My Reminiscences

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document . Letters with macrons are represented as ā. RABINDRANATH TAGORE from the portrait in colours by sasi kumar hesh MY REMINISCENCES BY SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE WITH FRONTISPIECE FROM THE PORTRAIT IN 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 his fiftieth year, shortly before he started on a trip to Europe and America for his failing health in 1912. It was in the course of this trip that he wrote for the first time in the English language for publication. In these memory pictures, so lightly, even casually presented by the author there is, nevertheless, revealed a connected history of his inner life together with that of the varying literary forms in which his growing self found successive expression, up to the point at which both his soul and poetry attained maturity. This lightness of manner and importance of matter form a combination the translation of which into a different language is naturally a matter of considerable difficulty. It was, in any case, a task which the present Translator, not being an original writer in the English language, would hardly have ventured to undertake, had there not been other considerations. The translator's familiarity, however, with the persons, scenes, and events herein depicted made it a temptation difficult for him to resist, as well as a responsibility which he did not care to leave to others not possessing these advantages, and therefore more liable to miss a point, or give a wrong impression. The Translator, moreover, had the author's permission and advice to make a free translation, a portion of which was completed and approved by the latter 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 the translation, it may be mentioned that those suggestions which might not have been as clear to the foreign as to the Bengali reader have been brought out in a slightly more elaborate manner than in the original text; while again, in rare cases, others which depend on allusions entirely unfamiliar to the non-Indian reader,…