To-day my visit to Berlin has come to an end. To-night we are starting for Munich. It has been a wonderful experience in this country for me!—Such fame as I have got I cannot take at all seriously. It is too readily given, and too immediately. It has not had the perspective of time. And this is why I feel frightened at it and tired and even sad. I am like a house-lamp, whose place is in a corner, and whose association is that of intimacy of love. But when my life is made to take part in a fire-work display, I apologise to the stars and feel humble.
I saw ‘Post Office’ acted in Berlin Theatre. The girl who took the part of Amal was delightful in her acting, and altogether the whole thing was a success. But it was a different interpretation from that of ours in our own acting in Vichitra. I had been trying to define the difference in my mind, when Dr. Otto of Marburg University, who was among the audience, hit upon it. He said that the German interpretation was suggestive of a fairy story, full of elusive beauty, whereas the inner significance of this play is spiritual.
I remember, at the time when I wrote it, my own feeling which inspired me to write it. Amal represents the man, whose soul has received the call of the open road—he seeks freedom from the comfortable enclosure of habits sanctioned by the prudent, and from walls of rigid opinion built for him by the respectable. But Madhab, the worldly-wise, considers his restlessness to be the sign of a fatal malady; and his adviser, the physician, the custodian of conventional platitudes—with his quotations from prescribed text-books full of maxims—gravely nods his head and says that freedom is unsafe, and every care should be taken to keep the sick man within walls. And so the precaution is taken.
But there is the post office in front of his window, and Amal waits for the king’s letter to come to him direct from the king, bringing to him the message of emancipation. At last the closed gate is opened by the king’s own physician; and what is ‘death’ to the world of hoarded wealth and of certified creeds, brings him awakening in the world of spiritual freedom.
The only thing that accompanies him in his awakenment is the flower of love given to him by Sudha.
I know the value of this flower of love, and therefore my petition to the Queen was—
“Let me be the gardener of thy flower garden”—the gardener, whose only reward is daily to offer his garlands to the Queen.
Do you think that ‘Post Office’ has some meaning at this time for my country in this respect that her freedom must come direct from the King’s Messenger, and not from the British Parliament; and that when her soul awakes, nothing will be able to keep her within walls? Has she received her letter yet from the King?
Ask Dinu what is the original of the following translation—
My vina breaks out in a strange disquiet measure,
My heart to-day is tremulous with the heart-throbs of the world.
Who is the restless youth that comes, his mantle fluttering in the breeze.
The woodland resounds with the murmur of joy at the dance lyric of the light,
The anklet bells of the dancer quiver in the sky in an unheard tinkle,
To whose cadence the forest leaves clap their hands.
The hope for the touch of a nearing footstep spreads a whisper in the grass,
And the wind breaks its fetters, distraught with the perfume of the Unknown.
To-day is the fifth of June. Our steamer sails on the third of July! *