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Anita Staðulâne. Kultûru sintçzes ideja: Rabindranâta Tagores ietekme uz Nikolaja Rçriha ..
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world expressed in beautiful poetical images. N. Roerich was especially devoted to
the Bengali poet. Indeed, for him, R. Tagore was not only a poet: “”Gitanjali” came
like a revelation.” 5 N. Roerich was so excited with R. Tagore’s poems that he finished
the play entitled “Ìèëîñåðäèå” (Mercy or Charity) dated November 1917 with
a translation of R. Tagore’s poem.
Fascinated with Eastern culture, philosophy, and religious teachings known
through the Bhagavad Gita, and the works of Tagore, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda,
the Roerichs began to make plans for their trip to India in the summer of 1918. After
a sequence of exhibitions in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, in the fall of 1919 the
Roerichs arrived in London, where they hoped to obtain visas to India. In May 1920,
while N. Roerich was mounting an exhibition of his works in the British capital, R.
Tagore left India for a fifteen–month tour of Europe and the United States. Finally,
while N. Roerich was working on a series called by him “Ñíû Âîñòîêà” (Dreams of
the East), R. Tagore came to see the Russian painter.
The next question, then, is that of the cause of their meeting. N. Roerich described
it as follows:
Will not fate bring about a meeting here, on this plane, with him who so
powerfully called towards Beauty the Conqueror? Strangely, Providence
transforms imperative dreams into reality. Indeed unforeseen are the
paths. Life itself weaves the beautiful web as no human imagination can
visualise it6 .
J. Decter, for her part, has expressed the following opinion: “Coincidentally [italics
– A. S.], […] Rabindranath Tagore came to see him at his studio” 7 . These considerations
suggest the idea to put their meeting in a concrete context. It is important to
observe that in England R. Tagore was received by his “old friends” 8 Rothenstein9 and W. B. Yeats10 . Stephen N. Hay points out:
Shortly before Tagore’s arrival [in 1912] he [W. B. Yeats] had been persuaded
by an American medium that his mind was being guided by his
astral counterpart, the darkskinned medieval poet Leo Africanus11 . Small
wonder that the arrival in the flesh of an exotic poet from India should
have so elated the susceptible Yeats12 .
Consequently, when R. Tagore met N. Roerich, he was already familiar with theosophical
and spiritualistic circles of London. We may suppose that R. Tagore had
heard of N. Roerich’s “Russian paintings” from these circles. Therefore, their meeting
at N. Roerich’s studio can be considered as a consequence of their links with
Theosophy. Moreover, it was not their last meeting: “Then we met in America […]” 13
In order to clarify the development of N. Roerich’s and R. Tagore’s relations, let
us pay attention to the way in which N. Roerich addresses the Bengali poet in their
correspondence which lasted from 1920 to 1939. In the first letter, N. Roerich addresses
R. Tagore: “Dear Master!”; in the second letter of July 26, 1920: “Dear Master
and Friend!”; in the third one (of December 27, 1929): “My Dear Friend!”; later,
in the letter of April 20, 1931: “Dear Brother in Spirit!” 14 Without proceeding to a
deeper analysis, we can point out the word friend as the axis of further addresses