SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

Let me conclude with two poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali.
Gitanjali LXIX
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs
through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless
blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is
the same life that is rocked in ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in
flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my
pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
And, Gitanjali XX
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew
it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream
and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me
that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect
sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
We in the arts have the “magic wand” that Tagore earlier referred to. We have the ability
and responsibility to use that wand to illuminate the truth, or we can, as so many have in
recent decades, use the wand exploit the underbelly of our culture. It is up to the individual
whether they wish to remain in the muck and mud of the lotus roots or rise to transcendent
beauty and
glory of the blossom.
It may be said of Tagore that he was ahead of his time, but I don’t believe that is true. He
was most certainly a man of his time but also a man who is timeless. His work would ring as
true and beautiful if it was written in 500B.C., 1200A.D., 1912, 2002 or 2102.
The lecture, “The Religion of an Artist,” may be found in its entirety in The English Writings
of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume 3, pp. 683-697, Sahitya Akademi, New Dehli, 1996. The
second part of the lecture, where the above quotes are found, is also published under the title,
“The Religion of an Artist,” in A Tagore Reader, pp. 230-240, Beacon Press, Boston, 1961.
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