The Home and the World

By -
The Home and the World, by Rabindranath Tagore

The great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore is one of those writers that I want to read, but am a bit afraid of.  Someday I'll get to the poetry, but for now I'm sticking to prose.  As far as I can tell, Tagore wrote just the one novel, published in 1915, and as you might expect it is excellent.

The Home and the World is set on a Bengali estate in 1908, in the midst of political upheaval and rebellion.  The three major characters take turns narrating their own points of view.  Bimala, at the center, is torn between her husband Nikhil and the leader of the radicals, Sandip. 

Bimala has lived her adult life in purdah, as is traditional, but Nikhil, a thoughtful modern man, wishes her to leave her seclusion and enter the world so that they may be equals.  Nikhil is a serious and gentle man who despises coercion and above all wants individual freedom for everyone; as a result he dislikes argument and refuses to assert himself.

Sandip, in contrast, is a believer in might making right.  He is charismatic, a persuasive speaker, and willing to justify any wrong or injury in the name of his goals.  His wish is to lead Bengal, and he is happy to force people to live as he wants them to.  He is great at making fiery speeches and whipping up mobs to follow him.

The two men disagree over the doctrine of swadeshi--the practice of boycotting British-made goods and encouraging Indian industry.  Nikhil has supported swadeshi for many years, but will not stop other people in his market from buying or selling British goods.  Sandip insists that people must be forced to abide by it and resorts to destroying British goods and terrorizing anyone who buys or sells them.  This mostly punishes the poor, who cannot afford the more expensive Indian-made goods or survive when their livelihoods are taken from them.

As Bimala gets to know Sandip, he enchants her with his flattery as Nikhil insists that she be free to choose.  Her home and the outside world pull her in different directions and she cannot reconcile the two.  Her choices dictate the future for the whole estate.

This is all very symbolic of the situation in India.  Bimala is Bengal itself, torn between possibilities.  She constantly compares herself to a river, to the country, to a goddess of the earth.  Tagore's writing is poetic and Bengali, given to high-flown sentences that may sound overly dramatic and sentimental to a modern ear unless the reader understands that Bengali really does sound like that.  It is very beautiful writing, but you have to come at it with the right attitude.

If you are at all interested in Indian literature, this is probably a necessary book to read, and not a bad choice for a relative beginner.  I got the title from one of my favorite writers, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who teaches a course on "India in the Writer's Eye."   I put the works on her syllabus, which she posted on Facebook, into the bonus section of my Classics Club list.  

The novel was made into a Bengali film, Ghare Baire, in 1984 and was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.  I'd like to see it very much.

 
Bimala in Ghare Baire

Comments

  1. AmyAugust 6, 2013 at 5:15 PM

    I'd love to read this. The book I'm reading right now on modern Asian history has a section devoted to Tagore; I didn't know much about him before I read his beautiful poetry last year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanAugust 6, 2013 at 6:41 PM

    I am sure that you would love it, Amy! Put it on your list!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AmyAugust 6, 2013 at 8:05 PM

    Okie doke, on the list it goes!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more