A Bengali Poet OF NOBEL WINNER

Rabindranath Tagore

[1861-1941]

• Gitanjali, 1912, 1913 - first poems in English - or see University of Virginia version
• The Crescent Moon, 1913 - child-poems, illustrated
• The Post Office, 1914 - a fable play, death of a child
• The King of the Dark Chamber, 1914 - powerful drama
• The Home and the World, 1915, 1919 - novel, in 1908
• Fruit-Gathering, 1916 - poems after Gitanjali
• Stray Birds, 1916 - philosophical epigrams
• The Hungry Stones and Other Stories, 1916 - short stories
• THE HUNGRY STONES
• THE VICTORY
• ONCE THERE WAS A KING
• THE HOME-COMING
• MY LORD, THE BABY
• THE KINGDOM OF CARDS
• THE DEVOTEE
• 
  

Tagore was a Bengali writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was born in Calcutta and later traveled over the world. He grew up in a large house where there was much writing and artistic activity, and he wrote prolifically his entire life, producing more than 3,000 songs as well as volumes of novels, short stories, plays, and poems. In later life he delivered lectures and made many paintings. He wrote what are now the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.

Tagore (who perhaps should be referred to as "Rabindranath" as Bengalis do with other famous writers) became famous in the West when he traveled to England and met W. B. Yeats and others, and translated his works into English. He was knighted in 1915--but, after the massacre in India in 1919 of demonstrators, gave up his knighthood. Although he did not agree with all the political activities and nationalistic principles of the movements for independence, he did participate in them along with Gandhi.

After a short spell of fame in the West, and after he gave up his knighthood, Tagore's English writings lapsed into a sort of obscurity. Very recently some editors and translators have realized that Tagore is very much a modernist writer in spite of the previous criticism that placed him in the sentimentalist or mystical Edwardian camp. It seems quite possible to improve on the earlier translations and make Tagore's works sing again to modern readers in English.

We would like to call your attention to two recent English translations: "Selected Poems" by William Radice (Penguin ISBN 0-14-018366-3); and stories and other writings, "The Housewarming", (Signet Classic paperback), edited by Amiya Chakravarty, and translated as well by Mary Lago and Tarun Gupta.