Rabindranath Tagore saw the similarity between religion and poetry in that both are "expressions" of human feelings. His religiosity is poetic, and his poetic vision of even everyday events and experiences could take on a universal scale and touch eternity. The poet said: "Religion, like poetry, is not only an idea, it is an expression... my religion is the religion of a poet, the fruit of my inner vision, not just knowledge "[Tagore Pamphlets, vol. I, p. 12]. And again: "Ideas take visible form thanks to some hidden, subtle work going on inside the poet."
Keywords: Rabindranath Tagore, "Brahmo Samaj", bhakti, love lyrics, civic poetry.

An Indian poet has this seemingly incomprehensible saying: "Poems should be, not mean." Obviously, this refers to what can be called the magic of verse, when the poetic description of a particular event takes on a special meaning that cannot be expressed in any other way. What is embedded in the poetic lines may not even be fully realized, but it is magically fixed in the memory as if by itself; of course, this happens thanks to the rhythm and music of the verse. Many people have experienced a similar effect of poetry, and among these many I: during the Great Patriotic War, I, a Moscow schoolboy at that time, came across a small book in Russian with the strange title " Gitanjali "("Sacrifice Songs")2. It was an English translation published during the First World War, and a little earlier the English edition of this collection [Tagore, 1913]3 marked the beginning of Rabindranath Tagore's worldwide fame. In 1913, he was the first person in Asia to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I don't think I understood anything from this book, but rather almost nothing. But the line "Children gather on the seashore of infinite worlds" was remembered forever. Similarly, it struck Charles Andrews, a friend of Gandhi and Tagore's companion in the enlightenment, who was with several London intellectuals at Tagore's first reading of the still-unpublished Gitanjali in 1910. After that, he would walk through the streets of London at night and repeat over and over to himself: "Children gather on the seashore of infinite worlds..." [Vide Tagore Ratindranath..., 1958, p. 131]. Then there were the lines:

...They build houses out of sand and play with seashells.
They make small boats out of fallen leaves and cheerfully let them sail through the open sea.
Children play on the seashore of worlds.
...They do not seek hidden treasures, they do not know how
to cast nets... (60)4.

1 Letter from Shahzadapsr, July 10, 1893. See: [PTCC, 12, p. 211].

2 Probably better to translate: "Songs of Offering".

3 The verses from this collection are not so much the author's translations from Bengali, but the author's version in English.

4 Hereafter, the verses from Gitanjali are given in my translation from the English edition, using some other Russian translations of these verses. Poems are marked with their ordinal numbers in the collection.

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Tagore did not contrast Poetry with Truth. His poetry served the truth of feelings (love and philosophical lyrics), and over time, political and social truth (protest civil lyrics that called for national freedom and social emancipation). It was a service to the truth on the terms of art.

The truth shines brighter than all beauty,
When he recognizes his own voice in the song.
No wonder the truth likes its borderline:
Only there can it merge with the beautiful.
(From the book "Writing", translated by S. Lipkin) 5

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) belonged to the Brahmo Samaj (Society of [one God] Brahma), India's first small public organization of a modern type, which was also a religious community, established in the early 19th century. The society operated mainly in Bengal, Tagore's birthplace. The founder of the society, Rammohan Rai (1772-1833), was a religious reformer and educator who opposed medieval customs and practices. Tagore called Rammohan Rai "the father of modern India".

"Let your life be like a dance on the borders of time, like a drop of dew on the tip of a leaf" (from the collection of poems "Sadovnik") [RTSS, vol. 12, p. 367]. Tagore himself really lived a life "on the edge of time" - one era after another, and in India itself, and in the world as a whole.

Tagore's poetry was originally characterized by the Bengali Renaissance - humanism and the reformist view of the relationship between man and God, which he developed in his own way, went much further than the medieval representatives of this trend. But Tagore is primarily a free - thinking educator in terms of the social order, and he has a lot of liberalism in him, and over time he "became a democrat who sympathized with the proletariat", as Jawaharlal Nehru said about him (Nehru, 1955, p.366). Tagore, even in his youth, was sympathetic to socialist ideas, seeing in them "a glimmer of hope that can inspire noble people to fight for the improvement of the people's lot" (Bengal. From Shileyda, May 10, 1893) [RTSS, vol. 12, p. 207]. Defending the cause of national liberation, political freedom and social justice, Tagore rejected the narrowness of nationalism and called for the unity of the West and the East in equality and freedom. He especially turned his anger and talent as a poet-publicist against religious intolerance. "Gurudev 6 is international because he is truly national," Mahatma Gandhi used to say. And he also called Tagore "the Great Sentry of Conscience" in the modern world.

Tagore's initial religious thinking was based on the idea of an all - encompassing impersonal divine entity-Atman, or Brahman, which is the ruler and administrator of the world. This idea went back to the Upanishads (presumably in the middle of the first century BC). It was followed by Rammohan Rai. Tagore was particularly attracted to the Isha Upanishad, which says:

It moves, and It doesn't move.
It's far away, and It's close.
He is within all, and He is beyond all (5).
Omniscient, Thinking, Omnipresent, Self-existent,
He duly distributed all things in perpetuity (8).
[Upanishads, 1967] 7

5 References to R. Tagore's poems and some prose works indicate their Russian title and the author of the translation into Russian. References are given to the publication: [RTSS, 1961-1965].

6 The Divine Teacher-this is how Tagore was called in India.

7 I have replaced the word "It" - the definition of Atman in A. Y. Syrkin's translation - with the word "He", as some other translators, including foreign ones, do.

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The concept of Atman is a certain form of monotheism. But in India, this monotheism, often identified in the West with Brahmanism, co-existed with the numerous pantheon of earlier Vedic gods, mostly anthropomorphic, which remained and continued to develop. It represented a superstructure over the vast Vedic pantheon, primarily in elite theology, but not only.: "Even in the most remote villages, the most untrained peasant has come to believe that God is one, but he can be worshipped in any form, including the one to which he was particularly devoted." It is like the Gita's formula: "The undivided in the divided "(Sardesai, 1986, p. 79). Bhakti8formed their own communities in different ethnic regions of the country, along with local associations and cults that previously existed there. Like the latter, they had little or no connection, and the country's religious diversity was growing.

The very concept of Atman, or Brahman, did not have a strict dogmatic formalization on the scale of such a huge and diverse country in many respects. The Vedic-Brahmin religious complex was all the more loose - the religion of ancient and later (with certain modifications) medieval India, a religion that knew neither a strictly uniform dogma, nor a single founder, nor a centralized organization.

Nevertheless, the very idea of monotheism opened up the possibility of asserting the equality of people before God, which was originally characteristic of world religions ("there is neither a Hellenic nor a Jew"), as well as the religion of India, which, being a special religious complex, is not considered a world religion, but can be comparable in number of adherents to them. In fact, the assertion of equality before God was rejected and suppressed by any dominant religious authority with the support of secular authorities, but it was just as invariably revived in religious reform movements. In India, with its caste system that included extreme forms of social inequality ("untouchability" and others), the preaching of equality before God had its own special protest significance. It was conducted mainly by bhakti preachers. Their sermons consisted of collective chants (bhajans, kirtans, etc.) that rejected caste divisions (although not always consistently) and called for boundless love and devotion to God, and from this it followed that the appeal to him was equally accessible to everyone, even the untouchables, who were simply not allowed to enter the temples of orthodoxy.

Rammohan Rai also encouraged participants in the Brahmo Samaj to consider bhakti followers as their "brothers". Tagore confirmed his rejection of the caste system and commitment to equality by translating the chants of Kabir (presumably 15th century), raised in the family of a Muslim weaver, one of the greatest poets of the Indian Middle Ages and a radical opponent of both caste and religious divisions.

It is in vain to ask a saint what caste he belongs to.
Priest, warrior, merchant-
All thirty-six castes are the Same for God.
[Tagore R. Poems of Kabir, B. G., p. 45].

The idea of equality before God, which is more or less inherent in monotheism, was not at all exclusively Indian. Meanwhile, the amorphous nature inherent in the entire Indian religious complex, including the idea of monotheism, led to the emergence in India in ancient times of a very rare, almost exceptional phenomenon in history, at least in the history of world religions. This is religious universalism, namely the idea of a single divine essence of religions, despite the differences in dogma, rituals and other features. Religious

8 This concept can be translated as "God-loving", and bhakti preachers and their followers can be called"God-loving".

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universalism promoted religious tolerance. However, there is a fundamental difference between these concepts: religious tolerance recognizes only the peaceful coexistence of different religions, but fundamentally rejects their unity. In ancient India, the religious universalist was Ashoka, the ruler of India's largest Mauryan power (3rd century BC), and the universalist tendency was also partly present in early Buddhism. The universalists were Akbar, the greatest Mughal ruler in medieval India, and his closest adviser and friend Abu'l Fazl. Universalists were popular preachers of bhakti, among them Kabir (see [Komarov, 2003; Komarov, 2004]).

Oh, servant, where do you seek Me?
Look, I'm right next to you.
I'm not in a [Hindu] temple or mosque:
I'm not in the Kaaba or Kailash:
I am neither in rites nor ceremonies,
Not in yoga and renunciation.
If you are a true seeker
You will be able to see Me: one day you will meet Me.
Kabir said, " O Sadu! God is the breath of all
living things."
[Tagore R. Poems of Kabir, B. G., p. 45].
But Tagore claims his own vision of the world:
Wide open the temple is dissolved! Ringing filled my temple-
It is open to all rays, all winds.
The world is my temple.
("Temple").

"All rays" is a metaphor for ancient Indian universalism. All creeds have their origin in one source, like rays coming from the sun.

Perhaps not without Kabir's influence ("God is the breath of All living things") Tagore reinterpreted the purely abstract notion of Brahman as an all-encompassing entity of a rather immobile world, where "all things are distributed [by Brahman] for all time." Tagore's supreme deity was life itself in its constant movement and change, and he gave this deity his name-Jibon debota, which can be translated as the God of Life.

Life is divine. "It is optimistic in itself," said Tagore (Sadhana, 1913, p.52). He took the "sacred gift of life" in his own way, far from ignoring human misery and suffering, as he spoke about in his civic poetry, but refused to accept life as a vale of sorrow. The poet does not accept the traditional notion that" liberation "(the term mukti partly corresponds to the Christian" salvation") is achieved by renouncing the mundane.

Liberation for me is not in renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand snares
of enjoying happiness 9.
(Gitanjali, 73)

This is the admiration for the beauty of nature, and the happiness of love, and the joy of a parent, and the renaissance enjoyment of life in general.

I saw the face of the world illuminated without closing my eyes,
Marveling at its perfection.
Lakshmi's Breath from the Garden of Eternal Beauty,
Fanned my lips.
The universe's bountiful joy and sighs of its sorrows
I expressed myself with my flute.
("End of the year". From the book
"Testament", translated by N. Stefanovich)

9 The word delight, which Tagore used in his English version of "Gitanjali", has many meanings, among them" pleasure"," happiness", as well as" joy","delight". Probably, this word can be translated as "enjoying happiness".

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My wealth is in the lightning flashes that twinkle night and day.
It appears instantly, disappears instantly,
It doesn't have a name, but remember what it looks like,
The air will suddenly sing, bracelets will ring on your feet...
("Gift". From the book "Cranes".
Translated by M. Petrov)

Already in his declining years, the poet spoke with satisfaction about the gift of a lived life.

I can smell
the mute language of love in this sky,
Which reigned supreme in my life.
In its water I will perform my ablution.
I think the truth of life is a necklace
On the boundless blue
Heaven.
("Open the door..." From the book
"Bedridden", translated by A. Akhmatova)

In the relationship between man and God, Tagore went much further than the medieval reformers ' idea of human equality before God. In his free-thinking, the poet proclaims the equality of man and God. They are creators and workers together. Moreover, they are nothing without each other:

"If I leave my home, I won't reach Your home. If I stop doing my job, I won't be able to do your job with You. I am nothing without You, or You are nothing without me." 1913, p. 163-164].

It's the same in verse:

You gave a song to the bird it sings your song,
It is no longer within the power of the ringing nightingale,
You gave me a voice, but I give you more
I sing my song.....
...I repay a hundredfold
For each of your gifts, for each of your mercies.
("I take-I give")
God is with the man of labor.
"It is where the farmer raises virgin land,
where the road builder breaks rocks. He is with them
in the hot sun and rain, his clothes in
the dust."
(Gitanjali, 11)

Even the poet sees paradise not as otherworldly, but in man himself, along with the earthly paradise of eternal beauty

Do you know where heaven is, brother?
.............................
Paradise is embodied in my hot body,
In my sorrow, in my tenderness, in my joy,
In my love,
In my shame, in my labor, in the raging blood,
In the waves of my deaths, my births,
In the game of all colors, all colors, in shades, in
light, in shadow.
He joined in my song.
..........................................
Out of the womb of my earthly mother came paradise.
And the waves of the wind carry this message from end to end.
("Paradise". From the book "Cranes".
Translated by A. Revich)

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In the book Letters on Russia, written during and after Tagore's visit to the Soviet Union, there is a significant phrase. Its translation in the Russian edition of letters is hardly successful [RTSS, vol. 11, pp. 58-59]. The original in its phonetic form in Cyrillic sounds gak: Manusher debotake shshikar kore ebon pronam kore jabo, shey mantra amar jibopdebota amake diechen10. My translation: "I recognize God in man and worship him-this is the commandment that my God has given me-Life." This is the pinnacle of Tagore's humanism. However, it is significant that here Tagore did not depart from the world medieval tradition, when any social phenomenon, and even more so innovation, required a religious justification.

Tagore may address God directly, sometimes prayerfully, but often his addresses are connected with his consciousness of divinity and the eternity of life itself. He does not distinguish between God, the personal and the impersonal. In the verses, he usually refers to God simply as "You". Only sometimes he calls god "Lord" (Prabhu). But the poet can also see God as Someone singing or playing a lute in a boat that floats on the river. Tagore could follow in his own way the practice of bhakti preachers who worshipped an impersonal nirguna ("unqualified") god, naming and repeating the simple word "name" (nam) in their prayer chants as a designation of the deity.

Tagore has a beautiful poem-song in the tradition of nirguna bhakti.

I will repeat your name often and a lot,
And under any pretext, and without any pretext at all.
I'll call him dumb,
I will call it in vain and in vain,
I will call him with a smile and with deep anxiety.
.................................................. I
will call you as a child calls its mother:
Loving the very name, he is glad to utter this word 11.
(From the book "The Garden of Songs", translated by V. Potapova)

Invocation of the divine is an essential part of Tagore's poetic oeuvre, but it is far from the only one. He usually spoke about nature and human relations as such, without the otherworldly, but often through the prism of his universal view.

Tagore's love lyrics are a rare, if not unique, insight into the special world of the mysterious bond of lovers. "Love is an infinite mystery. Apart from itself, there is nothing that can explain it" [Tagore Pamphlets, vol. 1, p. 10].

In the early morning, we whispered to each other:
We must set sail. Just you and me.
And no one will know about our journey without a goal and without
an end.
The bond between us will never be broken -
an outsider will not penetrate it, will not understand it.
That we are connected by light, by magical days
And a hand in my trembling palm.
("Invitation". From the book
"The Road", translated by S. Lipkin)

10 S. D. Serebryany in his detailed research cites the original of this phrase in Latin in the traditional Sanskritized spelling [Serebryany, 2000, pp. 26-64]. However, if you pronounce ce according to this spelling, the phrase will be unrecognizably different from the commonly used phonetic ce reading. Despite the differences in translations, the main meaning of the statement remains.

11 The word" name", in its traditional meaning, has come in handy for the slogan chanted by demonstrators in Calcutta to protest the Vietnam War: Amar nam, tomar nam-Vietnam ("My name, your name is Vietnam").

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The poet tells about love experiences vividly and directly: sometimes with passionate enthusiasm, then subtly lyrically, or even quite simply. He knows how to show love as an incoming whirlwind, which, along with clothes, tears off the individualistic shell - the "veils of the soul".

Fly, hurricane, crush, stun.
Tear off all the clothes, all the veils from the soul!
Let it stand naked, without shame!
Rock us!
("On the swing." From the book " Golden
rook". Translated by T. Revich)

But sometimes his love song is simplicity itself, though intricate, like a country ditty.

Our village is called Khonjona,
Our Onjona river is called,
Everyone here knows my name,
"She's simply called our Rongjona.
("We live in the same village." From the book
"Moments". Translated by T. Spendiarova)

The emotional mood of falling in love is a gift of love that can bring joy to the world of everyday life: "The gift of love is shy. He never identifies himself. It penetrates the veil, scattering coins of joy on the dusty ground."

Love deepens the perception of the visible world, becomes for the poet a special way of his joyful comprehension, takes him beyond the visible shell. He can say it simply and lyrically:

Without close involvement of a friend,
Who lived there in those years,
I probably wouldn't have known in the area
No lake, no grove, no village.
"That woman who was nice to me..."
(From the book "Initiations". Translated by B.
Pasternak)

But the poet can also raise the illusion of stopped time in lovers to communion with eternity:

Where the flow of life merged
With the flow of nothingness,
Where time ended for us,
Once you and I got together ...
the two of us were sitting side by side,
And I'm in a waking state of oblivion
Comprehended, whose breath is alive
Shakes the thick grass.
And the joy of heartfelt
Pierces the depths of the universe.
("Meeting". From the book "Evening Melodies".
Translated by V. Potapova)

The world of lovers is far away. They are "where the edge of the low sky is cut off by the border of the earth", i.e. in a space that is unattainable for ordinary mortals. Love took them there, and only the two of them decide their fate in the world of love.

Tagore also has some poems where the somber color of the unsettled life of lovers emphasizes their steadfastness. Again and again the poet repeats like an incantation: You are there, I am there, we are near!

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My dear, we will not create a new paradise.
The songs of tears didn't have to shine on us.
From the sufferings of love, from the sweetest torment burning,
We won't celebrate our wedding night, my dear.
We will not fall before fate, we know the value of its rewards.
Everything is not terrible for us here:
You are there, I am there, we are close!
............................................
You and I looked at the world with the same eyes.
The heat of the desert was endured, we made our way through dry sands.
Behind the mirage, the mirage floated by, not disturbing our souls.
We did not lie to ourselves, we did not disguise the truth with lies.
Proud of this power, we go against all odds.
Bright news is with us:
You are, I am, we are near!
("Dear, new paradise..." From the book "Garden of Songs", translated by Yu. Neumann)

As the final chord of Tagore's love lyrics, we can cite his masterful aphorism:

One thing is always one thing, and nothing else,
L Two create the beginning of one.
(From the book "Writing", translated by S. Lipkin)

Tagore always rejected the fear of death, but lamented the inability to hold on to the experiences, the moments of feeling that were inevitably being carried back in the past by the flow of time. This is the meaning of the famous poem "The Golden Boat" (1894). The poet was then just over 30 years old 12.

Instead of A. Revich's verse translation (see: RTSS) I prefer to give a prosaic version, which can be like this:

"Rainy day, clouds covered the sky. I sit alone on the edge of my deserted field by the riverbank. The harvest is complete. When we were collecting it, it started to rain heavily. The river foamed, became a rapid stream. The trees on the other side cast inky shadows, and you can see the village on the gray canvas of the morning mist.

Who is it that sings in the boat that floats on swollen sails, and the waves beat powerlessly against its sides? I think I know, I've already seen It. What faraway country are You sailing to? You're free to go wherever You want, and you can land wherever You want. But come to the shore, the pier at least for a while. Take the golden sheaves of my rice. Take as much as you can in the rook. What else do you have?" No, not at all. I have loaded everything, everything that I have cultivated with my labors here on the shore. I gave away everything I had, one by one. Now take me with you. Have mercy, take me to the rook! There is no room, there is no room, the rook is too small. My golden rice filled it all. Clouds swirl and float in the gray sky. I'm alone on a deserted beach. Everything I had is gone. The Golden Rook took everything."

But not so hopeless, in another place the poet writes:

Traces of my flight
Now no one in the sky will find it.
But I flew, I remember my flight.
("Volare". From the book "Writing", translated by S. Lipkin)

12 This is my interpretation. There are others: in particular, they talk about self-alienation (self-surrender) in love (as in the poets-preachers of bhakti), about the separation of the world from its Creator. The famous philologist S. K. Chatterjee reports that Tagore himself explained the meaning of the poem differently: for him, the boat is a symbol of Life, which gathers the harvest of our achievements and floats away on the river of time, leaving us behind [Chattarji, 1971, p. 200-201]. Obviously, this is not a quote, but a statement of Tagore's statement (there are no quotation marks or links). It also seems to me that the poet is not talking about "achievements", but about feelings, experiences and events that caused them.

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The memory doesn't get cold. Tagore went back to the past again and again. These are his poems, which can be called poems-memoirs, and he himself called them - " the game of fragments of the past." They occupy a prominent place in his work and reveal Tagore's characteristic lyrical and philosophical perception of life and the world. The eternal renewal of nature brings the poet's memory back to the past moments of joy, so that the past is seen not only in the present, but sometimes in the future.

But the lost moments are
In your rustling leaves, trembling with the breeze
Spring wind... And my memory comes alive... All of a sudden
There will be a leafy babble and youth, and an old friend.
So, looking each other in the face, chains of flowers are woven,
The magical nights of spring merge the past with the future.
("Shal". From the book "Voices of the Forest".
Translated by S. Shervinsky)

About the same aphorism:

The distant drew nearer. Look:
Years will pass and then the distance will become distant,
And it will seem to us that it is closer.
(From the book "Writing", translated by S. Lipkin)

Over the years, Tagore strove for greater concreteness not only in his prose (his prose was initially realistic), but also in his poetic work, while retaining, however, his characteristic lyrical and philosophical vision. He paints urban and rural landscapes in verse, Nora makes his own poetic pictures and short films from the lives of ordinary people. Back at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. he creates patriotic songs-denunciations of colonial power and a call to freedom, which were sung during the first mass demonstrations in India in 1905. The angry pathos of his civic poetry, which stigmatized caste oppression, first of all untouchability, religious pogroms, landlords ' arbitrariness, the ruin of the peasants and the famine that drove them to the cities and to the railway, recalls the "Railway" of N. A. Nekrasov; the pitiful share of poor students and small employees makes you think of the "Poor People" of F. A. Nekrasov.M. Dostoevsky, and the novel "House and World "(1909) is partly comparable to "Demons". The countries are different, and what feeds the creativity of their great writers reveals considerable similarities.

Drawing on folk life, Tagore creates a realistic yet exquisitely lyrical rural landscape. He contrasts the aloof and majestic Ganges, which "flows straight from the ancient texts", with the modest Kopai River, which is all part of the village life on its banks. In his youth, Tagore himself lived in those places, in one of the family estates: "And so, saying goodbye to my youth, I returned here." With his masterful allusions, Tagore translates the description of the river into a landscape - both cheerful and sad.

Here a small village took refuge in the greenery
Santalov 13. Here the Kopai River runs with me next
to it,
A neighbor since childhood.
It lacks antiquity and glory,
But it has its own simple name
Mixed with the loud chatter of women,

Santals 13 - a small nation (tribe), poor tenants, rural workers (farmhands) and handymen in the city, they have in one way or another preserved remnants of an archaic, almost primitive, way of life. A Santal boy "with a bow and arrow"is mentioned below.

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And here, between the water and the banks,
There is no disagreement. Love of the countryside
You can hear it from shore to shore.
Here is hemp over the wave itself.
Rice shoots nod their heads.
And where with the river
Met the road,
The water generously concedes
Passers-by need to wade through the path
A clear and talkative stream...
the language of a river is the language of a simple house,
Not scientists ' speech 14.
Wave and shore
Combines a common rhythm. And the river
He does not envy earthly riches.
Oh, how graceful she is, wriggling
In the midst of shadows and light!
How to clap your hands! How flexible, resilient
It happens in the rain! It is not inferior
Dancing village girls,
That you drank a little wine.
But even then the river does not come out
From the banks to flood the surrounding area,
And only a rapid movement of the skirt
He hits the bank and runs off laughing into the distance.
It becomes transparent in the fall
Its water and shoals are more visible.
But poverty doesn't shame her.
In wealth
She wasn't brazen,
And humiliate them
Now it is impotent poverty.
And that's why it's always beautiful,
Like a girl and joyful in the dance,
And sad, with a tired look in her eyes,
With a tired smile on his lips 15.
The rhythm of Kopai is extremely similar
To the rhythm of my poems.
Combines them
Both land and water. Fills it up
He has full-time work hours.
In the invisible rhythm of Tom santalsky boy
He walks lazily with a bow and arrow.
And in this rhythm the cart moves,
Loaded with hay. And the potter
Goes to the fair, carrying dishes
In two baskets tied to a pole.
And behind the master's shadow is a small dog
Runs in that rhythm.
It has a school teacher
who has not earned three rupees a month,

14 "Scholars" - here: traditional scholars of the holy scriptures ("ancient texts") from the Brahmin class.

15 The Santhals, as well as other "tribes" (small nationalities), as well as "lower castes", were extremely poor. Hence the allusion to poverty, although we are talking about a river, but poverty cannot humiliate the "river", in other words, the Santals, and the river is beautiful, like the dsvushki-santalki.

page 128
He goes wearily,
Opening his shabby, old,
leaky umbrella over his head 16.
("Digs". From the book "Again", translated by G. Registan)

In one of his memoir poems, Tagore formulated his aesthetic ideal as follows::

The beautiful is contained in the ordinary,
But it overcomes all boundaries
It is necessarily free
And in the transitory remains eternal.
("I changed my home..." From the book "The Last One
Octave". Translated by M. Zenkevich)

In the 1930s, Tagore's civic lyrics took on a new sound. She was getting more and more combative. The poet sees a world of crisis, contradictions, clashes and wars. But he rejects the eternal lamentations about the sinfulness of the world, about the loss of morality and the like, which are still being heard today. Tagore is unwavering in his optimistic belief in the victories of good won in the past and coming in the future, and the poet gives an accurate psychological definition to lamentations about the sinfulness of the world - they are from pride.

How distorted are your features
In the hour when you blame everything in the world
And you broadcast to everyone once again!
"The world is mired in terrible sins"!
But know that indignation is fervent
Only from your pride was.
From time immemorial good and evil
In the thick of life, the battle was fought.
If only that fight had subsided for a moment,
Then it is good not to know your victories.
..............................
I see in the oppressed awakening,
The wondrous greatness of the triumph,
I greet him joyfully.
Everyone calls him by his own name,
His tread will destroy oppression.
With it comes a great turning point.
I speak of him with the blood of my heart.
("Collision". From the book " The Road "(1935).
Translated by L. Nyman).

Now the poet confidently expected the imminent liberation of India:

And a new light of a new life,
Rejoicing, will be received by a new country.
("Redemption" (1940), translated by A. Sendyk)

However, he foresaw more than just one jubilation in the future:

People work hard
On the ruins of kingdoms and despotisms.
("Days and nights run..." From the book " Recovery "
(1941). Translated by D. Samoilov)

16 An umbrella, both from the rain and from the sun, belongs to a more or less well-to-do person. An old umbrella with holes in it is a sign of the poverty of a minor employee (like Akaky Akakievich's old greatcoat) or (as here) a poor village teacher. Tagore often used this symbol of poverty in his characters from the "lower middle class". By their caste status, as well as due to some education, they differed from the main mass of almost completely illiterate people who did not use umbrellas.

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These poems Tagore wrote shortly before his death. But the poet left full of faith in the future, with the calm confidence of a man who had fulfilled his main purpose.

Well, then? I will leave without sorrow.
So that new, better days tunes sounded.
Is it from the flowers of my spring
It is impossible to weave a wreath for the poet of novelty?
("New Listener", translated by S. Lipkin).

LIST OF LIT PAT URI

Komarov E. N. Akbar: religious universalism, religious tolerance and society // India: society, power, reforms. In memory of G. G. Kotovsky, Moscow, 2003.
Komarov E. N. Reformatory beliefs in India of the XV-XV1I centuries. Collection dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Professor L. B. Alaev, Moscow, 2004.
Nehru J. Discovery of India, Moscow, 1955.
Serebryany S. D. Rabindranath Tagore-poet and philosopher. To the 75th anniversary of the Indian Philosophical Congress, Moscow, 2000.
Tagore R. Collected Works (RTSS). In 12 volumes, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1961-1965.

Tagore R. Sungalia (Bengal. From Shilcyda, May 10, 1893). Collected Works (RTSS), vol. 12. M, 1965.

Tagore R. Zolotaya ladya (1894) / Translated by A. Rsvich / / RTSS. T. 10. M, 1963.

Tagore R. Pis'ma o Rossii [Letters about Russia], translated by M. N. Kafitina.

Tagore R. The Poems of Kabir.
Tagore R. Sadhana. Creativity of life. 3rd ed. Moscow: Amrita Publ., 2012.

Upanishads / Translated and prefaced by A. Y. Syrkin, Moscow, 1967.

Chattcrji S.K. World Literature and Tagore. Santinikctan, 1971.

Nehru J. The Discovery of India. Bombay, 1961.

Sadhana. London, 1913.

Sardcsai S.G. Progress and Conservatism in Ancient Indian History. New Delhi, 1986.

Tagore R. Gitanjali (Song Offerings); Introduction by W.B. Yeats. London: Macmillan and C°, 1913.

Tagore Pamphlets. Vol. I / Compiled by R.I. Paul. Lahore: Heart of Tagore.

Vide Tagore Ratindranath: On the Edges of Time. Bombay, 1958.

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