ENGLISH LITERATURE: MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN- SALMAN RUSHDIE

ENGLISH LITERATURE: MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN- SALMAN RUSHDIE: Midnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie that deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independ...

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN- SALMAN RUSHDIE

Midnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie that deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of British India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism. The story is told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, and is set in the context of actual historical events as with historical fiction.

Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary.  In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read. It was also added to the list of Great Books of the 20th Century, published by Penguin Books.

Background and plot summary

The novel has a multitude of named characters; see the List of Midnight's Children characters.

Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.

The book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events leading up to India's Independence and Partition. Saleem is born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, therefore, exactly as old as the independent republic of India. He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a Midnight Children's Conference, reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.

Meanwhile, Saleem's family begin a number of migrations and endure the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and her son Sanjay's "cleansing" of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi's overreach during the Emergency as well as a personal lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that of his still-young nation; a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.

Major themes

The technique of magical realism finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country's history.  Nicholas Stewart in his essay, "Magic realism in relation to the post-colonial and Midnight's Children," argues that the "narrative framework of Midnight's Children consists of a tale – comprising his life story – which Saleem Sinai recounts orally to his wife-to-be Padma. This self-referential narrative (within a single paragraph Saleem refers to himself in the first person: 'And I, wishing upon myself the curse of Nadir Khan.' and the third: 'I tell you,' Saleem cried, 'it is true. ...') recalls indigenous Indian culture, particularly the similarly orally recounted Arabian Nights. The events in Rushdie's text also parallel the magical nature of the narratives recounted in Arabian Nights (consider the attempt to electrocute Saleem at the latrine (p.353), or his journey in the 'basket of invisibility' (p.383))." He also notes that, "the narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history. 'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn," (259). Stewart (citing Hutcheon) suggests that Midnight's Children chronologically entwines characters from both India and the West, "with post-colonial Indian history to examine both the effect of these indigenous and non-indigenous cultures on the Indian mind and in the light of Indian independence.

Reception

Midnight's Children was awarded the 1981 Booker Prize, the English Speaking Union Literary Award, and the James Tait Prize. It also was awarded the Best Of The Booker prize twice, in 1993 and 2008 (this was an award given out by the Booker committee to celebrate the 25th and 40th anniversary of the award).

In 1984 Indira Gandhi brought an action against the book in the British courts, claiming to have been defamed by a single sentence in chapter 28, penultimate paragraph, in which her son Sanjay Gandhi is said to have had a hold over his mother by his accusing her of contributing to his father's Feroze Gandhi's death through her neglect. The case was settled out of court when Salman Rushdie agreed to remove the offending sentence.

Adaptations

In the late 1990s the BBC was planning to film a five-part miniseries of the novel with Rahul Bose in the lead, but due to pressure from the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, the filming permit was revoked and the project was cancelled. Later in 2003, the novel was adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Director Deepa Mehta collaborated with Rushdie on a new version of the story, the film Midnight's Children. Indian-American actor Satya Bhabha played the role of Saleem Sinai while other roles were played by Shriya Saran, Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Siddharth Narayan, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan, Shahana Goswami, Anita Majumdar and Darsheel Safary. The film was premiered in September 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival (2012-09-09)^[14] and the Vancouver International Film Festival (2012-09-27).

Regards

KK Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Sailing to Byzantium

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Sailing to Byzantium: This poem was written by Yeats in 1926, marking a point in his maturity, it was part of a collection called Tower, when Yeats stayed at th...

Sailing to Byzantium

This poem was written by Yeats in 1926, marking a point in his maturity, it was part of a collection called Tower, when Yeats stayed at the home of Lady Gregory in Coole Park near Gort in Co. Galway. The title of the poem refers to the ancient city of Byzantium, capital of the Byzantine ruled by the Turkish Sultan, the city is now called Istanbul.

Stanza I: In the opening line of the poem Yeats states-: "That is no country for old men." A reference both to ancient Byzantium and post 1922 Free State Ireland. The mention of old men provides our first example of Yeats' preoccupation with old age. The stanza continues by painting a picture of teaming life, the sensuous world of youth, vitality, reproduction, decay and death. The opening statements are quickly checked by the phrase- “Those dying generations”, a recognition by Yeats of the transience of life. He suggests that despite their apparent happiness, each is condemned to death, their mortality is inescapable -: “Whatever is begotten born and dies.” This contrasts the sensual world with the world of art, best represented by the magnificence of Byzantium -: “I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic and practical life were one.” In 1912 he had visited the city of Ravenna, in northern Italy and had seen there some examples of early Byzantium art. He recognised that many generations of people had witnessed the pictures, but that the pictures themselves had maintained their vitality and freshness, they it seemed were ageless, the figures portrayed in them also achieved a permanence that was not possible in reality. The predicament facing Yeats, is what he perceives to be a growing dicotony between his ageing body and his still youthful mind or intellect. He offers, in the opening stanza, the contrast between those who concentrate on the sensual world and those who are preoccupied with the permanent world of art.

Stanza II:, Yeats discusses an old man as something of little consequence -: “An aged man is but a paltry thing.” He uses the analogy with a scarecrow, to represent the lifelessness of someone old. It is as if the marrow has been sucked from the bones, the blood and flesh of the living have been removed, leaving behind a lifeless shell. This for Yeats is the inevitability of old age,unless- “Soul clap its hands and sing.” Unless one concentrates on the intellect of soul and by doing so seek to escape from the constraints of the human body. Consequently he has resolved to attempt such a journey, a metaphorical voyage-: “I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.” Which is for him the symbol of artistic magnificence and permanence.

Stanza III: He begins by referring to a particular painting he saw in a Ravenna church, the painting depicted martyrs being burned for their faith. Yeats interpretation suggests that these martyrs were sages and that the flames represent the Holy Spirit, in other words that the moment of their deaths, was equivalent to moving from the mortal life to the immortal life and achieving a permanence through both the life of the soul and the Byzantine painting. The phrase “perne in a gyre” refers to a spinning wheel such as those Yeats would have seen during his youth in Sligo. Yeats is referring to the movement of thread through bobbin and spool, a movement that is so fast that it is imperceptible to the naked eye. The point that Yeats is highlighting is that each individual strand of thread is submerged by speed into one continuous piece, similarly each successive human life is a mirror image of a previous one, but that taken together there is a continuation, a permanence. The figures in the Byzantine mosaic have been viewed by successive generations in that Ravenna church, but have not themselves succumbed to the ravishes of time. Yeats now calls on these figures, to be his guides on his voyage to Byzantium, to help him break free from his decreped body which he now sees as a “dying animal”. The poet wants to be subsumed into the world of Byzantine art, to be like the figures in the gold mosaic. Yeats sees gold as representing an untarnished brilliance and permanence that best reflects his opinion of art.

Stanza VI: In the final stanza he begins by declaring that in this world of art, he would not take on the form of any natural thing, which like the images of the opening stanza, would be susceptible to the ravages of time, decay and death. Instead he would take the form of a golden bird - an image based on golden birds that adorned trees in the palace of the Byzantine emperor. Yeats has finally broken with the sensual mortal world, he has rejected life as we know it, in favour of an intellectual permanence produced by a work of art. However he has not fully succeeded, the use of the word drowsy, rekindles the sensuous overtones of the poem, suggesting that the poet’s intellect is limited by his human condition, that in seeking a perfect existence his intellect is unable to avoid that which appeals to his senses. This becomes more obvious in the final lines of the poem, in line 30 is the voice of the golden bird that Yeats highlights again, contradicting his purpose in the poem. It is not the beauty of the hammered gold that Yeats now refers to, but the beauty of the birds voice which cannot come from a golden bird in a painting. The final line of the poem -: “Of what is past passing or to come.” reflects the line from the opening stanza-: “Whatever is begotten, born and dies.” In an effort to represent permanence and timelessness, and in achieving a resolution to his quest, the poet, paradoxically completes the poem by dividing time into past, present and future, suggesting that his intellect remains within the bounds of his human condition. Although the poem is ostensibly about Yeats' attempts to achieve an artist’s permanence, through -: “Monuments of unageing intellect.” represented by Byzantine art. Some critics suggest that Yeats is far more concerned with his loss of sexual potency, his references in the opening stanza to “the young in one another's arms etc.” are perhaps indicating a jealousy of the young and perhaps his concentration is as a direct result of his recognition of his physical failings. The image chosen by Yeats to represent the ideal artist states that the golden bird, was only introduced to the poem in the final drafts. Earlier drafts of the poem show Yeats wishing to take on the form of Phideas - a statue in Byzantium which represented the perfect like Adonis. This shows that at least during the writing of the poem, Yeats was wishing for physical perfection. This theme is also continued in “Among School Children”, where Yeats refers to “Golden-thighed Pythagoras”, and refers to the virility of Pythagoras. Yeats juxtaposes contrasting images of the sensuous world and the world of art, thereby creating a tension and conflict which he hopes to resolve by the end of the poem. In the opening stanza, the images of the sensuous world are depicted by the phrases in a staccato-like rhythm e.g.-: “The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born and dies.” In contrast the image which he associates with artistic permanence -: ”Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.” is written in a flowing style, perhaps a sense of timelessness and permanence in contrast to the transience of the previous image. There is also a noticeable contrast in the syllabic used by Yeats in the words representing the sensual and the intellectual. It is noticeable that many of the words associated with mortal life are monosyllabic or at most are composed of two syllables e.g. (a) “fish, flesh, fowl.” And (b) “An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick.” By contrast many of the words used to reflect the permanence of the intellect are polysyllabic e.g. (a) “Monuments of unageing intellect.” (b) “Of hammered gold and gold enamelling.” The poem sets out to display the superiority of the world of art, to show that permanence can be achieved through art as in Byzantium and that human life by contrast is transient. Yeats uses symbolism throughout the poem to represent this contrast.

Symbolism: The use of symbolism is very important throughout the poem. The title of the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” contains 2 important symbols-: (a) Sailing which depicts a metaphorical journey and gives substance and a physical aspect to what Yeats is trying to achieve. (b) Byzantium symbolizes a world of artistic magnificence and permenance, conjuring up in the mind of the reader, a rich and inclusive culture such as that associated with the Byzantium empire. The images of birds, fish and young lovers used by Yeats in the first stanza symbolises transience and mortality. Yeats highlights this aspect of the world he lives in, so that the world which he seeks i.e. Byzantium, becomes more clearly focused. In the second stanza Yeats uses the symbol of a scarecrow to represent the decrepitute of old age. The scarecrow is a repulsive lifeless image symbolising everything that Yeats wants to reject in his mortal existence. The symbol of music and song runs through the poem providing a unified motif between the worlds of intellect and sensual worlds. In the opening stanza the song is that of the birds in the trees, a sensual though transient song. In the second stanza he projects an image of “a singing school” a suggestion that the joy experienced in this artistic paradise is more comporable than the joy of song. This idea is again repeated in stanza three. In the final stanza the song of the golden bird which entertains the lords and ladies of Byzantium represents the intellectual joy to be experienced by Yeats. The golden bird of the final stanza is a chosen image of the permenant form Yeats wishes to take, in essence it represents durability which one associates with the untarnishing quality of gold , by virtue of it’s physical permenance there is the understood contribution of its song, thereby providing what Yeats hopes will be the representation of the artistic existence he yearns for.

FOR K.K SIR'S CLASSES

K.K.SINGH

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Canterville Ghost

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Canterville Ghost: The Canterville Ghost"   is a   short story   by the Irish author   Oscar Wilde which contains elements of both   horror   and comedy...

The Canterville Ghost

The Canterville Ghost" is a short story by the Irish author Oscar Wildewhich contains elements of both horror and comedy. It was first published in the magazine The Court and Society Review in 1887 and was republished in an anthology of Wilde's works, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories in 1891.

The plot is set in motion when the American Otis family moves into the old English country house Canterville Chase. They are warned that the house is haunted before they move in but are unconcerned at first. They soon accept that the ghost is real but are not frightened by it. The ghost, who had been frightening all those who stayed at Canterville Chase for three hundred years, takes the Americans' unwillingness to be scared by him as a great insult. He grows to despise them all, except for the teenage daughter Virginia, who he feels is different from the rest of her family. At the end of the story, the ghost asks for Virginia's help to lift the curse which is on him and allow him to rest in peace.

Much of the humor in the story is derived from the clash of cultures which occurs when members of the modern and largely materialistic American Otis family find themselves facing old English traditions and a centuries old ghost. The story contains the famous line, "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except of course, language."

"The Canterville Ghost" has been adapted numerous times for other media, serving as the basis for stage plays, musicals, operas, animated and live-action films and television programs, radio plays and comic books.

Plot

Three hundred years before the story begins, Sir Simon de Canterville murders his wife Lady Eleanor at their home Canterville Chase. As punishment for his crime, Lady Eleanor's brothers chain Sir Simon to a wall with some food and water placed just out of his reach. The door of the room is then sealed. Sir Simon is left to slowly starve to death and his disappearance remains a mystery for most people. After his death, Sir Simon is doomed to haunt Canterville Chase. However, Sir Simon makes the best of the situation and relishes his role as the ghost. He is able to take on different forms, including a black dog, a skeleton and a vampire monk. He enjoys frightening generations of the de Canterville family, their relatives and visitors to Canterville Chase, often to the point that those he frightens go mad and sometimes commit suicide.

Mr. Hiram B. Otis, the American ambassador to Britain, buys Canterville Chase from Lord Canterville. Mr. Otis is warned that there is a ghost in the house but he jokingly agrees to take the building with furniture, ghost and all. Mr. Otis moves into the house with his wife Lucretia, oldest son Washington, teenaged daughter Virginia and two unnamed young twin sons. On arrival at the house, Mrs. Otis notices a red stain on the floor. The housekeeper, Mrs. Umney, explains that it is a sign of the ghost's presence in the house, it is a bloodstain which marks the spot where Lady Eleanor was killed and it cannot be removed. Washington Otis scoffs at that notion and immediately wipes away the stain with some Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent. Although Washington removes the stain, it reappears each day. The fact that the stain reappears even when the room is locked convinces the family that the ghost exists. The family notice that the stain appears in different shades of red and even in green.

One evening, the ghost appears in front of Mr. Otis, rattling some chains. Mr. Otis is not at all frightened by the ghost but calmly tells him that the sound of his rusty chains is making too much noise and that he should use some Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator on them. Sir Simon also fails to frighten all of the other members of the family, no matter how hard he tries. He receives particularly rough treatment from the twins, who trip him up and fire pea-shooters at him. Sir Simon is even frightened when he sees what he thinks is another ghost, which is really a dummy that the twins have made from a jack o'lantern and a sheet.

Sir Simon eventually gives up trying to frighten the Otis family. The family wrongly believe that the ghost has left but, in fact, he is still quietly haunting the building. Hearing that the young Duke of Cheshire, who has fallen in love with Virginia, is to visit Canterville Chase, the ghost is pleased because he had terrified the Duke's ancestors.

During the Duke's visit, Virginia confronts the ghost. She scolds him both for taking her paints, which he used for the bloodstain, and for murdering his wife. The ghost admits to killing his wife but complains that he was cruelly punished afterwards by being starved to death. Sir Simon continues to say that he has neither eaten nor rested in the three centuries since that time and that he longs to truly die. Virginia feels sorry for the ghost and wants to help him. Sir Simon points out that there is a prophecy that he can rest if a girl cries for him and prays for him. Virginia agrees to do it, although the ghost warns her that it will be a frightening experience.

Virginia goes missing for some time while she is praying for the ghost. Her family, the Duke of Cheshire and the police search for her. When she reappears, she explains that Sir Simon de Canterville has finally truly died and leads her family to his skeleton. The body is buried soon afterwards.

Virginia later marries the Duke of Cheshire. Although she has no other secrets from her husband, she never tells him exactly what happened during the time that she went missing with the ghost

Regards

K.K Singh 

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new r...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new r...: The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the   Jorasanko mansion  in  Calcutta ,  India   to parents   Debendranat...

The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new radical canon in Indian writing

The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, India to parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875  The Tagore family came into prominence during the Bengal Renaissance that started during the age of Hussein Shah (1493–1519). The original name of the Tagore family was Banerjee. Being Brahmins, their ancestors were referred to as 'Thakurmashai' or 'Holy Sir'. During the British rule, this name stuck and they began to be recognised as Thakur and eventually the family name got anglicised to Tagore

WORKS

Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded; he is indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter: commoners. Tagore's non-fiction grappled with history, linguistics, and spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes, including Europe Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe) and Manusher Dhormo (The Religion of Man). His brief chat with Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix to the latter. On the occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday an anthology (titledKalanukromik Rabindra Rachanabali) of the total body of his works is currently being published in Bengali in chronological order. This includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty volumes.[92] In 2011, Harvard University Press collaborated with Visva-Bharati University to publish The Essential Tagore, the largest anthology of Tagore's works available in English; it was edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarthy and marks the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth.

Music

Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal color of classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas. Yet about nine-tenths of his work was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western, Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own ancestral culture Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range of Hindustani ragas:

Novels

Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher Kobita, Char Odhay, and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)—through the lens of the idealistic zamindar protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the Swadeshi movement; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged from a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's—likely mortal—wounding.

Gora raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with Ghare Baire, matters of self-identity, personal freedom, and religion are developed in the context of a family story and love triangle. In it an Irish boy orphaned in the Sepoy Mutiny is raised by Hindus as the titular gora—"whitey". Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu religious backsliders out of love for the indigenous Indians and solidarity with them against his hegemon-compatriots. He falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost past and cease his nativist zeal. As a "true dialectic" advancing "arguments for and against strict traditionalism", it tackles the colonial conundrum by "portray[ing] the value of all positions within a particular frame [...] not only syncretism, not only liberal orthodoxy, but the extremest reactionary traditionalism he defends by an appeal to what humans share." Among these Tagore highlights "identity [...] conceived of as dharma."

 In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by Dākshāyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil: her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed gentry. The story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations.

Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita—translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song—is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name: "Rabindranath Tagore". Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: "I have always regretted the ending".

Stories

Tagore's three-volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty-four stories that reflect upon the author's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "Sadhana" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore's life in Patisar, Shajadpur, Shelaidaha, and other villages. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point. In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller and novelist imputing exotic perquisites to an Afghan seller. He channels the lucubrative lust of those mired in the blasé, nidorous, and sudorific morass of subcontinental city life: for distant vistas. "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it [...] I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest [...].

The Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) was written in Tagore's Sabuj Patra period, which lasted from 1914 to 1917 and was named for another of his magazines  These yarns are celebrated fare in Bengali fiction and are commonly used as plot fodder by Bengali film and theatre. The Ray film Charulata echoed the controversial Tagore novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi, which was made into another film, the little Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village zamindar. The boy relates his flight from home and his subsequent wanderings. Taking pity, the elder adopts him; he fixes the boy to marry his own daughter. The night before his wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Wife's Letter) is an early treatise in female emancipation  Mrinal is wife to a Bengali middle class man: prissy, preening, and patriarchal. Travelling alone she writes a letter, which comprehends the story. She details the pettiness of a life spent entreating his viraginous virility; she ultimately gives up married life, proclaiming,Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I shall live. Here, I live."

Haimanti assails Hindu arranged marriage and spotlights their often dismal domesticity, the hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a young woman, due to her insufferable sensitivity and free spirit, foredid herself. In the last passage Tagore blasts the reification of Sita's self-immolation attempt; she had meant to appease her consort Rama's doubts of her chastity. Musalmani Didi eyes recrudescent Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. The somewhat auto-referential Darpaharan describes a fey young man who harbours literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. In youth Tagore likely agreed with him. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he ultimately acknowledges his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't."

Poetry

Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as those of the bard Lalon. These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical voice of the moner manush, the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's "life force of his deep recesses", or meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the "living God within. This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.

Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam, his birth anniversary, is celebrated by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries. Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from language and arts to history and politics.Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker".Tagore's Bengali originals—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is canonised as one of his nation's greatest cultural treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has produced

 Regards

K.K Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new r...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new r...: The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the   Jorasanko mansion  in  Calcutta ,  India   to parents   Debendranath...

The contribution of Tagore towards forming a new radical canon in Indian writing

The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, India to parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875  The Tagore family came into prominence during the Bengal Renaissance that started during the age of Hussein Shah (1493–1519). The original name of the Tagore family was Banerjee. Being Brahmins, their ancestors were referred to as 'Thakurmashai' or 'Holy Sir'. During the British rule, this name stuck and they began to be recognised as Thakur and eventually the family name got anglicised to Tagore

WORKS

Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded; he is indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter: commoners. Tagore's non-fiction grappled with history, linguistics, and spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes, including Europe Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe) and Manusher Dhormo (The Religion of Man). His brief chat with Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix to the latter. On the occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday an anthology (titledKalanukromik Rabindra Rachanabali) of the total body of his works is currently being published in Bengali in chronological order. This includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty volumes.[92] In 2011, Harvard University Press collaborated with Visva-Bharati University to publish The Essential Tagore, the largest anthology of Tagore's works available in English; it was edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarthy and marks the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth.

Music

Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal color of classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas. Yet about nine-tenths of his work was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western, Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own ancestral culture Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range of Hindustani ragas:

Novels

Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher Kobita, Char Odhay, and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)—through the lens of the idealistic zamindar protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the Swadeshi movement; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged from a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's—likely mortal—wounding.

Gora raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with Ghare Baire, matters of self-identity, personal freedom, and religion are developed in the context of a family story and love triangle. In it an Irish boy orphaned in the Sepoy Mutiny is raised by Hindus as the titular gora—"whitey". Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu religious backsliders out of love for the indigenous Indians and solidarity with them against his hegemon-compatriots. He falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost past and cease his nativist zeal. As a "true dialectic" advancing "arguments for and against strict traditionalism", it tackles the colonial conundrum by "portray[ing] the value of all positions within a particular frame [...] not only syncretism, not only liberal orthodoxy, but the extremest reactionary traditionalism he defends by an appeal to what humans share." Among these Tagore highlights "identity [...] conceived of as dharma."

 In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by Dākshāyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil: her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed gentry. The story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations.

Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita—translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song—is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name: "Rabindranath Tagore". Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: "I have always regretted the ending".

Stories

Tagore's three-volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty-four stories that reflect upon the author's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "Sadhana" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore's life in Patisar, Shajadpur, Shelaidaha, and other villages. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point. In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller and novelist imputing exotic perquisites to an Afghan seller. He channels the lucubrative lust of those mired in the blasé, nidorous, and sudorific morass of subcontinental city life: for distant vistas. "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it [...] I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest [...].

The Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) was written in Tagore's Sabuj Patra period, which lasted from 1914 to 1917 and was named for another of his magazines  These yarns are celebrated fare in Bengali fiction and are commonly used as plot fodder by Bengali film and theatre. The Ray film Charulata echoed the controversial Tagore novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi, which was made into another film, the little Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village zamindar. The boy relates his flight from home and his subsequent wanderings. Taking pity, the elder adopts him; he fixes the boy to marry his own daughter. The night before his wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Wife's Letter) is an early treatise in female emancipation  Mrinal is wife to a Bengali middle class man: prissy, preening, and patriarchal. Travelling alone she writes a letter, which comprehends the story. She details the pettiness of a life spent entreating his viraginous virility; she ultimately gives up married life, proclaiming,Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I shall live. Here, I live."

Haimanti assails Hindu arranged marriage and spotlights their often dismal domesticity, the hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a young woman, due to her insufferable sensitivity and free spirit, foredid herself. In the last passage Tagore blasts the reification of Sita's self-immolation attempt; she had meant to appease her consort Rama's doubts of her chastity. Musalmani Didi eyes recrudescent Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. The somewhat auto-referential Darpaharan describes a fey young man who harbours literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. In youth Tagore likely agreed with him. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he ultimately acknowledges his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't."

Poetry

Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as those of the bard Lalon. These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical voice of the moner manush, the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's "life force of his deep recesses", or meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the "living God within. This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.

Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam, his birth anniversary, is celebrated by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries. Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from language and arts to history and politics.Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker".Tagore's Bengali originals—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is canonised as one of his nation's greatest cultural treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has produced

Regards

K.K Singh