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17 of 17 humans found the following review helpful.
Vivid, Magnificent, Haunting, Mysterious Stories
By Erika Borsos
Rabindranath Tagore is best known for his Bengali devotional songs, which were translated to English as poetry. His most famous book of poems, Gitanjali, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. However, Tagore likewise wrote short stories which reflect the people, customs, social structure, turmoil, and relationships of the times in which they were written. When the stories were written, Tagore lived on a houseboat. He watched the ebb and flow of life in villages along the river. He captured the necessary features of Bengali village life. He saw the caste system, the inequality, the struggles and limitations imposed on people. He wrote when it comes to the realities he witnessed. He saw that women were treated as second class citizens, in spite of their intelligence and talents. He witnessed death as a part of life, when antibiotics had not yet been developed, contagions killed children and adults alike. Orphans remained to be raised by next of kin. Tagore manages to capture teh sensations and emotions of the disenfranchised, the poor, and the helpless. His stories are often times haunting and eery – the reader gets the sentiment for where the stories are leading but abruptly an unexpected twist may alter the outcomes. Whatever the theme or topic, Tagore maintains a spiritual consciousness or presence in all his stories … he is sensible to the innocent, the vulnerable, the unprotected ones in society. His characters have distinctive personalities. He describes family relationships and explores prescribed roles and society’s expectations. He likewise reveals what happens when people challenge their roles and fall outside behavioral norms. Although the stories were written in the 1890s, the message Tagore conveys has meaning in innovative times.
Expressions of love, respect, and decency toward one’s fellow humane being are universal, accordingly Tagore will be held in high respect by future generations, just as he has been revered by past and present readers. The content of his stories are not bound by space or culture, they are spiritual and hence timeless. Erika Borsos (erikab93)
10 of 10 humans found the following review helpful.
Touching…
By Farah Ahmad
Having the vantage of being a native from Bengal, I could relate to the tragedies conveyed in the stories. The characters are highlighted by their quality of being one of a kind and yet so typical of the period, region culture and customs – all so brilliantly portrayed. I ought to point out the marvellous occupation done in translation. It is very difficult to keep intact the sense of each context when translating and it will never be possible to reflect the stories in it is entirety in a translated form. Nevertheless, I felt this was as close as one could get. Tagore is undoubtedly a outstanding poetical but what amazes me is how he brings out the poetical in anybody who reads his stories or poems. The appreciation does not end with reading his works but endures in your perceptions from then on.
12 of 14 persons found the following review helpful.
Beautiful Stories, But Too Gloomy
By Randy LeJeune
These stories of Tagore’s are hauntingly beautiful. One could almost call these stories a series of extended prose poems; the scenes of Bengali life are painted with full force. The situations are not very realistic, but the realism of emotion is all the more authenti because of it. The one complaint I have is that each single story turns out bad! There is not a single happy story in the book, which makes Tagore seem like so much of a pessimist. The stories are likewise not actually stories in the western sense — they are more decently called “tales”, with a minimum of action and a sense of being “told” a story rather than experiencing it as it unfolds.
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