| Foreword
to Rabindranath Tagore, Show Yourself to My Soul |
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| During
the rediscovery and reassessment of Rabindranath Tagore that has unfolded in the
English-speaking world over the last two decades, we have been slow to work
round to Gitanjali. This may seem surprising, given that it was for the English
book of that name that Tagore won the Nobel Prize.
But with the English Gitanjali,
and other books in that vein such as The
Gardener and Fruit-Gathering, an
image of Tagore became fixed that he himself came to regard as restricting; and
Bengalis - and those who have learnt Bengali - have shared his frustration, have
wished to show, through translation of a wide variety of poems, that Tagore was
by no means exclusively a devotional, mystical or introspective poet. |
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| Nevertheless, a
true and complete presentation of Tagore ultimately has to give a special place
to the trilogy of books that were named, in Bengali, Gitanjali, Gitimalya and Gitali.
In these beautifully poised and subtle songs and lyric poems, we find
Tagore at his most inward. They are
his private, humble, lucid and sensitive dialogue with God – universal
precisely because they are so personal. |
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| Until recently,
it has been hard for the non-Bengali reader to hear that dialogue, except
through the filter of Tagore’s own English versions, which often conceal as
much as they reveal. But with Joe
Winter’s metrical translations of the Bengali Gitanjali (Writers
Workshop, Calcutta, 1998, and Anvil Press Poetry, London, 2000), and now with
the simpler, freer, unrhymed translations by Brother James that are offered
here, we are given a new opportunity. In
the case of Brother James’s translations, I would say that the opportunity is
also a unique privilege, for they are the fruit of long and deep reflection on
the poems, over many years of living and working among the people of Bengal. |
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| Brother
James’s translations – of Gitanjali and
other books – were first published in the 1980s by the University Press Ltd.,
which has been such a heroic pioneer in the publication of English-language
books in Bangladesh. But these
editions have normally been available only to visitors to that country. |
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| In this new edition for a wider
readership, which I hope will be followed by Brother James’s other books,
readers will find an accuracy, a simplicity, a patience, a beauty and a sheer
love of the poems that will bring them to the heart of Tagore.
They will come away from the book with numerous phrases and images that
will stay with them; and they will find themselves returning to favorite poems,
to those that strike a particular echo in their own inner lives.
In my own reading of the typescript, I jotted down phrases such as
‘Make my heart blossom out…’, ‘Take a light from the absence-fire…’,
‘I can endure still more blows…’, ‘the monsoon’s human face…’,
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of…’, ‘Songs have taught me so
much…’ – and many more. I
could list my favorite poems too; but maybe that choice should remain, as for
other readers of this book, a private matter. |
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