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Unit 10: Beggarly Heart by Rabindranath Tagore

He is with them in sun and in shower, Notes
and his garment is covered with dust.
Even though an affectionate God, who inspires not fear but love, has a big role in Tagore’s
thinking, he is guided on all worldly questions not by any variety of mysticism but by explicit
and discernible reasoning. This Tagore, the real Tagore, got very little attention from his Western
audience—neither from his sponsors nor from his detractors. Bertrand Russell wrote (in letters
to Nimai Chatterji in the 1960s) that he did not like Tagore’s “mystic air,” with an inclination to
spout “vague nonsense,” adding that the “sort of language that is admired by many Indians
unfortunately does not, in fact, mean anything at all.” When an otherwise sympathetic writer,
George Bernard Shaw, transformed Rabindranath Tagore into a fictional character called
“Stupendranath Beggor,” there was no longer much hope that Tagore’s reasoned ideas would
receive the careful and serious attention that they deserved.
In Tagore’s vision of the future of his country, and of the world, there was in fact much emphasis
on reason and much celebration of freedom—precisely the subjects on which more discussion
can have an enormously constructive role today. In a rousing poem, he outlined his vision of
what he so strongly desired for his own country and for the whole world:

Where the mind is without fear and
the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls
The difficulty in Tagore’s reception in the West itself can perhaps be seen as a particular illustration
of a world “broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.”
The fragmentary distortions take distinct forms in different societies and different contexts. In
arguing for a world in which “the mind is without fear and the head is held high,” Tagore
wanted to overcome all those barriers. He did not quite succeed; but the engagement in open-
minded and fearless reasoning that Tagore championed so eloquently is no less important
today than it was in his own time.

10.10 Tagore: A Poet of Western Romantic and Eastern Mystical
Tradition

Tagore is in many ways influenced by the romantic tradition of the West. The most significant
aspect of romanticism particularly that of early 19th century English literature, is a new and
intense faith in the imagination. This is as true of Rabindranath Tagore as of Wordsworth and
Coleridge, or Tennyson and Browning. The recorded fact that Rabindranath as a young man was
especially fond of Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and Browning lends weight to this literary
assumption.
Although romanticism in Tagore is not purely a product of the impact of English poets, it is
actually a combination of many diverse elements of the East and the West. Many particular as
well as general elements of romanticism forge the link between Tagore and nineteenth century
British romantic poets. Rabindranath and the romantic poets turned away from reason to
imagination and intuition. Rabindranath’s romantic imagination does not dwell upon the
mundane, banal actualities of existence, but as in Blake and Bridges, on the visions of the
mysterious universe and the Creator. Rabindranath, in his passionate search for the divine life,
expresses the Devotee’s intense experiences of pain, perplexity, and joy.
In portraying a harmonious and joyous relationship between Man and nature, in relying upon
the authenticity of intuition rather than reason or sense-impression, in mystically visualizing

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