Tagus

“ It is thus that the domain of literature has extended into the region which seems hidden in the depth of mystery and made it human and speaking. It is growing, keeping pace with the conquest made by the human personality in the realm of truth. It is growing, not only into history, science and philosophy, but, with our expanding sympathy, into our social consciousness. The classical literature of the ancient time was only peopled by saints and kings and heroes. ”

“ We have the two parallel series of words in English:
transfer, refer, confer, differ, etc.
translate, relate, collate, dilate, etc.
puzzled. This is one of the few words in the English language whose origin is doubtful. It probably comes from the word to “ pose ” (which itself is a shortened form of “oppose”) meaning to set forward a difficult problem.
losels. An uncommon English word meaning a person who is good for nothing. The word is derived from the verb to “ lose.” ”

“ The rustling leaves will read it aloud to me, the rushing stream will chant it, and the seven wise stars will sing it to me from the sky.
I cannot find what I seek, I cannot understand what I would learn; but this unread letter has lightened my burdens and turned my thoughts into songs.
V
A handful of dust could hide your signal when I did not know its meaning.
Now that I am wiser I read it in all that hid it before.
It is painted in petals of flowers; waves flash it from their foam; hills hold it high on their summits. ”

“ Bonds are yours, and so are you kept eternally bound to creation. Play on, then, with our forms and let me take my flight into your formlessness.—O Eternal, you are mine, mine, mine!’—Satish departed into the night towards the river. ”

“ The hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.
In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow apologetically and depart. ”

“ From the dawn of our history the poets and artists have been infusing the colours and music of their soul into the structure of existence. And from this I have known certainly that the earth and the sky are woven with the fibres of man's mind, which is the universal mind at the same time. ”

“ PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“The beauty of the language in which Rabindranath Tagore’s philosophy is enshrined defies analysis almost as completely as the loftiness of the thought. It is a rhapsody that compels and convinces. ”

“ What has impressed me most in this country is the conviction that you have realized nature's secrets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but by sympathy. You have known her language of lines, and music of colours, the symmetry in her irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of movements; you have seen how she leads her immense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions; how the very conflicts in her creations break out in dance and music ”

“ All the joy, the buoyancy, the resilience, the indomitable and irrepressible hopefulness of Youth are compacted in the lines of the play. The keynote is sounded, with subtle symbolism, in the Prelude, in which the King ranks above all matters of State or of Humanity the circumstances that two gray hairs had made their appearance behind the ear that morning.... Dramatic power, philosophy and lyric charm are brilliantly blended in a work of art that has the freshness and the promise of its theme. ”

“ III Poetry and the arts cherish in them the profound faith of man in the unity of his being with all existence, the final truth of which is the truth of personality. It is a religion directly apprehended, and not a system of metaphysics to be analysed and argued. We know in our personal experience what our creations are and we instinctively know through it what creation around us means. ”

“ He never advanced from one word to another, but the glorious thought that he was actually reading a book filled his soul with exultation. Whenever a boat went by, he lifted his book, and pretended to be reading hard, shouting at the top of his voice. ”

“ We darkly behold (in the poetry of the obscurest eras) the forms of men,—such as can be seen afar through the mist,—no costume, no dialect, but for language you have a tongue itself. As for costume—we can dispense with that, the skins of beasts or bark of trees are always to be had,—what if the man is naked? ”

“ I have my desire to be fascinated, and fascination must be supplied to me in bodily shape by my country. She must have some visible symbol casting its spell upon my mind. I would make my country a Person, and call her Mother, Goddess, Durga—for whom I would redden the earth with sacrificial offerings. ”

“ The arising sun; the setting sun! There we have the symbol and the type of humanity, and all things with which humanity has to do. The symbol and the type, yes, and the earthly beginning, and the end also. ”

“ Our conversation nowadays has become full of modern sex-problems, and various other matters, with a sprinkling of poetry, both old Vaishnava and modern English, accompanied by a running undertone of melody, low down in the bass, such as I have never in my life heard before, which seems to me to sound the true manly note, the note of power. ”

“ Thereafter I could not set my mind to any kind of work. At noon when the boys in my class hummed, when Nature outside simmered in the sun, when the sweet scent of the nim blossoms entered the room on the tepid breeze, I then wished,—I know not what I wished for; but this I can say, that I did not wish to pass all my life in correcting the grammar exercises of those future hopes of India.
When school was over, I could not bear to live in my large lonely house ”

“ Well, then, if the palingenistic aspects of the successive transformations of the spiritualized globe have struck, stirred, roused you, then, my dear sir, the 'Globe' newspaper,—noble name which proclaims its mission,—the 'Globe' is an organ, a guide, who will explain to you with the coming of each day the conditions under which this vast political and moral change will be effected. ”

“ Here the desire and power to write are mine as they are nowhere else. The stir of outside life comes into me in waves of verdure, and with its light and scent and sound stimulated my fancy into story-writing. ”

“ The peoples, being living personalities, must have their self-expression, and this leads to their distinctive creations. These creations are literature, art, social symbols and ceremonials. They are like different dishes at one common feast. They add richness to our enjoyment and understanding of truth. They are making the world of man fertile of life and variedly beautiful. ”

“ This comes from the Old French "treacher," to trick. It is to be distinguished from the word "traitor," which comes from the Latin "traditor," one who gives up another. Compare intricate, trickery, trick, intrigue.
parasites. From the Greek word "sitos," food,—one who feeds on another.
property. From the Latin "proprius," meaning "one's own." Compare proper, appropriate, improper.
haggle. This is an Old Norwegian word which has come into English, meaning literally to chop.
good-for-nothing. Such "phrase" words as these are not very common in English. They are more common in French. ”

“ This opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not confined to a section of your privileged classes, it is not the forced product of [Pg 10] exotic culture, but it belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. This experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in the heart of the world, has been embodied in your civilisation. It is civilisation of human relationship. ”

“ The more vital his thoughts the more have his words to be explained by the context of his life. Those who seek to know his meaning by the aid of the dictionary only technically reach the house, for they are stopped by the outside wall and find no entrance to the hall. ”

“ Then, again, before I could properly understand English, a profusely illustrated edition of "The Old Curiosity Shop" fell into my hands. I went through the whole of it, though at least nine-tenths of the words were unknown to me. Yet, with the vague ideas I conjured up from the rest, I spun out a variously coloured thread on which to string the illustrations. Any university examiner would have given me a great big zero, but the reading of the book had not proved for me quite so empty as all that. ”

“ In like manner, that sect, one of whose most striking characteristics is a beautiful simplicity of dialect, served to check that strain of servile flattery and Gothic compliment so prevalent in the same period, and to keep up some idea of that manly plainness with which one human being ought to address another. ”

“ There has always been the hankering within me to express some great idea in the process of giving shape to my life on the lines suggested by the Creator. In this endeavour I have spent all my days. How severely I have curbed my desires, repressed myself at every step, only the Searcher of the Heart knows. ”

“ When we say that art only deals with those truths that are personal, we do not exclude philosophical ideas which are apparently abstract. They are quite common in our Indian literature, because they have been woven with the fibres of our personal nature. I give here an instance which will make my point clear. The following is a translation of an Indian poem written by a woman poet of mediæval India,—its subject is Life. ”

“ Thus did the First Book of my life come to an end with these chapters of union, separation and reunion. Or, rather, it is not true to say it has come to an end. The same subject has still to be continued through more elaborate solutions of worse complexities, to a greater conclusion. Each one comes here to finish but one book of life, which, during the progress of its various parts, grows spiral-wise on an ever-increasing radius. ”

“ They consisted of homes where with their families lived men whose object was to see the world in God and to realize their own life in him. Though they lived outside society, yet they were to society what the sun is to the planets, the centre from which it received its life and light. ”

“ And cannot each of those artistes boast of a toe which is the very essence of all poetry—a TO' KAAO'N?
No. You may make verses on Taglioni's feet, (though if she be a poetess, she can do that better than you, standing, too, on one leg, like the man that Horace speaks of;) but you cannot make them of her feet. Feet of which verses are composed are made of syllables, not of bones, muscles, and ligaments. Feet and pauses are the constituent parts of a verse.
We have heard one boy ask of another, who was singing, "How much is that a yard?" still the yard is not a poetical measure. ”

“ Though my Latin tutor had never ventured to trouble me with the proofs of his theory, yet up to this day I do not disbelieve it. I am convinced that the minds of men are connected through some deep-lying continuous medium, and that a disturbance in one part is by it secretly communicated to others. ”

“ Matter, taken by itself, is an abstraction which can be dealt with by science; while manner, which is merely manner, is an abstraction which comes under the laws of rhetoric. But when they are indissolubly one, then they find their harmonics in our personality, which is an organic complex of matter and manner, thoughts and things, motives and actions. ”

“ But in all our dramas which still retain their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatikâ_, _Shakuntalâ_, _Uttara-Râmacharita_, Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions. ”

“ In this story Rabindranath Tagore begins with some amusing sentences about the dull, matter of fact character of modern scientific people, who cannot enjoy a fairy story without asking “ Is it true? ” The Poet implies that there are deeper truths than modern science has yet discovered. The ending of the present story will show this more clearly. ”

“ And while man tills his soil and spins his cloths, mates and rears his children, toils for wealth and fights for power, he does not forget to proclaim in languages of solemn rhythm, in mysterious symbols, in structures of majestic stone, that in the heart of his world he has met the Immortal Person. ”

“ If man could only listen to the voice that rises from the heart of his own creation, he would hear the same message that came from the Indian sage of the ancient time:
"Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, dwellers of the heavenly worlds, I have known the Supreme Person who comes as light from the dark beyond." ”

“ You will be better pleased with a free translation of the conversation, remembering that Mul-tal-la acted as the mouthpiece of the chief and the boys, though the latter had picked up enough knowledge of the tongue to catch the meaning of a good many of the words spoken by Taggarak, who, of course, knew nothing of English.
"My sons have come a long way from the land of the rising sun. Why did they leave their friends to make so long a journey?" ”

“ We find that all these men are, like ourselves, clad in the garment of the Holy Name, and sustained by the Food of that Name. They come from all sides singing their Pilgrim Songs, and sweep like a bright cloud into the City Gates. ”

“ Here he sees things in a time in which the mountains pass away like shadows, but the rain-clouds with their seeming transitoriness are eternal. He perceives in his world that this love of comrades, like clouds that require no solid foundation, is stable and true, is established without edifices, rules, trustees or arguments. ”

“ The secret gushes out from my heart. They come and ask me, "Tell me all your meanings." I know not how to answer them. I say, "Ah, who knows what they mean!" They smile and go away in utter scorn. And you sit there smiling. ”

“ Think of thy robe,
and remember thy splendid toga,
which thou shalt wear and (with which) thou shalt be adorned,
when thy name hath been read out in the list of the valiant,
and thy brother, our viceroy,
thou shalt be in our kingdom. ”