Tagore’s Song Offerings: Materialism Meets Mysticism.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue II, February 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Tagore’s Song Offerings: Materialism Meets Mysticism.

Tasnuva Tabassum
Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh

Abstract
Rabindranath Tagore is a great poet who enriched the genre of mysticism in world literature and his Nobel winning work Song Offerings presents it extensively. There is no debate about the mystic journey we experience through the contents of this outstanding piece of literature, but what we overlooked massively all these years is the point of view of Tagore that is quite opposite to his mystic poems or songs. Whenever a reader peruses the poems of Song Offerings, he or she starts to evaluate Tagore just as a mystic, but overlooks his materialist being. There is a ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’ or a ‘Thou’ to whom Tagore surrenders himself, and all the offerings through the songs are made to ‘Him’. This ‘Lord’ is not the unseen God. Tagore believes that ‘life’ is the power that gives him the spirit to experience the beautiful world. The presence of materialism does, in no way, hamper to nourish mysticism of the poems. Song Offerings indeed is a mystical journey but the mysticism does not roam around the perceived God, but the material ‘life’. Tagore shows that if material ‘life’ is the circle, the centre of that circle is mysticism. Such an innovative and unique concept builds Song Offerings. This unrevealed part of Tagore, where material body gets a mystic heart, is going to be unleashed in this paper.

Tagore’s Song Offerings: Materialism Meets Mysticism
Rabindranath Tagore is the name of a scorching sun in the sky of Bengali literature. His rays of wisdom enriched every visible corner of Bengali literature. This year whole Bengal will be celebrating the 100 years of Tagore’s Nobel winning. It is an honour for me working on his Song Offerings, the translated version of Gitanjali, which brought him Nobel Prize in Literature, 100 years ago, in 1913. Rabindranath Tagore is considered as the icon of Indian mysticism. In fact, it is the mystic journey of his Song Offerings that introduced sub continental mysticism to the western world and brought him the honour to be a Nobel laureate. But in the last 100 years, we overlooked a very unique concept of Tagore. We misunderstood his poems just as mystic poems or praiseful songs towards God. These songs are not mere mystic song offerings to God; rather they have material values too. There is a ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’ or a ‘Thou’ to whom Tagore surrenders himself, and numerous offerings through the songs are made to ‘Him’. It is natural to think that ‘Master’ is actually God who praised all through Song Offerings. But Tagore’s ‘Lord’ is not the unseen God whom we usually believe in. Tagore considers the ‘life’ as God which he calls ‘Jibon-Debota’. Tagore had a strong belief in the ‘life’ and being alive, more than an unseen God, and that is why he called the ‘life’ as God. And the praises, offerings and surrender he made are not at all small in numbers; they are actually dedicated to ‘life’ which is known as his ‘Jibon-Debota’. Tagore believes that life is the power that gives him the spirit to experience the beauty of world. He believes in inevitable death too as he believes in mortal life. It is quite unusual to mix up materialism with mysticism because they are the opposite concepts to each other which seem very nontraditional. This contradictory juxtaposition of opposite ideas is only introduced in Tagore’s Song Offerings, but we could not discover it in last 100 years.
Song Offerings is indeed a mystical journey but the mysticism roams around not only the so called God, but also the material ‘life’. In my opinion, such a concept needs to be discovered and researched for the sake of finding fresh ideas in literature. Not only juxtaposition of materialism and mysticism but also different ideas with contradictions often dwells together in Tagore’s poems. Usually a poet, who is the believer of materialism, does not believe in mysticism and vice versa. Tagore is not like common poets. The enmity between materialism and mysticism comes to an end with Tagore’s innovative way of thinking in Song Offerings. The paper will prove the friendship among them that is done by Tagore in his immortal work of Song Offerings.

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