Tagore gala begins in Spain with book, culture blitz
Tuesday September 13, 2011 11:39:23 AM,
IANS
|
New Delhi: Perhaps a
historic wrong was set right when Nobel laureate Rabindranath
Tagore reconnected to thousands of admirers in Spain - one of the
few countries in Europe to which he had called off his visit -
with a new book.
The compendium, "Redescubriendo a Tagore (Rethinking Tagore)", was
released Monday. It is part of a larger project, Tagore in Spain,
a celebration of his literature and performing arts in several
cities in Spain and Costa Rica which begins this weekend.
It has been co-edited by Indranil Chakravarty, a professor of Film
Appreciation at the Whistling Woods International Film Institute
in Mumbai, and scholar S.P. Ganguly, professor of Spanish studies
at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The editors said Tagore had remained popular in Spain despite his
decline in popularity in the rest of the Western world after World
War I, where he was seen as an Eastern mystical poet removed from
the harsh realities of life.
"He was equally popular in Latin America due to the interest of
many literary and socially activist figures," said Ganguly.
Tagore had said "the idea of Spain had such a deep attraction to
my mind" that he wanted to come into an intimate touch with it.
But he cancelled a scheduled visit to the country in 1921 at the
last moment with a telegram saying that "other important things
had drawn him away", said Ganguly.
The Spanish government had been ready to welcome Tagore. Detailed
preparations were made by Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez and his
wife Zenobia Camprubi. But the visit was cancelled in spite of
that.
"In that context, Tagore did a great injustice to Spain without
realising it," Ganguly said.
The new book aims to revive Tagore in Latin American and Spanish
speaking countries and re-introduce him as a humanist, poet,
artist, musician and writer in these places.
"Tagore's relevance is because of the resurgence of humanism in
the contemporary world and Europe is now realising the value of
his universalism."
The volume, a tribute to the poet on his 150th birth anniversary,
was released at the Instituto Cervantes. It is a collaboration
between the Embassy of Spain, the Spanish Cultural Centre and the
Sahitya Akademi.
Chakravarty said, "Available translations of Tagore in Spanish add
up to less than five percent of his literary output."
The book is a collectors' volume with 12 full-page colour
reproductions of his paintings, music in Western notations and
reflections and essays by scholars from Latin America and Spain.
A team of Indian scholars and performers will be travelling to
Spain this week to promote his works and collaborate with students
and scholars on his plays, music, poetry and dance dramas, some of
it translated in Spanish, as part of the project.
"In the first Tagore celebration in Costa Rica, a school full of
children are dressing up in Tagore T-shirts to recite his poem in
Spanish in chorus," said Chakraborty.
Two movies, "Charulata" and "Naukadubi" based on his short stories
and novel respectively, will be screened across the country.
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