Tagore: Beyond His Language

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As a global figure, Tagore transcends the boundaries of language and reaches out to people distant both in time and space. His art took inspiration from contemporary Western trends and became a powerful means to connect with people beyond Bengal. Word, image, song, and text were his tools of communication, as also his extraordinary presence in a sartorial garb of his own design. A littérateur in many genres, the impact of his work was determined both by the material he presented, and by its simultaneously local and global contexts. Now, when his international reputation has spanned over more than a hundred years, it is important to revisit the sites of Tagore's eminence, and ask to what extent he was a 'living text' in the century that witnessed him as a global intellectual.

Accordingly, this volume investigates how Tagore's writings and art are linked to the metalinguistic domains of the psychological, medical and mythical; how he was received in various cultures outside India; how his art was determined by individual circumstances and global aspirations; and how he acted as an inspiration to his contemporaries and subsequent generations including modern Indian writers and artists.

Imre Bangha is Associate Professor of Hindi at the University of Oxford. He studied Indology in Budapest and holds a doctorate in Hindi from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Along with publishing books and essays in English, Hindi, and Hungarian on literature in Brajbhasha and other forms of old Hindi, he has also prepared Hungarian translations from various South Asian languages. His work on the international reception of Bengali culture includes Rabindranath Tagore: Hundred Years of Global Reception (2014, co-edited with M. Kämpchen) and Hungry Tiger: Encounter between India and Central Europe (2007).

THE PRESENT VOLUME is based on the papers presented at the conference Rabindranath Tagore Beyond Bengali Literature', organized at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest on 19-20 March 2012. Held in the year between the poet's 150th birth anniversary and the centenary of his Nobel Prize, it was one of the many events reaping the fruits of academic activities encouraged by the celebrations of a towering figure claimed to be their own by both India and Bangladesh.

The conference focused on Tagore as a global figure who, transcending the boundaries of language, rises above divides and speaks to people distant both in time and space. Papers presented here as essays, extended essays or dialogues investigate how his writings and art are linked to the meta- linguistic domains of the psychological, medical and mythical, how Tagore was received in various cultures outside Bengal, how his art is determined by individual circumstances and global aspirations, and how he acted as an inspiration for his contemporaries and subsequent generations including modern Indian writers and artists. The location of the conference in East- Central Europe indicates the truly global nature of Tagore's legacy, which has affected the lesser known cultures of the eastern part of Europe as much as those of the West. Tagore scholars from East, West, Central and Northern Europe, Indian public figures, writers and artists combine various approaches in their contributions.

When examining Tagore beyond his impact on Bengali language, several questions arise about the nature of his contribution to the intellectual history of the world. His Nobel Prize generated a worldwide celebratory environment in which the global image of a poet-saint, outweighed the grounded realism that Tagore demonstrated with equal seriousness. To what extent was it possible to go beyond the deeply embedded Orientalist clichés of Western intellectuals reacting to Tagore? Although Tagore's hesitation in using English caused his readership to believe from the outset that his best language was Bengali, and that too much was 'lost' in translation, the overwhelming majority of translations have been based on his English versions.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages