches and corrections in my manuscript cause me annoyance. They represent regrettable mischance, like a gaping foolish crowd stuck in a wrong place, undecided as to how and where to move on. But if the spirit of dance is inspired in heart of the crowd, the unrelated many would find a perfect unity and be relieved of its hesitation between to be or not to be. I try to make corrections dance, connect them in a rhythmic relationship and transform accumulation into adornment. This has been my unconscious training in drawing. I find disinterested pleasure in this work of reclamation, often giving to it more time and care than to my attention, often aspiring to a permanent recognition from the world. It interests me deeply to watch how lines find their life and character, as their connection with each other develops in varied cadences and how they begin to speak in gesticulations. I can imagine the universe to be a universe of lines which in their movements and combinations pass on their signals of existence along the interminable chain of moments. The rocks and clouds, the trees, the waterfalls, the dance of the fiery orbs, the endless procession of life send up across silent eternity and limitless space of symphony of gestures with which mingles the dumb wail of lines that are widowed gypsies roaming about for a chance union of fulfilment. In the manuscript there occur erring lines and erasures, solitary incongruities, standing against the world principle of beauty and balance, carrying perpetual condemnation. They offer problems and therefore material to the Visvakarma, the Great Artist, for they are the sinners whose obstreperous individualism has to be modulated into a new variation of universal concord. And this was my experience with the casualties in my manuscripts, when the vagaries of the ostracised mistakes had their conversion into rhythmic inter-relationship, giving birth to unique forms and characters. Some assumed the temperate exaggeration of a probable animal that had unaccountably missed its chance of existence, some a bird that only can soar in our dreams and find its nest in some hospitable lines that we may offer it in our canvas. Some lines showed anger, some placid benevolence, through some lines ran an essential laughter that refused to apply for its credential to the shape of a mouth which is mere accident. These lines often expressed passions that were abstract, evolved characters, that hung upon subtle suggestions. Though I did not know whether such unclassified apparitions of non-deliberate origin could claim their place in decent art, they gave me intense satisfaction and very often made me neglect my important works. In connection with this came to my mind the analogy of music’s declaration of independence…originally melody-accompanied words, giving interpretation to the sentiments contained in them. But music threw off his bond of subservience and represented moods abstracted from words, and characters that were indefinite…This right of independence has given music its greatness, and I suspect that evolution of pictorial and plastic art develop in this line, aiming to be freed from an absolute alliance with natural facts or incidents. However, I need not formulate any doctrine of art but be contented by simply saying that in my case my pictures did not have their origin in trained discipline, in tradition and deliberate attempt at illustration, but in my instinct for rhythm, my pleasure in harmonious combination of lines and colours.”
Rabindranath being himself a poet reflected his mind on the works of his art of painting pictures abiding by the natural themes. His lines are basically outmoded but captured the beauty of nature thematically. Those lines are broadening happily Like calligraphy. He had controlled his hands in making lines adeptly on different versions making those of the human face frontal or sidewise, woman in a pensive mood with the tuft of her hairs deflecting the shadow. He had his compassionate mind in the art of painting forms with rhythmic fervor. Therein existed the divine gift of God that his hand possessed great pervasive passion, which automatically gives impressive perfection in all his art works. Reading them with acute intuition one can never go upset with passivity. It seems that each one of them is alive with its mood and venture. We find enough explanations about his art works in scratches above in his own words and convinced that in each work therein lies a tremendous impact of poetic rhythm. It appears to be reflective consciousness of his surrealistic appeal.
Since Rabindranath took up his brush he made as many as two thousand pictures of impressive art value. He is therefore noted to be the pioneering artist of modern art in the then Bengal.
