What left Mahatma Gandhi enraptured saying it had a soothing effect on his nerves while prompting W B Yeats to declare it as a masterpiece that conveys to the right audience an emotion of gentleness and peace?
It was Rabindranath Tagore's celebrated play "The Post Office".
Of all Tagore's many plays, "The Post Office" continues to occupy a special place in his reputation, both within Bengal and in the wider world.
When Gandhi saw the play in Calcutta in 1917, he wrote to a friend, "I was enraptured to witness 'The Post Office' performed by the poet and his company. Even as I dictate this, I seem to hear the exquisitely sweet voice of the poet and the equality exquisite acting on the part of the sick boy...I did not have enough of it, but what I did have had a most soothing effect upon my nerves which are otherwise always on trial."
Yeats, who first had the play produced in English and also wrote a preface to it, thought it a masterpiece and said, "On the stage the little play shows it is very perfectly constructed, and conveys to the right audience an emotion of gentleness and peace."
These nuggets are mentioned in a new anthology showcasing the best of Tagore. Edited by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson and published by Pan Macmillan India imprint Picador India, "Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology" is a selection which provides an introduction to the Nobel Laureate's work, new translations from Bengali and a perfect balance between the diverse genres in which he worked.
Collected in the anthology are a play, short stories, extracts from a novel, poems, songs, epigrams and paintings, as well as memoirs, letters, essays and conversations.
From his celebrated play "The Post Office" to his paintings and drawings, the anthology shows clearly the literary sophistication, emotional power and intellectual range of Tagore's whole achievement.
According to the editors, the book contains examples of the genres in which Tagore worked, letters, short stories, poetry, and so on, each genre being separately introduced.
"It opens with his little play 'The Post Office', because this seems to distill the thoughts and feelings that mattered most of all to its author into a vessel of timeless and universal appeal."
The letters in the book were written by Tagore to his family and to famous people like Yeats, Romain Rolland and Gandhi and also to not-so-famous people.
About a third of the pieces in the book - the essays, statements, conversations and letters - were written in English, the rest in Bengali.
