Visva-Bharati adds penultimate volume to Rabindra Rachanabali

KOLKATA: The compilation of Tagore’s works ‘

Rabindra Rachanabali

’ by

Visva-Bharati University

inched towards its completion, with the second last volume being added to the collection on Tuesday as a tribute to Tagore on his 76th death anniversary. The project, that had started in 1939 when Tagore was alive, would finally come to an end with the forthcoming 34th volume.

Initially however, Tagore was against the project as he didn’t want his earliest and his “immature” works to become a part of the Rachanabali. But, the project’s architect,

Prashanta Chandra Mahalanobis

, explained Tagore how important it was to capture the historicity of his creative genius. Tagore then allowed Mahalanobis, who was also the father of modern statistics and an ardent Tagore admirer, to go ahead with the project.

The 33rd volume of the Rachanabali has two-line, four-line and other short poems by Tagore, that he wrote as “blessings” for people who were close to him. It was a unique channel of communication between the poet and his admirers and he preferred to call these short pieces ‘Kabitika’, markedly different from Kabita or poems.

“These had to be painstakingly collated and authenticated before publication,” said Amit Hazra, V-B registrar and the officiating head of the publications division.

“Apart from these, short poems and Tagore’s lectures at V-B were added to this volume,” said Ashish Pathak, an official of the V-B publications division involved in compilation along with

Shyama Prasad Chattopadhyay

, a faculty member of Bengali at V-B’s Patha Bhavan. Poet Shankha Ghosh, who supervised the work, said, “We may be able to complete the project with the 34th volume, similar to the 33rd.”