Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/71

 CHAPTER V

RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S SHORT STORIES

are critics who know Rabindranath's writings intimately in their original form and say that his finest work lies, not in his songs or in his plays, but in his short stories. Only a few of them have been printed in English; but some were translated experimentally while their author was in London, and others may be had in versions printed from time to time by Mr. R. R. Sen and earlier translators. And though, judging by these alone, we might hesitate to accept the verdict of his Indian friends, as we read them we feel at once the touch of the born tale-teller, and remember then, perhaps, how inevitable is the tale-teller's figure in any symbolic cartoon of the east. But in this case we find that it is not the traditional tale-teller, reappearing with a modern difference, who offers us his wares. For while the tradition has 47