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Rabindranath TagoreTemplate:Cref pronunciationⓘ (Template:Lang-bn) (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941),Template:Cref sobriquet Gurudev,Template:Cref was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse",[2] he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.[3] In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[4] Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern South Asia.[5][6][7]

Rabindranath Tagore
রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
Late-middle-aged bearded man in white robes looks to the left with serene composure.
Tagore c. 1915, the year he was knighted by George V. Tagore repudiated his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.[1]
BornRabindranath Thakur
(1861-05-07)7 Template:MONTHNAME 1861
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died7 August 1941(1941-08-07) (aged 80)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
OccupationPoet, short story writer, song composer, novelist, playwright, essayist, painter
LanguageBengali, English
NationalityIndia
EthnicityBengali
Notable work(s)Gitanjali, Gora, Ghare-Baire, Jana Gana Mana, Rabindra Sangeet, Amar Shonar Bangla (other works)
Notable award(s)Template:Awd
Spouse(s)
Mrinalini Devi
​
(m. 1883⁠–⁠1902)​
Childrenfive children, two of whom died in childhood
Relative(s)Tagore family
SignatureClose-up on a Bengali word handwritten with angular, jaunty letters.

A Pirali Brahmin[8][9][10][11] from Calcutta, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[12] At age sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics.[5][13] He graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and strident anti-nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.[14]

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.

Early life: 1861–1878

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Main article: Early life of Rabindranath Tagore

The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, India to parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875).Template:Cref[15] The Tagore family came into prominence during the Bengal Renaissance that started during the age of Hussein Shah (1493–1519). The original name of the Tagore family was Banerjee. Being Brahmins, their ancestors were referred to as 'Thakurmashai' or 'Holy Sir'. During the British rule, this name stuck and they began to be recognised as Thakur and eventually the family name got anglicised to Tagore.Tagore family patriarchs were the Brahmo founders of the Adi Dharm faith. The loyalist "Prince" Dwarkanath Tagore, who employed European estate managers and visited with Victoria and other royalty, was his paternal grandfather.[16] Debendranath had formulated the Brahmoist philosophies espoused by his friend Ram Mohan Roy, and became focal in Brahmo society after Roy's death.[17][18]

The last two days a storm has been raging, similar to the description in my song—Jhauro jhauro borishe baridhara [... amidst it] a hapless, homeless man drenched from top to toe standing on the roof of his steamer [...] the last two days I have been singing this song over and over [...] as a result the pelting sound of the intense rain, the wail of the wind, the sound of the heaving Gorai [R]iver, have assumed a fresh life and found a new language and I have felt like a major actor in this new musical drama unfolding before me.

“
”
— Letter to Indira Devi.[19]

"Rabi" was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early childhood and his father travelled widely.[20] His home hosted the publication of literary magazines; theatre and recitals of both Bengali and Western classical music featured there regularly, as the Jorasanko Tagores were the center of a large and art-loving social group. Tagore's oldest brother Dwijendranath was a respected philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian appointed to the elite and formerly all-European Indian Civil Service. Yet another brother, Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright.[21] His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist. Jyotirindranath's wife Kadambari, slightly older than Tagore, was a dear friend and powerful influence. Her abrupt suicide in 1884, soon after he married, left him for years profoundly distraught.

Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby Bolpur and Panihati, idylls which the family visited.[22][23] His brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges or trek through hills, by gymnastics, and by practising judo and wrestling. He learned drawing, anatomy, geography and history, literature, mathematics, Sanskrit, and English—his least favourite subject.[24] Tagore loathed formal education—his scholarly travails at the local Presidency College spanned a single day. Years later he held that proper teaching does not explain things; proper teaching stokes curiosity:[25]

 
Tagore and his wife Mrinalini Devi, 1883.

[It] knock[s] at the doors of the mind. If any boy is asked to give an account of what is awakened in him by such knocking, he will probably say something silly. For what happens within is much bigger than what comes out in words. Those who pin their faith on university examinations as the test of education take no account of this.[25]

After he underwent an upanayan initiation at age eleven, he and his father left Calcutta in February 1873 for a months-long tour of the Raj. They visited his father's Santiniketan estate and rested in Amritsar en route to the Himalayan Dhauladhars, their destination being the remote hill station at Dalhousie. Along the way, Tagore read biographies; his father tutored him in history, astronomy, and Sanskrit declensions. He read biographies of Benjamin Franklin among other figures; they discussed Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and they examined the poetry of Kālidāsa.[26] In mid-April they reached the station, and at 2,300 metres (7,546 ft) they settled into a house that sat atop Bakrota Hill. Tagore was taken aback by the region's deep green gorges, alpine forests, and mossy streams and waterfalls.[27] They stayed there for several months and adopted a regime of study and privation that included daily twilight baths taken in icy water.[28][29]

He returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of major works by 1877, one of them a long poem in the Maithili style of Vidyapati; they were published pseudonymously. Regional experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhānusimha, a newly discoveredTemplate:Cref 17th-century Vaishnava poet.[30] He debuted the short-story genre in Bengali with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman"),[31][32] and his Sandhya Sangit (1882) includes the famous poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall"). Servants subjected him to an almost ludicrous regimentation in a phase he dryly reviled as the "servocracy".[33] His head was water-dunked—to quiet him.[34] He irked his servants by refusing food; he was confined to chalk circles in parody of Sita's forest trial in the Ramayana; and he was regaled with the heroic criminal exploits of Bengal's outlaw-dacoits.[35] Because the Jorasanko manor was in an area of north Calcutta rife with poverty and prostitution,[36] he was forbidden to leave it for any purpose other than travelling to school. He thus became preoccupied with the world outside and with nature. Of his 1873 visit to Santiniketan, he wrote:

What I could not see did not take me long to get over—what I did see was quite enough. There was no servant rule, and the only ring which encircled me was the blue of the horizon, drawn around these solitudes by their presiding goddess. Within this I was free to move about as I chose.[37]

For Bengalis, the songs' appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the Modern Review observed that "[t]here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath's songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung ... Even illiterate villagers sing his songs". A. H. Fox Strangways of The Observer introduced non-Bengalis to rabindrasangit in The Music of Hindostan, calling it a "vehicle of a personality ... [that] go behind this or that system of music to that beauty of sound which all systems put out their hands to seize."[38]

In 1971, Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written—ironically—to protest the 1905 Partition of Bengal along communal lines: lopping Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to avert a regional bloodbath. Tagore saw the partition as a ploy to upend the independence movement, and he aimed to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism. Jana Gana Mana was written in shadhu-bhasha, a Sanskritised register of Bengali, and is the first of five stanzas of a Brahmo hymn that Tagore composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress[39] and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem.

Paintings

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At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France[40]—were held throughout Europe. He was likely red-green color blind, resulting in works that exhibited strange colour schemes and off-beat aesthetics. Tagore was influenced by scrimshaw from northern New Ireland, Haida carvings from British Columbia, and woodcuts by Max Pechstein.[41] His artist's eye for his handwriting were revealed in the simple artistic and rhythmic leitmotifs embellishing the scribbles, cross-outs, and word layouts of his manuscripts. Some of Tagore's lyrics corresponded in a synesthetic sense with particular paintings.[19]

[...]Surrounded by several painters Rabindranath had always wanted to paint. Writing and music, playwriting and acting came to him naturally and almost without training, as it did to several others in his family, and in even greater measure. But painting eluded him. Yet he tried repeatedly to master the art and there are several references to this in his early letters and reminiscence. In 1900 for instance, when he was nearing forty and already a celebrated writer, he wrote to Jagadishchandra Bose, "You will be surprised to hear that I am sitting with a sketchbook drawing. Needless to say, the pictures are not intended for any salon in Paris, they cause me not the least suspicion that the national gallery of any country will suddenly decide to raise taxes to acquire them. But, just as a mother lavishes most affection on her ugliest son, so I feel secretly drawn to the very skill that comes to me least easily.‟ He also realized that he was using the eraser more than the pencil, and dissatisfied with the results he finally withdrew, deciding it was not for him to become a painter.[42]

— R. Siva Kumar, The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore.[43]

Rabindra Chitravali, edited by noted art historian R. Siva Kumar, for the first time makes the paintings of Tagore accessible to art historians and scholars of Rabindranth with critical annotations and comments It also brings together a selection of Rabindranath's own statements and documents relating to the presentation and reception of his paintings during his lifetime.[44]

The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore was an exhibition of Rabindranath Tagore's paintings to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. It was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, India and organised with NGMA Delhi as the nodal agency. It consisted of 208 paintings drawn from the collections of Visva Bharati and the NGMA and presented Tagore's art in a very comprehensive way. The exhibition was curated by Art Historian R. Siva Kumar. Within the 150th birth anniversary year it was conceived as three separate but similar exhibitions,and travelled simultaneously in three circuits. The first selection was shown at Museum of Asian Art, Berlin,[45] Asia Society, New York,[46] National Museum of Korea,[47] Seoul, Victoria and Albert Museum,[48] London, The Art Institute of Chicago,[49] Chicago, Petit Palais,[50] Paris, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, National Visual Arts Gallery (Malaysia),[51] Kuala Lumpur, McMichael Canadian Art Collection,[52] Ontario, National Gallery of Modern Art,[53] New Delhi

Theatre

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With niece Indira Devi in Valmiki Pratibha, 1881.

At sixteen, Tagore led his brother Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.[54] At twenty he wrote his first drama-opera: Valmiki Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki). In it the pandit Valmiki overcomes his sins, is blessed by Saraswati, and compiles the Rāmāyana.[55] Through it Tagore explores a wide range of dramatic styles and emotions, including usage of revamped kirtans and adaptation of traditional English and Irish folk melodies as drinking songs.[56] Another play, Dak Ghar (The Post Office), describes the child Amal defying his stuffy and puerile confines by ultimately "fall[ing] asleep", hinting his physical death. A story with borderless appeal—gleaning rave reviews in Europe—Dak Ghar dealt with death as, in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds".[57][58] In the Nazi-besieged Warsaw Ghetto, Polish doctor-educator Janusz Korczak had orphans in his care stage The Post Office in July 1942.[59] In The King of Children, biographer Betty Jean Lifton suspected that Korczak, agonising over whether one should determine when and how to die, was easing the children into accepting death.[60][61][62] In mid-October, the Nazis sent them to Treblinka.[63]

[I]n days long gone by [...] I can see [...] the King's postman coming down the hillside alone, a lantern in his left hand and on his back a bag of letters climbing down for ever so long, for days and nights, and where at the foot of the mountain the waterfall becomes a stream he takes to the footpath on the bank and walks on through the rye; then comes the sugarcane field and he disappears into the narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer and my heart becomes glad.

“
”
— Amal in The Post Office, 1914.[64]

[...] but the meaning is less intellectual, more emotional and simple. The deliverance sought and won by the dying child is the same deliverance which rose before his imagination, [...] when once in the early dawn he heard, amid the noise of a crowd returning from some festival, this line out of an old village song, "Ferryman, take me to the other shore of the river." It may come at any moment of life, though the child discovers it in death, for it always comes at the moment when the "I", seeking no longer for gains that cannot be "assimilated with its spirit", is able to say, "All my work is thine" [...].[65]

— W. B. Yeats, Preface, The Post Office, 1914.


In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of Śiva-Sati, exemplified by Dākshāyani—is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil: her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed gentry.[66] The story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations.

Others were uplifting: Shesher Kobita—translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song—is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name: "Rabindranath Tagore". Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: "I have always regretted the ending".

Stories

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Tagore's three-volume Galpaguchchha comprises eighty-four stories that reflect upon the author's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles.[31] Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "Sadhana" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by zamindar Tagore's life in Patisar, Shajadpur, Shelaidaha, and other villages.[31] Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point.[67] In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller and novelist imputing exotic perquisites to an Afghan seller. He channels the lucubrative lust of those mired in the blasé, nidorous, and sudorific morass of subcontinental city life: for distant vistas. "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it [...] I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest [...]."[68]

The Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) was written in Tagore's Sabuj Patra period, which lasted from 1914 to 1917 and was named for another of his magazines.[31] These yarns are celebrated fare in Bengali fiction and are commonly used as plot fodder by Bengali film and theatre. The Ray film Charulata echoed the controversial Tagore novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi, which was made into another film, the little Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village zamindar. The boy relates his flight from home and his subsequent wanderings. Taking pity, the elder adopts him; he fixes the boy to marry his own daughter. The night before his wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. Strir Patra (The Wife's Letter) is an early treatise in female emancipation.[69] Mrinal is wife to a Bengali middle class man: prissy, preening, and patriarchal. Travelling alone she writes a letter, which comprehends the story. She details the pettiness of a life spent entreating his viraginous virility; she ultimately gives up married life, proclaiming, Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I shall live. Here, I live."

Haimanti assails Hindu arranged marriage and spotlights their often dismal domesticity, the hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a young woman, due to her insufferable sensitivity and free spirit, foredid herself. In the last passage Tagore blasts the reification of Sita's self-immolation attempt; she had meant to appease her consort Rama's doubts of her chastity. Musalmani Didi eyes recrudescent Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. The somewhat auto-referential Darpaharan describes a fey young man who harbours literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. In youth Tagore likely agreed with him. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as he ultimately acknowledges his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't."

Poetry

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Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen.[70] Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as those of the bard Lalon.[71][72] These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.[73][74] During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical voice of the moner manush, the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's "life force of his deep recesses", or meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the "living God within".[19] This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.[75][76]

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said 'Here art thou!'
The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!'

“
”
— Song XII, Gitanjali, 1913.[77]

Tagore reacted to the halfhearted uptake of modernist and realist techniques in Bengali literature by writing matching experimental works in the 1930s.[78] These include Africa and Camalia, among the better known of his latter poems. He occasionally wrote poems using Shadhu Bhasha, a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali; he later adopted a more popular dialect known as Cholti Bhasha. Other works include Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), Balaka (Wild Geese, a name redolent of migrating souls),[79] and Purobi. Sonar Tori's most famous poem, dealing with the fleeting endurance of life and achievement, goes by the same name; hauntingly it ends: Shunno nodir tire rohinu poŗi / Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori—"all I had achieved was carried off on the golden boat—only I was left behind." Gitanjali (গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection internationally, earning him his Nobel.[80]

 
 
Hungary, 1926.

Song VII of Gitanjali:

আমার এ গান ছেড়েছে তার
সকল অলংকার
তোমার কাছে রাখে নি আর
সাজের অহংকার।
অলংকার যে মাঝে প'ড়ে
মিলনেতে আড়াল করে,
তোমার কথা ঢাকে যে তার
মুখর ঝংকার।

তোমার কাছে খাটে না মোর
কবির গরব করা-
মহাকবি, তোমার পায়ে
দিতে চাই যে ধরা।
জীবন লয়ে যতন করি
যদি সরল বাঁশি গড়ি,
আপন সুরে দিবে ভরি
সকল ছিদ্র তার।

Amar e gan chheŗechhe tar shôkol ôlongkar
Tomar kachhe rakhe ni ar shajer ôhongkar
Ôlongkar je majhe pôŗe milônete aŗal kôre,
Tomar kôtha đhake je tar mukhôro jhôngkar.
Tomar kachhe khaţe na mor kobir gôrbo kôra,
Môhakobi, tomar paee dite chai je dhôra.
Jibon loe jôton kori jodi shôrol bãshi goŗi,
Apon shure dibe bhori sôkol chhidro tar.

Tagore's free-verse translation:

My song has put off her adornments.

She has no pride of dress and decoration.
Ornaments would mar our union; they would come
between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet.
Only let me make my life simple and straight,

like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.[81]


Theft of Nobel Prize

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On 25 March 2004, Tagore’s Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati University, along with several other of his personal belongings.[82] On 7 December 2004, the Swedish Academy decided to present two replicas of Tagore’s Nobel Prize, one made of gold and the other made of bronze, to the Visva Bharati University.[83]

Impact

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Thákurova ulice, Prague.
 
Tagore Room, Sardar Patel Memorial, Ahmedabad.

Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam, his birth anniversary, is celebrated by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.[84][85][86] Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from language and arts to history and politics. Amartya Sen scantly deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker".[86] Tagore's Bengali originals—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is canonised as one of his nation's greatest cultural treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has produced".[87]

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

“
”
— The Gardener, 1915.[88]

Tagore was renowned throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-founded Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution;[89] in Japan, he influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.[90] Tagore's works were widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech indologist Vincenc Lesný,[91] French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova,[92] former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit,[93] and others. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those of 1916–1917, were widely attended and wildly acclaimed. Some controversiesTemplate:Cref involving Tagore, possibly fictive, trashed his popularity and sales in Japan and North America after the late 1920s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside Bengal.[4] Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astonished Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.[94]

By way of translations, Tagore influenced Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral; Mexican writer Octavio Paz; and Spaniards José Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia Camprubí, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. In the period 1914–1922, the Jiménez-Camprubí pair produced twenty-two Spanish translations of Tagore's English corpus; they heavily revised The Crescent Moon and other key titles. In these years, Jiménez developed "naked poetry".[95] Ortega y Gasset wrote that "Tagore's wide appeal [owes to how] he speaks of longings for perfection that we all have [...] Tagore awakens a dormant sense of childish wonder, and he saturates the air with all kinds of enchanting promises for the reader, who [...] pays little attention to the deeper import of Oriental mysticism". Tagore's works circulated in free editions around 1920—alongside those of Plato, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, and Tolstoy.

Tagore was deemed over-rated by some. Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously." Several prominent Western admirers—including Pound and, to a lesser extent, even Yeats—criticised Tagore's work. Yeats, unimpressed with his English translations, railed against that "Damn Tagore [...] We got out three good books, Sturge Moore and I, and then, because he thought it more important to know English than to be a great poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and wrecked his reputation. Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English."[4][96] William Radice, who "English[ed]" his poems, asked: "What is their place in world literature?"[97] He saw him as "kind of counter-cultur[al]," bearing "a new kind of classicism" that would heal the "collapsed romantic confusion and chaos of the 20th [c]entury."[96][98] The translated Tagore was "almost nonsensical",[99] and subpar English offerings reduced his trans-national appeal:

[...] anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations (made with or without Yeats's help). Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent, from distortion. E.M. Forster noted [of] The Home and the World [that] "[t]he theme is so beautiful," but the charms have "vanished in translation," or perhaps "in an experiment that has not quite come off."

— Amartya Sen, "Tagore and His India".[4]

List of works

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The SNLTR hosts the 1415 BE edition of Tagore's complete Bengali works. Tagore Web also hosts an edition of Tagore's works, including annotated songs. Translations are found at Project Gutenberg and Wikisource. More sources are below.

Original

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Bengali

Poetry
* ভানুসিংহ ঠাকুরের পদাবলী Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākurer Paḍāvalī (Songs of Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākur) 1884
* মানসী Manasi (The Ideal One) 1890
* সোনার তরী Sonar Tari (The Golden Boat) 1894
* গীতাঞ্জলি Gitanjali (Song Offerings) 1910
* গীতিমাল্য Gitimalya (Wreath of Songs) 1914
* বলাকা Balaka (The Flight of Cranes) 1916
Dramas
* বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা Valmiki-Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki) 1881
* বিসর্জন Visarjan (The Sacrifice) 1890
* রাজা Raja (The King of the Dark Chamber) 1910
* ডাকঘর Dak Ghar (The Post Office) 1912
* অচলায়তন Achalayatan (The Immovable) 1912
* মুক্তধারা Muktadhara (The Waterfall) 1922
* রক্তকরবী Raktakaravi (Red Oleanders) 1926
Fiction
* নষ্টনীড় Nastanirh (The Broken Nest) 1901
* গোরা Gora (Fair-Faced) 1910
* ঘরে বাইরে Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) 1916
* যোগাযোগ Yogayog (Crosscurrents) 1929
Memoirs
* জীবনস্মৃতি Jivansmriti (My Reminiscences) 1912
* ছেলেবেলা Chhelebela (My Boyhood Days) 1940

English

* Thought Relics 1921[original 1]

Translated

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English

* Chitra 1914[text 1]
* Creative Unity 1922[text 2]
* The Crescent Moon 1913[text 3]
* The Cycle of Spring 1919[text 4]
* Fireflies 1928
* Fruit-Gathering 1916[text 5]
* The Fugitive 1921[text 6]
* The Gardener 1913[text 7]
* Gitanjali: Song Offerings 1912[text 8]
* Glimpses of Bengal 1991[text 9]
* The Home and the World 1985[text 10]
* The Hungry Stones 1916[text 11]
* I Won't Let you Go: Selected Poems 1991
* The King of the Dark Chamber 1914[text 12]
* Letters from an Expatriate in Europe 2012
* The Lover of God 2003
* Mashi 1918[text 13]
* My Boyhood Days 1943
* My Reminiscences 1991[text 14]
* Nationalism 1991
* The Post Office 1914[text 15]
* Sadhana: The Realisation of Life 1913[text 16]
* Selected Letters 1997
* Selected Poems 1994
* Selected Short Stories 1991
* Songs of Kabir 1915[text 17]
* The Spirit of Japan 1916[text 18]
* Stories from Tagore 1918[text 19]
* Stray Birds 1916[text 20]
* Vocation 1913[100]

Adaptations of novels and short stories in cinema

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Hindi

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Bengali

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See also

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Notes

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Gordon Square, London.
 
Gandhi Memorial Museum, Madurai.
  1. REDIRECCIÓN Plantilla:AFI ⓘ.

Citations

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  1. ^ "Tagore renounced his Knighthood in protest for Jalianwalla Bagh mass killing". The Times of India. Mumbai: Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 13 April 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
  2. ^ The Nobel Foundation.
  3. ^ O'Connell 2008.
  4. ^ a b c d Sen 1997.
  5. ^ a b Thompson 1926, pp. 27–28.
  6. ^ Tribute: ‘Tagore belongs to all South Asians’ – The Express Tribune
  7. ^ Sri Lanka to release stamp on Tagore – The Hindu
  8. ^ Datta 2002, p. 2.
  9. ^ Kripalani 2005a, pp. 6–8.
  10. ^ Kripalani 2005b, pp. 2–3.
  11. ^ Thompson 1926, p. 12.
  12. ^ Tagore 1984, p. xii.
  13. ^ Dasgupta 1993, p. 20.
  14. ^ "Visva-Bharti-Facts and Figures at a Glance".
  15. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 37.
  16. ^ The News Today 2011.
  17. ^ Roy 1977, pp. 28–30.
  18. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 8–9.
  19. ^ a b c Ghosh 2011.
  20. ^ Thompson 1926, p. 20.
  21. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 10.
  22. ^ Thompson 1926, pp. 21–24.
  23. ^ Das 2009.
  24. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 48–49.
  25. ^ a b Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 50.
  26. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 54–55.
  27. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 55.
  28. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 55–56.
  29. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, p. 91.
  30. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, p. 3.
  31. ^ a b c d Tagore & Chakravarty 1961, p. 45.
  32. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 265.
  33. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 46–47.
  34. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 47.
  35. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 47–48.
  36. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 35.
  37. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 53–54.
  38. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 359.
  39. ^ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Citation/CS1/Suggestions' not found.
  40. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 222.
  41. ^ Dyson 2001.
  42. ^ [[#CITEREFR._Siva_Kumar2011|R. Siva Kumar 2011]].
  43. ^ R. Siva Kumar 2012.
  44. ^ Commemoration of 150th Birth Anniversary of, Shri Rabindranath Tagore
  45. ^ "Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Kalender". Smb.museum. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  46. ^ Current Exhibitions Upcoming Exhibitions Past Exhibitions. "Rabindranath Tagore: The Last Harvest | New York". Asia Society. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  47. ^ "Exhibitions | Special Exhibitions". Museum.go.kr. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  48. ^ "Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Painter – Victoria and Albert Museum". Vam.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  49. ^ http://www.artic.edu/sites/default/files/press_pdf/Tagore.pdf
  50. ^ "Le Petit Palais – Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) – Paris.fr". Petitpalais.paris.fr. 11 March 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  51. ^ "Welcome to High Commission of India, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)". Indianhighcommission.com.my. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  52. ^ "McMichael Canadian Art Collection > The Last Harvest: Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore". Mcmichael.com. 15 July 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  53. ^ http://www.ngmaindia.gov.in/pdf/The-Last-Harvest-e-INVITE.pdf
  54. ^ Lago 1977, p. 15.
  55. ^ Tagore & Chakravarty 1961, p. 123.
  56. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 79–80.
  57. ^ Tagore, Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 21–23.
  58. ^ Tagore & Chakravarty 1961, pp. 123–124.
  59. ^ Lifton & Wiesel 1997, p. 321.
  60. ^ Lifton & Wiesel 1997, pp. 416–417.
  61. ^ Lifton & Wiesel 1997, pp. 318–321.
  62. ^ Lifton & Wiesel 1997, pp. 385–386.
  63. ^ Lifton & Wiesel 1997, p. 349.
  64. ^ Tagore & Mukerjea 1914, p. 68.
  65. ^ Tagore & Mukerjea 1914, pp. v–vi.
  66. ^ Mukherjee 2004.
  67. ^ Tagore & Chakravarty 1961, pp. 45–46.
  68. ^ Tagore & Chakravarty 1961, pp. 48–49.
  69. ^ Ray 2007, pp. 59–60.
  70. ^ Roy 1977, p. 201.
  71. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, p. 94.
  72. ^ Urban 2001, p. 18.
  73. ^ Urban 2001, pp. 6–7.
  74. ^ Urban 2001, p. 16.
  75. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, p. 95.
  76. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, p. 7.
  77. ^ Prasad & Sarkar 2008, p. 125.
  78. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 281.
  79. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 192.
  80. ^ Tagore, Stewart & Twichell 2003, pp. 95–96.
  81. ^ Tagore 1952, p. 5.
  82. ^ "Tagore's Nobel Prize stolen". The Times of India. The Times Group. 25 March 2004. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  83. ^ "Sweden to present India replicas of Tagore's Nobel". The Times of India. The Times Group. 7 December 2004. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  84. ^ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  85. ^ Chakrabarti 2001.
  86. ^ a b Hatcher 2001.
  87. ^ Kämpchen 2003.
  88. ^ Tagore & Ray 2007, p. 104.
  89. ^ Farrell 2000, p. 162.
  90. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 202.
  91. ^ Cameron 2006.
  92. ^ Sen 2006, p. 90.
  93. ^ Kinzer 2006.
  94. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, p. 255.
  95. ^ Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 254–255.
  96. ^ a b Bhattacharya 2001.
  97. ^ Tagore & Radice 2004, p. 26.
  98. ^ Tagore & Radice 2004, pp. 26–31.
  99. ^ Tagore & Radice 2004, pp. 18–19.
  100. ^ Vocation, Ratna Sagar, 2007, p. 64, ISBN 81-8332-175-5

References

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Primary

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Anthologies

  • Tagore, Rabindranath (1952), Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore, Macmillan Publishing (published January 1952), ISBN 978-0-02-615920-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore, Rabindranath (1984), Some Songs and Poems from Rabindranath Tagore, East-West Publications, ISBN 978-0-85692-055-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Fakrul Alam (editor); Radha Chakravarty (editor)., Rabindranath; Alam, F. (editor); Chakravarty, R. (editor) (2011), The Essential Tagore, Harvard University Press (published 15 April 2011), p. 323, ISBN 978-0-674-05790-6 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Amiya Chakravarty (editor)., Rabindranath; Chakravarty, A. (editor) (1961), A Tagore Reader, Beacon Press (published 1 June 1961), ISBN 978-0-8070-5971-5 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Krishna Dutta (editor); W. Andrew Robinson (editor)., Rabindranath; Dutta, K. (editor); Robinson, A. (editor) (1997), Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, Cambridge University Press (published 28 June 1997), ISBN 978-0-521-59018-1 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Krishna Dutta (editor); W. Andrew Robinson (editor)., Rabindranath; Dutta, K. (editor); Robinson, A. (editor) (1997), Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, Saint Martin's Press (published November 1997), ISBN 978-0-312-16973-2 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Mohit K. Ray (editor)., Rabindranath; Ray, M. K. (editor) (2007), The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 1, Atlantic Publishing (published 10 June 2007), ISBN 978-81-269-0664-2 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Originals

Translations

  • Tagore; Devabrata Mukerjea (translator)., Rabindranath; Mukerjea, D. (translator) (1914), The Post Office, London: Macmillan {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Palash Baran Pal (translator)., Rabindranath; Pal, P. B. (translator) (2004), "The Parrot's Tale", Parabaas (published 1 December 2004) {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; William Radice (translator)., Rabindranath; Radice, W. (translator) (1995), Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems (1st ed.), London: Penguin (published 1 June 1995), ISBN 978-0-14-018366-5 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; William Radice (translator)., Rabindranath; Radice, W (translator) (2004), Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems, Angel Books (published 28 December 2004), ISBN 978-0-946162-66-6 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Tagore; Tony K. Stewart (translator); Chase Twichell (translator)., Rabindranath; Stewart, T. K. (translator); Twichell, C. (translator) (2003), Rabindranath Tagore: Lover of God, Lannan Literary Selections, Copper Canyon Press (published 1 November 2003), ISBN 978-1-55659-196-9 {{citation}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Secondary

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Articles

Books

  • Ayyub, A. S. (1980), Tagore's Quest, Papyrus{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Chakraborty, S. K.; Bhattacharya, P. (2001), Leadership and Power: Ethical Explorations, Oxford University Press (published 16 August 2001), ISBN 978-0-19-565591-9{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Dasgupta, T. (1993), Social Thought of Rabindranath Tagore: A Historical Analysis, Abhinav Publications (published 1 October 1993), ISBN 978-81-7017-302-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Datta, P. K. (2002), Rabindranath Tagore's The Home and the World: A Critical Companion (1st ed.), Permanent Black (published 1 December 2002), ISBN 978-81-7824-046-6{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Dutta, K.; Robinson, A. (1995), Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, Saint Martin's Press (published December 1995), ISBN 978-0-312-14030-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Farrell, G. (2000), Indian Music and the West, Clarendon Paperbacks Series (3 ed.), Oxford University Press (published 9 March 2000), ISBN 978-0-19-816717-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Hogan, P. C. (2000), Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean, State University of New York Press (published 27 January 2000), ISBN 978-0-7914-4460-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Hogan, P. C.; Pandit, L. (2003), Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (published May 2003), ISBN 978-0-8386-3980-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Kripalani, K. (2005), Dwarkanath Tagore: A Forgotten Pioneer—A Life, National Book Trust of India, ISBN 978-81-237-3488-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Kripalani, K. (2005), Tagore—A Life, National Book Trust of India, ISBN 978-81-237-1959-7{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Lago, M. (1977), Rabindranath Tagore, Boston: Twayne Publishers (published April 1977), ISBN 978-0-8057-6242-6{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Lifton, B. J.; Wiesel, E. (1997), The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak, St. Martin's Griffin (published 15 April 1997), ISBN 978-0-312-15560-5{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Prasad, A. N.; Sarkar, B. (2008), Critical Response To Indian Poetry in English, Sarup and Sons, ISBN 978-81-7625-825-8{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Ray, M. K. (2007), Studies on Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 1, Atlantic (published 1 October 2007), ISBN 978-81-269-0308-5, retrieved 16 September 2011{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Roy, B. K. (1977), Rabindranath Tagore: The Man and His Poetry, Folcroft Library Editions, ISBN 978-0-8414-7330-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Scott, J. (2009), Bengali Flower: 50 Selected Poems from India and Bangladesh (published 4 July 2009), ISBN 978-1-4486-3931-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Sen, A. (2006), The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity (1st ed.), Picador (published 5 September 2006), ISBN 978-0-312-42602-6{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Sigi, R. (2006), Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore—A Biography, Diamond Books (published 1 October 2006), ISBN 978-81-89182-90-8{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Som, R. (2010), Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and His Song, Viking (published 26 May 2010), ISBN 978-0-670-08248-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Thompson, E. (1926), Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist, Pierides Press, ISBN 978-1-4067-8927-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Urban, H. B. (2001), Songs of Ecstasy: Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal, Oxford University Press (published 22 November 2001), ISBN 978-0-19-513901-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Daruwalla, K. N. (2007), Poetry Magic, Ratna Sagar P.Ltd. (published 2006), ISBN 81-8332-175-5{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Photographs

Videos

Other

Texts

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Original

  1. ^ Thought Relics, Internet Sacred Text Archive

Translated

  1. ^ Chitra at Project Gutenberg
  2. ^ Creative Unity at Project Gutenberg
  3. ^ The Crescent Moon at Project Gutenberg
  4. ^ The Cycle of Spring at Project Gutenberg
  5. ^ Fruit-Gathering at Project Gutenberg
  6. ^ The Fugitive at Project Gutenberg
  7. ^ The Gardener at Project Gutenberg
  8. ^ Gitanjali at Project Gutenberg
  9. ^ Glimpses of Bengal at Project Gutenberg
  10. ^ The Home and the World at Project Gutenberg
  11. ^ The Hungry Stones at Project Gutenberg
  12. ^ The King of the Dark Chamber at Project Gutenberg
  13. ^ Mashi at Project Gutenberg
  14. ^ My Reminiscences at Project Gutenberg
  15. ^ The Post Office at Project Gutenberg
  16. ^ Sadhana: The Realisation of Life at Project Gutenberg
  17. ^ Songs of Kabir at Project Gutenberg
  18. ^ The Spirit of Japan at Project Gutenberg
  19. ^ Stories from Tagore at Project Gutenberg
  20. ^ Stray Birds at Project Gutenberg

Further reading

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edit

Analyses

Audiobooks

Talks

Texts

Template:Rabindranath Tagore Template:Bengal Renaissance Template:Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1901-1925 Template:Kolkata topics

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