From poet to poet

Within the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the poetic evening “From poet to poet” was held at the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Art. Ukrainian poets dedicated their poems and translations to the prominent Indian and international artist (in the broadest sense of this word).

Ukraine joined the honoring of the poet for the first time: “Such measures have not yet been held during the years of Ukraine’s independence. No one has ever honored Tagore the way we did here today. Because no one can understand a poet better than a poet. Ukraine has made a unique contribution to the celebration of Tagore’s 150th anniversary,” said the campaign organizer, chairman of East European Development Institute Mridula GHOSH.

That evening, the translations of Tagore were performed by Vitalii Kononov, Les Taniuk and Dmytro Pavlychko. The latter read the audience Tagore’s poetry translations that were made on the same day in the morning.

Members of Ukrainian poetic community also told how and when they first got to know Tagore. “I found a book autographed by Les Kurbas, this was the first Ukrainian edition of 1910; of course, I became interested in Tagore and made several translations,” told the theater and film director Les TANIUK.

Despite the fact that Mr. Taniuk’s creative output includes the translations of three Tagore’s plays, he is not planning to stage them in the nearest future. “Staging Tagore is not a problem of performance or production issues, but a problem of emotional experience. In order to play Tagore, the theater group should become, so to speak, a “sect,” and in some sense move to another planet. The modern actor is a pragmatist rather than a philosopher. Staging Tagore requires being at a certain level of consciousness. Unfortunately, the level of today’s theater is too low.” The organizers of the event sadly state the fact that even in India Tagore is rather a popular brand like Shakespeare – many people talk about him, but unfortunately, few deeply know and understand his creative work.