INTRODUCTION

A few days ago, I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine: “I do not know any German. Yet, if a translation of a German poet had moved me, I would go to the British Museum and find books in English that would tell me something of his life and the history of his thought. However, although these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore original: "Rabindra Nath Tagore." Tagore (1861–1941) was a prolific Bengali poet and polymath who became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. have stirred my emotions more than anything has for years, I will not know anything of his life or the intellectual movements that made his work possible unless some Indian traveler tells me.”

It seemed natural to him that I should be so moved. He said, “I read Rabindranath every day; to read even one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.”

I replied, “Consider an Englishman living in London during the reign of Richard the Second King of England from 1377 to 1399, a period when English literature, such as the works of Chaucer, began to flourish alongside influences from the European continent.. If he had been shown translations of Petrarch or Dante Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) and Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) were monumental Italian poets whose work helped spark the Renaissance., he would have found no books to answer his questions. Instead, he would have had to question a Florentine banker or a Lombard merchant Florence and Lombardy were major centers of trade and finance in Italy; merchants from these regions were common sights in medieval London., just as I am questioning you. For all I know—because this poetry is so abundant and yet so simple—a new renaissance has been born in your country, and I might never have known of it except by hearsay.”

He answered, “We have other...