Ezra Pound's appreciation in 1912..

There is in him the stillness of nature. The poems do not seem to have been produced by storm or by ignition, but seem to show the normal habit of his mind. He is at one with nature, and finds no contradictions. And this is in sharp contrast with the Western mode, where man must be shown attempting to master nature if we are to have "great drama." (Ezra Pound in Fortnightly Review, 1 March 1913)

Rabindranath Tagore’s Geetanjali is a very popular book in China and a bi-lingual edition is available in all the major book shops. His relationship with China was rather turbulent and it might interest readers to read some these mixed reactions to his visit to China in 1923, which I have compiled from various sources.

The Jiangxueshe (Beijing Lecture Association) invited Rabindranath Tagore in 1923 to deliver a series of talks. Tagore visited China in 1924 and delivered a few lectures. This Association was established in September 1920 in the wake of the May Fourth Movement. Its main objective was to invite foreign scholars and to arrange lectures by them for Chinese intellectuals. John Dewey (1859-1952), Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Hans Driesch (1862-1941) were some of those invited. Though they were exposed to a limited number of intellectuals, they made a positive impact on the listeners and the public. The invitation to Rabindranath Tagore created shock waves in the various circles in China and gave way to strong hostility against him as well as against Liang Qichao (1873.1929), President of the Association, by the radical student circles and some ultra left-oriented political leaders,

An American scholar Stephen Hay writing about Tagore’s visit to China considered it a failure and held Tagore responsible for it. Hay thinks, that the failure was due to Tagore’s desire to play the role of a prophet rather than a poet, He also projects the idea that Tagore went to China to propagate an ideal of the Orient, an ideal of one Asia and the cause of spiritualism against the materialism of the west. According to Hay, Tagore did not realise that the idea of the Orient was a gift of the western Orientalist, which was more a myth than a reality. Every Asian country had its own version of the Orient and Tagore’s idea of Asia was different from that of the Chinese. Tagore’s idea of a spiritual rejuvenation of Asia was rejected by both young and old according to Hay - by the former with crude vehemence and the latter with gentle indifference. Had he not gone to China as a prophet and a spokesman of Indian spirituality Tagore would not have met such humiliation, Tagore left China with bitter feelings, Hay thinks, rejected by all the students, the scholars, the politicians and the poets and the artists.

A volume entitled Lun Taige'er (On Tagore), containing many articles on Tagore written by various Chinese scholars and political activists during the period between 1921 and 1924, published by Zhang Guangliang of the Institute of South Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences at Beijing in 1983 is a rich source of secondary research.
Ji Xianlin, the Director of the Institute places the responsibility for this hostility and resentment on the organizers whom he termed as political reactionaries. He felt that the organizers were trying to exploit the reputation of Tagore and use him for their further political ends. They were trying to find some support for their ideology. The inherent contradictions that he perceived in Tagore’s work and philosophy according to him created ruckus amongst the scholars and thinkers of the then trouble wrought Beijing society. Tagore was an anti-imperialist and intensely patriotic, but he was also a religious poet and a mystic. His poems and songs did inspire the Indians in their struggle against foreign rule, his poems and short stories indeed breathed a universal spirit, but according to Chinese perceptions, strands of escapism were gleaned in his writings. The Chinese admirers of Tagore wanted to present him as a mystic without any concern for human suffering, as a writer engrossed in a world of dream and ethereal beauty without any understanding of the present reality This interpretation of Ji Xianlin was partly prompted by a desire to tone down the severity of the Chinese protest against Tagore.
However plausible such explanations were, they did not justify the extent of Chinese hostilities against a foreign guest. Though Tagore arrived in China in 1924, the controversy had broken out in 1923 itself, immediately after the invitation was announced. Several poets and intellectuals, some of whom were outside China issued strong words of criticism. They considered his writings a great threat to the Chinese youth. They did not directly criticize the host organization. The severity of the radical intellectuals criticism of Tagore makes one think that either they felt Tagore’s influence on the Chinese youth was already quite pervasive and that it must be stemmed immediately, or there was a strong possibility of the Chinese youth being swayed away by the presence of Tagore. This outlook is also contradicted by Krishna Kripalani, a biographer of Rabindranath Tagore, who challenges the view that Tagore was known in China. He wrote that Tagore was not that well known in China at that time. He attributed the causes to the ignorance of the intellectuals.
Chen Duxiu and Shen Yanbing were amongst those who had translated Tagore earlier and were the first to introduce him Chinese audiences. However, at the crucial juncture when the controversy regarding Tagore’s proposed visit broke out, they were unable to retract their earlier admiration and were almost forced to issue statements denouncing Tagore to safeguard their own position in those turbulent times. There were several who believed that Liang was out to capitalize on Tagore’s visit. Another intellectual Zhang Junmai was also expected to profit from Tagore’s visit. In spite of his established reputation thanks to his work Das Lebensproblem in China und in Europe, he had to issue a statement that he did not know Tagore earlier and his visit would not benefit him any way. He hastened to add: “I have come to know that his heart is full of love and beauty”, he wrote about Tagore, and added that, “Mr. Tagore and I have.no connectron witn each other, and he definitely did not come to China to assist me.” These statements betrayed the anxieties of Liang and his associates with regard to their opponents.
Xu Zhimo, a young poet was very enthusiastic about Tagore’e visit. Elmhirst met him along with another philosopher and educationist Qu Shiying and discussed Tagore’s possible visit. Xu Zhimo had something to look forward to. Having been in Cambridge at the time when Tagore’s reputation in England was at its zenith and being a lover of Shelley and Keats and of Katherine Mansfield, Xu Zhimo found in Tagore’s poetry a transcendent inspiration. The Crescenf Moon particularly appealed to him. He was one of the founders of the Xinyueshe (The Crescent Moon Society) in 1923, launched a monthly journal in collaboration with his poet friend Wen Yiduo in 1925, called The Monthly Crescent Moon. Even his own Publishing house was named The Crescent House Publishing house. Xu Zhimo paid the price for his open admiration of Tagore by being termed an anti-marxist, a dangerous tag to have in those days. He joined the ranks and file of the group which Liang Qichao informally founded with Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo, Zhang Junmai, Liang Shuming.
All this demonstrates the great stature of Tagore, the poet who oviously challenged and posed a threat to the radicals. Dewey and Russell were influential to a limited extent in China, butTagore being a poet and playwright, already popular in China, had greater potentiality of influencing a larger audience. It was but natural that a strong opposition to Tagore’s visit had to be made.
All the hostility did not stop Tagore from starting the Cheena Bhawan in Shantiniketan. Until today, it continues to be a leading Institution in India providing students with education in Classical Chinese. That is another story and an interesting one.

This is just superb, Lata—and thanks. I’ll soon put this as a post in its own right. To what extent are our Shantiniketan friends aware of this? Any idea? I’ll request Prof Goutam Ghosal if he has something to add.

~ RYD

Actually, I have culled this from several sources. One of the main sources was a paper from a professor in Shantiniketan. Of course everyone is aware of what happened when Tagore visited China. There were people in the Beijing railway station protesting his visit. Thanks for the appreciation! I am now in Shanghai and am trying to put a small collection of Chinese poetry for Mirror along with an introductory note. Regards. Lata

Let me quote here two passages from Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian, Penguin 2005, p. 115:

I. Amartya Sen: I am partial to seeing Tagore as an educator, having myself been educated at Shantiniketan. The school was unusual in many different ways, such as the oddity that classes, excepting those requiring a laboratory, were held outdoors (whenever the weather permitted). No matter what we thought of Rabindranath's belief that one gains from being in a natural setting while learning (some of us argued about this theory), we typically found the experience of outdoor schooling extremely attractive and pleasant. Academically, our school was not particularly exacting (often we did not have any examinations at all), and it could not, by the usual academic standards, compete with some of the better schools in Calcutta. But there was something remarkable about the ease with which class discussions could move from Indian traditional literature to contemporary as well as classical Western thought, and then to the culture of China or Japan or elsewhere. The school's celebration of variety was also in sharp contrast with the cultural conservatism and separatism that has tended to grip India from time to time.

II. Satyajit Ray: I consider the three years I spent in Shantiniketan as the most fruitful of my life ... Shantiniketan opened my eyes for the first time to the splendors of Indian and Far Eastern art. Until then I was completely under the sway of Western art, music and literature. Shantiniketan made me the combined product of East and West that I am.

~ RYD