Compare ‘Highest Price’, ‘Grandfather’s Holiday’ and ‘New Birth’ 11.24–6. Certain linguistic details in ‘The Hero’ stress the contrast between the boy’s age and the braggadocio of his fantasy. In 11.32–4 he uses ‘low-grade’ imperative forms such as would never be used by a child to an adult; in ll.36 and 54, on the other hand, he is addressed as khokā, a term only used for a small boy. In 1.48 his mother takes him in her lap as one would take a small child; and in 1.53 he shows an endearing desire to brag to dādā, elder brother.
An equivalently tight verse form seemed essential in translation, and I have sometimes had to compress or re-order the lines.
8–9 lit., ‘evening comes, the sun is setting/we seem to have come to an area of open land adjoining a pair of ponds’.
15 The land is covered with cor-kātā, lit. ‘thief-prickle’, a plant with burs that stick to the clothes of passers-by.
19 two lines in the original: lit., ‘who knows where we are going/it is hard to see well in the dark’.
21 ‘what’s that lantern?’ – oi-ye kiser ālo? ‘what is that the light of over there?’
22,35 ‘shouts and yells’ – the Bengali gives the actual shouts: hāre re re re re.
25–7 lit., ‘you, in fear, in one corner of the palanquin, are remembering a god (thākur-debatā) in your mind’. Only one god is implied: see notes to ‘Snatched by the Gods’.
40 ‘you would faint’ – tomār gāye debe kā
ā: ‘there would be a prickling over your body’.
50–52 lit., ‘every day there is so much that happens that is worthless, trivial (yā-tā);/Oh why do such (events) not occur truly?’
Death-wedding (p. 69)
mara
-milan from utsarga (Dedications), 1914
In 1903 Tagore published his poetical works to date, arranged according to theme, and for each section he wrote an introductory poem. These were eventually published as a separate volume in 1914, but in sañcayitā they were restored to their chronological position.
‘Death Wedding’ was first published in the journal ba
gadarśan in August-September 1902. There is disagreement about what could have inspired it. It has been related to the ideal of revolutionary martyrdom that was beginning to enter the air of Bengal; or to the death of Swami Vivekananda early in the year. Perhaps it can be taken as a premonition of the deaths of Tagore’s wife Mrinalini in 1902, his daughter Rani in 1903, his beloved assistant at Santiniketan the young poet Satischandra Ray in 1904, Tagore’s father in 1905 and his younger son Samindra in 1907. The poem is brilliant in structure and conception, but one may find an emptiness in it, as though Tagore yet had to face the full reality of death. In RM198 he writes of the four proper stages of life according to Indian tradition: the fourth, the pravrajyā, is ‘the expectant awaiting of freedom across death… Enriched with its experiences, the soul now leaves the narrower life for the universal life, to which it dedicates its accumulated wisdom, and itself enters into relations with the Life Eternal, so that, when finally the decaying body has come to the very end of its tether, the soul views its breaking away quite simply and without regret, in the expectation of its own entry into the Infinite.’ To want Death to act according to one’s wishes is not compatible with this. Cf. ‘The Borderland –10’ where Tagore is also not ready for death, though for different reasons.
The artifice of the verse and structure of ‘Death-wedding’ is paralled by an emphasis on form and style in its content. In 1.3 Tagore asks whether Death’s furtive approach is praayer-i dharan: ‘the (proper) form of love’; and in 1.19 he asks, milaner eki rīti ei: ‘is this the (right) style of union?’. Verse 4 describes Śiva’s appearance and trappings; in 1.40 there is the auspicious outward sign of Gauri’s happiness – the fluttering left eye; in 1.50 Tagore asks to be dressed naba rakta-basane, ‘in new blood-red robes’, suggestive of śakti (see Glossary).
1 ‘Death, Death’ – in the original this recurrent phrase is literally ‘O Death, O my Death’ (ogo maran, he mor maran).
32 babam-babam: slapping of the cheeks with the fingers is a feature of some of Hinduism’s more esoteric or cultic rituals.
35–6 ‘was this not/A better way of wedding’ – I have interpolated these words.
37 ‘deathly wedding-party’s din’ – śmaśān-bāsīr kal-kal: ‘the din of the dwellers in cremation-grounds’, i.e. those followers of Śiva that dwell in śmaśān, cremation grounds (see Śiva in the Glossary).
63 ‘Death, Death’ – ‘O Lord’ (ogo nāth) precedes the refrain at this point.
66 ‘infinity’ – akūl: ‘without shore’, a more spatial word than ‘infinity’, so I have inserted ‘sea’ in 1.65.
āgaman from kheyā (The Ferry), 1906
In this book we see the movement towards simple language, symbolism and preoccupation with religious themes that reaches its culmination in the poems and songs of gītānjali (1910) and gītimālya (1914). ‘Arrival’ was the first poem by Tagore that I tried to translate. The compelling rhythm of the original seemed to me such an important part of its power that I tried to copy it in English. To do this, I had to put in rather more prop-words than I would now favour. The original poem has great concision. In the first two verses, the following words and phrases are my own addition, metri causa: 1.4 ‘dark’, 1.5 ‘amongst us’, 1.5 ‘of Night’, 1.7 ‘outer’, 1.8 ‘they rattle when it blows’, 1.10 ‘peacefulness’, 1.11 ‘at the doors’. I have made finite verbs non-finite in 11.3-of each verse.
The poem is about the discovery of soul, God (‘the King’) being identified with soul in Tagore and in Indian tradition generally. It contains the paradox that on the one hand our selves are free to accept or reject soul/God; but on the other hand it will reveal itself anyway. Compare two passages in S: on p. 41 Tagore writes of the freedom of the self: ‘There our God must will his entrance. There he comes as a guest, not as a king, and therefore he has to wait until he is invited’; but on p. 33 Tagore quotes a conversation with a rural ascetic: ‘ “Why don’t you preach your doctrine to all the people of the world?” I asked.
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