Show Yourself To My Soul [Paperback]

Rabindranath Tagore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2002

Out of Bengal and the Hindu spiritual tradition comes a Nobel prize-winning mystical poet whose time for broad, popular acceptance has come. William Butler Yeats fell in love with these poems almost a 100 years ago, the Nobel Committee honored them with their literature prize in 1913 and just recently The Utne Reader cited Tagore as one of today's most overlooked spiritual writers. This new edition is important because its lyrical translation has been made from Tagore's original Bengali and because it makes the entire collection of 157 Gitanjali, or "song offerings" available to a wider audience for the first time. Rabindranath Tagore wrote with the insight and emotion that so characterizes Kahlil Gibran, with the mystical passion that has made Jalaluddin Rumi so popular and with a simplicity and depth that remains fresh and attractive to today's seekers.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Poet and pacifist Tagore (1861-1941) is the mostly forgotten winner of the Nobel Prize in literature (1913). Certainly, no one questions his worthiness, but outside of the Bengali-speaking world, he wins very few readers. This work is a new translation of his most famous and popular work, the Gitanjali, a collection of almost na ve prayers to God in poetic form. After many years of Rumi and Rilke, American readers may be ready for the sweet insights of the Bengal poet. For most collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Bengali

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Sorin Books; 1 edition (July 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189373255X
• ISBN-13: 978-1893732551
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous poems and translation, April 9, 2004

By 

Brenda Jo Mengeling (Davis, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Show Yourself To My Soul (Paperback)

Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore is a series of poems exposing Tagore's search for union with the divine. Tagore, a Bengali Hindu, writes with great beauty, emotion and simplicity. Reading the poems in order (there are 157 poems, each about a page or less long) shows the waxing and waning cycles of Tagore's spiritual life. Sometimes God is present to Tagore, only to leave later. A Christian spiritual seeker myself, I could easily relate to the pendulum swing that Tagore writes about: the joys, frustrations and patience. Tagore himself made an English translation of these poems for which he won the Nobel prize for literature in the early 20th century (the first non-European to win the literature prize). Here the translation is by a Catholic monk who spent most of his adult life in Bengal, and many scholars think his translation is better than Tagore's, due to his absolute fluency in both languages. I have read beautiful poems by many spiritual writers, and I found Tagore's Gitanjali the most approachable and meaningful. Highest recommendation.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The God of his life, September 20, 2008

By 

Peter M. Schogol (Lexington, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Show Yourself To My Soul (Paperback)

I can't read Bengali so I have no way of knowing how faithful Br. James Talarovic was to Rabindranath Tagore's GITANJALI. I have read other translations, even Tagore's own, and at the very least I can say that Talarovic's ring true; that is to say they put words to the dark nights and twilit days of my spirit. Whether this is because Talarovic is a poet in his own right, or because he gave himself to the Bengali language (see his Bengali for Foreigners: Basic Grammar, Basic Vocabulary With Sentences, Secondary Vocabulary, English-Bengali-Transliteration), Br. James was truly in love with Tagore's soul so much that he translated his GITIMALYA and GITALI as well (although at present only the GITANJALI is in print).

I can't recommend Br. James Talarovic's translation of the GITANJALI enough. Besides the quality of the poetry we are indebted to Talarovic for doing what even Rabindranath Tagore didn't do, which was to translate the entire GITANJALI rather than parts of it. SHOW YOURSELF TO MY SOUL is, for me, as edifying as any translation of Rumi, and -- I would venture to say -- equally as profound.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tagore's misuse of the word God and Lord, March 1, 2009

By 

Jim Roberts "retired astrophysicist" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Show Yourself To My Soul (Paperback)

I read Tagore's translation into English of his Bengali song lyrics back in the 1960s. The way he uses God and Lord in that translation, which I no longer have a copy of, struck me as quite at odds with what he actually meant. He never believed in the Western idea of some objective God controlling the Universe, but only in an experience you either have or have not had, rather what I think Jesus was actually referring to. Having had that experience part-way when I was 11, and Tagore's having had apparently the complete experience when he was 17, his songs seem to me to be his struggle to have the experience again, which it seems he never did. I certainly haven't. This translation gives a somewhat better idea of what Tagore meant. There is a fuller philosophical explanation in the Northrup book "The Meeting of East and West". In my elementary astronomy classes, I usually gave students a choice on the final between a few objective questions or commenting on one or two of Tagore's lyrics as they felt them, which to me is as important as the color-magnitude diagram.