[mrllxp]

I am not exactly a fan of Rabindranath Tagore. I read some of his books only in translation. in English and Telugu. I enjoyed his short stories but not novels. His Gitanjali sounded much better in Bengali and seemed fairly pedestrian in English. There isa clever novel "Sesher Kobita"; one of the tranlations (by ? Kulkarni ) is titled "Farewell my Friend". I enjoyed this translation in which the hero Amit Roy makes fun of Tagore. Here he comes with an interesting comment; "knowledge is like a stone and culture like a sparkle; one weighs and the other shines'. Of course Rabindra Sangeet is very nice ; he adopted music from several countries. Somehow, his poetry seemed to depend very much on Bengali sounds and looses much in translation. His paintings are interesting, but I do not know much about painting. He is clealy versatile and probably in the genius category but I would guess that his appeal is more to those who know Bengali. I liked Sarat's novels "Sesh Prasna", "Sreekant" and Premchand's novels "Nirmala" and "Godan" much better than Tagore's novels. This is all from memory. If I read Tagore again, I may change my mind.
Swarup