Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems [Hardcover]

Rabindranath Tagore (Author), Wendy Barker (Author), Saranindranath Tagore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rabindranath Tagore's poetry is notoriously difficult to transport intact from Bengali to English, even when the poet himself was doing the translating. Yet in a new selection of Tagore's Final Poems, written as the poet anticipated death (which came in 1941), Wendy Barker (Way of Whiteness) and Saranindranath Tagore, a great-nephew of Rabindranath and professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, have succeeded wonderfully. The collection is padded with the translators' long preface and introduction, but the 50-odd pages of poems are rife with hard clarity: "Sorrow's dark night over and over/ has come to my door./ Its only visible weapons / pain's deformed poses, fear's monstrous forms / play out their deceptions in darkness."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The great Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Tagore (1861-1941) was a versatile and unceasingly creative man who wrote in every literary form, composed songs, painted, and achieved renown as an educational reformer. In his introduction to the first English translation of selections from Tagore's last four books, Saranindranath Tagore, the poet's great-grandson and translator, celebrates the poet's life and, along with cotranslator Barker, discusses the difficulties involved in translating Tagore's brilliantly nuanced Bengali into English. But such concerns fall away in the presence of these exquisite poems. Written while Tagore was in extreme pain and moving slowly but inexorably toward death, they are compact, elegant, contemplative, and riveting lyrics that pierce the quiet realm of planets and stars, then dive back to the flowery, noisome Earth, where beauty and ugliness, life and death entwine. Tagore, poignant and wise, ponders love, fear, time, memory, and the porousness of the self in poems of wonder, sorrow, and solace. Hopefully, these precious final works will inspire renewed interest in Tagore's entire oeuvre. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 104 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller; lst ed edition (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807614882
• ISBN-13: 978-0807614884
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No rage against the dying of light, December 28, 2001

By 

Uday Roy (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems (Hardcover)

Inheriting a famous family name means nothing unless the bearer of this burden strives to achieve things that are extra-ordinary. I salute & congratulate Saranindranath (Tagore) and the co-author Wendy Barker for taking up the immense challenge of translating Rabindranath's Final Poems. Authors successfully carry the sacred torch of translating Bengali Literature to reach out to the world body in the new millenium that was once ignited by Tagore himself. It is interesting to rediscover this "mystic" poet from India who once became the sensation of America. In 1912, the famous Chicago based "Poetry" magazine ran an issue on Tagore before his visit to the Americas. Tagore became the Poet's Poet and Writer's Writer of many literary protagonists of west such as W B Yeats, Robert Frost and Ezra Pound. It is all the more befitting to publish this book in a time when the world is discovering the great literary genre of Indian English through the works of Rushdie, Roy and Naipaul.

It is a bit unusual to have a 40-page preface (by Wendy Barker) and introduction (by Saranindranath) in poetry book that contains only 59 pages of poems. But after reading these prologues I am convinced that they were necessary. Particularly Saranindranath's lucid explanation of Rabindranath's complex religious philosophy is very interesting. Before his death, Tagore wrote the Final Poems from his sick bed during 1940 and 1941. Through these poems, we understand and feel the maturity of a great genius of all times who explored the human inquiry through thousands of songs & poems, hundreds of essays, short stories, numerous novels & paintings. The Final Poems are divided into three sections: Sickbed, Birthday and Last poems. Being a serious reader of world literature, I completely appreciate the difficulties the translators were subjected to. However one can still smell the aroma original rose in many simple verses such as...Words of emptiness rise, compassion-filled, a meaning beyond understanding...Please read the rest, you will be enlightened.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Final poems by Tagore, April 3, 2007

By 

M. Hill "Poetrylover" (Sacramento, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems (Hardcover)

I cannot recommend a book more than this one. I have read and re read this book so many times. This man's insight, joy, acceptance and fear of his impending death comes forth brilliantly in the Last Poems. Please read them, and read them again. I believe I will get his other poetry as well. WOW and Wendy Barker's translation captures the spirit of the author's work. She has to be commended as well.