Glimpses of Bengal E-Book

Rabindranath Tagore

• Herausgeber: Seltzer Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 124

Beschreibung

According to Wikipedia: "Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he was the first non-European who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His poetry in translation was viewed as spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a prophet-like aura in the west. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" still remain largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal."

Leseprobe

GLIMPSES OF BENGAL, SELECTED FROM THE LETTERS OF SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE 1885 TO 1895

Published by Seltzer Books

established in 1974, now offering over 14,000 books

feedback welcome: [email protected]  

Works of Rabindanath Tagore available from Seltzer Books:

Chitra, a Play in Play in One Act

Creative Unity

The Fugitive

Glimpses of Bengal

The Home and the World

The Hungry Stones and Other Stories

The King of the Dark Chamber

Mashi and Other Stories

Sadhana the Realisation of Life

Stories from Tagore

INTRODUCTION

BANDORA, BY THE SEA October 1885

July 1887

SHELIDAH, 1888

SHAZADPUR, 1890

KILIGRAM, 1891

KILIGRAM 1891

NEARING SHAZADPUR

January 1891

SHAZADPUR

February 1891

February 1891

ON THE WAY

February 1891

CHUHALI, June 1891.

SHAZADPUR, June 1891.

SHAZADPUR, June 1891.

SHAZADPUR, June 1891.

SHAZADPUR, June 1891.

SHAZADPUR, July 1891.

ON BOARD A CANAL STEAMER GOING TO CUTTACK, August 1891.

TIRAN. 7th September 1891.

SHELIDAH,  October 1891

SHELIDAH, 2nd KARTIK, October 1891

SHELIDAH, 3rd KARTIC, October 1891

SHELIDAH, 9th January 1892

SHELIDAH, 7th April 1892

BOLPUR, 2ND May 1892

BOLPUR, 8th Jaistha May 1892

BOLPUR, 12th Jaistha May 1892

BOLPUR, 16th Jaistha May 1892

BOLPUR, 31rst May 1892

SHELIDAH, 31rst Jaistha June 1892

SHELIDAH, 16th June 1892

SHELIDAH, 2nd Asarh June 1892

ON THE WAY TO GOALUNDA, 21st June 1892

SHELIDAH, 22ND June 1892

SHAZADPUR, 25th June 1892.

SHAZADPUR, 27th June 1892

SHAZADPUR, 29th June 1892

SHELIDAH, 20th August 1892

BOALIA, 18th November 1892

NATORE, 2nd December 1892

SHELIDAH, 9th December 1892

BALJA, Tuesday, February 1893

CUTTACK, February 1893

CUTTACK, 10th February 1893

CUTTACK, March 1893

SHELIDAH, 8th May 1893

SHELIDAH, 10th May 1893

SHELIDAH, 11th May 1893

SHELIDAH, 16th May 1893

SHELIDAH, 3rd July 1893

SHELIDAH, 4th July 1893

SHELIDAH, 7th July 1893

SHELIDAH, 10th July 1893

PATISAR, 13th August 1893

PATISAR, 26th (Straven) August 1893

PATISAR, 19th February 1894

PATISAR, 27th February 1894

PATISAR, 22nd March 1894

PATISAR, 28th March 1894

PATISAR, 30th March 1894

SHELIDAH, 24th June 1894

SHELIDAH, 9th August 1894

SHELIDAH, 10th August 1894

SHELIDAH, 13th August 1894

SHELIDAH, 19th August 1894

SHAZADPUR,  5thSeptember 1894

ON THE WAY TO DIGHAPATIAYA, 20th September 1894

ON THE WAY TO BOALIA, 22nd September 1894

CALCUTTA, 5th October 1894

BOLPUR, 19th October 1894

BOLPUR, 31st October 1894

SHELIDAH, 7th December 1894

SHELIDAH, 23rd February 1895

SHELIDAH, 16th (Phalgun) February 1895

SHELIDAH, 28th February 1895

ON THE WAY TO PABNA, 9th July 1895

SHELIDAH, 14th August 1895

KUSHTEA, 5th October 1895

SHELIDAH, 12th December 1895

INTRODUCTION

 The letters translated in this book span the most productive period of my literary life, when, owing to great good fortune, I was young and less known.

Youth being exuberant and leisure ample, I felt the writing of letters other than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form of literary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotion accumulates. Other forms of literature remain the author's and are made public for his good; letters that have been given to private individuals once for all, are therefore characterised by the more generous abandonment.

It so happened that selected extracts from a large number of such letters found their way back to me years after they had been written. It had been rightly conjectured that they would delight me by bringing to mind the memory of days when, under the shelter of obscurity, I enjoyed the greatest freedom my life has ever known.

Since these letters synchronise with a considerable part of my published writings, I thought their parallel course would broaden my readers' understanding of my poems as a track is widened by retreading the same ground. Such was my justification for publishing them in a book for my countrymen. Hoping that the descriptions of village scenes in Bengal contained in these letters would also be of interest to English readers, the translation of a selection of that selection has been entrusted to one who, among all those whom I know, was best fitted to carry it out.

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

  20th June 1920.

 BANDORA, BY THE SEA,

October 1885.

 The unsheltered sea heaves and heaves and blanches into foam. It sets me thinking of some tied-up monster straining at its bonds, in front of whose gaping jaws we build our homes on the shore and watch it lashing its tail. What immense strength, with waves swelling like the muscles of a giant!

From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and water: the dry earth slowly and silently adding to its domain and spreading a broader and broader lap for its children; the ocean receding step by step, heaving and sobbing and beating its breast in despair. Remember the sea was once sole monarch, utterly free.

Land rose from its womb, usurped its throne, and ever since the maddened old creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually, like King Lear exposed to the fury of the elements.

 July 1887.

I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself before my mind--nothing else seems to have happened of late.

But to reach twenty-seven--is that a trifling thing?--to pass the meridian of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty?--thirty--that is to say maturity--the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage. But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it still feels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy.

Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected of you--that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot? Are we to put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what we shall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil which the blindfold, mill-turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you."

It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waiting expectantly any longer. While I was under age they trustfully gave me credit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty. But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterly incompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond a snatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have been unable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will turn their wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse these expectations?

Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine Bysakh morning I awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that I had stepped into my twenty-seventh year.

 SHELIDAH, 1888.

 Our house-boat is moored to a sandbank on the farther side of the river. A vast expanse of sand stretches away out of sight on every side, with here and there a streak, as of water, running across, though sometimes what gleams like water is only sand.

Not a village, not a human being, not a tree, not a blade of grass--the only breaks in the monotonous whiteness are gaping cracks which in places show the layer of moist, black clay underneath.

Looking towards the East, there is endless blue above, endless white beneath. Sky empty, earth empty too--the emptiness below hard and barren, that overhead arched and ethereal--one could hardly find elsewhere such a picture of stark desolation.

But on turning to the West, there is water, the currentless bend of the river, fringed with its high bank, up to which spread the village groves with cottages peeping through--all like an enchanting dream in the evening light. I say "the evening light," because in the evening we wander out, and so that aspect is impressed on my mind.

 SHAZADPUR, 1890.

 The magistrate was sitting in the verandah of his tent dispensing justice to the crowd awaiting their turns under the shade of a tree. They set my palanquin down right under his nose, and the young Englishman received me courteously. He had very light hair, with darker patches here and there, and a moustache just beginning to show. One might have taken him for a white-haired old man but for his extremely youthful face. I asked him over to dinner, but he said he was due elsewhere to arrange for a pig-sticking party.

As I returned home, great black clouds came up and there was a terrific storm with torrents of rain. I could not touch a book, it was impossible to write, so in the I-know-not-what mood I wandered about from room to room. It had become quite dark, the thunder was continually pealing, the lightning gleaming flash after flash, and every now and then sudden gusts of wind would get hold of the big lichi tree by the neck and give its shaggy top a thorough shaking. The hollow in front of the house soon filled with water, and as I paced about, it suddenly struck me that I ought to offer the shelter of the house to the magistrate.

I sent off an invitation; then after investigation I found the only spare room encumbered with a platform of planks hanging from the beams, piled with dirty old quilts and bolsters. Servants' belongings, an excessively grimy mat, hubble-bubble pipes, tobacco, tinder, and two wooden chests littered the floor, besides sundry packing-cases full of useless odds and ends, such as a rusty kettle lid, a bottomless iron stove, a discoloured old nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened with dust. In a corner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in the wall hung moist dish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The only piece of furniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains, oil stains, milk stains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of mixed stains. The mirror, detached from it, rested against another wall, and the drawers were receptacles for a miscellaneous assortment of articles from soiled napkins down to bottle wires and dust.

For a moment I was overwhelmed with dismay; then it was a case of--send for the manager, send for the storekeeper, call up all the servants, get hold of extra men, fetch water, put up ladders, unfasten ropes, pull down planks, take away bedding, pick up broken glass bit by bit, wrench nails from the wall one by one.--The chandelier falls and its pieces strew the floor; pick them up again piece by piece.--I myself whisk the dirty mat off the floor and out of the window, dislodging a horde of cockroaches, messmates, who dine off my bread, my treacle, and the polish on my shoes.

The magistrate's reply is brought back; his tent is in an awful state and he is coming at once. Hurry up! Hurry up! Presently comes the shout: "The sahib has arrived." All in a flurry I brush the dust off hair, beard, and the rest of myself, and as I go to receive him in the drawing-room, I try to look as respectable as if I had been reposing there comfortably all the afternoon.

I went through the shaking of hands and conversed with the magistrate outwardly serene; still, misgivings about his accommodation would now and then well up within. When at length I had to show my guest to his room, I found it passable, and if the homeless cockroaches do not tickle the soles of his feet, he may manage to get a night's rest.

 KALIGRAM, 1891.

 I am feeling listlessly comfortable and delightfully irresponsible.

This is the prevailing mood all round here. There is a river but it has no current to speak of, and, lying snugly tucked up in its coverlet of floating weeds, seems to think--"Since it is possible to get on without getting along, why should I bestir myself to stir?" So the sedge which lines the banks knows hardly any disturbance until the fishermen come with their nets.

Four or five large-sized boats are moored near by, alongside each other. On the upper deck of one the boatman is fast asleep, rolled up in a sheet from head to foot. On another, the boatman--also basking in the sun--leisurely twists some yarn into rope. On the lower deck in a third, an oldish-looking, bare-bodied fellow is leaning over an oar, staring vacantly at our boat.

Along the bank there are various other people, but why they come or go, with the slowest of idle steps, or remain seated on their haunches embracing their knees, or keep on gazing at nothing in particular, no one can guess.

The only signs of activity are to be seen amongst the ducks, who, quacking clamorously, thrust their heads under and bob up again to shake off the water with equal energy, as if they repeatedly tried to explore the mysteries below the surface, and every time, shaking their heads, had to report, "Nothing there! Nothing there!"

The days here drowse all their twelve hours in the sun, and silently sleep away the other twelve, wrapped in the mantle of darkness. The only thing you want to do in a place like this is to gaze and gaze on the landscape, swinging your fancies to and fro, alternately humming a tune and nodding dreamily, as the mother on a winter's noonday, her back to the sun, rocks and croons her baby to sleep.

 KALIGRAM, 1891.

 Yesterday, while I was giving audience to my tenants, five or six boys made their appearance and stood in a primly proper row before me. Before I could put any question their spokesman, in the choicest of high-flown language, started: "Sire! the grace of the Almighty and the good fortune of your benighted children have once more brought about your lordship's auspicious arrival into this locality." He went on in this strain for nearly half an hour. Here and there he would get his lesson wrong, pause, look up at the sky, correct himself, and then go on again. I gathered that their school was short of benches and stools. "For want of these wood-built seats," as he put it, "we know not where to sit ourselves, where to seat our revered teachers, or what to offer our most respected inspector when he comes on a visit."