পারস্য-যাত্রী
৯ মে ১৯৩২
তেহেরান লিটারারি সোসাইটিতে অভিভাষণ
Friends,
I thank you for this invitation from the literary club of Teheran. It is natural that I the poet from India should find my place in your midst. Let me hope that you do not expect a regular speech from me, formal and decorous, that you agree with me that it is as absurd to make a poet deliver speeches as to use a flute for a fishing rod or a fencing stick. I am reminded of a similar occasion in China, when the literary people of Pekin invited me to a picturesque garden on the hill and after lunch was over asked me to tell them about my ideas on art and literature. I spoke simply sitting in their midst, I was not condemned to be banished to a high platform aloof from my listeners. My place is with you, and not above you, so that I wish today also I could sit with you on the same level in this beautiful garden, and tell you what is in my heart.
It is not at all easy to define fundamental facts of existence such as art is. It is as indefinable as life itself. We only know that the spirit of life that manifests itself in a rose gives a definitely concrete form and character to an impulse which is indefinite and abstract. It has no other ulterior purpose than to fashion a unique form from elements that are amorphous like those of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and others having no resemblance whatever to their final result. But this form of a rose is not important in itself, the form which is a limited fact that can be measured and analysed. It is a mysterious dynamic quality imported to it that helps to make the rose transcend all its immediate facts. In this it is not only a thing but it is a thing which has its significance of beauty inexplicable
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