ABSTRACT
Rabindranath Tagore is remembered in the West as a poet, novelist, and sage who was briefly catapulted into international recognition through the twin efforts of Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats. Tagore set two thousand of his poems to music that he composed himself. The transmission in Bengal of a song like “Nidu charanamule” shows both Tagore and Dwijendralal Ray departing considerably from their immediate role models without taking recourse to parody or to a contestatory Bloomian mode vis-a-vis a powerful artistic predecessor. Tagore recognized early on the dangers of the kind of European nationalism that led to the two World Wars, as well as of religion-based volkisch nationalism. Although recordings of Tagore’s own recitations reveal an element of “heightened speech,” Tagore attached great importance to melodic lines. Tagore’s brush with early twentieth-century European modernism may have resulted in an ephemeral, if spectacular, success, but his contribution to Indian modernity was more multifaceted and abiding than has usually been acknowledged.
