Rabindranath Tagore and America: Overtures and Responses

This book is a collection of essays delineating the prolonged connection, both enthusiastic and ironic between Rabindranath Tagore and America. In an address to the American people Tagore had argued, “America is destined to justify the Western civilization to the East.” It was thus with a sense of expectation and interest that the poet had visited America five times over two decades (1912 to 1930). How far could he open out to and engage with people in America, both intellectuals and and the man in the street? Was the literary and artistic ambience he found in the country congenial to him? Did the poet consider it imoerative to carry a message from his country or his continent to the New World, and would the poet/prophet interchenge and bipolarization earn him both adulation and irony in the American press? Did the early enthusiasm gradually wear off to be replaced by a tired sense of weariness? These are some of the questions which the essays in this collection have sought to address.

Contributors: Nikhiles Guha, Raikamal dasgupta, Sobha Chattopadhyay, Abhijit Sen, Ananda Lal, Sukla Basu (Sen), Amrit Sen, Madhurima Neogi, Dipendu Chakrabarti, Indrani Haldar