First Asian Nobel Prize Winner: Rabindranath Tagore
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1edwinbcn
029. The gardener
Finished reading: 14 February 2012
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated 2011 as the Year of Tagore, celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth. Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. Authors from the Eastern world are heavily underrepresented, and it wasn't until the late 1980s that the Prize was awarded to writers in Arabic, Japanese and, later on, Chinese-speaking traditions.
In the first forty years of his career, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in his native Bengali, fearing that his English was not good enough. After 1911, he started translating some of his own poetry into English, but the vast majority of his poems remains untranslated.
Tagore is mostly known for his poetry, although he also wrote novels, short stories, plays, and essays, and composed more than 300 pieces of music and more than 2,500 songs. He also wrote for the theatre, both dramas, musical plays, and ballets. Nonetheless, Tagore is still relatively unknown in the West, perhaps heard of, but little read. At a higher age, Tagore also expressed himself in drawing and painting.
The gardener is a cycle of 85 love poems. Tagore's poetry in Bengali was mostly written in rhyme. In his later years, he also experimented with prose poems. His English translations, such as the poems in The gardener have alliteration, but no end rhyme.
His poetry is lyrical, tinged with an all pervading optimism, drawing on observations of simple life and nature. Extensive use of simile, metaphor and allegory create an atmosphere of mysticism, and Tagore's spirituality may, at first, estrange the Western reader. His many references to God in the English poems should be understood as reference to an over-arching God Being, never entirely pan-theistic, and never specifically referring to any known Gods or deities.
{1}
SERVANT: Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!
QUEEN: The assembly is over and my servants are all gone.
Why do you come at this late hour?
SERVANT: When you have finished with others, that is my time.
I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.
QUEEN: What can you expect when it is too late?
SERVANT: Make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN: What folly is this?
SERVANT: I will give up my other work.
I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust.
Do not send me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests.
But make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN: What will your duties be?
SERVANT: The service of your idle days.
I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning,
where your feet will be
greeted with praise at every step by the flowers eager for death.
I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna,
where the early
evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves.
I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside,
and decorate your
footstool with sadalwood and saffron paste in wondrous designs.
QUEEN: What will you have for your reward?
SERVANT: To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower
chains over
your wrists; to tinge the soles of your feet with the red juice of
ashoka petals and kiss
away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.
QUEEN: Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be the gardener of my flower garden.
Finished reading: 14 February 2012
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated 2011 as the Year of Tagore, celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth. Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913. Authors from the Eastern world are heavily underrepresented, and it wasn't until the late 1980s that the Prize was awarded to writers in Arabic, Japanese and, later on, Chinese-speaking traditions.
In the first forty years of his career, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in his native Bengali, fearing that his English was not good enough. After 1911, he started translating some of his own poetry into English, but the vast majority of his poems remains untranslated.
Tagore is mostly known for his poetry, although he also wrote novels, short stories, plays, and essays, and composed more than 300 pieces of music and more than 2,500 songs. He also wrote for the theatre, both dramas, musical plays, and ballets. Nonetheless, Tagore is still relatively unknown in the West, perhaps heard of, but little read. At a higher age, Tagore also expressed himself in drawing and painting.
The gardener is a cycle of 85 love poems. Tagore's poetry in Bengali was mostly written in rhyme. In his later years, he also experimented with prose poems. His English translations, such as the poems in The gardener have alliteration, but no end rhyme.
His poetry is lyrical, tinged with an all pervading optimism, drawing on observations of simple life and nature. Extensive use of simile, metaphor and allegory create an atmosphere of mysticism, and Tagore's spirituality may, at first, estrange the Western reader. His many references to God in the English poems should be understood as reference to an over-arching God Being, never entirely pan-theistic, and never specifically referring to any known Gods or deities.
{1}
SERVANT: Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!
QUEEN: The assembly is over and my servants are all gone.
Why do you come at this late hour?
SERVANT: When you have finished with others, that is my time.
I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.
QUEEN: What can you expect when it is too late?
SERVANT: Make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN: What folly is this?
SERVANT: I will give up my other work.
I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust.
Do not send me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests.
But make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN: What will your duties be?
SERVANT: The service of your idle days.
I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning,
where your feet will be
greeted with praise at every step by the flowers eager for death.
I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna,
where the early
evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves.
I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside,
and decorate your
footstool with sadalwood and saffron paste in wondrous designs.
QUEEN: What will you have for your reward?
SERVANT: To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower
chains over
your wrists; to tinge the soles of your feet with the red juice of
ashoka petals and kiss
away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.
QUEEN: Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be the gardener of my flower garden.
2edwinbcn
032. Stray birds
Finished reading: 26 February 2012
As discussed on the *Poetry Thread* with Barry, reading poetry and aphorisms, raises the question how to read. As a teenager, I would read each poem with full detail, in declamation, and pore over its meaning. Visiting a museum or gallery is a good comparison. I would stand in front of every painting, and study it, looking at all parts, and at the whole; then move on, and come back, to confirm my impressions. With "ugly", unusual or "difficult" paintings, I would do some soul searching, telling myself that my lack of appreciation lay in my inability to see it in the right way. Nowadays, I would call that the immature way of appreciating art and poetry.
In order to appreciate art, the challenge is to find those images and poems that you are ready for. You know you are ready when you can perceive meaning or beauty. The work of art has to "strike a chord". So, in galleries a visit at walking pace, and quick glancing are sufficient to spot what is of interest. I may be done with it in 20 minutes. (This is not the way I visited the Uffizi the year before last -- I was transfixed, some people might have thought I was one of the exhibits (as in stuck to it :-)). For poetry, it means I read everything, but only pause to reread and read more deeply into it when a chord has been struck.
Stray birds by Rabindranath Tagore is the first volume of aphorisms I have ever read, and have read from cover to cover. Previously, I would avoid aphorisms thinking it a particularly bothersome genre, the fleetingness of poetry and the depth of snobbery. However, it seems I was ready for Stray birds.
And having read Stray birds now, I regret that I haven't read it before. Rabindranath Tagore was a contemporary of my favourite Dutch author Frederik van Eeden, who translated much of Tagore's work into Dutch, which at the time -- I read most of Van Eeden as a teenager -- I shunned.
As with The gardener, Tagore wrote Stray birds originally in Bengali and then translated them into English. While I use the word aphorisms, other reviewers prefer to refer to the work as poetry, comparing each short poem to Haiku. In my edition, 325 such short poems are included. They are lyrical, and many rely on images of a personified, metaphorical use of nature and the elements, some invoking a God-like being, that any reader may read as his or her own, whether Christian or of other denomination.
My feelings about Stray birds is that one should read it in each of the ages of man; It seems wonderful reading for spiritually minded teenagers, aged 15 - 17, I regret not having read it at that time. Reading it now, in my mid-forties, I enjoyed it tremendously, surely seeing things I could or would not have understood in youth. And I expect that a reading at a higher age, will yield more, new wisdom, things I am not ready for now.
It is difficult to choose from between the many poems I liked. Here are some samples.
10.
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.
15.
Do not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.
17.
These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind.
42.
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
73
Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love.
151.
GOD's great power is in the gentle breeze, not in the storm.
154.
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
169.
Thought feeds itself with its own words and grows.
171.
Either you have work or you have not.
When you have to say, "Let us do something," then begins mischief.
228.
Kicks only raise dust and not crops from the earth.
258.
The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.
262.
The trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers of an infant child.
278.
We live in this world when we love it.
302.
GOD kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.
318.
I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.
Finished reading: 26 February 2012
As discussed on the *Poetry Thread* with Barry, reading poetry and aphorisms, raises the question how to read. As a teenager, I would read each poem with full detail, in declamation, and pore over its meaning. Visiting a museum or gallery is a good comparison. I would stand in front of every painting, and study it, looking at all parts, and at the whole; then move on, and come back, to confirm my impressions. With "ugly", unusual or "difficult" paintings, I would do some soul searching, telling myself that my lack of appreciation lay in my inability to see it in the right way. Nowadays, I would call that the immature way of appreciating art and poetry.
In order to appreciate art, the challenge is to find those images and poems that you are ready for. You know you are ready when you can perceive meaning or beauty. The work of art has to "strike a chord". So, in galleries a visit at walking pace, and quick glancing are sufficient to spot what is of interest. I may be done with it in 20 minutes. (This is not the way I visited the Uffizi the year before last -- I was transfixed, some people might have thought I was one of the exhibits (as in stuck to it :-)). For poetry, it means I read everything, but only pause to reread and read more deeply into it when a chord has been struck.
Stray birds by Rabindranath Tagore is the first volume of aphorisms I have ever read, and have read from cover to cover. Previously, I would avoid aphorisms thinking it a particularly bothersome genre, the fleetingness of poetry and the depth of snobbery. However, it seems I was ready for Stray birds.
And having read Stray birds now, I regret that I haven't read it before. Rabindranath Tagore was a contemporary of my favourite Dutch author Frederik van Eeden, who translated much of Tagore's work into Dutch, which at the time -- I read most of Van Eeden as a teenager -- I shunned.
As with The gardener, Tagore wrote Stray birds originally in Bengali and then translated them into English. While I use the word aphorisms, other reviewers prefer to refer to the work as poetry, comparing each short poem to Haiku. In my edition, 325 such short poems are included. They are lyrical, and many rely on images of a personified, metaphorical use of nature and the elements, some invoking a God-like being, that any reader may read as his or her own, whether Christian or of other denomination.
My feelings about Stray birds is that one should read it in each of the ages of man; It seems wonderful reading for spiritually minded teenagers, aged 15 - 17, I regret not having read it at that time. Reading it now, in my mid-forties, I enjoyed it tremendously, surely seeing things I could or would not have understood in youth. And I expect that a reading at a higher age, will yield more, new wisdom, things I am not ready for now.
It is difficult to choose from between the many poems I liked. Here are some samples.
10.
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.
15.
Do not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.
17.
These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind.
42.
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
73
Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love.
151.
GOD's great power is in the gentle breeze, not in the storm.
154.
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
169.
Thought feeds itself with its own words and grows.
171.
Either you have work or you have not.
When you have to say, "Let us do something," then begins mischief.
228.
Kicks only raise dust and not crops from the earth.
258.
The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.
262.
The trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers of an infant child.
278.
We live in this world when we love it.
302.
GOD kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.
318.
I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.
3edwinbcn
Stray birds is available as a free ebook from the Project Gutenberg.
For my review, I read and used the edition by the Yilin Press (2008). This edition includes Chinese translations of all poems besides the English originals. In the preface, the translator Lu Jinde describes how he first became enthralled by the works of Tagore, in what must be assumed an earlier Chinese translation. Dissatisfied with at least 15 extant Chinese translations, Mr Lu decided on retranslating Stray birds. No mention is made whether he consulted and translated from Bengali or English.
Unfortunately, this edition omits one poem, namely Stray Birds-263:
263.
This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.
As a result, in my review above, all references after 263 are off by one.
As a Chinese publisher, the Yilin Press edition also found it opportune to include a short essay on Tagore's reception in China. Unfortunately, this essay consists of an unchanged reprint of an essay dating from 1923. The choice to include (only) this essay, 泰戈尔来华 {Tagore’s Visit to China} is peculiar and inappropriate. Within a week after the essay was published, various essays and newspaper articles were published attacking Tagore and the hosts who had invited him to China. By the time Tagore arrived in China, he was met with hostility. The Yilin Press edition does not relate any of the development in the appreciation for Tagore leading up to that moment, nor the controversy around his visit in 1924, or the current revival and interest in Tagore.
Furthermore, this edition includes two interviews with Tagore, one between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, dating from 1930 and the other between H.G. Wells and Tagore, in the same year. The interview with Einstein is the more interesting, especially after they have skipped the preliminary remarks on metaphysics and find common ground in discussing music. Both interviews are freely downloadable, elsewhere.
In recent years, many Chinese publishers have discovered they can make a quick buck publishing out-of-copyright works in paper editions, which is nice, because they come at low prices. Unfortunately, these editions are unedited, or the editing is somewhat substandard, allowing for inaccuracies, and uncritical throwing together of freely available texts.
For my review, I read and used the edition by the Yilin Press (2008). This edition includes Chinese translations of all poems besides the English originals. In the preface, the translator Lu Jinde describes how he first became enthralled by the works of Tagore, in what must be assumed an earlier Chinese translation. Dissatisfied with at least 15 extant Chinese translations, Mr Lu decided on retranslating Stray birds. No mention is made whether he consulted and translated from Bengali or English.
Unfortunately, this edition omits one poem, namely Stray Birds-263:
263.
This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.
As a result, in my review above, all references after 263 are off by one.
As a Chinese publisher, the Yilin Press edition also found it opportune to include a short essay on Tagore's reception in China. Unfortunately, this essay consists of an unchanged reprint of an essay dating from 1923. The choice to include (only) this essay, 泰戈尔来华 {Tagore’s Visit to China} is peculiar and inappropriate. Within a week after the essay was published, various essays and newspaper articles were published attacking Tagore and the hosts who had invited him to China. By the time Tagore arrived in China, he was met with hostility. The Yilin Press edition does not relate any of the development in the appreciation for Tagore leading up to that moment, nor the controversy around his visit in 1924, or the current revival and interest in Tagore.
Furthermore, this edition includes two interviews with Tagore, one between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, dating from 1930 and the other between H.G. Wells and Tagore, in the same year. The interview with Einstein is the more interesting, especially after they have skipped the preliminary remarks on metaphysics and find common ground in discussing music. Both interviews are freely downloadable, elsewhere.
In recent years, many Chinese publishers have discovered they can make a quick buck publishing out-of-copyright works in paper editions, which is nice, because they come at low prices. Unfortunately, these editions are unedited, or the editing is somewhat substandard, allowing for inaccuracies, and uncritical throwing together of freely available texts.
4marq
I read The Home and the World many years ago and it made a deep impression on me. An allegorical story of a woman (representing India) torn between two lovers in the struggle for independence. The choice between non-violence and passive resistance (represented by her husband) and of war and terrorism (represented by her lover).
I don't know why I have not read more by Tagore.
I don't know why I have not read more by Tagore.
5fictiondreamer
The historian & braodcaster, Michael Wood, shared a dismal note during his interview of Pankaj Mishra, at the British Library, November 2012, http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event134666., that he had approached the BBC with an idea of a documentary to hightlight Tagore's bicentenary & importance to world literature, socialism, politics, but they said this subject was of no general interest!!! WHAT?!
