Academic literature on the topic 'Contextual Modernism of Rabindranath Tagore'

This article explores cultural dialogues between countries located in the (so-called) global South, focusing on India and Argentina through the nexus between the Bengali author, artist, and educationalist Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and the Argentine writer, publisher, and feminist Victoria Ocampo (1890–1979). The article examines the dialectical tensions that arose out of their encounter in Buenos Aires in 1924 which, while forging productive cultural networks through the globalist paradigms proposed by Ocampo's modernist review SUR and Tagore's Bengal-inflected notion of visva-sahitya – as well as the latter's significant contribution to the Argentine cultural scene – it also brought to the fore the geopolitics of empire by foregrounding India's and Argentina's fraught colonial relations with imperial Britain. 1

This article intends to critique the spectres of authority which haunt theatrical interpretations of Rabindranath Tagore's (1861–1941) plays. As Tagore is a cultural icon, since even before his demise his plays have been made sites for exercising cultural and institutional authority. A consequent uneasy anticipation of denunciation or censorship has essentially deterred theatre directors from creatively interpreting and staging his plays. In terms of discourse also, there has been a spiral of silence regarding the presence of such authority. It is only since the beginning of the twenty-first century, after the termination of the copyright to Tagore's works, that the situation has lightened considerably. This article deals with the above phenomenon in two segments. While the second segment provides a close analysis of one of the first productions to radically subvert the status quo regarding the creative staging of Tagore's plays, the first provides a contextual, historical build-up to that moment. The article argues that in dramatic theatre authority is often validated on the basis of an ‘archival logic’ of thinking which requires systematic dismantling.

Collaboration is often understood as central to modernist literary production. The recent turn to a transnational or globalised understanding of modernism has made attention to collaborations across races and cultures all the more pressing. This article attends to the colonial politics of collaboration by exploring a specific instance of a particular genre: the introductions written by white, male, metropolitan modernists to texts by colonial authors. Focusing initially on introductions by Ford Madox Ford, Arthur Symons, Edmund Gosse and W. B. Yeats to texts by Jean Rhys, Sarojini Naidu and Rabindranath Tagore, the article then looks in detail at the prefaces written by E. M. Forster and Leonard Woolf to writing by Mulk Raj Anand ( Untouchable, 1935 and Letters on India, 1942). By putting pressure on the term ‘collaboration’ itself – and the frequent slippage to ‘collaborationist’ in relation to scholarship on Anand – this article will investigate the oft-overlooked genre of the introduction to ask questions crucial to the wider study of global modernisms. It will tease out the complex relationships, networks and publishing histories signalled by this conjunction of introduction and text. These prefatory texts are marked by imperial gestures of cultural patronage, framing and mediation but are also the very place where these gestures and hierarchies are contested and overturned.

The article is devoted to early vocal works of P. Kozytsky. Mostly likely because of political situation, only a few opuses of early period of creativity of Ukrainian composer have survived until our times. Among them – Four romances for voice and piano op. 11. It is stated, that we can see modernistic vector of search in this opus. It is remarkable that poetic verses only of contemporary to Kozytsky authors has attracted his attention. Kozytsky became the first Ukrainian composer who wrote music to poem of Rabindranath Tagore, in particular, to his collection of verses named ―The Gardener‖. There was a great wave of attention to works of this Indian poet, composer and philosopher in Western Europe in the first third of 20th century. Kozytsky in his musical interpretation of Tagore (in Ukrainian translation by Y. Siry) is not trying to reflect the oriental color, but instead he conveys different the psychological shades of this poetry. The same kind of perception is represented in the work of Leos Janacek – ―The wandering madman‖ for men’s choir with tenor, baritone and soprano solo, which was written in 1922 year (the same with Kozytsky) on verses from ―The Gardener‖ too. There was a row of other acknowledged Western Europe composers who turned to the poetry of Tagore around the same time. Among them – D. Milhaud, K. Shymanovsky, A. Zemlinsky. Other romances of opus 11 are written on verses of Ukrainian poets: P. Phylypovich (the poet of Executed Renaissance) and close comrade of Kozytsky P. Tychina (who had similar artististic intentions with composer and was at the same artistic circle with him).It is stated, that the whole opus can be considered as cycle, which reflects different stages of life of a woman. Cycle also has apparant links to theatrical art which are reflected in the way composer uses marks. But, regardless of brightness of the music of Four romances op. 11, modernistic intentions of young composes were, unfortunately, changed to another way.

Abstract This article presents a linguistic model, based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL), for describing and comparing poetry translations. The proposed model takes both the form and meaning of poetry into consideration and involves linguistic analyses at the levels of graphology, phonology, lexicogrammar and context. To illustrate the applicability of the model, we offer an analysis of Rabindranath Tagore’s Stray Birds in English and its three Chinese translations, point out the choices made by Tagore and the translators at different levels, and discuss the translation shifts in the target texts. On the basis of a contextual analysis, we relate the target texts with the Chinese norms of translation and comment on the quality of the translations. Our intention is to prove that linguistic theories offer a powerful tool for analysing poetry translation and offer new possibilities in translation studies from the perspective of SFL.

Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize winning Bengali poet and polymath, is an eminent figure in the history and culture of modern India. As the Indian Independence Movement grew in the early twentieth century, Tagore used his renown to establish a university in the rural community of Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, “where the world meets in a single nest.” All of Tagore’s efforts — artistic, educational, and social — were informed by a universalist philosophy that he developed based on the Upanishads. Tagore’s philosophy facilitated unity between all creation, including harmony between the peoples of humanity and between humanity and the natural world. The architecture of Santiniketan is a tangible manifestation of Tagore’s philosophy. Designed under his direction by his associates Nandalal Bose, Rathindranath Tagore, and Surendranath Kar, Tagore’s residences at Santiniketan, in particular the houses Udayan and Shyamali, illustrate Tagore’s universalism in two primary ways. The designs unify a diverse set of traditions within a Modernist framework, and provide for maximum interaction between indoor and outdoor spaces. Udayan is a synthesis of Indian, Japanese, Javanese, and European designs, finding commonalities in the traditions through abstraction and modern materials. Shyamali also draws from a variety of influences and, in service to a connection between man and nature, the design blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors by using the natural material of mud. The architecture of Santiniketan, because it is a product of Tagore’s unique values, does not fit easily within the major trends of Modernist architecture in India or beyond. It is best evaluated as a single thread in the contrapuntal nature of Modernism.

In the wake of the First World War, reformers across the Western world questioned laissez-faire liberalism, the self-oriented and market-driven ruling doctrine of the nineteenth century. This philosophy was blamed, variously, for the war, for industrialisation and for urbanisation; for a way of life shorn of any meaning beyond getting and keeping; for the too great faith in materialism and in science; and for the loss of a higher, transcendent meaning that gave a unifying altruistic or spiritual purpose to individual existence and to society as a whole. For many, the cure to these ills lay in reforming the liberal social framework in ways that made it more fulfilling to the whole person and that strengthened ties between individuals. Dartington Hall was an outstanding practical example of this impulse to promote holistic, integrated living. It was a well-financed, internationally-minded social and cultural experiment set up on an estate in South Devon in 1925 by American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney) and her second husband, Leonard, son of a Yorkshire squire-parson. The Elmhirsts' project for redressing the effects of laissez-faire liberalism had two components. Instead of being treated as atomised individuals in the capitalist market, participants at Dartington were to achieve full self-realisation through a 'life in its completeness' that incorporated the arts, education and spirituality. In addition, through their active participation in running the community, they were to demonstrate how integrated democracy could bring about the perfection of individuals and the progress of society as a whole. The Elmhirsts hoped that Dartington would provide a globally applicable model for a better way of life. This thesis is a close study of Dartington's interlinked constellation of experiments in education, the arts, agriculture and social organisation - experiments that can only be understood by tracing them back to their shared roots in the idea of 'life in its completeness'. At the same time, it explores how Dartington's philosophy and trajectory illuminate the wider reform landscape. The Elmhirsts' community echoed and cross-pollinated with other schemes for social improvement in Britain, Europe, America and India, as well as feeding into the broad social democratic project in Britain. Dartington's evolution from an independent, elite-led reform project to one split between state-led and communitarian reform matched the trajectory of other such enterprises begun in interwar Britain, making it a bellwether of changes in reformist thinking across the century.

Transatlantic Modernism and the US Lecture Tour examines how the US lecture tour served as a vital infrastructure for bringing regional audiences from all across America into direct contact with international modernists. In doing so, the book reroutes scholarly understandings of modernism away from the magazines and other mass media that have so far characterized its circulation and toward the unique form of cultural distribution that coalesced around public lecturing. More specifically, it highlights the role the lecture circuit played in the formation of transatlantic modernism by following a diverse group of international authors—Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Gertrude Stein, and W. H. Auden—on their wide-ranging tours through the American landscape. By analyzing these tours, this study illuminates how this extremely physical form of literary circulation transformed authors into commodities to be sold in a variety of performance venues. Moreover, it shows how these writers responded to such broad distribution by stretching their own ideas about modernist authorship. In this way, Transatlantic Modernism and the US Lecture Tour adds to a critical tradition of revealing the popular dimensions of modernism by demonstrating how the tour’s social diversity forced modernists to take on new, more flexible forms of self-presentation that would allow them to appeal to many different types of audiences.

Chapter 3 argues that Rabindranath Tagore followed W. B. Yeats in becoming a cultural representative while traveling on the circuit, but it also contends that Tagore’s reception as a popular guru ultimately hampered his ability to engage with political issues in the same way that Yeats had on his tour. More specifically, this chapter considers how this specific reception history evolved across Tagore’s first two US lecture tours, which took place in 1912–13 and 1916–17 respectively. While US audiences certainly played a large part in labeling Tagore as a guru, the poet was also a much cannier manipulator of his own reception than his critics have previously acknowledged. Through his public lecturing on his first tour, Tagore cultivated a spiritual image without playing to certain stereotypes that painted the East as a place of staid contemplation. Yet this effort became much more difficult during his next tour, when he began using his lectures on Hinduism as a platform for waging an explicit anti-colonial campaign. At this point, the poet was met with criticism, not only from Euro-Americans, but also from Bengali immigrants living in the US. This chapter therefore comes to the conclusion that Tagore’s success in altering his identity as a spiritual leader came at the expense of his popularity as an international literary figure.