The first Asian to win the Nobel Prize, Rabindranath Tagore is one of India's most influential figures of all time. A prolific poet and writer, painter and visionary, Tagore also composed and wrote nearly 2500 songs, which became an integral part of Bengal's cultural fabric.
Long considered untranslatable, these songs express most profoundly his romantic and religious views. In this thoughtfully curated collection, Professor Sugata Bose sets out to capture the magic of Tagore's lyrical and musical repertoire. The first part, 'Oceanic Songs', comprises songs composed during Tagore's travels across the world. The second part is a selection of songs in 'five genres', namely, love, devotion, nature, patriotism and variety.
By skilfully translating the limpid beauty and deep wisdom of Rabindrasangeet, Prof. Bose succeeds transcending the barriers of language and banging the genius of Tagore closer to he English reader.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941) was one of the key figures of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age, and by the turn of the century had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his verse collection Gitanjali. Around the same time, he founded Visva- Bharati, a university located in Santiniketan near Kolkata. Called the "Great Sentinel' of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics, but is famous for returning the knighthood conferred on him as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.
Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include some sixty collections of verse, novels like Gora, Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire, plays like Raktakarabi and Dakghar, dance dramas like Shyama, Chandalika and Chitrangada, over a hundred short stories, essays on religious, social and literary topics, and over 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
SUGATA BOSE is the Gardiner Professor of history at Harvard University. He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata, and the University of Cambridge where he obtained his PhD and was later a fellow of St Catharine's College. Before taking up the Gardiner Chair at Harvard in 2001, he was professor of history and diplomacy at Tufts University. Bose was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997 and gave the G.M. Trevelyan Lecture at the University of Cambridge.
Bose's many books include The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood, the much-acclaimed A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire and His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire. He has also made documentary films on South Asian history and politics and published recordings of his translations of Tagore.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was India's greatest gift to world culture and civilization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many facets of his creative genius are well known to the outside world through translations. However, his songs, which are cherished in every Bengali home, are not familiar to readers and audiences beyond Bengal and India.
Through Prof. Sugata Bose's fresh poetic translations, that are accompanied by recordings on five CDs, we now hope to reach Tagore's music to a wider audience. This special set of one book and five CDs have both readings of the English translations and the original Bengali songs. It is supported by the National Implementation Committee for the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India. The book is divided into two parts. The first part titled 'Oceanic Songs' takes readers on sea journeys with Tagore between 1912 and 1934. Rabindranath Tagore's overseas voyages included visits to England and the United States in 1912-13, Japan and the United States in 1916, Europe in 1921, China and Japan in 1924, Latin America (Argentina) in 1924-25, Europe in 1926, Southeast Asia in 1927, Europe and the United States in 1930, Iran and Iraq in 1932, and Ceylon in 1934. During several of these trips Tagore composed forty songs, all of which are offered in this special gift set, along with the contexts in which each song was written.
The eleven songs composed on his voyage to England in 1912-13 will provide insights into Tagore's creativity in the domain of music just on the eve of his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is interesting to note that Tagore composed as many as twenty-two songs in Germany and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe during his trip in 1926. The voyage to Latin America in 1924 and Southeast Asia in 1927 also yielded what became some of his most famous songs.
Since Tagore composed the overwhelming majority of his songs in India, the second part titled 'Songs in Five Genres' gives readers and listeners a broader sample of his creativity as a song-writer and music composer.
We are proud to share with the world at large an aspect of Tagore's genius that has been treasured in his homeland.
As a Bengali, I know,' Satyajit Ray said emphatically, that as a composer of songs, Tagore has no equal, not even in the West-and I know Schubert and Hugo Wolf."
An immensely versatile creative genius-a poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, composer of dance dramas, essayist, and painter-Rabindranath Tagore is best remembered in Bengal as a songwriter. Yet there is a widespread conviction among Tagore scholars-often citing contradictory reasons-that Tagore's songs are untranslatable. According to Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, 'unless one can understand the words of Tagore's songs, they quickly begin to sound monotonous-though a small selection, carefully made, is usually convincing of his melodic gifts and its range'. In the view of William Radice, 'Tagore expressed his romantic and religious perception most profoundly in his songs, but they could not be rendered in translation. 'I do not think it impossible,' he wrote, 'that Tagore's songs will one day be known and appreciated outside India... but they will have to be known as songs. Translation of the words will not be enough."
The unique blend of words and melody of Tagore's songs cannot, of course, be replicated in another language and musical culture. However, we believe with Satyajit Ray that one can discern a range of songs in which Tagore's 'poetic skills' have enhanced 'the beauty of the song, to generate an interplay of word, mood, and beat'. A skilful, rhythmic translation of words and mood in these instances can capture some of the richness of Tagore's songs. Besides, it would be a mistake to preserve a wall of separation between Tagore's poems and songs. Several of his poems were set to music and are today celebrated as songs.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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