My girlfriend reads IIRC Hindi, Gujarati and some Sanskrit. She can’t read this. She thinks it’s Bengali. I’d greatly appreciate any help my fellow Dopers can give me.
This is definitely Bengali, but I don’t read it well enough to tell what it says. Looks to be a poem by Kabir (a famous poet saint)
Thanks! That’s more information than I had before.
I talked to my girlfriend and she says she got it from a Tagore page.
So, it looks like it’s Tagore and not Kabir.
Though after reading the Wikipedia entry on Kabir, he seems worth further study.
Acsenray is Bengali origin, though I’m not sure if he reads the language, so you could check with him.
The text in the link is definitely attributed to Kabir, not Tagore. I can’t read Bengali, I’m afraid, but it’s similar enough to Hindi to make out some basic characters. Definitely Kabir.
It is a Tagore poem. Bengalis (and I am Bengali although I was not born or brought up there) call him - Kabi Guru - the guru of poets. That’s why many are confusing Kabi with Kabir.
Here is the translation:
My cup of joy brims over
আমার জীবনপাত্র উচ্ছলিয়া মাধুরী করেছ দান
amar jibono patro uchholiya (audio)
My cup of joy brims over
With the sweetness you bestow
You know not what it is worth
Like the tuberose unseen by eyes
Scents the night with sweet dreams
You fill my life with your song
Time has come to say farewell
Do lift your radiant face
Offer at your feet I will
A life fulfilled in sweet death
One whom you never did know
Silent night of his secret pain
May it now come to an end.
That translation is taken from here : Gitabitan in English: My cup of joy brims over
Somehow I don’t feel like the English translation cuts it. It takes away a lot of feelings.
Here’s a different one.
My goblet of life has spilled with your gift of ardor
How priceless that has been to me – you know not.
Just as the fragrance of ‘Rajanigandha’ under cover
Fills the night with dreams
You drench my heart with your song.
It’s time to part –
Let me see your delightful face –
I shall offer my life onto your feet with a lovely demise.
Let the quiet night of his concealed suffering may come to an end
For whom you have never known.
taken from http://www.geetabitan.com/lyrics/A/aamar-jibonpatro-uchchholia.html
Slightly better, but the transcription may be better to try and follow for those who understand Hindi
Aamar jibonopatro uchchhalia madhuri korechho daan-
Tumi jaano naai tumi jaano naai
Tumi jaano naai taar mulyero poriman.
Rajanigandha agochare
Jemon rajani swapone bhore sourabhe,
Tumi jaano naai tumi jaano naai
Tumi jaano naai, marome aamar ddhelechhe tomar gaan.
Biday nebar shomoy ebar holo -
Prashanno mukho tolo, mukho tolo mukho tolo-
Madhur morone purno koriya shopia jaabo praan charone.
Jaare jaano naai, jaare jaano naai, jaare jaano naai,
Taar gopono byathar nirobo raatri hok aaji aboshan.
Thanks so much, everybody!
Tagore did his own translation of his *Gitanjali *into English (and in places it differed considerably from the original Bengali text). Won him the Nobel Prize. Very cool guy. My favorite of his:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.