L’Offrande lyrique

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

André Gide’s translation is based on the English version that Tagore himself had translated. The preface introduces the French public to the work of a poet Gide 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, published only a few weeks after the announcement of the Nobel Prize — a first for a non-Western author.

Complete with the errata leaf (printed on Japanese paper).