“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

(Originally posted September 18th, 2008)

Said Kusmi: "You will give me all the big news; you promised to, didn't you, Dadamashay? How else could I get educated?"

Answered Dadamashay: "But there would be such a sack of big news to carry, and so much rubbish in it."

"Why not leave those out."

"Then little else would remain and you would regard that remainder as small news. But that would be the real news."

"Give it to me -- the real news."

"So I will."

"Well, Dadamashay, let me see what skill you have. Tell me the big news of these days, making it ever so small."

"Listen."

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Big News

There are not many writers more out of fashion today than Tagore, the first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913). Big News was one of a set of "fables;" they are today virtually unknown. Amiya Chakravarty, the editor and translator of this work says that Big News "expresses the imminent conflict between the oars that labor and the sail that claims to direct the boat while doing so little."

Much (but not all) of Tagore's work was in Bengali; I understand that his use of that language helped to establish a modern standard for what we could call "literary Bengali." He also had a good command of English; a few of his works are in English, and many have been translated. Of all modern Indian authors, he is without doubt the best-known (except perhaps for Salman Rushdie, if you count him as Indian). Since he's now almost forgotten, this tells us that India's fabulously rich literary heritage is not much honored outside of its native land.

The passage given above expresses a theme that was important and common in Tagore's writings: that truth lies in small matters, not in glorious triumphs and epic tragedies. Extending this notion a little, we reach the conclusion that truth (and beauty, following Keats) is the property of the "little people," the "workers and peasants," but not of the leaders, the rich, or the powerful.

In the United States today, almost a century after Tagore's Nobel Prize, we are undergoing a serious economic crisis - to say nothing of a political crisis and probably quite a few other crises. These are, just as Tagore might have said, almost exclusively the property and doings of the rich and powerful. One wonders what the present climate would be like if we could bring down the Wall Street tycoons and the Washington Insiders and look at the small details of their lives, so that we might really understand the origins of the big events now dangerously close to being out of control.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me