Inadmissible Controversies and Disparities Tagging Tagore and Nazrul Hurt Patriotic Bengalis

Writing anything about Bengali literature makes it obligatory to cite allusions to Rabindranath Tagore, the most radiant name in the arena of our creative legacy and artistic discourses. Rabindranath Tagore introduced the luminosity of Bengali literature to the global communities and secured recognition for Bengali-speaking people's aptitude for aesthetics from all corners of the world. However, sometimes we notice some unpalatable attempts to raise unacceptable comparisons and contrasts between Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam which hurts us.

Rabindranath Tagore's most esteemed literary creation is Gitanjali which contains his perennial verses touching upon all spectacles of life. Gitanjali, which was titled Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore, brought him Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Gitanjali was originally written by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali and it was later on translated by himself into English. 

The poems in Song Offerings abound with devotional messages and ethereal delight and the ecstasy that vibrate through the poems in Song Offerings gushes out with a profound love for God, nature and mankind. All the poems of Song Offerings resonate with a celestial form of blitheness and have the power to usher the readers into a world of spiritual elevation. Spiritualism is a highly noteworthy feature in Song Offerings. 

Questing for the presence of God in God's creations leads us to another philosophical arena-pantheism. Pantheism stands for believing in the presence of God in everything. Mysticism and pantheistic philosophy have been in practice by oriental as well as western authors and poets for hundreds of years. We find mystic thoughts in literary works by Jalal Uddin Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, John Donne, Walt Whitman and some more celebrated poets of the world belonging to different nations. So, the intermingling of spiritual philosophy with literature crosses all barriers of time and geography.

In one of the verses of Song Offerings, Rabindranath Tagore wrote:  I shall ever try To drive all evils away from my heart And keep my love in flower, Knowing that thou Hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

The above lines show the poet's utmost loyalty to God saying that he would eliminate all diabolic things from this heart to keep it as pure and sacred as a flower because God resides in the hearts of all humans. These lines remind us of Jalal Uddin Rumi, the best-known Persian mystic philosopher who exalted God in the following way:

"In your light I learn how to love; in your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art." The words "You dance inside my chest" have a deep thematic affinity to Tagore's lines "Knowing that thou

Hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.”
To quote some more lines from Song Offerings:

"Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure."

By selecting words like "sit quiet" and "dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure" Tagore once again calls back to our minds another line from Jalal Uddin Rumi, "Silence is the language of God. Everything else is its poor translation." We search for God in silence, not in clamor. We look deeper into nature to trace the footprints of God while thinking over the meaning of nature's quietness.

 Walt Whitman, the most adored American poet of all times, wrote in a poem: "A child said: What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?"

Whitman's vision of the handful of grass brought to him by a child is illustrated through a marvelous analogy, "the handkerchief of the Lord." God has created the world not merely out of a whim. Rather He has spread His marks all over the universe for humans to explore His magnificence by taking a closer look into His creations.

Coming back to Song Offerings, let's read some more lines: "Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove." These lines by Tagore from Song Offerings take us back to John Keats's rejoicing words about the affluence of autumn in the lines stated below: "To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees…."
Tagore in Song Offerings lyrically expressed his gladness at the arrival of summer at his homestead while John Keats, an eminent English romantic poet, ecstatically put forward the glamorous colorfulness autumn added to nature in the lines cited above.

The introduction to Song Offerings was written by William Butler Yeats, a prominent Irish poet of 20th century who was also awarded Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote about Rabindranath Tagore in the introduction, "No poet seems to me as famous in Europe as he is among us." The exposure of Bengali literature and Bengali music to the west mainly happened through the sublime literary resources penned by Rabindranath Tagore. He made the world familiar with our literary grandeur and our musical plenitude.

Kazi Nazrul Islam, the rebel poet and the National Poet of our country, rocked the ground below the throne of British Empire with his revolutionary verses. His poetry, bolstered with fiery words and striking imagery, emboldened the general masses of Bengal to revolt against the British colonial forces which afterwards brought about the independence of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The revolutionary spirit found in most of the poems by Kazi Nazrul Islam jingles with an urge for freedom and equity. His poetry about love and nature are equally fabulous with the power of spellbinding readers with the magical aura of his diction. Kazi Nazrul Islam's poetry, with reflections of his love for nature, for humanity, his leaning towards social justice, gets him much closer to the romantic poets of England and America who thrived during 19th century. Several poems by Kazi Nazrul Islam can be compared with some of the poetic creations of P.B. Shelley, John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.

To quote a few lines from Kazi Nazrul Islam's best-known poem "Bidrohi" (The Rebel):

"I am the wild fire of the woods,
I am Hell's mad terrific sea of wrath!
I ride on the wings of lightning with joy and profundity,
I scatter misery and fear all around,
I bring earthquakes on this world!" (Translated by Kabir Chowdhury)

The above words illustrate the indomitable passion of the poet for revolting against all odds and an irrepressible desire to destroy all evil things around him to bring about a renovated genesis. A theme of resurrection can be traced in the above lines beside the motif of rebellion. Kazi Nazrul Islam's frequent allusions to himself as "I" remind us of Walt Whitman's most celebrated poem "Song of Myself". To read a couple of lines from this poem:

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

Like Kazi Nazrul Islam's "I", Whitman also points to himself in his poetic drive for self-adulation, for the eulogy of selfhood and for promoting the idea of rising higher than the rest in terms of thoughts and intellect. So, an identical approach to the value of self-esteem can be underlined in Whitman's "Song of Myself" and Kazi Nazrul Islam's "The Rebel".

To look into Kazi Nazrul Islam's love for nature, the following lines from his poem "Akashey Helan Diye" (Leaning against the Sky) may be paraphrased:

"There the hill sleeps leaning against the sky.
Never homebound, I am the spring on that hill,
and keep flowing at my will
The leopard is my comrade,
the cobra my playmate;
I cuddle happily the snake's basket
and pass the night on.
Catching the flight of the whirling wind
I hop and dance along." (Translated by Mohammad Nurul Huda)

The poet, as comprehended from the lines extracted above, is not willing to go back home because he is too happy with the natural entities around him to look for any other resort. The words "I am the spring on that hill" recall the idealization of spring found in P.B. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" in which Shelley asked "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" Spring is the season of verdure. Nature regains its resonance and glory when spring arrives victoriously vanquishing the aridness caused by winter. P.B. Shelley and Kazi Nazrul Islam stand on equal terms as far as their fascination for spring is concerned. Both these poets are devoted to the splendor of nature. Nature liberates us from all forms of myopia and broadens our vision and teaches us to uphold the words of love and fraternity.

Kazi Nazrul Islam's poems on love are highly moving and poignant. His poem "Bhalo Lagar Smriti" translated as "Memories of Liking" by Mohammad Nurul Huda, an eminent scholar on Nazrul Islam's literary creations, is one of the most melodious poems in Bengali literature. To have a glance over a few lines:

"Memories of liking cannot be forgotten,
so I visit your compound again and again,
The curved moon still rises in the sky,
the purple flower blooms in my garden;
The light that plays on its flute at radiant dawn,
now overflows my heart with endless joy.
O my sweet darling,
desert's desire still lingers in my heart.
and the body- Yamuna swells
in utmost affection."

Kazi Nazrul Islam recollects the honey-coated memories of the time while he was accompanied by his beloved. The sweetness and sublimity of love get reflected profusely through the above words. With love as a glaring theme in poetry, a few lines may be recalled from John Keats:

"Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories."
John Keats, who was a leading poet during English Romantic period, depicted his devotion for the woman he loved in the above lines and it is also added that all verses of the poet become delightful with the remembrance of that special woman.

Kazi Nazrul Islam's another highly esteemed poem "Chol, Chol, Chol," which is the national marching song of Bangladesh, should be named with earnest applause and heartiest salutes in this piece of writing. This is one of the most inspirational and persuasive poems ever written in Bengali language. To read some of the translated lines from this poem:

"Through dawn's door, a shattering blow
We will bring daybreak, scarlet in glow;
We will destroy the gloom of the night
And hindering mountain height." (Translated by Mohammad Nurul Huda)

The above poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam is thematically and rhetorically very close to Walt Whitman's poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" Let's read a few lines from this poem by Whitman:

"Beat! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying,
Leave not the bridegroom quiet-no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums-so shrill you bugles blow."

 Both these poems by Kazi Nazrul Islam and Walt Whitman yell out a clarion call to the people from all walks of life from their respective nations to join the battle for equity, justice and brotherhood. What Kazi Nazrul Islam terms "a shattering blow" is named "a ruthless force" in the poem by Walt Whitman. The glaring themes of both these reinvigorating poems are all about calling upon their compatriots to strive for a classless society free of exploitations.

 Kazi Nazrul Islam is inseparably bonded with the intellectual, literary and cultural resources of Bangladesh. His poems immensely inspired our freedom fighters during the glorious Liberation War of 1971. Nazrul’s poems fuelled the courage and mettle of the youths who participated in the Glorious July Revolution in 2024. All deliberations about Bengali literature should include a tribute to the imperishable memory of this sublime poet. At the same time generating undesirable debates and distasteful discrepancies between Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam is totally inadmissible.

Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is a 
contributor to different English 
newspapers and magazines.