Song Offering

Song Offerings is a volume of lyrics by Bengali poet Rabindranath Thakur (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর), rendered into English by the poet himself, for which he was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Song Offerings is often identified as the English rendering of Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি), a volume of poetry by poet Rabindranath Thakur composed between 1904 and 1910 and published in 1910. However, in fact, Song Offerings anthologizes English translation of poems from ten previously published volumes of Tagore poetry. The ten volumes, and the number of poems selected from each, are as follows:

Song Offerings is a collection of devotional songs to the supreme. The deep-rooted spiritual essence of the volume is brought out from the following extract :
My debts are large,
my failures great,
my shame secret and heavy;
yet I come to ask for my good,
I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
(Poem 28, Song Offering)

Rabindranath Thakur took the liberty of doing "free translation" while rendering these 103 poems into English. Consequently, in many cases these are transcreations rather than translation; however, literary biographer Edward Thomson found them 'perfect' and 'enjoyable'. A reader can himself realize the approach taken by Rabindranath in translating his own poem with that translated by a professional translator. First is quoted lyric no. 1 of Song Offering as translated by Rabindranath himself :

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,
and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands
my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

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