A Tagore reader : Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941 : Internet Archive
A Tagore reader : Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
A Tagore reader
- by
- Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941; Chakravarty, Amiya Chandra
- https://archive.org/details/tagorereader00tago
- =====
Mimi634
3.0 out of 5 stars but the buying esperience was fine,
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2016
Verified Purchase
Difficult book, but the buying esperience was fine,
Helpful
Report
susan raja-rao
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent collection of Tagore's life's work
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2015
Verified Purchase
This is a rich, excellent collection of Tagore's life's work !! I highly recommend it !!
Helpful
Report
Roman Nies
4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughts of days long gone by
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2009====
Tagore is a child of his time. It was a time of great upheavals in the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Thanks to his educated, creative human spirit and his literary qualities he was able during his life to comment the events in ever new variations in many ways and especially also in eloquent diversity.
But Tagore had limited effect in the world beyond India, perhaps because he wrote mostly in Bengali. This anthology is just a modest trial to convey an impression of the greatness of this man. It is a mere hint what a thinker and littérateur Tagore must have been.
The material in this book has been put into a timely order. The peculiar introductions contain important information about the context in which the original was once written and short overviews about the contents of the section as well as references to translations. More explanations can be found in the notations at the end of the book. Bengali notions are explained in a glossary.
The book contains contributions about Tagores journeys. All his life long he travelled and held lectures, recorded in letters and diaries. His letters alone filled 12 volumes. Further on the book comprises short stories, which he wrote in every period of his life, then also an excerpt of his life`s memories. Tagore met as a famous Nobel prize winner many notable personalities. This book has some talks, which he had with them, for example with Einstein. Tagore was educated enough that he new about the actual knowledge of science, so that he could formulate in front of the nuclear physician Einstein "the drama of existence is in its essence not absolutely deterministic". Einstein hung fast to his idea of an intramundane causality, whereas Tagore, not contradicting other nuclear physicists, concluded that the non-determination allowed access from outside, be it from a God. The further scientific investigation would cut the ground from under Einsteins desire for causality. In front of Einstein, Tagore also uttered the idea that the whole universe be a human universe.
The book goes on with fables. In his humourous fabels intellectual freedom and irony mix up with deep human feelings. The book has two examples. Of his dramas is but one extraction. Tagiore said that the main principle is the play of feelings not of actions.
Tagore was a universal genie, hence it is not wondrous, that he became also a literature and art critics, whose critique should set up not demolish. According to Tagore man takes part in the creative process of God through his own artistic work. He as God`s likeness is creative to his image. In the arts Tagore claims the union between aesthetics and ethics. Here you can see how far away artists of today are from Tagore!
The book would not be complete without Tagores poetry. Tagore wrote poetry in Bengali. The Bengali is rich in sounding syllables and natural melody. He translated himself his most known work "Gitanjali", of which the book has an excerpt.
The UNESCO and the son of Tagore supported the publication of this anthology, inclined to basical considerations. The agreement of West and East, the proclamation of universal humanity and the task to fulfil it was recognized as the goal of all of Tagore`s writings . A doubtless honourable and high aim of Tagore, that could have made him to a religion founder, if the completion of the human kind, about which Friedrich Wilhelm Josef Schelling philosophized so remarkably excessive, would not have been always the contents of so many religions. What seems to occupy so many people is a thought which bothered Tagore all his life long, also expressed in his works. Man is incomplete and has an ineradicable desire to get rid of the discomfort that worries him thereby. What does Tagore propose as a means for salvation, the more so as the humanity and tolerance and the lust for aesthetical and ethical relevance which he is preaching can as well only be a means to an end? It is dedication to an impersonal ethical Super-Ego, "reconciliation of the super-personal man, the universal human spirit in his own singular-existence". Tagore was Hindu, if not a lifelong follower of Brahmanism, which proclaims the knowledge-orientated dissolution of the individual soul in the world-soul as the last goal of creation. This is a piece of reasoning that must alienate the western society which is so keen on individual freedom rights, especially in face of the failure of the individuality dissolving socialistic conceptions.
In any case a recommendable book with many precious, inspiring and constructive thoughts in a time when aesthetic works of spirit are rather ridiculed, as one publisher told me.
Read less
4 people found this helpful
====
Ishan Bhattacharya
5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the read
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2007
Amiya Chakravarty was my grandfather, so I'm a bit biased. Nevertheless, if you have any interest in Tagore, this book is a superb introduction as well as detailed overview of Tagore and his work. It is easily available from multiple sources.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
Sheeba Arnold
5.0 out of 5 stars A must buy for all Tagore fans!
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2003
Nobel Laurate, poet, writer, philosopher, musician, painter, educator - Tagore was a multifaceted genius and a renaissance man par excellence! The section on philosophical meditations gives a cross-section of the cosmic vision of his legendary mastermind. Every page of this book resonates his own words; "The world speaks to me in colours, my soul answers in music". Can't recomment this enough for anyone who is interested in literature or philosophy in general or the works of Tagore in particular.
11 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
Randy LeJeune
5.0 out of 5 stars Samples of Tagore's Output
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 1999
An excellent sampler of Tagore's work collected by his literary secretary. Contains poetry, conversations with Einstein and H.G. Wells, plays, fables, short stories, essays as well as educational, political and and biographical information. A must read for all Tagorophiles.
24 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
See more reviews
- ===
FROM <Nationalism in India> (1918)
India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity. . ..
We must recognize that it is providential that the West has come to India. And yet some one must show the East to the West, and convince the West that the East has her contribution to make to the history of civilization. India is no beggar of the West. And yet even though the West may think she is, I am not for thrusting off Western civilization and becoming segregated in our independence. Let us have a deep association. If providence wants England to be the channel of that communication, of that deeper association, I am willing to accept it with all humility. I have great faith in human nature, and I think the West will find its true mission. I speak bitterly of Western civilization when I am conscious that it is betraying its trust and thwarting its own purpose. The West must not make herself a curse to the world by using her power for her own selfish needs, but by teaching the ignorant and helping the weak, she should save herself from the worst danger that the strong is liable to incur, by making the feeble acquire power enough to resist her intrusion. And also she must not make her materialism to be the final thing, but must realize that she is doing a service in freeing the spiritual being from the tyranny of matter. . . .
• . . It was my conviction that what India most needed was constructive work coming from within herself. In this work we must take all risks and go on doing the duties which by right are ours, though in the teeth of persecution; winning moral victory at every step, by our tailure and suffering. We must show those who are over us that we have in ourselves the strength of moral power, the power to suffer for truth. Where we have nothing to show, we have only to beg. It would be mischievous if the gifts we wish for were granted to us at once, and I have told my countrymen, time and again, to combine for the work of creating opportunities to give vent to our spirit of self-sacrifice, and not for the purpose of begging. ...
Once again I draw your attention to the difficulties India has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. Her problem was the problem of the world in miniature. India is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. It is just the opposite of what Europe truly is, namely, one country made into many. Thus, Europe in its culture and growth has had the advantage of the strength of the many as well as the strength of the one. India, on the contrary, being naturally many, yet adventitiously one, has all along suffered from the looseness of its diversity and the feebleness of its unity. A true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden casily; but diversity is a many-cornered thing which has to be dragged and pushed with all force. Be it said to the credit of India that this diversity was not her own crea-tion; she has had to accept it as a fact from the beginning of her his-tory. • . •
... In her caste regulations India recognized differences, but not the mutability which is the law of life. In trying to avoid collisions
she set up boundaries of immovable walls, thus giving to her numerous races the negative benefit of peace and order but not the positive opportunity of expansion and movement. She accepted nature where it produces diversity, but ignored it where it uses that diversity for its world-game of infinite permutations and combinations. She treated life in all truth where it is manifold, but insulted it where it is ever moving. Therefore life departed from her social system and in its place she is worshiping with all ceremony the magnificent cage of countless compartments that she has manufactured. . . .
=====
<인도의 민족주의>로부터
인도는 진정한 민족주의를 느껴본 적이 없습니다. 비록 어린 시절부터 나는 국가에 대한 우상 숭배가 하나님과 인류에 대한 경외심보다 더 낫다고 배웠지만, 나는 그 가르침을 능가했다고 믿습니다. 그리고 우리 동포들이 교육에 맞서 싸우면 진정으로 인도를 얻을 것이라고 확신합니다. 국가는 인류의 이상보다 더 위대하다는 것을 가르칩니다. . ..
우리는 서양이 인도에 온 것이 섭리라는 것을 인식해야 합니다. 그럼에도 불구하고 누군가는 동양을 서양에 보여주어야 하며, 동양이 문명사에 기여한 바가 있다는 것을 서양에게 설득해야 합니다. 인도는 서양의 거지가 아닙니다. 그러나 서양에서는 그렇다고 생각할지 모르지만 나는 서구 문명을 밀어내고 독립을 위해 분리되는 것을 원하지 않습니다. 깊은 교제를 합시다. 만약 섭리가 영국이 그 의사소통과 더 깊은 연합의 통로가 되기를 원한다면 나는 그것을 온 겸손한 마음으로 기꺼이 받아들일 것입니다. 나는 인간 본성에 대한 큰 믿음을 갖고 있으며, 서양이 진정한 사명을 찾을 것이라고 생각합니다. 나는 서구 문명이 그 신뢰를 배반하고 그 자체의 목적을 좌절시키고 있음을 의식할 때 이를 씁쓸하게 말합니다. 서구는 스스로를 만들어서는 안 된다
그녀는 자신의 이기적인 필요를 위해 자신의 힘을 사용함으로써 세상에 저주를 주지만, 무지한 사람을 가르치고 약한 사람을 도와줌으로써 약한 사람이 저항할 수 있는 힘을 얻도록 함으로써 강자가 겪기 쉬운 최악의 위험으로부터 자신을 구해야 합니다. 그녀의 침입. 그리고 또한 물질주의를 최종적인 것으로 삼아서는 안 되며, 물질의 폭정으로부터 영적 존재를 해방시키는 봉사를 하고 있음을 깨달아야 합니다. . . .
• . . 인도에게 가장 필요한 것은 인도 내부에서 나오는 건설적인 작업이라는 것이 나의 확신이었습니다. 이 사업에서 우리는 모든 위험을 감수해야 하며 박해 속에서도 당연히 우리의 의무를 계속 수행해야 합니다. 우리의 노력과 고통을 통해 모든 단계에서 도덕적 승리를 거두십시오. 우리는 우리 위에 있는 사람들에게 우리 자신 안에 도덕적인 힘, 진리를 위해 고통받을 수 있는 힘이 있다는 것을 보여 주어야 합니다. 보여줄 것이 없으면 구걸만 하면 됩니다. 우리가 바라는 선물이 즉시 우리에게 주어진다면 그것은 장난이 될 것입니다. 그리고 나는 우리 동포들에게 우리의 희생 정신을 발산할 수 있는 기회를 만드는 일을 위해 단결하라고 여러 번 말했습니다. 구걸의 목적. ...
나는 인도가 직면해야 했던 어려움과 이를 극복하기 위한 인도의 투쟁에 다시 한 번 주목해 주시기 바랍니다. 그녀의 문제는 미니어처 세계의 문제였습니다. 인도는 지역이 너무 넓고 인종도 너무 다양합니다. 하나의 지리적 저장소에 많은 국가가 들어있습니다. 이는 유럽의 실제 모습, 즉 한 국가가 여러 국가로 이루어진 것과는 정반대입니다. 따라서 유럽은 문화와 성장에 있어서 한 사람의 힘뿐만 아니라 다수의 힘이라는 이점도 누려왔습니다. 이와 반대로 인도는 자연적으로는 많지만 우연히 하나이기 때문에 다양성이 느슨하고 통일성이 약하다는 문제로 인해 고통을 받아 왔습니다. 진정한 연합은 둥근 지구본과 같아서, 부담 없이 굴러가며 자신의 짐을 짊어집니다. 그러나 다양성은 온 힘을 다해 끌고 밀어야 하는 다방면의 문제입니다. 이러한 다양성이 인도 자신의 창조물이 아니라는 것은 인도의 공로입니다. 그녀는 역사의 시작부터 그것을 사실로 받아들여야만 했습니다. • . •
... 인도는 카스트 제도에서 차이를 인정했지만, 삶의 법칙인 가변성은 인정하지 않았습니다. 충돌을 피하려고 노력하면서
그녀는 움직일 수 없는 벽의 경계를 설정하여 수많은 종족에게 평화와 질서라는 부정적인 혜택을 주었지만 확장과 이동의 긍정적인 기회는 주지 않았습니다. 그녀는 자연이 다양성을 생산하는 곳에서는 그것을 받아들였지만, 무한한 순열과 조합의 세계 게임을 위해 그 다양성을 사용하는 곳에서는 그것을 무시했습니다. 그녀는 삶이 다양한 곳에서는 모든 진리를 다루었지만, 그것이 움직이는 곳에서는 모욕했습니다. 그러므로 삶은 그녀의 사회 체계에서 벗어났고, 그 자리에서 그녀는 자신이 제작한 셀 수 없이 많은 칸막이로 이루어진 장엄한 새장을 모든 의식을 다해 숭배하고 있습니다. . . .
=====
