New Publication

'Rabindranath Tagore: Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems'

William Radice's debut translations of Tagore's poetry 'Selected Poems' (1985, revised 1987) have recently been followed by an even more daring attempt. 'Particles, Jottings, Sparks' contains each and every single one of Tagore's Bengali 'brief poems' ('kabitika'), which have been published in Bengali in three volumes, but their translations have been bound together. The first original 'Kanika' ('Particles') had come out in 1899, the second 'Lekhan' ('Jottings') appeared in 1927. The last one, 'Sphulinga' ('Sparks'), was published posthumously in 1945.

Although Tagore began this brief and light genre in the late-nineteenth century, it was not until 1916, during his trip to East Asia, especially Japan, that he seriously experimented with this form. The Japanese haiku, a genre that made a deep impression on him (introduction, p. 12 and appendix A, pp. 168-171), no doubt constituted an important source of inspiration for him. Tagore tried this verse out in both Lekhan and Sphulinga. This is quite a remarkable fact, for in the Western literary world, the haiku gained recognition and popularity through the American Beat poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg no sooner than the fifties and sixties.

In his introduction, Radice sketches the evolution of the genre of the brief poem (a term proposed by Radice on p. 3-4) underwent in Tagore's mind, and the position of these three books in Tagore's oeuvre as a whole. Thankfully not providing too many footnotes to the translations themselves, Radice renders us three highly interesting appendices. The first two of which are translations of Tagore's own prose writings in which he explains his views on the brief poems and on modern Western poetry, roughly covering the early period of T.S. Eliot. Appendix C offers the Bengali original of a hitherto unknown version of a short poem which appears as Sphulinga two.

In his translations, Radice has tried to retain the flavour of the rhyme and the metre of the originals. The book is a welcome addition to the growing body of good translations of Tagore's Bengali works, especially as it offers complete original volumes and not the usual random selections. (VvB) *

Tagore, Rabindranath: Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems, Translated with an introduction by William Radice. London: Angel Books (2001),
ISBN 0-946162-66-2