An In depth Study of a Song of Tagore HL¢V lh£¾cÊp‰£a : a¢æù f¡W.

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present paper is to explore the linguistic aspects of one of the most popular song of Tagore ami chini go chini tomare ogo bideshinee. It should be noted that this study is limited to the poetical framework of the song; the musical aspect is excluded The song pivots on the theme of bideshinee (foreign woman). Contrary to the widespread popular belief, the lady evoked here is not Victoria Ocampo, as is evident from Tagore’s own remarks about the composition of the song as well as all other relevant biographical data. Our objective however is not to establish the identity of this lady who dwells in a distant land, whose image the poet contemplates against the background of an autumn morning or a spring night. Through an in depth study of the salient linguistic features of this song we have tried to demonstrate how the theme of bideshinee had been developed at various levels of the song phonetic, lexical, morpho-syntactic and semantic levels.