12. SING WITH SHAKESPEARE- 6

12.SING WITH SHAKESPEARE-6

"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Albert Einstein

Insight of the Rishis

INDIANS  are naturally preoccupied with Immortality. At any rate, this is true of those Indians who still retain their traditional cultural affinities, in spite of nearly two centuries of Macaulayan assault in the name of modern education. This is the result of millennia of philosophical reflection on the mysteries of Time and Life on the part of their Rishis and their Insights. The Indian discovery is that there was not a time when we were not, and will not be! The Rishis called :

शृण्वन्तु बिश्वे अमृतस्य पुत्रा

आ ये धामानि दिब्यानि तस्थुः 

 Shrunvantu Vishve Amrutasya Putraa
Aa ye dhaamaani divyaani thasthu:

 Listen Ye Children of Immortality [Immortal Bliss]  and those occupying the celestial spheres!

The wandering saints and singers, the minstrels of God, spurned fame and fortune in the courts of royals, traversed the length and breadth of the country and brought the message to the common people. Even unlettered Indians [ still untouched by the poison of modernist ideas ] are still imbued with this conviction.

Our present birth is but a link in a long chain. It is said that we are reminded of our past just before our birth by a Divine Presence, and the new born cries at the loss of this vision when he is thrust into this world! And when infants laugh and cry in the cradle on their own for no apparent reason, we believe it to be due to remembrance of some scene from past lives ! This is what we believe; let the modern scientist break his head or pluck his hair!

Mystical Time!

Every great poet who writes of Time is aware of its mystical dimension and connection with Immortality. For the Jnani, there are no artificial divisions of time into the past, present and future. It is an eternal continuity. They live in the eternal present.

We have these lines from Khalil Gibran:

And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?" 

And he answered: 

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. 

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. 

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. 

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, 
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. 

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. 

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? 

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? 
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

We are all born with some innate sense of our immortal nature but as we grow we forget it in the hurly-burly of the world.  Our hope is that we shall recover it sometime!

Modern or modernist poets have lost this sense of a vision beyond the physical.  Wordsworth asked:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

This question  greatly exercises Shakespeare. He writes about the strong hand or wave of time against which none has power.

Time: its office and glory


Time's office is to fine the hate of foes,
     To eat up errors by opinion bred,
     Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.#

[ #money should not be spent in ways adversely affecting marriage]

Time's glory is to calm contending kings
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
     To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours
     And smear with dust their glitt'rng golden towers.

To fill with worm-holes  stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient raven's wings,
To dry the old oak's sap and blemish springs,
     To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,
     And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel.

To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
     To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
     And waste huge stones with little water drops.

[The Rape of Lucrece]

rsc collection

Time does strange things. Great heroes are forgotten, along with  their glorious deeds. No one can therefore rest on his laurels, but continue to work to renew the reputation. This is the message given by Ulysses to Achilles.

Envious and Calumniating Time

Time hath, my lord,
A wallet at his back, wherein he puts
Alms for oblivion, a great sized monster
Of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past,
Which are devoured as fast as they are made,
Forgot as soon as  done.
Perseverence, my dear lord,
Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mock'ry. 
Take the instant away,
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast.
Keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue:if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun run and trampled on.
Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past,must o'ertop yours.
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand
And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer.
Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.
O let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone,desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin-
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt,
More laud than gilt overdusted.
The present eye praises the present object.

[Troilus and Cressida ]

We live in the age of instant celebrities- 'present eye praising present object'! And instant communication brings us worldwide  news of 'heroes' in various fields, so that people with the same interests and inclinations- be it politics, foot-ball, cricket or cinema  instantly band together : "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."! Yet each hero has a very short run! 

Shakespeare reckons only two things to stand against time: for a man to raise a family and get children who will perpetuate his name. And  his verse will stand against time and also make the subject immortal!  

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst fro heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the waste of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
     And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 60

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before;
In sequent toil all forwards to contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
     And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
     Praising thy worth despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet 65

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid,
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
     O none, unless this miracle have might:
     That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

The sonnets are generally regarded as love poems. If we examine the contents of these sonnets, Shakespeare's concern with the question of time and how it snatches away youth, looks, everything, and his engagement with the idea of immortality  are unmistakable.

 Shakespeare shows how time heals some things but also changes things for ever. It takes away everything it gives. Great poetry  can defy time.

Authentic Indian poets have never lost touch with the mystic quality of Time. Gurudev Tagore writes:




Endless Time 

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.

 
There is none to count thy minutes.

 
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

 
Thou knowest how to wait. 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower. 

We have no time to lose, 
and having no time we must scramble for a chance.

 
We are too poor to be late.

 
And thus it is that time goes by
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, 
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last. 

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; 
but I find that yet there is time.

Oh, what a beautiful thought!