BLiterature-Apratim

31
An intense ray is dispersed into stream of colors
From an advancing darkness;
The Sun, the Moon and all the stars
Move dying in rotation
Layer up to layer
Like a lot of bubbles.”
(Translated by the author)
And he imposes transience upon the glory of an unquestionably pure love in
“Shahjahan”. The Indian emperor Shahjahan founded the great mausoleum called
Taj Mahal to immortalize his beloved wife’s memory. Tagore believes the great
emperor has eventually forgotten her memory on his journey from this planet to a
more glorified and enlightened world.
He was still a Romantic in the broader sense, but later during the more
destructive Second World War (1939-’45), his chaste romantic nature was severely
struck. Tagore became a Modern, but his modernism is colored by romanticism; he
“carried his romanticism intact into the modern world” (a comment by William
Radice). He foresaw a demon arising to devastate the civilization exactly as W. B.
Yeats did; but he had a deep belief in a supernatural good power and had optimism
in Man’s will for returning to purity and piety. Punascha (The Post-Script), Prantik
(The Border-Land), Shejuti (The Lamp), Shanai (The Cornet), Shesh Lekha (The
Last Writings) and some other poetical collections fall in this era. In the poem
“Shishutirtha” (“The Pilgrimage of the Child”) of Punascha, Tagore envisions the
victory of humanity and an enlightened glory of the civilization’s journey. “Banshi”
(“Flute-music”) of Punascha is a poem having the theme of unconsummated love of
a socio-economically deprived man who appears at such comprehension of the
sorrows of love through the sadness of flute-symphony –
“……nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk
From the Emperor Akbar.
Torn umbrella and royal parasol merge,
Rise on the sad music of a flute
Towards one heaven.”
(Translated by William Radice)
In “Ekjan Loke” (“A Man”), he tells of the eternal sadness of alienation in the human
world. And in “Apaghat” (“The Shocking News”) of Shanai, he shows how the
catastrophe of another part of the world disturbs the merriment of a few ordinary men
of a distant locality.
In “Janmadin” (“My Birthday”) of Shejuti, the poet memorializes his life-history
and the gradual fall of civilization alongside. He suspects the civilization is going to
be caught in the clutches of ‘human-animals’.
In the poem “Pakshi-Manab” (“The Bird-like Man”) of Nabajatak (The Newborn
Baby), he pleads mankind to save the world from a possible catastrophe
caused by technological advancement.
Even a few days before his death, he wrote a number of good poems which
are collected in Shesh Lekha. Especially memorable is “Prothom Diner Surya” (“The
First Day’s Sun”) –
“The first day’s Sun
Asked the being at its newer birth –