Ray & Rabindranath: Architects of Indian Cinematic and Literary Renaissance

Rabindranath Tagore is a brilliant exception in the sphere of modern literature. He was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 and the second writer in English to receive it. His delicate poetry and idyllic musical flair bestowed him the remarkable opportunity to become the author of the national anthems of three different countries. King George V conferred him the Knighthood in 1915 but he repudiated in protest of the atrocious carnage at Jalianwalla Bagh in India. He was one of the most revered men in the literary, cultural & intellectual spheres in both the East and West. Albert Schweitzer called him 'the Goethe of India’; W.B. Yeats, who wrote the introduction to the English translation of Gitanjali, hailed Tagore as "the founder of new Indian Renaissance" and Romain Rolland compared him with Plato. Like Tagore, Satyajit Ray too requires no introduction; anyone with a plebian knowledge of world cinema will identify this master director, who is the winner of lifetime achievement Academy award besides a number of honors at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals.

Giants in their respective fields of literature and filmmaking, both men enjoyed widespread international recognition in their lifetimes. Tagore redefined the parameters of Indian prose, especially Bengali literature and pioneered an original literary language through his poetry and stories, novels, plays. Likewise Ray, initially inspired by Italian Neorealism created a new language of cinema in India, starting with his first film Pather Panchali in 1955. Though separated by more than half a century, Tagore and Ray are bound together by the common thread of an intellectual and spiritual resurgence in India often commonly termed the Bengal Renaissance.

Tagore’s dominion was predominantly the realm of Sanskrit and Vedic classicism, which by means of acquaintance of British rule in India, received the essential innovative inspirations from post-Enlightenment ideas. His endeavors to read Tennyson, and later Dante and Goethe in English translation, all ended in utter failure. In a letter of 1921 to Edward Thompson from New York, he bemoans, "You know I began to pay court to your language when I was fifty. It was pretty late for me ever to hope to win her heart."

Ray on the other hand, developed a refined elite taste of American, French and Italian classics, he was moved to quit advertising and take up filmmaking as a profession after seeing the neo-realist Vittorio de Sica's Ladri di Biciclette in London in 1950.

It would be imperceptive to ignore the profound Tagorian influence on Ray, which emanates from his family, yet one can not overlook the fact that Ray's entire formal education was carried out in English, first at the Ballygunge Government High School, and then at the British Empire's premier educational institution outside Britain, the Presidency College. As Ray comments in a mid-life interview, "I had a Western education, I studied English, and only over the last ten years, I have found myself more and more going back to the history of my country, my people, my past, my culture. . ."

Ray’s arrival inside the ambit of filmmaking did not occur with an adaptation of Tagore’s literature; even he did not bid adieu with a film based on Tagore’s work. On the contrary, initially he has predominantly been involved with post Tagorian authors. Although eminent film critic Chidananda Dasgupta claims that Ray never surfaced from Tagore’s shadow. Ray accomplished all his work in a post-independence India looking for its place in a promptly contracting global village. Satyajit Ray became interested in the works of Tagore during 1960-61. Previously, he felt more comfortable in adapting such eminent Bengali authors like Bibhutibhushon, Tarashankar and Paroshuram.

Tagore’s influence on Ray was so immense that Chidananda Das Gupta, perhaps Ray's most significant Indian critic, incisively claimed that "Ray was so trapped in the Tagore mythos that he felt most comfortable in Tagorian space and was unable to deal with the issues of his own age." Ray himself affirms that "[Tagore's] influence was inescapable . . . we as students felt that Tagore was there all the time, hovering behind us or over our heads." In the comparatively small arena of Bengali Renaissance literature, Tagore reigned like a colossus. And Ray's entire family was among his most legendary courtiers.

Contemporary Ray scholars observe that his profound philosophy behind filmmaking, as perhaps of life, owed a great deal to the Santiniketan (the academic institution planned and established by Tagore) school of thought. His films illustrate an incredible focus on minute details and a taut, calm attentiveness such that the tiny emotional ripples are accentuated. Moreover Ray’s films reveal an unvarying striving towards an organic harmony, analogous to the literary works of Rabindranath Tagore.