This book is dedicated to Madeleine Rolland (1872-1960), “Rolland’s sister and interpreter, without whom the dialogue with India would never have been possible.” Nearly five decades after, the interaction between French humanist Romain Rolland and Rabindranath Tagore springs to life in Bridging East & West , capturing a dialogue which has been described as one between two continents and two histories by Marc Lambron, member, Academie Francaise.
The relationship between the two literature Nobel laureates ran deep and according to the author, who has edited the correspondence, it was inevitable that the two contemporary thinkers should meet in a moment of chaos and anxiety. Each represented an era, its tension and its wars; each troubled by what was happening around. They exchanged some 46 letters and telegrams between 1919 and 1940.
The compendium opens with Romain Rolland’s exhortation to Tagore to join the project of the Declaration of the Independence of the Spirit, which the poet readily accepted as it came at a time when his mind was clouded by the thought that the lesson of World War I was lost and people were trying to perpetuate “their hatred, anger and greed into the same organised menace for the world which threatened themselves with disaster....”
The bond, the mutual regard that these two great souls shared, is vividly portrayed. It is another thing that the tradition of ‘organised menace’ continues to the day.
That it was a meeting of minds, a kinship of two persons whose thoughts were divergent from the general trend of their times and their countrymen too is evident from the letters. “I have just left forever my apartment in Paris to settle in a small house in Switzerland,” writes Roland to Tagore, in May 1922 saying that he would no longer tolerate the moral and material milieu of Paris. He signs off as “your devoted friend.”
His loneliness finds resonance in Tagore’s own as he writes in May 1922 about India’s political upheaval and the independence movement. “What hurts me deeply is the fact that this movement fails to draw its inspiration from a large vision of humanity...”
The book is a collector’s item, thanks to a rich, scholastic introduction penned by Chinmoy Guha, setting the tone.
Equally enlightening and uplifting is the section on conversations between Rolland and Tagore. The letters between Kalidas Nag and distinguished Indian Communist Saumyendranath Tagore are the added attractions.
Bridging East & West: Rabindranath Tagore and Romain Rolland Correspondence (1919-1940) ; Edited by Chinmoy Guha, Oxford University Press, ₹995.
