1
The Many Tagores in Former Yugoslavia
Ana Jelnikar (ICCR Research Fellow, Presidency University, 86/1 College street, Kolkata, West
Bengal, India; ajelnikar@gmail.com)
I. Introduction
When Rabindranath Tagore got the Nobel Prize in 1913 and his name spread rapidly across the
globe, there was as yet no Yugoslavia.1 The article will therefore tackle not only Tagore’s
reception in the political entity known as Yugoslavia but also in its cultural predecessors and
successors. The lands that came to comprise the South-Slavic state (‘yug’ in Yugoslavia means
‘south’) were in 1913 still split between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the latter
already on the verge of disappearing from the Balkans. But notions of South-Slavic cultural and
linguistic unity go back to at least the second half of the nineteenth century. Bishop J. J.
Strossmayer, a well-known nineteenth-century advocate of Yugoslav unity in the nineteenth
century, for example, founded the so-called Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb
as early as 1867 with the intention to promote cultural unity of the South Slavs.2
The so-called “first Yugoslavia” came into being as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. After World
War II, it re-emerged from the Nazi occupation in 1944, but now as the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY led by the former Partisan leader Josip Broz, a.k.a. Marshal
Tito.) This federation consisted of six republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Following the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, Yugoslavia strove for
a position of neutrality in the cold-war era and in the 1960s it became one of the founding
members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Against its diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious
composition, consisting of Muslims, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians and others,
Tito’s official line cultivated a socialist fraternity and an ideal of unity in diversity intended to
override particularistic ethnic and religious identities. A decade after Tito’s death, however, in an
atmosphere of compounded economic and political crisis, with separatist nationalisms growing
and the inter-republic talks breaking down, the country disintegrated amidst horrific violence.
Direct politico-cultural relations between former Yugoslavia and India date back to no
more than six decades, when Yugoslavia joined the Non-Aligned Movement. But their literary
and cultural associations have a much longer history, with earliest connections traced in the
Indian origins of ancient Slavic myths.3 A notion of ancient political unity of the South Slavic
peoples and India in Great Macedonia was even propagated by Croatian humanists. The
sixteenth-century Croatian historian Vinko Pribojević, considered as a precursor of the PanSlavic ideology, for example, spoke of a great Slavic empire extending from the Adriatic Sea to
the Ganges. Alexander the Great, appropriated as a Slav, became a subject of many popular
Slavic romances. The fables of Barlaam and Josaphat with their reworking of the life of the
Buddha entered the medieval literatures of former Yugoslavia (Serbian and Croatian) via the
Byzantine cultural realm. The Panchatantra, transmitted into Europe through Persian, Arab and
Greek translations, found its way from early Greek adaptations into the literary Old Slavonic and
may have exacted an influence on old Yugoslav prose writings as early as the thirteenth century
with a reworking of Kalila and Dimna in the Serbian-speaking region.4 The notion of India as a
land of plenty, a paradise on earth, was captured by many South Slavic folksongs, tales and
2
sayings throughout the Middle Ages and subsequent centuries and has survived to the present
day in the popular phrase ‘India Koromandia’ (‘Koromandia’ refers to the Coromandel Coast
where St. Thomas preached Christianity.)5
As Sanskrit, alongside classical Greek and Latin, came to be an essential component of
philological education in Europe in the nineteenth century, Indian literature in this part Europe
too became associated with ancient Indian texts. The first direct translations from Sanskrit were
undertaken by Croatian Petar Budmani (1835-1914) and the Slovene Karol Glaser (1845-1913),
who each translated a selection of Sanskrit tales and dramas, including Kalidasa’s Sakuntala,
into Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian respectively.
The acquaintance with Indian philosophy, Vedanta and Buddhist thought first came
through German scholarship, and first reached those parts of former Yugoslavia that were under
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. India was seen as a land of profound wisdom, albeit still tinged
with exoticism. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, left a legacy of another version of ‘the
Orient’. In 1955 Svetozar Petrović was still able to write that Yugoslav Orientalist studies were
limited almost entirely to the study of Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages and literatures.6
Indology as a scholarly discipline came late in the day, the first academic institute established in
the 1960s at the University of Zagreb. To this day Zagreb is the only capital in former
Yugoslavia to systematically offer courses on Indian languages and cultures.7
As the first modern Indian author to be read in this part of the world, Tagore in former
Yugoslavia soon became one of the most widely translated foreign authors of the time. His
reputation went through different phases and his works met with various responses in different
parts of former Yugoslavia. Overall, his fame seems to rest secured, as old and new translations
are being published and reprinted to this day, and his poetry and novels are being taught at
secondary school and university level, increasingly associated with world and post-colonial
literatures.
II. First Encounters
The initial response to Tagore’s unexpected Nobel Prize in former Yugoslavia was
shaped largely by considerations other than the poet’s literary merit. As elsewhere across
Europe, the deeply meditative poems of Gitanjali were readily imbibed as the book of the soul
and its author seen as a prophet and mystic from the East. The full translation of the Nobelwinning collection of poetry first came out serially in 1914 in a Zagreb daily (Jutranji list) and
published in book form a year later.8 Christian intellectuals of the day were keen to assimilate
Tagore’s perceived mysticism into their own strivings to reject the world of materialism and
secularism.9 Yeats’s famous “Introduction” to the English Gitanjali, which launched some of the
more persistent misconceptions about the Indian poet, found its way into the earliest writings on
Tagore also in former Yugoslavia. For example, in Slovenia, one of the first articles to be written
on Tagore was almost entirely based on Yeats’s laudatory preface.10
For the Slavic peoples who were most exposed to the Germanization pressures under the
Habsburg rule, Tagore’s winning the Nobel Prize became a matter of preference over another
candidate for the biggest literary accolade that year, the Austrian poet Peter Rosegger (18431918). Certainly the Slovenes resented Rosegger for his associations with the nationalist
organisation called Südmark Schulverein that aided German-language schools in ethnically
Slovene or mixed territories in Southern Carinthia and Southern Styria. Similarly Croatians
sympathised with Tagore rather than his unpopular rival.11
3
The old Slavic-Germanic animosity transposed itself into a literary duel that was waged
in the daily press across Central and East-Central part of Europe. One of the first substantial
articles to come out on Tagore in 1914 in the Slovenian press was tellingly titled “Last year’s
rivals for the Nobel Prize.” Described as “a spiritual giant of enormous horizons”, Tagore is
contrasted with Peter Rosegger, who in turn is portrayed as a parochial writer fanning “the
flames of nationalist hatred”. Tagore is celebrated for his expansive love of humanity as opposed
to the narrow love of nation. His patriotic songs are described as perfect expressions of “his
universalism.”12 In short, here is “a patriot” whose voice is tuned to the deepest harmonies of
humanity, refusing to surrender the task of his country’s liberation from under foreign rule to a
nationalist agenda. Tagore’s anti-nationalist message and his alternative model of anti-colonial
struggle will become relevant once again in the context of the post-WWI border realignments, as
Italy came to rule over parts of Slovene and Croat populated territories and enforced
Italianization became the order of the day.
III. Publishing history, performances and translations
Discounting a few translations of individual poems, often appearing anonymously in the
press within months of Tagore’s winning the Nobel Prize,13 the already mentioned 1914
publication of Gitanjali that came out in Zagreb, first serially and then as a book, marks the first
substantial effort to present Tagore to a new Croatian readership and wider Yugoslav audiences.
The translator was a young student of philosophy Pavao Vuk-Pavlović (1894-1967). He also
translated Tagore’s poetic drama Chitra (most probably from German),14 which was staged at
Croatia’s National Theatre in Zagreb in October 1915. This may have been the earliest staging of
Chitra in Europe. The production also marks a joint effort of young searching minds starting out
in their careers. Namely, the task of directing Chitra was given to as yet entirely unknown
twenty-year-old Croatian by the name of Alfons Verli (today best known for his staging of
Krleža and Shakespeare in the 1930s), who was educated in Berlin and Leipzig. With established
actors playing the parts, and the music written by another freshman in his early twenties who was
to become a famous Croatian composer, Krešimir Baranović (1894-1975), Chitra put Tagore on
the map as it was “warmly welcomed by the critics and filling the house for three nights in ten
days.”15 In the words of one critic, “This was theatre’s victory over all those sceptics who think it
impossible that true, profound poetry can find embodiment in a mimetic form.”16
There were indeed some sceptics who did not share the enthusiasm over the newlydiscovered Indian author. Miroslav Krleža (1893-1981), considered one of the biggest Croatian
writers of the 20th century, struggled to relate to Tagore. As he noted in his diary some three
weeks after the premiere:
It’s getting to me. Rabin-Dranath-Tagore. Alfons Verli. Directing “Chitra”. […]
For all the ecstatic appreciation of the Upanishads and Rigveda, Tagore, while
conjuring up a suggestive picture of the East, of India, Asia, the Ganges and
Buddha, in what makes for a heady, melodious read, then crosses over into a
pseudo-lyrical monotony that becomes bothersome like tropical rain, and then
starts to irk and it irks more and more. What sort of a lesson is this? For snobs? Or
is it that I don’t get it at all?17
4
Arising out of a stock set of perceptions on the one hand and a lack of context on the
other, this kind of misgivings about the intentions of Tagore were not uncommon amongst the
literati of the time. But Verli’s enthusiasm for Tagore survived the war, and just before settling
down once again in Berlin, he stopped in Prague in 1921 to hear Tagore speak.
The earliest translations of Tagore into Serbo-Croatian18 were generally not done by
writers or poets. This was different from the start in Slovenia. Soon after the poet Župančič
brought out his short piece on Tagore largely based on Yeats, he published a few translations of
Tagore’s poems in the journal Literarna pratika. The short-story writer France Bevk (18901970) translated a selection of Tagore’s short stories from the German publication Die
Erzählungen, and poet Miran Jarc (1900-1942),rendered Chitra into Slovene. The play was
staged in the Ljubljana City Theatre in 1953, to be followed in 1958 by The Post Office,
translated by another major poet Jože Udović (1912-1986). But the greatest credit for giving
Tagore a permanent place within the Slovenian world of letters goes to the fine poet Alojz
Gradnik (1882-1967). The personal enthusiasm and taste of translators cannot be
overemphasized in this respect. By his own admission, Gradnik was so taken by what he read as
he chanced upon a copy of The Crescent Moon in a bookshop in Trieste during the war, that he
decided to introduce as much of Tagore’s poetry as was then available in English to Slovenian
readership.
How I grew to love this wonderful Indian is evident from the fact that I
transposed five of his books into Slovene. All these translations were motivated
by my wish that Slovenes too get to know this wonderful poet, philosopher and
apostle of peace and brotherhood between nations.19
Tagore’s first poetry collection to come out in Slovene was not the Nobel-winning
Gitanjali, but the volume of Gradnik’s personal choice: The Crescent Moon (1917),20 to be sold
out within months and republished in 1921. One after another the following collections appeared:
Stray Birds (1921), The Gardener (1922), Fruit Gathering (1922) and finally The Gitanjali:
Song Offerings (1924). If it were not for Gradnik’s personal commitment, it remains doubtful
whether so much of Tagore’s poetry would have been translated into Slovene. The Crescent
Moon and Fruit Gathering, for example, did not make it into Serbian or Croatian until very
recently.21
Gradnik’s translations closely followed the Macmillan text of Tagore’s own English
reworkings.22 They strove to be faithful renditions of Tagore’s English rhythmic prose. Luckily,
the adopted forms of “thou” and “thee”, which gave the English poems an antiquated air alien
both to the original Bengali and contemporary poetry being written in English, were lost in
Slovene (and Serbo-Croatian) translation, since, as in Bengali, their grammatical equivalents do
not sound archaic in these languages. Still, Gradnik’s translations were full of archaisms and
inversions, in line with the pervasive biblical style through which Tagore’s poetry was
domesticated in Europe, and which made Tagore seem less a contemporary and more of a poet
from a bygone era. Gradnik may have realized this when he came to revise his own translations
in the late 1950s, dispensing entirely with old-fashioned vocabulary and antiquated inversions.
Similarly, in Croatia, Gitanjali was retranslated in a more contemporary idiom by the poet,
writer and translator, as well as a great Indophile, Vesna Krmpotić in the 1980s.23 Recently,
another sensitive translation of Gitanjali came out in Croatia. In fact, between 2005 and 2008,
5
Robert Mandić, who runs a small publishing house in Split, translated and brought out six of
Tagore’s works, some of which saw the light of day for the first time across former Yugoslavia.24
Interestingly, the one feature of the early translations which seems to have had a stylistic
impact on the poets of the 1920s is the fact that these translations came in the guise of prose
poetry. Tagore himself noted that the reason for the popularity of his English Gitanjali with the
English poets was their prose reincarnation at a time when the prose-poem in Europe was
growing in popularity. The poets in Europe, Tagore felt, were ready to accept his translations “as
part of their own literature”.25 In Slovenia, Srečko Kosovel (1904-1922) – a foremost avantgarde voice on the inter-war period, who looked to the Indian poet for intellectual and aesthetic
nourishment – was indeed ready to receive his prose renditions of what in the original Bengali
was formally intricate verse. Part of Kosovel’s poetic experimentation involved a shift to free
verse, which also led him to the prose poem. Other literary antecedents notwithstanding, some of
Kosovel’s lyrical prose pieces carry an undeniable Tagorean imprint.26
In contrast, Janko Moder’s Slovene translation of Song Offerings from 1973, in what is
presumably an attempt to bring these poems closer to the Bengali original, sets out the poems in
regular stanzas rather than short prose paragraphs. These translations are being republished in
recent editions in Slovenia.27 But the penchant for the genre of an unrhymed rhythmical prose
has survived and is reflected in the recent addition to Tagore’s poetry opus in Slovene translation
– his short sketches Lipika.28
With Tagore’s works in the so-called Serbo-Croatian, we must note the following:
practically there was never just one translation of Tagore’s most popular works, but invariably a
book would be taken up for translation separately in Serbia, Croatia as well as in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. For example, The Gardener came out in 1923 in two translations of what was
officially one language: Iso Velikanovič’s translation was published in Zagreb and David S.
Pijade’s in Belgrade. Similarly, Tagore’s most popular novel in the Yugoslav 1920s, The Home
and the World, saw three different translations between 1922 and 1926 (the 1923 Belgrade
translation was done, unusually, from French by Petar St. Bešević, while the Croatian and
Bosnian variants were based on the English). When the novel The Wreck became the order of the
day with the Yugoslav readership, it also came out in three different translations within a span of
ten years, first in Belgrade, then Zagreb and finally in Sarajevo.
Clearly there was a strongly-felt need amongst the separate peoples of former
Yugoslavia, even in the early Yugoslav days, to have their own specific translations of Tagore.
This is rich and as yet unchartered territory for translation studies, which could reveal a variety
of translation strategies that take the differences between existing translations beyond the more
obvious aspects of lexicography, syntax and idiom that differentiate Croatian, Serbian and
Bosnian languages, even as these languages remain, to this day, mutually intelligible, and as
some would argue, are one and the same language.
IV. Intellectual engagement with Tagore in the 1920s
The second, most significant, wave of Tagore’s popularity in former Yugoslavia came
after World War I, gaining momentum at around 1921 and further bolstered by Tagore’s visit to
Zagreb and Belgrade in 1926. In this five-year period, more than ten books of Tagore’s writings
were translated – that is almost a third of the entire production between 1913 and 1961.29 Poetry
and drama were now supplemented by prose writings (short stories, the novels The Home and the
World, Wreck and his essays on Nationalism). The pendulum of advocacy for his work swung
6
from Christian critics, who now dismissed him as a pseudo-mystic, to intellectuals of a more
liberal persuasion. The latter primarily claimed Tagore as a spiritual leader of a new civilization
that should supplant the doomed civilization of the West. They regarded themselves as
proponents of a new humanism, and for them Tagore could offer a more holistic paradigm than
the old dualistic way of thinking. Tagore’s religiosity gets reconfigured from supposedly close
affinities with a particular faith tradition to a looser association with a more general state of
being, bringing it closer to Tagore’s own non-sectarian endorsement of religion as an essentially
humanist enterprise.30
The sense of doom and spiritual bankruptcy following the events of World War I in
many ways set the stage for Tagore’ impact on the minds of men – and women – of letters in the
1920s. The West was once again in need of a spiritual injection from the East. Srečko Kosovel
captures the moment well when in a poem he writers of “a tired European” gazing into “a golden
evening”, from where hope and regeneration were to come.31 The colour gold is a direct allusion
to Tagore, from whom he borrowed the title for his first intended collections of poetry, The
Golden Boat.32
Besides World War I, the other key event that was crucial in eliciting a response from
intellectuals across Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe is the October Revolution of 1917. As
the colonial era came face to face with the age of the proletariat, the anti-imperialist struggle was
increasingly seen as an extension of the anti-capitalist one. Sympathies for the worker extended
to the sympathies for the colonized, both seen to be at the receiving end of rapacious capitalism.
For the first time in Europe a more prominent culture of anti-hegemonism emerged and
questioned, more radically, Europe’s role in global politics.33 Many leftist intellectuals responded
to the civilizational crisis in anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist terms and saw in the Bolshevik
revolution a realistic hope (however short-lasting) for the ideal of a new classless society. Tagore
for them was now a prominent Eastern anti-imperialist voice who also spoke up for the
downtrodden worker. With this the Indian poet got delinked from some of the earlier Orientalist
associations propagated by Yeats. He was no longer a voice representing ancient India, but rather
a contemporary, who addressed issues of global concern, spanning nationalism, scientific and
technological revolutions, environmentalism, and feminism alike.
The most sympathetic readers of Tagore from this part of Europe seemed to be those who
identified with the Indian poet and his anti-imperialist struggle from their own position of being
dominated by a foreign power after the war.34 Illustrative of this type of response which stemmed
from a sense of commonality and joint purpose with the Indian poet is yet again that of Srečko
Kosovel, who came from a region that was allocated to Italy in the post-war era. When Kosovel
turned towards the “East” in the spirit of hope and identification, he turned as much towards the
promises of socialism as he did towards the ideals of an alternative liberation struggle
represented by Tagore’s anti-nationalist sentiments and Gandhi’s call for non-violence.35 It is not
surprising then to see that “the most important work of Tagore for the Yugoslav twenties”, as
Petrović noted, was his book of essays on Nationalism (1917, first published in Croatian
translation in 1921), with its uncompromising attack on the creed of nationalism and patriotism
the world over. Tagore’s novel The Home and the World, which became popular at the same
time, was often read as no more than a literary corollary to the ideas advanced in Nationalism.36
In poetry, Gitanjali was now superseded in popularity by the more secular love lyrics of
The Gardener. In Serbia, the excellent translation of Pijade has gone into countless reprints since
its first publication in 1923, far more than anywhere else in Yugoslavia. On occasion, the print
runs reached the astonishing 50 000 copies.37 The popularity of this particular collection, the
7
reasons for which would require a separate study, has survived down to the present: since the
new millennium, it has been republished over thirty times with some twenty-three different
publishers across the country.38
It may be true that in the 1920s Tagore’s political ideas were preferred to the bard in
former Yugoslavia, but we should perhaps not underestimate the impact of his poetry on the
creative expression of the avant-garde poets and artists of the day. This is an area that needs
further research, and I would not wish to suggest any straightforward link between the European
or Yugoslav avant-gardes and the Indian poet. Yeats and Pound, as we know, lost their interest in
Tagore precisely because they did not see him to be modernist enough. Within the Yugoslav
cultural milieu, the Belgrade avant-garde circle spearheaded by the controversial figure of
Ljubomir Micić and founder of Zenitism39 strongly objected to the Indian poet‘s visit to
Yugoslavia in November 1926 on the grounds that he was a fake portender of a new civilization.
V. Tagore’s visit and its aftermath
If Tagore’s reputation in the Yugoslav twenties was confined largely to the more exclusive circle
of academics, artists and intellectuals, it became more of a mass popular response once Tagore
visited Zagreb and Belgrade. Recovering from severe exhaustion at the sanatorium at Lake
Balaton in Hungary on what was his fifth and longest European tour, Tagore wrote in a letter to
Leonard Elmhirst:
Doctors advise me to take the shorter eastern route to India through Yugoslavia,
Serbia [sic], Constantinople, Greece and Egypt. The prescription is very much
like the French wine ordered for me in Milan; it is tempting. The people in this
eastern corner of Europe are perfectly charming – their personality unshrouded
by the grey monotony of a uniform civilization that has overspread the western
world. It is mixed with something primitive and therefore is fresh and vital and
warmly human.40
His return journey to India thus took him on a whistle-stop tour of the Balkans. Between 13
and 17 November, he spent two days in Zagreb and two in Belgrade, before proceeding to
Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Egypt, and finally returning to India. The four days in
Yugoslavia were jam-packed with the obligations any celebrity has to face: receptions and
parties in his honour, attending meals with dignitaries, giving interviews and, lectures in
auditoria filled to the last seat. The media played a key role in turning his visit into a sensation,
and Tagore’s every step, his appearance, meeting and spoken word was recorded minutely in the
press of the day.41
Tagore arrived in Zagreb on the Saturday morning of 13th November with the overnight
train from Budapest to be warmly welcomed on the platform by “many ladies”, as one
newspaper related the events, alongside his main host Hinko Hinković, a one-time politician
turned president of the local Theosophical society, and other representative of various
associations. 42 In the evening, he lectured to a packed hall of the Zagreb Musical Conservatory.
According to one report, his talk was on “Europe, the conflicts and troubles plaguing Western
nations,” with a clear message “to seek happiness not on the path of empty intellectualism,
economy, technology, politics and national hatred, but on that of contemplation, artistic
imagination, wisdom, love, faith and self-sacrifice.”43 The lecture was followed by a recital from
8
The Gardener in the original Bengali. The event was a major success and Tagore was asked
impromptu to speak again the next morning for a different crowd.
Tagore left Zagreb for Belgrade on the 14th, and was again awaited upon his arrival by a
welcoming crowd, greeting him with “Živeo!” (“Long live!”).44 His visit was well prepared for.
The Zagreb interview, in which he spoke candidly on fascism and Bolshevism, recognizing the
former’s threat to parts of Yugoslavia, was duly reproduced in one of the major Belgrade dailies
Politika the day before his arrival. In this interview Tagore also condemned colonialism and
spoke of the difficulty of European and Eastern civilizations coming harmoniously together
unless Europe overcame her drive to conquer and dominate new markets so as to satisfy her
greed for luxury.45 Earlier in the month, a prominent literary journal published nine of Tagore’s
poems in a new translation.46 Essays and lectures on the social realities of India and Tagore’s
work as a poet and philosopher were also pending.47
Allegedly “the whole of Belgrade”, ordinary workers as much as scholars, came to his
first lecture on contemporary civilization and the meaning of progress at the main University hall
in Belgrade.48 The following day was taken up by a round of press meetings, a visit to the
museum to see the collection of national crafts (he was gifted an eighteenth-century goldembroidered traditional costume from Kosovo),49 a tea party at the local YMCA, to end on the
second lecture in the evening, this time on the meaning of art and at a reduced price.50
For the most part, Tagore’s visit was a success, but not everyone was impressed with the
poet speaking against crude materialism and greed of Western civilization and the stiff entry-fees
charged for his lectures. The sentiments of disaffection were forcefully expressed by the group of
Belgrade avant-gardists at the first of his lectures. They denigrated the poet’s presence by shouts
of “Down with Tagore! Long Live Gandhi!” and threw pamphlets in the air with an open letter
addressed to Tagore in Serbian and English translation. Signed by poets Ljubomir Micić and
Branko ve Poljanski, the letter protested against Tagore’s perceived pro-Western and bourgeois
stance in India’s independence struggle, as opposed to the grass-roots Gandhian approach. The
dichotomous view probably owed something to Rolland’s book on Mahatma Gandhi.51 Couched
in a discourse of conceit and self-pity, the letter was vitriolic:
Your verses are lemonade, your philosophy dung, your mysticism, like all
mysticism is – mystification. (…) We speak truth and only in the name of truth
declare ourselves publicly against you today (…) the best sons of this country of
the Balkans are strangers in their own land…52
In the eyes of these self-proclaimed “barbarians”, whose notion of a Barbarogenious (a
Balkan adaptation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch) was invented as the Balkan’s antidote to a
spiritually depleted (Western) Europe, Tagore was but a fake trader of “empty phrases.” Such
fundamental mistrust may have had something to do with the unfortunate circumstances of
Tagore’s 1926 tour. There was Tagore’s contentious earlier visit of Mussolini, which was
reported again in the media on the eve of Tagore’s arrival. The fact that some of his tour was
orchestrated by dictatorial regimes made his political leanings suspect, and the commerciality
surrounding his visit with high entry fees jarred with the content of his addresses. One newspaper
condemned the outburst as a “scandal”, and the disruption was apparently swiftly brought under
control, so that Tagore, visibly disturbed, was able to begin his lecture.53 It is unknown how this
affected Tagore.54
9
Overall, Tagore’s visit in 1926 greatly increased his popularity in Yugoslavia,
particularly amongst the general reading public. Articles continued being written on him weeks
after his departure, and a more concerted effort was present to try and locate him within the
wider Indian context and understand him in his multifaceted personality. Tagore was also
appreciated as a defender of women’s rights and one who understood women’s creative needs.55
One remarkable woman writer and traveller, today considered one of the earliest Serbian
feminists, Jelena Dimitrijević (1862-1945), felt impelled to go to India just to see Tagore in his
home environment so as to appreciate his work more fully. Her Letters from India present an
engaging account of her arduous journey via Mumbai to Kolkata and finally Santiniketan, where
Tagore, suffering from malaria, could only see her for a few minutes. She cannot conceal her
disappointment, a sense of wounded national pride even, that Tagore had nothing to say about
his visit to Serbia only two years earlier.56 Another Tagore enthusiast wrote a booklet of twentyeight pages – in translation it is titled Rabindranath Tagore as poet and philosopher (1936) –
relating Tagore’s background and influences, and outlining his main ideas through poetry and
philosophy.57 But perhaps the most original engagement with Tagore at the time came with the
essayistic writings of a major Croatian poet Tin Ujević (1891-1955). Ujević’s essays on Eastern
religions and cultures, published in periodicals and running into hundreds of pages, include wellinformed, independent-minded essays on Tagore, Bengali literature and Tagore’s educational
efforts in Santiniketan. For the most part they resist orientalist platitudes, arguing instead for a
less Eurocentric appreciation of Tagore’s creative writing that needs to be seen in the context of
a long history of Bengali letters.58 Ujević also questions the constant need to trace in Tagore’s
writings European influences, suggesting we might instead look for traces of ancient Indian
philosophy in the “versified pantheism of Byron and Shelley”.59
VI. Post-World War II responses: entering the school curricula and scholarly engagement
Even before the war, India’s independence struggle was one of the major news items in former
Yugoslavia, and progressive Yugoslavs had always sympathized with it.60 In this regard,
Gandhi’s popularity as a key figure in India’s resistance against the British cannot be overstated.
By implication, Tagore could be seen as too Westernised or not anti-British enough. When India
became independent, Tito was the first foreign head of state to visit the country. The NonAligned Movement was the brainchild of Nehru, Tito and Nasser, with support from Indonesia’s
Sukarno and Ghana’s Nkrumah, and the first NAM summit was held in Belgrade in 1961. With
Yugoslavia becoming part of the global South, close ties were forged with non-European
cultures also through direct contact via student exchange programmes and economic and cultural
collaborations.
Following a lull in the 1930s and 40s, Tagore’s reputation was about to enter its third
important phase. His writings were introduced in primary and secondary school curricula across
Yugoslavia. Given an already established reputation, Tagore was the most obvious and
representative voice of modern Indian poetry.61 Thus made a part of most young people’s
learning experience, he was – and still is – widely known amongst the general reading public.
This was also the period when his works went into new editions, now for the first time
with serious, scholarly introductions.62 His poetry was now printed also in selected volumes, and
the range of his essayistic writings to appear in translation expanded, though Sadhana, Religion
of Man, for example, had to wait some decades before appearing in Serbo-Croatian and Slovene
translations for the first time. Personality has only been translated into Croatian a few years ago
10
by Robert Mandić. To mark the centenary of his birth in 1961, the volume of Tagore’s essays
entitled Towards Universal Man was brought out in Serbia the same year as it was published by
Asia Publishing House in London.63 In Slovenia, a new translation of the Gitanjali together with
the first translation of Gora came out in the prestigious Nobel Prize Winner series in 1973.64
Tagore’s name also became a standard entry in anthologies, encyclopaedias and compendiums of
world literature.65 His reputation as a modern world classic was thus secured.
A genuine wish to understand more about the world brought much closer through recent
political events was now being satisfied for the first time by translations of other Indian writers,
most notably Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Kamala Markandaya, R. K. Narayan, and
Premchand (translated from Hindi and Russian). Nonetheless, Tagore was still hitting top of the
list, this time with his novel The Wreck. In a big public Library in Zagreb in 1959 and 1960, he
was one of the most frequently read modern-day writers.66 As two of his plays were taken up by
the Ljubljana City Theatre in the late fifties, Tagore’s work as a playwright was discussed in
depth for the first time.67
The year 1981 presented another anniversary occasion to celebrate the Indian poet, with
writers, translators and artists responding once again to Tagore’s work. The Croatian Writers
Union organized a round-table discussion on Tagore at which poet Dragutin Tadijanović (19052007) read out a poem he wrote in remembrance of hearing Tagore speak back in 1926, and the
composer Bruno Bjelinski (1909-1992) played his compositions inspired by a few Gitanjali
poems. There was a screening of Satyajit Ray’s film on Tagore, and probably for the first time in
Yugoslavia, a small exhibition of Tagore’s paintings was put on display.68 This was also the
occasion for which the indologist Klara Gonc Moačanin wrote a keen appreciation of Tagore’s
life and work for a wider readership, after which she published two more scholarly papers, one in
defence of Tagore’s novels largely misunderstood in the West, and another on Tagore’s poetry.
These were reprinted in her book Sahrdaya; književno putovanje sa srcem u Indiju (Zagreb,
1996). Tagore found sympathetic and knowledgeable critics in a number of other scholars
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A substantial volume entitled Tagore and the world came out in
1982 in Zrenjanin (Serbia), featuring all of the established Yugoslav scholars who had written on
Tagore before the eighties (Petrović, Krmpotić, Sekulić, Ujević), alongside a few novel
contributions.
It is prescient that in 1990, with Yugoslavia on the brink of collapse, Nationalism was
republished in Serbia in two thousand copies, and reprinted in 1992. But just as Tagore’s antinationalist message went unheeded in his day, so it fell on deaf ears at the end of the twentieth
century. The years of war that followed did not stop new publications and reprints coming out
across the country.69
The academic and specialist interest in Tagore gathered momentum once again around
the occasion of the poet’s 150th anniversary. For the first time, a truly international angle was
brought to bear on Tagore scholarship across the region. International conferences on Tagore
were held in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Zrenjanin, hosting Tagore specialists and South Asian
scholars from the world over. Tagore Days in Ljubljana combined an international conference on
Tagore’s legacy for today’s world with the launch of the first substantial volume of Tagore’s
short stories in Slovene translation and en evening of poetry reading.
The Days of Indian culture in Croatia in May offered a rich programme of exhibitions
(including an exhibition of Tagore paintings), workshops, poetry readings, some classics of
Bengali cinematography and lectures from eminent Croatian and foreign scholars. William
11
Radice spoke to the Croatian parliament in Zagreb. Beside the Croatian capital, parts of the
programme were held also in Rijeka and Split.
In Serbia, the philosophy teacher Aleksandra Maksić was the primary force behind the
Days of Indian Culture and Philosophy, which hosted an international conference on
Contemporizing Tagore and the World, with Dipannita Datta giving a keynote address.
VII. Conclusion and outlook
In an ideal world, Tagore’s creative writings should be translated from the original
Bengali. This has not happened in any of the countries that made up former Yugoslavia and the
prospect of direct translations from Bengali seems unrealistic, since the only modern Indian
language to be taught in the region is Hindi. Robert Mandić, Tagore’s Croatian translator, has
noted a marked decrease even in translations from Sanskrit over recent decades. According to
him, the emergence of new sovereign states has also weakened the potential for such enterprises,
and globalization and internet culture are more detrimental still. Nonetheless, Mandić makes an
important point that motivated his own translations of Tagore into Croatian; Tagore’s authorial
English translations, even if a distance from the original, are no mere translations; rather they
offer “a different perspective of a poet on his own work”, and are in that sense originals in their
own right. This is “poetry in prose of great lyrical charge and profound thought” which deserves
to be brought closer to the Croatian readership in a new contemporary idiom.70 This is no doubt a
viable translation strategy, as dated translations need to be supplanted by new ones. Another
possibility, especially in view of the necessity of expanding Tagore’s Yugoslav opus, is to take
the excellent new English translations and use these as the closest we can so far get to the
original. I have adopted this strategy in translating a few of Tagore’s poems from Radice’s and
Dyson’s translations, and in selecting the short stories for the Slovenian short prose publication.
The same strategy was adopted when Tagore’s play The Post Office was staged in Sarajevo in
2002. They based their translation on William Radice’s recent English translation as opposed to
the old Macmillan one.
Although known for almost a century, especially from the 1960s onwards, Tagore has
been presented as a figure of world literature across Yugoslavia. He is indisputably seen as a
world-class modern lyricist. It remains questionable, however, how much of Tagore’s literary
imagination gets conveyed to the young internet generations, who appear to be unmoved by
Tagore’s emblematic Gitanjali.71 Perhaps it is time for us to jettison the paramount status of
Gitanjali in relation to Tagore, and aim towards understanding and presenting him in a wider –
cross-genre – perspective, for which the seeds have already been planted. This is a task for
translators, scholars, and publishers alike. It is only when the false aura of mysticism that still all
too often clings to the Indian poet in this part of the world is lost that Tagore will shine through
as our contemporary and a major postcolonial voice, both in thought and creative imagination.
This paper is not a comprehensive account and analysis of the complex story of Tagore’s reception in former
Yugoslavia. I am limiting myself to Slovene and Serbo-Croatian sources, the dominant languages of former
Yugoslavia. Therefore when I speak of Tagore’s reception in former Yugoslavia, my research is based primarily on
the sources from present-day Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I regret not being able to
comment on the Macedonian reception of Tagore and for saying nothing about Tagore in Montenegro or by the
Kosovo Albanians, as well as too little on Tagore in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1
12
For more on Yugoslavism (the idea of Yugoslavia), see Dennison Rusinow, ‘The Yugoslav Idea before
Yugoslavia’, in Dejan Djokić (ed.) Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea 1918-1992, London: Hurst & Company,
2003, 11-26.
3
Zmago Šmitek (ed.) Southern Slavs and India: Relations in Oral Tradition (Calcutta: Sampark, 2011). Subsequent
account relies on Svetozar Petrović ‘Jugoslaveni i Indija’ [Yugoslavs and India], Republika, XI: 1, (1955)382-400;
Ivan Slaming, “India and the Yugoslavs; A Survey of the Cultural Links”, 1967,
(http://www.iiwcindia.org/transactions/transaction35.pdf
4
Petrović, 384.
5
Šmitek (ed.) Southern Slavs, 75-92.
6
Petrović, “Jugoslaveni”, 398.
7
All prior academic Indological research was done elsewhere in Europe and published in German and English.
8
Serbia followed suit in 1921 and Slovenia in 1924.
9
An enthusiastic piece titled “Mistika” (“Mysticism”) came out in the newly launched Croatian Catholic monthly
Hrvatska prosvjeta in 1914. Tagore is hailed as a ‘poet of God’s love’ who has ‘taught us Catholics a deserved
lesson’ in that ‘mysticism belongs to us though it need not be Christian in its essence’. Cited in Petrović, “Tagore in
Yugoslavia”, Indian Literature, 1970, 13: 2, 5-29 (7).
10
Župančič, Oton (1914), ‘Rabindranath Tagore’, Slovan, 12: 6, 31-2. Excerpts of it are paraphrased in another
article Janko Lokar, “Lanska tekmeca za Noblovo književno nagrado,” [Last Year’s rivals for the Nobel Prize]
Slovan, 12: 6, 1914, 242-247. Whole sections are cited also in the preface to the first Slovene edition of Gitanjali,
Alojz Gradnik, “Preface”, in Rabindranath Tagore, Gitandžali (Žrtveni spevi), Ljubljana, Učiteljska tiskarna, 1924,
III-IV.
11
See Klara Gonc Moačanin, “Reception of Tagore's Work in Croatia”, Asian and African Studies, Vol. XIV, 1
(2010),71-78 (72).
12
Janko Lokar, “Lanska tekmeca,” 246. Translation mine.
13
An anonymously translated poem from Gitanjali appeared in the journal Slovenec at the end of November 1913.
14
Klara Gonc Moačanin, “Pavao Vuk-Pavlović i Rabindranath Tagore”. In: Pavao Vuk-Pavlović život i djelo (Life
and work of PVP), ed. Barišić (Zagreb: HAZU-Institut za filozofiju, 2003), 99-105. Pavlović translated two other
Tagore plays , Malini and The King of the Dark Chamber (Raja) but unlike Chitra they remained unpublished. See
Moačanin, “Reception”, 72.
15
Petrović, “Tagore and Yugoslavia”, 5.
16
Branko Gaella, Agramer Tagblatt, 5. 10. 1915, no. 231, tr. Nikola Batušić, cited in Nikola Batušić, “Prve Režije
Alfonsa Verlija” (“The First Review of Alfons Verli”), Dani Hvarskoga kazališta; Građa i rasprave o hrvatskoj
književnosti i kazalištu, Vol. 34, No.1, 2008, 197-208 (205).
17
Krleža, Davni Dani (Bygone Days), 21/09/1956, Zagreb. Cited in Batušić, “Prve režije”, 205. Translation mine.
18
The formation of Yugoslavia spelt a demand for a unified standard. Serbo-Croatian became the official language
from 1918 to 1991.The separate ethnic groups would refer to it as "Croatian", "Bosnian", "Serbian", and
“Montenegrin” without really implying a different language. All four standards are based on the same dialect and
are mutually intelligible. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia along ethnic and linguistic lines, the use of the term
“Serbo-Croatian” has, however, become controversial.
19
Cited in Branko Rudolf, “Spremna beseda in opombe” (“Foreword and notes”), Rabindranath Tagore, Spevi, tr. by
Alojz Gradnik, Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1958, 83-92 (83-4). Similarly, in the one-page preface to the first
Croatian edition of Gitanjali¸ translator Vuk Pavlović, writes in the first sentence: “This translation is the outcome
of immediate infatuation.”
20
The edition contains glossary of Indian terms and notes and four colour reprints of Nandalal Bose’s, Asit Kumar
Haldar’s and Surendranath Gangul’s paintings.
21
In 2006, Robert Mandić, another Tagore enthusiast, took up the initiative and came out with the selected poems of
Tagore entitled Sakupljanje voča i još poneki plod (“Fruit-gathering and some other fruits”; poems from Stray birds,
The Crescent Moon, and Fruit-gathering), published by Paralele in Split (Croatia).
22
The same can be said for those done into Serbo-Croatian, or rather, Serbian and Croatian.
23
Published in 1981 by Prosvjeta, Zagreb. It is a great pity that Krmpotič did not undertake the translations from the
original Bengali having spent almost two years in India in 1962 as a student, studying also the Bengali language.
24
Besides Gitanjali, Mandić translated Lover’s Gift and Crossing, Fruit Gathering and Other Fruits, The Religion
of Man, Personality and Sadhana in print runs of five hundred copies, except for Gitanjali, which was printed in a
thousand copies.
2
13
Tagore, ‘The Prose Poem’ [1938], tr. by Swapan Chakravorty, in Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Writings on
Literature and Language, ed. by Sisir Kumar Das, Sukanta Chaudhuri, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001),
331-4 (333).
26
See Jelnikar, PhD thesis, “Towards Universalism: Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel; A Joint Perspective
in a Disjointed World”, SOAS, University of London, 2009, 227.
27
Most recently in 2012 by Mladniska knjiga in Ljubljana.
28
Tagore, Lipika¸tr. by Miriam Drev, Celje: Mohorjeva družba, 1998.
29
S. M. Komandić, Tagore in Yugoslavia: A Bibliography, Belgrade: Union of Yugoslav Writers and Committee for
Foreign Cultural Relations,1-16.
30
Petrović, “Tagore in Yugoslavia”, 8-9.
31
Srečko Kosovel, “Kons” (the title is a shorthand for “construction” and its derivatives to suggest the need to
remake the world anew) in The Golden Boat, tr. by Bert Pribac and David Brooks, Cambridge: Salt Publishers,
2008, 100.
32
The collection Zlati čoln never made it into print. Kosovel died before it was published, and the manuscript was
lost. He must have known of Tagore’s Sonar tari as a collection in Bengali from the press coverage. Kosovel was an
enthusiastic reader of Tagore, the most frequently mentioned foreign author in his collected works. He read him in
Slovene, Croatian and German translations.
33
See Timothy Brennan, “Postcolonial Studies between the European Wars: An Intellectual History”, in Crystal
Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus, eds., Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002, 185-201 (191).
34
Imre Bangha has noted something similar in relationship to Hungary, see his Hungry Tiger: Encounters between
Hungarian and Bengali Literary Cultures (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008), 14. I have found it useful to call
this model of reception “situational identification” (borrowing the term from Patrick Colm Hogan), where
sympathies are forged between individuals and inspirations derived from a sense of shared predicaments. I related
this specifically to Kosovel’s reading of Tagore, but also to some other responses from within Europe. See Jelnikar,
"Turning 'East': Orientalist Variations on Tagore from the 'Eastern Corner of Europe'" in Rabindranath Tagore: A
Timeless Mind, ed. by Amalendu Biswas et al (London: The Tagore Centre UK, 2011), 165-78.
35
See Jelnikar, “Srečko Kosovel and Rabindranath Tagore: points of departure and identification”, Asian and
African studies, 14: 1, 79-95.
36
Petrović, “Tagore and Yugoslavia”, 9.
37
Rabindranath Tagore, Gradinar, tr. David S. Pijade, 7th edition, Belgrade: BIGZ, 1985. The blurb relates
something of an infatuation: “The Gardener is one of the best Tagore’s poetry books. This is a book of love –
towards woman, earth, towards man and the world in general.”
38
In contrast, in Slovenia, since its first edition in 1922, the collection was republished only once more in 2009, with
a small publisher and a print run of 250 copies.
39
The movement formed around the review Zenit (Zenith), a leading journal for the dissemination of new art and
culture in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. First launched in 1921 in Zagreb by Ljubomir Micić, then
transferred to Belgrade in 1923, the journal produced 43 issues before it was banned by the authorities in 1926 on
the grounds of alleged Bolshevik propaganda. (The digital version of the review is available online through Narodna
Biblioteka Srbska at http://www.digital.nbs.bg.ac.yu/novine/zenit/swf.php?lang=scr). It had a strong international
orientation, publishing articles in French, German, Russian, Flemish, Hungarian, Italian, and Esperanto.
40
Tagore, 7/11/1926, in Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson eds., Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 339-40.
41
To mention the main ones: Obzor, Vjesnik, Jutro, Prosveta from Croatia; Politika, Vreme, Pravda, Novosti from
Serbia; Slovene daily press also reported the events (Jutro, Slovenec, Narodni dnevnik, Slovenski narod).
42
“Rabindranath Tagore u Zagrebu” (“RT in Zagreb”), Vreme, 14. November, 1926
43
Božidar Borko, “Rabindranath Tagore v Zagrebu”, Jutro, 17. 11. 1926.
44
Pravda, Beograd, 15. 11. 1926, 3 (in cyrillic).
45
“Intervju s R. Tagorom”, Olga Morović, Politika, 14. XI, 1926, 5.
46
“Rabindranath Tagore: 'Devet Pesama'“, tr. Branko Popović, Srpski književni glasnik, Beograd, XX:6, 434-38.
47
F. Mirski wrote a paper on Indian nationalism, published on 15th and 16th in Politika (4 and 6 respectively), and
Dr. J. Stojanović was to lecture on Tagore in the Christian Society Hall at 6 pm. on 15th. It is not known whether
Tagore was present at the lecture. Jovan Pječić, ‘Rabindranath Tagore u Beogradu’ [Rabindranath Tagore in
Belgrade], Kulture Istoka, V:15, 1988, 66-8 (66).
48
“Dva predavanja Rabindranatha Tagora” (“Two lectures by RT”), 17. 11. 1926, 6 (cyrillic).
25
14
“Kosovski kostim kao dar g. Tagori” (“Kosovo costume as gift to Tagore”), Vreme, 17. 11. 1926, 4(cyrillic).
“Dva predavanja Rabindranatha Tagora” (“Two lectures by RT”), 17. 11. 1926, 6.
51
Gandhi’s attitudes to Indian political struggle were influential amongst the monarchy opponents in the old
Yugoslavia. It is telling that the leader of the Croat Republican Peasant Party Stjepan Radić authored the
introduction to the translation of Roman Rolland’s book Our Gandhi in 1924. Slamnig, “India and the Yugoslavs”,
6. Ironically, when Tagore was asked in an interview for the newspaper Vreme what lessons Serbia could take from
contemporary India he said: “India today sends forth a new light to the world, and that is Gandhi”.
52
Ljubomir Micić and Branko Ve Poljanski, ‘Lettre Ouverte a Rabindranath Tagore’, Zenit, 6: 43, 1926, 17-20.
53
Vreme, 17. 11. 1926, 5 (cyrillic).
54
The only letter in the Tagore archives sent from Belgrade makes no mention of the incident.
55
See his interview in Belgrade on the subject of feminism, “Mišljenje g. Tagore o feminizmu”, Politika,
16/11/1926, 4.
56
Pisma iz Indije, Belgrade: National University of Belgrade, 1928 (cyrillic).
57
Aršič B., Rabindranath Tagora kao pesnik i filozof, Skoplje: 1936 (cyrillic).
58
Tin Ujević, “Tagor: Ovjenčani pjesnik Indije” Jadranska pošta, VI: 162, 1930; “O Benglaskoj poeziji”, Pregled,
V:6, 1931; “Pedagogija u Šantiniketanu”, Reflektor, I:1, 1931; reprinted in Ujevič's Collected Works, Sabarana
dijela¸ Zagreb: Znanje, 1965, 8. Vol., 60-4; 191-7 and Vol. 11., 176-83.
59
Tin Ujević, “Tagor”, 63.
60
Radio Ljubljana, for example, broadcast a special programme devoted to covering India's struggle for
independence.
61
In the National Library of Ljubljana I had occasion to access the archives of old primary school textbooks from
former Yugoslavia and was able to find examples of 7 th grade and 8th grade primary school readers for literature and
language for Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia which contained at least one poem in translation from Tagore.
The same is most probably true of secondary school textbooks. For certain, he was included – and still is – in
Slovenia and in Serbia (Svet književnosti 3, ed. Janko Kos, Tomo Virk, Gregor Kocijan, Ljubljana: Založba Obzorja,
2002, 3rd year literature textbook, 121-3; Stanisavljević, Vukašin, Prilozi nastavi književnosti. Volume 3, Beograd:
Nauka, 1997.)
62
See first-rate forewords by Svetozar Petrovič to the 1959 edition of The Home and the World (tr. Mira Vodvarška,
Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 5-15), and Vlasta Pacheiner-Klander, an Indologist and foremost Slovene translator from
Sanskrit, to the 1977 edition of the same novel (tr. Vladimir Levstik, Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 199-206).
63
Rabindaranth Tagore: Eseji, tr. Svetozar Brkić (Beograd: Nolit, 1961).
64
Rabindranath Tagore (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1973; Gitanjali was translated by Janko Moder and Gora
by Vlasta Pacheiner Klander).
65
Antologija svjetske lirike, ed. by Slavko Ježič and Gustav Krklec (Zagreb: Kultura, 1956); Strani pisci: Književni
leksikon, ed. by Viktor Žmegač et al (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1961); Svetovna književnost; izbrana dela in odlomki
(Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1964).
66
Petrović, “Tagore and Yugoslavia”, 12, n.1 (22).
67
Bratko Kreft, “Rabindranat Thakkur in indijsko gledališče”, 30/06/1961, Naši razgledi,260-1.
68
Klara Gonc Moačanin, “Reception”, 74-5.
69
A new translation of The Gardener in 1994 in Croatia; first translation of The Religion of Man into Slovene
(1994); at least three reprints of The Gardner and one of Gitanjali in Serbia.
70
Email correspondence, 03/06/ 2012.
71
I draw on Moačanin's experience of teaching Gitanjali at Zagreb University. “Reception”, 75.
49
50