The “Class of 1861”: Rizal, Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

In 1912 poet and esotericist W.B. Yeats wrote an introduction to 'Gitanjali', a translation of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. He said in part, “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the tops of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention, display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble. If the civilization of Bengal remains unbroken, if that common mind which—as one divines— runs through all, is not, as with us, broken into a dozen minds that know nothing of each other, something even of what is most subtle in these verses will have come, in a few generations, to the beggar on the roads.”

Tagore’s communion with conscience seems to have been continuous. It was said of him that “all the aspirations of mankind are in his hymns.” He founded and fostered Visva Bharati university with funds from his 1913 Nobel Prize as a “world center for the study of humanity.” He is featured in the recent volume 'The Spirit of Modern India: Writings in Philosophy, Religion, and Culture' edited by Robert McDermott and V. S. Naravane.

Aban Bana in Anthroposophy Worldwide reported that the first Waldorf school in Bangladesh arose from a seminar on Tagore and Rudolf Steiner in 2003, “Creating Culture, Freeing Minds.” The seminar was “an attempt to highlight the significant contributions made to child education by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in the West and Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore in the East, with both great personalities having been born in 1861. For this occasion, the Waldorf book by Torin Finser 'School as a Journey' was translated into Bengali, the language of Tagore’s Bengal (India) as well as the national language of Bangladesh... In January 2007, the Tribeni (three streams) Waldorf School of Dhaka opened its doors to the first kindergarten group.”

From 'Gitanjali':

"When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony—and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of thy far spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord."

José Protasio Rizal (1861-1896)

Another exceptional individual born in 1861 is the national hero of the Philippines, José Rizal, a medical doctor and ophthalmologist, poet, writer, sculptor, painter, educator, and social reformist. His death by firing squad set off the nationalist revolution against Spain. He spoke many languages, studied at universities in Madrid, Paris, and Heidelberg, and gave an address in German to the Berlin Anthropological Society in 1887, age 25, on his native Tagalog language. Two novels, 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo', described the cultural degradation that resulted from Spanish colonial rule. Returning to Manila in 1892 he founded La Liga Filipina. Despite his peaceful approach to reform, he was deported to a rural area where he set about raising the quality of life with farming, public water supply, a school, and a hospital. Leaders of a rebellion naturally looked to Rizal, and he left to do medical work in Cuba, but was recalled, tried, and executed. The United States succeeded Spain as colonial power after their 1898 war, suppressing the Philippine rebellion in a war lasting until 1916. Independence came only in 1946.

Along with Tagore, Gandhi, and Sun Yat-Sen in China, Rizal stands as a founder of modern Asian culture. In the preface to 'Noli me Tangere' Rizal wrote: “Whenever, in the midst of modern civilizations, I have tried to call up thy dear image, O my country! either for the comradeship of remembrance or to compare thy life with that about me, I have seen thy fair face disfigured and distorted by a hideous social cancer. Eager for thy health, which is our happiness, and seeking the best remedy for thy pain, I am about to do with thee what the ancients did with their sick: they exposed them on the steps of their temples, that every one who came to adore the divinity within might offer a remedy.” His final poem, written the day before his death, includes this stanza:

"When our still dwelling-place wraps night’s dusky mantle about her,

Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning,

Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death’s mystery open.

If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern,

Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that is singing."

Note: this feature was suggested by Ica Fernandez and prepared by the editor.