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A
few days ago I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine,
´I know no German, yet if a translation of a German poet had moved
me, I would go to the British Museum and find books in English that
would tell me something of his life, and of the history of his
thought.
But though these
prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as
nothing has for years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of
the movements of thought that have made them possible, if some
Indian traveller will not tell me.´ It seemed to him natural that I
should be moved, for he said, ´I read Rabindranath every day, to
read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.´ I
said, ´An Englishman living in London in the reign of Richard the
Second had he been shown translations from Petrarch or from Dante,
would have found no books to answer his questions, but would have
questioned some Florentine banker or Lombard merchant as I question you. For
all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new
renaissance has been born in your country and I shall never know of
it except by hearsay.´ He answered, ´We have other poets, but none
that are his equal; we call this the epoch of Rabindranath.
Author : W.B.Yeats
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