Correspondence 1934, October (I)

October 1934

The other day Prithwi Singh said that Tagore has said your “Life Heavens” [is] not poetry proper. It then occurred to me that I must challenge Tagore who calls you not a poet proper to translate a bunch of your secular sort of poems — say about twenty of them and publish in a small book of about eighty pages with the original on one side. But now that Prithwi Singh is come, we can undertake a mightier task to prove home your sheer poetry. So we propose to do a few of your secular sort of poems like “Night by the Sea” and the whole of “Love and Death,” an ambitious endeavour but worth it. I am fired. Must take up the gauntlet and show these blind people who you are. I propose to take up this task for a month with Nishikanta and Prithwi Singh. Apropos I send you Nishikanta’s translation of your first verse of “Night by the Sea.” I am greatly struck by its beauty and melody and faithfulness and except for “censered honeysuckle guessed by the fragrance of her breast” which we could not quite catch, I believe you will be satisfied. Please explain those two lines. What does it mean? I leave space. Tell me also how you like Nishikanta’s rendering — and if you want improvements anywhere. We will try.

On back please.

I am very much intrigued by Tagore’s dictum. I am always ready to admit and profit by criticism of my poetry however adverse, if it is justified — but I should like to understand it first. Why is it not poetry proper? Is it because it is not good poetry — the images, language, are unpoetic or not sufficiently poetic, the rhythm harsh or flat? Or is it because it is too intellectual, leading in ideas more than visions and feelings? Or is it that the spiritual genre is illegitimate — spiritual subjects not proper for poetic treatment? But in that case much of Tagore’s poetry would be improper, not to speak of Donne (now considered a great poet), Vaughan, Crashaw, etc., Francis Thompson[1] and I don’t know how many others in all climes and ages. Is it the dealing with other worlds that makes it not proper? But what then about Blake,[2] whose work Housman declares to be the essence of poetry? I am at sea about this “poetry proper.” Did he only use this cryptic expression? Was there nothing elucidatory said which would make it intelligible? Or has Tagore by any chance thought that I was trying to convey a moral lesson or a philosophical tenet — there is nothing of the kind there, it is a frequent experience on the spiritual path that is being described in its own proper, one might almost say, objective figures — and that is surely a method of poetry proper. Or is it that the expression is too hard or clear-cut for the soft rondos of poetry proper. I swim helplessly in conjectures.

But where the deuce is the back?

Prithwi Singh will do very well in blank verse I think if we work together for a month or so. I mean to take it up as a sadhana with your blessings and will bring out a book like a shot you’ll see. I am extremely annoyed and fired up. And as I have such a talent by me I can tackle it I think. I have done a whole page almost, see. I will give one third to Prithwi Singh (of “Love and Death”) and one third to Nishikanta. After his rendering?] of “Night by the Sea” you will agree I hope that he is not likely to fail — if you bless him. Prithwi Singh is also willing to do this, as he too is hurt that Tagore should be so limited.

But if three people write, will not the style of the poem be a little disparate?

Apropos I threaten you with a long letter after the 15^th doubting your line, “Tagore is on the same path as ours.” I think that this doubt at least will be healthy as Prithwi Singh also was telling me that Tagore is aesthetic and not spiritual — so how in the name of thunder and hailstorm is he on the same path as you — your kindred by blood of Yoga. Qua poet — perhaps but qua spiritual seeker — how? But I will formulate my attack on your contention for all I am worth later — so don’t answer this question now and vanquish me ahead. Wait.

Day after tomorrow I want to pranam you a second time for Subhash, Niren, Maya and Esha[3]. A minute only — or half-a-minute.

Yes, half a minute is best.

I will examine the translations more closely afterwards. Have had the most cataclysmal two [?] of all my experience — and I have besides to fish out “Songs to Myrtilla.” I have no idea where it is.

What about Nishikanta’s painting? How did you and Mother find it? Has he improved? I find he has greatly improved as a translator by the [?] — but about painting?

Yes, there is progress. It is a very good painting especially from the decorative point of view — a little lacking in charm, but full of strength. He has evidently a great talent.

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October 2, 1934

Sorry about Niren, but que voulez-vous? [What would you?] Men were like that ever; the little ego first and the rest nowhere. Not all of course — but still. However, your novel seems to have been a great success in spite of all the Parichits [acquaintances] in Calcutta.

As to Radhakrishna, I don’t care whether he is right or wrong in his eagerness to get the blessed contribution from me. But the first fact is that it is quite impossible for me to write philosophy to order. If something comes to me of itself, I can write, if I have time. But I have no time. I had an idea of writing to Adhar Das[4] pointing out that he was mistaken in his criticism of my ideas about consciousness and intuition and developing briefly what was my idea about these things. But I have never been able to do it. I might as well think of putting the moon under my arm, Hanumanlike — though in his case it was the sun — and going for a walk. The moon is not available and the walk is not possible. It would be the same if I promised anything to Radhakrishna — it would not get done, and that would be much worse than a refusal.

And the second fact is that I do not care one button about having my name in any blessed place. I was never ardent about fame even in my political days; I preferred to remain behind the curtain, push people without their knowing it and get things done. It was the confounded British Government that spoiled my game by prosecuting me and forcing me to be publicly known as a “leader”. I don’t believe in advertisement except for books and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom — and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere — or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the “religions” and the reason of their failure. If I tolerate a little writing about myself, it is only to have a sufficient counter-weight in that amorphous chaos, the public mind, to balance the hostility that is always aroused by the presence of a new dynamic Truth in this world of ignorance. But the utility ends there and too much advertisement would defeat that object. I am perfectly “rational”, I assure you, in my methods and I do not proceed on a mere personal dislike of fame.[5]

This “Contemporary Philosophy,” British or Indian, looks to me very much like book-making and, though the “vulgarisation” of knowledge — to use the French term — by bookmaking may have its use, I prefer to do solid work and leave that to others. You may say that I can write a solid thing in philosophy and let it be book-made. But even the solid tends to look shoddy in such surroundings. And, besides, my solid work at present is not philosophy but something less wordy and more to the point. If that work gets done, then it will propagate itself so far as propagation is necessary — if it were not to get done, propagation would be useless.

These are my reasons. However, let us wait till the book is there and see what kind of stuff it is.

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[1] Donne, John (1572-1631). Dean of St. Paul’s; preacher and metaphysical poet; author of satires, epistles and elegies.

Vaughan, Henry (1622-1695). A Welsh metaphysical poet and mystic.

Crashaw, Richard (1613-1649). English poet of metaphysical inspiration.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907): English poet, author of “Hound of Heaven”.

[2] Blake, William (1757-1827). English poet, painter and mystic.

[3] Esha: Maya’s daughter.

[4] Adhar Das: a Professor of Philosophy at Calcutta University.

[5] The typed letter continues with the following passage: “If and so far as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to tolerate it; but I do not find publicity for its own sake desirable.” On Himself, Cent. Ed., p. 376.