"Stray Birds" contains ideas on nature, man, and his environment as may be entertained by a man sitting by a window where the stray birds of summer sing and fly away. These short, sometimes merely one-line poems are often just an image or the distillation of a thought, but they stay in the mind and do not fly away as easily as the birds. The author, Rabindranath Tagore, was a Nobel laureate for literature (1913) as well as one of India's greatest poets and the composer of independent India's national anthem, as well as that of Bangladesh. He wrote successfully in all literary genres, but was first and foremost a poet, publishing more than 50 volumes of poetry. He was a Bengali writer who was born in Calcutta and later traveled around the world. He was knighted in 1915, but gave up his knighthood after the massacre of demonstrators in India in 1919.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. 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—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
Llegué a este libro gracias a la introducción de la edición de Michael P. Predmore de "Platero y yo" de Juan Ramón Jiménez. Leyéndola, supe que tanto Juan Ramón como su esposa Zenobia Camprubí fueron los traductores de este bello e imprescindible libro de aforismos. Recomendadísimo.
Hermosas reflexiones de la vida, el mundo, la naturaleza. Pura contemplación, de lo pequeño y de aquello que nos pasa desapercibido. Nos invita a observar y detenernos para ser mejores. Recomiendo.
Me gustó la edición, que rescatara la labor de traducción de Zenobia y Juan Ramón. También es primera vez que incursiono en aforismos. Máximas, es necesario entender al autor que hay detrás.
Se trata de pequeñas reflexiones, a veces en forma de microrrelatos y otras de aforismos. Es un libro para leer de manera pausada, entendiendo lo que cada máxima nos dice a cada uno.
Poesía de lectura sencilla; algunos poemas son bastante simples, pero al mismo tiempo profundos, y muchos tienen un doble significado que realmente es genial de descubrir. Le doy dos estrellas porque, aunque está bien, no me resulta inolvidable.