Customer Reviews

On the Shores of Eternity: Poems from Tagore on Immortality and Beyond

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book begins with a narrative written by Dr. Chopra. His words were humble as he noted that he dared to tamper with the wisdom of Tagore. When I passed through his words and started reading the poetry of Tagore, I was mesmerized. The poetry is not really about death, but the immortality of life which begins each day when the eyes are opened and ends each day with the onset of sleep. It is a book which addresses how we, as humans, can look at what is going on around us and then decide what choice(s)to make. What is so incredible is that, each day, we are given the chance to make new choices for the same old problems. (Just like in the movie GroundHog Day starring Bill Murrey.) The trick is to selectively forget how yesterday's choices were unsuccessful and painful as we accept, within our bones, not our minds, our new choices. Conversely there are those of us who refuse to allow the beauty of a successful choice to preceed us as we broadcast our success(es) in bright primary colors. In our glee, we stamp out the memory of that natural process which allowed us to step into the universe and be filled with the knowledge which is aready there; knowledge which is just patiently waiting to be used.

Most of the poems in this book were translated by Tagore himself with the help of Yeats. On the Shores of Eternity complements rather than replaces Gitanjali. Especially interesting are the fragments from Tagore's notebooks which are not in Gitanjali. E.g. "Words cling to the dead like dust / Silence washes their souls." Tagore's poetry still shows him to be a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature.

On the other hand, I was not impressed by the introduction by Chopra ... whether it is helpful to you will depend upon your background in mysticism and literature. He makes too much of Tagore's friendly relationship with death - St. Francis wrote of "our Sister Bodily Death". Tagore's mysticism is in the long tradition of the collective world - east or west - his uniqueness is the superb poetry in which he shares his experience; this is not the emphasis of the introduction. But who cares - the poems are well worth pausing over.

I confess I had never read Tagore before and I was struck. This is the highest form of poetry. I am not sure how much is lost in translation, but with no hope I will ever read the original in Bengali this English version is as good as it is ever going to get for me. Poetry that is a bit cryptic, but open to readers making inroads if they are willing to make the effort. It is not easy and requires multiple readings, but it become penetrable and welcoming with time. The introduction helps a lot, while I agree with some other reviewers that the poems are more about eternal life than death.

The book is elegantly bound and has a beautiful hard cover, which explains the rather steep price, but it's worth it!

I love the poetry of Rumi, Han Shan, Kabir, Walt Whitman, and Ryokan, and although Tagore writes on similar themes, I have yet to find a translation of his poetry that I like.

In this book Tagore's poems appear clunky and disjoint, and I suspect it's a translation problem.

I enjoy Deepak Chopra and have great respect for him, but this book is less than I hoped for.

I was very disappointed in this translation. Bringing the language into modern form distorted the meanings and lost the beauty and simplicity of the original. I recommend Gitanjali if you want to experience real Tagore.