Across Oceans of Affinity: Rabindranath Tagore and the Forgotten Dialogue with Latin American Modernism

Authors: Arun Kumar Ghosh

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37082/IJIRMPS.v13.i6.232825

Short DOI: https://doi.org/hbbz9b

Country: India

Full-text Research PDF File:   View   |   Download

Abstract: This study argues that Rabindranath Tagore’s intellectual encounters with Latin America—particularly through Victoria Ocampo, Gabriela Mistral, and José Vasconcelos—constitute a forgotten axis of modernism that developed independently of Europe. While Tagore’s reception in Britain, the United States, and Japan has been widely documented, his profound resonance within Latin American literary culture remains largely absent from existing scholarship. This paper seeks to address that critical gap by examining Tagore’s influence on the ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual foundations of Latin American modernism. Through a combination of comparative literary analysis, archival research, and bibliographic mapping of early Spanish translations, the study traces how Latin American writers engaged Tagore’s poetics of universalism, agrarian spirituality, and cultural self-realization. The findings reveal a distinct pattern of South–South intellectual exchange that challenges Eurocentric narratives of global modernism and highlights Latin America as an autonomous reception centre. By recovering this overlooked dialogue, the paper proposes a more pluriversal model of modernist formation grounded in affinity rather than hierarchy.

Keywords: South–South Modernism, Transcultural Literary Exchange, Tagore Reception Studies, Latin American Modernism, Decolonial World Literature, Comparative Poetics

Paper Id: 232825

Published On: 2025-11-18

Published In: Volume 13, Issue 6, November-December 2025

Share this