Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee :
‘Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man’; ‘On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play.’ – Here is Rabindranath’s concept of children for you. One does not therefore wonder at the twenty books or so, that Rabindranath wrote for children and about children. One does not even need to look further than his little series of Bengali primers, Sahaj Path, to realize how deep was his understanding of the child’s mind. This is how Leela Majumdar describes it:
The fortunate learner is initiated into the mysteries of the written word, with a wealth of poetic suggestion and a murmuring as of music. The very act of learning one’s letters becomes a pleasure. The primer turns into literature. With a shock one realises that there never was a teacher like this, who gave of his best to the least of his self-appointed tasks.
The present volume is the first serious attempt at comprehensively presenting Rabindranath’s children’s literature in English translation. Apart from some of the verses from his innovative text-book Sahaj Path, the poems include not only whimsy, nonsense and fantasy, but also moral pieces, social narratives and historical tales. The prose writings comprise a variety of stories, again ranging from the moral to the fantastic. There is a section of short humorous plays and extracts from the poet’s own account of his childhood. For better understanding, an impressive array of notes, explanations and data have been marshalled, but they have been placed in the book as unobtrusively as possible. The book also contains a wealth of illustrations by Rabindranath himself, his circle and the members of Shantiniketan community, like his two nephews Gaganendranath and Abanindranath, then Nandalal Bose, the teacher, Asit Kumar Haldar and Sukhen Gangopadhyay.
The first section of verses contains sixteen delightful poems and songs including four from Shishu. There are many a conceit of rarest delicacy of perception and execution. One still misses that memorable passage from Shishu, where Rabindranath divines the cause of the smile that ‘flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps’. He is sure that ‘a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.’ Even in translation in an alien tongue how wonderfully it reads!
Five plays have been included in the book with the significant omission of Dak-ghar (another notable omission is Rajarshi, the story of little Hasi and Tata, which has always been considered a most commendable book for adolescents). One has to admit, however, that almost all the plays written and produced by the poet are of such a nature as to be enjoyed and appreciated by older children. The reason is not far to seek. The greater majority of Tagore’s plays was composed in order to be enacted by the pupils of the school at Shantiniketan. The themes are never childish, but always of an idealistic and inspiring nature, providing the highest and best material for growing minds.
That Men (Shey) follows the section of plays. These stories were written for Nandini, the adopted daughter of Rabindranath’s son, Rathindranath. Her pet-name was Pupu or Pupe, and she herself appears all through the book – listening to, commenting on, or even adding to her grandfather stories. Her reactions are those of any normal little girl in search of a good story, so full of a biting satire underneath the evident humour that almost all young readers react in the same manner as Pupudidi who strongly resents grandpas too obvious insinuations.
It has often been said that the world of Rabindranath’s children’s literature fails to reveal very many lusty, happy, hearty, normal boys or girls. They are mostly meditative creatures, with an inward life, or wild and wayward in their rebellion against the prison regime of society. The superior little invalid child Amal of Dakghar, the unruly student Panchak of Achalayatan, the disturbing little boys of Shishu are all pointers to this fact. This led to the criticism that he did not understand real children, that is ordinary, normal, hearty children, but was so engrossed in his poet’s idea of what a child might be, that the delicate and sensitive creatures of his books and poems, have no counterpart in actual life and are quite alien to a child’s conception of children. There is some truth in this allegation, for it is the elders who perhaps enjoy his children’s literature more than the children themselves.
The collection has been rounded off with some of Rabindranath’s accounts of his own ‘childhood’, as contained in Chhelebela. Suvro Chatterjee has translated it as My Childhood, while Marjorie Sykes in a Visva-Bharati edition of 1940, called it My Boyhood Days. There is more palpable difference in ‘childhood’ and ‘boyhood’ here, than is usually understood, especially in view of the general notion that Rabindranath’s children’s literature is meant more for slightly grown up boys and girls rather than for children. The opening sentences of the two translation are also interesting study in contrast. Here is Suvro Chatterjee :
I was born in the Calcutta of yesteryear. In those days horse-drawn carriages still rattled through the streets, leaving a trail of dust, the coachmen lashing the skinny horses with hempen whips.
Marjorie Sykes rendered it as :
The Calcutta where I was born was an altogether old-world place. Hackney carriages lumbered about the city raising clouds of dust, and the whips fell on the backs of skinny horses whose bones showed plainly below their hide.
The former is perhaps a more faithful translation, but the latter is definitely more evocative in language. In general, however, the translations done by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Sukhendu Ray and Suvro Chatterjee are of a very high quality. A lot of culture-specific and language-specific expressions as well as whimsy and fantasy of children’s literature have compelled the translators to take occasional liberty. The editor Sukanta Choudhuri has done well to point out in the notes any such major departure or omission which is crucial. For the rest we accept the editor’s claim in the editorial, ‘We can fairly claim not to have diverged too much or too often’.
At the end one wishes there were a section comprising some of Rabidnranath’s letters to his grand-daughters and another little girl which are perhaps the most happy things that he wrote for children. Filled with exquisite joy and humour, these letters were never intended for publication and in them he lays his neart bare, thus betraying occasional lapses from dignity and also the tender gaiety of his nature.
‘Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man’; ‘On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play.’ – Here is Rabindranath’s concept of children for you. One does not therefore wonder at the twenty books or so, that Rabindranath wrote for children and about children. One does not even need to look further than his little series of Bengali primers, Sahaj Path, to realize how deep was his understanding of the child’s mind. This is how Leela Majumdar describes it:
The fortunate learner is initiated into the mysteries of the written word, with a wealth of poetic suggestion and a murmuring as of music. The very act of learning one’s letters becomes a pleasure. The primer turns into literature. With a shock one realises that there never was a teacher like this, who gave of his best to the least of his self-appointed tasks.
The present volume is the first serious attempt at comprehensively presenting Rabindranath’s children’s literature in English translation. Apart from some of the verses from his innovative text-book Sahaj Path, the poems include not only whimsy, nonsense and fantasy, but also moral pieces, social narratives and historical tales. The prose writings comprise a variety of stories, again ranging from the moral to the fantastic. There is a section of short humorous plays and extracts from the poet’s own account of his childhood. For better understanding, an impressive array of notes, explanations and data have been marshalled, but they have been placed in the book as unobtrusively as possible. The book also contains a wealth of illustrations by Rabindranath himself, his circle and the members of Shantiniketan community, like his two nephews Gaganendranath and Abanindranath, then Nandalal Bose, the teacher, Asit Kumar Haldar and Sukhen Gangopadhyay.
The first section of verses contains sixteen delightful poems and songs including four from Shishu. There are many a conceit of rarest delicacy of perception and execution. One still misses that memorable passage from Shishu, where Rabindranath divines the cause of the smile that ‘flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps’. He is sure that ‘a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.’ Even in translation in an alien tongue how wonderfully it reads!
Five plays have been included in the book with the significant omission of Dak-ghar (another notable omission is Rajarshi, the story of little Hasi and Tata, which has always been considered a most commendable book for adolescents). One has to admit, however, that almost all the plays written and produced by the poet are of such a nature as to be enjoyed and appreciated by older children. The reason is not far to seek. The greater majority of Tagore’s plays was composed in order to be enacted by the pupils of the school at Shantiniketan. The themes are never childish, but always of an idealistic and inspiring nature, providing the highest and best material for growing minds.
That Men (Shey) follows the section of plays. These stories were written for Nandini, the adopted daughter of Rabindranath’s son, Rathindranath. Her pet-name was Pupu or Pupe, and she herself appears all through the book – listening to, commenting on, or even adding to her grandfather stories. Her reactions are those of any normal little girl in search of a good story, so full of a biting satire underneath the evident humour that almost all young readers react in the same manner as Pupudidi who strongly resents grandpas too obvious insinuations.
It has often been said that the world of Rabindranath’s children’s literature fails to reveal very many lusty, happy, hearty, normal boys or girls. They are mostly meditative creatures, with an inward life, or wild and wayward in their rebellion against the prison regime of society. The superior little invalid child Amal of Dakghar, the unruly student Panchak of Achalayatan, the disturbing little boys of Shishu are all pointers to this fact. This led to the criticism that he did not understand real children, that is ordinary, normal, hearty children, but was so engrossed in his poet’s idea of what a child might be, that the delicate and sensitive creatures of his books and poems, have no counterpart in actual life and are quite alien to a child’s conception of children. There is some truth in this allegation, for it is the elders who perhaps enjoy his children’s literature more than the children themselves.
The collection has been rounded off with some of Rabindranath’s accounts of his own ‘childhood’, as contained in Chhelebela. Suvro Chatterjee has translated it as My Childhood, while Marjorie Sykes in a Visva-Bharati edition of 1940, called it My Boyhood Days. There is more palpable difference in ‘childhood’ and ‘boyhood’ here, than is usually understood, especially in view of the general notion that Rabindranath’s children’s literature is meant more for slightly grown up boys and girls rather than for children. The opening sentences of the two translation are also interesting study in contrast. Here is Suvro Chatterjee :
I was born in the Calcutta of yesteryear. In those days horse-drawn carriages still rattled through the streets, leaving a trail of dust, the coachmen lashing the skinny horses with hempen whips.
Marjorie Sykes rendered it as :
The Calcutta where I was born was an altogether old-world place. Hackney carriages lumbered about the city raising clouds of dust, and the whips fell on the backs of skinny horses whose bones showed plainly below their hide.
The former is perhaps a more faithful translation, but the latter is definitely more evocative in language. In general, however, the translations done by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Sukhendu Ray and Suvro Chatterjee are of a very high quality. A lot of culture-specific and language-specific expressions as well as whimsy and fantasy of children’s literature have compelled the translators to take occasional liberty. The editor Sukanta Choudhuri has done well to point out in the notes any such major departure or omission which is crucial. For the rest we accept the editor’s claim in the editorial, ‘We can fairly claim not to have diverged too much or too often’.
At the end one wishes there were a section comprising some of Rabidnranath’s letters to his grand-daughters and another little girl which are perhaps the most happy things that he wrote for children. Filled with exquisite joy and humour, these letters were never intended for publication and in them he lays his neart bare, thus betraying occasional lapses from dignity and also the tender gaiety of his nature.
(Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee is Editor, Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi.)
-The Book Review Archives
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