Gitanjali

Song Offerings

A collection of prose
translations made by the
author from the original
Bengali

With an introduction by
W. B. YEATS

to WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN

--

INTRODUCTION

A few days ago I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of
medicine, 'I know no German, yet if a translation of a German
poet had moved me, I would go to the British Museum and find
books in English that would tell me something of his life, and of
the history of his thought. But though these prose translations
from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for
years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of the
movements of thought that have made them possible, if some Indian
traveller will not tell me.' It seemed to him natural that I
should be moved, for he said, 'I read Rabindranath every day, to
read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.'
I said, 'An Englishman living in London in the reign of Richard
the Second had he been shown translations from Petrarch or from
Dante, would have found no books to answer his questions, but
would have questioned some Florentine banker or Lombard merchant
as I question you. For all I know, so abundant and simple is
this poetry, the new renaissance has been born in your country
and I shall never know of it except by hearsay.' He answered,
'We have other poets, but none that are his equal; we call this
the epoch of Rabindranath. No poet seems to me as famous in
Europe as he is among us. He is as great in music as in poetry,
and his songs are sung from the west of India into Burma wherever
Bengali is spoken. He was already famous at nineteen when he
wrote his first novel; and plays when he was but little older,
are still played in Calcutta. I so much admire the completeness
of his life; when he was very young he wrote much of natural
objects, he would sit all day in his garden; from his twenty-fifth
year or so to his thirty-fifth perhaps, when he had a great
sorrow, he wrote the most beautiful love poetry in our language';
and then he said with deep emotion, 'words can never express what
I owed at seventeen to his love poetry. After that his art grew
deeper, it became religious and philosophical; all the
inspiration of mankind are in his hymns. He is the first among
our saints who has not refused to live, but has spoken out of
Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.' I may have
changed his well-chosen words in my memory but not his thought.
'A little while ago he was to read divine service in one of our
churches--we of the Brahma Samaj use your word 'church' in
English--it was the largest in Calcutta and not only was it
crowded, but the streets were all but impassable because