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Tagore's poems remembered by Chinese
By Anurag Priyadarshi |
April 30, 2010, Friday
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ON my recent visit to China, I had the most interesting conversation about poetry and literature.
At the swanky Shanghai airport, as I waited for my connecting flight to New Delhi, I met Shu, a Western-educated octogenarian university teacher, who was deeply in love with the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a poet, novelist, musician, and painter who was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Tagore is probably the only litterateur who had written the national anthems of two countries - "Jana Gana Man" for India and "Amar Shonar Bangla" for Bangladesh.
Shu had met "the bearded man with soft eyes" with her father, when he had visited China to deliver a series of lectures in 1929.
Tagore, fondly called Gurudev (the teacher), is a household name in Bengal, and his Rabindra Sangeet (Rabindra's music) is melodious and emotive.
Most Indians have heard about Tagore, and some of us have read Gitanjali or Gora; but this Chinese scholar knew more about him than most Indians.
She found Gitanjali profoundly sensitive, fresh and charming as she recited the inspiring lines of "Where the mind is without fear."
"Silence is the crux of his paintings," she told me, as she explained Tagore's immense attraction to primitive art, the distortion of form and the abstract use of colors.
"Some people believe that he was partially color blind," she added mischievously.
I was already homesick after a week of traveling in China, but Tagore was made of sterner stuff.
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore visited more than 30 countries in five continents.
Being a frequent flyer, he was hosted by many of his contemporaries in Europe and America, including Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Romain Rolland.
Tagore visited China twice in 1924 and 1929, and left a lasting impression here by espousing the universal spirit and the welfare of mankind.
Shu informed me that Tagore was popular in China and that his poems were first translated into Chinese in 1915, and published in influential publications of the time like the Xin Qingnian (The New Youth).
Chinese poets like Chen Duxiu, Guo Moruo, Hu Shi and Xu Zhimo were influenced by Tagore in those days.
Numerous references to Chinese civilization and contemporary Chinese life and culture are scattered in the writings of Tagore.
In 2006, The People's Daily had elected him as one of the 50 foreign personalities who have influenced modern Chinese thinking.
This year is the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore, and the Chinese government is honoring the great Indian poet by establishing his statue in the former French Concession area of Shanghai, and displaying a documentary on Tagore to visitors at the World Expo.
(The author is a global Indian, an environmentalist and winner of the United Nations Global Award for Chemical Leasing. Shanghai Daily condensed his article. He can be contacted at apriyadarshi9@gmail.com)
At the swanky Shanghai airport, as I waited for my connecting flight to New Delhi, I met Shu, a Western-educated octogenarian university teacher, who was deeply in love with the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a poet, novelist, musician, and painter who was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Tagore is probably the only litterateur who had written the national anthems of two countries - "Jana Gana Man" for India and "Amar Shonar Bangla" for Bangladesh.
Shu had met "the bearded man with soft eyes" with her father, when he had visited China to deliver a series of lectures in 1929.
Tagore, fondly called Gurudev (the teacher), is a household name in Bengal, and his Rabindra Sangeet (Rabindra's music) is melodious and emotive.
Most Indians have heard about Tagore, and some of us have read Gitanjali or Gora; but this Chinese scholar knew more about him than most Indians.
She found Gitanjali profoundly sensitive, fresh and charming as she recited the inspiring lines of "Where the mind is without fear."
"Silence is the crux of his paintings," she told me, as she explained Tagore's immense attraction to primitive art, the distortion of form and the abstract use of colors.
"Some people believe that he was partially color blind," she added mischievously.
I was already homesick after a week of traveling in China, but Tagore was made of sterner stuff.
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore visited more than 30 countries in five continents.
Being a frequent flyer, he was hosted by many of his contemporaries in Europe and America, including Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Romain Rolland.
Tagore visited China twice in 1924 and 1929, and left a lasting impression here by espousing the universal spirit and the welfare of mankind.
Shu informed me that Tagore was popular in China and that his poems were first translated into Chinese in 1915, and published in influential publications of the time like the Xin Qingnian (The New Youth).
Chinese poets like Chen Duxiu, Guo Moruo, Hu Shi and Xu Zhimo were influenced by Tagore in those days.
Numerous references to Chinese civilization and contemporary Chinese life and culture are scattered in the writings of Tagore.
In 2006, The People's Daily had elected him as one of the 50 foreign personalities who have influenced modern Chinese thinking.
This year is the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore, and the Chinese government is honoring the great Indian poet by establishing his statue in the former French Concession area of Shanghai, and displaying a documentary on Tagore to visitors at the World Expo.
(The author is a global Indian, an environmentalist and winner of the United Nations Global Award for Chemical Leasing. Shanghai Daily condensed his article. He can be contacted at apriyadarshi9@gmail.com)
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