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Authors: Rabindranath Tagore Ketaki Kushari Dyson

I Won't Let You Go

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

 

I WON’T LET YOU GO: SELECTED POEMS

 

SECOND EXPANDED EDITION TRANSLATED BY

KETAKI KUSHARI DYSON

 

RABINDRANATH TAGORE
(1861-1941) is India’s greatest modern poet and the most brilliant creative genius produced by the Indian Renaissance. As well as poetry, he wrote songs, stories and novels, plays, essays, memoirs and travelogues. He was both a restless innovator and a superb craftsman, and the Bengali language attained great beauty and power in his hands. He
created
his own genre of dance drama and is one of the most important visual artists of modern India. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

 

Tagore’s poetry has an impressive wholeness: a magnificent loving warmth, compassionate humanity, a delicate sensuousness, an intense sense of kinship with nature and a burning awareness of man’s place in the universe. He moves with effortless ease from the literal to the symbolic, from the part of the whole, from a tiny detail to the vast cosmos.

 

He is religious in the deepest sense, wavering between a faith that sustains the spirit in times of crisis – or fills it with energy and joy in times of happiness – and a profound questioning that can find no enduring answers. To him the earth is a vulnerable mother who clings to all her offspring, saying
‘I won’t let you go’
to the tiniest blade of grass that springs from her womb, but who is powerless to prevent the decay and death of her
children
.

 

‘Dyson has succeeded in these new translations in restoring a sense to the reader of Tagore’s real and remarkable genius as a poet. Short of learning Bengali one does not see how our sense of him as a poet could be bettered than it is by reading her
versions
… if any translation can put Tagore back on the map where he belongs, this one should do it’

– POETRY REVIEW

 

Rabindranath Tagore in America in 1916.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

I Won’t Let You Go
SELECTED POEMS

NEW EXPANDED EDITION TRANSLATED BY

KETAKI KUSHARI DYSON

Dedicated to the tercentenary of the city of Calcutta

 

Rabindranath Tagore in 1875.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction to the First Edition

 

FROM
Sandhyasangit
(1882)

The Suicide of a Star

Invocation to Sorrow

 

FROM
Prabhatsangit
(1883)

Endless Death

 

FROM
Kadi o Komal
(1886)

Breasts (No. 2)

The Kiss

 

FROM
Manasi
(1890)

Desire

Death-dream

The Amatory Conversation of a Young Bengali Couple

 

FROM
Sonar Tari
(1894)

I Won’t Let You Go

Earth

On the Doctrine of Maya

Play

On Her Powerlessness

 

FROM
Chitra
(1896)

Farewell to Heaven

The Victorious Woman

The Year 1400

 

FROM
Chaitali
(1896)

Renunciation

An Ordinary Person

The Ferry

The Worker

Big Sister

The Mediatrix

On the Nature of Love

Putu

The Companion

A Scene of Affection

Against Meditative Knowledge

True Meditation

Drought

Hope Against Hope

 

FROM
Kanika
(1899)

Give Us Deeds, Not Words

Relationship of Convenience

Kinship Analysed

Too Good

Positive Proof

 

FROM
Katha
(1900)

The Repayment

The Realisation of Value

 

FROM
Kahini
(1900)

Dialogue between Karna and Kunti

 

FROM
Kalpana
(1900)

A Stressful Time

Dream

 

FROM
Kshanika
(1900)

What the Scriptures Say

Straightforward

 

FROM
Naibedya
(1901)

No. 88

No. 89

No. 90

 

FROM
Smaran
(1903)

No. 5

No. 14

 

FROM
Shishu
(1903)

Empathy

An Offer of Help

Hide-and-Seek

 

FROM
Utsarga
(1903-4, 1914)

No. 7

 

FROM
Kheya
(1906)

The Auspicious Moment

The Renunciation

 

FROM
Gitanjali
(1910)

No. 106

No. 107

No. 108

 

FROM
Balaka
(1916)

No. 6

No. 36

No. 39

 

FROM
Palataka
(1918)

Getting Lost

The Last Establishment

 

FROM
Lipika
(1922)

The Old House

One Day

Grief’s Ingratitude

The Question

 

FROM
Shishu Bholanath
(1922)

Sunday

Remembering

 

FROM
Purabi
(1925)

Gratitude

The Apprehension

The Skeleton

The Exchange

 

FROM
Mahua
(1929)

The Identity

Disappearance

 

FROM
Punashcha
(1932)

Kopai

By the Pond

Dwelling

Memory

The Boy

The Last Letter

Camellia

A Person

Writing a Letter

 

FROM
Shesh Saptak
(1935)

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

No. 9

No. 11

No. 13

No. 22

No. 27

No. 29

No. 31

No. 46

 

FROM
Bithika
(1935)

The Indifferent One

 

FROM
Patraput
(1936)

No. 5

No. 7

No. 8

No. 11

 

FROM
Shyamali
(1936)

Dream

The Lost Mind

Tamarind Flower

The Nap

The Uncoupling

A Sudden Encounter

 

FROM
Prantik
(1938)

No. 5

No. 14

No. 18

 

FROM
Akashpradip
(1939)

The Dark Girl

Green Mangoes

 

FROM
Nabajatak
(1940)

Birthday

Romantic

 

FROM
Sanai
(1940)

Coming and Going

Impossible

 

FROM
Rogashajyay
(1940)

No. 22

No. 38

 

FROM
Arogya
(1941)

No. 7

No. 9

 

FROM
Janmadine
(1941)

No. 28

 

FROM
Shesh Lekha
(1941)

No. 5

No. 11

No. 13

No. 14

No. 15

 

Songs

1. O beggar, you’ve made me a beggar

2. I live with so little

3. I want, I want, I want with all my strength

4. So many unknowns you made me know

5. ‘Save me in danger!’ is never my prayer to you

6. Sunshine and shadows play hide-and-seek today

7. A soft wind stirs the white sail without a spot

8. Clouds have gathered on clouds

9. Where’s the light? Where, where is the light?

10. It is a stormy night

11. O master singer, how marvellously you sing!

12. No! It won’t do to evade me like this!

13. If I don’t see you, Lord, in this life

14. My eyes keep vigil for you, Lord

15. My heart’s ravisher

16. For how many aeons

17. The song I came to sing here stays unsung

18. That is why

19. All life’s acts of worship

20. She won’t take no for an answer

21. The dawn in which you called me

22. When my pain escorts me to your door

23. That fire of music you ignited in me

24. Not just your words

25. There’s no end to it

26. I shall not beguile you with my beauty

27. I couldn’t keep them in the golden cage

28. A fire of flowers has hit the blue horizon

29. Tonight the fire-flames burn in a million stars

30. Lest he goes without telling me

31. Come to the kadamba grove, under the shady trees

32. Lost to myself

33. So many times I’ve been along this trail

34. Shiuli flower! Shiuli flower!

35. The two of us had swung in the forest that day

36. The moon’s laughter’s dam has burst

37. House-bound men, open your doors

38. Where does the road end?

39. In the dead of night you brought me devastation

40. You gave me the monsoon’s first kadamba flower

41. Take the last song’s diminuendo with you

 

Notes

 

Glossary

 

Biographical note

 

Copyright

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