168

The War and Faust: "Goethe's drama of Faust is being acted [out] in your history"

Rabindranath Tagore

Autograph Letter Signed, to "Dear Mrs. Woods,"

diagnosing the ailment afflicting Europe at a moment when "the time is troubled" [presumably the outbreak of World War I] by observing that "it [the War] is a struggle for emancipation of Europe from [the] allurements of Science," and sending sympathy and regards to her husband. 3 pages, small 8vo, written on a folded sheet; two short closed tears at upper and lower edges, horizontal fold.

Calcutta, 9 July 1915.

  • Notes: "It is kind of you to remember me, especially when the time is troubled. My only hope is that this sudden rushing down of life flood through channels of death will break through the accumulation of dead matters of centuries that the sluggish stream of prosperity always brings in its wake. I believe it is a struggle for emancipation of Europe from allurements of science, your heart must bleed to show that it is there in your civilization. It seems to my mind that Goethe's drama of Faust is being acted in your history. When Man enters into a compact with Mephistopheles for enlarging his sphere of enjoyment and possession he ends by killing his very object. When our intellect becomes dipsomaniac and thirsts solely for mastery and self-aggrandisement it loses itself in delirium. Then its very frightfulness is its only cure.
    "Please accept my thanks and give my best regards to your husband and know that all my sympathy is with you in this terrible trial."

    The recipient of his letter is likely Gertrude B. Woods, wife of Harvard philosophy professor James Houghton Woods (1864-1935), to whose class Tagore lectured on February 15, 18 and 20, during a 1913 visit to America.
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April 9, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
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