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I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems
A substantial selection ofpoems by Tagore (1861-1941), the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and India's greatest modern poet. He was the most brilliant creative genius produced by the Indian Renaissance.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
Rabindranath Tagore
2,577 books4,253 followersAwarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 19, 2014
My life can be split into before and after I read Tagore, and specifically before and after I read "I won't let you go". I can remember the room I was sitting in at university, the shadows across the page, the noises of students outside fading away as the poem pulled me in and held me fast, just like its importunate protagonist. This lyrical English translation by Ketaki Dyson comes the closest of any to reproducing the musicality and beauty of the original Bengali. I have read and reread this volume so many times, and while they are now familiar, the power of the words hasn't diminished.
As his wife piles tangible symbols of her love for him on top of an already mountainous heap of baggage, the poet notices his little daughter sitting silently, almost forgotten, by the front door. “I won’t let you go,” she declares, and the narrator sees in her fierce determination the nature of life itself. “Foolish girl, my/daughter, who gave you the strength/to make such a statement, so bold, so self-assured ... such a proud assertion of love.” (Dyson, 84) The audacity of his young daughter reminds him that “a cry of the cosmos is quite as importunate/as a child’s. Since time began/all it gets it loses. Yet its grasp/of things hasn’t slackened, and in the pride/of undiminished love, like my daughter of four,/ceaselessly it sends out this cry: “I won’t let you go!” (Dyson, 85)
The earth holds the smallest blade of grass close, the flame of the candle is held from oblivion by an unseen force, lovers, daughters, all claim “a charter of rights in perpetuity” from their creator. (Dyson, 86) Ultimately all of the treasures of the world are “blown away by a breath/like a trivial dry dust,” but “such is love, it never concedes defeat.” (Dyson, 85) Tagore wrote in “The World of Personality,” that “when I love ... when I feel I am truer in someone else than myself, then I am glad, for the One in me realizes its truth of unity by uniting with others.” (Currents in the Poetry of Rabindrananth Tagore, 1985, Peterson)
Nature is cast, in the Vedic tradition, as a loving mother shielding her children with her own body. “I Won’t Let You Go” finds beauty in this bittersweet “holding fast,” a tenacity against all odds that, like water wearing at a stone, leaves the memory of its arrogance behind it. Tagore wrote “I Won’t Let You Go” in 1894, a year after he married Mrinalini Devi. Marjorie Sykes notes that between 1884 and 1899 he barely left Bengal, enjoying his growing family, publishing books and plays, and learning to understand, through the villages on his family’s estate, the basis of the oppression of India’s agrarian poor. It was a period of relative inactivity preceding years of constant work at Santiniketan, (the university he founded) travel around India and the world, literary conferences and speaking engagements. It reflects in part Tagore’s thinking on how human endeavors can make a difference, and on what kinds of work might have a lasting meaning.
Tagore felt that he was often struggling against the current of Indian culture; indeed, this was a struggle he had undertaken since childhood, growing up in the Maharisi’s compound in Calcutta. “I Won’t Let You Go” reflects the despair of a man who knew that his best efforts could accomplish little, and yet who believed, with equal firmness, that those efforts would not be in vain. In small things, ordinary things, like a young girl’s expression of love, or jars upon jars of grains and sweets and provisions, is something that holds fast no matter how much it loses, no matter how much is lost. Chaos envelops all creation in the end, but that moment of protest, that itself is a moment of creation.
As his wife piles tangible symbols of her love for him on top of an already mountainous heap of baggage, the poet notices his little daughter sitting silently, almost forgotten, by the front door. “I won’t let you go,” she declares, and the narrator sees in her fierce determination the nature of life itself. “Foolish girl, my/daughter, who gave you the strength/to make such a statement, so bold, so self-assured ... such a proud assertion of love.” (Dyson, 84) The audacity of his young daughter reminds him that “a cry of the cosmos is quite as importunate/as a child’s. Since time began/all it gets it loses. Yet its grasp/of things hasn’t slackened, and in the pride/of undiminished love, like my daughter of four,/ceaselessly it sends out this cry: “I won’t let you go!” (Dyson, 85)
The earth holds the smallest blade of grass close, the flame of the candle is held from oblivion by an unseen force, lovers, daughters, all claim “a charter of rights in perpetuity” from their creator. (Dyson, 86) Ultimately all of the treasures of the world are “blown away by a breath/like a trivial dry dust,” but “such is love, it never concedes defeat.” (Dyson, 85) Tagore wrote in “The World of Personality,” that “when I love ... when I feel I am truer in someone else than myself, then I am glad, for the One in me realizes its truth of unity by uniting with others.” (Currents in the Poetry of Rabindrananth Tagore, 1985, Peterson)
Nature is cast, in the Vedic tradition, as a loving mother shielding her children with her own body. “I Won’t Let You Go” finds beauty in this bittersweet “holding fast,” a tenacity against all odds that, like water wearing at a stone, leaves the memory of its arrogance behind it. Tagore wrote “I Won’t Let You Go” in 1894, a year after he married Mrinalini Devi. Marjorie Sykes notes that between 1884 and 1899 he barely left Bengal, enjoying his growing family, publishing books and plays, and learning to understand, through the villages on his family’s estate, the basis of the oppression of India’s agrarian poor. It was a period of relative inactivity preceding years of constant work at Santiniketan, (the university he founded) travel around India and the world, literary conferences and speaking engagements. It reflects in part Tagore’s thinking on how human endeavors can make a difference, and on what kinds of work might have a lasting meaning.
Tagore felt that he was often struggling against the current of Indian culture; indeed, this was a struggle he had undertaken since childhood, growing up in the Maharisi’s compound in Calcutta. “I Won’t Let You Go” reflects the despair of a man who knew that his best efforts could accomplish little, and yet who believed, with equal firmness, that those efforts would not be in vain. In small things, ordinary things, like a young girl’s expression of love, or jars upon jars of grains and sweets and provisions, is something that holds fast no matter how much it loses, no matter how much is lost. Chaos envelops all creation in the end, but that moment of protest, that itself is a moment of creation.
May 18, 2012
Okay, Tagore is my all time favorite poet so it is only natural I'm gonna give him 5 stars. I turned to Tagore when my wife died in 2005. He came closer to reflecting what I felt than anyone alive. There are many reasons he won a Nobel Prize for literature. This poem has to be one of them and there are many more. This poem was written in 1880, five years after the death of his mother. He was only 22. His poetry is timeless.
Invocation to Sorrow
Come, sorrow, come,
I’ve spread a seat for you.
Pull, rip out each blood-vessel from my heart,
place your thirsty lips on each split vein
and suck from my bloodstream drop by drop.
With a mother’s affection I shall nurture you.
My heart’s treasure, come you to my heart.
…
Come, sorrow, come,
My heart’s full of such longing!
Press your hands on my mouth,
fall tumbling on my heart’s ground.
Like an orphaned child cry loudly within me once
till it echoes in all my heart.
In my heart of hearts there’s a musical instrument
that’s broken.
Pick it up with your hands,
play it with al your strength,
like a madman strum it twang twang.
Instrument and strings –
if they break, let them.
Never mind, pick it up,
play it with all your strength
like a madman strum it twang twang.
Bruised by sharp sounds,
all the echoes troubled,
will cry out in chorus
in pain.
Come, sorrow, please come.
…
Come, sorrow, treasure of my heart.
Right here I’ve spread your seat
Whatever little blood
is left in my heart of hearts,
all of that you may drain if you wish.
[Autumn 1880, p. 71]
Invocation to Sorrow
Come, sorrow, come,
I’ve spread a seat for you.
Pull, rip out each blood-vessel from my heart,
place your thirsty lips on each split vein
and suck from my bloodstream drop by drop.
With a mother’s affection I shall nurture you.
My heart’s treasure, come you to my heart.
…
Come, sorrow, come,
My heart’s full of such longing!
Press your hands on my mouth,
fall tumbling on my heart’s ground.
Like an orphaned child cry loudly within me once
till it echoes in all my heart.
In my heart of hearts there’s a musical instrument
that’s broken.
Pick it up with your hands,
play it with al your strength,
like a madman strum it twang twang.
Instrument and strings –
if they break, let them.
Never mind, pick it up,
play it with all your strength
like a madman strum it twang twang.
Bruised by sharp sounds,
all the echoes troubled,
will cry out in chorus
in pain.
Come, sorrow, please come.
…
Come, sorrow, treasure of my heart.
Right here I’ve spread your seat
Whatever little blood
is left in my heart of hearts,
all of that you may drain if you wish.
[Autumn 1880, p. 71]
April 4, 2021
Tagore is the quintessential writer who is capable of perceiving the cosomos in a tiny drop of water and then articulating it so well that us, fools may also comprehend it.
September 9, 2013
One of the best translations I've read of Tagore's poetry. Dyson (an accomplished poet, novelist, playwright, and linguist) gives readers a better sense of the beauty and power of Tagore's work as a poetic visionary and master craftsman. Lyrical, delicate, warm, sensual, and spiritual, Dyson's translations take English readers to the heart of Tagore's poetic vision.
March 8, 2013
Each and every poem is the gem ...The entire book is the journey of life..knowledge and enlightenment ...Each poem shows that why Gurudev Rabindra nath Tagore got Nobel for literature ..
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews