Gitanjali

Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞলিি) is a collection of 103 English poems, largely

translations, by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. This volume became
very famous in the West, and was widely translated.

Gitanjali (গীতাঞিল Gitanjoli) is also the title of an earlier Bengali volume

(1910) of 157 mostly devotional songs. The word gitanjoli is composed
from "git", song, and "anjoli", offering, and thus means - "An offering of
songs"; but the word for offering, anjoli, has a strong devotional
connotation, so the title may also be interpreted as "prayer offering of song".

The English collection is not a translation of poems from the Bengali

volume of the same name. While half the poems (52 out of 103) in the
English text were selected from the Bengali volume, others were taken from
these works (given with year and number of songs selected for the English
text): Gitimallo (1914,17), Noibeddo (1901,15), Khea (1906,11) and a
handful from other works. The translations were often radical, leaving out or
altering large chunks of the poem and in one instance even fusing two
separate poems (song 95, which unifies songs 89,90 of naivedya).

The translations were undertaken prior to a visit to England in 1912, where

the poems were extremely well received. A slender volume was published in
1913, with an exhilarating preface by W. B. Yeats. In the same year, based
on a corpus of three thin translations, Rabindranath became the first non-
European to win the Nobel prize.

The poems of Gitanjali express a largely metaphysical outlook, talking about

a union with the "supreme"; but like much western poetry that explores
similar themes, the language suggests the union of two earthly lovers. This
type of anthropomorphic depiction of celestial love is quite common in the
Vaishnava literature of India since the 12th century (see Vidyapati or
Jayadevaf). Rabindranath Tagore encountered it also in his interactions with
the Baul community in rural Bengal. For example, poem 7 in the English
volume renders poem 125 from the Bengali gItanjali, Amar e gan
chheŗechhe tar shôkol ôlongkar and talks of heavenly love in terms of the
lover taking off her jewelry, which is getting in the way of the union. See
also the poem 18, at the bottom of this page.

Some poems involve themes related to nature, but here, too, the spiritual is
subtly present, as in this poem (no. 57), given here along with the Bangla
text in Roman script:

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-

sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes,
my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild,
laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines
surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters
gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure.
The heaven's river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad.