Zeal

Keats’ Endymion is, no doubt, a grand success with its wonderful vividness and splendid felicity. But his Hyperion was, according to many critics, a sad failure. However, one cannot say that Hyperion has no magnificence at all. As ill luck would have it, when this epic was brought to light, the poet was savagely criticised even by his bosom friends. As a result, his health broke down and the long-threatening consumption grew more formidable. He was ultimately compelled to pay his debt to nature. So it will be no exaggeration to say that lack of indomitable zeal was in the main responsible for snatching away one of the wonder-poets of the world. Poor earth could not cherish his presence even for thirty fleeting years.

Now let us focus our attention on Rabindranath’s zeal. During his earlier days he had to face very bitter criticism of his writings in season and out of season. Kaliprasanna Kabyabisharad, the well-known editor of the Bengali weekly Hitavadi, probably stood as the bitterest and most impossible critic of Tagore’s works. His merciless pen runs:

> “Flap not your wings to fly,

> O pigeon-poet!

> Stay where you are, in your hole.

> Even to your babblings and to your

> bullyings you have given the air of poesy.

> That too you have published as a work of Art.

> And the return it has fetched you

> was one full rupee in cash.” Any other poet of lesser zeal would have sunk down under the weight of such ruthless criticism, but Rabindranath proved to have an adamant nature. And that is why he was so successful. In spite of innumerable blows from his boyhood to the end of his life, his eyes smiled and his lips sang like the beautiful flowers and lucid sunbeams peering through the saffron robes of Dawn.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Rabindranath Tagore: the moon of Bengal’s Heart, Agni Press, 2011
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