Published on May 9, 2023, for Rabindranath Tagore’s 162nd birth anniversary, this feature pairs five poems from Gitanjali in older English renderings with translations from Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta. The poems turn on devotion, song, waiting, missed connection and the limits imposed by the self. The excerpt is from Gitanjali: A New Translation and was reproduced with permission; the source credits Parabaas.
Read the five paired poems and the full 2023 feature at Scroll.in.
What the five poems explore
Reading each older rendering beside Gupta’s translation makes differences in diction, pronouns, syntax, rhythm and imagery visible. Neither version needs to be treated as definitive: the paired texts offer distinct English approaches to poems translated from Bengali.
Keeping life answerable to the divine
The first poem begins, “Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure…” Its speaker seeks to make more than the body accord with a divine presence: thought, feeling and ordinary action also become part of that effort. The opening address makes devotion intimate, while the promise to keep oneself pure gives it a practical, ongoing dimension.
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A place found through song
“I am here to sing thee songs…” presents singing as the speaker’s reason for being in the divine hall. Night and dawn shape the poem’s sense of time: song is not simply performance but a way of belonging, sustained across the hours.
Waiting when the day’s market closes
In “I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands…,” surrender to love is set against social judgment and rules. The image of the market at day’s end gives the waiting a worldly setting: bargains and public measures have their limits, while the speaker remains oriented toward love.
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A meeting missed in sleep
“He came and sat by my side but I woke not…” frames longing as an encounter that has already happened but was not consciously received. Sleep, music and fragrance give the absence a sensory presence; the speaker’s awakening comes with the knowledge of what passed unnoticed.
The self imprisoned by its name
“He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon…” turns inward. The image suggests that attachment to a fixed identity can become a confinement: the self’s act of enclosing someone or something within its name is also what makes the dungeon.
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About the translation and the excerpt
The Scroll.in feature appeared May 9, 2023, and presents five poems in paired older and newer English renderings. Gupta’s versions are translated from Bengali and are identified as part of Gitanjali: A New Translation. Comparing the two renderings can bring out changes in register, line movement, pronouns and image choices, without assuming that one English text settles the meaning of the Bengali poem.
The feature’s closing credit says the excerpt is reproduced with permission from Gitanjali: A New Translation, by Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta, Parabaas. The article identifies the collection but does not establish a particular retail edition or current availability.
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