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thus an event of some importance in his vita , not as an index of his literary merit, but because it invested his life with a new international dimension, and in that way helped him to modernise and radicalise himself at a faster rate.
    At the house of William Rothenstein in London in 1912; seated (from left to right): Somendra Dev-Varman of Tripura, Rabindranath Tagore, his son Rathindranath; standing: D.N. Maitra, Rothenstein’s young son, and Rothenstein.
    An unfortunate side-effect of the Nobel Prize was the way in which Tagore’s poetry was presented to the Western public after that event. The book that won him the prize, the English Gitanjali (1912), containing Tagore’s own re-creations in poetic prose of verses taken from the Bengali Gitanjali (1910) and some other collections , was taken as a text in its own right and re-translated into other languages from the English. This Western Gitanjali , as it has been called, did indeed take the Western world by storm. The Dutch, French, and Spanish versions were particularly elegantly done. The English Gitanjali lent itself to good re-translation,especially into other European languages. Its language was simple and unaffected, with a Biblical air, and its message had a universal appeal. But such a tour de force of re-creation could not necessarily be repeated. Tagore was not in a position to do it. Yet inadequate translations were hastily brought out, taken as texts in their own right, and re-translated into other languages as before. Some renderings were tolerable, but other poems were truncated and mutilated . To introduce an analogy from the food-processing industry of our times, the “dietary fibres” of the poems were often taken out and artificial sweeteners were added. Often the English versions were not translations at all, but rough paraphrases, abstracts. Tagore’s reputation in the West was inevitably affected, especially in the English-speaking world.
    Partly because re-translations may iron out the wrinkles of translations, and partly because of other complex cultural and political factors, Tagore’s fortunes in other European languages did not necessarily follow a course parallel to that of his fortunes in English. He was, for instance, very popular between the wars in Germany; it is possible that many Germans, feeling humiliated and rejected after the First World War, turned to the consolations of his poetry with a passionate eagerness. Tagore also enjoyed a great vogue in the Spanish-speaking world, which included the Latin Americans. The Spanish re-translations were prepared by Zenobia Camprubí and her husband, the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who was probably influenced by Tagore in the concept of ‘poesía desnuda’ or ‘naked poetry’ he put forward from 1916 onwards and also in other ways. 7 Tagore also enjoyed a great popularity in Mexico, and in Argentina, where he had a profound influence on Victoria Ocampo, and in Chile, where the young Gabriela Mistral and the young Pablo Neruda were influenced by him. Yet, as new translations failed to appear, an ambivalence crept into the attitude of the Latin Americans too, as is evinced by Jorge Luis Borges’ flippant comment that Tagore was, ‘above all, a hoaxer of good faith, or, if you prefer, a Swedish invention’. 8
    Tagore has been called his own worst enemy in allowing his inadequate English translations to see the light of day, yet it would be quite naïve of us to blame him entirely for the process in which he became caught. It is doubtful if the reputation of any poet could survive for very long outside his own home territory if that reputation had to depend on the poet’s own capacity to translate himself into a second language. If Shakespeare’s reputation had depended upon his capacity to translate himself into Frenchor Latin, he might have had a tough time becoming famous! Shakespeare has been very lucky in that the language in which he wrote was subsequently disseminated throughout