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 THE CURSE AT FAREWELL

the burning words and moving story. The poet’s real line of defence is that he was bound by his authority, the Mahabharata story which ends with this ‘curse.’ But he has handled that story so freely and to such immense advantage, shedding its childishness and slight grossness, and mak- ing a natural, human narrative of Kach’s sojourn, that he could, one thinks, have changed the conclusion also. Rabindranath Tagore’s work has been so long before the outer world that he should now be treated seriously asa writer, and studied in foreign countries as any other first-class poct is. His own versions published as Gitanjali and Chitra must stand for their intrinsic beauty and essential faithfulness. But the rest of his work would gain by reissue in chrono- logical order, with accurate representation of what his own original actually says, and

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