Liszt’s famous summary of Beethoven’s career – “L’adolescent, l’homme, le dieu” – accords well with what we perhaps feel ought to describe the career of any great artist: for surely, the more an artist experiences of life, the more profound and wise their vision of it must be; and the closer they are to death [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Tagore’
12 Jul
Translations of Tagore: a retraction
Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote a piece on Tagore, and, in the process, made some rude comments about translations into English. I made similar comments in the Guardian books blog recently, in response to certain denigratory comments about Tagore made by certain other posters who did not have access to [...]
28 May
Choose your own Desert Island Discs
It’s such a simple idea, but so effective. If you were stranded on a desert island, and had, miraculously, some machine on which to play music, which eight pieces of music would you choose? And which of those eight would you keep if you could keep only one? The answers are so very revealing. Some [...]
1 Jul
These are a few of my favourite things…
Who hasn’t wanted to appear on Desert Island Discs? Or on Private Passions? Who hasn’t wanted to fill in a questionnaire all about one’s own self? Well, when one has one’s own blog, one can. Can’t one? So, without any apology or preamble, I shall take a leaf out of the blog Somewhere Boy, and [...]
22 May
Some Reflections on Rabindranath Tagore
Suppose that, in a book of translated poems, one comes across this: Oh, how I would love a glass of wine That has been chilled for a long time in a deep cellar. Its taste would be redolent of flowers, and of the countryside, It would have associations of dancing and of merrymaking in the [...]
