Tagore Final Poems

by Tagore, Rabindranath; Barker, Wendy

• ISBN13: 9780807614884
• ISBN10: 0807614882
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-17
• Publisher: George Braziller Inc.

Summary

The brilliant and immensely prolific Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is known the world over for his accomplished works in an astoundingly wide range of genres: fiction, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays. During the final year of his life, while suffering from the painful illness that would eventually end in his death, Tagore completed four volumes of poetry that expressed the emotional turmoil of facing one's own imminent extinction. Appearing here for the first time in English is a selection of these extraordinary poems that captures as closely as possible the beauty and subtlety of Tagore's original Bengali verses. A marked departure from Tagore's earlier work, these poems are, as the translators say, "so compact that it is almost as if [he]...were going beyond words, as if language no longer suffices, and yet, of course, the language radiates meaning." Poised between life and death, Tagore is awed by the beauty of this world and glimpses in it the presence of the infinite ("Such splendor illuminates a deathlessness/ hidden in the everyday by our senses' limits"). At other times, "alone by sorrow's last window," he is gripped by the sheer terror of experiencing the relentless approach of death. Tagore was so weak at the end that he had to dictate his poems. Although the pain was often excruciating and the fear and anger overwhelming, he still exulted in life. In these poems, from his deathbed, he conveys the intense joy of living and his ultimate triumph over death.

Author Biography

Saranindranath Tagore is the great-grandson of the painter Abanindranath Tagore, nephew of Rabindranath. The Sculptor Speaks, a documentary film for which he wrote the text, was recently produced in India. Previously an associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he is now an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Wendy Barker
Introduction	xix
Saranindranath Tagore
FROM Sickbed
Under this vast universe	5	(2)
Deep night-interior	7	(1)
Ancient dark-swept night	8	(2)
If the long painful night	10	(1)
I dozed off	11	(1)
Waking in the morning	12	(1)
Recovering, welcomed	13	(1)
I have no faith in my works	14	(1)
Open the door	15	(1)
As after a wind storm	16	(1)
One day, I saw, in an ashen moment of dusk	17	(1)
When I don't see you, pain weaves	18	(3)
FROM Recovery
Empty patient's room	21	(2)
A bell rings in the distance	23	(3)
Distant, fragile, pale blue of sky	26	(1)
Cruel night sneaks in, breaks	27	(1)
Alone by sorrow's last window	28	(1)
In the space of vast creation	29	(1)
Daily, in the morning, this faithful dog	30	(1)
Distant Himalayas' orange groves'	31	(1)
This lazy bed, languorous life	32	(1)
In vast consciousness	33	(1)
Dusk drops down slowly--bindings loosed one by one	34	(1)
From time to time I feel the moment for travel has come	35	(4)
FROM on my Birthday
As I enter my eightieth year	39	(2)
In the afternoon, invited to the birthday	41	(1)
Ripping the breast off my birthday	42	(1)
Like clusters of foam	43	(1)
In the mountain's blue and the horizon's blue	44	(1)
Brutal war's blood-stained teeth	45	(2)
Run-down house, deserted courtyard	47	(2)
From the vase one by one	49	(1)
This world's vast nest	50	(1)
This river-tended life	51	(4)
FROM Last Poems
Death-eclipse, that demon	55	(1)
Sun-heat drones	56	(1)
I'm lost in the middle of my birthday	57	(1)
The first day's sun	58	(1)
Sorrow's dark night over and over	59	(2)
Notes on the poems	61
Saranindranath Tagore