Glimpses of Bengal: Selected from the Letters of Sir Rabindranath Tagore, 1885 to 1895
Glimpses of Bengal: Selected from the Letters of Sir Rabindranath Tagore, 1885 to 1895
These are the letters of Rabindranath Tagore before the world knew his name. Written between 1885 and 1895, when he was a young man in his twenties and thirties living in the villages of Bengal, they capture a poet discovering his voice far from the glare of fame. Tagore himself later reflected that these were "the days when, under the shelter of obscurity, I enjoyed the greatest freedom my life has ever known." Through his lyrical observations, we see Bengal as he saw it: the shimmer of riverbanks at dusk, the vibrancy of village life, the philosophical weight of ordinary moments. These are not the writings of a mature Nobel laureate but of a young man wrestling with time, nature, and his own emerging artistic consciousness. Reading these letters is like overhearing a genius talk to himself in the dark, before history had any expectations of him. For anyone who has ever wanted to know what shaped one of the twentieth century's most luminous minds, this collection offers something rare: access to the forming of a poet, unfiltered and intimate.
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“Consciously or unconsciously, I may have done many things that were un-true, but I have never uttered anything false in my poetry ⎯ that is the sanctuary where the deepest truths of my life find refuge.””
— Rabindranath Tagore
“Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us to maintain the strength of will to do. We get no help in any real sense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we might gain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, or feeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or of really and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work, smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotion they grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns for a full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so many shadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world.””
— Rabindranath Tagore
“I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself before my mind ⎯ nothing else seems to have happened of late.But to reach twenty-seven ⎯ is that a trifling thing? ⎯ To pass the meridian of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty? ⎯ Thirty ⎯ that is to say maturity ⎯ the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage. But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it still feels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy.Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected of you ⎯ that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot? Are we to put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what we shall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil which the blindfold, mill turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you." It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waiting expectantly any longer. While I was under age they trustfully gave me credit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty. But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterly incompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond a snatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have been unable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will turn their wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse these expectations?Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine Bysakh morning I awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that I had stepped into my twenty-seventh year.””
— Rabindranath Tagore
“yet I also yearn for a little sheltered nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for flight.””
— Rabindranath Tagore
