On the whole, the response across the world proved positive – not least among Tagore’s ever-watchful compatriots. In the Preface to the 1994 edition, however, I felt obliged to take account of E. P. Thompson’s charge that I had unfairly dismissed the work of his father, Edward Thompson. I tried to put matters straight not only in the Preface but in an additional appendix – which can now, I think, along with the 1994 Preface itself, be safely removed.

The 1994 Preface was also an opportunity to mention the expansion of interest in Tagore that had developed since my book was published: the new translations that had appeared not only in English but in other European languages, and musical adaptations such as Param Vir’s chamber opera, Snatched by the Gods. The expansion has gone on, but this time it is best conveyed by the list of Further Reading. In 1985 it would have been hard to compile such a list without including many older books and translations that even then were no longer in print. But now a list much longer than the one I have supplied could be made up of books currently available. In India, especially, numerous books have appeared, uninhibited by any copyright restrictions. (Copyright in India was extended by a special act of Parliament in 1991, fifty years after Tagore’s death, but the extension came to an end in 2001.)

One issue that I discussed in both the 1985 and 1994 Prefaces was whether it was right to go on using ‘Tagore’, an anglicized form of Thākur, or whether we should call the poet – as Bengalis do – ‘Rabindranath’. I decided to stick to ‘Tagore’, writing in 1985: ‘I regret this, as “Rabindranath” is a much more beautiful and expressive name than Tagore (it means “Lord of the Sun”), and I respect other writers who have tried to adopt it. But Tagore is convenient.’

Partly because ‘Tagore’ is widely used in India outside Bengal, as well as all over the world (sometimes with the final ‘e’ pronounced as a syllable), there seems little chance of its displacement. In fact, the existence of these two names is a useful shorthand for Tagore’s Indian and international career (as Tagore) and his specifically Bengali identity as Rabindranath. In lectures and essays I have often depicted the two names as overlapping circles. The two careers developed separately from each other in some ways, yet they also partook of each other. ‘Rabindranath’ went on informing ‘Tagore’; yet the international fame and responsibilities that Rabindranath acquired after he won the Nobel Prize in 1913 also impinged on his Bengali identity.

The critic and scholar Harish Trivedi – whose introduction to a new edition in 1989 of Edward Thompson’s Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist (1948) gave Thompson’s pioneering work a new lease of life – has argued that through an ever growing number of new translations we now have a third entity: not the Tagore of his own translations and secondary translations of them, not the Rabindranath of his Bengali works, but the total poet and writer now being presented to non-Bengalis through new translations and books. This is, perhaps, a fulfilment of what Tagore himself came to regret had not been achieved by his own translations. In a letter to William Rothenstein of 26 November 1932 he wrote:

It was not at all necessary for my own reputation that I should find my place in the history of your literature. It was an accident for which you were also responsible and possibly most of all was Yeats. But yet sometimes I feel almost ashamed that I whose undoubted claim has been recognized by my countrymen to a sovereignty in our own world of letters should not have waited till it was discovered by the outside world in its own true majesty and environment…

Every new translation that appears now is a step towards that discovery. There is a long way still to go, but when the present book first appeared I never imagined that it would open a door through which so many others have enthusiastically passed.

In the 1985 Preface I wrote in some detail about the pronunciation of Bengali names, and then in 1994 unhelpfully removed that guidance, leaving readers to sink or swim. The issue is rather complicated: Bengali is not pronounced as it is spelt. A transcription that attempts to convey the sound of Bengali names and words weakens their connections with other South Asian languages; yet a system that adopts – as in this book – a ‘Sanskritic’ system of diacritical marks to indicate the spelling will not help with pronunciation. On the other hand, to pronounce ‘Krsna’ in a standard ‘North Indian’ way – ‘Krishna’ – rather than Bengali ‘Krishno’ is not to go badly wrong. So, on balance, I am content to stick to what I wrote in 1985: ‘Anyone wanting to know exactly how to pronounce a word will have to ask a native speaker’ – especially as the growth of a Bengali diaspora in the Western world makes it much easier to find a native speaker than it was then.

I have learned over the years that it is a mistake to meddle too much with past books, other than correcting printing errors or obvious factual or translation mistakes. In 1994 I changed the titles of two of the poems. In fact, it is foolhardy to change a title once it has been published, even if it is slightly wrong. Other creative works may be based on that title, and references may be made to it in books of biography or criticism. For this reason, I have decided that ‘Snatched by the Gods’ and ‘Injury’ should revert to those titles, imperfect though they may be.

As regards the Introduction, this may well, now, be a period piece. I have removed one statement about Tagore’s paintings that was dubious when I wrote it and is certainly untrue now (they are today a source of tremendous pride to their custodians at Santiniketan, not any kind of embarrassment, and are the focus of a highly specialized conservation effort); and one inaccuracy in the list of those who were present when W.