AQS, two pages on two adjoining sheets, 4.25 x 7, dated January 1915. Tagore pens a lengthy quote from his poem ‘Fruit Gathering,’ starting the quote with “From a poet who is not wise though old.” In full: “Is festival of summer only for fresh blossoms? Do you not see there the play of withered leaves and faded flowers? Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves? Does it also not sing with the waves that fall?
There are jewels on the carpet where my king stands. But are there no patient colds of earth waiting to be touched by his feet?
There by the side of my master sit few who are wise and great, But he has taken the foolish in his arms and that has made me his servant forever.”
Beneath the date, Tagore inscribes “To Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, London.” Wilson was a member of the British Viceroy’s Council in India at the time. In fine condition.
In 1911, Rabindranath Tagore honored England’s King George V with a newly composed piece to be sung as he received the imperial crown of India. Four years later, the year this outstanding piece was penned in London, George returned the gesture of honor and knighted the internationally celebrated poet. Though there had always been mutual political respect between the two, Tagore renounced his knighthood in 1919 as “a symbolic act of protest” upon hearing of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which British officials in India, fearing that an uprising was in the works, opened fire on a peaceful crowd, taking over 1,000 lives and wounding hundreds more.
The political relationship between Britain and Tagore contained highs and lows, a wholeness that is reflected in the content of this beautiful piece, Part III of his poem ‘Fruit Gathering:’ “Is festival of summer only for fresh blossoms? Do you not see there the play of withered leaves and faded flowers? Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves? Does it also not sing with the waves that fall?” Penned at a time of honor, the poet remains ever mindful that with the good there is bad, a fact that would become all too clear in the years to come. To have this poignant and lengthy piece of the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s work penned in his own hand is truly extraordinary. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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