LETTERS FROM ABROAD
of reality. That is to say, fact indicated some truth to me, even though I did not clearly understand it. That is why my mind was constantly struck with things that, in themselves, were commonplace.
When I watched, from over the wall of the terrace of the inner apartments of our Jorashanko house, the cocoanut trees and the tank surrounded by the huts of the milk vendors, they came before me with a more-than-themness that could not be exhausted. That faculty—though subsequently mingled with reasoning and self-analysis—has still continued in my life. It is the sense and craving for wholeness, Constantly it has been the cause of my separation from others and also of their misunderstanding my motives.
Swadeshism, Swarajism, ordinarily produce intense excitement in the minds of my countrymen, because they carry in them some fervour of passion generated by the exclusiveness of their range. It cannot be said that I am untouched by this heat and movement. But somehow, by my temperament as a poet, I am incapable of accepting these objects as final. They claim from us a great deal more than is their due. After a certain point is reached, I find myself obliged to separate myself from my own people, with whom I have been working, and my soul cries out“ The complete man must never be sacrificed to the patriotic man, or even to the merely moral man.”
