'La Nuit Bengali', French (Bengal Nights, English) is a 1933 Romanian novel written by the author and philosopher Mircea Eliade.
It is a fictionalized account of the love story between Eliade, who was visiting India at the time, and the young Maitreyi Devi (protegée of the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who became a famous writer herself). The novel was translated into Italian in 1945, German in 1948, Spanish in 1952, Esperanto in 2007. Its most famous translation is the one in French, published as La Nuit Bengali in 1950.
For many years, Maitreyi Devi was not aware that the story had been published. After reading it, she wrote her own version of the relationship in 1974. Entitled Na Hanyate, it was originally published in Bengali. It was published in English as It Does Not Die.
In fulfillment of a promise Eliade made to Maitreyi that his novel would not be published in English during their lifetimes, an English translation, of Mayitreyi, Bengal Nights did not appear until 1993. In 1994, the University of Chicago Press published the two works in English as companion volumes.
Read more about Bengal Nights: Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the words bengal and/or nights:
“Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It needed the heavy nights of drenching weather
To make him return to people, to find among them
Whatever it was that he found in their absence,
A pleasure, an indulgence, an infatuation.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)