On this day in 1941, Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright, Nobel Prize recipient, The Shakespeare of India, The Bard of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore died in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion in which he was raised in Calcutta, at the age of 80. Born on 7 May 1861. He wrote one of my favorite poems, Unending Love, which Gregory Peck read on camera after Audrey Hepburn’s death.
Unending Love
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain, It’s ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time. You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting, the distressful tears of farewell, Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever. ~Rabindranath Tagore From Selected Poems, Translated by William RadiceThe Final Footprint – Tagore was cremated and his cremains were scattered in the Ganges River.
#RIP #OTD in 1957 comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy double act, Oliver Hardy died from cerebral thrombosis at age 65. Cremated remains at the Masonic Garden of Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood
#RIP #OTD in 1972 pin-up model, actress (Touch of Evil, Marriage on the Rocks, The Beverly Hillbillies), nightclub singer Joi Lansing died from breast cancer at St. John’s Hospital, Santa Monica, California, aged 49. Pierce Brothers Santa Paula Cemetery, Santa Paula CA
On this day in 1974, poet and author Rosario Castellanos died from an electrical accident in Tel Aviv, at the age of 49. Born Rosario Castellanos Figueroa on 25 May 1925 in Mexico City. In my opinion, she was one of Mexico’s most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced Mexican feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
She joined a group of Mexican and Central American intellectuals, read extensively, and began to write. She studied philosophy and literature at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), where she would later teach, and joined the National Indigenous Institute, writing scripts for puppet shows that were staged in impoverished regions to promote literacy. She also wrote a weekly column for the newspaper Excélsior.
She married Ricardo Guerra Tejada, a professor of philosophy, in 1958. However, she and Guerra divorced after thirteen years of marriage, Guerra having been unfaithful to Castellanos. Her own personal life was marked by her difficult marriage and continuous depression, but she dedicated a large part of her work and energy to defending women’s rights, for which she is remembered as a symbol of Latin American feminism.
The Final Footprint
Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres, Panteón Civil de Dolores, located on Constituyentes Avenue in the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City.
#RIP #OTD in 1985 television, film and stage actress (Dark Shadows, The Night of the Iguana) Grayson Hall died from lung cancer at New York Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 62. Saint John the Evangelist Church Cemetery, Barrytown, New York
#RIP #OTD in 2022 actor (Magnum, P. I.; McQ; Semi-Tough; Unlawful Entry), director, writer, Roger E. Mosley died of injuries from a car crash, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the age of 83. Cremated remains scattered at sea.
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