Thursday, June 7, 2012

Rabindranath and Moliere (1622-1673)

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, (January 15, 1622 – February 17, 1673) was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Among Molière's best-known works are Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope), L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur, (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite), L'Avare (The Miser), Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid), and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman).
On  17th Jan 1922, at the intiative of Viswa Bharati Sammilani 300th birth anniversary of Moliere was held at Santiniketan under the presidentship of Rabindranath Tagore. The Prof. of French Morris at first discussed about his life and creativity.Sylvain Levi recited one sonnet written by Moliere and read a scene from his attire play in the original language (French). Rabindranath in his presidential address said that he had very little knowledge about Moliere. He read  only some translation of Moliere by Jyotirindranath and some other English translated work.Morris had read the original work from Madam Levi and hence his discussion was well and good and we came to learn about his biography.Morris said that a few critics remarked that Moliere had exaggerated in painting the characters in his work which sometimes crossed the limit. But Morris differed from that statement explained with the help of examples from Shakespeare's Macbeth, Hamlet, Kingleor etc. He then described one important aspect of his comedy.