Published : Jan. 29, 2012 - 19:21
Scenes from the journeys of India’s former freedom fighter and poet laureate, Gurudeb Rabindranath Tagore, are being displayed in Seoul.
The photographic exhibition showing Tagore’s sea voyages coincides with the country’s Republic Day celebrations.
A celebration for the Indian community and a reception for diplomats were both held in Seoul to celebrate the country’s 63rd Republic Day last week.
A lamp is lit at the opening of the Indian photographic exhibition at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center. (Indian Embassy)
Recently-arrived Indian ambassador Shri Vishnu Prakash read excerpts from the Indian president’s Republic Day address to guests from the Indian community on Thursday at the Indian Cultural Center.
And the Tagore exhibition organized by the cultural center and the Indian Embassy is now open until Feb. 4. at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center Gallery in Seoul’s Jung-gu area.
The “Pilgrimages to the East” show includes archive photographs of some sights of Tagore’s journeys made between 1916 and 1934. The images show his travels throughout much of Southeast Asia to then Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaya (Malaysia), Siam (Thailand) and Indo-China (Vietnam). He also traveled to Bali, Singapore and China.
Tagore, who lived from 1861-1941, was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He composed a short poem in 1929 calling Korea a “lamp-bearer” of the past, saying that the lamp was waiting to be lit again: “For the illumination in the East.”
Following this, many Korean intellectuals translated Tagore’s poems for readers in Korea and the Korean government unveiled a bust of him in the Daehangro district of Seoul last May to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.