拍品专文
POEMS - five poems from Tagore's famous book Blak (1916), seven poems from Gtjali (1910, including the celebrated he mor citta, punya trthe jgo re dhre/ei bhrater mahmnaber sgartre - 'Oh my heart wake gently at this sacred place on pilgrimage of the shore of India's great sea of humanity', sometimes referred to as Tagore's 'Hymn to India') and three poems translated by Tagore for his Nobel Prize winning English Gitanjali (1912), six poems from Gtimlya (1914), three poems from Gtli (1914), one poem from Patraput (1936), two poems from Prab (1925), including the magnificent poem in praise of the poet Satyendranath Datta, and one poem (Khel-bhol - Lost in Play - from iu Bholnth (1922) with two poems not listed in the index to the Visva-Bharati edition of Tagore's collected works (a five line poem in the style of Lekhan or Sphuliga (undated) and a long narrative poem, Majul, dated the first day of Baisakh 1312 (April 1905) and one poem in English, Tagore's own translation of Ahalyr prati ('To Ahaly), published in the posthumous collection, (Poems, Visva-Bharati, 1942).
SONGS - including masterpieces such as mi kn pete rai/mr pan hrday-gahan-dvre ('I will keep my ears open at my own heart's secret door'), and yakhan parbe n mor pyer cihna ei bte ('When my footprints no longer appear on this path'), the poems and songs together approximately 32 pages 8vo and 4to.
PROSE WRITINGS - including six prose poems from Lipik (1922), four pieces that Tagore included in his book of travel writing, Pather Sacay (1939, one piece on London), three religious meditations published in the 17 part collection antiniketan (1909-1916), two essays published in Paricay (1916), one of them the famous Bhrat-barser itihser dhr ('The Current of Indian history'), an essay on varieties of Bengali (Bamla bahubacan) published in Bml abdatattva (1909) and two unnamed pieces, one of them referring to comments by W.B. Yeats on the English Gitanjali, altogether 160 pages various sizes.
DRAMA - the complete autograph text of the dance-drama aradotsab ('Autumn Festival', 1908), written for the boys and girls in Tagore's rama school at Santiniketan, a year after the death of his youngest son - a drama deeply response to the bounties of nature, showing an intense joy in living and expressing ideas of significance on the relationship between suffering, toil, leisure and joy, 60 pages 8vo.
LETTERS - 115 letters (nearly all of them in Tagore's own hand), written between January 1904 and August 1938, more than half of them concerning poems and writings published in Prabs or The Modern Review, but also including five letters written before Charuchandra became Assistant Editor of these periodicals in 1909, and forty-five written after he became professor of Bengali at Calcutta University in 1919 and at Dacca University in 1924, some letters written on cards, altogether approximately 200 pages 8vo.
The later letters are of particular interest, as some of them contain replied to questions about Tagore's writings: sources, meaning of particular words, philosophic ideas, artistic purposes and so on. These discussions arose in part from research that Charuchandra did in the 1920s and 1930s for his major study of Tagore's poetry, Rabi-ramik, the second volume of which was published posthumously in 1939. Charuchandra clearly remained on friendly terms with Tagore till the end of his life. Tagore's last letter to him (31 August 1938) is touchingly revealing of the seventy-seven year old poet's exhaustion: 'Plots for stories are created by idle hours: a spider's web spun in a corner of the mind.Now that I'm so busy, the web has been torn clean away, and the spider has fled..I'm harassed and tired, despair of being released'.
A REMARKABLE COLLECTION, OF GREAT INTEREST TO SCHOLARS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
Charuchandra Bandyopadhyay (1877-1938) was himself an established figure in Bengali literary life. He was a graduate of Presidency College, Calcutta, and began his career by writing about Sanskrit literature for periodicals such as Meghadta and Mgh. He then joined Indian Publishing House, and was responsible for editions of the Mahbhrata and medieval Bengali poets. He himself wrote short stories (the first letter from Tagore in the collection, dating from January 1904, refers to a short story that Charuchandra had evidently sent to him), books for children, and twenty-five novels. It was in his capacity as Assistant Editor of Prabs and The Modern Review that he came to know Tagore well: the manuscripts in his collection were nearly all sent to him for publication. Critics and biographers of Tagore will find much of value in the letters. Textual critics - soon to be set free by the expiry of the copyright in August 1991 - will wish to consult the manuscripts in order to arrive at the optimum punctuation and lay-out of Tagore's poems. In some cases the manuscripts differ from the versions printed in the Visva-Bharati edition of Tagore's Collected Works. For example the poem to Satyendranath Datta begins sher pujamegh ela dharanr prbbadvre ("The heaped clouds of the month of sh have come to the eastern gate of the world"), a stronger line than the printed barr nabn megh ... ("The new clouds of the rainy season ...".The first line of ami kan pete rai contains the significant adjective adhar ("at my own dark heart's secret door'), deleted from the published text. Throughout the collection, in Tagore's beautiful clear handwriting, is a delight to behold
A complete list (in Bengali) of the items in the collection is available on request.
We are grateful to Dr. William Radice for his assistance in preparing the description of this lot
SONGS - including masterpieces such as mi kn pete rai/mr pan hrday-gahan-dvre ('I will keep my ears open at my own heart's secret door'), and yakhan parbe n mor pyer cihna ei bte ('When my footprints no longer appear on this path'), the poems and songs together approximately 32 pages 8vo and 4to.
PROSE WRITINGS - including six prose poems from Lipik (1922), four pieces that Tagore included in his book of travel writing, Pather Sacay (1939, one piece on London), three religious meditations published in the 17 part collection antiniketan (1909-1916), two essays published in Paricay (1916), one of them the famous Bhrat-barser itihser dhr ('The Current of Indian history'), an essay on varieties of Bengali (Bamla bahubacan) published in Bml abdatattva (1909) and two unnamed pieces, one of them referring to comments by W.B. Yeats on the English Gitanjali, altogether 160 pages various sizes.
DRAMA - the complete autograph text of the dance-drama aradotsab ('Autumn Festival', 1908), written for the boys and girls in Tagore's rama school at Santiniketan, a year after the death of his youngest son - a drama deeply response to the bounties of nature, showing an intense joy in living and expressing ideas of significance on the relationship between suffering, toil, leisure and joy, 60 pages 8vo.
LETTERS - 115 letters (nearly all of them in Tagore's own hand), written between January 1904 and August 1938, more than half of them concerning poems and writings published in Prabs or The Modern Review, but also including five letters written before Charuchandra became Assistant Editor of these periodicals in 1909, and forty-five written after he became professor of Bengali at Calcutta University in 1919 and at Dacca University in 1924, some letters written on cards, altogether approximately 200 pages 8vo.
The later letters are of particular interest, as some of them contain replied to questions about Tagore's writings: sources, meaning of particular words, philosophic ideas, artistic purposes and so on. These discussions arose in part from research that Charuchandra did in the 1920s and 1930s for his major study of Tagore's poetry, Rabi-ramik, the second volume of which was published posthumously in 1939. Charuchandra clearly remained on friendly terms with Tagore till the end of his life. Tagore's last letter to him (31 August 1938) is touchingly revealing of the seventy-seven year old poet's exhaustion: 'Plots for stories are created by idle hours: a spider's web spun in a corner of the mind.Now that I'm so busy, the web has been torn clean away, and the spider has fled..I'm harassed and tired, despair of being released'.
A REMARKABLE COLLECTION, OF GREAT INTEREST TO SCHOLARS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
Charuchandra Bandyopadhyay (1877-1938) was himself an established figure in Bengali literary life. He was a graduate of Presidency College, Calcutta, and began his career by writing about Sanskrit literature for periodicals such as Meghadta and Mgh. He then joined Indian Publishing House, and was responsible for editions of the Mahbhrata and medieval Bengali poets. He himself wrote short stories (the first letter from Tagore in the collection, dating from January 1904, refers to a short story that Charuchandra had evidently sent to him), books for children, and twenty-five novels. It was in his capacity as Assistant Editor of Prabs and The Modern Review that he came to know Tagore well: the manuscripts in his collection were nearly all sent to him for publication. Critics and biographers of Tagore will find much of value in the letters. Textual critics - soon to be set free by the expiry of the copyright in August 1991 - will wish to consult the manuscripts in order to arrive at the optimum punctuation and lay-out of Tagore's poems. In some cases the manuscripts differ from the versions printed in the Visva-Bharati edition of Tagore's Collected Works. For example the poem to Satyendranath Datta begins sher pujamegh ela dharanr prbbadvre ("The heaped clouds of the month of sh have come to the eastern gate of the world"), a stronger line than the printed barr nabn megh ... ("The new clouds of the rainy season ...".The first line of ami kan pete rai contains the significant adjective adhar ("at my own dark heart's secret door'), deleted from the published text. Throughout the collection, in Tagore's beautiful clear handwriting, is a delight to behold
A complete list (in Bengali) of the items in the collection is available on request.
We are grateful to Dr. William Radice for his assistance in preparing the description of this lot