Poetry of Kabir

Introduction to Poetry of Kabir

The poetry of mysticism might be defined on the one hand as a

temperamental reaction to the vision of Reality: on the other, as

a form of prophecy.  As it is the special vocation of the

mystical consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out

in loving adoration towards God and coming home to tell the

secrets of Eternity to other men; so the artistic self-expression

of this consciousness has also a double character.  It is love-

poetry, but love-poetry which is often written with a missionary

intention.

Kabîr's songs are of this kind: out-births at once of rapture and

of charity.  Written in the popular Hindi, not in the literary

tongue, they were deliberately addressed--like the vernacular

poetry of Jacopone da Todì and Richard Rolle--to the people rather

than to the professionally religious class; and all must be struck

by the constant employment in them of imagery drawn from the

common life, the universal experience.  It is by the simplest

metaphors, by constant appeals to needs, passions, relations which

all men understand--the bridegroom and bride, the guru and

disciple, the pilgrim, the farmer, the migrant bird-- that he

drives home his intense conviction of the reality of the soul's

intercourse with the Transcendent.  There are in his universe no

fences between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds; everything

is a part of the creative Play of God, and therefore--even in its

humblest details--capable of revealing the Player's mind.

This willing acceptance of the here-and-now as a means of

representing supernal realities is a trait common to the greatest

mystics.  For them, when they have achieved at last the true

theopathetic state, all aspects of the universe possess equal

authority as sacramental declarations of the Presence of God; and

their fearless employment of homely and physical symbols--often

startling and even revolting to the unaccustomed taste--is in

direct proportion to the exaltation of their spiritual life.  The

works of the great Sûfîs, and amongst the Christians of Jacopone

da Todì, Ruysbroeck, Boehme, abound in illustrations of this law.

Therefore we must not be surprised to find in Kabîr's songs--his

desperate attempts to communicate his ecstasy and persuade other

men to share it--a constant juxtaposition of concrete and

metaphysical language; swift alternations between the most

intensely anthropomorphic, the most subtly philosophical, ways of

apprehending man's communion with the Divine.  The need for this

alternation, and its entire naturalness for the mind which

employs it, is rooted in his concept, or vision, of the Nature of

God; and unless we make some attempt to grasp this, we shall not

go far in our understanding of his poems.

Kabîr belongs to that small group of supreme mystics--amongst

whom St.  Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sûfî poet Jalâlu'ddîn

Rûmî are perhaps the chief--who have achieved that which we might

call the synthetic vision of God.  These have resolved the

perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the

transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the

Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure

true Friend" of devotional religion.  They have done this, not by

taking these apparently incompatible concepts one after the

other; but by ascending to a height of spiritual intuition at

which they are, as Ruysbroeck said, "melted and merged in the

Unity," and perceived as the completing opposites of a perfect

Whole. 

"This version of Kabîr's songs is chiefly the work of

Mr. Rabîndranâth Tagore, the trend of whose mystical genius makes

him--as all who read these poems will see--a peculiarly

sympathetic interpreter of Kabîr's vision and thought.  It has

been based upon the printed Hindî text with Bengali translation

of Mr. Kshiti Mohan Sen; who has gathered from many sources--

sometimes from books and manuscripts, sometimes from the lips of

wandering ascetics and minstrels--a large collection of poems

and hymns to which Kabîr's name is attached, and carefully

sifted the authentic songs from the many spurious works now

attributed to him.  These painstaking labours alone have made the present undertaking possible.

By Evelyn Underhill

Taken from Project Guthenburg