Original text of Tagore’s Nobel nomination on display

As part of ‘Sweden India Nobel Memorial Week’ being organised by the Embassy of Sweden in memory of innovator and philanthropist Alfred Nobel,the Embassy has procured the nomination text from the Swedish Academy.

The text describes Tagore as a “strange” Indian poet whose nomination was a “real surprise” to the Nobel Committee. It had regretted that the actual significance of Tagore’s works can be understood in a limited way because of the unavailability of his translated works.

Ambassador of Sweden in India Harald Sandberg said that the text has been translated from Swedish to English so that people in India can go back to history and get an idea of what the Nobel committee felt of the legend’s works.

“Tagore was not really known in Sweden that time. When they started reading his work they were impressed by his sense of modernity,openness and the human touch his works had,” he said.

One of the members of the British Royal Society of Literature had proposed Tagore’s name for the prize.

Tagore was declared the Nobel awardee-designate on November 13,1913 for his book of poems ‘Gitanjali’ and the prize was officially conferred on him on December 10 that year.

He was not only the first Indian to win the Nobel Prize but also the first non-European to win the award in literature.

As part of the two-day celebration,a wall at the Esplanade Metro Station in Kolkata was converted into ‘Nobel Memorial Wall’. Besides Tagore,the wall also commemorates six other Indian Nobel laureates like physicist C V Raman and economist Amartya Sen.

The corridor,which will be a permanent structure at the busiest station in Kolkata,would recall the Indian laureates’ glorious achievements with photographs and documents.

Two temporary walls were fabricated at ‘Gitanjali’ Metro Station (named after tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning work) and Shyam Bazaar (closest to his home Jorasanko) for a week,sources said.