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    The Lover of God
    The Lover of God
    The Lover of God
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    The Lover of God

    By Rabindranath Tagore

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    About this ebook

    • First time in English • Nobel laureate Tagore is one of the 20th century’s great poets • In 2001, Tagore’s work entered the public domain, so new, refreshing translations are becoming available. (His work was tightly guarded by Visva Bharati University [the university Tagore created], so much of Tagore’s poetry that exists in English translation is wooden—even Tagore’s own translations.) • When Tagore published these poems he claimed them to be from an unknown Bengali religious poet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateDec 15, 2013
    ISBN9781619321229
    The Lover of God
    Author

    Rabindranath Tagore

    Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

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      Book preview

      The Lover of God - Rabindranath Tagore

      [image: cover][image: cover]

      Note to the Reader

      Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:

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      Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.

      When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.

      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

      This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

      Contents

      Title Page

      Note to the Reader

      Introduction

      On Translating Bhānu

      The Poems of Sun Lion

      1. Spring at last! The amuyas flare (English) • (Sanskrit)

      2. You innocent (English) • (Sanskrit)

      3. He never came to me (English) • (Sanskrit)

      4. That jewel-dark blue becomes you, Lord (English) • (Sanskrit)

      5. Shake off that sadness, Rādhā! (English) • (Sanskrit)

      6. Come to me with a mouth full of words (English) • (Sanskrit)

      7. Listen, can you hear it? (English) • (Sanskrit)

      8. He’s there among the scented trees (English) • (Sanskrit)

      9. A warm breeze frets through the woods (English) • (Sanskrit)

      10. Your flute plays the exact notes of my pain (English) • (Sanskrit)

      11. High in the blossoming canopy (English) • (Sanskrit)

      12. I know who visits your dream, Dark One (English) • (Sanskrit)

      13. Not only is it dark, but clouds roar (English) • (Sanskrit)

      14. When we’re together, nights like this delight me (English) • (Sanskrit)

      15. Don’t talk about love to me, Mādhava (English) • (Sanskrit)

      16. When pitiless Mādhava left for Māthura City (English) • (Sanskrit)

      17. So many times, Lord, I have implored you (English) • (Sanskrit)

      18. How long must I go on waiting (English) • (Sanskrit)

      19. You resemble my Dark Lord Śyāma (English) • (Sanskrit)

      20. Who are You, who keeps my heart awake? (English) • (Sanskrit)

      21. Who wants to hear the long, miserable story (English) • (Sanskrit)

      22. I’ve fallen from my life, friend (English) • (Sanskrit)

      Postscript

      Appendix: The Life of Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākura

      About the Translators

      Acknowledgments

      Copyright

      Special Thanks

      Introduction

      Sometime late in 1875, the prominent Calcutta journal of Bengali arts and letters Bhāratī published the first of eight poems by a newly discovered seventeenth-century Vaiṣṇava religious poet, Bhānusiṃha, or Sun Lion. That journal would eventually publish thirteen over the next six years. The poems told of the love of Lord Kṛṣṇa, through the ministrations of a friend to Kṛṣṇa’s adolescent lover, Rādhā. Typical of the genre, the confidante was an older woman—the poet’s persona—who chides and scolds Kṛṣṇa, soothes Rādhā’s anguish, and ruefully comments on the plight of all who suffer the love of this fickle master. Typical, too, was the language, Brajabuli, a long-dead literary dialect of Bengali reserved for the exclusive use of Vaiṣṇava poets. At the time, it was a notable discovery as scholars within the academy were at pains to construct a proper literary history for India, one of the earliest nation-building exercises in the political and intellectual ferment that was late-nineteenth-century Calcutta. Yet several years would pass before leading critics discovered that they had been drawn into a somewhat embarrassing scenario: Bhānusiṃha did not really exist. And perhaps even worse, the true author was none other than a precocious fourteen-year-old boy poet named Rabindranath Tagore.

      So began one of the most curious literary episodes of the period of nationalist India, a mild exposé that alleged deceit, fraud, and, worst of all, gullibility. At the time of this discovery, Rabindranath was beginning to distinguish himself from his enormously talented siblings, some of whom were probably privy to the ruse that originated in this family-sponsored journal. His poetry and his prose were beginning to draw considerable attention, yet as his fame increased he would never abandon these first poems, just as he would for years refuse to acknowledge having written them, as if he wanted them to be neither closely examined nor ignored. He would throw up obstacles at every turn, but would tease his audience by drawing attention to the songs and just as quickly deflect any serious discussion of them. In 1884 he published a fictional biography of Bhānusiṃha, mocking scholars with its sarcasm and wit, but dropping tantalizing clues to Bhānusiṃha’s real identity, tacitly acknowledging that Bhānusiṃha was he (see Appendix). He would continue to criticize the author of the poems, as well as those scholars who might try alternately to beatify or to denigrate the poet, this game of cat and mouse continuing as he added more poems to the sequence. Today many schoolchildren know these songs by heart and delight in their recitation.

      Much of

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