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= Rabindranath_Tagore =
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Introduction
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Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861
- 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer,
playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the
Bengal Renaissance.
* He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with
Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was
the author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry
of 'Gitanjali.' In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European to win a
Nobel Prize in any category, and also the first lyricist to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as
spiritual and mercurial; where his elegant prose and magical poetry
were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a fellow of the
Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was
known by the sobriquets Gurudeb, Kobiguru, and Biswokobi.
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan
district*
*
* and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At the age
of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the
pseudonym 'Bhānusiṃha' ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by
literary authorities as long-lost classics. By 1877 he graduated to
his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As
a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent critic of
nationalism, he denounced the British 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 also endures in his
founding of Visva-Bharati University.
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". The Sri Lankan
national anthem was also inspired by his work.*
*
* His song "Banglar Mati Banglar Jol" has been adopted as the state
anthem of West Bengal.
Family background
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The name Tagore is the anglicised transliteration of Thakur. The
original surname of the Tagores was Kushari. They were Pirali Brahmin
('Pirali' historically carried a stigmatized and pejorative
connotation) who originally belonged to a village named 'Kush' in the
district named Burdwan in West Bengal. The biographer of Rabindranath
Tagore, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya wrote in the first volume of his
book 'Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya Prabeshak' that
Early life: 1861–1878
=======================
The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed "Rabi") was
born on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta, the son of
Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905) and Sarada Devi (1830-1875).
Tagore was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early
childhood, and his father travelled widely. The Tagore family was at
the forefront of the Bengal renaissance. They hosted the publication
of literary magazines; theatre and recitals of Bengali and Western
classical music featured there regularly. Tagore's father invited
several professional Dhrupad musicians to stay in the house and teach
Indian classical music to the children. Tagore's oldest brother
Dwijendranath was a 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. His sister
Swarnakumari became a novelist. Jyotirindranath's wife Kadambari Devi,
slightly older than Tagore, was a dear friend and powerful influence.
Her abrupt suicide in 1884, soon after he married, left him profoundly
distraught for years.
Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the
manor or nearby Bolpur and Panihati, which the family visited. 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. 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.
After his 'upanayan' (coming-of-age rite) at age eleven, Tagore and
his father left Calcutta in February 1873 to tour India for several
months, visiting his father's Santiniketan estate and Amritsar before
reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There Tagore read
biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit,
and examined the classical poetry of Kālidāsa. During his 1-month stay
at Amritsar in 1873 he was greatly influenced by melodious gurbani and
Nanak bani being sung at Golden Temple, for which both father and son
were regular visitors. He writes in his 'My Reminiscences' (1912): He
wrote 6 poems relating to Sikhism and several articles in Bengali
children's magazine about Sikhism.
* Poems on Guru Gobind Singh: নিষ্ফল উপহার Nishfal-upahaar (1888,
translated as "Futile Gift"), গুরু গোবিন্দ Guru Gobinda (1899) and শেষ
শিক্ষা Shesh Shiksha (1899, translated as "Last Teachings")
* Poem on Banda Bahadur: বন্দী বীর Bandi-bir (The Prisoner Warrior,
written in 1888 or 1898)
* Poem on Bhai Torusingh: প্রার্থনাতীত দান (prarthonatit dan -
Unsolicited gift) written in 1888 or 1898
* Poem on Nehal Singh: নীহাল সিংহ (Nihal Singh) written in 1935.
Tagore returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of major works by
1877, one of them a long poem in the Maithili style of Vidyapati. As a
joke, he claimed that these were the lost works of newly discovered
17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet Bhānusiṃha. Regional experts accepted them
as the lost works of the fictitious poet. He debuted in the
short-story genre in Bengali with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman").
Published in the same year, 'Sandhya Sangit' (1882) includes the poem
"Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").
Shilaidaha: 1878–1901
=======================
Because Debendranath wanted his son to become a barrister, Tagore
enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878.
He stayed for several months at a house that the Tagore family owned
near Brighton and Hove, in Medina Villas; in 1877 his nephew and
niece--Suren and Indira Devi, the children of Tagore's brother
Satyendranath--were sent together with their mother, Tagore's
sister-in-law, to live with him. He briefly read law at University
College London, but again left, opting instead for independent study
of Shakespeare's plays 'Coriolanus', and 'Antony and Cleopatra and the
Religio Medici of Thomas Browne.' Lively English, Irish, and Scottish
folk tunes impressed Tagore, whose own tradition of Nidhubabu-authored
'kirtans' and 'tappas' and Brahmo hymnody was subdued. In 1880, he
returned to Bengal degree-less, resolving to reconcile European
novelty with Brahmo traditions, taking the best from each. After
returning to Bengal, Tagore regularly published poems, stories, and
novels. These had a profound impact within Bengal itself but received
little national attention. In 1883, he married 10-year-old Mrinalini
Devi, born Bhabatarini, 1873-1902 (this was a common practice at the
time). They had five children, two of whom died in childhood.
In 1890, Tagore began managing his vast ancestral estates in
Shelaidaha (today a region of Bangladesh); he was joined there by his
wife and children in 1898. Tagore released his 'Manasi' poems (1890),
among his best-known work. As 'Zamindar Babu', Tagore criss-crossed
the Padma River in command of the 'Padma', the luxurious family barge
(also known as "budgerow"). He collected mostly token rents and
blessed villagers, who in turn honoured him with
banquets--occasionally of dried rice and sour milk. He met Gagan
Harkara, through whom he became familiar with Baul Lalon Shah, whose
folk songs greatly influenced Tagore. Tagore worked to popularise
Lalon's songs. The period 1891-1895, Tagore's 'Sadhana' period, named
after one of his magazines, was his most productive; in these years he
wrote more than half the stories of the three-volume, 84-story
'Galpaguchchha'. Its ironic and grave tales examined the voluptuous
poverty of an idealised rural Bengal.
Santiniketan: 1901–1932
=========================
In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a
marble-floored prayer hall--'The Mandir'--an experimental school,
groves of trees, gardens, a library. There his wife and two of his
children died. His father died in 1905. He received monthly payments
as part of his inheritance and income from the Maharaja of Tripura,
sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a
derisory 2,000 rupees in book royalties. He gained Bengali and foreign
readers alike; he published 'Naivedya' (1901) and 'Kheya' (1906) and
translated poems into free verse.
In 1912, Tagore translated his 1910 work 'Gitanjali' into English.
While on a trip to London, he shared these poems with admirers,
including William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. London's India Society
published the work in a limited edition, and the American magazine
'Poetry' published a selection from 'Gitanjali'. In November 1913,
Tagore learned he had won that year's Nobel Prize in Literature: the
Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic--and for
Westerners--accessible nature of a small body of his translated
material focused on the 1912 'Gitanjali: Song Offerings'. He was
awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915 Birthday Honours,
but Tagore renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Renouncing the knighthood, Tagore wrote in a letter addressed to Lord
Chelmsford, the then British Viceroy of India, "The disproportionate
severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and
the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without
parallel in the history of civilised governments...The time has come
when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous
context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all
special distinctions, by the side of my countrymen."
In 1919, he was invited by the president and chairman of
Anjuman-e-Islamia, Syed Abdul Majid to visit Sylhet for the first
time. The event attracted over 5000 people.
In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the
"Institute for Rural Reconstruction", later renamed Shriniketan or
"Abode of Welfare", in Surul, a village near the 'ashram'. With it,
Tagore sought to moderate Gandhi's 'Swaraj' protests, which he
occasionally blamed for British India's perceived mental - and thus
ultimately colonial - decline. He sought aid from donors, officials,
and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from the shackles of
helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge". In the early
1930s, he targeted ambient "abnormal caste consciousness" and
untouchability. He lectured against these, he penned Dalit heroes for
his poems and his dramas, and he campaigned--successfully--to open
Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits.
Twilight years: 1932–1941
===========================
Dutta and Robinson describe this phase of Tagore's life as being one
of a "peripatetic litterateur". It affirmed his opinion that human
divisions were shallow. During a May 1932 visit to a Bedouin
encampment in the Iraqi desert, the tribal chief told him that "Our
Prophet has said that a true Muslim is he by whose words and deeds not
the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm ..." Tagore
confided in his diary: "I was startled into recognizing in his words
the voice of essential humanity." To the end, Tagore scrutinized
orthodoxy--and in 1934, he struck. That year, an earthquake hit Bihar
and killed thousands. Gandhi hailed it as seismic 'karma', as divine
retribution avenging the oppression of Dalits. Tagore rebuked him for
his seemingly ignominious implications. He mourned the perennial
poverty of Calcutta and the socioeconomic decline of Bengal and
detailed this newly plebeian aesthetics in an unrhymed hundred-line
poem whose technique of searing double-vision foreshadowed Satyajit
Ray's film . Fifteen new volumes appeared, among them prose-poem works
'Punashcha' (1932), 'Shes Saptak' (1935), and 'Patraput' (1936).
Experimentation continued in his prose-songs and dance-dramas--
'Chitra' (1914), 'Shyama' (1939), and 'Chandalika' (1938)-- and in his
novels-- 'Dui Bon' (1933), 'Malancha' (1934), and 'Char Adhyay'
(1934).
Tagore's remit expanded to science in his last years, as hinted in
'Visva-Parichay', a 1937 collection of essays. His respect for
scientific laws and his exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy
informed his poetry, which exhibited extensive naturalism and
verisimilitude. He wove the 'process' of science, the narratives of
scientists, into stories in 'Se' (1937), 'Tin Sangi' (1940), and
'Galpasalpa' (1941). His last five years were marked by chronic pain
and two long periods of illness. These began when Tagore lost
consciousness in late 1937; he remained comatose and near death for a
time. This was followed in late 1940 by a similar spell, from which he
never recovered. Poetry from these valetudinary years is among his
finest. A period of prolonged agony ended with Tagore's death on 7
August 1941, aged 80. He was in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko
mansion in which he grew up. The date is still mourned. A. K. Sen,
brother of the first chief election commissioner, received dictation
from Tagore on 30 July 1941, a day before a scheduled operation: his
last poem.
Travels
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Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries
on five continents. In 1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works
to England, where they gained attention from missionary and Gandhi
protégé Charles F. Andrews, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra
Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others.
Yeats wrote the preface to the English translation of 'Gitanjali';
Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan. In November 1912 Tagore began
touring the United States and the United Kingdom, staying in
Butterton, Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen friends. From May
1916 until April 1917, he lectured in Japan and the United States. He
denounced nationalism. His essay "Nationalism in India" was scorned
and praised; it was admired by Romain Rolland and other pacifists.
Shortly after returning home, the 63-year-old Tagore accepted an
invitation from the Peruvian government. He travelled to Mexico. Each
government pledged 100,000 to his school to commemorate the visits. A
week after his 6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires, an ill Tagore
shifted to the Villa Miralrío at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He
left for home in January 1925. In May 1926 Tagore reached Naples; the
next day he met Mussolini in Rome. Their warm rapport ended when
Tagore pronounced upon 'Il Duce's' fascist finesse. He had earlier
enthused: "[w]without any doubt he is a great personality. There is
such a massive vigor in that head that it reminds one of Michael
Angelo's chisel." A "fire-bath" of fascism was to have educed "the
immortal soul of Italy ... clothed in quenchless light".
On 1 November 1926 Tagore arrived in Hungary and spent some time on
the shore of Lake Balaton in the city of Balatonfüred, recovering from
heart problems at a sanitarium. He planted a tree, and a bust statue
was placed there in 1956 (a gift from the Indian government, the work
of Rasithan Kashar, replaced by a newly gifted statue in 2005) and the
lakeside promenade still bears his name since 1957.
On 14 July 1927, Tagore and two companions began a four-month tour of
Southeast Asia. They visited Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca,
Penang, Siam, and Singapore. The resultant travelogues compose 'Jatri'
(1929). In early 1930 he left Bengal for a nearly year-long tour of
Europe and the United States. Upon returning to Britain--and as his
paintings were exhibited in Paris and London--he lodged at a
Birmingham Quaker settlement. He wrote his Oxford Hibbert Lectures and
spoke at the annual London Quaker meet. There, addressing relations
between the British and the Indians - a topic he would tackle
repeatedly over the next two years - Tagore spoke of a "dark chasm of
aloofness". He visited Aga Khan III, stayed at Dartington Hall, toured
Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930,
then went on into the Soviet Union. In April 1932 Tagore, intrigued by
the Persian mystic Hafez, was hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi. In his
other travels, Tagore interacted with Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein,
Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and
Romain Rolland. Visits to Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Sri Lanka (in
1933) composed Tagore's final foreign tour, and his dislike of
communalism and nationalism only deepened. Vice-president of India M.
Hamid Ansari has said that Rabindranath Tagore heralded the cultural
rapprochement between communities, societies and nations much before
it became the liberal norm of conduct. Tagore was a man ahead of his
time. He wrote in 1932, while on a visit to Iran, that "each country
of Asia will solve its own historical problems according to its
strength, nature and needs, but the lamp they will each carry on their
path to progress will converge to illuminate the common ray of
knowledge."
Works
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Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short
stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's
prose, his short stories are perhaps the most highly regarded; he is
indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the
genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic,
and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from the lives of
common people. Tagore's non-fiction grappled with history,
linguistics, and spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His
travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes,
including 'Europe Jatrir Patro' ('Letters from Europe') and 'Manusher
Dhormo' ('The Religion of Man'). His brief chat with Einstein, "Note
on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix to the latter.
On the occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday, an anthology (titled
'Kalanukromik Rabindra Rachanabali') of the total body of his works is
currently being published in Bengali in chronological order. This
includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty volumes. In
2011, Harvard University Press collaborated with Visva-Bharati
University to publish 'The Essential Tagore', the largest anthology of
Tagore's works available in English; it was edited by Fakrul Alam and
Radha Chakravarthy and marks the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth.
Drama
=======
Tagore's experiences with drama began when he was sixteen, with his
brother Jyotirindranath. He wrote his first original dramatic piece
when he was twenty - 'Valmiki Pratibha' which was shown at the
Tagore's mansion. Tagore stated that his works sought to articulate
"the play of feeling and not of action". In 1890 he wrote 'Visarjan'
(an adaptation of his novella 'Rajarshi'), which has been regarded as
his finest drama. In the original Bengali language, such works
included intricate subplots and extended monologues. Later, Tagore's
dramas used more philosophical and allegorical themes. The play 'Dak
Ghar' ('The Post Office'; 1912), 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". Another is Tagore's 'Chandalika' ('Untouchable Girl'), which
was modelled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda, the
Gautama Buddha's disciple, asks a tribal girl for water. In
'Raktakarabi' ("Red" or "Blood Oleanders") is an allegorical struggle
against a kleptocrat king who rules over the residents of 'Yaksha
puri'.
'Chitrangada', 'Chandalika', and 'Shyama' are other key plays that
have dance-drama adaptations, which together are known as 'Rabindra
Nritya Natya'.
Short stories
===============
Tagore began his career in short stories in 1877--when he was only
sixteen--with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman"). With this, Tagore
effectively invented the Bengali-language short story genre. The four
years from 1891 to 1895 are known as Tagore's "Sadhana" period (named
for one of Tagore's magazines). This period was among Tagore's most
fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the
three-volume 'Galpaguchchha', which itself is a collection of
eighty-four stories. Such stories usually showcase Tagore's
reflections upon his surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas,
and on interesting mind puzzles (which Tagore was fond of testing his
intellect with). Tagore typically associated his earliest stories
(such as those of the "'Sadhana'" period) with an exuberance of
vitality and spontaneity; these characteristics were intimately
connected with Tagore's life in the common villages of, among others,
Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida while managing the Tagore family's
vast landholdings. There, he beheld the lives of India's poor and
common people; Tagore thereby took to examining their lives with a
penetrative depth and feeling that was singular in Indian literature
up to that point. In particular, such stories as "Kabuliwala" ("The
Fruitseller from Kabul", published in 1892), "Kshudita Pashan" ("The
Hungry Stones") (August 1895), and "Atithi" ("The Runaway", 1895)
typified this analytic focus on the downtrodden. Many of the other
'Galpaguchchha' stories were written in Tagore's 'Sabuj Patra' period
from 1914 to 1917, also named after one of the magazines that Tagore
edited and heavily contributed to.
Novels
========
Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them 'Nastanirh'
(1901), 'Noukadubi' (1906), 'Chaturanga' (1916) and 'Char Adhyay'
(1934).
In 'Chokher Bali' (1902-1903), 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.
'Ghare Baire' ('The Home and the World', 1916), through the lens of
the idealistic 'zamindar' protagonist Nikhil, excoriates rising Indian
nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the 'Swadeshi' movement;
a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged from
a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and
Nikhil's likely mortal--wounding.
His longest novel, 'Gora' (1907-1910), raises controversial questions
regarding the Indian identity. As with 'Ghare Baire', matters of
self-identity ('jāti'), personal freedom, and religion are developed
in the context of a family story and love triangle. In it, an Irish
boy orphaned in the Sepoy Mutiny is raised by Hindus as the titular
'gora'--"whitey". Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu
religious backsliders out of love for the indigenous Indians and
solidarity with them against his hegemon-compatriots. He falls for a
Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost
past and cease his nativist zeal. As a "true dialectic" advancing
"arguments for and against strict traditionalism", it tackles the
colonial conundrum by "portray[ing] the value of all positions within
a particular frame [...] not only syncretism, not only liberal
orthodoxy but the extremist reactionary traditionalism he defends by
an appeal to what humans share." Among these, Tagore highlights
"identity [...] conceived of as 'dharma.'"
In 'Jogajog' ('Yogayog', 'Relationships', 1929), 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 roué of
a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; 'pathos' depicts the
plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and
family honor; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed
gentry. 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 Kabita' (1929) -- 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
Satyajit Ray for 'Charulata' (based on 'Nastanirh') in 1964 and 'Ghare
Baire' in 1984, and by several others filmmakers such as Satu Sen for
Chokher Bali already in 1938, when Tagore was still alive.
Poetry
========
Internationally, 'Gitanjali' () is Tagore's best-known collection of
poetry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in
1913. Tagore was the first non-European to receive a Nobel Prize in
Literature and the second non-European to receive a Nobel Prize after
Theodore Roosevelt.
Besides 'Gitanjali', other notable works include 'Manasi', 'Sonar
Tori' ("Golden Boat"), 'Balaka' ("Wild Geese" - the title being a
metaphor for migrating souls)
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. 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. These, rediscovered and re-popularized by Tagore,
resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity
and rebellion against bourgeois 'bhadralok' religious and social
orthodoxy. 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". 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 seventy years.
Later, with the development of new poetic ideas in Bengal - many
originating from younger poets seeking to break with Tagore's style -
Tagore absorbed new poetic concepts, which allowed him to further
develop a unique identity. Examples of this include 'Africa' and
'Camalia', which are among the better-known of his latter poems.
Songs (Rabindra Sangeet)
==========================
Tagore was a prolific composer, with around 2,230 songs to his credit.
His songs are known as 'rabindrasangit' ("Tagore Song"), which merges
fluidly into his literature, most of which--poems or parts of novels,
stories, or plays alike--were lyricized. Influenced by the 'thumri'
style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion,
ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to
quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal color of classical
'ragas' to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody
and rhythm faithfully, others newly blended elements of different
'ragas'. Yet about nine-tenths of his work was not 'bhanga gaan', the
body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western,
Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavors "external" to
Tagore's own ancestral culture.
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: cutting off the
Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to
avert a regional bloodbath. Tagore saw the partition as a cunning plan
to stop the independence movement, and he aimed to rekindle Bengali
unity and tar communalism. 'Jana Gana Mana' was written in
'shadhu-bhasha', a Sanskritised form of Bengali, and is the first of
five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn 'Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata' that Tagore
composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the
Indian National Congress, and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent
Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem.
Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work.
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". Tagore influenced 'sitar' maestro Vilayat Khan and 'sarodiyas'
Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan.
Art works
===========
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--were held
throughout Europe. He was likely red, green color blind, resulting in
works that exhibited strange color schemes and off-beat aesthetics.
Tagore was influenced by numerous styles, including scrimshaw by the
Malanggan people of northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Haida
carvings from the Pacific Northwest region of North America, and
woodcuts by the German Max Pechstein. His artist's eye for handwriting
was 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.
India's National Gallery of Modern Art lists 102 works by Tagore in
its collections.
In 1937, Tagore's paintings were removed from Berlin's baroque Crown
Prince Palace by the Nazi regime and five were included in the
inventory of "degenerate art" compiled by the Nazis in 1941-1942.
Politics
======================================================================
Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, and
these views were first revealed in 'Manast', which was mostly composed
in his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu-German Conspiracy
Trial and latter accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarites and
stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi
Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the
Swadeshi movement; he rebuked it in 'The Cult of the Charkha', an
acrid 1925 essay. According to Amartya Sen, Tagore rebelled against
strongly nationalist forms of the independence movement, and he wanted
to assert India's right to be independent without denying the
importance of what India could learn from abroad. He urged the masses
to avoid victimology and instead seek self-help and education, and he
saw the presence of British administration as a "political symptom of
our social disease". He maintained that, even for those at the
extremes of poverty, "there can be no question of blind revolution";
preferable to it was a "steady and purposeful education".
Such views enraged many. He escaped assassination--and only
narrowly--by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco
hotel in late 1916; the plot failed when his would-be assassins fell
into an argument. Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian independence
movement. Two of Tagore's more politically charged compositions,
"Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo" ("Where the Mind is Without Fear") and "Ekla
Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone"), gained mass
appeal, with the latter favored by Gandhi. Though somewhat critical of
Gandhian activism, Tagore was key in resolving a Gandhi-Ambedkar
dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables, thereby
mooting at least one of Gandhi's fasts "unto death".
Repudiation of knighthood
===========================
Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre in 1919. In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord
Chelmsford, he wrote
Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati
======================================================================
Tagore despised rote classroom schooling, as shown in his short story,
"The Parrot's Training", wherein a bird is caged and force-fed
textbook pages--to death. Visiting Santa Barbara in 1917, Tagore
conceived a new type of university: he sought to "make Santiniketan
the connecting thread between India and the world [and] a world center
for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and
geography." The school, which he named Visva-Bharati, had its
foundation stone laid on 24 December 1918 and was inaugurated
precisely three years later. Tagore employed a 'brahmacharya' system:
'gurus' gave pupils personal guidance--emotional, intellectual, and
spiritual. Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school,
he contributed his Nobel Prize monies, and his duties as
steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught
classes; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students' textbooks. He
fundraised widely for the school in Europe and the United States
between 1919 and 1921.
Theft of Nobel Prize
======================
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
belongings. 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. It inspired the
fictional film 'Nobel Chor'. In 2016, a baul singer named Pradip
Bauri, accused of sheltering the thieves, was arrested.
Impact and legacy
======================================================================
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 (US); 'Rabindra Path
Parikrama' walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Santiniketan; and
recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.
Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from language and arts to
history and politics. Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a
"deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker". Tagore's
Bengali originals--the 1939 'Rabīndra Rachanāvalī'--is canonized as
one of his nation's greatest cultural treasures, and he was roped into
a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has produced".
Tagore was renowned throughout much of Europe, North America, and East
Asia. He co-founded Dartington Hall School, a progressive
coeducational institution; in Japan, he influenced such figures as
Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. In colonial Vietnam Tagore was a
guide for the restless spirit of the radical writer and publicist
Nguyen An Ninh Tagore's works were widely translated into English,
Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech
Indologist Vincenc Lesný, French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian
poet Anna Akhmatova, former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, and
others. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits,
particularly those of 1916-1917, were widely attended and wildly
acclaimed. Some controversies 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.
Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astonished
Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.
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". 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--criticized 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 see and 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." William
Radice, who "English[ed]" his poems, asked: "What is their place in
world literature?" 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 century." The translated Tagore was
"almost nonsensical", and subpar English offerings reduced his
trans-national appeal:
In October 1961 a blue plaque to Tagore was unveiled at Number 3,
Villas on the Heath in Hampstead, to mark Tagore's visit in 1912 and
to mark the centenary of Tagore's birth. The address was Tagore's home
for a few months in the summer of 1912, during his third visit to
England. The lodgings were found for him by the artist and writer Sir
William Rothenstein, who lived nearby at 11 Oak Hill Park.
Museums
======================================================================
* Rabindra Bharati Museum, at Jorasanko Thakur Bari, Kolkata, India
* Tagore Memorial Museum, at Shilaidaha Kuthibadi, Shilaidaha,
Bangladesh
* Rabindra Memorial Museum at Shahzadpur Kachharibari, Shahzadpur,
Bangladesh
* Rabindra Bhavan Museum, in Santiniketan, India
* Rabindra Museum, in Mungpoo, near Kalimpong, India
* Patisar Rabindra Kacharibari, Patisar, Atrai, Naogaon, Bangladesh
* Pithavoge Rabindra Memorial Complex, Pithavoge, Rupsha, Khulna,
Bangladesh
* Rabindra Complex, Dakkhindihi village, Phultala Upazila, Khulna,
Bangladesh
Jorasanko Thakur Bari (Bengali: 'House of the Thakurs'; anglicised to
'Tagore') in Jorasanko, north of Kolkata, is the ancestral home of the
Tagore family. It is currently located on the Rabindra Bharati
University campus at 6/4 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane Jorasanko, Kolkata
700007. It is the house in which Tagore was born, and also the place
where he spent most of his childhood and where he died on 7 August
1941.
List of works
======================================================================
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
==========
Original poetry in Bengali
Bengali title !! Transliterated title !! Translated title !! Year
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
Original dramas in Bengali
Bengali title !! Transliterated title !! Translated title !! Year
বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা 'Valmiki-Pratibha' 'The Genius of Valmiki' 1881
কালমৃগয়া 'Kal-Mrigaya' 'The Fatal Hunt' 1882
মায়ার খেলা 'Mayar Khela' 'The Play of Illusions' 1888
বিসর্জন 'Visarjan' 'The Sacrifice' 1890
চিত্রাঙ্গদা 'Chitrangada' 'Chitrangada' 1892
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 'Raktakarabi' 'Red Oleanders' 1926
চণ্ডালিকা 'Chandalika' 'The Untouchable Girl' 1933
Original fiction in Bengali
Bengali title !! Transliterated title !! Translated title !! Year
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
Original nonfiction in Bengali
Bengali title !! Transliterated title !! Translated title !! Year
[
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%A6%9C%E0%A7%80%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%A8-%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%83%E0%A6%A4%E0%A6%BF_-_%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%80%E0%A6%A8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A5_%E0%A6%A0%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%81%E0%A6%B0.pdf
জীবনস্মৃতি] 'Jivansmriti' 'My Reminiscences' 1912
ছেলেবেলা 'Chhelebela' 'My Boyhood Days' 1940
Works in English
Title !! Year
'Thought Relics' 1921
Translated
============
English translations
Year Work
|1914 'Chitra'
|1922 |'Creative Unity'
|1913 |'The Crescent Moon'
|1917 'The Cycle of Spring'
|1928 |'Fireflies'
|1916 |'Fruit-Gathering'
|1916 |'The Fugitive'
|1913 |'The Gardener'
|1912 |'Gitanjali: Song Offerings'
|1920 |'Glimpses of Bengal'
|1921 |'The Home and the World'
|1916 |'The Hungry Stones'
|1991 |'I Won't Let you Go: Selected Poems'
|1914 |'The King of the Dark Chamber'
|2012 |'Letters from an Expatriate in Europe'
|2003 |'The Lover of God'
|1918 |'Mashi'
|1928 |'My Boyhood Days'
|1917 |'My Reminiscences'
|1917 |'Nationalism'
|1914 |'The Post Office'
|1913 |'Sadhana: The Realisation of Life'
|1997 |'Selected Letters'
|1994 |'Selected Poems'
|1991 |'Selected Short Stories'
|1915 |'Songs of Kabir'
|1916 |'The Spirit of Japan'
|1918 |'Stories from Tagore'
|1916 |'Stray Birds'
|1913 |'Vocation'
|1921 |'The Wreck'
In popular culture
======================================================================
* 'Rabindranath Tagore' is a 1961 Indian documentary film written and
directed by Satyajit Ray, released during the birth centenary of
Tagore. It was produced by the Government of India's Films Division.
* Serbian composer Darinka Simic-Mitrovic used Tagore's text for her
song cycle 'Gradinar' in 1962.
* In 1969, American composer E. Anne Schwerdtfeger was commissioned to
compose 'Two Pieces', a work for women's chorus based on text by
Tagore.
* In Sukanta Roy's Bengali film 'Chhelebela' (2002) Jisshu Sengupta
portrayed Tagore.
* In Bandana Mukhopadhyay's Bengali film 'Chirosakha He' (2007)
Sayandip Bhattacharya played Tagore.
* In Rituparno Ghosh's Bengali documentary film 'Jeevan Smriti' (2011)
Samadarshi Dutta played Tagore.
* In Suman Ghosh's Bengali film 'Kadambari' (2015) Parambrata
Chatterjee portrayed Tagore.
See also
======================================================================
* Rabindra Jayanti
* Works of Rabindranath Tagore
* List of works by Rabindranath Tagore
* List of things named after Rabindranath Tagore
* Adaptations of works of Rabindranath Tagore in film and television
* Timeline of Rabindranath Tagore
* Tagore family
* Kazi Nazrul Islam
* Rabindra Puraskar
* 'An Artist in Life' - biography by Niharranjan Ray
* Taptapadi
* Music of Bengal
* List of Indian writers
References
======================================================================
Notes
Citations
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Anthologies
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Texts
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Original
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External links
======================================================================
*
*
*
[
https://schoolofwisdom.com/about/rabindranath-tagore-one-of-the-school-of-wisdoms-most-notable-teachers/
School of Wisdom]
*
Analyses
* [
http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2013/04/rabindranath-tagore/ Ezra
Pound: "Rabindranath Tagore"], 'The Fortnightly Review', March 1913
* [
https://library.missouri.edu/specialcollections/collections/show/36
'Mary Lago Collection'], University of Missouri
Audiobooks
*
Texts
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* [
http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/index.php Bichitra: Online Tagore
Variorum]
*
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Talks
* [
http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/entity/rabindranath-tagore South
Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)]
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
