1 review for Young Tagore- Skryf Library
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Young Tagore- Skryf Library
by Sudhir Kakar
Description:
An imaginative and luminous meditation on art and life, the body and the soul and the East and the West’ Indian Express A seamless blend of intelligent analysis with real empathy, Young Tagore is a first of its kind psychobiography that deepens our understanding of Rabindranath Tagore. By carefully reconstructing the crucial years of Tagore’s childhood and youth, preeminent psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar examines the young prodigy’s formative experiences and unravels how they shaped his creative genius. In laying bare the inner workings of Tagore’s brilliance, Kakar reveals the real man behind the luminary. Refreshing, A set of meditations by a thoughtful reader on what Tagore means to him’ Outlook Paints a fascinating portrait of Tagore seen through the prism of psychological analysis of his own ‘memory pictures’ Sunday Indian Sudhir Kakar is indispensable to our understanding of Indian men and women’ The Hindu.
About The Author
Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and writer. He has written seventeen highly acclaimed books of non-fiction which include, among others, The Inner World (now in its sixteenth printing since its first publication in 1978), Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, Intimate Relations, The Analyst and the Mystic, The Colors of Violence and The Indians: Portrait of a People (with K. Kakar). He has written four novels and his books have been translated into twenty one languages around the world. Kakar has taught at leading institutions around the world and has won numerous accolades for his work. Most recently, in February 2012, he was conferred the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country's highest civilian honour.
Skryf Review
Good Book
Sudhir Kakar is a practicing psychoanalyst in New Delhi, India and he writes clearly and even sometimes elegantly. This quality of his serves as a shield for his weaknesses not noticed by his non-Bengali readers. However, his psychoanalysis is less than credible even when he cites the familiar shibboleths of his professional specialty. His principal drawback in choosing his subject–in the present case the Bengali poet laureate of the world [Bishvakabi] Rabindranath Tagore as in his earlier work on the popular Bengali “mystic” Ramakrishna Paramahamsa–is that he has not been able to research the available vernacular sources in their original. That said it must at once be granted that Dr. Kakakr is assiduous in gathering some, if not a whole lot, secondary materials in English and some primary sources in English translated by others. He, however, shows little appreciation for Tagore’s evolving ideas of femininity, his subtle interfacing of human and divine love, his sexual timidity (see Nirad Chaudhuri’s Atmaghati Rabindranath), his aesthetic sensibilities (the author ought to have mined the two volume pioneering study by Jagadish Bhattacharya; he has a minor reference to the frankly inadequate translated version). The author ought to have taken advantage, in hindsight, of Tagore’s sexual turn in his poetical work.