পাতা:রবীন্দ্র-রচনাবলী (ষোড়শ খণ্ড) - সুলভ বিশ্বভারতী.pdf/৭১৯

গ্রন্থপরিচয় Հ OS our music is the music of cosmic emotion. It deals not primarily with the drama of the vicissitudes of human life. It does not give emphasis to the social enjoyment of men. In fact, in all our festivities the business of our music seems to me to bring to the heart of the crowded gathering the sense of the solitude and vastness that surrounds us on all sides. It is never its function to provide fuel for the flame of our gaiety, but to temper it and add to it a quality of depth and detachment. The truth of this becomes evident when one considers that Sahand is the ragini specially used for the occasion of wedding festivals. It is not at all gay or frolicsome, but almost sad in its solemnity. Our rigints of springtide and rains, of midnight and daybreak, have the profound pathos of the all-pervading intimacy, yet immense aloofness of Nature. Ratan Devi sang an aldip in Kandra, and 1 forgot for a moment that I was in a London drawing-room. My mind got itself transported in the magnificence of an eastern night, with its darkness, transparent, yet unfathomable, like the eyes of an Indian maiden, and l seemed to be standing alone in the depth of its stillness and stars. -Foreword to Thirty Songs from the Punjab and Kashmir recorded by Ratan Devi with introduction and translations by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy . February 93. 'l have heard that your poems are often sung, and chanted by the people of your country', said I, "that is true, is it not ?" 'Yes', he said, "it is true. Our people love poetry. I know villagers in my neighborhood, who after their day's work in the field, gather under the stars before some hut and sing in chorus till midnight devotional songs belonging to the best lyrical literature of their language. If the people enjoy singing your poems is it because they are like folk poetry?" 'Some of my poems are like folk poetry, said Dr. Tagore, but some are in the romantic style and some in the classical style.' The music that goes with them is your own music, is it not?" "Yes." "Can you telt me something about it?' "It is difficult to do that because it is not at all like your Westem music. When I first went to England I was taken to hear a great singer-she had been in opera. I could not understand why people found her singing beautiful. To me