Chitra - A Play in One Act

By Rabindranath Tagore

This antiquarian book contains Tagore Rabindranath’s 1892 play, "Chitra". It is a play in one act that adapts the story from the Mahabharata. This particular tale revolves around the character Chitrangada - a female soldier who attempts to get the attention of Arjuna. "Chitra" has been performed in many countries around the world and has been used as the basis for a variety of different mediums and formats, including dance. Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), was a Bengali polymath who was pivotal in the reshaping of Bengali literature and music. This antiquarian book is being republished now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition, complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author. Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473374263

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

Book preview

CHITRA

A Play In One Act

by

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Rabindranath Tagore

PREFACE

THE CHARACTERS

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE VI

SCENE VII

SCENE VIII

SCENE IX

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Thakur, anglicised to Tagore, was born on 7 May, 1861 to a wealthy family based in Calcutta, British India. Tagore composed beautiful songs, wrote elegant poems, novels and plays, created celebrated artworks and was a life-long political advocate of equality and freedom. He consequently denounced the Raj and British control of Indian life, inspirationally changing his region’s politics, literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, acclaimed for their contemplative nature mixed with an unflinching naturalism. Two of his compositions were chosen by India and Bangladesh as their national anthems. His legacy also endures in Visva-Bharati University; the establishment which Tagore founded himself. Tagore is still little known outside Bengal, however his profound, if smaller than deserved, reception has helped to introduce the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. Tagore started writing poetry when he was just eight years old, and released his first substantial collection of poems, The Songs of Bhanushingho Thakur, at the age of sixteen. These were published under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha (Sun Lion) and were immediately seized upon by the literary authorities; hailed as long-lost classics. However due to his father’s wishes for Tagore to become a Barrister, he moved to England at the age of sixteen and enrolled at a public school in Brighton. He briefly read law at University College London, but left to independently study the literature of Shakespeare, especially Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra. The young man was impressed by