On Friday November 15th, Dr. Gal Gvili from the East Asian Department at McGill University addressed an attentive room of attendees at the Munk School of Global Affairs for the annual Bengal studies lecture sponsored by the centre for South Asian Studies. Chaired by Dr. Christoph Emmrich, and co-sponsored by the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, the Department for the Study of Religion, and the Department of English, the Munk school welcomed academics, students, and Bengali diaspora alike to partake in an illuminating lecture on the literary impacts of renowned Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
The guest lecturer, Dr. Gvili, is an Assistant Professor specializing in how modern literature came to be perceived as effective in ushering social change during the late Qing and the Republican era through interactions between religious thought and literary realism. Gvili began by clearly outlining the three parts of her talk: Tagore’s part in the global discourse on eastern spirituality, Tagore in China in 1924 during his controversial tour, and responses to Tagore’s visit by Chinese poets, who launched what Gvili terms “Pan-Asian poetics.”
Gvili gave the audience a dynamic understanding of Tagore, presenting him as a figure with two sides: the politician and the poet. Rarely, Tagore’s diverse audiences were able to appreciate the depths of both these sides together. Tagore, the poet, was a part of the Bengali renaissance, which impact, as Gvili notes, is often overlooked in the studies of modern China. Here, Tagore played a significant part in inspiring Chinese authors, poets, artists and intellectuals that called for reforms in thinking, outlook, and ideas of the world. Meanwhile, Tagore, the politician, expressed strong anti-imperialist sentiments, and a deep rejection of the nationalism. Western audience, in particular, has often failed to take into account his political side.
Tagore had a huge influence on Western and Eastern parts of the world alike due to his winning of the Nobel Prize in 1913, which led to a slew of translations of his work into many languages. Western audiences were in awe of his writing and saw in Tagore a “prophet” bringing them back from their secular existence to reconnect with a belief in God. During that time, translations of Tagore’s work into Chinese were always adopted from the already translated English editions. This meant that Chinese translations of Tagore’s literature fell into the trap of generalizing his religious and spiritual sensibilities, and thus neglected his more concrete criticisms of nationalism and profit-driven imperialism. This Anglo-American habit of generalization presented Tagore’s work to fit a stereotype of Eastern spirituality, ultimately downplaying Tagore, the politician.
This has of course impacted how Chinese audiences saw Tagore’s themes in literature. When Tagore visited China in 1924, the nation was fighting strongly against imperialism and the occupation of parts of its land. China was submerged in its “century of humiliation” – and with this submersion came various movements of reform. Gvili referred to this period of transformation as “the Chinese renaissance” from 1915-1925. The struggle felt by this period of tension and flux spurred the creation of new philosophies, new cultures, and new art. Gvili explained that scholarship on Tagore’s tour of China usually focuses on this controversial nature of Tagore as a figure. Namely, the critiques from Chinese Marxists underline how coldly Chinese audiences in the midst of this renaissance received Tagore’s more capitalist ideas. Gvili emphasized that at the same time there were the enthusiastic responses that emerged from Chinese poets. These responses had been neglected by researchers. Journal articles on Tagore, as well as ample Chinese poetry that directly connected with Tagore’s ideas of Eastern spirituality was published in prestigious venues in preparation for and the aftermath of his visit.
Despite this relatively common misinformation about what Tagore stood for, the Chinese renaissance was a perfect environment for the ideas of Tagore. It permeated the layer of misinformation to inspire deep experimentation and stimulating change in Chinese poetry. This emergence of Pan-Asian Poetics would go on to touch the hearts of Chinese readers. Yet, Tagore’s critique of nationalism is still very much ignored in China. To this day, however, translations of Tagore’s work spark controversies over questions of “eastern Spirituality’ but never critiques of nationalism.
Anushka Kurian is a fourth year student majoring in International Relations and Ethics, Society and Law. She is an Event Reporter and Contributor for Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, South Asia section.
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