‘দ্য প্যাশন প্লে’-এর আলোকে রবীন্দ্রনাথের ‘শিশুতীর্থ’ ও ‘শাপমোচন’/ Tagore's Shishutirtha and Shaapmochon through the light of The Passion Play

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore visited foreign lands so many times. Whenever he travelled abroad, he had returned with a wealth of experience which had become one of the resources of his literary creation most of the time. He visited Germany three times (in 1921, 1926, and 1930). The last journey to Germany (which is in 1930) is remarkable because in July 1930, he had experienced one of the most famous performances, ‘The Passion Play’, a historical dramatic creation based on the life of Jesus Christ, at Oberammergau in Munich, Germany. ‘The Passion Play’ depicts Christ's birth, crucifixion, resurrection, the last supper, and so on. The play continues for ten long hours with three intervals. The play carries biblical impact and myth. It is being performed every ten years from 1634 till now.

         In July 1930, the guest list of Oberammergau included the name of Rabindranath Tagore along with Adolf Hitler. Undoubtedly, he was so moved by the performance that he had confined himself in a room and engaged himself to pen a script named ‘The Child’. In 1927, Tagore was requested for a script from German studio company UFA, and in that time writing ‘The Child’ intended to make a film for them came into vain for fascist regime at Germany. Whatsoever 'The Child', the only one he had wrote directly in English, becomes a resource for Tagore's upcoming masterpiece which is Dance-Drama during 1930s.

         In the next year, that is in 1931, Tagore had translated ‘The Child’ into Bengali and named as ‘Shishutirtha’. The metaphorical translation reshaped with the theme of eternal potential within self from the allegory of Christ's life in ‘The Child’. At the same year he wrote ‘Shapmochon’ (1931), a poem carries the theme composed in prosaic verse form. But here in this paper the format Tagore used to compose this poetry get focused. Both of the poems are compiled in the collection of poetry ‘Punascha’ (1931) which is his first attempt to write poetry in prose form. Moreover, as Tagore always carries spirit to compose for stage performance, these two being did not escaped from this thought. At the same year ‘Shishutirtha’ was being staged by adding previously composed songs with dance movements. Also at this time, ‘Shaapmochon’ was being performed like a dance-drama which was actually a narrative play on the occasion of Tagore's 70th year birth anniversary at Kolkata. Very importantly, Tagore called both of the creation ‘Shishutirtha’ and ‘Shaapmochon’ as ‘Kathika’. Although these ‘Kathikas’ were not composed a full-fledged dance-drama, yet, the way they paved reach Tagore's composition to a unique dramatic form Dance-Drama. The narrative portion was being to recomposed with rhythm and melody and formed as songs and present formed into Dance Drama. This paper aims to draw the line from the experience of ‘The Passion Play’ (1930) with historical evidence to the composition of ‘Shishutirtha’ (1931) and ‘Shaapmochon’ (1931) which is actually the draft of Tagore's Dance-Drama.