Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

July-Sept short story selection is Selected Short Stories by Indian Nobel Prize in Literature winner Rabindranath Tagore. (Linked here is the Penguin Classics edition, which is under 350 pages.)

From GR: Poet, novelist, painter, and musician, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is the grand master of Bengali culture. Written during the 1890s, the stories in this selection brilliantly recreate vivid images of Bengali life and landscapes in their depiction of peasantry and gentry, casteism, corrupt officialdom and dehumanizing poverty. Yet Tagore is first and foremost India’s supreme Romantic poet, and in these stories he can be seen reaching beyond mere documentary realism towards his own profoundly original vision.

For more about Tagore:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lit...

https://www.britannica.com/biography/...

Including his poetry:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...

Free (legal) ebooks from Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/auth...

I'll be reading an ebook collection from a library app at some point this quarter and I'm really looking forward to it!

For what it's worth, I believe Nidhi, who nominated it, said most story collections will have many of the same stories so, in this case, it's not necessary that we read the exact same publication. There seems to be countless options for Tagore short story collections...

Also cool- this collection will count toward the translated classics challenge.
And incidentally, I heard an interviewee on BBC quoting Tagore the radio this morning. And it sounded like someone from an entirely different field- culinary maybe.

Jen, please feel free to read a different collection by him. For some authors, finding a specific short story collection can get tricky.

Love the coincidence of the BBC quoting him!

I've read some of his poetry, but none of his short stories. I've just started on The Cabuliwallah. Wonderful! Thank you so much for calling my attention to this.

I see there is an enormous collection available on the Project Gutenberg page linked to above.

Ben, I'm glad you're enjoying his work.

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for many classic works and writers

I finally got to this author last night. I read The Cabuliwallah and I listened to The Postmaster as I went to bed and I agree with Ben's comment above- wonderful!

Both stories seem quite wholesome, centered around paternal love and the sadness of separations, and I also enjoy the South Asian cultures reflected in them.

The writing is simple and lovely. Happy to be discovering this writer! And this seems a perfect genre in which to start. Very accessible- so far the stories seem suitable for all ages. I am definitely curious now about his poetry too.

The Cabuliwallah is one of the best short stories that I've ever read. It's amazing..

Finished a book of 10 stories. The Cabuliwallah was the first. Unfortunately by the end they felt a bit redundant and I found myself anticipating and dreading the melancholy and heartbreaking endings. I was hoping for some upliftment to come and offer some relief but I guess that'll have to be in my next read.

The writing is really lovely, the stories are good, and sometimes have a searing end which gives one pause. Glad to have tried it out and am curious about his writing in other forms like poetry and essay... Perhaps a better way to take these in would be a collection that offered more variety of some kind, maybe a collection of assorted writers...

Jen wrote: "Finished a book of 10 stories. The Cabuliwallah was the first. Unfortunately by the end they felt a bit redundant and I found myself anticipating and dreading the melancholy and heartbreaking endin..."

I would agree there, Jen. Tagore is too emotionally intense to be taken in large doses. One or two stories in a collection of stories is a better way to get started on him.

Mbuye wrote: "Jen wrote: "Finished a book of 10 stories. The Cabuliwallah was the first. Unfortunately by the end they felt a bit redundant and I found myself anticipating and dreading the melancholy and heartbr..."

And it is indeed the first two stories that are most memorable for me- I wonder if it's because after that they were too much of the same. The Cabuliwallah and The Postmaster...

So far as the stories themselves go, they are all deeply poetic and intense, but this is true of all Indian and Pakistani writers of the period. I have sometimes wondered if such grief and pathos did not arise from the trauma of the Partition and the scars it left behind.

Unfortunately, few of these writers have been translated into English, and many of the translations that came my way I found to be truly execrable. Despite this, the emotional depth and feeling of the original comes through and they make wonderful reading. Not until the 50's did authors begin to write in English for a very different readership,

Tagore's stories were appreciated as much for the absolute simplicity of the style and language - almost naif - as much for the content. This was in stark contrast to other short story writers, whose work displayed sophistication and maturity in the depiction of their themes.