Songs of Tagore

About the Book Though famous the world over as a poet, Rabindranath Tagore was no less remarkable as a music maker. Appropriately the Nobel Award was for Gitanjali which means an offering of songs and is indeed such. Tagore's poetry is rich with music and his music no less rich with poetry. To appreciate his music, known as Rabindra Sangeet, one must understand the poetry of the words.'

This publication of or select songs of Tagore, and twelve for those Indian and non-Indian listeners who have no access to the original language of the poet, but enjoy listening to his songs and would like to understand what the song says.

About the Author Aruns Cinservants was Principal of Janks Devs Memorial College, Univerity of Delhi. She is Has a well known academic, writer and translate and has contributed widely for national and international journals. Prominent among her ten published books are her traditions of Sarachandra Chamopadhyay's Srikanto and Sunil Gangopadhyay's Those Days and Fint Light, published by Penguin Book India. Her volume of translated stories from the masters of contemporary Bengal fiction entitled The Way Home speared in 2006. Her fint attempt at creative writing-avel The Inheritors (Pengain India), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2004. Secret Spaces, a volume of her own short stories, was published in April 2010. She has also contributed a piece The Broken Nest, a translation of Rabindranath Tagore's novella Nashta Needh to the volume entitled The Essential Tagore published by the Harvard University Press and a simultaneous volume of the same name by Visva-Bharati. Among her forthcoming publications is Jorasanko-a novel based on the lives of the women of the Tagore family.

Aruna Chakravarti is the recipient of several prestigious awards. Among them are the Vaitalik Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize and the Sarat Puraskar.

Foreword Nobel Prize R 1913 English version originally published in Bengali 1910. translation was the poet himself and two books were given the sume title. there some them. Several additions and deletions are found the English version.

The Nobel Award for Gilanjali surprised and continues to and scholars. Some best poetry such Manasi, Somar Tan and Chitra had appeared prior to Gitanjali If one were to conduct a comparative evaluation of the poems of the carlier anthologies with those of Gitanjali, there is no doubt that the latter would appear somewhat feeble. One wonders why Rabindranath chose to translate, for his foreign readers, the poems Gitanjali, actually a collection of songs, in preference to the ones which, in terms of poetic excellence. were far superior. Could it be because Europe at that time stood on the brink of a devastating world war and its people were staggering under a load of anxiety and depression? Did Rabindranath feel that, at such a juncture, readers were not in a mood for intellectually stimulating poetry? That they would prefer the refreshing, spiritually optimistic verses of Gitanjali which soothed the mind and brought peace probability that was the reasoning behind the choice Rabindranath chose an archaic form English for translation, something like the language of Bible That, perhaps, was an added attraction. Even Yeats and Era Pound, who used robust, modern English for their own poetry, declared themselves spell bound by the oriental poet's quaint, old fashioned expressions. The euphoria, however, was short lived. A few years later Yeats started taking an active dislike both Rabindranath's language and his spiritualize so much so that he instructed the publisher refrain from publishing the Indian poet's other works.

We, who have read the original Gitanjali, do not appreciate the translated version. When Rabindranath wrote in his mother tongue he used the living language a Bengali that, in his hands, became more vigorous and expressive with each new effort. Why did he choose dead, archaic medium for his English translation?

There have been several other attempts at rendering the poems of Gitanjali into English since Rabindranath's own but not one has proved worthwhile. The reason for this obviously, is that translating poetry is far more demanding tasking than translating prose. Translating songs is even more difficult, well nigh impossible.

**Contents and Sample Pages**

**Contents and Sample Pages**