''TAGORE, QUELLE HARMONIE!'' ... ROMAIN ROLLAND

''TAGORE, QUELLE HARMONIE!'' ... ROMAIN ROLLAND

Rabindranath Tagore was the outstanding genius of what has now come to be known as the Bengal Renaissance. His was a versatile genius in literature, music and art unrivalled in the annals of Indian history and holding pride of place in world history as well. Tagore was not only prolific but his poetic and musical compositions were of a very high order as well in terms of their timelessness and universality of appeal. His works are our great national treasure even as the Taj Mahal which incidentally Tagore had described as 'a tear-drop on the cheek of time'.

As we celebrate the 161st birth anniversary of Tagore on 9 May, 2022, we must remember that we owe it to the poet to be creative in our endeavours as we build our nation, hopefully along the broad lines envisioned by the poet in his Gitanjali poem, 'Where the mind is without fear'. One more thing --- we must indeed celebrate the life of our poet about whom the French savant Romain Rolland had exclaimed in admiration, "Quelle harmonie!", who Europe beheld in the inter-war years as a veritable Messiah, whose Gitanjali held the literary circles of London in rapturous silence culminating in the Nobel Prize in 1913, this, our poet, we must honour by reading his works and comparing notes with the other great geniuses the world has seen that we may do better justice towards appreciating his own genius.

We must scrupulously avoid the innate tendency in us to offer him blind adulation instead of properly studying the development of his life and works. Our heart's love is for him, for sure, for where shall we get another like him who was, perhaps, the climactic evolution of the Indian artistic tradition, but even so, we must not surrender our critical faculties or creative discernment in absorbing the genius that was Tagore. Only then can we do him honour as, perhaps, he would have liked, and only then, perhaps, we as a nation may hope to keep our artistic traditions up and evolving towards giving birth to future Tagores, for infinite is the potential of Man. It may sound facile, but did not Tagore say, 'হে নূতন, দেখা দিক আরবার জন্মের প্রথম শুভক্ষণ' ? ('Hail heralding newness! May it show its visage once more, that hallowed first moment of birth!')

Our prostrations at the feet of our beloved poet, our venerable Gurudev.

Written by Sugata Bose