SOURCE: FRONTLINE

The English poet and Bengali scholar’s translations of Tagore and Michael Madhusudan Dutt brought Bengali renaissance to international audiences.

William Radice, the English poet, Tagore translator, and scholar of Bengali language and literature passed away on November 10. He was 73.

I was his oldest Bengali friend, but I never worked out what led him to make Bengali the focus of his life’s work. I honestly can claim no part. The Bangladesh liberation movement took place when he was an English student at Oxford. It made waves in England and Oxford, far beyond the South Asian community. William was deeply involved, not just politically but also morally; he was viscerally disturbed by the agony of the nation struggling to be born. My best conjecture is that the strong cultural currents of the movement led him to a deeper interest in the language and literature of the region. In later years, he interacted equally with both Bengals, east and west.