Tagore and France I india and France

In 1961 appeared, in the excellent collection « Poètes d’aujourd’hui » by Pierre Seghers, a volume entitled Rabindranath Tagore, which contained a presentation, selected texts and a bibliography. The author was Odette Aslan. Later, in 1987, Sylvie Liné wrote Tagore, pèlerin de la lumière, and published it in Monaco and Paris : Le Rocher.

Several Ph.D. thesis were written about Tagore and his works in French universities, at first mostly by students of Indian origin. Manjulal Jamnadas Dave published his thesis entitled « La poésie de Rabindranath Tagore » at Montpellier University in 1927. Sushil Chandra Mitter, in 1930, wrote on « La pensée de Rabindranath Tagore ». The thesis was published by a regular publisher in Paris. Gita Banerjee-Dalgalian wrote, in 1987 a study of Raktakarabi for a Ph.D at Lille University which remained unpublished.

In 2002, a DEA (M.Phil.) memoir on «  La Voix dans Balaka et Gitanjali : Présence, Passages et Seuils » was presented by Laetitia Zecchini at the English Department of Paris Sorbonne University 4.

In 2004, Fabien Chartier obtained a doctorate (Ph.D) of University of Rennes 2, at the English Department, on : «  Réception britannique et française du poète indo-anglais Rabindranath Tagore (1912-1930) : utilisation d’un symbole et genèse d’un mythe. »

Association Tagore Sangam

An association, called Tagore Sangam, was founded by Azarie Aroulandom in 2002.  Its aim is to popularise Tagore’s thought and works in French-speaking countries, mainly through organized exhibitions of photogtaphs on Tagore’s life and work. The photographs have been collected and mounted by the founder. The bilingual exhibition comprises more than 250 photos and illustrations as well as reproductions of some of the paintings. It also includes some rare objects, some unique original pieces and a number of copies of Tagore’s books in various languages. The exhibition was presented in March 2002 in Unesco, Paris, under the high patronage of Mr. Jacques Chirac, the then President of the French Republic. It was followed by a seminar and a cultural programme.

In 2004, the enlarged exhibition was taken to Guadeloupe as part of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Indians in the island. It was held under the patronage of Mr. Abdou Diouf, ex-President of the Republic of Senegal and Acting Secretary General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.

The association continues to show the exhibition of photographs and to participate to all national poetry and literary festivals . It regularly organizes recitals of dances and songs of the poet.

III- Important friends of Tagore in France

a- Sylvain Lévi

When Rabindranath arrived from London in 1920, he was welcomed by the banker Albert Kahn in his cultural centre « Autour du monde ». He was accompanied by his son, his daughter in law and an Indian admirer. Shortly after his arrival, Albert Kahn took the poet in his car to see the battlefields of the First World War near Reims. Tagore was deeply moved.

It is during this visit to France that he met Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935), a renowed Sanskrit scholar and specialist on the history of Buddhism. Sylvain Lévi was born in Paris. After his brilliant studies at the higher secondary level, he was persuaded by Ernest Renan to start learning Sanskrit under Abel Bergaigne at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1886, after Bergaigne’s death, the young Lévi was appointed to teach Sanskrit at his alma mater. He wrote a dissertation on the Indian Theater and obtained a D.Litt. In 1894, he was elected professor of Sanskrit Language and Literature at the prestigious College de France. In 1897 he went to India and the Far East for the first time. Of Jewish origin, he became President of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1920.

The same year, 1920, he met Rabindranath in Paris who spoke to him about the university that he was setting up at Santiniketan where he wanted to welcome scholars from abroad. It was to be a meeting ground of intellectuals from East and Wesr. Lévi was impressed by the poet’s enthusiasm and, at once, volunteered to go to Santiniketan. He became the first European professor to do so. After their first meeting in Paris, they met again at Strasburg where Sylvain Lévi, already professor at the Collège de France, was teaching at the university. A reception was given to the poet on April 27, 1921. Tagore read his « The message of the forest » and the professor praised him and his work in deeply moving terms (12) (Pal P.K. , Rabijîvanî, vol. 8, pp. 101-02). The university formed a Tagore Committee to appeal for funds in order to present a collection of French classics to the new Visva-Bharati. In november 1921, Professor Lévi arrived in Santiniketan as visiting professor accompanied by his wife. There he taught Sanskrit, ancient Indian history in relation to the rest of Asia, Chinese and Tibetan. On their return to Paris, Madame Lévi wrote a book of souvenirs entitled En Inde (de Ceylan au Népal). The sixth edition appeared in 1926, and the last one in 2008. She gives an account of the life at Santiniketan with great enthusiasm. The Lévis were present at the formal inauguration of Visva-Bharati. In August 1922, they left Santiniketan to tour India after staying sometime in Nepal, and accompanied the poet to various places in India.

In 1926, when Tagore went again to Paris, on his return from Italy and after spending ten days in Villeneuve in Romain Rolland’s company, he again met Sylvain Lévi. But an incident occured when Tagore was in Java in 1927 that resulted in a misunderstanding between the two friends. The poet was shown a press cutting from a Dutch newspaper reporting Lévi’s unfavourable comments on Visva-Bharati as an academic institution. Tagore was deeply hurt and expressed his sorrow in a letter to Lévi, that can be seen at Rabindra Bhavan with a wrong dating. The professor protested and affirmed his total innocence in a letter December 16, 1927 in which he expressed his deep love and admiration for the poet and his work. In August 1928, on their way back from Japan, the Lévi couple made a stop in Calcutta to meet Rabindranath and claim once more their complete innocence and sorrow. The poet was sick at that time, and it is not clear whether Sylvain Lévi was able to totally convince him of his unqualified love for Visva-Bharati. Lévi was a rigorously trained academicand he may not have felt fully at home in the somewhat free atmosphere of the new university founded by a poet who, moreover, was very often absent. Yet he had a sincere love for Tagore and trained several students of Visva-Bharati in Paris like Prabodh Kumar Bagchi. Lévy was sent to Tokyo in 1927 to become the founder and the director of the Institut franco-japonais.

In 1930, during his stay in Paris, Rabindranath expressed his desire to meet again the Lévis at their home. « It will be far more tempting for me if you occasionally drop in to our place for lunch, with Didima (Mrs. Lévi) as our guardian angel, and in return ask us to tea all by ourselves. » The following year, Sylvain Lévi wrote an original essay in the Golden Book of Tagore entitled « An ancestor of Tagore in Javanese Literature » (13) (pp. 292-97). In Java, he had come to know a Javanese version of Bhatta Narayana’s Veni Samhara, and remembered that the poet had mentioned that his family descended from one Bhatta Narayana who came to Bengal from Kanyakubja ! He wrote : « Called by his (Tagore’s) choice to inaugurate the teaching of Orientalism in the Western way in the Visva-Bharati that he was founding at that time, I have learnt much more than I have taught. Thanks to Gurudev, as we call him there, thanks to the elite of scholars and disciples who gather around him and who live of his inspiration, I came to know in its living reality the soul of India that the study of texts had taught me to admire. It is only at Santiniketan, in the contact of the Master and of his entourage, that I could appreciate in their incomparable charm the dignity of deportment, the nobility of feelings, the measured exaltation of thought that effortlessly combine with a witty gaiety, a spiritual fantasy, an exquisite sweetness and the perpetual communion with nature which give to the daily life a charming coloration of a Virgilian eglogue.”

After the sudden death of the scholar in 1935, at a meeting of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, his widow published her husband’s translation from Bengali of five poems by Tagore in a literary periodical with the introduction that he had written (14) (cote BNF microfilm 4622). Tagore offered his contribution to the fund the Paris University intiated to create a Foundation in memory of Professor Sylvain Lévi. The correspondance between Rabindranath and Sylvain Lévi is kept in Rabindra Bhavan, at Santiniketan. Sylvain Lévi’s main contributions to Indian studies are his volumes on the Indian Theatre and his La Doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brahmanas. He also wrote an important study on Nepal and many articles on Buddhism.

b- Romain Rolland

In 1916, Rabindranath Tagore had gone to Japan where he was received warmly till he lectured on the evil of nationalism that Japan, so he felt, had imbibed from the West. Tagore saw the Japanese people as eminently artistic and linked with India through the Buddhist faith. But he discovered that they were keener to imitate Europe, even in her follies, than befriend a poor and subjected India. He clearly condemned the materialism of the new Japan. Romain Rolland, a French writer who had just received the Nobel Prize, read the lectures that Tagore gave in Japan. They were published, under the title Nationalism, at the time when the whole of Europe was involved in a terrible armed conflict. Romain Rolland was a citizen of a country that was fighting against its neighbor Germany for the recovery of two of its provinces lost in a previous war. The French nation was behind its army in a “sacred union”, and patriotism was at a pitch. Yet Rolland was a declared pacifist, and remained « above the battle » at an enormous cost for his reputation in his country. He wrote: « Any man who is a real man must learn to stand alone in the midst of all others, to think alone for all – and if need be, against all. » and also: « The task of the intellectual is to search for Truth in the midst of error. » He had written a Declaration for the Independence of the Spirit that, after reading Nationalism, he requested Tagore to sign along with other European intellectuals. Rolland felt that the writers had a duty to express feelings of humane brotherhood even in the most terrible conflict. The Bengali poet had no hesitation and signed the document, accompanied by a beautiful letter dated June 24, 1919: “When my mind was stuped (sic) (steeped?) in the gloom of the thought that the lesson of the late war has been lost and that the people where trying to perpetuate their hatred, anger and greed into the same organized menace for the world which threatened themselves with disaster, your letter came and cheered me with its message of hope.” In August of the same year, Rolland wrote a letter to him thanking him for the two books, Nationalism and The Home and the World, that he had received, and he added: « I have a deep pain (and I would say, a remorse, - if I was not feeling more Man than European) of the monstrous abuse that Europe has made of her power, of the ravage of the universe, of the destruction and debasement by her of so many material and moral riches, of the greatest strengths of the world that even in her own interest she should have defended and increased, by uniting them with her own… It is not only a question of justice, it is a question of salvation for humanity». Then, he expressed his great desire to see a union of eastern and western minds in defense of humanism and wrote: « Europe alone cannot save herself. Her thought is in need of the thought of Asia, just as the latter has benefitted from contact with the thought of Europe. These are the two hemispheres of the brain of mankind. » (15) (Rabindranath Tagore et Romain Rolland, pp. 27-28). Tagore was exactly of the same opinion.

More should be said about Romain Rolland, the man who was one of the best European friends of the poet. He was born in 1866 in a provincial middle-class family who lived in the center of France. His mother taught him music and he became an excellent pianist. A brilliant student, he obtained an agregation in history and spent two years in Rome as member of the Ecole française de Rome. Back in Paris, he obtained a doctorat es lettres (D. Litt) on the origins of lyrical theatre in Europe. He started to teach musicology at Sorbonne. At the same time, he was pursuing a literary career and, as soon as he had some success, he resigned from the university. He was fluent in German and in Italian but knew no English. In 1916, three years after Tagore, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. When he met the Bengali poet in 1921, he had already published more than thirty books: plays, biographies, novels and essays. His monumental Jean-Christophe had come out between 1903 and 1912 and was an enormous success. His friends were Paul Claudel, Hermann Hesse, Stefan Zweig and, among the younger writers, Jean Guehenno and Georges Duhamel.

In his letter of August 26, 1919, Romain Rolland had expressed his wish to start a periodical that would present the “moral wealth”, both of the West and of Asia. It would be published in French and in English, and would be the meeting-ground of intellectuals and writers from many countries. He asked Tagore whether such a publication would interest Asian thinkers. The poet replied assuring Rolland of his own interest in the proposal but, at the same time, his doubt about its immediate realization because of the political situation in India. He wrote:  “The great event that was the meeting of Orient and Occident has been vitiated by the contempt of one and, in reply, the hatred of the other. » (my translation from the letter published in French (16) (Ibid. p. 29). This was the beginning of Rolland’s persistent efforts to include the poet into his group of pacifist and idealistic European writers who, in newspapers, literary magazines and books, were actively promoting their generous ideas.

After a somewhat unsuccessful tour in America to collect funds, Tagore returned to Europe, and, after spending a few weeks in London where he spoke of the difficult political situation in India and the resulting antagonism between his country and England, he flew to France in April 1921. At that time, Romain Rolland was living in Paris, and Tagore went to meet him for the first time at Albert Kahn’s place. They discussed many things with the help of Rolland’s sister Madeleine who knew English. Rolland promised to help Tagore’s young university at Santiniketan by informing the European intellectual elite about its aims and by trying to send French scholars to teach there. He himself would go if his health would permit. Unfortunately, Rolland, for various reasons, never went to Tagore’s Bengal but kept for Santiniketan his sincere interest. There was a great deal of goodwill on both sides. Romain Rolland could not but appreciate the name given to the university Visva-Bharati, or India opened onto the world.

At the beginning of Tagore and Rolland’s friendly relations, Kalidas Nag, a young Bengali who was known to the poet, was studying for a doctorate in Paris University, Sorbonne. Knowing French and being a very cultured person, Nag was introduced to Romain Rolland, and he became much appreciated by the French writer, both personally and as a link between Tagore and himself. For the first time, the name of Kalidas Nag is mentioned by Rolland in May 1922. A month later, Rolland wrote to Nag about Tagore in these words: “Of no poet or thinker of contemporary Europe I feel nearer than to him, by the mind and the heart. This is a proof of the vanity of these artificial divisions established between the thought of India and that of the west.” (17) (Ibid. p. 95) He described himself as a pure product of provincial France, without any contact with Asia till very recently. In the same letter, the French writer announced his shift of residence from Paris to Villeneuve, a small town on the shore of the Lac Leman in Switzerland.

At that time, both Tagore and Rolland were misunderstood in their respective countries. Tagore was advocating a cultural rapprochement between India and Europe at a time when India was passing through a great political upheaval and when chauvinistic tendencies were understandably very strong. On his side, Rolland was saddened by the humiliating way Germany was treated after the victory of the Allies in 1919. Both felt isolated. At the same time, Rolland was keen to include the Bengali poet in all his efforts to promote a universal literature. Tagore gave him the right to publish in French a translation of his letters from Europe that had appeared in the Modern Review. With the same generosity, he gave to Rolland’s sister, Madeleine, the permission to translate from English into French his great novel Gora that Pearson was to render into English. Madeleine did not translate Gora but, in 1924, appeared her French translation of Chaturanga entitled A quatre Voix. We also know from a letter that Rolland wrote in March 1923 that Madeleine was busy learning Bengali (18) (Ibid. p.101).

So far all the translations of Tagore’s works had been made from English, with the exception of Balaka, Cygne, translated in 1923 from Bengali by Kalidas Nag and the French poet Pierre-Jean Jouve, a friend of Rolland. The publisher was Stock, whose proprietor was yet another friend of Rolland. In the same year 1923, Rolland informed Tagore that he had completed a long essay on Gandhi based on the articles that had appeared in Young India. He would publish it in the review, Europe, which reflected his views. Though he wrote that he considered some of Gandhi’s ideas “a little too medieval”, he felt a great respect for the Mahatma. Later, the political and moral leadership that Gandhi embodied attracted more and more a person like Rolland who was both an idealist and an activist. Tagore, primarily a poet and an artist, was trying at that time to keep Santiniketan away from the turmoil of politics. In another letter to Kalidas Nag, dated September 15, 1923, Rolland expressed a great interest in the nascent university at Santiniketan. He wrote: “Please, my dear friend, tell our common great friend, Rabindranath Tagore, the deep affection that I have for him, my firm intention to go to Santiniketan as soon as the circumstances will permit and my desire to help him in his international task… After a conversation with Pearson, it seems to me that the international university needs, before all, a strong organization that will keep it, in the beginning, concentrated on a few essential courses – that will set a course programme for several years - and that will try in a friendly way to tie down students and teachers to it. A course on the general history of civilizations would seem to me fundamental. It is the axis upon which the whole construction can rise… Similarly, it would be good to proceed little by little to teach comparative literature and art.” (19) (Ibid. p.102-103) He was still very eager to go with his sister to Bengal and wrote: “We have the firm intention to go to India as soon as it will be possible.” He was not discouraged by Pearson’s not too favourable comments on the new university. Tagore’s devoted English friend had described it as “more fictitious that real” and complained to Rolland of its lack of organized curriculum of studies and of a fixed timetable. The same drawbacks had probably attracted the attention of Professor Sylvain Lévi, as also, later, that of Giuseppe Tucci.

During these months, Romain Rolland met several friends and young admirers of Rabindranath. His interest in India was becoming paramount in his intellectual life. He came to know C.F. Andrews and talked to him about the poet and Gandhi. He expressed a great desire to go to India and see Tagore in his own surroundings, but he regretted that the presence of his old father and his own weak health would probably not allow him to realize his dream. With some grandiloquence, rare in a French writer, he added: “The union of Europe and Asia must be, in the coming centuries, the highest task of humanity.” (20) (Ibid. p.50) During this period, the friendship between Tagore and Rolland was at its zenith, and they wrote long letters to each other. Rolland was greatly concerned by Tagore’s tiring tours in search of funds for Santiniketan. He pleaded with him in his letters not to sacrifice poetry to the extension of his university. He also took a great interest in the Visva-Bharati Quarterly that his sister would translate for him. He wanted to share with the poet his “small volume” on Gandhi and also his novel L’Âme enchantée. Tagore, on his side, opened his heart to Rolland. He wrote that “there is in my nature a kind of civil war between the personality of the creative artist – to whom solitude is necessary, - and that of the idealist who must find his accomplishment through works of a complex nature, requiring a vast collaboration with a great number of men.”(21) (Ibid. p.54)

With the passing of time, nevertheless, their friendship had to face obstacles of several kinds. Tagore was always moving from one continent to another. In 1924, hardly back from China, he left for South America, and so the occasions for the meeting of the two friends became rare. Twice, the poet had to cancel a visit to Villeneuve where Rolland, who hardly travelled, was continuously waiting for him. In March 1925, the French writer wrote a moving reply to the Bengali poet who had put to writing his sadness and feeling of solitude, even in Bengal. Rolland wrote that men like Tagore and himself are always alone, wherever they live. “Our country is the future”, he added. Thinking that Tagore could come to rest for sometime in Switzerland, he took the trouble to describe the landscape of several places in that country, mentioned a physician who could help him to recover his health in a pleasant nursing-home, gave the name of a hotel near his own house and the train directions to come to Villeneuve. But, by another letter, we learn that Tagore could not go to Villeneuve where all had been prepared for him. The following year, in May 1926, Rabindranath announced his arrival. Delighted, Rolland wrote back mentioning the new arrangements that he was making. Once again, Tagore had to postpone his visit.

After the foundation of Visva-Bharati, Tagore, eager to get funds for his university, accepted invitations from wherever they came. On the contrary, Rolland, more and more politically conscious, wanted to prevent the poet from mixing with the wrong type of politicians. In 1924, Tagore embarked from a French port to go to Peru invited by a dictatorial government that had promised financial help for Visva-Bharati. Rolland was irritated by Tagore’s lack of discrimination and tried his utmost, during three months, by letters and messengers, to make him aware of the wrong signal that his visit to Lima would send to the democrats. When the poet left without meeting him, he wrote to Kalidas Nag: “I am very saddened and angry.” As is well known, the poet finally did not go to Peru and had to break journey in Argentina because of his bad health. He spent two months there as the guest of the charming and cultured Victoria Ocampo. On his way back from South America, because of his poor health, Tagore failed again to meet Rolland who was another time disappointed. Yet, in January 1925, an enthusiastic Rolland informed Kalidas Nag of his idea of opening a Maison de l’Amitié (a Friendship House), in Switzerland, which would be a kind of European branch of Santiniketan. It would bring together the living intellectual energies of Asia and Europe. A Swiss publishing house would take up this project and would also undertake to publish Asian authors and Tagore, in the first place.