Poems of Rabindranath Tagore

The sheer volume and diversity of Rabindranath Tagore’s work in a creative life of over six decades makes one gasp. In translation, only a very small fraction of this voluminous body of work can give pleasure comparable to that of great literature in the original. Nearly forty years back, Humayun Kabir, himself a leading figure in English sholarship in India, brought together as many as eighteen of the most well known literary figures and finest minds of English scholarship in Bengal to translate a hundred and one of the best poems of Tagore. The poetic sensibilities and contribution to the study of, and research on Tagore literature of each of the translators resulted in this outstanding anthology of Tagore’s poems in translation. The poems included in this book have been composed over a period of as many as sixty years, the first as early as 1881 and the last barely a week before this death in 1941. The poems illustrate an astounding variety of interests and a great imaginative sweep. A number of manuscript pages and twenty colour reproductions of Rabindranath’s paintings add to the value of this new edition. The difficulties faced by a translator of Tagore’s poetry are pointed out by Tagore himself in a few lines: “It will be difficult for you to imagine the blazing summer sky of ours with hot blasts of air repeatedly troubling the fresh green leaves of a tree whose name will be of no use to your. This is as unlike the climate and country where your poems were written as anything could be .” Later, reiterating similar apprehension while in Germany, in 1930, Tagore said, “My poetry is for my countrymen…” and for his audience beyond the boundaries of India, he says,”…my paintings are my gift to the West.” It would barely be an exaggeration to say that the best of Tagore’s paintings are, for all those who are alien to Bengal and its language, the best way to understand the poet’s mind. It is through his paintings that Tagore speaks to those with no particular interest in, or understanding of, his homeland. Totally uninfluenced by any school of painting or any painter anywhere, Tagore puts before us the creations of his playful visions in all simplicity. The poet gives no descriptive titles to his pictures, giving his viewers full freedom to see and interpret as they wish.