Letters from a Young Poet (51 page)

While translation is always generally acknowledged as a difficult task in itself, translating from Tagore, it has been readily conceded, is an endeavour most peculiarly susceptible to failure. My work here has been made easier by the patience and cooperation of colleagues and friends who have answered queries, listened to passages, and provided references, chiefly Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Partha Chatterjee, Manabi Majumdar and Dwaipayan Bhattacharya. I presented a portion of the introduction at a seminar at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, in September 2013, and I am grateful for the keen response of faculty and students there. Dipesh Chakrabarty had read the first draft of some of these letters, and to him I owe the illuminating thought that these wonderful letters actually allow you to be, for a moment, as if ‘in the company of the man'. Amit Chaudhuri—‘
il miglior fabbro
'—was available on demand to test the sound of the sentence on the page; for that I am, as always, grateful.

Two of these letters have been previously published in the
Telegraph
under the title ‘Letters from Another Autumn', on 4 October 2011; they have been further revised since. Radha Chakravarty and Fakrul Alam are to be thanked for the freedom
they allowed me in choosing what I wanted to translate for
The Essential Tagore
(Harvard University Press and Visva-Bharati, 2011). The original selection I made for them was the seedbed for this entire project, setting in motion the process that would ultimately result in this book. I must also thank Supriyo Tagore and Supurna Devi (via Srimanti) for responding to my queries, as also my uncle, Kamal Ghosh, for his help. Most of all, my gratitude to Diya Kar Hazra at Penguin for having the foresight and generosity of a great commissioning editor, and having so readily agreed to my suggestion of publishing these letters in translation; to Sivapriya and Ambar Chatterjee for having attended to innumerable workable and unworkable suggestions with patience and courtesy; and to Richa Burman for an admirable job at the proofs stages.

A critically acclaimed translation that renders with beauty and precision the poetic rhythm and intensity of the Bengali originals

Described by Rabindranath Tagore as ‘revelations of my true self', the poems and songs of
Gitanjali
established the writer's literary talent worldwide. They include eloquent sonnets such as the famous ‘Where the mind is without fear', and poems that are intense explorations of love, faith and nature, and tender evocations of childhood.

In his arrangement of Tagore's original sequence of poems alongside his translations, William Radice restores to
Gitanjali
the structure, style and conception that were hidden by W.B. Yeats's edition of 1912, making this book a magnificent addition to the Tagore library.

The Nobel Prize–winning author's most ambitious work

Gora
unfolds against the vast, dynamic backdrop of Bengal under British rule, a divided society struggling to envisage an emerging nation. It is an epic saga of India's nationalist awakening, viewed through the eyes of one young man, an orthodox Hindu who defines himself against the British colonialist culture and finds himself approaching his nationalist identity through the prism of organized religion. First published in 1907,
Gora
questions the dogmas and presuppositions inherent in nationalist thought like few books have dared to do. This new, lucid and vibrant translation brings the complete and unabridged text of the classic to a new generation of readers, underlining its contemporary relevance.

‘There is nothing static, earthbound or lifeless about it … It has the complexity and tragic dimensions of Tagore's own time, and ours'—Anita Desai

Set against the backdrop of the partition of Bengal by the British in 1905,
Home and the World
(
Ghare Baire
) is the story of a young, liberal-minded zamindar Nikhilesh, his educated and sensitive wife, Bimala, and Nikhilesh's friend Sandip, a charismatic nationalist leader whom Bimala finds herself attracted to. A perceptive exposition of the difficulties surrounding women's emancipation in pre-modern India, and a telling portrayal of the chasms inherent in the nationalist movement,
Home and the World
has generated endless debate and discussion. This classic novel was first published in Bengali in 1916, is now available in a lucid new translation.

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First published in Bengali as
Chinnapatrabali
by Visva-Bharati Press, Kolkata 1960
First published in English by Penguin Books India 2014

Translation and introduction copyright © Rosinka Chaudhuri 2014

Cover illustration by Anna Higgie

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-143-41576-3

This digital edition published in 2013.
e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18636-6