GLIMPSES OF BENGAL

SELECTED FROM THE LETTERS OF

SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE

1885 TO 1895







INTRODUCTION


The letters translated in this book span the most productive period of my
literary life, when, owing to great good fortune, I was young and less
known.

Youth being exuberant and leisure ample, I felt the writing of letters
other than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form of
literary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotion
accumulates. Other forms of literature remain the author's and are made
public for his good; letters that have been given to private individuals
once for all, are therefore characterised by the more generous
abandonment.

It so happened that selected extracts from a large number of such letters