THE PROLIFIC ENGLISH WRITER

Many readers of Rabindranāth Tagore might be surprised by the extent of this Bengali author's English writings. Outside the two Bengals, those who know of his Nobel Prize know also of the English Gitanjali, the book largely responsible for it. Some might also know of the misleadingly titled and unrepresentative Macmillan volume, Collected Poems and Plays. However, many people will be astonished by the four folio-sized Sahitya Akademi volumes, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, with over 3,200 pages of text. And even these are not comprehensive in their coverage.

The extent seems even more astonishing when one considers that Tagore started writing regularly in English only in his fifties. In fact, the English Gitanjali (1912) was his first real creative venture in the language. Its spectacular success led to more volumes of poetry in English to meet the demand in the West. It also resulted in a substantial correspondence in English with eminent admirers from across the globe. His growing fame made him an international celebrity by the mid-1910s. He began to deliver speeches and lectures all over the world, of course in English, which too ended up in print. He also engaged in public conversations and spoke up for many causes internationally in English.

Extent apart, the range of his English writings becomes apparent from a glance at the four volumes of English Writings. Volume 1 comprises poems, chiefly ‘translations’ diverging from the Bengali to varying degrees, but a few entirely original compositions (sometimes with later Bengali versions). Many poems are patchworks, recalling snatches of Bengali (often from more than one original) alongside passages that seem original to the English.

Volume 2 collects ten plays, four short stories, prose essays compiled in volume form, and talks from his visits to Japan and China in the 1910s and 1920s. The other two volumes are truly, as subtitled, miscellanies. They encompass essays, again sometimes in volume-length collections; lectures and addresses delivered in India and abroad; and occasional and miscellaneous texts – letters, speeches, tributes, prefaces, reviews, and musings, with more poems and plays, not to mention the Nobel Prize acceptance speech.