Chapter 7 Title Seven: The Second Book of Tagore

Tagore's "What is Art" is an English speech he gave in the United States, which has been translated into Chinese several times.His collection of poems was self-selected when he was 50 years old, and he himself recreated the English prose poetry style, and it has long been translated into Chinese.The former is theory and the latter is practice.Here I intend to do only a preliminary tentative analysis of the two, not a macro discussion of Tagore's aesthetics, philosophical thoughts, and poetry creation, but a microscopic peep, and only an explanation, not an evaluation. . The publication of Tagore's lectures on art in the collection (1917) was only a few years after Tolstoy's death (1910).However, Tolstoy's book of the same name "What is Art" looks quite different from Tagore's speech.Tolstoy's promotion of "people's art" focuses on ethics and morality, while Tagore attributes art to the soul, as if it is something divorced from reality.Tolstoy's "man" is "social man", while Tagore's "man" seems to be "cosmic man".Both great writers are thinkers with an idealist worldview, both promote religion, both come from "noble" families, and both have great ambitions to save people and save the world. However, their theories and practices of art are very different. It can be seen that in addition to the macro generalization, there is also a need for microscopic investigation.This point is mentioned here first, in order to show the need for a specific analysis of individual works of a writer, not to do a comparative study of them.

Now let's talk about this paper entitled "What is Art".First analyze the external conditions, and then analyze the internal factors. Time: In the early 20th century, a collection of lectures was first published in 1917.World War I is still going on.The Russian October Revolution has not yet been victorious. Place: United States. Person: Tagore.Born in Bengal, India, when Britain was still ruling India; it has been nearly 200 years since the East India Company began to control Bengal. This shows a contradictory contradiction: Britain, the United States and India and Bangladesh.This is a political and economic, but also a sharp cultural contradiction.

If we want to further analyze Tagore's external conditions in terms of culture and thought, we must relate to the internal factors of his speech. This article and the one immediately following in the lecture collection highlight the contradictions between art and science.Tagore contrasted the two: Science—abstract, insensate and emotionless, dead. Art—concrete, based on feeling and emotion, living. This coincides with the opposition of the previous external conditions: Science—Industrialized Economy—Britain, America—Unnatural Art - Agriculture Natural Economy - India Bengal - Nature

However, Tagore did not negate science, but simply negated science in terms of art.Art can only be natural, not "artificial", only figurative, not "abstract". What is "abstraction"?Tagore clearly stated that there are a large number of "abstract" things in human society, named "society, country, nation, business, politics, war", and even slaughtered in the name of "religion".This mass of "abstract" concepts overwhelms "people".Governments and bureaucracies deal with general concepts rather than real people. The "scientific" creed "survival of the fittest" (the law of the struggle for existence) makes the human world a "desert of monotonous abstractions".This is a "nebulous nebula" from which art "creates their stars".Here, Tagore explained what he called "science" in a figurative language. "Science" is actually a representative name.

And that's just the surface.It can be seen from the whole article that the natural language and scientific terms used by Tagore can be interpreted.He also used some English words such as politics, society, science, etc., which are technical in nature, but they have been absorbed into Chinese and are easy to understand.But some of them are English words that he uses as code names for concepts of Indian traditional thought (according to his explanation), which convey different information from the original English words, which is prone to ambiguity and misunderstanding.The title of this collection of lectures was previously translated as "Personality" as an example. The meaning of the word "personality" used by Tagore is very different from the commonly used meaning in English and the customary meaning in Chinese that uses this translated neologism.This affects the understanding of the categories of thought Tagore used and his system of thought.

Let me explain a few of these words below.This is not only influenced by the practice of analyzing semantics in the world in recent decades, but also by a practice in ancient my country. The materials are extracted and explained, such as "Mencius's Meaning of Mencius" written by Dai Zhen in the Qing Dynasty.However, this is only an extremely rough and at least an attempt at a simple solution.In order to avoid tediousness, it is not possible to list the materials first and then extract the description, but only to give a brief explanation. (1) "Abstract": Chinese words are translated neologisms, roughly equivalent to English words.Tagore used the same meaning.But at the beginning, he analyzed people's material needs and spiritual needs, then divided people into two, and then divided the world into two.His explanation is just the opposite of ours: the scientific world is an unreal "abstract" world, but "realized" by our "personality" (temporarily used as a code or code) (this is also a code using English words, it should be The world in which the ancient Chinese translated "provide" is the real world.Science leaves the latter world, but art emerges from it.Therefore, art is true and science is not. The term "truth" can be understood in general terms, and it can be said that seeing is believing and hearing is believing.

At first glance, this is nothing more than an upside-down idealist world view, but it is not so simple when you look deeper.What Tagore said is exactly our common sense view, not mystical mysticism.He made it very clear: the world we get from our senses and emotions is real, while the world we get from our intellect is just a shadow.He just said that the world of images in people's lives that we see and hear is real, but the world of laws drawn from analysis and reasoning can only be known but not felt.This is the opposite of Plato's world, and it is not the same as Berkeley's world.Today, he would probably say that satellites parading through the sky are real, while elementary particles and the laws of energy are "abstract".Art can only emerge from the real world, not from the world of "abstract" elements and laws.

Therefore, the word "abstract" must be understood concretely based on Tagore's words.Tagore excluded "abstract" from the source of art, just to point out that art can only be produced in real life and the image world. According to Tagore, the world he lived in at that time was an upside-down world, with the bottom layer as the surface layer.That is to say, think that the world is just chemical elements, the interaction of molecules-atoms-electrons, energy and information, and people, gone, are just a bunch of molecules-atoms-electrons constantly moving according to the laws of number, physics and chemistry That's all.Tagore believed that this became an "abstract" world.

According to the same view, Tagore opposed to define art, but wanted to trace the "reason for existence", source and use of art.He did this to deal with the confusing fog of art criticism that had spread from the West to Bengal.He opposed the asceticism of the Puritans and put forward the traditional Indian theory that "pleasure is the soul of literature" (this is the sentence he used to modernize the ancient Indian language).From this point of view, Tagore is not a person who is prone to mystical fantasy, he is very practical.His theory of "art for art's sake" is also something to do.

(2) "Personality": This is a core word in Tagore's essays.The English word he uses is the code name for what he considers "person", and the core of his "person" is emotion.He cites the term "taste" (a term that means more than emotion) from traditional Indian literary theory.Therefore, this "man" is opposed to science that excludes emotion, and art is based on feeling and emotion rather than reason.Tagore cited as an example the discussion of new architectural styles when the British and Indian governments moved their capital from Calcutta to New Delhi.He said: The emperors of the Mughal dynasty were still "human" (humanity), born in India, and died in India, with architectural artistic style and "feeling" ("taste"); but the British and Indian governments were not "human" (without humanity), is a bureaucracy and therefore an "abstract" and cannot have style.It is impossible for a governor to imitate the "imperial meeting" of the Mughal dynasty. "Etiquette" is art.Plagiarism, imitation, forgery without "person", how can it work?Art is just the expression of "people".Art is a friendly dialogue between "man" and the world.Both are one.For example, he said that he arrived in Japan on the same boat as a Japanese, and the Japanese threw himself into his hometown and motherland, his "people" as soon as he landed, instead of seeing countless novelties like Indians.He praised Eastern art, especially Japanese and Chinese art, because their artists knew and believed in this "person", this "soul", while Westerners may believe in an individual "soul", but do not really believe that the world also has a "soul". ".

The "personality" mentioned by Tagore means "person", or "human heart", "human nature", etc., in fact, it is probably a translation of the meaning of a term in the Indian philosophical tradition.This term has been translated into Chinese "I" through Buddhist literature; but Buddhism advertises "no-self", and there are various explanations for this word.The so-called "Vedanta philosophy" and the so-called "Upanishad philosophy" in India both advertise "I", but in fact there are various explanations of each of them.Modern and modern people use Western philosophical terms to make various explanations, which is even more chaotic.Tagore has his own explanation in this article, and we should understand the meaning of the word he used according to his own statement. (3) "God": Tagore said that most of Indian literature is religious literature.The English word "God" he used is God with a capital letter; but this is not the God of Christianity or Allah of Islam, nor is it Buddha or the so-called great god of Hinduism.Buddhism was first introduced to China, but it died out in India for hundreds of years, and it has only begun to recover in recent decades.The so-called Hinduism is similar to Taoism in China. It is a pantheon including many sects.We can all understand this.But the "God" or "God" that Tagore spoke of was different.According to him, "God" is not far away in the sky, nor only in the temple, but in our home, "God" is born again and again as our child, an "eternal child", so religious songs are love songs . "God" is real, not "abstract", like "philosophy" and "infinity".He cites a poem by an ancient Indian poetess to prove that women know life and "infinity" in their children.Tagore's "God" and "God" are "the supreme person" (the word he used should be the ancient word "the supreme self"), that is, the "personality" or "human heart", "human nature" and so on. In fact, it is nothing more than Refers to human feelings.Art emerges from outbursts of emotion. This "god" of Tagore was not his original creation, but the product of a sect thought that was popular among the people in India for hundreds of years (or even longer).This is the so-called "Vishnu sect".There is also a link to the Sufi sect of Islam, and Kabir, a weaver-poet associated with Sikhism.Many of the propagandists of these sects were poets.The Sufis Mir and Ghalib were poets in Urdu.Kabir was a Hindi poet and religious thinker.Many "Vishnupa" poets are Bengali poets and saints.It can be traced back to Shengtian, a famous Sanskrit poet in Bangladesh and the author of "Shepherd Boy Song".These people are considered "mystics", their "gods" are human, and many of their (except Kabir) hymns are in the form of love songs, and they are a combination of spirit and flesh, not abstract Yes, not "Platonic".Among the above-mentioned poets, except for the two Islamic poets who only belong to the Sufi sect in thought, they are all parading among the people.Their "God" is omnipresent. If we use the terms we usually use to describe their philosophical thinking, it is "mysticism" and "pantheism", but these two terms are not exact and scientific, but vague and customary. of. The above explanation can be confirmed from Tagore's works. The literal translation is "Song of the Song", and the translation as "Song of the Song" is not accurate, so Tagore just used the Hindi language as the title of the book.In the literal translation in Chinese, the word "zhi" has to be added.In ancient Chinese, "Qin Xian" can be said, but it seems out of habit to say "Ge Xian".This collection of poems is the poet dedicated his poems to his "god", which is actually the "person" ("human heart" and so on, "the highest person"), just like offering incense and flowers. Without having to trace which poem came from which collection of poems (see also No. 60), we can also see the hierarchical structure of the whole book.The first three poems say that the poems come from the feelings of the "god" or "man", that is, the "infinite" person, and are dedicated to the omnipresent "pantheistic" "god".Then turning to the human world, "God" is in people, in every corner, until it is obvious that the nation is both spiritual and material, but this is not an "abstract" concept.The singer of the poem sometimes identifies himself as a "beggar girl".The object of singing is sometimes a child, and this is the "God", the "eternal child".Sometimes a maiden, a "God," a "goddess," an idol of a god, then death, and finally a hymn to an unknown "god."This collection of poems seems to be a complete movement with a beginning, a conclusion, a theme melody, and variations. The constant repetition of the same theme with different variations is a common feature of the poets mentioned above.It is also often seen in traditional Indian music, dance, sculpture and literature.We are not very used to this, it will feel monotonous.Maybe it's like ordinary foreigners can't distinguish many of our landscape paintings? It's about love, it's about gods, it's full of images of the material world, and it doesn't seem like natural language in daily life, which makes us Chinese readers feel mysterious. These two points are not the real reason why many of us find this collection of poems difficult to understand.I say I don't understand, but I actually can't appreciate it, and it's a bit out of place. There can be an explanation: this poem is the practice of Tagore's artistic conception.He walks the talk.He does not want "abstract" in his poems, but his "person" or "personality", "human heart", "human nature", and human feelings.He just expresses that kind of emotion, not description and discussion, and his kind of emotion is far from what we are familiar with. Poetry is the art of language.Language has three functions in conveying information: epistemic (intellect, knowledge), aesthetic (emotion, belief), and behavioral (morality, education).We are used to the former and the latter. We need to know what is being said and what effect it has, and we don’t pay much attention to the second.This has been the case since it was said that "Guan Guan Jujiu" is "the virtue of concubines". In fact, this is still not a real obstacle.The language of Tagore's poems is clear, expressing the harmony between people and things, and they also have moral effects.It's not that we don't talk about feelings and don't understand beliefs. The problem lies in the distance between each other. The "Psalms" and "Song of Solomon" in the "Bible Old Testament" of Judaism and Christianity, which one is easier for us to appreciate?Tagore's poems and those of the above-mentioned Indian "mystic" poets are often a combination of "Psalms" and "Song of Songs", but what we are used to admiring is this type.But we don't appreciate teaching lessons in poems, and we also require images and emotions in poems. It can be seen that "style" (this word is used as a term for modern literary criticism) is not the main obstacle. The key may be the great distance between each other's feelings. First of all, our tradition of "God" and religion has always been "sacrificing as if there is, offering sacrifices to gods as if there is God", talking about "as" and rituals.The so-called "religious feelings" are very rare among people who do not belong to a certain sect, especially among intellectuals.For example, Xin Qiji's words: "I searched for him thousands of times in the crowd; when I looked back suddenly, the man was in a dimly lit place." This is exactly like the inscription.But Xin Qiji never thought that the "man" he wrote was Tagore's "god", and no one would think that Xin Qiji's words contained "mysticism" religious feelings.We can also take the modern poem and song "Teach Me How Not to Miss Him" ​​as an example (where the word "he" can be used in Yin, Yang, or neutral meanings). More important is probably the fundamental emotional distance or separation.This "unity of God and man" is very different from our "relationship between man and nature" which has a smell of witchcraft.What Tagore pursued and expressed was very different from what we usually understand.His "god" is not a master who gives orders, nor a hero, not like a deified person, but like a humanized universe, all mankind (song 77).He himself said that he "can't tell" who and what it is (song 102).The love of people to "god" in his poems is by no means our "fairy match".In Shengtian's "Shepherd Boy Song", the shepherd girl loves the shepherd boy who is a humanized god. This kind of love is both spiritual and fleshy.The two sides are equal and unequal, but it is not the inequality of social status, but the inequality of people and "God".This is far from the love we are familiar with between Baoyu and Daiyu, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, oil seller and oiran.Our implicitness and theirs are explicit, but in our opinion, theirs is "inhuman".Tagore changed explicitness to subtlety, making this feeling farther away from us. Feelings cannot be completely separated from the basis of thought, and the distance in this respect is obvious.The thought source of Tagore's feelings about the combination of man and god is obviously different from ours.He seeks unity and we speak of opposition, he seeks harmony and we speak of contradiction, he seeks silence and we speak of struggle, he seeks unity of two and we speak of one divided into two.The object of his love is both "man" and "god", which is very different from our concept of man and god. Tagore's speech on art and this collection of poems revealed that the core of his thoughts and feelings is to seek unity in differences, seek harmony in opposition, and seek to create art with human emotions and resolve worldly contradictions.The paintings he created in his later years are very similar to some so-called modern schools that appeared in the 20th century, and they are actually the embodiment of this artistic conception.There is a great distance between his poems and paintings and the poems and paintings we are familiar with, and they seem "nondescript" to us.Only his epic poems and novels and stories and characters can be known and appreciated by us, and the distance is shorter.His plays are different, some plays are actually poems.We have a strong tendency to choose poetry.For example, Whitman's reputation is great, but no full translation is popular. If the above is not fundamentally wrong, then this distance is the distance between China and India, so similar to India, so similar yet so different, is it the distance between two cultures?