The Golden Book of Tagore along with a signed letter

Ramananda Chatterjee, The Golden Book of Tagore: A Homage to Rabindranath Tagore from India and the World in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday, Calcutta: Golden Book Committee, 1931

xx, pp. 374, 30 plates including 1 Frontispiece [Photogravure portrait of Tagore, after a photograph by Martin Vos], 29 plates, many of them tipped-in colour plates [with tissue guards carrying title and artist's name] by Abanindra Nath Tagore, Nanda Lal Bose, Asit Kumar Haldar, A D Thomas, Gogonendra Nath Tagore, Samarendra Nath Gupta, Abdur Rahman Chughtai and Ramendra Nath Chakravarti. Others are reproductions of works by a Chinese and a Japanese artist, portraits of Tagore done by eminent Indian and Western artists and early photographs of Tagore; rebound in full leather with a gilted roundel of the vegetal design on the front board and gilt title ticket along with raised bands on the spine, most pages remain uncut along the top edge, a leather ticket with title embossed in gilt pasted on spine
11.8 x 9 x 1.9 in (30 x 23 x 5 cm)

This copy is numbered 25 out of a limited-edition of 1500 copies.

The last page states that the blocks for the illustrations in the book were engraved and printed at U. Ray & Sons, Calcutta, a firm that was owned by the family of Satyajit Ray. There is a complete list of Founders and Subscribers at the end. Many from the USA including Thomas J. Watson (IBM) and others.

The book contains many beautiful tipped in painting/photos and there are sections from various countries and individuals from around the world many in their native language. Tagore during his life interacted with many notable contemporaries, including Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Romain Rolland.

This book comes along with Rabindranath Tagore's hand written letter on his letterhead from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Bengal measuring 22.7 x 17.1 cm, with its logo stamped in blue ink at top right, signed and dated 24th January 1925 on the verso in Bengali. The letter seems to be addressed to the country Italy. Although Visva-Bharati letter head has been used the poem was penned at Milan, Italy.

The poem is named "Italia". Rough English Translation of The Poem:

I say dear queen
Many poets come and offer gifts to your feet
I have come like a bird and
Sing a song and go
Hearings that you stood on your window
Said in a sad tone
Behind your Vail
Now it is winter
The sky is foggy
And flowers have not blooming in the garden
I said oh my queen
I have brought the flute
Beyond the seas
For once remove
Your Vail and
Let me see the light in your dark eyes.
You said not decked up yet
Oh, colourful poet
Please return in
Spring comes
Flowers blooming
Then I will call you by my side.
Successful is my visit
As I got your message of hope.
Your invitation in Spring
When flowers will bloom in sweet smell
I will find my way to the window.
Today at my departure I will only sing your praises.

Interestingly the letter has also Tagore's signature "doodling" - crossing out lines that he did not like and turning them into forms and shapes. He would delete unwanted words or even whole lines by creating strange, intriguing images so that the whole page became a work of art and thereby liberating the erasures from the text itself.

Rabindrnath himself recognized such doodles as the beginnings of his art and wrote: "The only training which I had from my young days, was the training in rhythm. The rhythm in thought, the rhythm in sound. I had come to know that rhythm gives reality to that which is desultory, which is insignificant in itself. And therefore, when the scratches in my manuscript cried, like sinners, for salvation, and assailed my eyes with the ugliness of their irrelevance, I often took more time in rescuing them into a merciful finality of rhythm than in carrying on what was my obvious task." (N C Bhattacharya, "Paintings by Rabindranth Tagore", Roopa-Lekha: Illustrated Journal of Indian Arts & Crafts, Volume 28, no. 1-2, March 1958, pp. 66-74)

He also called this his "unconscious training in drawing."