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Suresh Frederick

Human Aggression on Nature: Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore

Human Aggression on Nature: Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore

Dr. Suresh Frederick

Reader in English, Bishop Heber College
Trichy –620 017

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is a well known and eminent Bengali poet. He has translated making of his works into English. He is a multifaceted personality. He is a philosopher, poet, composer, essayist, critic, artist and educator. He became the first-ever Asian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913 for his collection of poems entitled Gitanjali. He was the first non-western write to be honoured so. In 1915, King George V knighted him. But Tagore renounced his knighthood in 1919 following the Amritsar Massacre. This creative genius has produced a great deal of poetry, which deals with nature.

Ecocriticism is an emerging critical theory. Cheryll Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment” (xviii). Nature poetry is not new to literature, but ecocriticism allows one to study a poem from a new perspective, that is, nature’s perspective. This also makes humans to think in a biocentric way.

Human beings are the greatest aggressors on this biosphere. They have dominated this earth with their aggressive behaviour. Their only aim is to tame the elements of nature and turn this ecosphere into something of their own liking. In fact they want to enslave the entire universe. As a great visionary, Tagore denounces human aggression on nature.

Through his poem ‘The Tame Bird was in a cage’ (The Gardener, Poem No. VI), Tagore brings out the plight of a tamed bird. One bird is in the cage and the other in the forest. Both of them meet and fall in love.
The free bird cries, “O my love, let us fly to the wood”
The caged bird whispers, “come hither, let us both
live in the cage”

Says the free bird, “Among bars, where is there
room to spread one’s wings?
“Alas” cries the cage bird,” I should not know
where to sit perched in the sky”. (4-10)

Here both the birds are of the same type, but the difference lies in the way they were brought up. One is a domesticated bird and the other is a free bird.

Both these birds are totally different from each other.
The free bird cries, “My darling sing the songs of
the woodlands”
The cage bird says, “Sit by my side, I’ll teach you
the speech of the learned”.
The forest bird cries, “No, ah no! Songs never be
taught.”
The cage bird says, “Alas for me, I know not the
songs of the woodlands”. (11-18)

The caged bird has even forgotten how to sing. But it can imitate its master’s voice. The free bird knows that the songs of nature can never be taught, they are all part of the system of the birds. Here the question of culture vs. nature arises. “….some of the debates within ecocriticism concerning the crucial matter of the relationship between culture and nature” (252) says peter Barry in Beginning Theory. Human beings consider culture as a great achievement. In fact, culture has destroyed nature in many ways. William Rueckert says, “Culture – one of our great achievements wherever we have gone – has often fed like a great predator and parasite upon nature and never entered into a reciprocating energy-transfer, into a recycling relationship with the biosphere” (Glotfelty 119). Here also, this lovely bird has lost its natural song and has learnt human beings’ language, which is in no way useful to it.

The plight of the domesticated bird is vividly explained by the poet.
Their love is intense with longing, but they never
can fly wing towing.
Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is
their wish to know each other.
They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing,
“come closer, my love!”
The free bird cries, “It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage”
The cage bird whispers, “Alas, my wings are power-
less and dead”. (19-28)
Because of their greedy nature, the humans want to domesticate nature. The humans always want to look from their perspective and clearly refuse to see from nature’s perspective. Ecocriticism enables the humans to view everything from nature’s point of view

According to Nirmal Selvamony, the humans have introduced a hierarchy in nature. In that the humans have placed the domesticated animals higher than the wild animals. “Even animals were ranged in hierarchic order, the domestic and the wild” (Selvamony 4). Humans look through the anthropocentric eyes and place the domestic animals higher than the wild animals. In fact the topsy-turvy placement is the correct one. from this poem, one can easily understand that the wild animals are better placed than the domesticated animals. The humans have introduced this hierarchy with their self-interest in mind. Through the domesticated animals like cows and sheep, they get milk. Through domestication, they use horses for riding. They domesticate birds and eat them. Thus, this theory of the ladder with domesticated animals at the top and wild animals at the bottom is not the correct one as it is a result of man’s greed.

In another poem, “I plucked you Flower” (The Gardener, Poem No. LVII), human aggression gets expressed through the plucking of a flower
I plucked your flower, O world!
I pressed it to my heart and the thorn pricked.
When the day waned and it darkened, I found that
the flower had faded, but the pain remained. (1-4)

Even though the speaker starts with a flower, his motive is “flower-gathering” (7). His motive is business. When he plucks a flower, his hand is pricked by a thorn.
More flowers will come to you with perfume and
pride, O world!
But my time for flower-gathering is over, and through
the dark night I have not my rose, only the pain
remain. (5-9)
The humans feel that plucking flowers is their own right. Nature is not a silent spectator. One day it will react. It would not be just a thorn-prick but can be a mighty tsunami. The humans should be careful about this.
The humans have converted the animate and living nature into an inanimate thing. Because of their nature, they have always behaved in an anthropocentric way. In the first poem, ‘The Tame Bird was in a Cage’, the caged bird does not react. The free bird does not know how to react to the human beings’ greed of domesticating its loved ones. In the second poem, ‘I plucked you flower’, the plant reacts in a small way, but there will be a time when human beings will have to pay a heavy price for their anthropocentric behaviour.
In Fruit Gathering, Poem No. XVIII, Tagore clearly says that no one should interfere with the activities of nature. “No it is not yours to open buds into blossoms” (1). Human beings do not know how to interact with nature. They “Shake the bud” and “strike it” (2). Because they feel that they are the masters of the Universe, they crush the bud under the pretext of making it blossom. Tagore emphatically says,
… it is beyond your power to
make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and
Strew them in the dust. (2-5)

Humans have the habit of destroying something to create something for them. They destroy a beautiful rock to create a sculpture of their liking. They cut a gorgeous tree to make a musical instrument for their use. Many trees are uprooted and many major massacres of nature have taken place for the implantation of tea or coffee gardens. This is how human beings behave. This attitude is caused by their anthropocentric behaviour. It is totally unnecessary for humans to enter into the creating act. The modern inventions in gene technology will boomerang on them one day. Dollys of today will teach the humans a lesson later. If they do something in a biocentric way, then that will exist for ever. All anthropocentric attempts will end only in disaster. Tagore beautifully says, “Ah! it is not for you to open the bud into a blossom” (7). He repeats this line to give double emphasis. Humans should understand the roles assigned to them at a macrocosmic level. Any human aggression will end in a disaster for the whole biosphere.
The time has come for them to realize that the destinies of both the humans and nature are intricately bound together. As William rueckert says, “The conceptual and practical problem is to find the grounds upon which the two communities – the humans, the natural – can coexist, cooperate, and flourish in the biosphere” (Glotfelty 107). cooperation is the key to the survival of the humans in this biosphere.

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Marchester UP, 2002.
Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm, ed. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Georgia: The University of Georgia press, 1996.
Selvamony, Nirmal. Tinai 1. Chennai : Persons for Alternative Social Order, 2001.
Tagore, Rabindranath. Collected Poems and Plays. New Delhi:Rupa and Co, 2002.

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