The Modern Review/Volume 10/Number 6/Victorious in Defeat
VICTORIOUS IN DEFEAT
(A Short Tale)
(From the Bengali of Rabindranath Tagore).
I.
THE princess was named Invicta (Aparájtá.) Her father's court-poet, Shekhar, had never seen a glimpse of her. And yet, when he read out to the king any new poem of his own, from the floor of the Court where he sat he raised his voice so high as to reach the years of the lady listeners sitting unseen behind the latticed screen of the upper gallery of that lofty hall,—as if he were sending his outburst of song towards an inaccessible starry realm, where the unknown guiding star of his life shone in invisible glory amidst a ring of luminaries.
At times he divined her by a shadow, at times he heard her in the tinkle of her anklets; and then he sat dreaming of the two feet, stirred by which the golden anklets were singing so rhythmically! Ah, with what a touch of blessedness, grace, and tenderness did those two fair, rosy, velvet feet meet the earth at every step! In the temple of his mind he set up these feet; before them he prostrated himself in his quiet hours, and set his songs to the tune of those tinkling anklets!
Whose shadow had he really seen? Whose anklets had rung in his ears? Such a question, such a doubt never assailed that adoring heart.
When Manjari, the princess's maid, went to the river side, she had to pass by Shekhar's house, and she was sure to exchange a word or two with him on her way. Of some morning or eventide when there were no people about in the road, she would even visit him in his rooms. I don't think it was really on business that she went to the water so often. And even if she had any business, one cannot fully explain why she should take pains to put on a gay coloured robe and ear-tops of mango-blossoms just before going to the ghat.
People whispered and giggled. And they were not to blame for it. Shekhar felt a particular delight in her presence, and hardly cared to conceal it.
Her name was Manjari, a name good enough for work-a-day people, as all must admit. But Shekhar went a step further and called her poetically Basanta-Manjari (Spring Bud). At this people shook their heads and said, "He is lost! He is lost!"
Nay more, in his odes to Spring one now and then came upon jingles like manjul banjul manjari. The tale had even reached the king's ears.
The king was greatly amused to hear of this sentimental effusion of his poet,—and chaffed him about it. Shekhar, too, gladly joined in the fun.
The king with a smile put the conundrum, "Does the bee only sing in the court of king Spring?" The poet answered, "No, he also sucks the honey of flower-buds."
In this way, they laughed and made fun. Methinks, in the royal harem the princess Invicta must have now and then jested with Manjari about it. And Manjari did not take it ill.
Thus compounded of truth and falsehood, human life glides on in its own way,—a part of it shaped by Providence, a part by ourselves, and a part by our neighbours. It is a patchwork of odds and ends, truth and falsehood, the fictitious and the real.
Only the songs that the poet sang were true and whole. Their theme was the old old one of Radha and Krishna,—the Eternal Male and the Eternal Feminine, the primeval sorrow and the unending bliss! In those songs he told his true inner history; and the truth of the songs was tested in every heart from the king's to the poorest peasant's, at Amarápur. His songs were in every mouth. When the moon appeared or a breath of the south-wind blew, at once all over the country his songs overflooded the woods, the roads, the boats, the balconies, and the courtyards. And his fame knew no bounds.
Years passed on in this way. The poet wrote his odes, the king listened to them, the courtiers cried applause, Manjari visited the ghat, and from the lattice-window of the royal harem now a shadow was cast, now a tinkle of anklets was heard.
II.
Then came a champion-poet from the Southern Land. Chanting a Pythean ode in praise of the king, he stood in the royal Court. After leaving home he had defeated in metrical contest the laureate of every king on the way, and had at last reached Amarápur.
The king reverently said, "Welcome! Welcome!" The poet, Pundarik, haughtily cried out, "Come on! I challenge your Court."
The king's honour demanded that the challenge should be accepted. But Shekhar had no clear idea of how a poetical combat can be fought out. He grew extremely nervous and alarmed. His night wore on without sleep. On all sides he only saw images of the renowned Pundarik's tall stalwart frame, sharp hawk nose, and proud elevated crest.
In the morning the poet entered the arena with a trembling heart. From the earliest dawn the Court had been filled with spectators; the din was ceaseless; all work had been stopped in the city.
With great effort Shekhar forced a smile of cheerfulness on to his face, and bowed to his rival poet;—Pundarik with profound indifference returned the salute by a slight nod, and looked at his admiring followers with a smile.
Shekhar cast one glance at the lattice of the harem. He knew that from there hundreds of curious dark eyes were gazing eagerly and ceaselessly on the crowd. Once he threw up his heart in abstraction at that high plane and bowed to his guardian deity saying only, "If I win today, then O goddess, O Invicta, it will only prove thy name true!"
Trumpet and clarion pealed forth. The assembled throng stood up with a cry of "Hail". King Uday-náráyan, clad in white, entered the hall slowly like the fleecy clouds sailing in the sky of autumn mornings, and mounted his throne.
Pundarik advanced and stood in front of the throne. The vast assembly was hushed.
With chest thrown out and head slightly tilted aside, the large-limbed Pundarik began to chant deeply an ode in glory of Uday-náráyan. His voice filled the vast hall to overflowing; its deep resonance beat and was beaten back from the walls around, the pillars and the roof, like waves of the sea. The impact of the sound made the hearts of the vast audience quiver like so many doors. What skill he showed, what literary craft, what various interpretations of the name Udaynarayan, howi many different anagrams formed out of the letters of the king's name, how many metres, and how many puns!
When Pundarik made pause, for a time the hushed hall only simmered with the echo of his voice and the speechless amazement of a thousand hearts. The scholars come from far and near raised their right arms and with uplifted voice cried 'Bravo' on him.
The king from his throne cast one glance at Shekhar. The poet sent back to the king a look of mingled respect, friendship, pride and some amount of pathos and shrinking, too, and then slowly rose from his seat. Surely, when Rama, to humour his subjects, asked Sita to go through the ordeal of fire again, she must have looked thus as she stood up before her husband's throne.
The silent look of the poet seemed to tell the king, "I am truly thine. If you want to make me stand before the wide world and test me, you may do so. But——." Then he lowered his glance.
Pundarik had stood like a lion, Shekhar like a deer ringed round by hunters. He was a mere youth, his face tender with bashfulness and sweetness, pale-cheeked, slender of limb, the very look of him suggesting that at the touch of emotion all his body would quiver and break into song, like the strings of a lyre.
With head bent down, he began in a low tone. Possibly none caught his first verse clearly. Then he slowly raised his face;—where he cast his gaze it seemed as if the crowd and the stone-walls of the Court dissolved and vanished into nothingness amidst the far off past. His sweet and clear voice tremulously rose higher and higher like a bright flame of light. First he sang of the king's ancestors in the lunar line. And then gradually he led the royal narrative down to his own age, through many a war and struggle, many a heroic feat and sacrifice (yajna), many alms-givings and noble institutions connected with them. At last his gaze, so long fixed on the memory of the past, was turned and planted on the king's face; and, incarnating in a metrical form the universal unspoken loyalty in the hearts of the populace of the kingdom, he set it up in the middle of the Audience-hall,——as if, the heart-stream of myriads of subjects had rushed from afar and filled with a noble hymn that ancient palace of the king's fore-fathers,—as if it touched, hugged and kissed every stone of that edifice,—as if it rose [like a fountain] up to the high window of the harem-gallery, and bowed in tender loyalty at the feet of the royal ladies, (the indwelling spirits of goodness of the palace), and returned thence to walk round the king and his throne a thousand times in tumultuous rapture. The poet concluded, "Sir King! I can be defeated in words, but not in devotion," and then sat down palpitating [with his efforts.] The people, bathed in tears, shook the sky with their hurrahs.
Pundarik rose up again, chiding this wild outburst of the vulgar populace with a scornful laugh. With an exulting shout he asked, "What is there higher than word?" In a moment all were hushed to Silence.
Then in a variety of metres he gave expression to his matchless scholarship, and proved from the Vedas, the Vedanta, the Puranas, &c., that the word is the supreme thing in the universe. The Word is verity, the Word is the Godhead. The Hindu Trinity,—Brahmá, Vishnu, and Shiva,—are all subject to the Word; therefore the Word must be higher than they. Brahmá with his four mouths cannot exhaust the Word;—Shiva with his five mouths has failed to reach the last of words and has therefore at last silently sat down in meditation in search of the Word.
Thus piling up scholarship on scholarship, scripture on scripture, he built for the Word a cloud-kissing throne, seated the Word above the heads of Earth and Heaven alike, and again asked in a voice of thunder, "What is there higher than word?"
Proudly he glanced round; but none gave reply. Then he slowly resumed his seat. The scholars cried, "Well spoken, well spoken," "Bless you." The king was lost in amazement. And the poet Shekhar felt himself very small by the side of such vast erudition. The assembly was broken up for that day.
III.
Next day Shekhar came and began his song:—The scene is at Brindaban; the notes of a flute are heard, but the milk-maids do not yet know who is playing on it nor where. At times the music seemed to float on the south wind, at others it seemed to come from the peak of the Govardhan hill in the north; once it seemed as if some one were standing on the Hill of Sunrise and calling them to a love meeting, again it appeared as if some one seated on the verge of the Sunset Range were weeping in the pang of lorn love. It seemed as if the flute were speaking from every wave of the Jamuna,—as if every star of the sky were a stop of the pipe. At last its notes were heard issuing from every grove, every street, every ghat of Brindaban,—from fruit and flower, from earth and water, from above, below, within and without. None understood what the flute was saying, none could perceive clearly what his heart longed to say in response to the notes. Only tears awoke drowning their eyes; only a yearning for a death of ethereal beauty, shady and reposeful, set all hearts a-quiver.
Forgetful of the Court, forgetful of the king, forgetful of friends and enemies, fame and obloquy, victory and defeat, proposition and reply, forgetful of everything else,—Shekhar seemed to be standing alone amidst the seclusion of his heart-bower, as he sang of the music of Krishna's flute. Before his mind's eye stood only a bright ideal figure; in his ears rang only the tinkle of anklets on a pair of velvet feet. Closing his song, the poet sat down like one benumbed; and an unspeakable sweetness, a vast universal sense of loneliness and longing, filled the Audience Hall. None could cry applause on him.
When the force of this emotion had abated a little, Pundarik stood up confronting the throne. He asked, "What is Rádhá and what is Krishna?" and then glanced all around. Smiling at his followers he repeated the question, and then began to answer it himself with a marvellous display of erudition.
He said, "Rádhá stands for the mystic syllable Om, and Krishna for meditative trance, while Brindában symbolises the central spot of the forehead between the two eyebrows." He dragged into his exposition every apparatus of yoga,—the navel, the heart, the cerebral focus. One after another he gave every conceivable meaning of the syllables rá and dhá, and of all the letters of Krishna's name taken separately. In one interpretation he put forward Krishna as symbolic of yajna and Rádhá as the holy fire, in another Krishna as the Vedas and Rádhá as the six branches of philosophy, then he took Krishna as education and Rádhá as initiation, Krishna as argument, Rádhá as conclusion, or Rádhá as controversy and Krishna as victory.
Then he glanced at the king, the scholars, and—with a scornful smile, at Skekhar, and sat down.
The king was entranced by Pundarik's wonderful powers; the amazement of the scholars knew no bounds; and these new metaphorical explanations of Krishna and Rádhá utterly swept away the song of the flute, the murmur of the Jamuna, and the intoxication of love;—as if some one wiped away the fresh verdant hue of Spring from the face of the earth, and spread all over it a coating of the sacred cowdung! Shekhar felt his song of so many years to be vain. After this he could not muster strength enough to sing. The assembly broke up for the day.
IV.
On the third day, Pundarik showed his wonderful mastery of language by constructing acrostics, anagrams, riddles, epigrams, quibbles, paragrams, antitheses, rondeaux, oxymorons, paradoxes, &c. On hearing these the assembled audience could not control their wonder.
The verses that Shekhar used to frame were exceedingly simple,—the public used them in joy and sorrow, festivity and ceremony. Today they saw clearly that these verses had no merit, that they themselves could have composed them if they had but wished it,—only their want of practice, indifference or lack of leisure had prevented them from writing such poetry! For, the words were not particularly new or hard, they taught nothing new to the world, nor gave one any new advantage. But what they heard today was a marvellous thing! Pundarik's discourse, even of the day before, had been full of thought and instruction. They looked upon their own poet as a mere boy or ordinary writer by the side of Pundarik's erudition and subtlety.
The lily feels every impact of the secret agitation in the pond set up by the tails of fishes. So, too, Shekhar perceived in his heart the secret feelings of the audience around himself.
This day was the last one of the contest. Today the award of victory would be made. The king cast a sharp glance at his poet, as if to say, "Try your utmost. It will not do to remain unanswering today."
Languidly did Shekhar stand up, and he spoke these words and no more. "O, white-armed goddess of the lyre! if you desert your lake of lotuses and appear at this wrestling arena today, what will be the fate of your adorers who thirst for nectar?" Slightly raising his eyes he asked this tenderly, as if "the white-armed goddess of the lyre" were standing behind the lattice-screen of the harem gallery, gazing down on the scene!
With a boisterous laugh, Pundarik sprang to his feet, and seizing the last two syllables of the word Shekhara he composed verses in ceaseless flow. He asked, "What connection has a khara (=ass) with the lake of lotuses? And how far has that animal succeeded in spite of its strenuous practice of music? Saraswati (the goddess of poetry) is known to be seated on the Pundarik (=lotus.) What offence has she committed in your majesty's realm that here she has been disgraced by being mounted on an ass (khara)?"
At this reply the scholars burst into a loud laugh, in which the courtiers joined; and, following their example, all the assembled people, whether they understood anything or not, began to laugh.
The king prodded his poet-friend with glances keen as the elephant's goad, time after time, in expectation of a proper reply. But Shekhar sat unmoved without minding his hint at all.
Then the king, his heart full of wrath for Shekhar, stepped down from his throne, and transferred his own pearl-necklace to the neck of Pundarik. The audience shouted applause. From the harem was heard the jingle of many bracelets, wristlets and anklets shaken all at once. At this sound Shekhar left his seat and slowly walked out of the Audience Hall.
V.
The dark night of the fourteenth day of the waning moon! Thick gloom everywhere. Through the open windows the south wind, laden with the incense of flowers, was entering the houses of the city like a universal comrade of mankind. From the wooden shelf of his room Shekhar took down his books and heaped them up before him. From them he picked out and laid aside his own compositions.
There were many works, written during many years. Several of them he himself had almost forgotten. He turned their leaves over and skipped them here and there. To-day they all seemed to him utterly worthless.
He sighed, "Is this a whole life's garnering? Only a lot of words, metres, and rhymes!" To-day he failed to see that they embodied any beauty, any eternal joy of mankind, any echo of the music of the universe, any expression of his heart's depths. As a sick man loses relish for every kind of dish, so to-day he flung aside whatever he took up in his hands. The king's friendship, public fame, his heart's wild dream, the witchery of fancy, all seemed hollow mockeries in this dark night. Then he tore up his manuscripts one by one and flung them into the blazing fire before him. Suddenly an ironical idea flashed through his mind: he smiled and said to himself, "Great monarchs celebrate the horse-sacrifice, to-day I am celebrating a poem-sacrifice!" But immediately afterwards he felt that the simile was not a happy one,—"The horse is sacrificed when it returns home after its master's victory over all sides, but I am sacrificing my poems on the day when my muse has been beaten; I ought to have done it long ago."
One by one he consigned all his books to the fire. The flames shot up fiercely; the poet shook his empty hands violently in the air and cried out, "To thee I sacrifice, to thee, to thee, O fair nymph of fire, to thee I sacrifice them. So long I had been offering my all to thee; to-day I make an utter end of them. Long hadst thou been raging in my heart, thou Fire-shaped Enchantress! Had I been gold, I might have come out purer from the process,—but I am a humble weed, and so to-day I have been shrivelled up to ashes."
It was a late hour of night. Shekhar opened all the windows of his room. In the evening he had gathered the flowers that he loved best; all of them were white,—juin, bel, and gandharaj. He strewed handfuls of them on his bed, and lighted the lamps in the four corners of the room. Then he mixed the juice of a poisonous plant with honey, drank it off quietly, and retired to his bed. (Slowly) his limbs grew benumbed, and his eyes closed.
A tinkle of anklets! The fragrance of braided tresses entered the room, borne on the south wind.
With closed eyes the poet asked, "Goddess of my adoration! At last, at last, thou hast taken pity on thy worshipper? At last, thou hast appeared to him?"
A sweet voice replied, "Yes, poet, I have come."
Shekhar started, opened his eyes, and—lo! there was a matchless female form standing by his bed.
Dim-eyed with the haze of death he could not see her clearly. It seemed as if the shadowy ideal image of his heart had come out of it and was steadfastly gazing at his face in the hour of death.
The lady spoke, "I am the Princess Invicta!"
With a supreme effort the poet sat up in his bed.
She continued,—"The king has not done thee justice. Thine is the victory, poet. Lo! I have come to give thee the victor's garland."
So saying she took off from her person a flower-garland of her own weaving, and placed it round the poet's neck. The death-stricken poet sank down on his bed.