Selected Short Stories
In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he remains one of the most important voices of Bengali culture to this day.These short stories, written mostly in the 1890s, vividly portray Bengali life and culture. Tagore’s treatment of caste culture, bureaucracy and poverty paint a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century India, and all are interwoven with Tagore’s perceptive eye for detail, strong sense of humanity and deep affinity for the natural world.Tagore’s stories continue to rise above geographic and cultural boundaries to capture the imaginations of readers around the world.
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SELECTED SHORT STORIES
Rabindranath Tagore
In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the ï¬rst dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.
Soon after, William published the ï¬rst Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.
Aged 30, Williamâs son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly âVictorianâ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeareâs works and ThePilgrimâs Progress, making them available to the masses for the ï¬rst time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientiï¬c books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.
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About the Author
Rabindranath Tagore (1861â1941) is regarded as the father of Indian modern literature. He was a polymath and all-round creative talent who became something of a celebrity in the West during the second half of his lifetime. In 1878 Tagore moved to England with the intention of obtaining a degree. However, he was ill-suited to formal education and returned to India in 1880, having failed in his academic ambitions. Despite this, his exposure to English literature, including Shakespeare, had made a lasting impression on Tagore, and he resolved to fuse the European concept of the novel with elements of Indian culture and society.
Tagore came from a very wealthy Indian family, which explains his position to travel and to indulge his creative interests in a country where poverty and hardship were the lot of the common man. Despite his privileged background, he had strong empathy for his fellow human beings, which is largely why he was able to write stories and poems with humility and connection. This empathy came from managing his vast ancestral estates, where he would travel to collect rents and interact with the tenants. This exposed him to traditional storytelling and songs, as well as philosophical and religious ideas. This fertile environment, combined with his intellectual curiosity and imagination, resulted in prolific creativity.
Selected Short Stories
Tagoreâs stories are typically like a hybrid between fairytales and fables, as they incorporate elements of the traditional Indian belief system with philosophical insight. Many are short in length, simply because they have no need to be any longer. In fact, they are already filled with superfluous detail, so it would be quite possible to condense them further.
From a literary point of view, it is difficult to assess their merits, as the works we read in the West are merely translations. The stories themselves and their allegory survive intact, but the use of language is largely lost, primarily because the translator naturally gives a subjective interpretation of Tagoreâs words and subsequent choice of English words. Also, the English language has a far richer vocabulary than Bengali, so an inevitable ambiguity results in terms of the literary forming of prose. Further complicating the issue is that Tagore also translated some of his own material into English.
