Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Sukanta Chaudhuri/
Editor: Sukanta Chaudhuri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 261
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195686799
Description
This volume provides readers – children and adults alike – with a window to a world rich in fantasy, wit, and expression. It extends the image of Tagore in the world’s eyes, and offers readers a rich insight into one of the most attractive, yet, least explored aspects of Rabindranath’s life and imagination.
‘The Oxford Tagore Translations’ is a major series undertaken by Oxford University Press in collaboration with Visva-Bharati, the university founded by Tagore. It aims to present a selection of his major writings including his poetry, fiction and non-fiction prose, in volumes grouped by subject and genre.
Being a planned series, ‘The Oxford Tagore Translations’ has the benefit of a uniform editorial policy and a shared, though, not identical approach among its panel of translators, who include established writers and academics. Leading Tagore scholars are actively involved with the series as advisers and commentators. While the Introduction, notes and critical apparatus represent the best of Tagore scholarship, the translations present the cultural and linguistic ambience of the original in versatile, readable English that meets the demands of the international reader.
This book extends the image of Rabindranath Tagore in the world’s eyes, and offers readers a rich insight into one of the most attractive, yet, least explored aspects of Rabindranath’s life and imagination.
Rabindranath, the poet and sage, appears here as a writer for children in a number of veins – comic, whimsical, tender, serious. Among the variety of verses to be found here are delicate pieces originally written for an innovative Bengali textbook; delightful nonsense poetry and presentations of a child’s desires and fantasies; and narrative and didactic poems as simple as they are sober and unpatronizing. These verses appear alongside a range of other writing: short plays and sketches; short stories; chatty tales where everyday life blends with fantasy and witty philosophizing; and the more sustained fantasy of ‘That Man’. The collection is rounded off with a selection from Rabindranath’s accounts of his own childhood.
The book also contains a wealth of illustrations by Rabindranath himself, his circle and the members of the Shantiniketan community. All in all, it constitutes a treasury of funny, colorful, thoughtfully writing touched by the mind of an all-time genius.
The translations were made by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Sukhendu Ray and Suvro Chatterjee. Sukanta Chaudhuri, the General Editor of the Oxford Tagore Translations series, has also contributed the Introduction and detailed notes. This volume will provide readers – children and adults alike – with a window to a world rich in fantasy, wit, and expression.
Contents
Introduction
At the Start
Grandfather's Holiday
VERSES
Flowers
Our Little River
The Voyage
The Runaway City
Bhotan-Mohan
The Flying Machine
The Blaze
The Tiger
The Palm Tree
Sunday
The Unresolved
The Stargazer
The Hero
The Wise Brother
Big and Small
Astronomy
STORIES
The Scientists
The King's Palace
The Big News
The Fairy
More-Than-True
The Rat's Feast
Wishes Come True
PLAYS
The Welcdome
The Poet and the Pauper
The Ordeals of Fame
The Extended Family
The Free Lunch
THAT MAN
MORE VERSES
Moving Pictures
At Sixes and Sevens
The Invention of Shoes
The King's Son and the King's Daughter
Fragments
Bhajahari
The Builder
Madho
Two Bighas of Land
The Magic Stone
The Fake Fortress
The Captive Hero
The Representative
The Beggar's Bounty
MY CHILDHOOD
DESTRUCTION
Explanations
Notes on Texts, Dates, and Publication
List of Illustrations