Tagore’s Visit to Belgrade

Predrag Čičovački

I. Arrival 

Exactly a hundred years ago, an unusual event happened in Belgrade. On Sunday, November 14, 1926, around nine o’clock at night, at the old railway station in Belgrade, a large crowd of people began to gather. They were awaiting the train from Zagreb, and on it, the respected guest. They were expecting a sixty-five-year-old Rabindranath Tagore, a poet from India, along with his entourage. When the train arrived at the station, the public had enthusiastically greeted the guest, who had then, for the first and last time, stepped on Serbian soil.

          Who was that esteemed guest, whose arrival was awaited with such excitement? Why were all those people waiting for him on that cold November night? What kind of gifts was he bringing them? Did they get what they were hoping for, and did they see him off just as enthusiastically from Belgrade just two days later, on November 16, 1926?

II. An Extraordinary Character

Everything regarding the guest from India was unusual and extraordinary: from his name and appearance to his roots and life course. The last name “Thakur” has been transcribed from Bengali to Hindi as “Tagore,” and to this day we have not resolved whether his family name should be pronounced as Tagore or Tagor in Serbian, nor where to put the accent when pronouncing it. His first name is composed of two words: “Rabi,” which in Bengali, his native language, means “Sun,” and “nath,” the word for “Lord” in that language. So, when translated, his name means “Sun-Lord,” or “Sun-God.”

        Tagore truly had something divine in his appearance: he was tall, with long hair and a long beard, with piercing but gentle eyes. Despite his infrequent journeys to the West and the popularity of British clothing among the upper classes in India, he was always dressed in the “Indian” manner. His whole figure exuded extraordinariness.

           His appearance reminded many of Jesus Christ, and many compared his sermons to Christianity. He defended himself by saying that he was not imitating anyone, especially not Jesus Christ, and that his sermons were based on the rich Indian tradition, especially the one that found its expression in the ancient Upanishads.

Tagore was born in the house of his father in Calcutta, the capital city of Bengal, on May 7, 1861. Eighty years and three months later, on August 7, 1941, he also passed away in that same house. Calcutta was the center of an unusually rich cultural and spiritual tradition, and Tagore’s family was one of the most prominent. Not only his grandfather and father, but many of his numerous relatives were known for distinguished and multiple gifts. Rabindranath was no exception. He published his first book of poems, The Poet's Story, at the age of seventeen. After that, at the persuasion of his father, he went to London to study. During his stay in England, he published two more books of poems, but he did not finish his studies, for which he traveled to that distant country. After two years, he returned to India.

Twenty-two-year-old Tagore got married in 1883 to Mrinalini Devi (a name he gave to her), who had been around ten years old at the time. Sometime later (1891), his father entrusted him with the management of one of the family estates in rural East Bengal (Bangladesh today), where he spent around ten years living in a boat house (on the Padma River) and where he came in contact with very different life conditions than those under which he was brought up in the capital of Bengal. Mrinalini and Tagore had five children, only two of whom survived him. The first decade of the twentieth century was particularly difficult for Tagore: within a few years, he lost his beloved wife, two children, and his father.

In the same decade, Tagore established his experimental school in the open in Santiniketan (in western Bengal, 152 kilometers south of Calcutta). The school exists to this day, and from 1921, under the name Visva Bharati (“where the world comes together in a single nest”), it has grown into an all-India college. When he was not traveling, Santiniketan was Tagore’s home. Wishing to help the local population, he engaged in various agricultural and craft projects.

Quite unexpectedly, Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. A year before, he visited England and shared his verses with a group of poets. He himself translated them from Bengali to English, and they were then published under an unusual title: Gitanjali: Song Offerings. Touched by his poetry, William Butler Yeats nominated Tagore for the Nobel Prize. When that came true, Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; he also became the first winner of that award in Asia. This acknowledgment brought him the unwanted burden of fame, which followed him regardless of whether he was traveling through India or to other parts of the world. As he put it: “It is almost as bad as tying a tin can to a dog's tail, making it impossible for him to move about without creating noise and collecting crowds all along.”

Tagore could not help but participate, in one way or another, in the then-flaring movement for the liberation of India from British rule. There, his public status and moral authority were more important than direct involvement. Tagore’s reaction to the massacre in Amritsar on April 13, 1919 (also known as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) needs to be mentioned: as a sign of his indignation, Tagore returned the knighthood, which had been awarded to him in 1915, to the English Viceroy of India. His gesture was widely applauded across India and inspired many in the struggle for Indian independence. It is also important to remember his friendship with Gandhi, which did not exclude the publicly stated disagreements regarding the proper way of fighting for freedom: Tagore was strongly opposed to the public burning of British clothing, as well as to asceticism and the spinning wheel, which Gandhi ardently advocated.

Tagore traveled a lot, more abroad than around India. He traveled to hold lectures and to learn about different parts of the world. Most of all, he wanted to spread his conviction of the necessity of a better understanding not only between the East and the West, but also between all parts of the world. He visited around 30 countries on five continents, where he also met figures like George Bernard Shaw and Ezra Pound, Hermann von Keyserling and Romain Rolland, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein.

That was the extraordinary and celebrated person whom the Belgradians were waiting for on November 14, 1926.

III. Civilization

Tagore came to Belgrade on his European tour. His journey led him from London and Paris, Vienna and Berlin, to Budapest, Zagreb and Belgrade, and then further to Sofia, Thessaloniki and Istanbul. In all those cities, besides meeting local journalists and intelligentsia, Tagore delivered a lecture “On Modern Civilization.”

This topic was then discussed frequently and vigorously. The western defenders of civilization had seen in it a linear and progressive improvement of life—both materially and culturally—in all parts of the world where civilization penetrated. There was a growing number of critics, however. Perhaps the most important among them was Oswald Spengler, who had shaken such a positive outlook with his magnum opus: The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes; the first volume was published in 1918 and the second in 1922). Albert Schweitzer had also written about The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization, as well as about Civilization and Ethics in his two-volume Philosophy of Civilization (Kulturphilosophie; published in 1923).

After the First World War, it was hard not to notice that Western civilization was in crisis. The question was whether the crisis was the result of an accidental development of that civilization or whether, on the contrary, there was something in the very nature of the civilization, which had led to it turning increasingly toward the material sphere and expansion, which were opening the road to a destructive and almost unlimited use of force.

Tagore shared such concerns. Europe, in his opinion, had drowned in ‘‘cruel realism,” in a unification with which the obsession with money and the lowest passions of the soul also gain strength. According to him, the cause of the fall of Western civilization was the growing skepticism toward its own ideals.

Tagore had an additional motive for dealing with the problems of civilization. The first one was about the influence of the Western—especially British—civilization on India and its population. During their rule, the British aggressively imposed their culture on India, while belittling or ignoring the rich traditions they found there. And the Indians themselves—of course, the well-off ones—were divided on whether they should imitate the British or whether the encroachment of their civilizing influence should be strongly opposed.

Tagore stood between these two extreme views. He advocated that the future of a universal civilization lies in the cooperation of the West and the East. It could even be said that he saw the encouragement of such cooperation as an important part of his life's mission, and he often spoke and wrote about the subject.

His lecture in Belgrade makes it clear that Tagore does not believe that something is inherently wrong in the idea of civilization, whether it is Western or Eastern. On the contrary, civilizations emerge from a deep and natural human urge for development and freedom. They are part of our noble impulses to overcome the limitations of our small and selfish “I” and turn to the development of both our own spiritual culture and the establishment of a spiritual community of all people, regardless of their gender, race, religion, or social status.

Something, however, diverts Western civilization toward selfish and lower goals. Modern civilization inexorably stimulates us from the outside. The flow of sensations and impressions coming toward us is like a continuous beating of drums from which we can no longer hide; it hinders our spontaneous reaction to other people and the natural world and increasingly prevents us from following our most intimate impulses and aspirations. In his Belgrade lecture, Tagore compared Western civilization in its current crisis state with that proverbial elephant in the glass shop. In other writings on the modern world, he presented it as a giraffe, which is a more appropriate and original comparison: it is an animal with a huge neck, whose brain distanced itself from the heart and whose body became disproportionately big in comparison to its other aspects. The giraffe’s huge body has insatiable desires, the satisfaction of which pushes civilization toward colonization and exploitation of others, toward wars and plundering. Tagore described the beginning of the twentieth century as the “flood of ambition and greed for gain,” completely out of sync with people’s moral and spiritual being and incapable of stimulating the best in us.

Tagore did not accuse science and technology of such an outcome, but rather the spirit of the forces that they encourage with their inventions. The power that science and technology give us represents an enormous danger and the greatest temptation of today. Like money, power can be accumulated endlessly. Also like money, power does not carry any ideals but only strives for practical use. It is precisely the twilight of civilization that, like any other twilight, allows us to see clearly that the continuation of such trends perverts both healthy human relationships and the best in us.

From the oppressed heart of the world, Tagore hoped that one could still “hear that glorious prayer once uttered in the solitude of an Indian forest” and recorded in “The Chandogya Upanishad”:

“Lead me from the unreal to the real;

lead me from darkness to light;

lead me from death to immortality.”

IV. Art

There were no plans for an additional lecture during Tagore’s visit to Belgrade. It happened due to an invitation from the host for the respected guest from India to speak to the enthusiastic Belgrade public about some artistic topic, which he gladly accepted. Tagore gained fame mostly as a poet, but he also wrote plays and novellas, composed music for his own lyrics, and, toward the end of his life, seriously engaged in painting. It is difficult to imagine a more competent speaker on the subject of art.

In his lecture titled “The Meaning of Art,” Tagore used a comic and instructive example. Passing by a school, Tagore noticed a newly scribbled message on its wall: “Bipin is a huge donkey.” It is this inscription, claimed Tagore, that helped him answer the question: “What is art?”

“Bipin” is a common Bengali name for a boy, and one such Bipin was pointed out to the world by someone as a “huge donkey.” There was no word on whether Bipin was tall or short, fat or skinny, smart or not. But the characterization of the boy called Bipin as a donkey is a clear expression of agitated passion. It is the expression of a soul that could not accept some injustice probably committed, as well as the expression of an angry desire to perpetuate its opinion of Bipin and brand him in the whole community.

Tagore compared science to a “passenger on the train to generalization”: this is where learned minds gather from every side to travel together with the same vehicle. Unlike the scientist, who travels by train, the artist is a “solitary figure walking alone in the crowd,” constantly absorbing direct experiences that are easy to overlook while traveling by train and which can neither be classified nor scientifically defined. Unlike science, art reflects a personal approach and judgment, so art is always “selective.” By omitting all that is irrelevant to his aim, the artist “brings forth the truth of his work much more vividly than he could by merely copying a reality which is decidedly impartial to all that exists.” To the question “What is art?” Tagore offers the following insight: “Art is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the real.”

Let us reflect for a while on these expressions, “call of the real” and “the response of the man’s creative soul.” Reality is more than bare facts, more than lifeless and soulless things. The essence of reality is revealed in rhythm, in the rhythmic pulsation of being. Light is the rhythm, says Tagore, and sound is the rhythm. Is not the difference between stones and minerals in the rhythm of the elements that make them up, in the different metrics of their positions and circumstances? Tagore defines “rhythm” as “the movement born and regulated by harmonic constraints.” It is instructive to quote his deeper explanation of rhythm: “It is a freedom that finds its strength through the vigor of restraint, through the union of two contradictory spirits—the ecstasy of exuberance and endurance, of control. When words and thoughts remain without cadence and form, they do not give us a lasting sense of reality. The moment they are put into rhythm, they tremble and radiate. It is the same with a rose ... A rose seems to me to be still, but because of the metric of its composition, it has a lyrical movement in its full peace, the dream of a game that revolves in a circle, which is the same as the dynamic quality of a picture that has perfect harmony.”

Reality does not consist of some huge cosmic “bucket,” in which a heap of real things is placed, and whose identity and relations are determined by temporal and spatial dimensions. While we focus on it as a heap, it remains lifeless. It does not call us to it: it is indifferent toward us, just as we are toward it. Unlike that heap, rhythm is a relationship between things, and it is their interplay that makes them what they are. That is exactly their reality, which also invites us to join the pulsation of everything that exists, to join that game of living forms and constellations. Reality calls us and waits for us with open arms.

A big picture always beckons and speaks, explains Tagore; news from the newspaper, even when it is about a tragic event, is stillborn. If we, however, give it the right rhythm, it will never stop pulsating and radiating. Tagore explains this on the example of the magnificent Taj Mahal, created after Shah Jahan lost his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal (in 1632): Shah Jahan's grief was insignificant as long as it was locked “in the darkness of his own heart, but it found eternity in the rhythmic stones of the Taj Mahal. That is art. It has a magic wand that gives immortal reality to everything it touches, and binds everything to the personality within us.” As we stand before such a work of art, absorbing it, we seem to say to it: “I know you as I know myself; you are true, real.”

An artist is a person who sees things for what they could be and what they are. We value artists because they have a gift to help us see the same. As Tagore poetically summed this up in his lecture to the Belgrade audience: “The human artist invites God the artist to his home. God dwells amid what he has created, and the man is expected to create his own environment, a home worthy of his soul.”

V. Thought

        Human beings have a soul. But not just humans. A bird has a soul, and a rose has a soul. A song has a soul, and a picture has a soul. Tagore does not divide the world into what has a soul and what does not. Everything has a soul; the only question is whether it is awakened or not, whether that soul is receptive to the fullness of being and the rhythm of its play, whether it is free or not.

     The more important division for Tagore is between the finite and the infinite. It is not an absolute divide since those two worlds intersect, because they are in a constant pulsation of interplay. Finite is that which is many and which needs some form, by means of which it manages to express itself and realize itself in its existence; it finds and changes that form, with the rhythm of seasons and situations. The infinite, by contrast, is that which is one, which is unique, and which carries an idea within itself. That idea is a vision of the joy of the present, a vision of the joy of existence. Tagore believes that all beings are born from eternal joy.

    We live in two worlds: in a finite and an infinite one. “All my works,” writes Tagore, “deal with only one topic: the exhilaration of reaching the infinite within the finite.” Following only the finite, living only in the limited, temporary world, leads to blindness, to the darkness of mechanical and soulless existence. Tagore emphasizes, however, that the “Isha Upanishad” teaches that trying to live only in the infinite leads to even greater darkness, to even greater delusions. Only those who know the transitory and the eternal as inseparably harmonized in the play of life can experience the fullness of living; only they can feel freedom in its true sense.

     The tension between those two worlds, their occasional hostility and conflicts, is not something bad that should always be eliminated as urgently and decisively as possible. Tensions and opposites, hostility and conflicts are necessary ingredients of life, without which there is no fullness and harmony. The God of the Hindus is both immanent and transcendent, without this creating any “logical” problems for anyone. Nor do they exist at the level of everyday opposites, which are not only mutually exclusive but also complementary. The air blown into the flute meets the resistance of its material, but it is precisely this resistance that enables them to harmonize and create a musical sound. And our insights and thoughtful penetrations commonly occur precisely in the “collision” of light and darkness, day and night: at dawns and at twilights.

     Sādhanā—the realization and fulfillment of the meaning of life is exactly that simultaneous living in the world of the finite and in the light of the infinite. Such fulfillment does not manifest itself in some kind of “nirvana,” which Eastern sages seek through yoga and meditation. Nor does that fulfillment consist in the alleged “happiness” that Western civilization is obsessed with and seeks with greater persistence than the medieval alchemists searched for the elixir of life (“lapis philosophorum”).

     The fullness of life does not lead to nirvana or happiness, but to the feeling of joy and fulfillment. My small “I” finds its home and its role in one big “we”—in the community with other people, with living beings, with nature, with the whole world. It finds its home and its role when we treat that world with love, when we become lovers of life. “We really live in the world,” says Tagore, “only when we love it.”

    Tagore believes that this thought is not new and that he is not laying out some new teaching to the world. He only reminds us of the ancient wisdom recorded in holy books, as well as in famous works of art and philosophy. In all of them, Tagore believes that we find the same topics that can be summed up into four:

1. The search for regularities and laws that would express the order (ṛta) that pervades all being.

2. The search for ways to overcome the imperfections of our existence and the world's existence.

3. The search for eternal harmony that hides beyond the changeable “face of the world,” beyond the world of appearances.

4. Expressing the deepest respect for the natural and spiritual forces that we celebrate in the form of deities, in connection with which we almost at the same time intuitively understand that they are only symbols, and that the power and powerlessness, the joy and sorrow that life brings are in the works of man, in our own hands.

VI. Departure

William Butler Yeats wrote that Tagore's lyrics depicted “the world he had dreamed of all his life,” and Andre Gide spoke of Tagore's “incomparable purity of spirit.” Hermann Keyserling compared him to Homer, and Albert Schweitzer called him “the Goethe of India.” Tagore did not compare himself with anyone. He was simply himself, and the only thing he wanted to share with others was his gift of living, inspired by the rich cultural tradition from which he came.

The Belgradians welcomed Tagore with enthusiasm, which only grew stronger in the course of his short visit. During that time, Tagore was presented with the most beautiful costume from the Academy's collection of Serbian handicrafts and costumes, a folk costume all in gold, made in the 18th century. On his departure, he was presented with a flute, a pair of traditional leather shoes (“opančići”), and a flask of plum brandy.

Tagore left, and for us who follow it from the distance of a hundred years, the question remains whether there is anyone in the world today who would move us to rush to the Belgrade railway station (or airport) on a cold November evening to welcome the distinguished guest. If such individuals do exist, would we personally head out into the cold night, or would we just continue to sit in our warm homes in front of the TV or computer screens?

What would the answers to these questions reveal about our age and ourselves?

Perhaps we should not try to answer those uncomfortable questions right away. At this moment, it is better to hear Tagore's verses and thus end the remembrance of the visit of this extraordinary man to Belgrade, as well as the recollection of our ancestors who knew how to appreciate such a man and his gift to the world.