Gora

Vittorio Veronese, UNESCO Director General wrote about GORA in1961, the centennial year of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore, “One of his greatest works, the monumental novel GORA was to choose as theme the trials and tribulations of the Brahma Samaj, a classless movement. It is not merely by chance that UNESCO under its many undertakings towards the celebration of the Tagore Centenary, has decided to publish the first French translation of this very novel. For in this book the poet stresses with great fervor and by moving scenes depicted with all his skill as a writer, his zealous devotion to the cause of a classless world, a world without cruel, irrational discrimination between one human being and his fellow men. His hero GORA, cries out, “It is you who are my mother. The imaginary mother whom I long sought during my wandering and vagabonding was still sitting at home, waiting before my own room. You have no caste, you make no distinction between men, you know no hatred, you give flesh to the good that is in all of us. It is you who are India”. And then comes these words from GORA, which one may apply to Tagore himself: “No longer is there opposed within me the Hindu, Muslim and Christian. Today all foods are my food.” For indeed Tagore took nourishment from what all the world had to offer, and his message of mutual understanding and tolerance is directed far beyond the boundaries of India, to all cultures and all peoples. A message of freedom too, not merely freedom for oneself, but freedom for all. “He who wishes freedom for himself”, he affirmed, but not freedom for his neighbor, is not worthy of freedom.” With this message he was and remains a GURU to UNESCO, and it is both fitting and imperative that UNESCO’s message to Tagore should join with that of the rest of mankind.

It is only fitting that the entire world should unite with India in rendering solemn homage to a man whose glory ennobled indissolubly both his own country and the world.

In SHESER KAVITA or the FINAL POEM, Rabindranath concluded the novella with a magnificent poem that is the epilogue of the work. The epilogue is in the pen of the heroine Lavanya, who was a university topper in her MA examination. Her suitor was an Oxford educated barrister, who could write spontaneous poems and come back with repartees and ripostes for all situations and arguments, just as Rabindranath was. The couple met fortuitously in Shillong, a hill station resort city in Assam, India, with great natural beauty of flowers and trees in the Himalayan foothills. Their love for each other has been expressed by these very erudite folks in introspective memorable lines that were the quotes of the student generations of the successive decades in Bengal. Rabindranath was 68 years young at the time and his power of pen bedazzled the elite Bengali intellectuals, Dr. Brajendranath Seal, the then Vice Chancellor of Mysore Universities, among them.

Dr. Seal penned:
“…..No doubt all emotions are proper plastic stuff for constructions in aesthetics as well as ethics; but as building material, experience in all its forms is intrinsically valuable-ideation, imagination, instinct, no less than emotion. But none of these enter into the norm.

What does enter into the norm and test of Poetry is not emotional ‘exaltation’, imaginative ‘transfiguration’ or disinterested ‘criticism’, but in and through them all, the creation of a Personality with an individual scheme of life, an individual outlook on the universe.

Judged by the above criterion, Rabindranath Tagore’s poetic achievement is characteristically complete. His early poems are an exercise in emotional ‘exaltation’. To this he soon added the art of imaginative ‘transfiguration’ as in Urvashi (PL see the translation on the web www.tagorethepoetofeternity.org, Legendary Poet page 2nd poem). In his mature achievement, he developed the ‘criticism of life’ without sacrificing the exaltation or transfiguration. Finally in his consummate later art, he has summed up all these elements and achieved the supreme mastery-the creation of a Personality with an individual scheme in life, an individual outlook on the Universe.”

Rabindranath’s 7 other novels and 68 short stories are based on the contemporary society, its idealistic values and deplorable aberrations. The next famous novel is Home and the World (screened), An Apple of Discord (screened). Two of the famous stories screened are The Broken Home and Hungry Stones. Hungry Stones is another example of imaginative ‘transfiguration’ by the poet who tells the sad tale of an Iranian slave girl kept 24 X 7 as a concubine in a harem in India. She and her paramour tried to flee the castle, the guards chased and caught them. The young man was banished from the kingdom and the slave girl’s misfortune did not end.

In beginning to tell this story, Rabindranath paraphrased a quote from Hamlet, “There happen more things in heaven and Horatio, than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.”

The dance dramas of Rabindranath number 9. Principal among them are Chandaalika (The Outcaste Woman), Shyamaa (A courtesan in the first millennium) and Chitrangadaa (An Indian Princess of legend).

This page is dedicated to two distinguished Oscar (AMPAS, Hollywood) officials.