As discussed on the *Poetry Thread* with Barry, reading poetry and aphorisms, raises the question how to read. As a teenager, I would read each poem with full detail, in declamation, and pore over its meaning. Visiting a museum or gallery is a good comparison. I would stand in front of every painting, and study it, looking at all parts, and at the whole; then move on, and come back, to confirm my impressions. With "ugly", unusual or "difficult" paintings, I would do some soul searching, telling myself that my lack of appreciation lay in my inability to see it in the right way. Nowadays, I would call that the immature way of appreciating art and poetry.

In order to appreciate art, the challenge is to find those images and poems that you are ready for. You know you are ready when you can perceive meaning or beauty. The work of art has to "strike a chord". So, in galleries a visit at walking pace, and quick glancing are sufficient to spot what is of interest. I may be done with it in 20 minutes. (This is not the way I visited the Uffizi the year before last -- I was transfixed, some people might have thought I was one of the exhibits (as in stuck to it :-)). For poetry, it means I read everything, but only pause to reread and read more deeply into it when a chord has been struck.

Stray birds by Rabindranath Tagore is the first volume of aphorisms I have ever read, and have read from cover to cover. Previously, I would avoid aphorisms thinking it a particularly bothersome genre, the fleetingness of poetry and the depth of snobbery. However, it seems I was ready for Stray birds.

And having read Stray birds now, I regret that I haven't read it before. Rabindranath Tagore was a contemporary of my favourite Dutch author Frederik van Eeden, who translated much of Tagore's work into Dutch, which at the time -- I read most of Van Eeden as a teenager -- I shunned.

As with The gardener, Tagore wrote Stray birds originally in Bengali and then translated them into English. While I use the word aphorisms, other reveiewers prefer to refer to the work as poetry, comparing each short poem to Haiku. In my edition, 325 such short poems are included. They are lyrical, and many rely on images of a personified, metaphorical use of nature and the elements, some invoking a God-like being, that any reader may read as his or her own, whether Christian or of other denomination.

My feelings about Stray birds is that one should read it in each of the ages of man; It seems wonderful reading for spiritually minded teenagers, aged 15 - 17, I regret not having read it at that time. Reading it now, in my mid-forties, I enjoyed it tremendously, surely seeing things I could or would not have understood in youth. And I expect that a reading at a higher age, will yield more, new wisdom, things I am not ready for now.

Stray birds is available as a free ebook from the Project Gutenberg.

For my review, I read and used the edition by the Yilin Press (2008). This edition includes Chinese translations of all poems besides the English originals. In the preface, the translator Lu Jinde describes how he first became enthralled by the works of Tagore, in what must be assumed an earlier Chinese translation. Dissatisfied with at least 15 extant Chinese translations, Mr Lu decided on retranslating Stray birds. No mention is made whether he consulted and translated from Bengali or English.

Unfortunately, this edition omits one poem, namely Stray Birds-263:

263.
This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.

As a result, in my review above, all references after 263 are off by one.

As a Chinese publisher, the Yilin Press edition also found it opportune to include a short essay on Tagore's reception in China. Unfortunately, this essay consists of an unchanged reprint of an essay dating from 1923. The choice to include (only) this essay, 泰戈尔来华 {Tagore’s Visit to China} is peculiar and inappropriate. Within a week after the essay was published, various essays and newspaper articles were published attacking Tagore and the hosts who had invited him to China. By the time Tagore arrived in China, he was met with hostility. The Yilin Press edition does not relate any of the development in the appreciation for Tagore leading up to that moment, nor the controversy around his visit in 1924, or the current revival and interest in Tagore.

Furthermore, this edition includes two interviews with Tagore, one between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, dating from 1930 and the other between H.G. Wells and Tagore, in the same year. The interview with Einstein is the more interesting, especially after they have skipped the preliminary remarks on metaphysics and find common ground in discussing music. Both interviews are freely downloadable, elsewhere.

In recent years, many Chinese publishers have discovered they can make a quick buck publishing out-of-copyright works in paper editions, which is nice, because they come at low prices. Unfortunately, these editions are unedited, or the editing is somewhat substandard, allowing for inaccuracies, and uncritical throwing together of freely available texts. ( )