Poetry and Rabindranath Tagore
Bonding of a Hundred Years
Subrata Kumar Das
Poetry, published from Chicago of the United States, has a good relation with the Bengali littérateurs since its inception. The century-old relationship started with the publication of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the first Non-European to receive the Nobel Literature Award in 1913, in the December issue of 1912. The pieces of Tagore with the title ‘Poems’ were sent by the Poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) to Harriet Monroe (1860-1936), the editor of this newly established poetry journal. Pound himself submitted a small article for that issue too. In some later issues, more poems of Tagore were published. Along with all those, in January of the year 1959, the journal published a special issue on India, of which many of the contributors hailed from the Bengal. In the year 1961, the Poetry published a long comment on Tagore by the reputed American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963).
The history of Pound’s meeting the Bengali poet and sending his poems to the editor of Poetryhas been sketched in the sixth volume of the much-hailed biography of Tagore named Robijiboni (Life of Tagore) by Prashanta kumar Paul (1938-2007) published in 1993. With full details the author has narrated those days. It is now a well known fact that Pound was one of the enthusiasts who played vitally in the Gitanjali-days before the Nobel declaration. Gitanjalior Song Offerings impressed many of the English-language poets including Ezra Pound. In a letter to Monroe, Pound wrote ‘Also I’ll try to get some of the poems of the very great Bengali Poet, Rabindranath Tagore. They are going to be
the sensation of the winter. … They are translated by the author into very beautiful English prose, with mastery of cadence’.1 The six poems by Tagore that were published in the third issue i.e. the December issue included:
1. Thou hast made me known to friends …
2. No more noisy loud words from me…
3. On the day when the lots bloomed…
4. By all means they try to hold me…
5. I was not aware of the moment…
6. Thou art the sky and thou art the nest…
It may be noted that Poetry was the journal that published Tagore’s poems for the first time in America. In that issue five poems were also included written by the famous Irish poet of England William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). Pound wrote in his small piece that ‘The six poems now published were chosen from a hundred lyrics about to appear in book form. They might just as well have been any other six, for they do not represent a summit of attainment but and average’ which actually was a genesis of a long critique by Pound on Tagore. In a note to Tagore, Pound wrote: ‘The little notice in “Poetry” was nothing. As you can see, the space in the magazine permits t the briefest sort of review’ which came true in the March Issue of 1913 in the Fortnightly Review. It is also known to all that in the same journal Pound wrote a review of the newly published best selling book Gitanjali in the November Issue.
The English version of Gitanjali was first published by the India Society in November 1912 and due to its huge demand it was followed by a cheaper edition from the Macmillan in March 1913 with many further editions for its popularity. The author of Robi jiboni has confessed that he did not get the opportunity to access the issues of Poetry; rather his source was Katherine Henn’s (1940- ) Rabindranath Tagore: A
Bibliography (1985). But the online availability shows that in more three issues poems of Tagore were published.
In the June, issue of 1913, more fourteen poems were included with the title ‘Poems’. The pieces by Tagore were:
1. I found a few old letters…
2. We both live in the same village…
3. Sing the song of the moment…
4. O you mad, you superbly drunk!
5. With a glance of your eyes…
6. I asked of Destiny…
7. Tell me if this is all true…
8. Amidst the rush and roar of life…
9. Lest I should know you…
10. Come as you are…
11. Leave off your works, bride…
12. My soul is alight…
13. Keep me fully glad…
14. Over the green and yellow…
In the December issue of the same year, Poetry published more five poems by Tagore including: ‘The Temple of Gold’, ‘The Price’, ‘Union’, ‘The Gift’, ‘The Tryst’. In the September issue of 1916 it published some small poems under the title ‘Epigrams’. It could be noted here that Tagore published his epigrammatic poems in two volumes: one in 1916 with the title Stray Birds and the other in 1928 with Fireflies, both from New
York.
Now, let us take a look at the India Issue of Poetry which included a poem with the title ‘I Will Not Let You Go’ by Tagore, translated by Humayun Kabir (1906-1967). Along with that, poems by noted Bengali poets like Buddhadeva Bose (1908-1978), Rajlukshmee Debee (1927-2005), Asoke Vijay Raha (1910-1990), Karuna Nidhan Bandypadhyay (1877-1955), Naresh Guha (1924-2009), Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), Sudhindranath Datta (1901-1960), Amiya Chakravarty (1901-1986) and Humayun Kabir himself were included there. Three of the poems were translated by Lila Ray (1910-1992) and the poems of Bose, Debee, Das, Kabir, Datta and Chakravarty were of their own translations.
In 1961 the birth centenary of Tagore was observed in many parts of the world and on that occasion Poetry did a great job by publishing a long comment from Frost. Recorded on 19 April 1961, the comment was published in the November issue with the title ‘Remarks on the Occasion of the Tagore Centenary’. In that comment, Frost has recognized Tagore as a nationalist first, then as a follower of ‘Art for art’s sake’, though Frost mentioned that ‘He [Tagore] was not afraid of that’. According to Frost, ‘He had a great deal of love of all humanity; he loved everybody but his enemies. And he was quite positive about some of them. It was very interesting to hear him – very, very positive. But he had a kind of indulgence of his enemies’ (p.114). Frost also mentioned that Tagore talks a great deal about God. And thus in the long 14-page comment Frost talks much on Tagore and many related issues such as Tagore’s use of free verse. He asserted that ‘I don’t know how to read free verse; I’m a sing-song man. And I always want meter and all that. I can read straight prose, but I’m all bothered by this that’s somewhere between. I think they meant to intone; you “intone” when you don’t know what else to do with anything’ (p. 116). In this regard it could also be mentioned that in the voluminous Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume 1861-1961 edited by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) published on the same occasion of the centenary from New Delhi an article by Frost was included titled ‘Tagore’s Poetry overflowed national boundaries’.
It could be noted herewith that Frost in Poetry, commented, ‘Now I have interests with Ireland, have been friends with the poets that made Ireland. I knew them quite well. And I knew best of all an Indian, Rabindranath Tagore’ (p. 106) which illuminates the idea that Tagore met Frost in his lifetime. He writes that he knew Tagore a good deal through Mrs. William Vaughn Moody (1857-1932) fifty years ago. The days at Moody’s have been sketched well in the biography of Mrs. Moody called A House in Chicago across fourteen pages.2 Krishna Kripalani (1907-1992), another biographer of Tagore, writes in his book that Tagore met Frost in 1912 in London and in 1930 in Massachusetts.3 Similar information could be found in Ochena Rabindranath(Unknown Tagore, Kolkata 1984) by Hirendranath Datta (1903-1995) also.4
In the March issue of 1968, Poetry published a review with the title ‘From the Bengali’ that focused on three books including One Hundred and One: Poems by Rabindranath Tagore published in 1966 from Bombay (now Mumbai) edited by Humayun Kabir and Moon, For What Do You Wait? Poems by Tagore, published in 1967 from New York and edited by Richard Lewis.
Poetry completed its sixty years in 1972 and on that occasion it published ‘Comment of Six Decades’ which included Ezra Pound’s ‘Tagore’s Poems’ which was previously published in the December issue of the year 1912. Thus through the century, since the emergence of the Poetry, Rabindranath Tagore was a regular phenomenon and we believe on the centenary of the journal in 2012, he will remain with the same status as he is across the world on his 150th birth anniversary in 2011.
1 The Letters of Ezra Pound: 1907-1941, ed. by D. D. Paige, London, 1951, p 44
2 A House in Chicago, Olivia Howard Dunbar, Chicago, 1947, Second Impression 1948, pp 93-106
3 Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography, London, 1962, Second Revised Edition, Kolkata, 1980, p. 374
4 Ochena Rabindranath(Unknown Tagore), Hirendranath Datta, Kolkata, 1984, p 119
