A great poem, when analyzed, is a set of detached sounds. The reader who finds out the meaning, which is the inner medium that connects these outer sounds, discovers a perfect law all through, which is never violated in the least; the law of the evolution of ideas, the law of the music and the form.
But law in itself is a limit. It only shows that whatever is can never be otherwise. When a man is exclusively occupied with the search for the links of causality, his mind succumbs to the tyranny of law in escaping from the tyranny of facts. In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point, and only concern ourselves with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach the end--for grammar is not literature, prosody is not a poem.
When we come to literature we find that though it conforms to rules of grammar it is yet a thing of joy, it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings, they do not keep it weighed down, they carry it to freedom. Its form is in law but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step towards freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond, the law and the liberty.
In the world-poem, the discovery of the law of its rhythms, the measurement of its expansion and contraction, movement and pause, the pursuit of its evolution of forms and characters, are true achievements of the mind; but we cannot stop there. It is like a railway station; but the station platform is not our home.
-- Rabindranath Tagore, Realization in Love, Sadhana
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the notion of law being the first step toward freedom, while beauty is the complete liberation standing on the pedestal of law? How does this affect your worldview of law, freedom and beauty? Can you share a personal experience of being bound by strict laws, and yet, transcending them to express beauty?
I am very fond of Rabindranath Tagore. I love his poems . he has helped me to appreciate the beauty in all phases of life. He inspired me write poems. Law and Liberty do not oppose each other unless I allow myself to be bound by the law. When a poem comes to me, I spontaneously go beyond words and grammar. I hear the voice without words. I transcend without knowing the boundaries of of the form. There is a natural flow from form to formless. from sound to soundlessness, a sky-like freedom.
Jagdish P Dave
Tagore is beautiful and true. This affects my worldview of law, freedom and beauty by keeping my sense that I do not know. I do not know the law, freedom and beauty. A personal experience about this arose when I realized strongly the enormous value of "not knowing." This allows me to be in the present and it allows me to not be a separate knower. It helps me be more comfortable being no one going nowhere. Knowing nothing in this sense has the same affect as knowing everything I need to know at this moment. That is a heavenly experience in one sense and it is in another sense the experience of everyone and everything at this moment.