George Anca – Florin Zamfirescu – Doina Boriceanu – Puși Dinulescu – Sinziana Ionescu – Gheorghe Constantin Nistoroiu
TAGORE AND ELIADE CONTENPORARIES
By Dr. George Anca
Two years ago, being asked from Office of Prime Minister of India, Sri Narendra Modi, to suggest something for his speach on India’s Independence Day, I could dare only to quote from Bhagavad Gita:
yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas
tat tad evetaro janaḥ
sa yat pramāṇaṁ kurute
lokas tad anuvartate (3.21)
Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men follow in his footsteps. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.
na jāyate mriyate vā kadācin
nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ
ajo nityaḥ śāśvato ’yaṁ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (2.20)
For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. English, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Rabindranath Tagore visited Romania in 1926 and received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Bucharest. Mircea Eliade spent four years (1938 – 1931) studying philosophy and Sanskrit at Calcutta University. Maitreyi Devi wrote Rabindranath – the man behind his poetry, as well as Na Hanyate ( It Does Not Die: A Romance) novel, written as a response to Maitreyi /Bengal Nights by Mircea Eliade.
According to Lucian Blaga, all major writers and thinkers of Romania were inspired by Indian culture, starting with Mihai Eminescu. Now a days, from the oak tree planted at centenary of Tagore in Bucharest to Shantiniketan, one faces both the greatness of India.
Thus, for an intended Indian-Romanian conference on Indology, Dr. Shashi Bala thinks it should incorporate history, linguistics, literature and ritual. There may be a panel discussion on Indology in Romania – past, present and future. Other topics can be Sanskrit for all round cultural development, Role of Upanishadic philosophy in establishing peace and harmony ; vedic ritual for controlling pollution… Professor Sayavrat Shastri suggested Modern Sanskrit Literature, Sanskrit teaching both in India and abroad, the utility of Indological studies for modern society.
“The Great Empires, wrote Tagore, change their shape and shakes like clouds; nations play their part and then disappear into obscurity, but these individuals bear in them the immortal life of all humanity”. He was talking about revealing personalities, breathing in the world of the Spirit.
…We speak now in Calcutta’s birth of him (May 6, 1861). In the Victoria Memorial, today’s Bengal Museum, Tagore plays in a Sanskrit drama, with the Nobel Prize on the wall, in front of young actor photo. All of us would build palaces from Tagore’s footsteps. I was telling then that the Saint of Montparnasse Brancusi and the Saint of Shantiniketan Tagore, both of whom were scratched in the words of Tudor Arghezi, cut spiritual salvation into the world. That Tagore is an old Christ, a big brother with Romanian Mihai Eminescu. Calcuttan, by birth, Amita Bhose could even avoid the taste of death by incinerating in Bucharest near the tomb of Eminescu, spreading herself into the cosmos of Orpheus and Tagore alike.
The doctrines of the third millennium will not be able to avoid what Philosopher N. Bagdasar had imposed in 1938, the contrast between European civilization, now on the same American, materialist trend, and the Indian-Oriental culture of the soul and the interior. If the incorporation of Tagore’s thinking into Romanian culture in the 1920s and 1930s could have been destroyed even by Tagore himself, when Sovietized, the third, the fourth Tagore will be again and again the Tagore the first, the true one.
A blasting Tagore aura shows how he named Gandhi “mahatma”. Think how Vivekananda died at the age of 39, as Eminescu.. Questening what title got Ramakrishna?… Chased by the white ants, ui poka, even you, Tagore.
Let be not dispersed Tagore’s house in Pandua, Orissa, former Bengal, where he was writing under a bakul tree the Chitrangada drama-dance. Here was the revenue inspector office. The 1971 cyclone has shattered the surrounding houses, but not that of Kabiguru. Now, ready, we can rebuild our houses, we can not replace Rabindranath’s. Sarada Prasad Malik, no point in building an auditorium in a remote village. The Rabindra Mandap was finally built in Bhubaneswar.
The villagers installed a statue at the entrance to the village and the main street called Rabindra Sarani, unrecognized by the government. Money for bakul mandap. The youth formed the club Biswakabi Rabindranath Yubak Sangsad. They tried a Rabindra Library. Tagore called them: baba aum khao. He came here by dolparba before moving to Shantiniketan. Cooracharan Sahoo, the 56-year-old son of the late Durjodhan Sahoo, Tagore’s estate manager: my father handed me all the papers before he died and asked me not to lose them. I kept my word and saved the papers though I lost my belongings.
Likewise, ready to drown in the ocean, Camoens was wearing the Os Lusiades manuscript above his head.
In 1926, on November 21, he was in the National Theater in Bucharest and uttered his conference on poetry and Indian thought. Today, November 22, 1999, in Shantiniketan, the next day we remember the endlessness of the Ganges-Danube whisper. Happily, I delivered two lectures, Tagore in Romanian Perspective, Vidya Bhavan, 22 November ’99, Tagore and Eminescu, 23 November.
„Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence?” (Tagore)
As on Mircea Eliade, younger contemporary of Tagore, in Calcutta and elsewere, he made both India and Romania fresh resonance of universal spirit. His works had a faboulous success since he started first chair of History of Religions in Chicago. His novels turned also into movies.
I received in India many letters from him like this: ‘I will send you as soon as they appear (in March): 1) Cahiers de L’Herne: Mircea Eliade (almost 400 pages, with the bibliography of all the translations in my books, 2) L’epreuve de lairirinthe: Entretiens avec Mircea Eliade. Two more books have been published about Mircea Eliade this autumn and others (three) are under printing. But not everything is interesting! … ‘
Let salute together his masterpiece.
Yoga. Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne by Mircea Eliade appeared on May 20, 1936. The book is dedicated to the memory of Manindra Chandra Nandi of Kassimbazaar, who granted him scholarships in India, and to both his masters, Professor Surendranath Dasgupta and Professor Nae Ionescu. „Nous ne tenterons pas d ‘exprimer tout que nous devons et l’appui et au génie de ces deux maîtres”.
Eliade had written in October 31, 1934, to Valeriu Bologa: „For a year I have been madly working on the definitive French language of my studies on the phenomenology of Indian meditation. It is more than an Orientalist book or the history of religions It is, I hope, a work of philosophy of culture, although it has philological and technical appearances, I think we could prove a whole new thing: the tendencies towards concrete, to the real and immediate experience of the Indian spirit. Preface to India against the abstract themes of Brahmanism and the Sanskrit „philosophy.” I have been working for five years on this demonstration and have used all the instruments of scientific knowledge: philology, ethnography, religion history, history of philosophy, psychology. Much in the value of this book – my first book that will be printed in April „.
Emil Cioran writes on June 10, 1936: „There is so much vibrant learning in Yoga and a world so special that it awakens so many shy things I thought I had escaped. When you wrote letters, I could not believe you had to write the most serious erudition book that Romania has produced „
In the five volumes titled Mircea Eliade and his correspondents, published between 1993 and 2007, among prestigious names are: J. Przyluski, Professor at the College of France, Vittorio Macchioro, Professor at the University of Naples, Carl Hentze (University of Gand), AB Keith (University of Edinburgh), Samuel Angus (University of Sydney), Ananda Coomaraswamy (Director of the Boston Art History Museum).
Sergiu Al. George: „Paul Masson-Oursel, one of the most important French historians of Indian philosophy, who in his 1967 work defines the Yoga phenomenon in terms surprisingly similar to those of Eliade … This strict adherence to the essential theses of Mircea Eliade seem all the more surprising to me, as at the appearance of the 1936 Yoga monograph, P. Masson-Oursel, in contrast to all the great Indianists (G. Tucci, A. Coomaraswamy, H. Zimmer, L. from Valée Pousin, etc.) was the only one to review the volume reluctantly. „
My translations from Tagore include Gitanjali and The Child.. From Eliade, I received a ‘Thanks for the letter and for 10 Indian Poems ‘. India’s Independence belongs also to theirs creation.
***
16 iulie, 2018
FLORIN ZAMFIRESCU
„Dragă Uniune Europeană.
Trebuie să-ți mărturisesc ceva important. Acum mai bine de zece ani am dorit să mă cuplez cu tine. Erai plină de promisiuni, prevedeam un mariaj fericit. Abia mai târziu am înțeles ce le-ai impus celor pe care i-am trimis se te pețească.
Și ceea ce nouă nu ne-au spus: că ne voiai fără industrie, fără agricultură și că mai voiai că toate averile noastre să fie înstrăinate. Fiindcă veneam la ține, cea bogată, poate că am fi acceptat… Dar, măi Uniune Europeană, am observat apoi că ești o curvă perversă, că vrei să dereglezi mințile oamenilor, că nu ai nimic sfânt”, a scris Zamfirescu.