A RECENT TRIBUTE TO RABINDRANATH THROUGH SCULPTURE FROM SOVIET LATVIA
[We have much pleasure in publishing in the Quarterly a remarkable portrait* study of Rabindranath by a young sculptress of Latvia in the Soviet Union. Latvia is one of the two states within the Soviet Union, Lithuania and Latvia, which form the home-lands of two sister-nations, the Lithuanians and the Letters or Latvians, who are the two surviving sections of the ancient Balts. The Balts are an important branch of the Indo-European people of whom the Iranians and the Aryans of India form another branch, along with the other branches, viz. the Armenians, the ancient Greeks, the Italic peoples, the Slaves, the Celts and the Teutons or Germanic people, and the ancient Tokharians of Central Asia and the Hittites of ancient Asia llinor. Ed.]
The Latvians and the Lithuanians are numerically not very big nations—at present they number about 3.1 millions of Lithuanians and some 2.3 millions of Latvians; and including some 5 lacs more Balts who are scattered all over the Soviet Union or have migrated to the different countries of Europe and to U.S.A., the total number of Baltic speakers—Lithuanians and Latvians—will not exceed 6 millions. The Latvians and Lithuanians, along with Armenians in the Soviet Union, and a few other small nations like the Georgians of the Caucasus region and the Esthonians by the Baltic Sea to the north of Latvia, are among some of the most highly cultured people of the world, with ancient civilisations which are millennia old. The Baltic form of the Indo-European speech runs very close to Sanskrit. The Balts are a Iovable people when one gets to know them, and an Indian can easily see how very close they are to us, through our basic Indo-European language and our culture. I have had the good fortune to be among the Balts of both Latvia and Lithuania in 1964 and in 1966, and I could on these occasions come to know the Lithuanians and the Latvians very closely, and could form intimate friendships in Vilnius and Riga, the two Balt capital cities. My experiences and my views have been expressed in a book Balts and Aryans (published in 1967 from the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Simla), where notes on Balt history and character, language and literature, art and culture will be found.
With their innate spirit of hospitality and reciprocity in affection, a number of prominent scholars and writers have accepted me, as a professor from India with the atmosphere of Sanskrit in his mind and as one who has been in personal touch with Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. I was received by them with open arms as a newly found brother. I could make these valued friendship by direct personal contact, and also by correspondence, through their deep interest in Indian thought, Indian life and Indian culture and philosophy. Prof. Ricardas Mironas, of the Department of Sanskrit and Linguistics in the University of Vilnius in Lithuania, and Dr. Antanas Poska, and Sanskrit scholar and Indologist from Vilnius who had met me in Calcutta in 1934, Dr. Karlis Egle, the Librarian of the Latvian National Library in Riga (he has translated a good amount from the writings of Rabindranath into Latvian from English versions), and several others, are like brothers to me; and Mme. Mirdza Kempe, the National Poetess of Latvia, is my Latvian sister, and I have other sisters and nieces in these lands. They are all interested in Indian thought and culture, and are great admirers of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Vivekananda, Rabindranath, Gandhiji, Jawaharlalji, Sri Aurobindo and other great personalities, whose writings I have to send to them, as they have helped me with a rich library of Balt (Latvian and Lithuanian) classics and works on Balt ethnology and art. Our friends in Latvia and Lithuania as in other lands (both within the Soviet Union and elsewhere) express their great love for Rabindranath and Indian Culture and literature by celebrating whenever they find it feasible the birthday of Rabindranath. Last August, in Riga, a meeting was held when Mme. Kempe, Dr. Egle and some other prominent lovers of Tagore spoke, and Tagore songs were sung and Tagore poems were recited by two Bengali students who happened to be there.
Early in 1971, I had the great pleasure in coming into contact by letter with a remarkable lover of India and of Rabindranath from Riga. He is a young engineer named Dr. Viktors Jobulis, whose interest in Indian thought and culture and Indian literature (particularly Rabindranath) was a great urge which made him take up the study of Bengali and Sanskrit. He began his Bengali studies under Mme. Vera Novikova of the University of Leningrad, where he went to learn Bengali. He wrote to me about his ideals and aspirations, and wanted books to learn Bengali and Sanskrit, and texts of the writings of our more important Bengali poets and other writers. In one of his letters (which was in English) he wrote a few lines in Bengali, and for a beginner they were quite commendable, showing that he was getting into the swing of the language. I wrote back to him in all friendship and cordiality and offer to help, and then I sent him some books which would be useful for his Bengali and Sanskrit. He also sent me books and pictures on Latvian art as well as on Latvian Literature.
In his letter, he introduced me to his wife Arta Dempe (that is her maiden name). Mrs. Arta Jobulis, as I came to know from her husband’s letters, is a rising young sculptor of Latvia, and she has, by some of her works, already accomplished, made quite a name for herself in the artistic world of Latvia and the Baltic land—and of the entire Soviet Union. I received some photographs of her work, including her fine statue of Rabindranath, which has some unique qualities. Besides, Mrs. Arta Jobulis sent me a little illustrated catalogue of a small exhibition of her work—of six items only, in bronze, aluminium and ceramic, which was held in 1967. One of her symbolic statues, called “The Torch of Peace’’ has been selected by the Union Soviet Government for a postal stamp—it is the kneeling figure of a tall handsome young woman, executed in a monumental style, in the grandeur of her nudity, holding aloft a burning torch in both hands—it is quite a noble creation far above the usual banal compositions in the same line. Apart from the Tagore statue, three of her sculptures are also remarkable—the bust of the actress, Mrs. Zemdega (in bronze), “The Native Land’’ (we can call this “the Desha-Mata’’ or “Land’s-Mother’’), in granite, and a group of Young Men and a Girl called “Youth’’, in aluminium. All of these show a bold and vigorous style, with an elemental quality about it.
The Tagore statue is about half life-size, and the photos show the figures in roughly finished clay, and it will be cast in bronze. The arresting thing about the figure is that it is drapped in the national grab of Bengali and Hindu India—the dhoti or the lower garment of a single piece of unsewn cloth, the anga-vastra (urani or odhni or chadar or upper garment) also of unsewn cloth, and a loose tunic (kurta) which is covered up by the upper garment. The spirit of an ancient Indian sage or thinker has been very successfully caught in drapery, which gives the figure a calm and serene dignity. The poet is usually depicted in the loose Indo-Persian robe of medieval Indian style, which is of Muslim inspiration. A tall handsome person like Tagore would look arresting in any kind of dress he wore, but in this figure of Arta Dempe we find him unexpectedly revealed in his native Indian Hindu dress in which we would always love to see him. The lower part of the body from the waist downwards has a columnar quality, fitting well with the plain unadorned beauty of the composition, like that of Dorian pillar. In his left hand, the poet holds a scroll, he seems to be speaking, he slightly clenches his right hand as if he wants to press a point. The folds of his upper garment fall gracefully about his shoulders and arms, and the face has a serious and a distant detached look. The noble modelling of the head, with its long locks and its beard giving a prophetic character to it, has been caught by the sculptor most successfully.
Many sculptors of genius, both Indian and foreign, including some other sculptors from the Soviet Union, have sought to give their impression of Tagore in clay or stone or bronze, and each has done it in his own way. The Present work of Arta Dempe Jobulis however has its special qualities, both in the attitude or stance of the figure, and in the drapery, and that is what makes it unique.
We feel happy that quite at the beginning of her artistic type, she has given us—to her countrymen, to us, Indians and to the world of Art—her beautiful and convincing portraitures of Tagore, which we can take as a sincere tribute from a great little nation to a Poet of Humanity, the beloved of the nations.
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* The portrait is dropped in this collection—Editor.
Visva-Bhārati Quarterly, Vol. 138,
Nos. 1 & 2, 1972-73