Tagore: Poet Wanderer

Rabindranath Tagore set off for England in May, 1912. The next one and-a-half year marked a very crucial period in his life. During this period the poet travelled in England and the USA. This biographical novel by Arvin Ghosh depicts precisely this chapter from Tagore's life. This is the story of how a poet who wrote in Bengali during the high noon of the Raj came to cut a celebrated figure in the western literary circles. The novel begins with his voyage to England and ends with his being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. But underlying this true to-the-facts plot there is another plot, in which reflections, remembrances and visions of the poet override the everyday occurrences. This account of the journey of the poet balladeer in the west is also an account of an inner journey–both literary and spiritual. As the reader learns Tagore's views on politics and literature, he also encounters the Tagore of flesh and blood. Ghosh has tried to capture the emotional self of the poet balladeer in apparently trivial and smaller details. Thus in this novel the genius of Tagore the poet meets the man he was.