![]() ![]() The lyrics are his supreme achievement, to my mind. The allegorical poems are dream-like and imaginative, at once passive and active. The narrative poems tell the stories of ordinary people, but tell them in such a manner as to evoke that deep yearning, so that the ordinary matter is suffused with immense dignity. ![]() But, if Gandhi was the "Great Soul, Tagore was the "Beautiful Soul"įrom a deep appreciation of the varied imperfections of earth, Tagore's poems yearn for the single, perfect ineffable. Whatever gifts are in my power to give you, It can be uplifting and it can plumb the depths of sadness. His mom died when he was 14, his wife when he was 43, his sister in law committed suicide, a daughter died a year after his wife and his youngest son died four years after that. It was Tagore who first called Gandhi "Mahatma" (Great Soul). Tagore spent considerable time in England and was born in Calcutta. His work was originally done in Bengali and I've read that the poetry is even more beautiful in Bengali than in English. Tagore may have been the greatest poet ever. Interesting, but unlikely to inflame those new to Tagore. But those same marvelous afternotes reveal the sometimes extensive liberties Radice takes, which leaves one wondering just whom one is truly reading. The poetry itself fares slightly less well, though the strength of the images wins through more often than not. Radice's introduction and extremely thorough afternotes (which both explicate the poems and discuss why he chose certain phrases, noting any deviations from the strictly faithful translation)are both interesting and helpful. That's an awful lot of impressed to bring to any reading of verse, particularly one rendered in translation.įrom what little I've read on the subject, it seems Tagore's own translation of his work from Bengali to English were less than successful, hence William Radice trying his hand at it here. This is a dude who chatted it up with Einstein. The first non-Western winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tagore was a polymath: painter, poet, political theorist, physicist. The problem with reading Tagore is that, if you know anything about the man, it's difficult to raise your face from a prostrated we're-not-worthy position long enough to make sense of what's on the page. The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites: His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla. ![]() Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed-or panned-for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Īwarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West." With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. And exuberant works such as “New Rain” and “Grandfather's Holiday” describe Tagore's sheer joy at the glories of nature or simply in watching a grandchild play.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. Poems such as “Earth” and “In the Eyes of a Peacock” present a picture of natural processes unaffected by human concerns, while others, as in “Recovery – 14,” convey the poet's bewilderment about his place in the world. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging harmonies. The poems of Rabindranath Tagore are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and in world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. ![]()
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