The Ocean-Cradle of Birth and of Death – An Appreciation of Tagore’s Sea Poetry

This essay is an appreciation of Tagore’s poems about the sea, interwoven with reminiscences of a sailing trip off the south coast of the Isle of Skye, in Scotland, and a boat voyage among the mangrove-fringed islands of the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, India. At the heart of the essay is rumination on the poem ‘Snatched by the gods’, written by Tagore in the late 1890s, in which adverse wind and tide provide the context for a tragic drowning of a young boy and an old man. The sailing trip mirrors these sea conditions. The Sundarbans visit draws reflection on the real threat posed by wind and tide to the lives and livelihoods of people in Bengal and the increasing risks caused by climate change. The paradoxical wonder and danger of the ocean runs through Tagore’s representations of the sea, and the essay explores both this paradox and some of the many instances of the sea in his poetry as a metaphor for death, for the final release of the soul, for religious fervour, for work and time and even for poetry itself.