Abstract
This essay explores how Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore mediates his ideas about universalism and natural harmony through the figure of the unnamed child in his collection of poems, The Crescent Moon (1913). I argue that when the child crosses the borders of home/nature and earth/cosmos, he also extends these borders to reach out for unity with broader communities outside of his own. The child embodies this unity with others and openness to the world because his body is a part of nature and the cosmos. Thus, the child also blurs the boundary between body and nature and reflects a unity with the world as a whole. This relationship with the natural world is one that adults in The Crescent Moon do not possess to the same extent and is specific to the child. In this way, the child must lead the adults to see and to live this connection.
Highlights
This essay explores how Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore mediates his ideas about universalism and natural harmony through the figure of the unnamed child in his collection of poems, The Crescent Moon (1913)
For Tagore, universalism was a resistance to nationalism or Western colonialist influences in India; universalism could be tied to unity with nature and the world, which was impacted and altered by British colonial presence
This paper explores how Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore’s attention to unity and the lessons of nature are fulfilled through the figure of the child in his poems in The Crescent Moon (1913)
Summary
This unity and connection to the natural world is special to children; the adults in Tagore’s The Crescent Moon do not have this connection or knowledge, and Tagore suggests that it is in the child that we can reconceive kinship structures that are not narrowly conceived of as community between humans. As Roy argues, for Tagore, this universalism (here represented through the child’s connection with the natural world and his mobility to connect with other villages and communities outside of his own) is what will “liberate” India from Western influence.. As Roy argues, for Tagore, this universalism (here represented through the child’s connection with the natural world and his mobility to connect with other villages and communities outside of his own) is what will “liberate” India from Western influence.11 The child embodies this possibility of unity leading to “freedom” in that the child is represented as a stopper of violence in The Crescent Moon in contrast to adults’ experience with the trauma of colonization. Adults can turn to universalism and unity in the face of the divisiveness of British colonialism and Western influence and oppression
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