CHENNAI: An ‘unknown manuscript notebook’ of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore will go under the hammer at auction house Sotheby’s in New York on December 13. It is estimated to fetch around $150,000 to 250,000.The notebook dates back to the fall of 1928 and contains 12 poems and lyrics for 12 songs in Bengali. Some of the songs were heavily amended drafts of works that were published subsequently. Tagore had presented this work to a family friend and early patron — who the auction house did not identify — in the mid-1930s. A press release from the Sotheby’s said that the notebook was consigned by a descendant of the original owner. The friendship between the two families dated back to the mid-1800s. The notebook presented by Gurudev was brought to North America in the 1950s, the release added.Two of the lyrics in the notebook were later included in the dance drama Chitranggada, first performed in 1892 and then modified and extended in 1936. Three other songs were included in Tagore’s three-volume collection titled Gitabitan (Garden of Songs), published in 1931. Heavily amended and containing Tagore’s inimitable artistic deletions, one of these songs, “Mon je bale chini chini” is of particular significance.Each poem in the notebook is a draft version of a piece published later. Twelve of the poems went on to be included in a collection titled Mohua in 1929. Mohua is a tree with flowers of the same name containing intoxicating nectar, and Tagore’s poems included in this collection celebrated nature, love and life.Born in 1861 in a village called Jorasanko which is now in Bangladesh, Tagore was widely acclaimed as one of the world’s most profound writers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian Nobel Laureate. Rabindranath Tagore wrote thousands of poems and short stories from his early childhood until his death in 1941, many of which were celebration of nature, life and people he met during his extensive travel worldwide.
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