The Lamp of the East

[조영희]

"The Lamp of the East
In the golden age of Asia
Korea was one of its lamp-bearers
And that lamp is waiting to be lighted once again
For the illumination in the East.”

   by  Rabindranath Tagore

 This is an Indian poem by Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941), that is specially loved by Koreans.
When Tagore visited Japan in 1929, a Korean journalist recommended that he visits Korea.
He could not visit then , but he wrote a poem titled 'The Lamp of the East’.
This poem speaks of the Japanese Ruling Era in Korea.

The poem was published in the Donga Daily Newspaper which has a very strong presence in Korea.
The poem was printed in the middle school textbooks in Korea after the country won its freedom from Japan
and it had a profound impact on Korean people.
Even today, Tagore, and Mahatma Gandhi are the two individuals,
remembered and revered by Koreans as towering intellectuals who most aptly represent India.
Tagore was the Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist, educator,

and an early advocate of Independence for India.
Tagaore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Two years later he was awarded the knighthood,
but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar,

where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators.
Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous,
but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role

as a reformer and critic of colonialism.
"When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.
 Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many." (from Gitanjali)