Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Stray Birds
Stray Birds
Stray Birds
Ebook341 pages1 hour

Stray Birds

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Collected here are three hundred twenty short poems by Rabindranath Tagore. They were written in Bengali before being translated into English by Tagore. These poems are beautiful, thought provoking, and somewhat reminiscent of Haiku. Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 4, 2014
ISBN9781633841079
Stray Birds
Author

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known poet and litterateur and arguably the finest Bengali poet ever, reshaped Bengali literature and music. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.Gulzar, an acclaimed film-maker, lyricist and author, he is the recipient of a number of Filmfare and National Awards, the Oscar for Best Lyricist and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

Read more from Rabindranath Tagore

Related authors

Related to Stray Birds

Related ebooks

Philosophy For You

View More

Related articles

Related categories

Reviews for Stray Birds

Rating: 4.111111111111111 out of 5 stars
4/5

18 ratings1 review

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As discussed on the *Poetry Thread* with Barry, reading poetry and aphorisms, raises the question how to read. As a teenager, I would read each poem with full detail, in declamation, and pore over its meaning. Visiting a museum or gallery is a good comparison. I would stand in front of every painting, and study it, looking at all parts, and at the whole; then move on, and come back, to confirm my impressions. With "ugly", unusual or "difficult" paintings, I would do some soul searching, telling myself that my lack of appreciation lay in my inability to see it in the right way. Nowadays, I would call that the immature way of appreciating art and poetry.In order to appreciate art, the challenge is to find those images and poems that you are ready for. You know you are ready when you can perceive meaning or beauty. The work of art has to "strike a chord". So, in galleries a visit at walking pace, and quick glancing are sufficient to spot what is of interest. I may be done with it in 20 minutes. (This is not the way I visited the Uffizi the year before last -- I was transfixed, some people might have thought I was one of the exhibits (as in stuck to it :-)). For poetry, it means I read everything, but only pause to reread and read more deeply into it when a chord has been struck.Stray birds by Rabindranath Tagore is the first volume of aphorisms I have ever read, and have read from cover to cover. Previously, I would avoid aphorisms thinking it a particularly bothersome genre, the fleetingness of poetry and the depth of snobbery. However, it seems I was ready for Stray birds.And having read Stray birds now, I regret that I haven't read it before. Rabindranath Tagore was a contemporary of my favourite Dutch author Frederik van Eeden, who translated much of Tagore's work into Dutch, which at the time -- I read most of Van Eeden as a teenager -- I shunned.As with The gardener, Tagore wrote Stray birds originally in Bengali and then translated them into English. While I use the word aphorisms, other reveiewers prefer to refer to the work as poetry, comparing each short poem to Haiku. In my edition, 325 such short poems are included. They are lyrical, and many rely on images of a personified, metaphorical use of nature and the elements, some invoking a God-like being, that any reader may read as his or her own, whether Christian or of other denomination.My feelings about Stray birds is that one should read it in each of the ages of man; It seems wonderful reading for spiritually minded teenagers, aged 15 - 17, I regret not having read it at that time. Reading it now, in my mid-forties, I enjoyed it tremendously, surely seeing things I could or would not have understood in youth. And I expect that a reading at a higher age, will yield more, new wisdom, things I am not ready for now.Stray birds is available as a free ebook from the Project Gutenberg.For my review, I read and used the edition by the Yilin Press (2008). This edition includes Chinese translations of all poems besides the English originals. In the preface, the translator Lu Jinde describes how he first became enthralled by the works of Tagore, in what must be assumed an earlier Chinese translation. Dissatisfied with at least 15 extant Chinese translations, Mr Lu decided on retranslating Stray birds. No mention is made whether he consulted and translated from Bengali or English.Unfortunately, this edition omits one poem, namely Stray Birds-263:263.This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.It waits to be lifted in the night.As a result, in my review above, all references after 263 are off by one.As a Chinese publisher, the Yilin Press edition also found it opportune to include a short essay on Tagore's reception in China. Unfortunately, this essay consists of an unchanged reprint of an essay dating from 1923. The choice to include (only) this essay, 泰戈尔来华 {Tagore’s Visit to China} is peculiar and inappropriate. Within a week after the essay was published, various essays and newspaper articles were published attacking Tagore and the hosts who had invited him to China. By the time Tagore arrived in China, he was met with hostility. The Yilin Press edition does not relate any of the development in the appreciation for Tagore leading up to that moment, nor the controversy around his visit in 1924, or the current revival and interest in Tagore.Furthermore, this edition includes two interviews with Tagore, one between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, dating from 1930 and the other between H.G. Wells and Tagore, in the same year. The interview with Einstein is the more interesting, especially after they have skipped the preliminary remarks on metaphysics and find common ground in discussing music. Both interviews are freely downloadable, elsewhere.In recent years, many Chinese publishers have discovered they can make a quick buck publishing out-of-copyright works in paper editions, which is nice, because they come at low prices. Unfortunately, these editions are unedited, or the editing is somewhat substandard, allowing for inaccuracies, and uncritical throwing together of freely available texts.

Book preview

Stray Birds - Rabindranath Tagore

Stray Birds

By Rabindranath Tagore

A&D Books

Copyright © 2014 A&D Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-63384-107-9

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

88

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1