Gitanjali: Song Offerings (Paperback - 2022)

The initial fame of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 was due to Gitanjali which was published from London in 1912, although Tagore had published another Gitanjali in Bengali in 1910.

Deeply rooted in the Indian soil and steeped in the Upanishadic thoughts as the poems were, nevertheless the reception of the book in the West was simply overwhelming. Great poets like W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound sang paean to it. Yeats was visibly excited over the arrival of a great poet, whom he hailed as “greater than any of us”, while Pound too was moved by “the saner stillness” of the poems as opposed to “our clanguor of mechanisms”.

While eminent critics have put on record their genuine admiration of the translation through the past hundred years, devotion of the heart and simplicity of the song seem to be mutually complementary in the poems. The simplicity may have been informed by the very mood and tenor of most of the poems, which is one of utter and humble submission; a happy contentment of surrender and union that brings him to the realization that the loudness and flashiness of ‘ornaments’ are not only redundant but out of tune at such a moment.

Gitanjali, with its ideas, images, its music of utterance, its divine joy, and also its occasional dark clouds of sorrow and anguish, seems to run through the interstices of Tagore’s stories, plays, songs, dance-drama, and even non-fictional prose till the end. After going through the volume every time the reader too would (like Wilfred Owen) perhaps feel like singing in unison with the poet “what I have seen is unsurpassable”.

The new edition of Gitanjali: Song Offerings will offer a stimulating reading to the lovers of Tagore all over the world. A comprehensive Introduction has been given to provide deeper insights into the poet and his great work.

Dr Mohit K. Ray, recently retired, is one of the seniormost Professors of English in the country. He has five books and a large number of research papers published in scholarly journals in India and abroad. Professor Ray has edited several anthologies of critical studies, including two volumes on Rabindranath Tagore and one on Translation Studies. He also edits The Atlantic Critical Review, an international quarterly of global circulation. He is at present working as the Chief Editor of Atlantic Publishers & Distributors Pvt. Ltd.

Dr Rama Kundu, a full Professor of English, in Burdwan University, West Bengal, is the author of nine books. She edits The Atlantic Literary Review and has also edited several anthologies of research papers including one on Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World. She has written a large number of research papers published in scholarly journals and anthologies in India and abroad.

Prof. Ray and Prof. Kundu have jointly translated Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora (APD 2008).