Rabindranath Tagore is not an outdated eastern mystic. His legacy is still relevant
The column by Ian Jack criticised Rabindranath Tagore but failed to address whether these criticisms are valid (Rabindranath Tagore was a global phenomenon, so why is he so neglected?, 7 May). Jack writes, "Is his poetry any good? The answer for anyone who can't read Bengali must be: don't know … perhaps the time has come for us to forget Tagore was ever a poet."
I am the director of a new production of Tagore's play The Post Office, performed in the theatre at the British Library. I regard this play to be a masterpiece by a poet of genius.
My association with his writing goes back nearly a decade, when I was invited by the Tagoreans to read some of his poetry for an evening performance at the Nehru Centre.
His poem Borderland No 9, published in the Penguin Classic edition translated by William Radice, which I read at the Nehru Centre, includes the lines:
Sun, you have removed
Your rays: show now your loveliest, kindliest form
That I may see the Person who dwells in me as in you.
Tagore's vision links the personal with the universal. His writing embodies the great truths that poets of genius bring to us. Indeed, Indian people regard Tagore as their Shakespeare.
Ian Jack also writes, "No translation … lives up to the job." Yet the brilliance of Radice's Tagore translations has allowed many to appreciate Tagore's genius.
Jack also seems to take a tone of disparagement towards Tagore's very important legacy for us, when he refers to Tagore's "spiritual message and reverence for the natural world". Surely huge numbers of people worldwide would not agree with Jack on this – probably including a majority of younger people for whom environmental issues are of overriding concern. Many realise now, as Tagore taught, that only by appreciating the natural world will we save our beautiful planet.
These concerns of Tagore's speak to all areas of society and people of all political persuasions. Schumacher College, based at Dartington in Devon, was created directly out of Tagore's philosophy and teaching. Mark Tully, the former BBC Delhi correspondent, spoke this month at the Dartington Festival dedicated to Tagore's memory, on Tagore's influence. This shows that to portray Tagore as some irrelevant mystic from the east is a wrongful judgment on a man whose thinking is of profound importance to all of us today.
In his concluding comments, Jack seems to dismiss Tagore completely: "In fact, I could remember one line clearly ... reading Tagore himself had nothing to do with it." But Jack can surely only come to a fair and true evaluation by reading the writings. It would seem, therefore, that this article is based on an unsubstantiated premise.
Sadly, many people now feel a superficial acquaintance with great literature through reading it on the internet, but this can never replace a profound reading over time of these wonderful works.