L’Offrande lyrique

The first French translation of Gitanjali, the celebrated collection by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 — the same year as this publication, hastily undertaken to coincide with news of the major award.

André Gide’s translation is based on the English version that Tagore himself had translated. His preface introduces the French public to the work of the man he called “the prophet of the soul; one of those very rare men whose contact makes you better.” The collection’s spare, mystical style exerted a strong influence in French Symbolist and spiritualist circles; it was published only a few weeks after the Nobel Prize announcement — a first for a non-Western author.

Complete with the errata leaf, printed on Japanese paper.