My Reminiscences

Rabindranath Tagore

Description

“My Reminiscences” is Rabindranath Tagore's 1917 memoir written just before he embarked on a trip to Europe and America in 1912 due to his bad health. Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (1861–1941) was a Bengali writer, poet, painter, and composer who is credited with reshaping Bengali and Indian art through Contextual Modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1913 he became the first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. “My Reminiscences” offers a unique insight into the life and mind of this amazing polyglot who single-handedly changed the face of literature, art and music on the Indian subcontinent. Contents include: “Teaching Begins”, “Within and Without”, “Servocracy”, “The Normal School”, “Versification”, “Various Learning”, “My First Outing”, “Practising Poetry”, “Srikantha Babu”, “Our Bengali Course Ends”, etc. Other notable works by this author include “The Fatal Hunt” (1882) and “The Play of Illusions” (1888). Read & Co. Books proudly republishing this classic autobiography now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Bengali poetry
• History of India

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 31 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528791083
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

MY REMINISCENCES
By
RABINDRANATH TAGORE

First published in 1917



Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Books
This edition is published by Read & Co. Books, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
Rabindr anath Tagore
TRANSLAT OR'S PREFACE
PART I
I
II TEA CHING BEGINS
III WITHIN AND WITHOUT
PART II
I V SERVOCRACY
V THE N ORMAL SCHOOL
VI V ERSIFICATION
VII VARI OUS LEARNING
VIII MY FIRST OUTING
IX PRACT ISING POETRY
PART III
X SR IKANTHA BABU
XI OUR BENGALI COURSE ENDS
XII T HE PROFESSOR
XI II MY FATHER
XIV A JOURNEY WI TH MY FATHER
XV AT T HE HIMALAYAS
PART IV
X VI MY RETURN
XVII HOME STUDIES
XVIII MY HOME ENVIRONMENT
XIX LITERAR Y COMPANIONS
X X PUBLISHING
XXI BHANU SINGHA
XXI I PATRIOTISM
XXIII THE BHARATI
PART V
XX IV AHMEDABAD
XXV ENGLAND
XXVI LOKEN PALIT
XXVII THE BROKEN HEART
PART VI
XXVIII EU ROPEAN MUSIC
XXIX VALM IKI PRATIBHA
XXX E VENING SONGS
XXXI AN ES SAY ON MUSIC
XXXII TH E RIVER-SIDE
XXXIII MORE ABOUT THE E VENING SONGS
XXXIV M ORNING SONGS
PART VII
XXXV RAJEN DRAHAL MITRA
XXXVI KARWAR
XXXVII NATU RE'S REVENGE
XXXVIII PICTUR ES AND SONGS
XXXIX AN INTERV ENING PERIOD
XL BA NKIM CHANDRA
PART VIII
XLI THE STEAMER HULK
XLII BEREAVEMENTS
XLIII THE RAIN S AND AUTUMN
XLIV SHAR PS AND FLATS


Illustrations
RABINDRANA TH TAGORE 11
RABINDRANATH TAGOR E IN 1877 19
THE INNER GARDEN WAS MY PARADISE 25
T HE GANGES 55
SATYA 63
SINGING TO MY FATHER 77
THE SERVANT-MAIDS IN THE VERANDAH 91
MY ELDEST BROTHER 102
M OONLIGHT 145
THE GANG ES AGAIN 167
KARW AR BEACH 187
MY BROTHER JYO TIRINDRA 203



Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Thakur, anglicised to Tagore, was born on 7 May, 1861 to a wealthy family based in Calcutta, British India. Tagore composed beautiful songs, wrote elegant poems, novels and plays, created celebrated artworks and was a life-long political advocate of equality and freedom. He consequently denounced the Raj and British control of Indian life, inspirationally changing his region's politics, literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, acclaimed for their contemplative nature mixed with an unflinching naturalism. Two of his compositions were chosen by India and Bangladesh as their national anthems. His legacy also endures in Visva-Bharati University; the establishment which Tagore founded himself. Tagore is still little known outside Bengal, however his profound, if smaller than deserved, reception has helped to introduce the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. Tagore started writing poetry when he was just eight years old, and released his first substantial collection of poems, The Songs of Bhanushingho Thakur, at the age of sixteen. These were published under the pseudonym Bhānusim ha (Sun Lion) and were immediately seized upon by the literary authorities; hailed as long-lost classics. However due to his father’s wishes for Tagore to become a Barrister, he moved to England at the age of sixteen and enrolled at a public school in Brighton. He briefly read law at University College London, but left to independently study the literature of Shakespeare, especially Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra . The young man was impressed by the lively English, Irish and Scottish folk tunes, and he returned to Bengal in 1880, resolving to reconcile European and Brahmin traditions. In 1883 he married Mrinalini Devi, with whom he had five children. From 1890 onwards, Tagore managed his vast ancestral estates in Shelaida, and it was here that he released his Manasi poems (1890), probably his best known work. The period 1891-1895 was his most productive, and it was during this time that Tagore wrote more than half of the 84 story long Galpaguchchha. This collection revealed the poverty and suffering in an otherwise idealised rural Bengal. In 1901, Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram (a place of spiritual hermitage), it had an experimental school attached, beautiful groves of trees, substantial gardens and a well-stocked library. During his time at Santiniketan, Tagore’s wife and two of his children died. However he kept up his campaigns for social justice in the Indian provinces, as well as maintaining his prolific writing career. Tagore also kept composing, amassing a massive 2,230 songs to his credit. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for his Gitanjali: Song Offerings. Two years after this accolade, Tagore was knighted by George V, however he repudiated this award in 1919, after the outrages of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre . He asserted that ‘the time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.’ As a result of his extensive travels, Tagore felt affirmed in his opposition to societal divisions and continued reflecting on such themes in his later works Chitra (1914), Dui Bon (1933) and Patraput (1936). Tagore died at the age of 80, in Calcutta, the place of his birth, on 7 A ugust, 1941.



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
These Reminiscences were written and published by the Author in his fiftieth year, shortly before he started on a trip to Europe and America for his failing health in 1912. It was in the course of this trip that he wrote for the first time in the English language for publication.
In these memory pictures, so lightly, even casually presented by the author there is, nevertheless, revealed a connected history of his inner life together with that of the varying literary forms in which his growing self found successive expression, up to the point at which both his soul and poetry attain ed maturity.
This lightness of manner and importance of matter form a combination the translation of which into a different language is naturally a matter of considerable difficulty. It was, in any case, a task which the present Translator, not being an original writer in the English language, would hardly have ventured to undertake, had there not been other considerations. The translator's familiarity, however, with the persons, scenes, and events herein depicted made it a temptation difficult for him to resist, as well as a responsibility which he did not care to leave to others not possessing these advantages, and therefore more liable to miss a point, or give a wrong impression.
The Translator, moreover, had the author's permission and advice to make a free translation, a portion of which was completed and approved by the latter before he left India on his recent tour to Japan and America.
In regard to the nature of the freedom taken for the purposes of the translation, it may be mentioned that those suggestions which might not have been as clear to the foreign as to the Bengali reader have been brought out in a slightly more elaborate manner than in the original text; while again, in rare cases, others which depend on allusions entirely unfamiliar to the non-Indian reader, have been omitted rather than spoil by an over-elaboration the simplicity and naturalness which is the great feature of t he original.
There are no footnotes in the original. All the footnotes here given have been added by the Translator in the hope that they may be of further assistance to the for eign reader.




RABINDR ANATH TAGORE By Sas i Kumar Hesh


MY REMINISCENCES


PART I
I
I know not who paints the pictures on memory's canvas; but whoever he may be, what he is painting are pictures; by which I mean that he is not there with his brush simply to make a faithful copy of all that is happening. He takes in and leaves out according to his taste. He makes many a big thing small and small thing big. He has no compunction in putting into the background that which was to the fore, or bringing to the front that which was behind. In short he is painting pictures, and not writ ing history.
Thus, over Life's outward aspect passes the series of events, and within is being painted a set of pictures. The two correspond but are not one.
We do not get the leisure to view thoroughly this studio within us. Portions of it now and then catch our eye, but the greater part remains out of sight in the darkness. Why the ever-busy painter is painting; when he will have done; for what gallery his pictures are destined—w ho can tell?
Some years ago, on being questioned as to the events of my past life, I had occasion to pry into this picture-chamber. I had thought to be content with selecting some few materials for my Life's story. I then discovered, as I opened the door, that Life's memories are not Life's history, but the original work of an unseen Artist. The variegated colours scattered about are not reflections of