ロパムドラ・チャクラバルティ様（声楽家、ラビンドラ・バラティ大学 博士課程）が、応援の意を込めて、寄稿してくださいました！
Lopamudra Chakraborty
vocalist、Rabindra Bharati University ph.D
A SHORT NOTE ABOUT “A GOLDEN ERA”
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I awoke and saw that
life was service, I acted and behold ,service was joy. You can’t
cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
Clouds come floating into my life , no longer to carry rain or
usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky”
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore! He is a ‘Man of Eternal Truth’ in Bengalis entire life. In everyday life
we need that man’s thought. We are the bengalis can’t live without him mostly in our sadness,
in our happiness, in our entertainment , all over that everywhere he is in our life.
Rabindranath Tagore also written Rabindranath Thakura, sobriquet Gurudev, was a bengali
polymath who reshaped bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual
Modernism in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. He was born 7 th may,1861 at kolkata in renouned Thakur Family those was a pirali brahmin from kolkata with ancestral gentry root in
jessore. Tagore wrote poetry as an eight year old . At the age of sixteen he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym ‘BHANUSIMHA’ (Sun Lion), which was seized upon by literary
authorities as long lost classic. By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As a humanis universalist internationalist and ardent
anti-nationalist, he denounced the ‘British Raj’ and advocated independece from Britain, as an exponent of the Bengali Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprise paintings, sketches, and
doodles, hundred of text, and some 2,230 songs; His legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva Bharati University.
Tagore modernised bengali art by spurming rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic
structures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas and essays spoke to topics political and personal. GITANJALI (song offerings), GORA (fair-faced) and GHARE-BAIRE (the home and the world) are
his best known works, and his verse, short stories and novels were acclaimed – or panned – for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen
by two nations as National Anthems. India’s – Jana Gana Mana and bangladesh’s – Amar Sonar Bangla. Some sources state that Sri Lanka’s national anthem was written by Tagore whilst others state it
was inspired by his work.
Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. Rabindra Sangit merges
fluidly into his literature, most of which – poems or parts of novels, stories or plays alike – were lyricised. His songs influenced by the Thumri style of Hindustani Music, they ran the entire
gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo Devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal colour of classical Ragas to varying extents. Some songs
mimicked a given Ragas melody and rythms faithfully, others newly blended elements of different Ragas. Yet about nine-tenths of his work was ‘Notbhanga Gaan’ , the body of tunes revamped with
“fresh value” from select Western, Hindustani, Bengali Folk and other regional flavours “external” to Tagore’s own ancestral culture. Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range
of Hindustani Ragas. In Nov.1913, Tagore won Noble Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic and for westerners – accessible nature of a small body of his translated
material focussed on the year of 1912 GITANJALI ( song offerings ). He was awarded a knighthood by king George 5 in the 1915 Birthday Honours, but renounced it after the 1919 Jalianwala Bagh
massacre.
The book forming a collections of all songs written by Rabindranath is called “GITABITAN
(Garden of Songs) “ and forms an important part of extant historical materials pertaining to
Bengali musical expression. The six major part of this book are – Puja ( worship ), Prem ( love ), Prakriti ( nature ), Bichitra ( diverse ), Swadesh ( patriotism ) and Anushthanik ( celebration
).
For Bengalis , the songs appeal ‘stemming from the combination of emotive strength and
beauty described as surpassing even Tagore’s poetry, was such the “Modern Review” observed that “(t)here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath’s songs are not sung or atleast attempted
to be sung…….Even illiterate villagers sing his songs”. A.H.Fox stranways of the observer introduced non-Bengalis to Rabindra Sangit in The Music of Hindostan, calling it a
“vehicle of a personality…..(that) go behind this or that system of music to the beauty of sound which all systems put out their hands to seized.
At last according to my openion , Rabindranath Tagore and his work like his songs, literature, painting etc. has been an integral part of Bengal and Bengalis culture for over a
century. His work and life story not a short for describe everything . Rabindranath Tagore died 7 th august, 1941 at kolkata, that day was the sadest day in all of our bengalis life and from that
time a golden era is end not only for Bengalis, it is end for whole world, but in every time , in every work, in sadness, in celebration and in our entire life we the bengalis remember him, can’t
live without Rabindranath Tagore ( Gurudev ) and it is a universal truth for every Bengalis life.
Compiled by Lopamudra Chakraborty