Rabindranath Tagore ![]() It is a day of rejoicing for me that I, who belong to a distant part of Asia, should be invited to this land of yours. I shall make a confession. When I had your invitation I felt nervous; I asked myself: “What do these people expect when they invite me to their country?” Before Christmas I had been debating this and putting off the date of my departure, partly because I was unwell, but also, quite frankly, because I could not make up my mind. In the meantime, Spring broke out in my own land. A sense of compulsion had been urging me to sit down and prepare my lectures. Having to write in a language not my own, this preparation was necessary for me and took time. But Spring came, the poet heard its call, and I was lured from what I thought was my duty. Songs came in such profusion, like blossoms in spring that 1 had no time for duty and went on writing my poems and composing my songs. Yet I could not get rid of the trouble in my heart. How was I to stand before my friends in China, after idling away my time doing nothing, or what was perhaps even worse, singing songs? But surely you don’t expect fulfilling of engagements from poets. They are for capturing on their instruments the secret stir of life in the air and giving it voice in the music of prophecy. Yet, a poet’s help is needed at the time of awakening, for only he dares proclaim that, without our knowing it, the ice has given way; that the winter which had its narrow boundaries, its chains of ice, inhospitable and coldly tyrannical, is gone. The world has for long been in its grip, — the exclusive winter that keeps the human races within closed doors. But the doors are going to open. Spring has come. I had my faith, then, that you would understand my idling, my defiance of duty. And it came to my mind: Is it not the same thing, your invitation and this invitation of the Spring breeze, which was never ignored by your own wayward poets who forgot their duty over the wine-cup? I too had to break my engagements, to lose your respect, — and thereby win your love. In other continents they are hard taskmasters ; they insist on every pound of flesh; and there, for the sake of self-preservation, I would have done my duty and forgotten my muse. I say that a poet’s mission is to attract the voice which is yet inaudible in the air; to inspire faith in the dream which is unfulfilled ; to bring the earliest tidings of the unborn flower to a sceptic world. So many are there to-day who do not believe. They do not know that faith in a great future itself creates that future; that without faith you cannot recognise your opportunities. Prudent men and unbelievers have created dissensions, but it is the eternal child, the dreamer, the man of simple faith, who has built up great civilisations. This creative genius, as you will see in your own past history, had faith which acknowledged no limits. The modern sceptic, who is ever critical, can produce nothing whatever, — he can only destroy. Let us then be glad with a certainty of faith that we are born to this age when the nations are coming together. This bloodshed and misery cannot go on for ever, because, as human beings, we can never find our souls in turmoil and competition. There are signs that the new age has arrived. That you have asked me to come to you is one of them. For centuries you have had merchants and soldiers and other guests, but, till this moment, ypu never thought of asking a poet. Is not this a great fact, — not your recognition of my personality, but the homage you thus pay to the springtime of a new age? Do not, then, ask for a message from me. People use pigeons to carry messages; and, in the war time, men valued their wings not to watch them soar, but because they helped to kill. Do not make use of a poet to carry messages! Permit me, rather, to share your hope in the stirring of life over this land and I shall join in your rejoicing. I am not a philosopher: therefore keep for me room in your heart, not a seat on the public platform. I want to win your heart, now that I am close to you, with the faith that is in me of a great future for you, and for Asia, when your country rises and gives expression to its own spirit, — a future in the joy of which we shall all share. Amongst you my mind feels not the least apprehension of any undue sense of race feeling, or difference of tradition. I am rather reminded of the day when India claimed you as brothers and sent you her love. That relationship is, I hope, still there, hidden in the heart of all of us, — the people of the East. The path to it may be overgrown with the grass of centuries, but we shall find traces of it still. When you have succeeded in recalling all the things achieved in spite of insuperable difficulties, I hope that some great dreamer will spring from among you and preach a message of love and, therewith overcoming all differences bridge the chasm of passions which has been widening for ages. Age after age, in Asia great dreamers have made the world sweet with showers of their love, Asia is again waiting for such dreamers to come and carry on the work, not of fighting, not of profit-making, but of establishing bonds of spiritual relationship. The time is at hand when we shall once again be proud to belong to a continent which produces the light that radiates through the storm-clouds of trouble and illuminates the path of life.
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January 2025
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