Arts & Letters

Arts & LettersD H A K A T R I B U N E S AT U R D AY, M AY 7, 2 0 1 6

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D H A K A T R I B U N E A r t s & L e t t e r s , s At U r D AY, M AY 7, 2 0 1 6

EditorZafar Sobhan

Editor Arts & Letters

Rifat Munim

Cover IllustrationSyed Rashad Imam

DesignAsmaul Hoque Mamun

note

It is quite a pleasure to be able to bring out this special issue on the occasion of Rabindranath Tagore’s 155th birth an-niversary that will be celebrated today in

Bangladesh, India and many other places in the world.

The inspiration for this issue stemmed mainly from the belief that a writer as gifted and with as much literary and artistic output as Tagore is still very much relevant to many of our contemporary cultural, social and literary issues. However, the articles presented here, written by some of the leading Tagore translators and researchers, are not intended as the drab, intellectual exercise of a lifeless ritual that has become part of this celebration. By bringing in new perspectives as regards both the translation and analyses of his work, they rather prove the very point that Tagore

continues to be our contemporary in the East as well as the West.

The motto of this issue is not to shine an angelic light on Tagore’s creative persona. That sanctifying halo will perhaps never exhaust itself. Nor is it our intention to demonise him as it has become a trend among a school of thought. No writer is above criticism. We, however, believe that the criticism or evaluation of any writer should be substantial and objective as opposed to a biased, subjective or propagandist approach.

It is with this intention that we offer readers this issue, which, we hope, will enrich our understanding of Tagore and thus, of his time as well as ours.

–Rifat MunimEditor, Arts & Letters

ContentThe continuing relevance of Rabindranath Tagore Page 3by Golam Faruque Khan

Rabindranath’s Siksar Herfer Page 4 by Kathleen O’ Connell

Rabindranath’s thoughts on nation-state and politics Page 5by Professor Serajul Islam Chowdhury

Translating Rabindranath Page 6by Martin Kampchen

Discovering Rabindranath and my own self Page 7by Fakrul Alam

Bangla Literature on the world stage: Page 12an interview with Kaiser Haq

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The Continuing Relevance of Rabindranath TagorenGolam Faruque Khan

There is no dearth of people in the Bengali-speaking milieu and beyond to suggest that

Rabindranath Tagore is already an anachronism and that his legacy, dwindling as it is day by day, will find very few expo-nents in years to come. As they hasten to explain, it is unlikely that Tagore will ever reappear on the global literary scene to serve any meaningful purpose since his language and form reek too much of the old world and his ideas have lost all relevance in the current global intellectual context. Some of these skeptics are only eager to relegate the whole oeuvre of Tagore to the background while some are a bit lenient with his contribution to genres like songs and short stories. In fact, such skepticism about Tagore’s relevance is not at all a new phenomenon and his detractors of various hues have never held back from crying foul.

In The Argumentative Indian (2005) Amartya Sen discusses how some of the great minds of Europe, WB Yeats most of all, once took a partial view of Tagore and tried to put and keep him in a narrow box – the box of a comforting oriental mysticism. It is also common knowledge that there was a prolonged si-lence about him in the West after the initial enthusiasm fuelled by his receipt of the Nobel Prize had petered out. However, an analysis of Tagore’s reception in his own country shows that skeptical and blinkered views of him were never a preserve of the West. Actually he has always been subjected to such one-sided criticism by a good number of his compatriots as well. This trend dates back to the late 19th century when diehard conservatives like Kaliprasanna Kavyabisharad and Sureshchan-dra Samajpati put Tagore in the dock allegedly for flouting the codes of morality. Bipinchandra Pal and Dwijendralal Roy also did their bit to demean him. Some of the modernist poets

of the 1930s and their succes-sors viewed him as non-modern in form and deficient in his awareness of the demands of the flesh and the existential crisis. In the 1940s and 50s, a section of the Indian Marxists castigated Tagore as an unmiti-gated idealist and apologist for feudalism and imperialism. The Muslim nationalists loyal to the two-nation theory branded him as a defender of caste Hindu interests and as a threat to the integrity of Pakistan. Despite Tagore’s great inspirational role in the national liberation movement of Bangladesh that culminated in a war in 1971, the Pakistani paranoia persists and is often seen to raise its head in independent Bangladesh as well – now in its original communal form under the guise of a more subtle ultra-left ideology spiced up with a sprinkling of modern-

ism or postmodernism, as the case may be. A little more than a decade ago, Partha Chatterjee, a postcolonial thinker of interna-tional repute, depicted Tagore’s social and political thoughts as almost useless in coping with contemporary problems.

Despite all such dismissive gestures, Tagore is still hold-ing his ground and there is no sign that he can be written off so easily. What these doubters have failed to see is that the works of any great writer and, for that matter, of Tagore do not neatly fit into a narrow frame and their immense potential is not exhausted in a particu-lar context. There are many aspects of Tagore’s writings that address the needs and crises of all ages, not least those of the contemporary world. He is such an artist who always overtakes himself and has a protean way

of changing shapes in ever new situations. All his thoughts contain some seeds of counter-thoughts. While Purabi (1925; A Twilight Raga), a book of poems published in his advanced years, signals the end of the day, he reappears in Mahua (1929; An Intoxicating Flower) with a new lust for life. The curtains drawn by Senjuti (1938; The Evening Lamp) are lifted again by Na-bajatak (1940; The New-born), just a year before his death. It seems that Tagore was engaged in a continuous dialogue with himself all his life and this helped him see through the limitations of his own thoughts and rise above them when he felt they fell short of his perception of truth. Thus he could grow out of his turn-of-the-century penchant for nationalism soon. Gora (1910); Ghare Baire (1916; The Home and the World)

and Nationalism (1917) amply testify to this. In Russiar Chithi (1931; Letters from Russia) he admits that had he not been to post-revolution Russia, his life-pilgrimage would have remained incomplete. But this admiration for the new society does not make him gloss over what he thinks was a mechanical educa-tion system in the Soviet Union, and the coercion, in his reck-oning, endemic in the system of governance there. It stands to reason that this amazing capacity of Tagore to constantly transcend himself will never let him lapse into irrelevance.

It is very easy to see that Tagore is still the most promi-nent icon in Bengali culture. Not that his deeper messages always come home to his audience; they are, if the truth be told, often lost in the customary ceremo-nial excesses surrounding him. But the tremendous influence he still has on the middle-class Bengalis long after his death is undeniable. They are used to borrowing profusely from him to express their finer sentiments. Over the years, the audience for Tagore songs has expanded remarkably. In fact, these songs now melodiously resound more often than ever before through all parts of the globe inhabited by the Bengalis. True that Tagore lay forgotten in much of the West, especially in the English-speaking world, for a pretty long time. This is what prompted Hermann Hesse to say way back in 1957 that he would be very happy if he lived to see Tagore’s ‘triumphant re-emergence after the testing period of temporary oblivion.’ Probably it would not be wrong now to say that Tagore is gradually re-emerging in the West. The publication of Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems by William Radice in 1985 may be considered a turning point in this process as the book went a long way towards rein-troducing Tagore to the western readers. A host of worthy trans-lators have since come forward to disseminate Tagore’s works

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But the tremendous influence he still has on the middle-class Bengalis long after his death is undeniable. They are used to borrowing profusely from him to express their finer sentiments

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Rabindranath’s Siksar Herfer: A Voice for Educational Diversity in Bengal and BeyondnKathleen M. O’Connell

In 1892, Rabindranath delivered his first major ad-dress on education “Siksar Herfer,” which could be

loosely translated as “Educa-tion out of Whack.” The address has previously been entitled “Topsy-Turvy Education” and “The Vicissitudes of Education,” though “discrepancy” or “disas-sociation” in education might be a more literal approximation. It deals with the incongru-ity between English-medium education in a British setting and English-medium education in a Bengali setting, but it marks the beginning of a new vision for education within the borders of Bengal and beyond, a vision of ever-widening inclusivity.

Tagore’s speech was one of the first comprehensive critiques of English-medium educa-tion in India, though there had been earlier criticism and some alternative schools had been created, including the Bengali-medium Tattvabodhini Path-sala which had been started by Rabindranath’s father in 1844. Tagore was thirty-one years old when he gave the address. He had already criticized the failure of the educational system to train people to think in some of his early writings, and in his Eu-rope Prabasir Patra, published in 1881, he had advocated women’s education. There is no evidence to suggest that he had as yet given any thought to starting a school of his own.

This article examines some of the formative educational experiences which helped shape Rabindranath’s perceptions con-cerning education and creative development, particularly his first formal schooling, his experi-ence of subconscious learning at the family home Jorasanko, and his first-hand experience of Ben-gali rural life in East Bengal. This article also examines the central educational concerns which Tagore presented in “ Siksar Herfer” and followed up in later works, not only as a critique of the English medium system, but as a reaction to his own educa-tional experiences and as the

foundation for his educational experiment at Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati.

The Background: Formal and Informal Education Rabindranath writes about two aspects of his early education: the formal institutional educa-tion received outside his home and the informal education which he received within the family setting. A pathsala (el-ementary school) was set up in one corner of the veranda at Jo-rasanko, where he studied with his cousin Birendranath, who was close to him in age, and his elder brother Dwijendranath’s son. Of his first experience at the Calcutta Training Academy, a private Bengali medium school, he wrote later:

What I learnt there, I have no idea, but one of its methods

of punishment I still bear in mind. The boy who was unable to repeat his lessons was made to stand on a bench with arms extended, and on his upturned palms were piled a number of slates...I have since realised how much easier it is to acquire the manner than the matter. With-out an effort had I assimilated all the impatience, the short temper, the partiality and the injustice displayed by my teach-ers to the exclusion of the rest of their teaching.(Tagore, My Reminiscences 6)

The next school, the Bengal Academy, a private English- me-dium, Eurasian institution didn’t fare much better, and Tagore says:

What we were taught there we never understood, nor did we make any attempt to learn, nor did it seem to make any

difference to anybody that we did not...The rooms were cruelly dismal with their walls on guard like policemen. The house was more like a pigeonholed box than a human habitation. No decoration, no pictures, not a touch of colour, not any attempt to attract the boyish heart. The fact that likes and dislikes form a large part of the child mind was completely ignored. Naturally our whole being was depressed as we stepped through its door-way into the narrow quadran-gleand playing truant became chronic with us. (Tagore, My Reminiscences 60-61)

Rabindranath attended St. Xavier’s, a Catholic school for boys, for a short period, where he did have a more positive relationship with several of the Jesuits and translated parts of Macbeth into Bengali. During

his trip to England in 1878, he was enrolled in a public school in Brighton. Later he spent three months attending Henry Morley’s lectures on English literature at the University of London, which he enjoyed, but for which he received no degree. (In fact, the only degrees Tagore received anywhere were honor-ary ones bestowed late in life.) Of Henry Morley, Rabindranath writes: “His teaching was no dry-as-dust exposition of dead books. Literature came to life in his mind and in the sound of his voice, it reached to our inner beings where the soul seeks its nourishment, and nothing of its essential nature was lost. With his guidance I found the study of the Clarendon Press books at home to be an easy matter and I took upon myself to be my own teacher.” (Tagore, My Boyhood Days 90)

The Jorasanko Model: “A Living University” The cultural atmosphere of the Tagore household greatly over-shadowed whatever external schooling took place and in

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Tagore’s speech was one of the first comprehensive critiques of English-medium education in India}

PAInTInG By RABIndRAnATH TAGORE

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Rabindranath’s thoughts on state and societynProfessor Serajul Islam

Chowdhury

We already know that Rabindranath had faith in the society, not in the

nation state. He did not have much liking for politics and was never hesitant to ridicule politi-cians. In Ghore Baire (Home and the World), Swadeshi agitator, Swandip, was not an honest man; the rebels in Char Oddhay (Four Chapters) – some of them are seeking compensation for their personal failures while some are driven by their pas-sions.

...In an essay written in 1929,

Rabindranath writes about his thoughts on state:

A thought as fixed as politics did not arise out of my mind at a definite time – it has rather built up through many stages and changes of my experience. [“Rabindranath er Rastronoitik Mot” Rabindra Rachanabali, Part 24, Page 437]

It is true that Rabindranath in his long writing career has said many things about the concep-tion of nation state and politics at different times and that he has said even more things about society. There is nonetheless a certain unity in his observations on state and politics and society and we need to find that link which unites his observations. In this article, we will try to find that link and we will limit our discussion to Rabindranath’s essays only.

In the conclusion of his book, Rabindranath, Rajnoitik Byaktitwo, Aurobindo Poddar has said there were many contradictions in Rabindranath’s thoughts on state. Despite his claim, which is true, there were certain areas where Rabindranath hardly contradicted himself. For example, he distinguished society from state or nation-state, and attached less importance to state than to society etc.

...Now questions may arise

as to the reason behind Ra-bindranath’s indifference to the idea of nation-state. One obvious reason is his habitual introspec-tiveness. He has called himself

a lifelong romantic. In one of his letters, he says:

It shames me to confess and hurts me to think that company of men usually befuddles me. There is a cocoon around me from which I cannot break free. At the same time, it is impos-sible for me to live in seclusion. [Chhinnapatra]

Breaking free from that co-coon of self-centredness, he has time and again gone towards the bustle of life, example of which is aplenty in his stories, poems, novels and poems. He has even taken part in politics; he has read his essays in public meetings ... But all of this was temporary. His connection to on-the-ground politics never lasted long. His involvement with the anti-Banga Bhanga movement was for three or four months only; just when the movement was gaining mo-mentum and being transformed from a cultural movement to a political one, he abandoned it. It was due to the unity of oppos-ing forces – the introvert and the extrovert -- in him. As a matter of fact, Rabindranath has always had faith in unity, harmony and compromise ... But in this har-mony, introspectiveness has al-ways gained the upper hand. On many occasions Rabindranath has talked highly about the road: animals have homes and humans have roads, and that’s why humans can never be true citizens. Still, in the last analysis, he seeks out an abode of peace, and he finds peace in its shelter. His inner idealism is linked to his introspectiveness. That’s why he has considered a political subject like freedom as a matter of one’s inner self. Let us look at a few of his quotes:

What political freedom is to the Europeans, personal free-dom is to us. We do not accept the greatness of any freedom other than the one attained by the soul – the tie of passion and greed is the real tie, if we can untie ourselves from that tie, then we achieve a status higher than that of the king.

[“Prachya O Pashchatya Shab-hyata”, RR, Part 4, Page 417]

The freedom to do good to others is freedom; the freedom to protect the religion is free-dom. [“Attoshokti”, RR, Part 4, Page 533]

The society is not established

on the basis of materiality; its real basis is in our mind.

[“Satyer Ahoban”, RR, Part 4, Page 13]

...When freedom becomes a

matter of the soul, not so much a matter of economics and politics, it becomes obvious how introspective Rabindranath was ... That he got involved with politics at times was not a result of inspiration that came from within, it was rather a result of undeniable external forces.

...It is not true that his liking for

solitude was caused only by his personal contemplative nature, but not by his family and class positions. Brahmo by religion and zamindar by profession – both of these, on family and class levels, made him some-what alienated from the larger society. Furthermore, having lost his mother in childhood and his wife at a young age, he became even more solitary in his life. The fame that ensued as a writer only widened this gap with social life.

His aversion to politics was

approved by his class position as well. It is really hard to fully appreciate Rabindranath without knowing that he was a zamindar ... He called zamindars parasites, employees of the British. He felt ashamed to depend on others for his living, though he couldn’t help taking up zamindari himself. It was so because our mind is not free, not even Rabindranath’s; it doesn’t really matter if you seek to show that freedom is born out of our mind, not of material conditions.

The link between the zamind-ri system and the English settlers is historical. The British were the ones who initiated this system; the rulers’ relationship with the zamindars never really turned that sour, as it did with the service holders ... Rabindranath did not have to go through any of this. He was never really em-broiled in any conflict with the British. So it is possible that he felt indebted to the rulers as far as class was concerned. Unlike Rabindranath, both Vidyasagar and Bankimchandra were on their own when it came to mak-ing a living.

...

If you got into politics, you would either have to ask for the rulers’ favour or to get into conflict with them. To get into conflict was against Rabinranath’s interest and to ask for favours beseechingly was humiliating, and there was no other form of politics available to him except these two. Hence, aversion to politics was not very unusual for him. But what is the ultimate outcome of this aversion? Firstly, making people reluctant and uninterested about politics, and secondly, allowing the British to rule and help them to do so without trouble. That’s what it comes to when you cut to the chase, removing the outward excesses.

...... Rabindranath is a liberal; to

him the individual is more im-portant than the social. In order for the individual to grow, it is of importance to protect the growth of private property and oppose social revolutions. His essays demonstrate how difficult it is for the bourgeoisie of a colonised country to assume the character of a national bourgeoisie and why their contribution to the na-tional movement is fragmented. In a lecture entitled “National-ism”, Rabindranath said, “Our real problem in India is not political. It is social.” His words would be true if India were an independent country. He, like many others in his time, refused to understand that aversion to politics means standing against the struggle for independence, especially when the whole coun-try was still under foreign rule.

(This is an abridged version of selected excerpts from an essay collected in the writer’s book, Rabindranath Keno Joruri (Why Rabindranath is important).

Professor Emeritus at Dhaka University, Seraju Islam Chowd-hury is a pioneer of Marxist crit-ical thought. Remarkable among his books are Middle Class and the Social Revolution in Bengal, Unish Shotoker Bangla Godyer Samajik Byakoron, Sharatchandra O Samantatantro, Shakespeare er Meyera, Bangalir Jatiyatabad. l

Translated by Rifat Munim. All the Tagore quotes have been rendered into English by the translator.


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Translating Rabindranath

nMartin Kampchen

In early May, Rabindranath’s birth anniversary will be celebrated with just routine fanfare. The big anniversa-

ries are over: 150th birth anniver-sary (2011); the centenary of the English Gitanjali (2012); and the centenary of Tagore’s Nobel Prize (2013). Seminars have been con-ducted all over the world, many funded by the Indian govern-ment, at least two dozen antholo-gies collecting the speeches and essays of Tagore experts have been published, Tagore’s works have been reprinted to an extent which amazes everyone. His works also have seen a good num-ber of new translations from Ben-gali. My own book, Rabindranath Tagore: One Hundred Years of Global Reception, co-edited with Imre Bangha, attempted an over-view of the poet’s standing in the world today.

Now that the Tagore Season has been completed with a good measure of success, it may be the time to take stock. What have I achieved as a translator of Rabindranath’s poetry from Bengali to German which I see as my main contribution?

German translation of Ra-bindranath began almost as early as English translation. While the English Gitanjali appeared in 1912 in London, the German

Gitanjali followed in 1914. Yet, these two translation ventures had a totally different cultural significance. In Great Britain, Rabindranath was a poet from the colonies using the language of the colonizers who succeeded in expressing himself on the level of literature. In Germany, the German translation carried no such ideological and political baggage. In the German percep-tion, Rabindranath was not the poet of a colonized nation speak-ing to the colonizers; rather, he was a voice from the mystic east speaking to the mysticism- and mysteries-seeking West.

He was seen in the context of German Indology which began in the early 19th century simul-taneously with and inspired by German Romanticism. German Romanticism had discovered India as a land of philosophy and wisdom. Hence, the German public of the early 20th century saw in Rabindranath an exponent of the philosophy and wisdom of India, not primarily a poet. More importantly, the sympathetic Ger-man public saw in Rabindranath a fellow-Romantic and considered his Romanticism as the entry point through which to under-stand and appreciate him.

Thus, translating Ra-bindranath from Bengali to English and translating him to German are two very differ-

ent exercises. In Anglo-Saxon countries, Rabindranath Tagore is a poet of renown because he did write in English and did re-ceive the Nobel Prize for a book written in English. He is part of the colonial and post-colonial discourse, and his literary work can be viewed in the context of Commonwealth literature.

Such contexts do not exist in Germany. Moreover, in present-day Germany, the romantic mould has become somewhat suspect after an excess of mis-guided emotions during Hitler’s Third Reich. Tagore, the mystic poet, is still alive in the memory of elderly people who were told to read him by their parents. These parents had witnessed the enthusiasm surrounding the Indian poet in Germany in the 1920s. This lack of a contempo-rary cultural context makes it an arduous task to create a new -- truer, more genuine -- im-age of the Indian poet through translations from the Bengali original. The one valid claim for his rediscovery is that he is a figure of world literature. So far, the translations done from the English to German did not sub-stantiate such a claim. Hence, in German such a claim had to be established and proven anew through philologically correct and literary satisfying transla-tions from the Bengali original.

This has been my task during the last twenty-five years in which six volumes of my poetry trans-lations from Bengali to German have appeared in Germany.

I have done all my transla-tions, without exception, while living at Santiniketan which I call my Indian home since 1980. It was clear to me that I could do them only in Bengal, not out-side, certainly not in Germany. Here at Santiniketan, I have the atmosphere and the social envi-ronment with its emotions and habits, its nature and its sounds which provide the backdrop of many of the poems and songs that I have translated. This helped me to first understand and then re-create the deeper intuitions and the emotional-ity of these poems. Further, Santiniketan provides me with the expert help I need in order to know every shade of meaning and get the interpretation of the poems and songs just right.

On the one hand, I am here enjoying good Tagorean fellow-ship. But on the other hand, I am alone and lonely as a translator into German. No one in San-tiniketan can understand and appreciate my translations. West Bengal, therefore, has neither expert praise nor expert criti-cism for me. The academic com-munity here hardly knows that I have been translating one poem

after another. The community neither joins in my ecstasy that my work gives me, nor comforts me when I am faced with what I call the ‘tragedy of translation’.

Let me, very briefly, give you some details of my translation predicament. In contrast to Ger-man, the Bengali language can dispense with the definite and indefinite articles as well as with certain pronouns which instead can be expressed through end-ings. Auxiliary verbs, too, are incorporated in the verb end-ings. This makes Bengali curt, compressed, often wonderfully sententious encapsulating one dictum within a few syllables. Try to translate gele hata in just two words! In English as well as in German it needs a full sen-tence with a subordinate clause. German does not have the same gift of brevity. Translating a Ben-gali line of verse often needs two lines in German. Hence, if you want to fashion a Tagore poem into a German poem, certain judicious compromises regard-ing the wealth and exactitude of meaning must be admitted.

The claim to create a new poem demands from the transla-tor to deconstruct all the compo-nents of the Bengali poem into a “mass” of meaning, rhythm and moods and then to rebuild the German poem from that same

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Rabindranath with his german publisher, Kurt Wolff in 1921

This has been my task during the last twenty-five years in which six volumes of my poetry translations from Bengali to German have appeared in Germany

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Discovering Rabindranath and My Own SelfnFakrul Alam

Apnake jana amar phurabe naEi Janare shongo tomai chena(There will be no end to my

discovery of myself/And this discovery keeps coming with my discovery of you)

On the one hand, Ra-bindranath Tagore has been with me almost all my life. On the oth-er, I only began to discover that I had Rabindranath so centrally in me relatively late in my life. In fact, I have now realized that the process of discovering the way he has been embedded in me is part of the process of discovering my own self in the course of the life that I have been leading till now. Indeed, at this stage of my life, it seems to me that there will be no end to my discovery of the way Rabindranath has become part of my consciousness since I feel that there will be no end to discovering myself till the time I lose consciousness once and for all. The one thing I can say with certainty, using his words but in my translation, is “There will be no end to my discovery of myself.” For sure, this process of discovering myself endlessly keeps happening with my contin-uing discovery of Rabindranath.

Surely, the process through which Rabindranath had be-come embedded in me began in childhood. However, I did not encounter his work in my (English medium) textbooks since I did not learn Bengali in school for a while. How then did I come to remember poems such as “Tal gach ek paye dariye/shob gach chareea/ Uki mare akaashe” (Palmyra tree, Standing on one foot/Exceeding all other trees/Winking at the sky”) or “Amader Choto Nadi chole banke banke” (“Our little river keeps winding its way”). How do I remember these opening lines even now? And why do I still associate such palm trees and winding little rivers with these lines even now whenever I am in the Bangladeshi countryside? Surely, it must have been my mother who planted Rabindranath in me in my seed time so that he would become embedded in my unconscious, only to surface in my consciousness decades later. It is surely no coincidence that she taught me Bengali and made

me learn Rabindranath’s poems indirectly.

As a boy growing up at a time when the radio was the main source of entertainment in middle-class Bengali houses, my siblings and I were made to listen to Rabindra Sangeet in our house by my father, who felt that he had to share his favorite songs and singers in the musi-cal genre with us, whether we wanted to listen to them or not. Of course, at that age I would

have much rather not listen to those solemn-sounding, soulful songs, and whenever I could put my hands on the radio dials, I would listen to English popu-lar music on Radio Ceylon. My favorite singers were Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards and—a little later—the Beatles. In school, when we were not playing or talking about sports or girls, we boys would be discuss-ing the pop music we heard on Radio Ceylon. By the end of

the 60s, we would be talking about the English thrillers and comedies we saw on Dhaka television. What place could Rabindranath have in one’s life then? If Rabindranath had been placed in my innermost self by my mother through her reading of his poems to us children or my father through his addiction to Rabindra Sangeet, for the moment he was getting occluded deep inside me and, it would now seem, all but forgotten!

But from the middle of the 1960s our lives in Dhaka began to change as the claims of Pakistan on us East Pakistanis started to loosen, little by little. It was a time when in neighbor-hoods and on streets, proces-sions would come out singing gonosangeet—literally songs of the people, but in effect music of protest and patriotism. First, the Six Points Movement and then the Agartala Conspriacy case were on everyone’s lips and East Pakistanis everywhere were becoming activists in one way or the other. There was no escap-ing songs like “Shonar Bangla” (“Golden Bengal”) or “Banglar mati, banglar jol, banglar baiuo, banglar phol/Punno houk”” ( “Let the land, the waters, the air and fruits of Bengal be blessed…) and “Bartho Praner Aborjona Purea Phele Agun Jalo” (“Burn the frustrated soul’s detritus and light up a flame”). In my school where we boys now studied “Ad-vanced English” and “Easy Ben-gali” there was no way we could have learned enough Bengali to read Rabindranath or Nazrul in the original in any sustained at-tempt, but how could we escape the call from such songs and poems like Nazrul’s “Bidrohi” (“The Rebel”) or the call from the streets to protest and even burn for our emancipation? At home, three of my four sisters would be practicing Rabindra Sangeet regularly, since this was what my parents wanted them to do, and so there would be no evading Rabindranath’s songs at home for this reason as well, but I was more interested in friends and sports than staying home and so I would hear the songs only in snatches at this time.

By the end of the decade though, Rabindranath was everywhere in our lives since becoming Bengali became first and a Pakistani last at this time. Even on Dhaka Television, Rabindranath’s songs and dance numbers were being aired fairly regularly then. Outside, one could get to see his plays and dance dramas being performed every now and then in functions and cultural events all over the city. He would soon become an important part of Pohela Bois-akh, which itself would become instantly popular amongst us all

By the end of the decade though, Rabindranath was everywhere in our lives since becoming Bengali became first and a Pakistani last at this time}


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almost as soon as Chhayanaut organized the first event in Balda Garden as the decade came to a close. But while Rabindranath was everywhere around me all of a sudden, I was still not reading him at all, preferring English thrillers and westerns initially, and later, when I became a “serious” reader from college on-wards, contemporary classics of English and European literature available in English editions.

In the early seventies, however, you could not be in Bangladesh without imbibing Rabindranath at least a little, for there was a process of osmosis at work at this time. Glued as we were to Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro during our Liberation War, we kept listening to his patriotic songs on our radios; the promise of Shonar Bangla seemed alive and possible then. The years after liberation, my generation was exposed to Rabindranath in new ways; we would get to hear and view singers like Kanika, Debobroto and Suchitra Mitra on stage in Dhaka; their songs be-came freely available in tapes in our shops; and Satyajit Ray’s film version of Rabindranath’s fiction and Ray’s documentary on him became staples of Dhaka’s film societies. I was finally growing up intellectually and was hungry for culture, and so how could I have escaped the poet’s works totally at this time?

But the Rabindranath that I was imbibing thus was almost entirely coming to me aurally and visually. Because he was becoming embedded in my consciousness through songs and the silver screen as well as television, he still inhabited the surface of my consciousness. And I was certainly not making any conscious bid to savor him. The seventies and the eighties were, in fact, decades when I was becoming an even more “serious” student of English literature than before and get-ting “advanced” degrees in my subject and acquiring exper-tise for my teaching career; where would I get the time to read Rabindranath then? As an expatriate student for 6 years in Canada and as a visiting faculty member for 2 years in the USA, I would be getting small doses of Rabindranath in those countries through the songs I kept hearing in the cassettes I had brought along of my favorite singers and in the occasional film versions of his work that I would get to see

because of campus film socie-ties, and I suppose nostalgia played a part in my yearning for him then, but I had no time to spare for him and not enough exposure to his works to let his ideas and his achievement reso-nate in me in any way.

To sum up my encounters with Rabindranath till then, I was discovering Rabindranath in small doses all the time and ex-periencing him directly here and there, but my knowledge was all very superficial and my under-standing of him too limited. And nothing much had happened that would allow me to tap into the unconscious where all the memories of poems and songs by him I had first come across through my parents’ enthusiasm for his works were hidden.

“Dekha hoi nai chokkhu meliaGhor hoite shudhu dui pa felia”(I haven’t seen with my eyes

wide open/what was there only a stride or two away from my house)

In the 1980s, I became smitten by theory, especially the works of Edward Said, and suddenly questions of

postcoloniality, ideology, power and location became all-important for my understanding of literature. I was coming around to the belief that I could not be a good and truly advanced student of English literature in Bangladesh, let alone a good teacher of the subject here, unless I sensitized myself to my roots and look at the world around me. And now I remembered some lines I had been hearing since childhood without realizing their relevance for me and everyone else around us then: “Dekha hoi nai chokkhu melia/Ghor hoite shudhu dui pa felia” (“I haven’t seen with my eyes wide open/What was there only a stride or two away from my house”). Rabindranath had been all around me and yet I had not opened my eyes wide enough to learn from him. I had not read his works with any kind of sensitized attention at all and I had not been able to arrive at any kind of appreciation of his achievements except the smug sense of self-satisfaction at the thought that this Bengali had once won the Nobel Prize.

Towards the end of the 1990s, for the first time really, I plunged into Rabindranath and found—to quote Dryden on Chaucer— “here was God’s plenty”. Having opened my eyes to him I realized that there was so much to him than one could take in at any one time. He had once said in a song about the infinite contained in the finite and I now thought, “How appropriate of him!” He had said in one of his most famous poems, “Balaka” about how one must not succumb to stasis and how the essence of life is motion and I thought, “how inspirational”!. He had writ-ten in a song about viewing the Ultimate Truth through music and I thought “Exactly”! He had looked on in amazement in a starry night at how humans have a place in the cosmos (Akaash Bhora Surjo Tara”) and I thrilled at the idea now. He made me see the monsoonal kadam flower that I had passed every year without blinking an eye as im-mensely lovely. Every poem that I read enlightened me, every song lent my soul harmony, every short story or novel took

me to eternal truths about hu-man relationships. Who would not learn from a man who had been given some of the highest honors the world has offered any human being, when he says with such unambiguous humility, “ Mor nam ei bole khati houk/Aami tomaderi lok…”Let this be my claim to fame/I am all yours/This is how I would like to be introduced.” And so I kept read-ing him in between teaching and writing, finding him an endless source of inspiration, creativity and wisdom. I strove to learn about nature, the universe, people, relationships, beauty and the dark side of humans through his works. And soon I felt compelled to translate some of them.

Rabindranath, then, opened my eyes not only to the world I lived in but also helped me dis-cover my own self as a product of forces that had taken our na-tion past 1947 to true liberation. He helped root me in Bengali and Bangladesh as never before, making me discover myself not merely as a Bengali but as a citizen of the world, a product of a certain history but also of the history of mankind. My discovery of him and my place in the world was furthered by the work I did in co-authoring The Essential Tagore and authoring a collection of essays on diverse aspects of his work.

But Rabindranath truly contains multitudes. What I now realize is that it is impossible to discover him fully in one life, especially when one embarks on the process of discovery so late in life. By now, therefore, I have despaired of knowing the whole man and feel I will get to know only parts of him. But I also know whatever I read of him will enlighten me and make me know myself better in every way than before. And so I’ll keep reading him and translating him, if only to know him and myself better in the days left for me! l

Fakrul Alam teaches English at the University of Dhaka. He is editor of The Essential Tagore (Harvard University Press). Rabindranath Tagore and National Identity Formation in Bangladesh is his collection of essays on Tagore. His forthcoming works include a new translation of the English Gitanjali poems to be published by UPL and a translation of Mir Mosharraf Hossein’s Bishad Sindhu, to be published soon by Bangla Academy as Ocean of Sorrow.

In the early seventies, however, you could not be in Bangladesh without imbibing Rabindranath at least a little

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The Continuing Relevance of Rabindranath Tagore FRoM Page 3

mainly through the medium of English. William Radice has later done a lot more work to take Tagore to a wider contemporary audience. The contributions made by translators like Mary Lago, Ketaki Kushari Dyson, Krishna Dutta, Andrew Robin-son, Kaiser Haq, Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty are stim-ulating a new interest in Tagore outside the Bengali-speaking circles. There are, nonethe-less, some people who contend that Tagore never slipped into oblivion in some parts of South America and Eastern Europe.

One may always wonder if art can touch on everything we live out – if it can relate to all we feel or experience. But this question becomes almost redundant when we get in touch with Tagore’s works. While reading him, we cannot but feel that the world we are slipping into is very much our own. We are surprised to see that like a magician Tagore is reading our mind at every turn. When gripped with a strong sense of despair, one can easily identify with the helpless little bird fad-ing into the vast crepuscular sky and seeking intermittently to fold its wings for ever – the bird Tagore has set flying in his won-

derful poem “Dussomoy” (Hard Times). And one can also find a ray of hope in the nonstop flut-tering of its frail wings that help it try to cross the huge expanse of the sky. Tagore is indeed one of those few writers in world lit-erature who can inspire us to live on when engulfed by the “dark night of sorrow.”

Thanks to Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (1995), we now know the Korczac story. Before being gassed by the Nazis, Janusz Korczac, a Polish writer and educator, had Tagore’s play Dakghar (1912; The Post Office) staged by some orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto. This was part of their preparations to “accept serenely the angel of death.” Shankha Ghosh (1980) has a dif-ferent story to tell us -- a story of some Bengali poets of the 1950s who were sold on a particular strand of European modernism and, quite understandably, were not much appreciative of Tagore. Once at a reception party, when they were ranting on about their distaste for Tagore, one of them suddenly began to hum a Tagore tune – a tune from a familiar song of devotion – and everybody was soon carried away and joined the singer, turning the scene into an unannounced Tagore song soiree.

Raktakarabi (1926; Red Oleanders), one of Tagore’s most significant plays, raises a whole lot of issues that breathtakingly foreshadow many harsh realities unleashed by today’s globalised world order. Raktakarabi reso-nates with the sufferings and protests of the people marginal-ised in an exploitative system. The condition of the miners in the play is not too dissimilar from that of the European coal miners who still have to go on strikes to claim their rights. The not-so-infrequent reports of garment workers dying in factory blazes and building collapses in Bangladesh or of peasants com-mitting suicide in India, South Korea or elsewhere have grim echoes of the subhuman hard-ships the workers in Tagore’s Yaksapuri are condemned to. Nandini, the heroine of Rakta-karabi, also symbolises the fresh-ness and abundance of nature and, at one level of meaning, she is a buffer against the desertifi-cation of the world – a menace well-known to us these days.

By now we are all too familiar with the politics of water that we encounter in Muktadhara (1922; The Waterfall). Today the helpless lower riparian countries know to their cost how unfairly

they are denied their rights by the powerful upper riparians. Do the orthodox, tyrannical clergy Tagore portrays in Achalayatan (1912; The Immovable) need any introduction in our world that is bleeding so copiously from the outbreak of ever new brands of militant zealotry?

Tagore was keenly aware of the oppressive role of the state and offered subtle critiques of the excesses committed by the state in an age when the nation-state still had a mystique sur-rounding it. Although Naibedya (1901; The Offering) is often seen as a book of devotional poems, the pieces, at a deeper level, em-body such strong protest against domination and oppression that an astute ruler and alumnus of Santiniketan like Indira Gandhi did not miss it and she went so far as to ban the broadcast of some of those poems during her emergency rule in the 1970s.

Most of what Tagore has writ-ten is infused with a deep sense of the bond between humans and nature. It is only recently that the world has woken up to how some wrong models of development so popular with the modernising states have been playing havoc with nature – how ruthlessly forests are being denuded, the

air and water are being polluted and the earth is being scorched. But Tagore did not have to wait till the Earth Summit to sense the dangers looming ahead. Unless we all can empathise with his character Balai, a small boy who was heartbroken by the felling of a tree, our grand action plans to protect the environment are not quite likely to pay dividends. The message of universalism running through Tagore’s works has much to offer in these troubled times when narrow perceptions of singular, monolithic identity are sparking off endless conflicts and tearing the world apart. The mindless consumerism rampant in the world now is also a seri-ous threat to its well-being. We still have an awful lot to learn from Tagore about how to deal with the dictates of consuming unnecessary goods touted by today’s corporate capital and, instead, to enrich the life of the mind. Who else but him can say so serenely: “Ami bohu basonai pranpone chayi, bonchito kore banchale more”?(I desperately crave to fulfill my myriad desires but you have saved me by deny-ing them)!’ l

Golam Faruque Khan is a poet and essayist.

New translation of Tagore songs By Fakrul Alam

This boundless ocean(Ananta sheemar majhe)

Launch our boat in this boundless ocean!Bliss is at an end, grief too, and all hope is goneAhead lies endless night and us two travelers so forlorn.Spread before us, the ocean stretches aimlesslyAnd is utterly still; the shoreline looms ahead gloomily;The still blue water has merged with the horizon.No movement, not even a ripple; all hushed, as if by a spell,Night descends slowly, extending arms towards us as well!

O Sublime One, your message is ethereal(Aroop Tomar Bani)

O Sublime One, your message is ethereal Let it my body and consciousness liberateIn the eternal festival of the world you illuminate,I’m only a clayey lamp—light me up as well!Eternal and luminous are your wishesJust as your spring breeze composes musical notes Everywhere—whether in hues, flowers, bushes or forests,Let your melodies breathe into the center of my being.Let whatever is hollow in me become hallowed through your tunes,Let impediments in my way turn into advantages through your touch!

Why are you so bent on leaving(Keno re tora jabar tore)

Why are you so bent on leaving, O Spring?Have songs already filled up your morning?Have all the Madhavi creepers vanished?Now that forest shades have sung their Bhairavi finaleAnd late-blooming Korobi flowers have disappearedWon’t you let go of your yellow stoleAnd spread it this hot, hot day on dried-up grass beds?The Bokul flowers strewn on pathways look perturbedDoves too keep cooing away anxiously,And earth sheds flowers for prayer services profusely.

The night my door shattered in the storm(Je Raate Mor duar)

The night my door shattered in the stormI didn’t know it was you who had come to my homeEverything had darkened; the lamplight had dimmedWho did I raise my hands skywards to then?I lay down in darkness thinking I was dreaming.How could I’ve known the storm was your banner?In the morning I looked up and was startled to see—You— straddling my room’s void— miraculously!

What wind is it lilting my thoughts so amazingly (Mor Bhabonere Ki Haowa)

What wind is it lilting my thoughts so amazingly?Its caress swings, swings my mind unaccountably.In my heart’s horizon moist dense new clouds swarm,Stirring a shower of emotions. I don’t see her—don’t see her at allOnly occasionally in my mind I recallAlmost indiscernible footsteps soundingAnd ankle bells tinkling, oh so tunefully!A secret dreamscape spreadsAcross the wet wind-swept sky—A new and ethereal azure shawl!Shadowy unfurled tresses fly,

Filling me with such intense disquietOn this far-off ketoki- perfumed wet

night.

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Rabindranath’s Siksar Herfer: A Voice for Educational Diversity in Bengal and Beyond FRoM Page 4

many ways provides the model for learning at Santiniketan. Edward Thompson, one of the Poet’s earliest biographers, gives a contemporary description of Jorasanko:

The house has grown as the whims or needs of successive Tagores have dictated, rambling and wandering round its court-yards, till it has become a tangle of buildings. If other houses may be thought of as having a soul of their own, this must have such an over-soul as belongs to the congregated life of ants and bees. If society be desired it is always at hand; Yet for solitude, for the meditation of sage or the ecstatic absorption of child, there are corners and nooks and rooms. (Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore; Poet and Dramatist 20)

As one reads what Tagore has written about his childhood, a conflicting picture arises. On the one hand, he speaks of tremendous loneliness and neglect, of being raised by the servants, of unhappiness at school and of being confined. On the other hand, there was the tremendous excitement and cultural richness of Jorasanko, which instilled in him a great sense of cooperative learning, permitting him to develop the many facets and layers of his creativity in a subconscious manner, as well as exposing him to other cultures and values.

That Tagore’s ideal educational atmosphere was close to home is evident from his description of Jorasanko. There, pandits of great learning would visit his father’s drawing room to discuss the scriptures and sciences, while musicians displayed their skills, creating a living university.

Tagore’s siblings and extended family provided an educational system among themselves, and it is not surprising that Rabindranath would find outside schooling woefully inadequate by comparison. His eldest brother, Dwijendranath, was a poet, musician, philosopher and mathematician and the father of shorthand writing in Bengali. The journal Bharati was started by him in 1877.

Satyendranath, the second

eldest brother, the first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service, was also a Sanskrit scholar who translated Sanskrit works into Bengali and a musician who wrote hymns for the Brahmo Samaj. Satyendranath encouraged his wife, Jnanadanandini Devi, to defy the rules of purdah and accompany him to social events. Jnanadanandini started a children’s journal to which Rabindranath used to contribute.

Also living in Jorasanko were the family of Debendranath’s second brother, Girindranath, who with his sons, Ganendranath and Gunendranath, helped to create a rich cultural and scientific atmosphere. Jyotirindranath Tagore writes in his Jibansmrti (Memoirs) of Girindranath’s scientific laboratory, where chemistry experiments were conducted and of the various battery-operated machines there. Ganendranath’s passion was the theatre and he was responsible for staging many productions at Jorasanko. Gunendranath’s sons Gaganendranath and Abanindranath became great artists, who influenced the modern art movement within India. Another older brother, Hemendranath, a strict disciplinarian, was in charge of education at home for his younger brothers, sisters and sisters-in-law. He had studied at the Medical College of Calcutta and also had an interest in wrestling. Apart from English, taught by Mr. Aghor, studies were all carried on in Bengali.

The members of the Jorasanko Thakurbari—both male and female--played an integral part in the socio-religious, literary, educational and nationalist currents that were taking place in their time. Their role in helping to transform the lives Bengali women was no exception. One can argue that the women’s movement within India had its beginnings within the Jorasanko joint family. Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of Rabindranath, had advocated women’s education and social reform regarding women as early as 1842, following his trip

to Europe.Rabindranath’s father,

Debendranath, though more cautious regarding social change, supported the Bethune school for women’s education, and did not prohibit the participation of his daughters and other female members of the family in various forms of education and social work. He even sanctioned theatrical performances by the women of the family within the confines of Jorasanko. We can also gather from anecdotal accounts and Debendranath’s Autobiography that Rabindranath’s mother, Sarada Devi, played a strong role. Since Debendranath was frequently away from home, he created a special financial account for her—something highly unusual for the times.

Rabindranath’s oldest sister, Swarnakumari, was one of the most distinguished literary figures of her time, providing a role model for other women. Novelist, poet, playwright, songwriter, journalist and social worker, Swarnakumari wrote many books on a variety

of topics and is considered a pioneer of the Bengali historical and romantic novel. In her role as editor of the journal Bharati, articles on and by women were encouraged, as well as popular articles on science, which would give non-English speaking Bengali women access to scientific ideas. Moreover, her vision was a broad and egalitarian one. She founded a Ladies Theosophical Society and helped form the Sakhi Samiti, an educational organization that brought together women of different social and religious groups—Hindu, Muslim, Christian--with the goal to educating widows and destitute women and making them self-supporting. She was also among the first group of women who attended the annual session of the Indian National Congress in 1890.

Swarnakumari’s daughter, Sarala Devi--who did not marry until the age of thirty-three—provided another role model with her active political participation during Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement.

Sarala was the first in the Tagore family to have an occupation and salary after she accepted a highly paid appointment at Hydrabad’s Girls School in 1895.

Within his own experience, Tagore’s model was one that was strongly influenced by the cultural richness, hospitality and social exchange that he witnessed within the sprawling joint family of the Jorasanko Thakur Bari, which he called the “living university”. In his educational scheme at Santiniketan, he stretched this Jorasanko extended-family model to its limits by inviting diverse individuals from Bengal and beyond to come together “in a single nest”… and there to concentrate on those elements in each other’s cultures that harmonize and afford maximum development of the human personality within the perimeters of peaceful cooperation and non-violence. In developing his holistic educational paradigm, Rabindranath sought through various means to break down barriers and foster interconnectivity in ever more inclusive ways.

Rural Experience: Shelaidah and Potisar As well as growing up in a household which was the meeting place for leading artists and intellectuals from India and the West, Rabindranath had a further experience which was uncommon for someone of his upbringing. In the 1890s, he was put in charge of the family’s rural properties at Shelaidah and Potisar and began spending time in rural Bengal.

At first his aesthetic side was charmed by the beauty of the countryside, but gradually he became aware of the acute material and cultural poverty that permeated the villages. As he later wrote in his essay, “Palli-Prakrti:”

...The everyday tasks of village folk and the varied cycle of their work filled me with wonder. Bred in the city, I stepped right into the heart of rural charm and filled myself with it. Then, slowly, the poverty and misery of the people grew vivid before my eyes and I began to wish that I

Rabindranath spending time with students in Shantiniketan

11


could do something for them...To try to help villagers from the outside could do not good...It was so difficult to help them because they did not have much respect for themselves. (Tagore, Towards Universal Man 317-320)

Rabindranath’s experience in rural East Bengal affected him deeply and he became determined to alleviate some of its problems. In his assessment of the existing system in “Siksar Herfer,” Tagore examines some fundamental elements for the optimal development of a child’s capabilities which he found to be lacking in the type of education current in Bengal at that time, either indigenous or colonial.

Mental and Physical freedom in a Linguistic Medium Connected to a Child’s Social and Cultural EnvironmentTagore argues that just as humans need plenty of space for their physical well-being and full development; so too, an educational framework must allow for mental space and freedom for students to achieve psychic well-being and development of their creative and critical powers. With great empathy, and undoubtedly drawing upon his own earlier negative experiences with formal education, he pleads for the unfortunate Bengali child, thin legs dangling beneath him, confined to boring and unending schoolwork, who has to learn a foreign language,

pass several examinations and qualify himself for a job as quickly as possible. (Tagore, Siksa 8) Tagore argues that pleasurable learning is as essential as the prescribed curriculum, because in reading for pleasure, children’s capacity for reading increases and their powers of comprehension, assimilation and retention develop naturally.

Tagore argues in “Siksar Herfer” that English fails to connect a Bengali child to its surroundings because of the many grammatical and syntactical differences with Bengali. Furthermore, the subject matter alienates the child. The Tagore family had always cultivated Bengali language, and they were among the first to fight for the use of the vernacular in education. When Rabindranath’s school at Santiniketan was started in 1901, it was a Bengali-medium school with English offered as a second language.

Education in Harmony with the EnvironmentIn “Siksar Herfer,” Rabindranath states that the purpose of education, is to acquire the ability to enter two worlds: the imaginary world of literature and the real world of nature. These worlds, says Tagore, are essential and give us life, strength, and health and keep us vital by ceaselessly breaking in on our senses. In a later essay entitled “A Poet’s School,” he

elaborates further upon this theme, emphasizing the need to develop an empathetic sense of interconnectedness with the surrounding world:

We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it. We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fulness by sympathy. The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed. From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar. His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates...Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment. (Tagore, Personality, 116)

Rabindranath felt that a curriculum should revolve organically around nature with classes held in the open air

under the trees to provide for a spontaneous appreciation of the plant and animal kingdoms, and seasonal changes.

The Santiniketan children were especially privileged to have one of the world’s finest nature poets as their mentor. They were able to listen to first readings of his work and participate in festivals and plays which he created on site to celebrate the nuances of nature. Such festivals included the Spring Festival “Basant Panchami” and the Rain Festival “Barsha Mangal”.

Rabindranath was concerned about the environment from early on and began creating ceremonies to create ecological awareness. One such ceremony “Briksha Ropana,”--- a part of the Rain Festival,---was introduced in 1928. As part of the ceremony, Rabindranath planted trees and encouraged the children to each adopt a tree. It was in his words, “A ceremony of the replenishing of the treasury of the mother by her spendthrift children.” In the villages, he celebrated the harvest cycle with Hala-karshana, a festival celebrating the cultivation of the land, and a Harvest Ceremony, the “Nabanna” which welcomed the new rice crop.

He showed an awareness over the role of technology in outstripping the resources of the planet. As he wrote in an essay entitled “The Robbery of the Soil” in 1922:

Man has been digging holes

into the very foundations not only of his livelihood but of his life. He is now feeding upon his own body...most of us who deal with the poverty problem think of nothing else but of a greater intensive effort of production, forgetting that this only means a greater exhaustion of materials as well as of humanity, and this means giving a still better opportunity for profit of the few at the cost of the many...Multiplying materials intensifies the inequality between those who have and those who have not. This is the worst wound from which the social body can suffer. It is a wound through which the body is bled to death! (Elmhirst, Poet and Plowman 39-41) l

This is a truncated version of an article that draws upon some of the writer’s other writings on Tagore, including: Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator. Read the full article online (www.dhakatribune.com)

Kathleen M. O’Connell is a scholar of comparative literature and modern Bengali culture, specializing in the works of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray. A short bibliography: Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator. Second edition. Kolkata: Visva-Bharati. 2002, 2012. Bravo Professor Shonku. Translation (Bengali to English) of three stories by Satyajit Ray. New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 1985; ‘Rabindranath Tagore: Facets of a Cultural Icon’ issue, University of Toronto Quarterly.

Translating Rabindranath FRoM Page 3

material. Each line and each sentence needs to undergo the same slow transformation in the mind of the translator. If this progresses happily and that means, if my mind becomes fully attuned to the mind of the crea-tor, Rabindranath, then there is nothing more fulfilling, more intoxicating, than translating poetry. This is what I referred to as the ecstasy which a translator enjoys.

The tragedy is that a transla-tion is never finished. A poem may be complete and perfect, but never the translation of a poem. The translation has to be truthful to itself, as a Ger-man poem, and truthful to the

original, a Bengali poem. This is walking a tightrope from which I may fall off on the right or the left any moment, sometimes without noticing it.

A special challenge is the translation of rhymed verse-endings. In Bengali, rhyme comes easy as only few endings exist, while rhyming in German lan-guage is more demanding as the endings are more in number and more varied. Rhyming had once been the norm in German poetry; modern poetry uses it, too, but less frequently. However, when translating Rabindranath, I can-not abandon rhyme altogether. For example, translating a poem of Sisu without rhyme would mean missing the point -- the

fun, the banter, the childlike-ness -- of the poem altogether. Even many Gitanjali poems will be only half as enjoyable and effective without rhyme, as with rhyme. This means that rhyme has to be made a part of the trans-lation effort. This is a tremendous challenge. Rhyme must come naturally and easily, without twists in the sentence structure. But rhyme should not be too easy either, otherwise a verse might degenerate into a mere pun on words, a Kalauer. The need for rhyme drastically reduces the freedom of choice of words and increases the need for compro-mises regarding the wealth and exactitude of meaning.

I see the work of a translator

of poems as a special call. You must be something of a poet yourself to be excellent. At least, you should rise to become a poet in the process of transla-tion, assembling the elements of the Bengali poem into a new resplendent and self-confident structure. Often I felt an extraor-dinary union with the poem and with its creator, Rabindranath. In these moments, I was aware that translating Rabindranath’s poems means communicating with the poet’s imagination and spiritual persona in a more intense, more intimate way than just reading his poems. In such moments I feel an almost aching happiness that I am not a mere reader but a translator of

Rabindranath’s poetry.My translations are done. I

now devote my time to my own writing which is clearly suffused by the philosophy and poetic vision of Santiniketan’s Gurudev. In a certain manner, my writing is a continuation of my transla-tion work. It is a contemporary interpretation of Rabindranath’s universe of ideas and emotions for modern German society.

This article first appeared in The Statesman in Kolkata on 27 March 2016. l

The writer, a distinguished German translator of Tagore, is a scholar based in Santiniketan. His last book is Anubhave Anudhyane Rabindranath (Karigar 2016).

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INTERVIEW

TAGORE SnIPPETS

Kaiser Haq is a poet, essayist and translator with an il-lustrious career as a univer-sity teacher of English. His areas of special interest include twentieth century literature, especially poetry and the literature of the First World War, and Third World literature, especially the literature of the Indian subcontinent.

His volumes of poetry in-clude Pariah and Other Poems (Bengal Lights Books, 2013), Published in the Streets of Dhaka: Collected Poems (UPL, Dhaka, 2012), The Logopathic Reviewer’s Song and Other Pieces (Aark Arts, London and UPL, Dhaka, 2002), A Happy Farewell (Dhaka: UPL, 1994).

His remarkable transla-tions include Quartet (trans. of Tagore’s Chaturanga), Heine-mann, UK, 1993 (revised, in Tagore Omnibus, Vol. 1, Penguin India, 2005); Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman, Dhaka: BRAC, 1985 (Enlarged edition, Dhaka: Pathak Samabesh, 2008); Urukkoo: The Woman Who Flew (trans. of Nasreen Ja-han’s novel), Penguin India; The Triumph of the Snake Goddess (retelling of Manasa legends), Harvard University Press; The Wonders of Vilayet (trans. of the first Indian travel book on Eu-rope), Peepal Tree Books, Leeds, 2002 (A section, titled ‘Passage to Scotland’, excerpted in The Scotsman). Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh (editor), SAARC Foundation, Delhi; New edition: Delhi, Chroniclebooks, 2007.

Bangla literature on the world stagenRifat Munim

Having just returned from France, where he attended the launching ceremony

of his first collection of poetry in French translation, Kaiser Haq was sharing his experience there with a younger poet and short story writer, at the office of Ben-gal Lights in Dhanmondi. When I chipped in, Haq was lamenting the decline of studies of Bangla literature across the continental countries, especially in England and France. William Radice had an accident, Haq mentioned, which left him incapacitated. Radice’s incapacity to continue his work, he went on, would seriously affect Bangla studies in England. It was then the talk began.

In an article titled “On Translating Rabindranath Tagore and Others”, published in May 2011, you said you’d round off your career as a translator and concentrate on your own writing. But you took up the gargantuan task of translating the Mangal Kavya in about a year. Why?I haven’t translated the Mana-samangal, I have produced a composite prose retelling based on my reading of eight versions. It’s as if I were yet another of the Manasamangal poets produc-ing his distinctive version. But I have cited all my sources, chap-ter by chapter. I have also added a bit here and a bit there to make the narrative flow smoothly.

you have had an illustrious career as a translator of Bangla literature. do you think Bangla literature is under-represented

in the international arena?Yes, and it’s inevitable. The global reader perceives Bangla-desh mainly in terms of certain stereotypes, and is not interest-ed in going into the complexities of our situation.

In prose fiction, translation of Bangla novels has been triggered mostly by academic or political interest. Mahasweta devi is an example of academic interest and Taslima nasrin of a brand of Western feminism. do you think

post-Tagorian Bangla novels do not have the potential to attract wide international readership beyond academic or political circles?Yes, I do, I’m afraid, for the rea-son I have already mentioned in answer to the previous question.

In the last two decades, a huge body of English translation of Bangla novels has appeared in Bangladesh, India, USA and

many other countries. But we are not sure about how far they have made an impact on literary circles across the world. does big international publishers’ lack of interest in bringing out translation of contemporary Bangla fiction explain this?You’re right, they’ve hardly had any impact. It’s not because of the lack of interest of interna-tional publishers, the lack of interest is a result of the fact that translations of our novels haven’t had any impact on the global literary scene.

The largest market for transla-tions of literature in the South Asian languages is South Asia.

Can co-ordinated government efforts go a long way towards funding quality translations of Bangla literature and ensuring that they are circulated to literary enthusiasts all over the world?In theory, yes, but I have grave doubts about what any govern-ment can achieve in this arena. Still, any effort by the govern-ment to promote the translation of our literature is welcome. What government agencies lack is the ability to distribute publi-cations commercially.

More viable are independent efforts like the Dhaka Transla-tion Centre of ULAB, which has within a short time organized two international workshops and launched the ‘Library of Bangladesh’, a series of transla-tions of Bangladeshi works of fic-tion. Already several have been published, and a total of twelve are being produced in the initial phase of the project. l

“Each year, Dartington Hall in England hosts a festival to celebrate the poetry, prose, art, and philosophy of the most eminent of Indian authors, Rabindranath

Tagore. A similar annual commemoration takes place in Illinois, USA. A bronze statue of Asia’s first recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature with his

characteristically furrowed yet compassionate expression stands in the centre of Prague. In Nicaragua, Salman Rushdie discovered a surprising reverence for the

first non-European Nobel laureate. This ubiquity cannot be explained merely by Tagore’s extensive travels, but owes to a more pertinent value in his thought, which

finds an audience across the world”

Anthony Elliott in “The Unfinished Legacy of Rabindranath Tagore” on the culturetrip.com

“More than anything, what Tagore stood for was a synthesis of east and west. He admired the European intellect and felt betrayed when Britain’s conduct in India let down the ideal. His western enthusiasts, however, saw what they wanted to see. First, he was an exotic fashion and then he was not. ‘Damn Tagore,’ wrote Yeats in 1935, blaming the ‘sentimental rubbish’ of his later books for ruining his reputation”

Ian Jack in his article “Rabindranath Tagore was a global phenomenon, so why is he neglected?”

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