Of Myself

In the great Bengali poet's autobiographical writings we discover what his translators describe as 'a heart of love, a mind at its service that can cut like a knife, and in some sense the spirit of a child.' The six prose pieces, centering on the poet's quest, were composed at landmark moments during the second half of his life and published posthumously. At each point he looks back on a long creative journey. Here in their first English translation, the essays offer an insight into the intellectual and spiritual world of a twentieth-century genius.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) became the first non-Westerner to win the Nobel Prize in 1913. Among the writers to have translated his work are Gide, Neruda, Pasternak and Akhmatova. His world tours featured debates with figures as diverse as his friend and admirer Gandhi, Einstein and H.G. Wells. The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh were Tagore's compositions. Joe Winter, born in London in 1943, taught English until retiring in 1994 and moving to Calcutta. He has published a book of his own poems, Guest and Host, in 2003, as well as his translations of the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das (also published by Anvil). Devadatta Joardar is a resident of Calcutta and a Bengali scholar. He works for the Calcutta Electricity Board.