Oendrila Guha1
Abstract
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (English 1912) attests to his poetic temperament: “amikabi”. Sisirkumar Ghosh incisively points out, “No account of Tagore’s poetry can be complete without a reference to Gitanjali.” (44) Tagore grew up, reveling in the mighty stir of Bengal renaissance. Tagore’s family, well-known for its contributions to the renaissance, provided the young Rabi the appropriate ambience which formed his subjective self. Tagore’s Gitanjali offers this positivist view by initiating a shift in consciousness by imparting the lesson that the physical world is a “wonderful vision” of the infinite Being. It is small wonder that he became a sensation and a symbol of India’s spiritual heritage abroad for he announced to a materialistic Europe the truth of the universe as the playground of the infinite Being. The body of poems relays to the human mind that the finite universe is a conscious design which displays the immense magnitude of the creative Self. This conscious design cannot be exploited by humanity for utilitarian gains. Thus Tagore’s Gitanjali is one of the earliest ecocritical texts and this paper is an attempt to give some of the poems of Gitanjali an ecocritical reading, that from the perspective of ecofeminist spirituality.
Keywords : Tagore, Gitanjali, Ecocritical
Ecofeminist spirituality is a counterpart of feminist ecocriticism which probes into the interplay of woman/Nature as seen through literary theory and criticism. Ecofeminist spirituality or the “spiritualist strand within ecofeminism” (Nayar 252) is a follow-up theory of ecofeminism since the latter stresses on the suppressive nature of patriarchal values on Nature/woman. The masculine culture which
includes mind, objectivity, rationality and the public sphere has defined
a feminine culture which is its very opposite in characteristics as place/body, subjectivity, emotionality and the private sphere. Thus the man gains the privilege over Nature/woman as a symbol of “culture” as opposed to Nature and exploits them as his self-given privilege.
1 Research Scholar (Ph.D) at NIT Goa, Department of Humanities and Sciences (English)
Journal of Social Work and Social Development, Volume 09, Number 1 & 2, 2018
The Romantics are the earliest eco-critics to make the society aware of the difference between human “nature” and natural world.
They re-defined “place”, environment and culture. Wordsworth, for
instance, wrote exclusively of the Lake District. Romantic poetry employs a compelling language to evoke an association between setting and emotion.
Rabindranath Tagore gives importance to the concept of “place” as well. In Personality (1917) he says that any form of art is resultant of one’s relation to the place. A foreign surrounding cannot communicate the deeper emotions and associations between itself and the native to the foreigner
Tagore explains, “Our emotions are the gastric juices which transform this world of appearance into the more intimate world of sentiments.” (14) The foreign surrounding is the “world of appearance”
which cannot be identified with without sentiments. His first trip to Japan reinforced land-specific emotions. On the ship there was
a Japanese gentleman who was not distracted by the beauty of the land since he was already familiar with it. Tagore, the visitor, was mesmerized by the beauty of the land since he was visiting it for the
first time. He was charmed by the external beauty but was unable to
commune with its inner being. The land was not his extended self. It is
the lack of identification which results in possession. History records
the fascination of the West with the external “world of appearance” of the East, ensuing in the latter’s exploitation of natural resources
and cultural identifies. Ergo Tagore wrote of his land and his people,
his culture and tradition to raise awareness of the erstwhile ecological tradition of India which was pulverised by European imperialism.
Gitanjali is a fine example of the poet’s identification with his
land. The endemic imagery of the land as Mother goddess vindicates
Tagore’s influence by “The narrative of the nation as mother that
unfolded during the late nineteenth century and throughout the course of the twentieth century…” (Bose 15) This narrative was the issue of Abanindranath Tagore’s painting of Bharatmata, portrayed as bestowing
the boons of “food, clothing, learning and spiritual salvation in her four hands.” (Bose 5) In the process of framing an anti-colonial ideology two images of the Mother as “cultural” and “literal” emerged. The
‘Hindu’ Mother, largely created by Bankimchandra Chatterjee, was
introduced as a “cultural artifact” in order to oppose the Christian God. The other was the universal Mother, as portrayed by Tagore which was “literal”.
As against the European metaphorical expression of ‘fatherland’ the Indian expression of ‘motherland’ was literal because the land
was “a distinct personality” who “bore and reared, and gave food and shelter” like the woman. (Bose 6) It was to her that their allegiance lay
and it was on her behalf that nationalists took up arms to fight against the British supremacy. The European expression of ‘fatherland’ is a
metaphor of Christianity which is a male-dominated religion: God the father, God the son and God the ghost. One autonomous male God is the ruler of woman/Nature; man is the “the patriarch of Mankind” (Milton 211). Adam is created out of God but Eve is created out of Adam, which proves that she is not a direct representation of God as is Adam. Less “intellectual” than him, as opined by Milton, she is the easy target for Satan.Shakespeare parrots this view by making Hamlet say of his mother, “Frailty, thy name is woman.” (1032) Eve is punished, whereas Adam chooses to be punished by God as an act of
matrimonial fidelity to Eve: “with her the worst endures”. (Milton 208)
Hierarchy necessitates dualism and thus the West conceptualized
‘dualism’: mind versus body, man versus woman/Nature, civilization/
culture verses barbarism/Nature became the structural basis of the Western rationality. It was against this fragmented and one-sided patrilineal discourse that feminists protested against. They claimed that Eve was a prop to propagate patriarchy. Jesus is supposed to carry on with Mary’s genealogy since God has no ancestral lineage on earth. Instead he is consigned to Joseph’s genealogy, thereby downplaying the role of woman in Christianity. Ketaki Kushari Dyson avows:
In Christianity, the Madonna represents the point where the
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Church has to yield to the old goddesses, and she has effectively performed the function of a divine mother, but theology has formally denied her full status, holding her to be the Mother of God, but not God Herself.” (53)
Senses, as part of the body, came to be associated with grossness and immanence in the Western context since Eve gave in to her senses and her body after eating the fruit. She was seduced by Satan and in turn seduced Adam. Correspondingly, Nature was misused by Satan for an ulterior motive. The ecofeminist, Victoria Davion writes that woman has always “been associated with nature, the material, the emotional” (9) because of their physiological similarities. Nature as an extension of woman was an object of domination. Francis Baconhas been denounced by feminists because he encouraged a “subordination of nature to the (male) will”. (Mies and Shiva 18)Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths and Helen Tiffin explain that Western rationality assumed “land itself, cast as a female and ‘new’…was ‘ripe’ for conquering and taming”. (68) The European expression of ‘fatherland’ is a metaphor
of woman-Nature domination and Western rationality applied the “logic of domination” toother lands and women. Western ecofeminist spiritualists attempt to restore woman-Nature’s lost position as the
great Goddess of the matrilineal society and the originator of finite
forms in the Western civilisation.
The theory of ecofeminist spirituality observes these practices:
● Retrieval of old myths and beliefs where Nature and woman are revered.
● Pre-modern cultures have treated Nature-woman with respect.
● Nature and woman are divine-feminine as opposed to divine- masculine (there is no autocratic God).
● Legitimization of female power: body and emotion.
To reverse the Western metaphor of woman-Nature domination Indian nationalists and poets brought back the cult of the Mother- worship, emphasizing on “the female principle as Shakti or the source of strength.” (Bose 7) The Vedanta tradition maintains that as the creative power, she is the “adyasakti, primal or original power”. (Nandy 72- 73)In the aesthetic and ideological context of Bengal the nationalist equated Shakti with the regional goddesses, such as goddesses Durga, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati which inadvertently took a religious colouring. For example, Bankimchandra Chatterjee presents Mother India as emanated of the collective powers of goddesses Durga, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati in the lines of Bande Mataram, as translated by Sri Aurobindo:“Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,/With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,/Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,/
And the Muse a hundred-toned.” (5: 498)It is this small but significant
difference between the Western Madonna and the Indian goddesses which frames the autocratic God in the West and “God as Mother” or the feminine principle in India.
Tagore does relate to the religious image of “Hail to the Mother” since he belongs to a tradition which addressed and worshipped “God as Mother”. But simultaneously he transcends it by a secular representation of his land as Mother or Shakti, the universal power of manifestation which extends beyond the geographical boundary
of India. Sometimes he calls upon a ‘Hindu’ goddess and at other
times he invokes the “literal” procreant power of “Mother mine”of whom he is born.
According to Tagore, in Nature “…the people of the West seem to be delighted to discover an enemy for the sheer enjoyment
of challenging her to fight.” (2012: 175) It is the domination of the “inoffensive” flora and fauna that Tagore protests against. Coupled
with this conquest on the Indian ecology, the West promoted the practice of one autocratic God which was in direct opposition to the Indian concept of the Shakti. Written in the third phase of Tagore’s poetic career some of the poems of Gitanjali not only explore woman-
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Nature imagery but re-establish the pre-colonial practice of ecological awareness in the Vedanta tradition as well as restore the cult of Nature/ mother worship as the empirical energy of Shakti.
In verse no. 73 Tagore says, “No, I will never shut the doors of my senses. The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.” (51) These lines observe the ecofeminist spirituality tenet of legitimization of female power: body and emotion. Tagore says that through senses one gains “the intimacy of this world” (253) like the mother nurtures the child in her body. The child relates to her through its senses since the mind is not yet developed. The senses are the primordial instruments of oneness and delight since the child feels secure in the mother’s touch. In the West senses are disparaged as the symbol of lust and lack of self-control; whereas the Hindu tradition
recognizes them as composites of the five elements: nose is related to earth, tongue to water, eyes to fire, skin to air and ears to ether. Bodily
senses are not “non-civilised” but instruments to gain knowledge of Absolute in the human and non-human environment. Tagore writes in Religion of Man, “The relative proportion of the non-civilised to the civilised in man should be in the proportion of the water and the land in our globe, the former predomination.” (173)
According to Tagore, the uncivilised in him was “sensitive” which could naturally respond to the beauty in Nature and woman. Thus the body becomes a symbol of “delight” for the poet; a delight of universal presence which he feels in close physical contact/touch of Nature as well. Through his verse he makes his people conscious of their pre-colonial, uncivilised and “sensitive” tradition as opposed to the colonial, civilised and rational culture of the West.
As a child Tagore came across death more than once. In Reminiscences
(1917)he conveys that on losing his mother and sister-in-law he turned to mother earth to seek comfort and love and reassurance. He says:
When, in later life, I wandered about like a madcap, at the first
in a corner of my muslin scarf, and as I strolled my forehead with the soft, rounded, tapering buds, the touch of my mother’s
fingers would come back to me; and I clearly realized that the tenderness which dwelt in the tips of the lovely fingers was the
very same as that which blossoms every day n the purity of these jessamine buds; and that whether we know it or not this tenderness is on the earth in boundless measure. (268)
The poet recalled the presence of his mother in the caressing touch
of the “Jessamine” flowers. Tagore’s reference to the “jessamines” is
similar to Robert Burns’ employment of the symbol of rose to denote love in the poem titled, A red, red Rose: “O my Luve is like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June”. (589)
The jessamines and the rose are respectively native to India
and Europe. These flowers are cultural symbols, invoking certain
sensibilities in regards to the “place”. Burns compares his love to the rose by using the simile of “like”which has “newly sprung in June.”This implies the Scottish summer which is kind unlike the Indian summer which is harsh. It is a meteorological fact that Scotland is subjected to frosty winters and heavy monsoons. The poet does not want to compare his love to these bleak and unfavourable seasons. To represent his new and tender love he compares it with the mild and embalming European summer which encourages people to go out in the open.
Tagore’s deliberate allusion to “jessamines” indicates his personal
relation with his house. Jasmines flower in the tropical and mild
parts of India, Bengal being one of the places where the jasmines grow. Jasmines obviously grew in the poet’s house. White in colour and soothing in perfume, the “jessamines” represent his house. The house is not the “world of appearance” but as essential part of him which arouses in him a sense of belonging. It evokes a visual and tactile imagery, making Tagore recall his love for his late mother. The “jessamines” and his mother are synonymous. His mother was as pure
and temperate as the colour and perfume of the flower. Growing up, he Oendrila Guha
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rarely saw his mother who had to look after an extensive household; he associated her invisible presence to the airy perfume of the jasmines which hung about the house. This poem is,ergo,an exclusive example of “…a sentence or sentences containing juices, which stimulate the juices of emotion.” (Tagore 2002: 14) The “jessamines” legitimize the poet’s close association with the emotional side of himself or the feminine culture of the body/place, subjectivity, emotionality and the private sphere of his mother and the woman.
There is a corresponding attribution of the quality of motherliness to Nature in verse no. 87 in the lines: “Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness./ Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe.” (58) The poet speaks of “the deepest fullness”, otherwise associated with life. He lacks this “fullness” of life. This feeling of emptiness is also experienced by John Keats who voices it in “Ode on a nightingale” in the line “Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains” (742). Keats seeks deliverance but Tagore wants to take a “dip” into the “ocean” of the universe so that he can once again experience the “sweet touch” and “allness”
of the infinite. Can Tagore be assumed to mean that a life devoid of emotion is a life devoid of the play of the infinite? His repeated
implications to “sweet touch” reiterate the protection and familiarity of his mother. His existence is once again validated by the love and the care bestowed on him by Mother Nature.
In Personality he says that the woman
…has realized the mystery of life in her child more intimately than man has done. The woman’s nature in the poet has felt the deep stir of life in all the world. She has known it to be
infinite,-not through any reasoning process, but through the
illumination of her feeling. (27-28)
The poet can naturally identify with the feminine side of his
nature as “delight”. Tagore is obviously influenced by the concept
behavior for man and woman. On the empirical side, she is analogous to cosmology or the Prakriti; on the speculative side, she is associated with the Purusha. (Das Gupta 67) The Indian thought observes man and woman/Nature as two simultaneously existing and harmonious principles which came together in joyous manifestation: ardhanarishwara. This concept has evolved out of the masculine and feminine energies of the universe. The standards of male and female sexual behaviours
are not clearly demarcated in Indian philosophy in the figure of ardhanarishwara, thereby not subscribing to the power-discourse of one particular sex. Regarded as “an indicator of saintliness and yogic accomplishment”, AshisNandyasserts that it indicates India’s
successful coping with “one’s deepest conflicts about femininity and
masculinity…” (75)
In both these verses Tagore does not invoke the religious image
of any ‘Hindu’ goddesses. Instead he comprehends Shakti as an all-
pervading positive “delight” which includes the element of empiricism. The “sweet touch” is an empirical experience which engenders the
speculative emotion of the “allness” of the infinite. The poet experiences
the universal “delight” (speculative side) and creates a poem (empirical
output) in the same manner that the infinite consciousness became the finite world in an “immense delight to be” (2: 609), to quote Sri
Aurobindo.
The lines of verse no. 67 deal with the ecofeminist spirituality aspects of retrieval of old myths and beliefs where Nature/woman is revered and that pre-modern cultures have treated Nature-woman