Satyajit Ray

An "Oscar" Novelty – Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray is rated by many as one of the five great filmmakers in the history of World Cinema. The following biography attempts a brief sketch of the life and works of the Maestro.

He was the grandson of Upendrakishore Roychoudhury, the Bengali Scientist and Children’s Novelist; and the son of Sukumar Ray, the legendary limerick artist. He was a typographer with at least two internationally acclaimed type faces to credit, a graphic artist, an author, a music creator and above all, a filmmaker. He was Satyajit Ray; a name respected and revered by movie enthusiasts the world over.

Ray was born on May 2, 1922 to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in the erstwhile Calcutta, now Kolkata. His initial years were not very remarkable; having lost his father at the age of two, he was brought up by his mother and his uncles. However, his interest in music and the Cinema was evident even then; he learned to read music and attended concerts, while ‘bioscopes’, as Cinema was then known, remained a perennial favourite.

After graduating from Presidency College in Kolkata he went on to study the fine arts in Shantiniketan, the open air university founded by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate poet and philanthropist. More inclined toward the visual media of the celluloid, Ray spent most of his time in Shantiniketan poring over books on films and filmmaking. In 1943, Ray decided to cut short his education and joined the British advertising agency D J Keymer as a visualiser. It was here that the idea of being a filmmaker slowly started taking root in his mind. In 1949, when the French stalwart Jean Renoir visited Calcutta to shoot his film "The River", Ray sought an appointment with him, It is said that Renoir was so impressed with the young man that he encouraged Ray to take up filmmaking as a profession.

In 1950, Ray was sent to London on a six-month stint by his employer, and he took the opportunity to quench his ever-unsatisfied thirst for the Cinema. During that six-month period he saw over a hundred films and was heavily influence by Vittorio De Sica’s "The Bicycle Thief". As he later commented in one of his books, "All through my stay in London, the lessons of Bicycle Thieves and neo-realist cinema stayed with me". In retrospect, these six months perhaps form the core of the conviction that prompted him to move ahead with what was still experimental cinema in those days – he was contemplating shooting his first film "Pather Panchali" with an unknown cast and on actual locations, an idea that did not find much favour with friends.

There is an interesting story behind Ray’s making of "Pather Panchali". In 1944, D K Gupta, a senior colleague at D J Keymer, started the Signet Press and requested Ray to illustrate the abridged version of a novel by Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay and also commented that the book might be made into a fine film. Until then, Ray had not indulged much in bengali literature. But as his illustrations progressed, he came to realize that this was perhaps the story that he was looking for to make his directorial debut. A decade later, "Pather Panchali" or "The Song of the Road" was made, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, and had a 13-week run at the Calcutta theatres.

Soon after completing "Pather Panchali", Ray resigned his job at D J Keymer to pursue a full-fledged career in filmmaking. By 1959, Ray had completed making "Aparajito (1956)" or The Unvanquished and "Apur Sansar (1959)" or The World of Apu - the sequels to "Pather Panchali". The three films together traced the life of the protagonist Apu from childhood to adulthood. "Aparajito" went on to bag the prestigious 'Lionne d'Ore' at the Venice Film Festival.

Unlike his contemporaries, Ray exhibited very little bias towards genre. While "Pather Panchali" and its sequels painted a fluid story of a single life, "Kanchenjunga" (1962), his first colour feature, wove a network around the lives of a patriarch, his daughters, and the other men in their lives, over the period of a single day. In "Shatranj Ke Khiladi" (1977) or "The Chess Players" , Ray made a period drama set against the backdrop of the British annexation of the Indian kingdom of Oudh, while in Films like "Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne" (1968) and "Hirak Rajar Deshe" (1980) there was a clear attempt to ridicule political lethargy and corruption through seemingly Children’s Cinema.

In 1978, Ray was declared to be one of three all time best directors by the Berlin Film Festival organising committee.

Apart from being a master director, Satyajit Ray was also a talented music director. In fact, he had written the score for almost all of his films, aside from writing the screenplay, doing the theme illustrations and directing.

In 1961, Satyajit Ray revived "Sandesh", a children’s literary magazine founded by his grandfather and continued by his father till his untimely and sudden death. The magazine continues to be published and widely read even today, with Ray’s son Sandip Ray taking over the mantle as Managing Editor. In 1968, Ray had been approached by the editor of a widely circulated Bengali literary magazine to contribute a novel for its annual issue. Wielding the pen with as much ease as with the camera, Ray created two immortal characters in two different genres – Feluda, the detective and Professor Shonku, the genius scientist. The adventures of Feluda gained such fame in the Bengali literary circles that Ray went on to make two full length films – "Shonar Kella" (1974) and "Jai Baba Felunath" (1978) based on the master detective. His Professor Shonku stories, too, found great favour with fans of Bengali teen science fiction. As a filmmaker and as an author, Ray had diverse interests, and science fiction was not the least of them. While making a Sci-fi film in India was nearly impossible owing to financial and technical constraints; Ray had been approached to make a full length Hollywood feature titled "Alien" (not to be confused with the Sigourney Weaver claim-to-fame classic), but the project fizzled out due to differences of opinion between the director and the producers.

In the eighties, Ray suffered two major heart attacks and had to refrain from filmmaking for nearly five years. In 1988, he resurfaced with "Ganashatru", an Indian rendition of Ibsen’s "Enemy of the People" and by 1990 had made two more films, the more notable being "Agantuk" (1991) or The Stranger , which went on to become one of the top-ten earners in Paris that year.

In 1992, Ray was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in recognition of his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures and for his profound humanitarian outlook. Unfortunately, Ray had suffered another heart attack and was confined to the hospital bed when the award was announced. The academy award committee flew down to Calcutta to hand over the coveted statuette to him.

On April 23, 1992, Satyajit Ray, the "Last Bengali Rennaissance Man", died at a Calcutta nursing home. The achievement of this versatile filmmaker is perhaps best explained in the words of the veteran Akira Kurosawa "The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race, which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly. ...I feel that he is a "giant" of the movie industry."

Filmography:

1955 Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road)
1956 Aparajito (The Unvanquished)
1957 Parash Pathar (The philosopher’s Stone)
1958 Jalsaghar (The Music Room)
1959 Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
1960 Devi (The Goddess)
1961 Teen Kanya (Three Daughters)
1962 Kanchenjungha
1962 Abhijan (The Expedetion)
1963 Mahanagar (The Big City)
1964 Charulata (The Lonely Wife)
1965 Kapurush-O-Mahapurush (The Coward and The Saint)
1966 Nayak (Nayak: The Hero)
1967 Chiriakhana (The Zoo)
1968 Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne
1969 Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest)
1970 Pratidwandi (The Adversary)
1971 Seemabaddha (Company Limited)
1973 Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder)
1974 Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress)
1975 Jana Aranya (The Middleman)
1977 Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players)
1978 Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God)
1980 Pikoor Diary (Pikoo’s Day)
1980 Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds)
1981 Sadgati (Deliverance)
1984 Ghare Baire (The Home and The World)
1989 Ganashatru (An enemy of the people))
1990 Shakha Proshakha (The Branches of The Tree)
1991 Agantuk (The Stranger)

Rabindranath Tagore

1913 Nobel Laureate in Literature

because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with comsummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.

Background

• 1861-1941
  
• Place of Birth: Calcutta, India
  
• Residence: India
• Biographical highlights:
  • 1879 - Enrolled at University College, but recalled by father in 1880
  • 1901 - Founded Santiniketan
  • 1921 - Added a university at Santiniketan
  • 1913 - Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first Asian to receive it
  • 1915 - Knighted
  • 1919 - Resigned knighthood after Amritsar Massacre, in protest of British policies

Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর)^{α[›]β[›]} (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941),^γ[›] sobriquet Gurudev,^δ[›] was a Bengali polymath. As a poet, novelist, musician, and playwright, he reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse",in 1913 being the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature,^[2] Tagore was perhaps the most important literary figure of Bengali literature. He was a mesmerising representative of the Indian culture whose influence and popularity internationally perhaps could only be compared to that of Gandhi, whom Tagore named 'Mahatma' out of his deep admiration for him.

A Pirali Brahmin from Kolkata, Tagore was already writing poems at age eight. At age sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion")^[8][9] and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. Tagore denounced the British Raj and supported independence. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only litterateur who penned anthems of two countries: Bangladesh and India: Amar Shonar Bangla and Jana Gana Mana.

Stories

Ink illustration of a tousled-haired boy seated outside and holding a lance-stick and playing with a wheeled red toy horse; in the background, a large blue palanquin and tackle with a carrying pole projecting out of it.
A Nandalal Bose illustration for "The Hero", part of the 1913 Macmillan release of The Crescent Moon

The "Sadhana" period, 1891–1895, was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha, itself a group of eighty-four stories.[17] They reflect upon Tagore's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "Sadhana" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore’s life in villages such as Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida.[17] Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point.[77]

In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town-dweller and novelist who chances upon the Afghani seller. He channels the longing of those trapped in mundane, hardscrabble Indian urban life, giving play to dreams of a different existence in the distant and wild mountains: "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Kolkata, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it ... I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest .... ".[78] Many of the other Galpaguchchha stories were written in Tagore’s Sabuj Patra period (1914–1917; also named for one of Tagore's magazines).[17]
A warm-toned ink work, dominated by orange-red (foreground) and olive green (background wall) showing a shawl- and sari-clad woman with a young child, who holds a book, in her lap.
A 1913 illustration by Asit Kumar Haldar for "The Beginning", a prose-poem in The Crescent Moon

Tagore's Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) remains among Bengali literature's most popular fictional works, providing subject matter for many successful films and theatrical plays. Satyajit Ray's film Charulata was based upon Tagore's controversial novella, Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi (also made into a film), the young Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village zamindar. The boy reveals that he has run away from home, only to wander around ever since. Taking pity, the zamindar adopts him and ultimately arranges his marriage to the zamindar's own daughter. However, the night before the wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Letter from the Wife) is among Bengali literature's earliest depictions of the bold emancipation of women. The heroine Mrinal, the wife of a typical patriarchical Bengali middle class man, writes a letter while she is travelling (which constitutes the whole story). It details the pettiness of her life and struggles; she finally declares that she will not return to her husband's home with the statement Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I shall live. Here, I live".

Haimanti assails Hindu marriage and the dismal lifelessness of married Bengali women, hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a sensitive young woman, must—due to her sensitiveness and free spirit—sacrifice her life. In the last passage, Tagore directly attacks the Hindu custom of glorifying Sita's attempted self-immolation as a means of appeasing her husband Rama's doubts. Musalmani Didi examines Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. Darpaharan exhibits Tagore's self-consciousness, describing a fey young man harboring literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her own literary career, deeming it unfeminine. Tagore himself, in his youth, seems to have harbored similar ideas about women. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he acknowledges his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't".

Poetry

Tagore's poetry—which varied in style from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic—proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets. Tagore was awed by the mysticism of the rishi-authors who—including Vyasa—wrote the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen.^[79] Yet Tagore's poetry became most innovative and mature after his exposure to rural Bengal's folk music, which included Baul ballads—especially those of bard Lalon.^[80][81] These—rediscovered and popularised by Tagore—resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity and rebellion against religious and social orthodoxy.^[82][83] During his Shilaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical quality, speaking via the maner manus (the Bāuls' "man within the heart") or meditating upon the jivan devata ("living God within"). This figure thus sought connection with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Tagore used such techniques in his Bhānusiṃha poems (which chronicle the romance between Radha and Krishna), which he repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.^[84][85]

Tagore responded to the mostly crude emergence of modernism and realism in Bengali literature by writing experimental works in the 1930s.^[86] Examples works include Africa and Camalia, which are among the better known of his latter poems. He occasionally wrote poems using Shadhu Bhasha (a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali); later, he began using Cholti Bhasha (a more popular dialect). Other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), Balaka (Wild Geese—the title being a metaphor for migrating souls),^[87] and Purobi. Sonar Tori's most famous poem—dealing with the ephemeral nature of life and achievement—goes by the same name; hauntingly it ends: "শূন্য নদীর তীরে রহিনু পড়ি / যাহা ছিল লয়ে গেল সোনার তরী" ("Shunno nodir tire rohinu poŗi / Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori"—"all I had achieved was carried off on the golden boat—only I was left behind."). Internationally, Gitanjali (গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection, winning him his Nobel Prize.^[88] Song VII (গীতাঞ্জলি 127) of Gitanjali:

Title page of Gitanjali

আমার এ গান ছেড়েছে তার সকল অলংকার, তোমার কাছে রাখে নি আর সাজের অহংকার। অলংকার যে মাঝে পড়ে মিলনেতে আড়াল করে, তোমার কথা ঢাকে যে তার মুখর ঝংকার। তোমার কাছে খাটে না মোর কবির গর্ব করা, মহাকবি তোমার পায়ে দিতে যে চাই ধরা। জীবন লয়ে যতন করি যদি সরল বাঁশি গড়ি, আপন সুরে দিবে ভরি সকল ছিদ্র তার।

Amar e gan chheŗechhe tar shôkol ôlongkar Tomar kachhe rakhe ni ar shajer ôhongkar Ôlongkar je majhe pôŗe milônete aŗal kôre, Tomar kôtha đhake je tar mukhôro jhôngkar. Tomar kachhe khaţe na mor kobir gôrbo kôra, Môhakobi, tomar paee dite chai je dhôra. Jibon loe jôton kori jodi shôrol bãshi goŗi, Apon shure dibe bhori sôkol chhidro tar.

From Tagore's hand, committed in Hungary, 1926: Bengali and English

Free-verse translation by Tagore (Gitanjali, verse VII):^[89]

"My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers."

"My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music."

"Klanti" (Bengali: ক্লান্তি; "Fatigue"), the sixth poem in Gitanjali:

ক্লান্তি আমার ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু, পথে যদি পিছিয়ে পড়ি কভু। এই যে হিয়া থর থর কাঁপে আজি এমনতরো, এই বেদনা ক্ষমা করো,ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।। এই দীনতা ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু, পিছন-পানে তাকাই যদি কভু। দিনের তাপে রৌদ্রজ্বালায় শুকায় মালা পূজার থালায়, সেই ম্লানতা ক্ষমা করো, ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।।

Klanti amar khôma kôro, probhu Pôthe jodi pichhie poŗi kobhu Ei je hia thôro thôro kãpe aji êmontôro, Ei bedona khôma kôro, khôma kôro probhu. Ei dinota khôma kôro, probhu, Pichhon-pane takai jodi kobhu. Diner tape roudrojalae shukae mala pujar thalae, Shei mlanota khôma kôro, khôma kôro, probhu.

Tagore's poetry has been set to music by various composers, among them classical composer Arthur Shepherd's triptych for soprano and string quartet, as well as composer Garry Schyman's "Praan", an adaptation of Tagore's poem "Stream of Life" from Gitanjali. The latter was composed and recorded with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt Harding's 2008 viral video.^[90] In 1917 his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Richard Hageman (an Anglo- Dutch composer) to produce what is regarded as one of the finest art songs in the English language: Do not go my love (Ed.Schirmer NY 1917).

Music Articles And Life Enrichment

Articles Of Note | Music Article

Whether you admit it or not, music imbeds our daily life, weaving its beauty and emotion through our thoughts, activities and memories. So if you're interested in music theory, music appreciation, Beethoven, Mozart, or other composers, artists and performers, we hope you'll spend some time with here and learn from these music articles of note for all ages and tastes.

When I first started studying the history of music, I did not realize what I was getting into. I had thought that music history was somewhat of a trivial pursuit. In fact, I only took my history of classical music class because I needed the credits. I did not realize how completely fascinating music history is. You see, in our culture many of us do not really learn to understand music. For much of the world, music is a language, but for us it is something that we consumed passively. When I began to learn about the history of Western music, however, it changed all that for me. I have had some experience playing musical instruments, but I have never mastered one enough to really understand what music is all about. This class showed me.

When most of us think about the history of music, we think of the history of rock music. We assume that the history is simple because the music is simple. In fact, neither is the case. The history of music, whether you're talking about classical music, rock music, jazz music, or any other kind, is always complicated. New chord structures are introduced bringing with them new ways of understanding the world. New rhythmic patterns are introduced, bringing with them new ways of understanding time. And music reflects all of it.

Even when the class was over, I could not stop learning about the history of music. It had whetted my appetite, and I wanted more. I got all the music history books that I could find. I even began to research forms of music that had not interested me before in the hopes of enhancing my musical knowledge further. Although I was in school studying toward something very different – a degree in engineering – I had thought about giving it up and going back to get a degree in musicology. That is how much I am fascinated by the subject.

If you have never taken a course in the history of music, you don't know what you are missing out on. The radio will never sound the same to you again. Everything will seem much more rich, much more luminous, and much more important. A new song can reflect a new way of being, and a new way of imagining life in the world. This is what learning about the history of music means to many of us