Would it not be
wonderful?
Sarojini Naidu - Golden Threshold
"I have taught
myself," she writes to me from India, "to be commonplace and like
everybody else superficially. Every one thinks I am so nice and
cheerful, so 'brave,' all the banal things that are so comfortable
to be. My mother knows me only as 'such a tranquil child, but so
strong-willed. ' A tranquil child! " And she writes again, with deeper
significance: "I too have learnt the subtle philosophy of living from
moment to moment. Yes, it is a subtle philosophy, though it appears
merely an epicurean doctrine: 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for
to-morrow we die. ' I have gone through so many yesterdays when I
strove with Death that I have realised to its full the wisdom of that
sentence; and it is to me not merely a figure of speech, but a
literal fact. Any to-morrow I might die. It is scarcely two months
since I came back from the grave: is it worth while to be anything
but radiantly glad? Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament
has given me I prize the gift of laughter as beyond price. "
Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like
the birds, with a song in my heart. " A spirit of too much fire
in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully
granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in
England, and from Italy her letters are radiant. "This Italy is
made of gold," she writes from Florence, "the gold of dawn and
daylight, the gold of the stars, and, now dancing in weird
enchanting rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of
fireflies in the perfumed darkness--'aerial gold. ' I long to
catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with
a rhythm like the quick irregular wild flash of their sudden
movements.
Would it not be wonderful? One black night I stood
in a garden with fireflies in my hair like darting restless stars
caught in a mesh of darkness. It gave me a strange sensation, as
if I were not human at all, but an elfin spirit. I wonder why
these little things move me so deeply? It is because I have a
most 'unbalanced intellect,' I suppose. " Then, looking out on
Florence, she cries, "God! how beautiful it is, and how glad I am
that I am alive to-day! " And she tells me that she is drinking
in the beauty like wine, "wine, golden and scented, and shining,
fit for the gods; and the gods have drunk it, the dead gods of
Etruria, two thousand years ago. Did I say dead? No, for the
gods are immortal, and one might still find them loitering in
some solitary dell on the grey hillsides of Fiesole. Have I seen
them? Yes, looking with dreaming eyes, I have found them sitting
under the olives, in their grave, strong, antique beauty--Etruscan
gods! "
In Italy she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment
longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for Nirvana;
"then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine that warms
one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men and women
in the street, dramatic faces over which the disturbing experiences
of life have passed and left their symbols, one's heart thrills up
into one's throat. No, no, no, a thousand times no! how can one
deliberately renounce this coloured, unquiet, fiery human life of
the earth? " And, all the time, her subtle criticism is alert, and
this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, "the
beautiful worldly women of the West," whom she sees walking in the
Cascine, "taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant
toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!
myself," she writes to me from India, "to be commonplace and like
everybody else superficially. Every one thinks I am so nice and
cheerful, so 'brave,' all the banal things that are so comfortable
to be. My mother knows me only as 'such a tranquil child, but so
strong-willed. ' A tranquil child! " And she writes again, with deeper
significance: "I too have learnt the subtle philosophy of living from
moment to moment. Yes, it is a subtle philosophy, though it appears
merely an epicurean doctrine: 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for
to-morrow we die. ' I have gone through so many yesterdays when I
strove with Death that I have realised to its full the wisdom of that
sentence; and it is to me not merely a figure of speech, but a
literal fact. Any to-morrow I might die. It is scarcely two months
since I came back from the grave: is it worth while to be anything
but radiantly glad? Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament
has given me I prize the gift of laughter as beyond price. "
Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like
the birds, with a song in my heart. " A spirit of too much fire
in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully
granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in
England, and from Italy her letters are radiant. "This Italy is
made of gold," she writes from Florence, "the gold of dawn and
daylight, the gold of the stars, and, now dancing in weird
enchanting rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of
fireflies in the perfumed darkness--'aerial gold. ' I long to
catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with
a rhythm like the quick irregular wild flash of their sudden
movements.
Would it not be wonderful? One black night I stood
in a garden with fireflies in my hair like darting restless stars
caught in a mesh of darkness. It gave me a strange sensation, as
if I were not human at all, but an elfin spirit. I wonder why
these little things move me so deeply? It is because I have a
most 'unbalanced intellect,' I suppose. " Then, looking out on
Florence, she cries, "God! how beautiful it is, and how glad I am
that I am alive to-day! " And she tells me that she is drinking
in the beauty like wine, "wine, golden and scented, and shining,
fit for the gods; and the gods have drunk it, the dead gods of
Etruria, two thousand years ago. Did I say dead? No, for the
gods are immortal, and one might still find them loitering in
some solitary dell on the grey hillsides of Fiesole. Have I seen
them? Yes, looking with dreaming eyes, I have found them sitting
under the olives, in their grave, strong, antique beauty--Etruscan
gods! "
In Italy she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment
longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for Nirvana;
"then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine that warms
one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men and women
in the street, dramatic faces over which the disturbing experiences
of life have passed and left their symbols, one's heart thrills up
into one's throat. No, no, no, a thousand times no! how can one
deliberately renounce this coloured, unquiet, fiery human life of
the earth? " And, all the time, her subtle criticism is alert, and
this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, "the
beautiful worldly women of the West," whom she sees walking in the
Cascine, "taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant
toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!
