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sophia_sol) wrote2020-09-29 09:22 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-09-29 09:22 pm
Glimpses of Bengal, by Rabindranath Tagore
A collection of letters from Rabindranath Tagore at the end of the 19th century, consisting largely of descriptions of scenery, weather, people-watching, and philosophical musings. The letters are sometimes beautifully evocative and thoughtful, sometimes self-consciously pretentious in that arrogant-young-man way. Overall the style of writing is...very much the kind of thing I expect of a person who has received major acclaim for Literature, which is not so much my kind of thing. I don't think I would have made it through this book without the Librivox reader, who did a good job of putting animation and feeling into what she was reading. (note though that there's a fair number of editing errors in the audio for this book, more than I have generally found in Librivox)
Tagore almost never mentions anything personal in the letter excerpts he includes in this book. But occasionally he mentions his travels by houseboat, practically the only personal detail that makes it in, and he makes that sound very pleasant indeed. Of course, he's a well-off enough person to be able to just wander extensively by houseboat to wherever he wants, taken care of by servants all the way.
It's pretty clear from Tagore's attitudes throughout the book that he comes from a well-to-do, high-class family and he comes across in places as rather out of touch as a result. The letter where he talks about the servant who comes to work late one day because his daughter died, and then just sets to work as usual, and Tagore takes this as inspiration to reflect on how work can be a consolation in the hard things in life......oof. You don't know your servant's interiority, sir!
There's a part in the letters where he reflects at some length on The Thousand and One Nights, and I found it fascinating to read an orientalist perspective from a non-european. The way he talks about that book!!
He's also sexist, but that one didn't come as a surprise to me.
The thing that surprised me the most was something that's moooostly not present in the text of this book itself. There's a bit early on where Tagore describes an attractive preteen girl he sees, which was mildly uncomfortable when I first read it, but I tried to tell myself I was reading too much into it. And then it became abruptly VERY uncomfortable when I was browsing Tagore's wiki page and discovered he married his wife when she was 10 and he was 22, and their first kid was born only 3 years later, indicating he willingly had sex with a girl who was 12 and quite possibly younger. I do gather that historically (including into Tagore's time) it was considered appropriate and indeed preferable for girls in India to be married extremely young, so I will withhold judgement for him marrying Mrinalini. But I will absolutely 100000% condemn him for how young Mrinalini was when he had sex with her, and how he's apparently interested in evaluating the appeal of other young girls. B A D.
The thing is, I went into this book predisposed to like it. On a trip I took to India several years ago, I visited the Tagore family estate near Kolkata, where Rabindranath Tagore died, and which is now a museum dedicated to him. And I have very fond memories of that visit. It was a pleasant day, and we got there just after a major rainstorm, so the covered outdoor walkways on the second floor were wet. The sensation of the warm, wet, smooth painted walkways under my bare feet is a sense-memory that still brings me happiness. And it was so nice to just wander that huge estate quietly on my own -- it felt so peaceful, after spending time in Kolkata, which had been overwhelming to me and my sensory processing disorder.
So I wanted to like Tagore, because of those pleasant associations! But I do not like the version of him who exists in his letters, at the very least, and I am appalled by his personal morals around sex. Perhaps there is value in his poetry or his short stories or other works that I can't see in these letters. But I'm not feeling inspired in the slightest to seek out any more of his works, despite how important and influential a writer he was.
Tagore almost never mentions anything personal in the letter excerpts he includes in this book. But occasionally he mentions his travels by houseboat, practically the only personal detail that makes it in, and he makes that sound very pleasant indeed. Of course, he's a well-off enough person to be able to just wander extensively by houseboat to wherever he wants, taken care of by servants all the way.
It's pretty clear from Tagore's attitudes throughout the book that he comes from a well-to-do, high-class family and he comes across in places as rather out of touch as a result. The letter where he talks about the servant who comes to work late one day because his daughter died, and then just sets to work as usual, and Tagore takes this as inspiration to reflect on how work can be a consolation in the hard things in life......oof. You don't know your servant's interiority, sir!
There's a part in the letters where he reflects at some length on The Thousand and One Nights, and I found it fascinating to read an orientalist perspective from a non-european. The way he talks about that book!!
He's also sexist, but that one didn't come as a surprise to me.
The thing that surprised me the most was something that's moooostly not present in the text of this book itself. There's a bit early on where Tagore describes an attractive preteen girl he sees, which was mildly uncomfortable when I first read it, but I tried to tell myself I was reading too much into it. And then it became abruptly VERY uncomfortable when I was browsing Tagore's wiki page and discovered he married his wife when she was 10 and he was 22, and their first kid was born only 3 years later, indicating he willingly had sex with a girl who was 12 and quite possibly younger. I do gather that historically (including into Tagore's time) it was considered appropriate and indeed preferable for girls in India to be married extremely young, so I will withhold judgement for him marrying Mrinalini. But I will absolutely 100000% condemn him for how young Mrinalini was when he had sex with her, and how he's apparently interested in evaluating the appeal of other young girls. B A D.
The thing is, I went into this book predisposed to like it. On a trip I took to India several years ago, I visited the Tagore family estate near Kolkata, where Rabindranath Tagore died, and which is now a museum dedicated to him. And I have very fond memories of that visit. It was a pleasant day, and we got there just after a major rainstorm, so the covered outdoor walkways on the second floor were wet. The sensation of the warm, wet, smooth painted walkways under my bare feet is a sense-memory that still brings me happiness. And it was so nice to just wander that huge estate quietly on my own -- it felt so peaceful, after spending time in Kolkata, which had been overwhelming to me and my sensory processing disorder.
So I wanted to like Tagore, because of those pleasant associations! But I do not like the version of him who exists in his letters, at the very least, and I am appalled by his personal morals around sex. Perhaps there is value in his poetry or his short stories or other works that I can't see in these letters. But I'm not feeling inspired in the slightest to seek out any more of his works, despite how important and influential a writer he was.
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I'd be very interested to hear more about this! What did he say about it?
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That does sound fascinating!
You wrote beautifully about that experience on his estate but WOW, yeah, I see why you're not a fan of the person. Eesh.
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