Selected Poems (Tagore, Rabindranath) Read online

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE: SELECTED POEMS

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE was born in 1861, into one of the foremost families of Bengal. He was the fourteenth child of Debendranath Tagore, who headed the Brahmo Samaj (a Hindu reform movement). The family house at Jorasanko in Calcutta was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity. Tagore was educated by private tutors, and first visited Europe in 1878. He started writing at an early age, and his talent was recognized by Bankimchandra Chatterjee, the leading writer of the day. In the 1890s Tagore lived mainly in rural East Bengal, managing family estates. In the early 1900s he was involved in the svadeśī campaign against the British, but withdrew when the movement turned violent. In 1912 he came to England with Gitanjali, an English translation of some of his religious lyrics. It was acclaimed by W. B. Yeats and later published by Macmillan, leading directly to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. In the 1920s and 1930s he made extensive lecture tours of America, Europe and the Far East. Proceeds from these tours, and from his Western publications, went to Visva-Bharati, the school and international university he created at Santiniketan, a hundred miles north-west of Calcutta.

  Tagore was a controversial figure at home and abroad: at home because of his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama and music; abroad because of the stand he took against militarism and nationalism. In 1919 he protested against the Amritsar Massacre by returning the knighthood that the British had given him in 1915. He was close to Mahatma Gandhi, who called him the ‘Great Sentinel’ of modern India; but he generally held himself aloof from politics. His own translations (Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore, 1936) have not proved sufficient to sustain the worldwide reputation he enjoyed in his lifetime; but as a Bengali writer his eminence is unchallenged. His works run to thirty-two large volumes. They contain some sixty collections of verse; novels such as Gora and The Home and the World; experimental plays such as The Post Office and Red Oleanders; and essays on a host of religious, social and literary topics. He also wrote over 2,000 songs, which have become the national music of Bengal, and include the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh. Late in life he took up painting, exhibiting in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London and New York. He died in 1941.

  WILLIAM RADICE was born in 1951 in London. He has pursued a double career as a poet and as a scholar and translator of Bengali, and has written or edited nearly thirty books. In addition to his translations of Tagore for Penguin, his publications include eight books of his own poems, Teach Yourself Bengali (1994), Myths and Legends of India (2001) and A Hundred Letters from England (2003). He has also translated from German (Martin Kämpchen’s The Honey-Seller and Other Stories, 1995, and Sigfrid Gauch’s autobiographical novel Traces of My Father, 2002) and Italian (Puccini’s Turandot for English National Opera). He wrote the libretto for Param Vir’s Tagore-based chamber opera Snatched by the Gods (1992). He has contributed regularly to BBC radio, has lectured widely in South Asia, North America and Europe, and has been given literary prizes in India and Bangladesh.

  William Radice is Senior Lecturer in Bengali at SOAS, University of London, and from 1999 to 2002 was Head of the Departments of South and South East Asia. He lives in London and Northumberland.

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE

  Selected Poems

  Translated by WILLIAM RADICE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Dedicated to the Peace Movement and to E. P. Thompson (1924–1993)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published in Penguin Books 1985

  Reprinted with revisions 1987

  Reprinted with revisions 1993

  Reprinted with a new Preface and an additional Appendix 1994

  Reprinted with a new Preface, Further Reading and corrections in Penguin Classics 2005

  6

  Translation, Introduction, Notes, Glossary and Further Reading

  copyright © William Radice, 1985, 1987, 1993, 1994, 2005

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 9781101491362

  Contents

  Preface to the 2005 Edition

  Further Reading

  Chronology

  Introduction

  1882–1913

  Brahmā, Vi§nu, Śiva

  Bride

  Unending Love

  The Meghadūta

  The Golden Boat

  Broken Song

  A Half-acre of Land

  Day’s End

  On the Edge of the Sea

  Love’s Question

  Snatched by the Gods

  New Rain

  The Hero

  Death-wedding

  Arrival

  Highest Price

  1914–1936

  The Conch

  Shah–Jahan

  Gift

  Deception

  Grandfather’s Holiday

  Palm-tree

  The Wakening of Śiva

  Guest

  In Praise of Trees

  Last Honey

  Sea-maiden

  Question

  Flute-music

  Unyielding

  Earth

  Africa

  1937–1941

  The Borderland – 9

  The Borderland – 10

  Leaving Home

  In the Eyes of a Peacock

  New Birth

  Flying Man

  Railway Station

  Freedom-bound

  Yaksa

  Last Tryst

  Injury

  The Sick-bed – 6

  The Sick-bed – 21

  Recovery – 10

  Recovery – 14

  On My Birthday – 20

  Notes

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Glossary

  Preface to the 2005 Edition

  This book is now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and I present it this time without any apologia. In the first edition of 1985 I was nervously presenting my work for the first time, aware of those before me who had fallen short, and wondering if my own attempts to present and translate Rabindranath Tagore would be any more successful. On the whole, the response across the world proved positive – not least among Tagore’s ever-watchful compatriots. In the Preface to the 1994 edition, however, I felt obliged to take account of E. P. Thompson’s charge that I had unfairly dismissed the work of his father, Edward Thompson. I tried to put matters straight not only in the Preface but in an additional appendix – which can now, I think, along with the 1994 Preface itself, be safely removed.

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p; The 1994 Preface was also an opportunity to mention the expansion of interest in Tagore that had developed since my book was published: the new translations that had appeared not only in English but in other European languages, and musical adaptations such as Param Vir’s chamber opera, Snatched by the Gods. The expansion has gone on, but this time it is best conveyed by the list of Further Reading. In 1985 it would have been hard to compile such a list without including many older books and translations that even then were no longer in print. But now a list much longer than the one I have supplied could be made up of books currently available. In India, especially, numerous books have appeared, uninhibited by any copyright restrictions. (Copyright in India was extended by a special act of Parliament in 1991, fifty years after Tagore’s death, but the extension came to an end in 2001.)

  One issue that I discussed in both the 1985 and 1994 Prefaces was whether it was right to go on using ‘Tagore’, an anglicized form of Thākur, or whether we should call the poet – as Bengalis do – ‘Rabindranath’. I decided to stick to ‘Tagore’, writing in 1985: ‘I regret this, as “Rabindranath” is a much more beautiful and expressive name than Tagore (it means “Lord of the Sun”), and I respect other writers who have tried to adopt it. But Tagore is convenient.’

  Partly because ‘Tagore’ is widely used in India outside Bengal, as well as all over the world (sometimes with the final ‘e’ pronounced as a syllable), there seems little chance of its displacement. In fact, the existence of these two names is a useful shorthand for Tagore’s Indian and international career (as Tagore) and his specifically Bengali identity as Rabindranath. In lectures and essays I have often depicted the two names as overlapping circles. The two careers developed separately from each other in some ways, yet they also partook of each other. ‘Rabindranath’ went on informing ‘Tagore’; yet the international fame and responsibilities that Rabindranath acquired after he won the Nobel Prize in 1913 also impinged on his Bengali identity.

  The critic and scholar Harish Trivedi – whose introduction to a new edition in 1989 of Edward Thompson’s Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist (1948) gave Thompson’s pioneering work a new lease of life – has argued that through an ever growing number of new translations we now have a third entity: not the Tagore of his own translations and secondary translations of them, not the Rabindranath of his Bengali works, but the total poet and writer now being presented to non-Bengalis through new translations and books. This is, perhaps, a fulfilment of what Tagore himself came to regret had not been achieved by his own translations. In a letter to William Rothenstein of 26 November 1932 he wrote:

  It was not at all necessary for my own reputation that I should find my place in the history of your literature. It was an accident for which you were also responsible and possibly most of all was Yeats. But yet sometimes I feel almost ashamed that I whose undoubted claim has been recognized by my countrymen to a sovereignty in our own world of letters should not have waited till it was discovered by the outside world in its own true majesty and environment…

  Every new translation that appears now is a step towards that discovery. There is a long way still to go, but when the present book first appeared I never imagined that it would open a door through which so many others have enthusiastically passed.

  In the 1985 Preface I wrote in some detail about the pronunciation of Bengali names, and then in 1994 unhelpfully removed that guidance, leaving readers to sink or swim. The issue is rather complicated: Bengali is not pronounced as it is spelt. A transcription that attempts to convey the sound of Bengali names and words weakens their connections with other South Asian languages; yet a system that adopts – as in this book – a ‘Sanskritic’ system of diacritical marks to indicate the spelling will not help with pronunciation. On the other hand, to pronounce ‘Krsna’ in a standard ‘North Indian’ way – ‘Krishna’ – rather than Bengali ‘Krishno’ is not to go badly wrong. So, on balance, I am content to stick to what I wrote in 1985: ‘Anyone wanting to know exactly how to pronounce a word will have to ask a native speaker’ – especially as the growth of a Bengali diaspora in the Western world makes it much easier to find a native speaker than it was then.

  I have learned over the years that it is a mistake to meddle too much with past books, other than correcting printing errors or obvious factual or translation mistakes. In 1994 I changed the titles of two of the poems. In fact, it is foolhardy to change a title once it has been published, even if it is slightly wrong. Other creative works may be based on that title, and references may be made to it in books of biography or criticism. For this reason, I have decided that ‘Snatched by the Gods’ and ‘Injury’ should revert to those titles, imperfect though they may be.

  As regards the Introduction, this may well, now, be a period piece. I have removed one statement about Tagore’s paintings that was dubious when I wrote it and is certainly untrue now (they are today a source of tremendous pride to their custodians at Santiniketan, not any kind of embarrassment, and are the focus of a highly specialized conservation effort); and one inaccuracy in the list of those who were present when W. B. Yeats read out poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali at William Rothenstein’s house in Hampstead, on 7 July 1912 (Ezra Pound was not present). But readers still seem to find the Introduction helpful as an entrée into Tagore’s life and work. So let it stand.

  Northumberland, 2005

  Further Reading

  The standard edition of Tagore’s Collected Bengali Works is the rabīndra-racanābalī of Visva-Bharati, Calcutta. Vols. 1–26 were first published between 1939 and 1949, with two supplementary volumes in 1940–41; Vol. 27 appeared in 1965, and Vols. 28–30 in 1995–8. Visva-Bharati is also the publisher of volumes of Tagore’s letters, his collected songs, separate editions of individual works, and many books relating to Tagore. Now that Tagore is no longer in copyright, other editions of individual works are appearing in India, and collected editions on CD-ROM: Chirantan Rabindra Rachanaabali (Kolkata: Celcius Technologies) and Gitabitan Live (Tagore’s songs, with recordings, Kolkata: ISS Infoway). For many years, the standard edition (though it lacked any information or notes) of Tagore’s own English translations was Collected Poems and Plays, first published by Macmillan in London in 1936. This has been superseded by a massive and excellent annotated edition, published by the Sahitya Akademi in Delhi and edited by Sisir Kumar Das. Vol. 1 (Poems) appeared in 1994, and Vol. 2 (Plays, Stories, Essays) and Vol. 3 (A Miscellany) in 1996. The stories in Vol. 2 are only those that Tagore translated himself.

  The main library and archive for Tagore, and the largest collection of his paintings, is at Rabindra Bhavana, Santiniketan, West Bengal. In London, the Tagore Centre UK has an interesting collection of Tagore books and documents.

  The fullest bibliography of Tagore in English is still Rabindranath Tagore: A Bibliography by Katherine Henn (The American Theological Library Association, 1985); also useful is Dipali Ghosh, Translations of Bengali Works into English: A Bibliography (London and New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd, 1986).

  For on-line material about Tagore, go especially to www.visvabharati.ac.in (an impressive and informative website), and to the Internet journal Parabaas at www.parabaas.com.

  Please note that Calcutta is now known as Kolkata and has been so cited for works published since 2000.

  Works by Tagore

  For a useful list that includes older translations, see Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English, 2 vols., ed. Olive Classe (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000).

  Final Poems, selected and trans. Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, preface by Wendy Barker, introduction by Saranindranath Tagore (New York: George Braziller, 2001).

  Glimpses of Bengal: Selected Letters, newly trans. after Surendranath Tagore’s translation of 1921 by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson and with an introduction by Andrew Robinson (London: Papermac, 1991).

  Gora (novel), trans. Sujit Mukherjee, with an introduction by Meenakshi Mukherjee (New Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 1997).

  The Home and the World (novel), trans. Surendranath Tagore (London: Macmillan, 1919); with an introduction by Anita Desai (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985); new edn with a preface by William Radice (London: Penguin Books, 2005).

  I Won’t Let You Go: Selected Poems, trans. with an introduction by Ketaki Kushari Dyson (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1991).

  My Reminiscences, Surendranath Tagore’s translation of 1912, revised and introduced by Andrew Robinson (London: Papermac, 1991).

  Particles, jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems, trans. with an introduction by William Radice (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000; London: Angel Books, 2001).

  The Post Office (play), trans. William Radice, set as a play-within-a-play by Jill Parvin (London: The Tagore Centre UK, 1995).

  Quartet (novella), a translation by Kaiser Haq of caturanga (Oxford: Heinemann, 1993).

  Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, ed. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (London: Picador, 1997).

  Selected Poems (various translators), ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri, introduction by Sankha Ghosh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  Selected Short Stories, trans. with an introduction by William Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991, revised 1994, new edn 2005; New Delhi: Penguin India, 1995).

  Selected Writings on Literature and Language (various translators), ed. Sisir Kumar Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  Show Yourself to My Soul, a translation of gītāñjali (the Bengali book of that name, which does not correspond exactly to the selection in Tagore’s own English Gitanjali) by James Talarovic, foreword by William Radice, introduction by David E. Schlaver (Notre Dame, Indiana: Sorin Books, 2002; translation originally published in 1983 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by the University Press Ltd).

  Three Plays [raktakarabī, tapatī and arūp ratan], trans. with an extensive introduction by Ananda Lal (Calcutta: Birla Foundation, 1987; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).