Tagore by the lake

In February, the frozen blue surface of Lake Balaton reflects a pale sun amidst yellowing reeds and sleepy villages latched up for the cold months ahead. On the northern shore is a neat small town, Balatonfüred, where the beach is lined with two parallel rows of linden trees that form the Tagore Promenade. Under their naked silver branches, the bust of Rabindranath Tagore is waiting for the spring, wrapped up in protective sheets. The story of the statue and the park — as with many stories of significance — started with the murmurs of a heart.

By 1926, Tagore was a literary celebrity with the appearance of a prophet — a travelling ambassador of not only India, but the Orient at large. With an ailing heart, weakened by a long European tour that took him from Scandinavia to Italy, he reached Hungary in October, to be cared for by the cardiologists of the Heart Sanatorium of Balatonfüred.

Balatonfüred has century-old summer cottages, chapels, sailing clubs, quaint little parks, vineyards and cultural traditions. The 10 days Tagore spent there left a deep impression on him. Later he wrote: “I have seen almost all the countries of the world but I saw nowhere such a beautiful harmony of the sky and the water than that I had the privilege to enjoy on the shore of Balaton, filling my soul with rapture.”

His health improved quickly, thanks to serene walks along the beach and treatment with the local spa’s carbonated acidic water under the supervision of the hospital’s director. His spirit was lifted by the leading Gypsy violinist of the time who serenaded him at his sickroom’s door, and by a doctor who chatted with him in English and Esperanto.

Poetic pause: The Heart Sanatorium of Balatonfüred, where Tagore checked into for 10 days in October 1926 at the end of a long European tour

Hungarians pronounce Tagore’s name with an open ‘e’ (like the ‘a’ in action). They even entertained themselves with self-deprecating songs about the difficulties of pronouncing ‘Rabindranath’ until the ’50s. Back in the ’20s, this gap in knowledge between Indians and Hungarians seemed mutual. Tagore himself noted in the hospital’s visitor book: “Frankly speaking, there is very little knowledge in the world about Hungary.”

When he arrived, the country was still reeling from the losses of World War I. In such times, Tagore’s spirituality (once compared to St Francis of Assisi) offered a contrast to the irrationality of Western European powers and the unjust peace they forced on Hungary. Even before his arrival, there was a veritable ‘Tagore Fever’, with 30 of his books translated into Hungarian between 1920 and 1922. When he came in person, Tagore was treated as royalty — he was received by the governor, taken for an obligatory photo to the Fishermen’s Bastion at the Buda Castle, asked to recite his poetry and lecture on ‘Civilization and Evolution’.

Hungarian is a language with no close relatives in Europe — a fact that pushed generations of scholars and patriotic enthusiasts to look for the true origins of the Magyar people. Inspired by myths and a long history of resistance to Western influence, most preferred to tie the origins of the Magyar soul to Asia, even if political realities rooted the country firmly in Europe. Tagore was presented with the then fashionable theory of Hungarian-Hun-Indian relations, and found it attractive enough to later write about this far edge of Europe being the first to be kissed by the Eastern sunrise.

According to legend, Balaton was the last giant of Hungary. He was building a tomb for his beloved daughter, who killed herself out of loneliness, but he slipped and buried himself under the large rock that was being prepared for her memorial. Water gathered above the rock and the lake became the burial ground of Balaton himself. Tagore spent hours working on his balcony in the mild autumn sunshine — one giant, unknowingly, looking out to another. He was finishing Fireflies , a set of haiku-like poems and epigrams similar in structure to his Stray Birds , with a reflective tone and universal imagery.

For Hungarian readers, Tagore’s works were translated and, to a certain extent, reinterpreted to fit their tastes and notions of artistic modernity. Tagore was liked as a humanist and a charismatic Oriental thinker — his most popular book being Sadhana: The Realisation of Life — but less understood as an artist. Upon hearing his Bengali recitation, an eminent poet, sceptical of the promise of spiritual reawakening coming from the Orient, wrote marvellingly: “I don’t ponder anymore, just listen with my jaws dropped... I hear Bengali... it’s all ‘a’, all melody, all deep throbbing, all melting softness, the long-ago lullaby of humanity.” Regardless of his positive reception, the number of Tagore books published after 1926 dropped and he largely faded from Hungarian literary consciousness.

Dark times were ahead and the quest for novelty and renewal after the Great War was extinguished by rising political radicalisation. Even Ervin Baktay, Hungary’s most avid Indologist and painter Amrita Sher-Gil’s uncle, lost his enthusiasm for Tagore: “Even though his aims are universal and he does not stop at the game of art for art’s sake, the artist always lives somewhat in an ivory tower and instinctively retires from the great masses…” Initially, the communist regime had a similar view of Tagore and dismissed him as a naive idealist. But the establishment of Indian-Soviet friendship in 1955 changed perceptions all across the communist block. Tagore was resurrected as a great hero of the anti-imperialist struggle — a postcolonial icon worthy of having his memory preserved.

Tagore’s recovery at the Heart Sanatorium prompted him to plant a linden tree on Balatonfüred’s main promenade by the beach. He was said to have been motivated by an old Indian belief that if the tree takes root, its planter will live long enough to see the new sprouts. At the planting ceremony, he said: “I am planting this tree in resemblance of my stay here, for nowhere else I was given what I received here. It was more than hospitality. It was the awakening of the feelings of kinship. I sense that I have come to the land of a nation which is emotionally akin to India.” Never a better tagline for diplomatic relations, the tree has become a compulsory stop for Indian dignitaries. Shankar Dayal Sharma, Zakir Hussain, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi have all planted trees, and the Indian state donated a new Tagore bust by Gautam Pal in 2005, to replace the original installed in 1956. Memorial plaques and trees planted by Hungarian Nobel laureates and politicians further increased the promenade’s cultural significance while taking nothing away from its beauty.

Tagore maintained his Hungarian ties till the end of his life — which was long enough that he could have seen his tree flourishing had he returned. He sent a greeting card to the hospital’s director every year. He asked Prof Gyula Germanus, an Orientalist and the first Hungarian haji , to head the department of Islamic Studies in Santiniketan. He personally invited the Brunners, an eccentric mother--daughter painter duo, after he received their letter about the younger Elizabeth’s dream of an old man with flowing grey beard holding a lamp and asking her to show his light to the whole world.

Seeds of content: Tagore’s recovery at the Heart Sanatorium prompted him to plant a linden tree on Balatonfüred’s main promenade by the beach

All summer the Tagore Promenade is full of life. Wedding photos are taken in front of the luminous lake and crowds from nearby wine festivals, balls, and open-air theatre performances linger. The pale-pink building of the Heart Sanatorium and the carbon-acid water spring receive their share of patients looking for healing. For most of these people, Tagore is just an exotic name given to the most scenic part of Balatonfüred. But even if they have not heard of the poet, when they are looking at the golden bridge drawn on the lake by the setting sun, they might understand what the poet meant when he wrote in Fireflies :

My soul tonight loses itself

in the silent heart of a tree

standing alone among the whispers of immensity .

ZV Kovácsis a freelance writer based in Singapore