Rabindranath Tagore and the English Romantic Poets: A Study in the Heritage of Romanticism

Abstract

Since the nature of this study is fundamentally based on comparative literature, the content analysis certainly includes the exemplary portions of selected texts of two languages. So, the study is affected by bilingual notes, Bengali and English. The dissertation has been written in English; comparison has been drawn mainly between the poems of Rabindranath Tagore and the Major English Romantic Poets. Besides, references from other genres like essays, discourses, letters, short stories, songs and novels where it has seemed relevant have been used. For this purpose a large amount of Tagore's writing has been translated into English. Tagore's own translation has been prioritized. For its scantiness in comparison with his huge volume of creation, other sources of satisfactory translation have been used, and these are duly mentioned in the reference. For the dearth of any satisfactory source, researcher's own translation has been used. Translation from either renowned translators or the researcher has proved a very difficult job since Tagore's poems are untranslatable. In one of his letters to Edward John Thompson, Tagore's early -critic and biographer, Tagore dealt with the issue of translation that appears mentionable here: I have come to the conclusion that translating a poem is doing it wrong, especially when the original belongs to a language which is wholly alien to the medium of its translation. Have you a single honest translation in English, from poems written in any other European language, which occupies a decent seat in your literature? Is not Dante in English a dead star which has its heavy load of materials and no light? You know most of the great poets of Europe through the experience of a large number of your countrymen who have read them in the original -their evidence being supplemented by translations which cannot but be inadequate. ---------