Tales of Tagore in Latin America

Tagore's reception outside India is quite an interesting subject. He was an insatiate globetrotter who had travelled vastly on both sides of the Atlantic. The ways in which he and his works were and are still being received, interpreted and reinterpreted underlie the culture-specific, historical dimensions of an ever-changing world, understanding which is as much important as appreciating any other aspect of his work.

His travels through Europe and the US have been sufficiently documented and reflected upon. Even the unkind reception he was accorded in China in 1924 has been dug out with the accuracy of historical analysis by Pankaj Misra. But vast swathes of his travels in Latin America, a continent that dominates world literature today, are left broadly untouched.

Razu Alauddin has recently opened a new window on this subject: Tagore's tour of Latin America, a window that has remained partly open. The only mentionable beam of light that has passed through it so far is that of Tagore's relationship with Argentine author, Victoria Ocampo -- a literary friendship that has been explored at some length by the likes of Shankha Ghose and Ketaki Kushari Dyson, among others.

But Razu in his book Dakkhine Surjodoy (Sunrise in the South) tells us there were many more characters in this story and hence many more chapters -- all of which reveal a world where Tagore is not a half-forgotten name, as he is in the west now, but still has a luminous presence.

No sooner had Tagore arrived in England in 1912 with a self-translated English manuscript of Gitanjali than he swept the western literary world off its feet, as if it were a ground all prepared for him, as if every writer there were already aware of his indefatigable literary potential.

This unexpected tide had its pitfalls; it ebbed as suddenly as it had come, never to rise again until a hundred years later. His rise to fame and fall from grace in Europe do not say much about the intrinsic value of his writing. But they do tell us about the European discourses prevalent in those times, some of which found in him a sage and a mystic who perfectly fitted in their emerging anti-colonial campaign and some found an overtly "sentimental" poetic voice, not too uncharacteristic of the orient. On the other hand, some (Marxists of Frankfurt school) saw in him -- vis-a-vis Ghore Baire (Home and Abroad) -- a zamindar, loyal to the British Raj, making a last-ditch attempt to strengthen his own class position against the rise of a middle class supporting the nationalist movement (Swadeshi Andolon) in India.

But this is not what Razu's book deals with. Razu tells us what a different experience Tagore had had in Latin America. Tagore interacted with most of its prominent literary figures and had a huge influence on the future generations of its writers. But unlike in the west, he has never ceased to be one of the major 20th century voices in Latin America even though his work there was seen through an extra layer of translation, all of which was done from English. This fact necessitates a massive project to bring out all of Tagore's major works in Spanish from the original Bangla, rather than from another translated version.

In the book, Razu gives us the many titbits of Tagore's meetings and exchanges with writers such as Ocampo, Neruda and Borges. Browsing through many influential Argentine, Chilean and Peruvian journals, magazines, books and newspapers, he also shows the extent of Tagore's influence upon the younger generation of Latin American writers, painters and thinkers.

One of the most intriguing snippets is about a prolonged rivalry between Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro, two of Chilea's most prominent poets, centring one of Tagore's lyrics from The Gardener. Neruda published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, his second volume of poems, in 1924 at the age of 18. Ten years later a Chilean magazine called Pro published an anonymous article in which Neruda was accused of plagiarising the poem (numbered 16 in the volume) titled "In my Sky at Twilight" from "Tumi Sondhyar Meghmala", which, one of Tagore's most celebrated songs, had been available in Spanish translation since 1917.

Later, other literary supplements and magazines picked up this debate, many of them calling Neruda a literary thief. Although there was no evidence of anyone pulling the strings, Neruda came to believe that the broadside launched against him was Huidobro's doing.

According to Razu's findings, Neruda had not acknowledged it in the 1st edition of Twenty Love Poems that his poem was a free-floating translation of one of Tagore's songs. However, after the debate started and lingered, Neruda added in the later editions an appendage saying, "This poem is a paraphrase of the 30th poem of Rabindranath Tagore's The Gardener."

Razu's book, which is full of such snippets, is a substantial contribution to the subject of Tagore's reception in Latin America. But the more important reason why it should have a prominent place in literary research is that it has opened up the avenue to comparative studies between Bengali and Latin American authors.

It is only expected that more illuminating books with such fresh angles are to follow suit.

The reviewer is a journalist and a writer.