Tagore's imagery is hardly if ever ornamental. It is chiefly functional. It is used for illustrative, decorative, evocative and emotive purposes. It gives extra - dimensions to his thought and experience. He attains clarity and concreteness with his images. Many of his images become symbolic in as much as they express in a memorable form his main themes and are recurrent and central. For example, the images of the lute, of the boat and of the vessel in Gitanjali assume symbolic dimensions.
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| Use of Imagery in Tagore’s Poetry |
In Tagore's poetry we have direct images by means of picturesque and concrete fancies, visions and dreams, figurative images by means of metaphor and simile, symbol and personification, mythical or legendary images. Many a time he makes use of reciprocal images in which the tenors and vehicles reciprocate. For instance, in Gitanjali both the poet and God appear to be singer; both are related to music imagery.
This little flute of a reed thou hast
carried over hills and dales, and hast
breathed through it melodies eternally new
I know not how thou singest, my master!
I ever listen in silent amazement.
The light of thy music illumines the world,
The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky.
The holy stream of thy music breaks through all
stony obstacles and rushes on.
My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly
struggles for a voice, I would speak, but
speech breaks not into song, and I cry out
baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive
in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!
Furthermore, his images are informative; they give information about Tagore's likes and dislikes, his philosophical, mental and aesthetic constituents. Most of his vehicles are from the world of Nature, from the agricultural and pastoral world of India from his images we can easily infer that he should have lived a life very close to Nature and to the peasants of India.
The scope of Tagore's imagery, however, is very limited. The scientific world and spheres of matter are untouched. The senses are used and shared profusely. His imagery is sensuous. He gives us a variety of images which are sensuous images of ear (auditory), of touch (tactile) of smell (of factory), of taste (gustatory), and of eye (visual). A count of his images will reveal that the majority of his images are visual, auditory, and olfactory. The mental picture which his poetry evokes are those of the orchards and landscape, birds and animals, seasons and great elemental power such as the sun, the moon, the ocean (sea) the sky, the cloud, etc. The meadows with green grass different kinds of flowers, trees, streams, rivers amidst them, the boat the pilgrim and the voyage are all there again and again be it Crossing, Fruit-Gathering, The Crescent Moon, Lover's Gift or Gitanjali.
In Gitanjali, Tagore's imagery is expressive of his search for truth. It is sensuous as well as emotional. Tagore embodies an attempt to relate the finite with the infinite, or the human personality with the mythical Krishna through the images of light, darkness, boat, cloud, pitcher, the flute, the palace and the king. “Tagore uses images common to classical Indian love poetry to symbolise his yearning to merge with God and his joy at imminent union. So the mud - stained traveller, the parched earth in summer, the bride waiting in the empty house for the return of her lord, the first monsoons shower, the flowers and rivers and the conch shells are images which gain a mystical depth in these poems.
In Gitanjali, it is the water imagery that is predominant. The oceans and waves, the streams and rivers, the rain and flood, the boat and vessel, the traveller and the voyage, the pools and showers are all there.
In the very first verse, the poet compares the human body with a vessel. In the fifth “my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. In the twelfth verse he speaks of his journey, and ‘the question and the cry’ Oh, where? melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance I am !” In the eighteenth verse, “Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens” and “I know not how I am to pass these long, rainy hours”. In the nineteenth, “The morning will surely come .......... and thy voice pour down in the golden streams breaking through the sky”. And then
I must launch out my boat. The languid
hours pass by on the shore ........
The waves have become clamorous,
and upon the bank in the shady lane
the yellow leaves flutter and fall. (XXI)
The poet's beloved God walks “in the deep shadows of the rainy July” (XXII) and the poet asks: “By what dim shore of the ink black river ........... thou threading thy course to come to me?” (XXIII). In the twenty - fourth verse we come across ‘traveller’ and ‘voyage’. In the twenty-seventh, “The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless.”
In the thirty - fifth verse the poet prays to God to flow the stream of reason, in the thirty - seventh he thinks that his voyage has come to its end. In the thirty- ninth he prays, “When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy”. And then there is the whole monsoons rising from the Bay of Bengal in the fourteenth verse:
The rain has held back for days and days,
my God, in my arid heart. The horizon
is fiercely naked not the thinnest
cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest
hint of a distant cool shower.
Sent thy angry storm, dark with death,
if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning
startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord, call back this
pervading silent heart still and keen and
cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from
above like the tearful look of the from
on the day of the father's wrath. (XL)
In this verse, we have a union of cloud, storm, shower, rain lightning and heat. It is an image which can build the whole scientific process of the formation of clouds and fall of rain on the one side, and realization of Ghanshyam, Krishna, through all his physical and linguistic attributes. The suggestiveness of imagery here is very rich; the images have been turned into symbols, and symbols into mystic gleams.
In the forty - second verse, we have a confluence of sea - images:
Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I and never a soul in the world would mood know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.
In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.
Is the time not come yet? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the sea birds come flying to their nests.
Who knows when the chains will be off, and the coat, like the last glimmer of sunset, vanish, into the night?
The whole sea - landscape – ‘sail’, ‘boat’, ‘ocean’, ‘waves’ ‘sea birds’, ‘sunset’, ‘night’ — is painted to undertake the spiritual ‘pilgrimage to no country and to no end’. Another full picture of the sea - life is given in verse LX:
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim they know not how to cast nets. Pearl fishers dive for pearls; merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures; they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach. Death -dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.
On the seashore of endless world children meet. Tempest By spam roams in the pathless sky; ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
The words ‘seashore’, ‘water’, ‘sand’, ‘sea beach’, ‘sea’, ‘waves’, ‘tempest’, ‘pearls’, ‘pearl – fisher’, ‘swim’, ‘dive’, ‘shells’. ‘boat’, ‘sail’, ‘wrecked’, ‘nets’, ‘float’ and ‘vast deep’ all belong to the register of the sea life. The ‘sky’ is the background against the sea. Thus the whole panorama of the sea - world is before our eyes.
Even Tagore's God comes in and with water: “In the rainy gloom of July night on the thundering chariot of clouds he comes, comes, ever comes (XLV) At another times ‘the morning sea of silence’, ‘breaks into the ripples of bird song’ and the poet sees God flooding his sleep with His smile (XLVIII). In the fifty - first verse, there is a reference to the rumbling of clouds.” In the sixty - fourth the maiden on the slope of the desolate river replies:
I have come to the river
to float my lamp on the
stream when the daylight wanes in the west
In verse LXVII, “the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds “comes " through trackless paths carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest”. In LXVIII poem there is a reference to “clouds made of .......... and songs” and “misty cloud”. In verse LXIX “The same stream of life ....... runs through the world ........ and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean - cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.”
When we proceed further, we find the poet, caught in “the whirl of .......... fearful joy” and “All things rush on” “with the speed of a river,” “they rush (LXX). In verse LXXI, “waves rise up and sink again” and sink again” and then in LXXIV:
The day is no more, the shadow is upon
the earth, It is time that I go to the
stream to fill my pitcher
The evening air is eager with the sad
music of the water.
In the LXXV verse, “The river has its everyday work to do and hastens through fields and hamlets; yet its incessant stream winds towards the washing of thy feet.”
Water metaphors abound in Gitanjali. Many a time the vehicle becomes the tenor, and many other times the tenor becomes the vehicle. In the LXXX verse, the poet says:
I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn
uselessly roaming in the sky .........
Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour.
In the LXXXII verse, there is a reference to ‘a chain of pearls’ and ‘tears of sorrow’, in the LXXXIV to rainy darkness of July in the LXXXVIII to the holy stream of oblivion and in the XCIV to ‘voyage’. Towards the close of Gitanjali, the poet writes:
I dive down into the depths of the ocean of forms
hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbour to harbour with this my weather - beaten boat. The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.......... (C)
Even in the last poem of Gitanjali, the poet has not forgotten water images:
Like a rain - cloud of July hung low
with the burden of unshed showers let all
my mind bend down at thy door in one
salutation to thee.
Water imagery, though not so dominant and recurrent as in Gitanjali, also features in Love's Gift, Fruit - Gathering, The Crescent Moon. The poem – ‘On the Seashore’, ‘Clouds and Waves’, ‘The Land of Exile’, ‘The Rainy Day’, ‘Paper Boat’, ‘The Sailor’ and ‘The Further Bank’ — are full of water or sea images.
In Lover's Gift, poems numbering 1, 16, 17, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, make references to the world of water. In Fruit - Gathering (LIV), Death tells the poet, “I play the boat of your life across the sea.” Crossing again reveals Tagore's preference for water imagery. See, for example the following passages:
1. The wind is up, I set my sail of songs,
Steersman, sit at the helm.
For my boat is fretting to be free, to
dance in the rhythm of the wind and water.
The day is spent, it is evening.
My friends of the shore have taken leave.
Loose the chain and heave the anchor
we sail by the starlight........ (3)
2. I have reached the brink of the shoreless sea
to take my plunge and lose myself for ever. (37)
3. My heart bends in worship like a dew - laden flower,
and I feel the flood of my life pushing to
the endless.
By and large it is the quieter, saner, softer aspect of Water or the Sea that appeals to Tagore and is exploited by him frequently. Occasionally, the fierce aspect of it is also pictured:
Do you hear the tumult of death afar,
The call midst the fire floods and poisonous clouds
—The Captain's call to the steersman to turn
the ship to an unnamed shore,
For that time is over - the stagnant time in the port—
Where the same old merchandise is brought and sold
in an endless round.
Where dead things drift in the exhaustion and
emptiness of truth .........
The cloud have blotted away the stars............
All the black evils in the world have overflowed
their banks,
Yet , oarsmen take your places with the blessing of
sorrow in your souls .......... —The Oarmen, Fruit -Gathering ( LXXXIV )
Almost similarly
Is it the Destroyer who comes?
For the boisterous sea of tears leaves in the flood tide of pain.
The crimson clouds run wild in the wind lashed
by lightning, and the thundering laughter of the
Mad is over the sky.
Life sits in the chariot crowned by Death (Crossing, 22)
The preference which Tagore gives to water imagery may be attributed to his close association with his motherland, Bengal which is the land of water, of river and the sea. Tagore watched the rivers and the sea closely; he loved them, and was impressed by their beauty and occasionally saddened by the destruction and damage done by the flooding river in the rainy season. The following passage from his Lover's Gift speaks for his love for the life around water:
1. I loved the sandy bank where, in the lonely pools, ducks clamoured and turtles basked in the sun, where, with evening, stray flashing - boat took shelter in the shadow by the tall grass............ (23)
Tagore's water imagery holds an important place in the structure of his poetry. This too likewise his other images is functional. It casts a spell upon his reader. It is neither idle nor artificial. To make a typology, his images can be classified according to the four elements earth, water, air and fire, Besides the elemental images we have images from the world of Music, insects and birds, garden and orchard, meadows and seasons.
Tagore's images run and rush; in the whirl of God's joy they flow swiftly in the poet's mind and the poet's own words summarize the flow of his images:
All things rush on, they stop not, they
look not behind, no power can hold them
back, they rush on.
Keeping steps with that restless, rapid
music, season come dancing and pass away,
—colours, tunes, perfumes pour
in endless cascades in the bounding
joy that scatters and gives up and dies
every moment. —Gitanjali, LXX