Purabi: The East in Its Feminine Gender (With CD)

Seventeen poems from Purabi (1925) form the core of this volume of translations of fifty-two thematically arranged poems and songs by Rabindranath Tagore. Purabi not only signifies ‘the East in its feminine gender’, as the poet put it, but also is the name of a wistful evening ragini whose spirit and mood seem to pervade this remarkable phase of Rabindranath’s poetic life. This book reveals a passionate Tagore, a poet who celebrated the wonders of this earth instead of just pondering the mysteries of the other world and whose irrepressible love of life was tinged with an acute awareness of its inexorable limits and tragedies. An audio CD of sixteen poems and songs accompanies the volume.