Sri Dhiman Dasgupta has kindly agreed to edit the new edition. Lila Ray's grandson Chandrahas Ray has lovingly prepared the presscopy. Thanks are due to Smt. Sudarshana Dhar for gladly translating Dhiman's introduction from the original Bengali.
I am grateful to the Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi for publishing the new edition.
Lila Ray was the married name of Alice Virginia Orndorf. After her marriage she was named Lila, after Annada Sankar Ray's penname, Lilamoy Ray. Originally. she was a musician, a brilliant pianist. She played on stage, in concerts, as a professional musician. She had performed on the compositions of Bach. Mozart, Wagner and Beethoven. Romain Rolland, the epic novelist and the European inheritor to the vision of Tolstoy to Annada Sankar, was an author and musician to Lila Ray. Just as the lack of mood, time and spontaneity due to the busy life of a District Magistrate or District Judge marred Annada Sankar's poetic skills; similarly, Lila Ray's emigration to India, her marital life and continuous changes in places over an impoverished land, ruined her musical career. And, instead, she became a poet and a translator. Introspective and effervescent-the two poles of music, found their way in her poems and translations in course of time.
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