Page 8 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Unit 1: The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore

physics, and was well able to hold his own in a debate with Einstein in 1930 on the newly Notes
emerging principles of quantum mechanics and chaos. His meetings and tape recorded conversations
with his contemporaries such as Albert Einstein and H.G. Wells, stand as cultural landmarks,
and show the brilliance of this great man. Although Tagore is a superb representative of his
country - India - the man who wrote its National Anthem - his life and works go far beyond
his country. He is truly a man of the whole Earth, a product of the best of both traditional
Indian, and modern Western cultures. The School of Wisdom is proud to have him as part of
its heritage. He exemplifies the ideals important to us of Goodness, Meaningful Work and
World Culture.

Did u know? Tagore was a close friend of Gandhi, to whom he gave the sobriquet
“Mahatma,” meaning “great soul,” while Gandhi dubbed Tagore, “The
Great Sentinel,” out of his abiding respect for Tagore’s unswerving commitment
to open-mindedness, inclusiveness and diversity in the envisioning of India
that was soon to be born.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his
fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden
Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The
Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913),
Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes
in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: the Song Offerings (1912), the most
acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore’s major
plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan
(1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders].
He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora
(1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides
these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two
autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore
also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

1.2 The Post Office

Tagore wrote The Post Office (Dak Ghar) in 1911, after having lost his son, daughter, wife and
father to disease, all within a few years. One night, lying in his roof garden and looking at a
starlit sky, he was inspired to write this magnificent play about the “death” of a child, Amal,
which is in fact the boy’s liberation, and the beginning of a great voyage towards the Outside.
Through the child’s demise, Tagore expresses his conviction that the full meaning of life can
only be grasped in death. Yet he does this with such a light, elegant and poetic touch that The
Post Office has found its way into the hearts of audiences everywhere and in many different
languages. Worth citing are two examples that demonstrate the impact this delicate piece has
had on people in moments of extreme need: in 1940, the evening before the Nazis entered
Paris, André Gides French translation of this play was read over the radio, so it was heard by
almost the entire nation; in 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto, the Polish version of The Post Office
was the last play performed at the orphanage of the great Jewish educator, Junusz Korczak.
Asked why he chose this, Korczak responded “eventually we have to accept with serenity the
angel of death.” Within a month, he and the children were taken away to the gas chambers.
But these examples should not suggest that the play is heavy or depressing; on the contrary
it is a beautifully inspired look at the way in which we live on in the intangible and the
eternal.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 3