L’Offrande lyrique
One of 500 copies on vergé d'Arches paper, justified and initialed in ink (no. 149).
L’Offrande lyrique, translated into English by Tagore himself as Song Offerings, with a preface by Yeats, is a collection of 103 prose poems by Rabindranath Tagore. It is a humble and magnificent collection of daily meditations by the most mystical of poets and the most poetic of Bengali mystics. This canticle of love earned Tagore the distinction of becoming the first Asian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded on 14 November 1913.
André Gide had been working on the translation for several months, and dedicated it to Saint-John Perse: “I readily persuade myself that I took far more trouble, and far longer, to translate certain of these poems than Tagore took to compose them.” The edition was printed a few days after the Nobel award, on 26 November; an excerpt appeared in the NRF of December 1913, and the volume, printed in 500 hand-numbered copies, was distributed at the very beginning of 1914. The first trade edition followed in February, with a long introduction by Gide added.
Tagore left behind a poetic œuvre of 150 volumes (novels, plays and poetry) and songs including—a unique case—two national anthems: those of India and of Bangladesh. The anniversary of his death, 7 August [1941], is a day of mourning in government offices throughout the Bengali-speaking world.
A fine copy of a title whose wrappers are often faded.
Vignes, Bibliographie des Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 50.