Calcutta
29 September 1894
It’s very surprising, but nowadays when I hear my poems being praised, I don’t feel as happy as I should. Actually, that’s because I don’t entirely grasp that the person who is being praised by people is the same person who writes the poems. I know I haven’t been able to write all the good poems I’ve written just because I wanted to—if a single line in them gets lost, I doubt I’d be able to reconstruct it, however hard I try. The moment I hear praise, I wonder if I’m equal to it—perhaps the best writing I’ve done will never be bettered. Because the power that makes me write is outside of my abilities. I’m sending you a review that appeared in one of the papers. This person has played quite an original hand. He’s abused my poems, but praised my short stories to the sky. There’s another group of people who travel along the exact opposite route. I’m left sitting in the middle, both puzzled and amused. As long as I’m a writer there’s no end to the number of different opinions I will have to hear. And then again, there’s another group of people who say that all the rest of my work will be short-lived, it’s only the songs that will ensure my immortality among men. I think to myself, if fame is the ultimate aim of man’s ambition, I don’t need to worry—I’ve been sitting around throwing stones into the darkness of eternity; out of the whole lot, you never know, one might hit the mark. But it’s one thing to hit the mark by fluke just once, and another thing to hit it for all time. No one can say what will endure eternally and what will not, and I too don’t want to enter into any sort of argumentation about it—for a writer, true immortality is when you yourself experience a joyful feeling of success. Unfortunately, that joy is felt to a greater or lesser degree by almost all writers, from the very best to the very worst.