THE THEME OF LONELINESS IN TAGORE’S VERSE - M. Padmarani

 The theme of loneliness was much sought after by most of the Romantics. Wordsworths’ ‘Daffodils’ begins with the line “I wandered lonely as a cloud...”. In Keats’ “Ode To A Nightingale”, we have the narrator sitting all alone and musing over the melody of the bird’s song. The Ancient Mariner is all alone on the wide wide sea. This aspect as seen in the poetry of the Romantics can be noticed in Tagore’s poetry too.

            Loneliness is not merely being alone; it is an outlook, a mood that is reflected by the aid of external phenomenon like a lonely road, a lonely star or a lonely tree. They are just symbols to portray the loneliness present in the inner self.

            Loneliness is sometimes enjoyed. At times it is shown as something frightening, and at most of the times, very depressing.

            In Tagore’s poem loneliness lends intensity to the theme. For example in the poem ‘THE GOLDEN BOAT’ loneliness is presented with a tinge of pathos. The narrator is all alone sitting on the river bank and his harvest is ready. He puts the harvest load in a boat that goes to the other side of the place left for him. The boat sails away leaving him all alone on the bare river bank. The poem starts with the lines

“Clouds rumbling in the sky, teeming rains, I sit on the river bank, Sand and alone, The scene is all set,

“The river is swollen and fierce in its flow As we cut the paddy it started to rain.”

            So one can intute that things are heading towards something tragic. The boat coming nearer and taking all the paddy are all incidents linked with each other. Ultimately the narrator’s only companion is again loneliness.

“On the bare river, bank, I remain alone­

What I had has gone, the golden boat took all-”

            Basically the fact remains that this loneliness is a culmination of helplessness. On all sides he is faced with situations he cannot escape from. There is the harvest that is ready, it has to be cut and stored, on the other side there is rain, so the narrator is left with no choice but to put the paddy in the boat...These incidents are just symbolic representations of man’s life which is at all stages dominated by circumstances and the various vicissitudes of life. At each stage when man gains something he loses some other thing; At each stage he goes through the lonely phase of depression, which he tries to overcome gradually.