Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For acomplete list, please see the bottom of this document.Letters with macrons are represented as ā.
MY REMINISCENCES
BY
SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE
WITH FRONTISPIECE FROM THE PORTRAITIN COLORS BY SASI KUMAR HESH
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1916 and 1917
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1917.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
These Reminiscences were written and published by the Author in hisfiftieth year, shortly before he started on a trip to Europe and Americafor his failing health in 1912. It was in the course of this trip thathe wrote for the first time in the English language for publication.
In these memory pictures, so lightly, even casually presented by theauthor there is, nevertheless, revealed a connected history of his innerlife together with that of the varying literary forms in which hisgrowing self found successive expression, up to the point at which bothhis soul and poetry attained maturity.
This lightness of manner and importance of matter form a combination thetranslation of which into a different language is naturally a matter ofconsiderable difficulty. It was, in any case, a task which the presentTranslator, not being an original writer in the English language, wouldhardly have ventured to undertake, had there not been otherconsiderations. The translator's familiarity, however, with thepersons,vi scenes, and events herein depicted made it a temptationdifficult for him to resist, as well as a responsibility which he didnot care to leave to others not possessing these advantages, andtherefore more liable to miss a point, or give a wrong impression.
The Translator, moreover, had the author's permission and advice to makea free translation, a portion of which was completed and approved by thelatter before he left India on his recent tour to Japan and America.
In regard to the nature of the freedom taken for the purposes of thetranslation, it may be mentioned that those suggestions which might nothave been as clear to the foreign as to the Bengali reader have beenbrought out in a slightly more elaborate manner than in the originaltext; while again, in rare cases, others which depend on allusionsentirely unfamiliar to the non-Indian reader, have been omitted ratherthan spoil by an over-elaboration the simplicity and naturalness whichis the great feature of the original.
There are no footnotes in the original. All the footnotes here givenhave been added by the Translator in the hope that they may be offurther assistance to the foreign reader.vii