The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard by Anatole France

Title: The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Author: Anatole France
Original Publication Date: 1881
Pages: 148



Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard, a member of The Institute, a philologist who in the twilight of his years lives in a City of Books accompanied by his condescending cat, Hamilcar, and Therese, his adroit and remarkably annoying house help, finds himself committing a crime. And you wonder, what crime he did commit? He commits two actually, both of which stems from love. The former impelled by the haunting quest for redemption of a failed unrequited love, the latter, inevitably constrained by a passion unmatched. Of the two, he was not indicted for the former, and I am sure you will understand and forgive the latter, as I did.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard  is divided into two stories, The Log and Daughter of Clementine, both presented as Bonnard's diary entries. The entries are intermittently  recorded, sometimes years apart. In both stories, Bonnard is the central character, and the connection in the stories are subtly and beautifully formed.

Of all of France's works I've had the pleasure of reading so far, I've come to appreciate he Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard the most. The differences were readily apparent. Bonnard is a warm and gentle kind man. He was not cynical, only true and honest. He wore his heart on his sleeves. "Then he said to her that the troubles in which we often involve ourselves, by trying to act according to our conscience and to do the best we can, are never of the sort that totally dishearten and weary us, but are, on the contrary wholesome trials."(148)The profound human sympathy and grace France is known for defines this book. It was poignant and beautiful, down from the vivid imagery he employed up to the ruminations in life, but still remaining to be critical without any hint of naivety just as he did on his later works. France's development as an author and a person is evident in this work too. Written earlier in his career in 1881 compared to Penguin Island and The Revolt of the Angels written in 1908 and 1912 respectively, both books the majority of which are criticisms on the church and of faith in the divine, the Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard professes however a faith in the church, and France even goes so far as ending this work by leaving a blessing in the name of God! It is so evident that what faith he had lost through those intervening years was still there. And it is interesting and amazing to experience a writer change and develop, and at times contradict himself, almost like how the young Nietzsche is so different to the old Nietzsche. And I like this kind and warm story, it makes you appreciate life.




Other Books by Anatole France:
Revolt of the Angels(4 Stars)
Penguin Island (3 Stars)

This book forms part of my remarkably extensive reading list on Nobel Prize for Literature Awardees

Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

Title:  Gitanjali
Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Original Publication Date:1910
Pages:90

'I read Rabindranath every day, to read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.'

-Unnamed Bengali Doctor addressing W.B. Yeats, contained in the Introduction

Isn’t it just fitting that this masterpiece be introduced by a person no less than William Butler Yeats who is another Nobel Laureate? Tagore received the Nobel in 1913 and Yeats in 1923. It is ostensibly perceivable that Yeats managed to capture the focal points in his Introduction, so quoting parts of Yeats introduction and placing my heartfelt impressions, let me try doing justice to this book, however insufficient that may turn out to be.

Gitanjali is a collection of poems,  ruminations and rhapsodies, or more accurately Song Offerings, and when you do offer something, you offer it to a higher being, a divine existence of which belief is professed, and so, much of the verses are addressed to a Lord, God, and Master.

Yeats in introducing this work to William Rothenstein says:

“For all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new renaissance has been born in your country.”(7)

And this is true in both instances that I have read Tagore, just as it was in The Gardener, the poetry was actually simple but it communicates at so many levels owing to the depth that is carried by Tagore's ruminations.

“These verses will not lie in little well-printed books upon ladies' tables, who turn the pages with indolent hands that they may sigh over a life without meaning, which is yet all they can know of life, or be carried by students at the university to be laid aside when the work of life begins, but, as the generations pass, travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon the rivers.”(8)

And more than a hundred years since its original publication, where in those hundred years we have witnessed, through history’s questioned objectivity, men doubt the ideals of their forefathers and see thier beloved posterities entirely discard what has been handed down, it is extraordinary to enjoy sometime like Gitanjali, which in all its completeness is certainly worthy to be read beyond its year if not entirely a timeless masterpiece on its own.

“I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me.”(9)

I too have carried Gitanjali over the days, over a span of daytrips, through the inevitable but longed-for ride home, through talks with friends, and ardent discussions with other students, I sometimes find myself, reading parts of this work, and you really do “forget all the troubles of the world.” But unlike Yeats, I did not hesitate to show the world how much it moved me. If words so masterfully chosen and phrases adroitly matched delivered a gamut of emotions, I welcomed it. If it made me smiled, I smiled, if it made me ponder, I ruminated. I wanted the world to see, I wanted to tell them, this is Gitanjali, and you should read it too.

“These lyrics— which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention—display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my live long.”(10)

And in the same vein, I am perpetually grateful and irretrievably wounded that my experience is defined by a translated medium. Now that is one hell of a dilemma. I could feel the “subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention” which must be so richly contained in Bengali, just inches beyond my reach, but still gravely beyond my reach, unrelentingly clawing at my thoughts reading this.   But if there’s one thing that I’ve learned through Tagore, that is, to be thankful for what comes in life. And this is also what I appreciate in Tagore, he loves life, he loves the world, and for that he welcomes death itself in its entirety.

I leave you with a customary quotation.

“On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.”




Other works by Rabindranath Tagore:
The Gardener (4 Stars)
Nationalism (3 Stars)

This book forms part of my remarkably extensive reading list on Nobel Prize for Literature Awardees

A free ebook copy is legally downloadable here, along with a voluminous number of other works: Gutenberg

The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore

Title: The Gardener
Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Original Publication Date: 1913
Pages: 87


“It is a game of giving and withholding, revealing and screening
  again; some smiles and some little shyness, and some sweet useless struggles.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.

No mystery beyond the present; no striving for the impossible; no
  shadow behind the charm; no groping in the depth of the dark.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.

We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; we do not
  raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.
It is enough what we give and we get.
We have not crushed the joy to the utmost to wring from it the
  wine of pain.
This love between you and me is simple as a song.”

One of my favorite excerpts from this wonderful book. It is amazing to read Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali polymath, a hundred and one years after he received his Nobel Prize for Literature, a hundred and one years after being the first non-European awardee of the Nobel. The Gardener is a book of poetry. In the beginning, a modest servant pleads to the queen to be her gardener. She asks the reason why. He answers, the simplicity of which carries a subtle unfathomable heartbreaking depth. But perhaps, the servant turned gardener was compelled, inescapably, by an unrequited impermissible love for the queen, the kind that makes you queasy and uncharacteristically giddy all around, for much of this book contains aphorism, euphemisms, and ruminations for love in its varying forms, shortcomings and eternal joys, or perhaps the Gardener wanted the queen to know the real beauty of life, as ponderings in life too are contained in it. Tagore's use of colloquial language is spiritual and mercurial. There is depth in his rich use of imagery and allegories and one can read this in varying degrees but it is strange that at the same time it is straightforward in its delivery that it taxes credulity knowing this has been written a century before. And I think, it too is wonderful how he ended this work. Strange and beautiful.

"Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the
  spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.”

“From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the
  vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang
  one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred
  years."





This book forms part of my remarkably extensive reading list on Nobel Prize for Literature Awardees