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Rabindranath Tagore
রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর Robindro-nath Thakur |
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Born
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7 May 1861
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India |
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Died
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7 August 1941
(aged 80)
Calcutta, Bengal Province, British India |
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Pen name
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Gurudev/Bhanu
Shingho
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Occupation
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Poet, writer, lecturer
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Language
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Bengali
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Nationality
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Indian
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Genres
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Poet, novelist, short-story
writer, essayist, playwright, thespian, educationist, spiritualist, philosopher, internationalist, painter, cultural relativist, orator, composer, song-writer, singer, artist
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Subjects
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Literature
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Literary movement
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Bengal Renaissance
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Notable work(s)
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Gitanjali
Gora Ghare-Baire |
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Notable award(s)
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Nobel Prize in
Literature
1913 |
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Spouse(s)
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Mrinalini Devi
(1873–1901)
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Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর , pronounced Hindi: रबिन्द्रनाथ ठाकुर May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev,
was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali with its "profoundly sensitive, fresh
and beautiful verse", he
was the first non-European and the only Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His poetry in translation was viewed as
spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a
prophet-like aura in the west. His "elegant prose and magical poetry"
still remain largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal.
A Pirali
Brahmin from Kolkata, Tagore had been writing poetry since he was
eight years old. At age 16,
he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho
("Sun Lion") and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877.
Tagore achieved further note when he denounced the British
Raj and supported Indian
independence. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he
founded, Visva-Bharati University.
Tagore modernised
Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs,
dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. 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 for their lyricism, colloquialism,
naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only litterateur who
penned anthems of two countries – Jana
Gana Mana, the Indian national
anthem and Amar Shonar Bangla, the Bangladeshi national anthem.
The youngest of 13
surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkata of parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875). His ancestral home was
in Pithabhog village under Rupsha Upazila of Khulna, then part of British India; now Bangladesh.
Tagore family patriarchs were the Brahmo founding fathers of the Adi
Dharm faith. He was mostly
raised by servants, as his mother had died in his early childhood; his father
travelled extensively. Tagore largely declined classroom schooling, preferring
to roam the mansion or nearby idylls: Bolpur, Panihati, and others. Upon his upanayan initiation at age eleven, Tagore left
Calcutta on 14 February 1873 to tour India with his father for several months.
They visited his father's Santiniketan estate and stopped in Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of
Dalhousie.
There, young
"Rabi" read biographies and was home-educated in history, astronomy,
modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the poetry of Kālidāsa. He completed major works in 1877, one long
poem of the Maithili style pioneered by Vidyapati. Published pseudonymously, experts accepted
them as the lost works of Bhānusiṃha, a newly discovered 17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet. He wrote "Bhikharini" (1877;
"The Beggar Woman"—the Bengali language's first short story) and Sandhya Sangit (1882)—including the
famous poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the
Waterfall").
A prospective
barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East
Sussex, England in 1878. He first stayed for some 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, the children of Tagore's brother Satyendranath—were sent together with their mother (Tagore's sister-in-law)
to live with him. He read law at University College London, but left school to explore Shakespeare and
more: Religio Medici, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra; he returned
degreeless to Bengal in 1880. Nevertheless, this exposure to English culture
and language would later percolate into his earlier acquaintance with Bengali
musical tradition, allowing him to create new modes of music, poetry, and
drama.
Tagore neither fully
embraced English strictures nor his family's traditionally strict Hindu
religious observances in either his life or in his art, choosing instead to
pick the best from both realms of experience.
In 1890, Tagore began
managing his family's vast estates in Shilaidaha, a region now in Bangladesh; he was joined by his wife and children in
1898. In 1890, Tagore released his Manasi poems, among his best-known
work. As "Zamindar Babu", Tagore criss-crossed the holdings while living out
of the family's luxurious barge,
the Padma, to collect (mostly token) rents and bless villagers, who held
feasts in his honour. These years—1891–1895: Tagore's Sadhana period,
after one of Tagore's magazines—were his most fecund. During this period, he wrote
more than half the stories of the three-volume, 84-story Galpaguchchha.
With irony and gravity, they depicted a wide range of Bengali lifestyles,
particularly village life.
Life at St Xavier's Kolkata
Rabindranath Tagore
was first admitted to Oriental
Seminary School and
subsequently got himself in Normal School and Bengal Academy. His family then
as a final attempt to lure him into conventional education got Rabindranath
Tagore admitted in St. Xavier's Collegiate
School Kolkata where he had
a much better experience with the teachers and his fellow students.
I shall always retain
one memory of St. Xavier's, the memory of its teachers.
— remembers the great Rabindranath Tagore in
his book "My Reminiscences"
In his book he
mentions about his relationship with Father De Peneranda, a Spanish Jesuit
Professor at that time.
We had half an hour for writing our
copy-books, a time when, pen in hand, I became absent-minded and my thoughts
wandered hither and thither. One day Father De Peneranda was in charge of this
class. He was pacing up and down behind our benches. He must have noticed more
than once that my pen was not moving. All of a sudden he stopped behind my
seat. Bending over me he gently laid his hand on my shoulder and tenderly
inquired: ‘Are you not well, Tagore?’ It was only a simple question, but one
I have never been able to forget'.
At St.Xavier's, the annual calender misspelt Rabindranath's
name twice as 'Robindronath Tagore' and since he was irregular in class, he
failed his fifth standard final exam.Rabindanath Tagore left his alma mater in 1877 to come back in 1931 to head a
function organized by the teachers and students to collect funds to aid the
people of Bengal after severe floods destroyed the state Rabindranath
Tagore (1861–1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the
Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and
which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid
down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he
was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there.
In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he
managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with
common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started
an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals
of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist
movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the
political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted
by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned
the honour as a protest against British policies in India.
Tagore had early
success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his
poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous
height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship.
For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India,
especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.
Although Tagore wrote
successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his
fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari
(1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914)
[Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings
of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and
The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the
original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912),
the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its
namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber],
Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable],
Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He
is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among
them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog
(1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas,
essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle
years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous
drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.
Santiniketan (1901–1932)
In 1901, Tagore left Shilaidaha and moved to Santiniketan to find an ashram which grew to include a marble-floored prayer
hall ("The Mandir"), an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, and a
library. There, Tagore's wife and two of his children died. His father died on
19 January 1905. He received monthly payments as part of his inheritance and
additional income from the Maharaja of Tripura, sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside
bungalow in Puri, and mediocre royalties (2,000) from his works. By now, his work was
gaining him a large following among Bengali and foreign readers alike, and he
published such works as Naivedya (1901) and Kheya (1906) while translating his poems into
free verse. On 14 November 1913, Tagore learned that he had won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Asian Nobel laureate. The
Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic and for Western readers, accessible
nature of a small body of his translated material, including the 1912 Gitanjali: Song Offerings. Later that year, he was awarded the Honorary
Degree of Doctorate in Literature by the Calcutta University. In 1915, Tagore was knighted by the British
Crown. He later returned
his knighthood in protest of the massacre of unarmed Indians
in 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh.
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 at Santiniketan.
Through it, Tagore bypassed Gandhi's symbolic Swaraj protests, which he despised. He sought aid
from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from
the shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis
knowledge". In the early 1930s, he targeted India's "abnormal caste
consciousness" and untouchability. Lecturing against these, he penned untouchable heroes for his poems and dramas and
campaigned successfully to open Guruvayoor
Temple to Dalits.
Twilight years (1932–1941)
Tagore's international
travels also sharpened 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
noted in his diary: "I was startled into recognizing in his words the
voice of essential humanity." To the end, Tagore scrutinized orthodoxy. He upbraided Gandhi for declaring that a
massive 15 January 1934 earthquake in Bihar, leaving thousands dead, was divine
retribution brought on by the oppression of Dalits. He mourned the endemic poverty of Calcutta and the accelerating socioeconomic decline of
Bengal, which he detailed in an unrhymed 100-line poem whose technique of
searing double-vision would foreshadow Satyajit
Ray's film Apur Sansar. Fifteen new volumes of Tagore writings appeared,
among them the prose-poems works Punashcha (1932), Shes Saptak
(1935), and Patraput (1936). Experimentation continued as he developed
prose-songs and dance-dramas, including Chitrangada (1914), Shyama
(1939), and Chandalika (1938), and wrote the novels Dui Bon
(1933), Malancha (1934), and Char Adhyay (1934).
Tagore took an
interest in science in his last years, writing Visva-Parichay (a
collection of essays) in 1937. His exploration of biology, physics, and
astronomy impacted his poetry, which often contained extensive naturalism that underscored his respect for scientific laws. He also wove
the process of science, including narratives of scientists, into many stories
contained in such volumes as Se (1937), Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa
(1941).
In 1940 the Oxford
University conferred on Rabindranath an honorary doctorate.
Personal life
On 9 December 1883 he
married Mrinalini Devi (born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902); they had five children,
two of whom died before reaching adulthood.
Later years and death
Tagore's 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 an extended period. This was followed three years later, in late
1940, by a similar spell, from which he never recovered. The poetry Tagore
wrote in these years is among his finest, and is distinctive for its
preoccupation with death. After extended suffering, Tagore died on 7 August
1941 (22 Shravan 1348) in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion in which he
was raised, aged 80 years. His death anniversary is mourned across the
Bengali-speaking world. The last person to see Tagore alive was Amiya Kumar Sen
(brother of Sukumar Sen, the first chief election commissioner); Tagore
dictated his last poem to Sen, who wrote it down. Sen later donated the
resulting draft to a museum in Kolkata.
Travels
Between 1878 and 1932,
Tagore visited more than 30 countries on five continents; many of these trips were crucial in
familiarising non-Indian audiences with his works and spreading his political
ideas. In 1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they
impressed missionary and Gandhi protégé Charles F. Andrews,Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others. Indeed, Yeats wrote the preface to the English
translation of Gitanjali, while Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan.
On 10 November 1912, Tagore began touring the United States and the
United Kingdom, staying in Butterton, Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen
friends. From 3 May 1916 until April 1917, Tagore went on lecturing circuits in
Japan and the United States and denounced nationalism. His essay
"Nationalism in India" was scorned and praised, this latter by
pacifists, including Romain
Rolland.
Shortly after returning
to India, the 63-year-old Tagore accepted the Peruvian government's invitation to visit. He then
travelled to Mexico. Each government pledged US$100,000 to the school at
Shantiniketan (Visva-Bharati) in commemoration of his visits. A week after his
6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, an ill Tagore moved into the Villa Miralrío
at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He left for India in January 1925. On 30 May 1926, Tagore
reached Naples, Italy; he met Benito
Mussolini in Rome the next day. A warm rapport ended when
Tagore criticised Mussolini on 20 July 1926.
On 14 July 1927,
Tagore and two companions began a four-month tour of Southeast Asia, visiting Bali, Java, Kuala
Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. Tagore's travelogues from the tour were collected
into the work "Jatri". In early 1930 he left Bengal for nearly a
year-long tour of Europe and the United States. Once he returned to the UK,
while his paintings were being exhibited in Paris and London, he stayed at a Friends settlement in Birmingham. There he wrote his Oxford Hibbert
Lectures and spoke at London's annual Quaker gathering.
There (addressing relations between the British and Indians, a topic he would
grapple with over the next two years), Tagore spoke of a "dark chasm of
aloofness". He visited Aga
Khan III, stayed at Dartington
Hall, and toured Denmark,
Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930, then the Soviet
Union. Lastly, in April 1932, Tagore—who was acquainted with the legends and
works of the Persian mystic Hafez—was
hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran. Such extensive travels allowed Tagore to interact with
many notable contemporaries, including Henri
Bergson, Albert
Einstein, Robert
Frost, Thomas
Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Romain Rolland. His visits and intensive contact with Albert Einstein also
laid the foundation for the Tagore Einstein Council, the Einstein Baghwan, ...
and many acivities maintained in Berlin and Shantinitekan. Tagore's last
travels abroad, including visits to Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Sri Lanka (in
1933), only sharpened his opinions regarding human divisions and nationalism.
Works
Tagore's
Bengali-language initials are worked into this "Ro-Tho" wooden seal,
which bears close stylistic similarity to designs used in traditional Haida carvings. Tagore often embellished his
manuscripts with such art.
Though known mostly
for his poetry, Tagore also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues,
dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are
perhaps most highly regarded; indeed, he is 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
deceptively simple subject matter: common people.
Novels
Tagore wrote eight
novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher
Kobita, Char Odhay,
and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)—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 out of a 1914 bout of depression.
The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's (likely mortal) wounding. Gora
raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with Ghare
Baire, matters of self-identity personal freedom, and religion are
developed in the context of a family story and love triangle.
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
exploitative, rakish, and patriarchical husband. In it, Tagore demonstrates his
feminist leanings, using pathos to depict the plight and ultimate demise
of Bengali women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; simultaneously,
he treats the decline of Bengal's landed oligarchy. 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
arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is
married off to Madhusudan. She was brought up in a sheltered home where she had
followed the traditional way of life and observed all the religious rituals
like all the other womenfolk in the family.
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 the main character, a poet. It also contains elements of satire and
postmodernism; stock characters gleefully attack the reputation of an old,
outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by the name of
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 and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore elaborately records early
20th century Bengali society, through his central character, the rebellious
widow, who wants to live a life of her own. In writing this novel he exposes
the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry and were
condemned to a life of seclusion and loneliness. It is a melancholy, stirring
tale of the deceit and sorrow that arise from dissatisfaction and sorrow.
Tagore has said about the novel, "I have always regretted the
ending". Their soundtracks often feature rabindrasangit. In the latter work, it illustrates the
battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and
revolution against the Western culture. These two ideas are portrayed in two of
the main characters, Nikhil, who is rational and opposes violence, and Sandip,
who will let nothing stand in his way from reaching his goals. These two opposing
ideals are very important in understanding the history of this region and its
contemporary problems. There is much controversy over whether or not Tagore was
attempting to represent Gandhi in Sandip but many argue that Tagore would not
even venture to personify Sandip as Gandhi because Tagore was a large admirer
of Gandhi and Gandhi was anti-violence while Sandip would use violence in any
respect to get what he wanted.
Non-fiction
Tagore wrote many
non-fiction books, writing on topics ranging from Indian
history to linguistics to spirituality. Aside from autobiographical works, his
travelogues, essays,letters and lectures were compiled into several volumes,
including Europe Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe) and Manusher
Dhormo (The Religion of Man). A brief conversation between him and Albert Einstein,
"Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix.
Music and art
Tagore composed
roughly 2,230 songs and was a prolific painter. His songs popularly known as Rabindra
Sangeet (রবীন্দ্র সংগীত—"Tagore Song"),are an integral part
of Bengali culture. Tagore's music is inseparable from his literature, most of
which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—became lyrics for his
songs. 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. Though at times his songs
mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully, he also blended elements
of different ragas to create innovative works. They are immensely popular and
form a foundation for the Bengali ethos that is comparable to, perhaps even
greater than, that which Shakespeare has on the English-speaking world. It is said that his songs are
the outcome of 500 years of literary churning that the Bengali community has
gone through. Dhan Gopal Mukerji has said that these songs transcend the mundane to the
aesthetic and express all ranges and categories of human emotion. The poet had
given a voice to all—big or small, rich or poor. The poorest boatman on the Ganges as well as the rich landlord find expression
for their emotional trials and tribulations in Tagore's songs. It has evolved
into a distinctive school of music. Practitioners of this genre are known to be
fiercely protective of tradionalist practice. Novel interpretations and
variations have drawn severe censure in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Rabindrasangeet demands an educated, intelligent & cultured audience to
appreciate the lyrical beauty of his compositions.
For Bengalis, their
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". Arthur Strangways of The Observer introduced non-Bengalis to rabindrasangeet
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." Among them are Bangladesh's
national anthem Amar Shonar Bangla which became the national anthem of
Bangladesh in the year 1971 (আমার সোনার বাঙলা) and India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana is written
in the year 1911 (জন গণ মন), making Tagore unique in having scored two national anthems.
He influenced the styles of such musicians as sitar maestro Vilayat
Khan, and the sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad
Ali Khan. The song was written
in 1905 during the period of Bongobhanga (Bôngobhôngo – 1905 Partition of Bengal) – when the ruling British empire had the
province of Bengal (of undivided India) split into two parts; the decision on the Partition of Bengal was announced on 19 July 1905 by then Viceroy
of India, Lord Curzon. The partition took effect on 16 October 1905. This
divide of Bengal was along communal lines. East Bengal had a majority of
Muslims, while West Bengal had a majority of Hindus. This partition is claimed
to have undermined India's national movement against British imperialism, and
is said to have been politically motivated. This song, along with a host of
others, was written by Tagore, a pioneer of the cultural and political movement
against this partition. These songs were meant to rekindle the unified spirit
of Bengal, to raise public consciousness against the communal, political
divide. Jana Gana Mana is written in highly Sanskritized (Tatsama) Bengali, and is the first of five stanzas of a Brahmo hymn composed. It was first sung at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress on 27 December 1911. It was adopted by the
Constituent Assembly as the Indian national anthem on January 24, 1950. It is
written in a literary register called Sadhu
bhasa.
At age 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. Tagore—who likely exhibited protanopia ("color blindness"), or partial
lack of (red-green, in Tagore's case) colour discernment—painted in a style
characterised by peculiarities in aesthetics and colouring schemes. Tagore
emulated numerous styles, including craftwork from northern New Ireland, Haida
carvings from the west coast of Canada (British Columbia), and woodcuts by Max
Pechstein. Tagore also had an
artist's eye for his own handwriting, embellishing the scribbles, cross-outs,
and word layouts in his manuscripts with simple artistic leitmotifs, including
simple rhythmic designs.
Theatre
At 16, Tagore led his
brother Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. At 20, he wrote his first drama-opera Valmiki
Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki), which describes how the pandit Valmiki reforms his ethos, is blessed by Saraswati, and composes the Rāmāyana. Through it, Tagore vigorously 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. Another notable play, Dak Ghar (The Post Office), describes how a
child striving to escape his stuffy confines, ultimately "fall[s]
asleep" (which suggests his physical death). A story with worldwide appeal
(it received 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". During World War II, Polish doctor and
educator Janusz Korczak selected "The Post Office" as the play the orphans in
his care in the Warsaw Ghetto would perform. This occurred on 18 July 1942, less than three
weeks before they were to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. According to his main English-language
biographer, Betty Jean Lifton, in her book The King of Children, the
underlying reason for this being that since Dr. Korczak thought a great deal
about whether one should be able to determine when and how to die, he may have
been trying to find a way for the children in his orphanage to accept death.
His other works
emphasizing fusion of lyrical flow and emotional rhythm tightly focused on a
core idea, were unlike previous Bengali dramas. His works sought to articulate,
in Tagore's words, "the play of feeling and not of action". In 1890
he wrote Visarjan (Sacrifice), regarded as his finest drama. The
Bengali-language originals included intricate subplots and extended monologues.
Later, his dramas probed more philosophical and allegorical themes; these
included Dak Ghar. Another is Tagore's Chandalika (Untouchable
Girl), which was modeled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda—the Gautama
Buddha's disciple—asks water
of an Adivasi (belonging to an indigenous tribe) girl.
Lastly, among his most famous dramas is Raktakaravi (Red Oleanders),
which tells of a kleptocratic king who enriches himself by forcing his subjects
to mine. The heroine, Nandini, eventually rallies the common people to destroy
these symbols of subjugation. Tagore's other plays include Chitrangada, Raja,
and Mayar Khela. Dance dramas based on Tagore's plays are commonly
referred to as rabindra nritya natyas.
Stories
The
"Sadhana" period, 1891–1895, was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding
more than half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha,
itself a group of eighty-four stories. They reflect upon Tagore's surroundings,
on modern and fashionable ideas, and on mind puzzles. 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 villages such as Patisar,
Shajadpur, and Shilaida. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their
lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point.
In "The
Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller
and novelist who chances upon the Afghani seller. He channels the longing of those
trapped in mundane, hardscrabble Indian urban life, giving play to dreams of a
different existence in the distant and wild mountains: "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 .... "Many of the other Galpaguchchha stories were
written in Tagore’s Sabuj Patra period (1914–1917; also named for one of
Tagore's magazines).
Tagore's Golpoguchchho
(Bunch of Stories) remains among Bengali literature's most popular
fictional works, providing subject matter for many successful films and
theatrical plays. Satyajit Ray's film Charulata was based upon Tagore's controversial novella, Nastanirh (The Broken Nest). In Atithi
(also made into a film), the young Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with
a village zamindar (aristocrat). The boy reveals that he has run away
from home, only to wander ever since. Taking pity, the zamindar adopts him and
ultimately arranges his marriage to the zamindar's own daughter.
However, the night before the wedding, Tarapada runs off yet again. Strir
Patra (The Letter from the Wife) is among Bengali literature's
earliest depictions of the bold emancipation of women. The heroine Mrinal, the
wife of a typical patriarchical Bengali middle class man, writes a letter while
she is travelling (which constitutes the whole story). It details the pettiness
of her life and struggles; she finally declares that she will not return to her
husband's home with the statement Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum: "And I
shall live. Here, I live".
Haimanti assails Hindu marriage and the dismal lifelessness of married
Bengali women, hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how
Haimanti, a sensitive young woman, due to her sensitivity and free spirit, must
sacrifice her life. In the last passage, Tagore directly attacks the Hindu custom of glorifying Sita's attempted self-immolation as a means of
appeasing her husband Rama's
doubts. Musalmani Didi examines Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways,
embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. Darpaharan exhibits Tagore's
self-consciousness, describing a fey young man harboring literary ambitions.
Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her own literary career, deeming
it unfeminine. Tagore himself, in his youth, seems to have harbored similar
ideas about women. Darpaharan depicts the final humbling of the man as
he 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 died in the first place".
Poetry
Tagore's poetry—which
varied in style from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and
ecstatic—proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century
Vaishnava poets. Tagore was awed by the mysticism of the rishi-authors who—including Vyasa—wrote the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad
Sen. Yet Tagore's poetry
became most innovative and mature after his exposure to rural Bengal's folk
music, which included Baul
ballads—especially those of bard Lalon. These—rediscovered and popularised by
Tagore—resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity
and rebellion against religious and social orthodoxy. During his Shilaidaha
years, his poems took on a lyrical quality, speaking via the maner manus
(the Bāuls' "man within the heart") or meditating upon the jivan
devata ("living God within"). This figure thus sought connection
with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human
drama. Tagore used such techniques in his Bhānusiṃha poems (which chronicle the
romance between Radha
and Krishna), which he repeatedly revised over the course
of seventy years.
Tagore responded to
the mostly crude emergence of modernism and realism in Bengali literature by
writing experimental works in the 1930s. Examples works include Africa
and Camalia, which are among the better known of his later poems. He
occasionally wrote poems using Shadhu Bhasha (a Sanskritised dialect of
Bengali); later, he began using Cholti Bhasha (a more popular dialect).
Other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat),
Balaka (Wild Geese—the title being a metaphor for migrating
souls), and Purobi. Sonar Tori's most famous poem, dealing with
the ephemeral nature of life and achievement, goes by the same name; hauntingly
it ends: "শূন্য নদীর তীরে রহিনু পড়ি / যাহা ছিল লয়ে গেল সোনার তরী" ("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.").
Internationally, Gitanjali (গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection, winning him his Nobel
Prize. Song VII (গীতাঞ্জলি 127) of Gitanjali:
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আমার এ গান ছেড়েছে তার সকল অলংকার,
তোমার কাছে রাখে নি আর সাজের অহংকার।
অলংকার যে মাঝে পড়ে মিলনেতে আড়াল করে,
তোমার কথা ঢাকে যে তার মুখর ঝংকার।
তোমার কাছে খাটে না মোর কবির গর্ব করা,
মহাকবি তোমার পায়ে দিতে যে চাই ধরা।
জীবন লয়ে যতন করি যদি সরল বাঁশি গড়ি,
আপন সুরে দিবে ভরি সকল ছিদ্র তার।
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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.
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"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."
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"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."
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"Klanti" (Bengali: ক্লান্তি; "Fatigue"), the sixth poem in Gitanjali:
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ক্লান্তি আমার ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু,
পথে যদি পিছিয়ে পড়ি কভু।
এই যে হিয়া থর থর কাঁপে আজি এমনতরো,
এই বেদনা ক্ষমা করো,ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।।
এই দীনতা ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু,
পিছন-পানে তাকাই যদি কভু।
দিনের তাপে রৌদ্রজ্বালায় শুকায় মালা পূজার থালায়,
সেই ম্লানতা ক্ষমা করো, ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।।
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Klanti amar khôma kôro, probhu
Pôthe jodi pichhie poŗi kobhu
Ei je hia thôro thôro kãpe aji êmontôro,
Ei bedona khôma kôro, khôma kôro probhu.
Ei dinota khôma kôro, probhu,
Pichhon-pane takai jodi kobhu.
Diner tape roudrojalae shukae mala pujar
thalae,
Shei mlanota khôma kôro, khôma kôro, probhu.
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Tagore's poetry has
been set to music by various composers, among them classical composer Arthur
Shepherd's triptych for soprano and string quartet, Alexander Zemlinsky's famous Lyric Symphony, Josef Bohuslav Foerster's cycle of love songs, Leoš Janáček's famous chorus "Potulný šílenec" ("The Wandering Madman") for soprano, tenor, baritone and male chorus, JW 4/43,
inspired by Tagore's 1922 lecture in Czechoslovakia which Janáček attended, and
Garry Schyman's "Praan", an adaptation of Tagore's poem
"Stream of Life" from Gitanjali. The latter was composed and recorded
with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt
Harding's 2008 viral video.
In 1917 his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Richard Hageman (an
Anglo-Dutch composer) to produce what is regarded as one of the finest art
songs in the English language: Do not go my love (Ed. Schirmer NY 1917). The
second movement of Jonathan Harvey's "One Evening" (1994) sets an
excerpt beginning "As I was watching the sunrise..." from a letter of
Tagore's, this composer having previously chosen a text by the poet for his
piece "Song Offerings" (1985).
Political views
Tagore's political
thought was complex. He opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists.
His views have their first poetic release in Manast, mostly composed in
his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu-German Conspiracy trial and later accounts affirm his awareness of
the Ghadarite conspiracy, and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime
Minister Terauchi Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma
Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the
Swadeshi movement, denouncing it in "The Cult of the Charka",
an acrid 1925 essay. He emphasized self-help and intellectual uplift of the
masses as an alternative, stating that British imperialism was a
"political symptom of our social disease", urging Indians to accept
that "there can be no question of blind revolution, but of steady and
purposeful education".
Such views enraged
many. He narrowly escaped assassination by Indian expatriates during his stay
in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916. The plot failed only because the would-be
assassins fell into argument. Yet Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian
independence movement and renounced his knighthood in protest against the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. 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
favoured by Gandhi. Despite his tumultuous relations with Gandhi, Tagore was
key in resolving a Gandhi-Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for
untouchables, ending Gandhi's fast "unto death".
Tagore lampooned rote
schooling: in "The Parrot's Training", a bird is caged and force-fed
pages torn from books until it dies. These views led Tagore, while visiting Santa Barbara on 11 October 1917, to conceive of a new type
of university, desiring 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; it was later inaugurated on 24 December 1921. Here, Tagore implemented a brahmacharya pedagogical structure employing gurus to provide individualised guidance for
pupils. Tagore worked hard to fundraise for and staff the school, even
contributing all of his Nobel Prize moneys. Tagore’s duties as steward and
mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy; he taught classes in the morning and
wrote the students' textbooks in the afternoon and evening. Tagore also
fundraised extensively for the school in Europe and the U.S. between 1919 and
1921.
Impact
Tagore's relevance can
be gauged by festivals honouring him: Kabipranam, Tagore's birth
anniversary; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana,
Illinois, in the United States;
Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to
Shantiniketan; ceremonial recitals of Tagore's poetry held on important
anniversaries; and others. This legacy is most palpable in Bengali culture,
ranging from language and arts to history and politics. Nobel laureate Amartya
Sen saw Tagore as a
"towering figure", being a "deeply relevant and many-sided
contemporary thinker".Tagore's Bengali-language writings—the 1939 Rabīndra
Rachanāvalī—is also canonised as one of Bengal's greatest cultural
treasures. Tagore himself was proclaimed "the greatest poet India has
produced".
Tagore was famed
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. 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 in
1916–1917, were widely attended and acclaimed. Yet, several controversies involving
Tagore resulted in a decline in his popularity in Japan and North America after
the late 1920s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside of
Bengal.
Via translations,
Tagore influenced Hispanic literature: Chileans Pablo
Neruda and Gabriela
Mistral, Mexican writer Octavio
Paz, and Spaniards José Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia Camprubí, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Between 1914 and 1922, the Jiménez-Camprubí spouses translated
22 of Tagore's books from English into Spanish and extensively revised and
adapted such works as Tagore's The Crescent Moon. In this time, Jiménez
developed "naked poetry" (Spanish: «poesia desnuda»), a landmark
innovation. Ortega y Gasset
wrote that "Tagore's wide appeal [may stem from the fact that] 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 Dante
Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Plato, and Leo
Tolstoy.
Tagore was deemed
overrated by some Westerners. Graham
Greene doubted that
"anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously."
Modern remnants of a past Latin American reverence of Tagore were discovered,
for example, by an astonished Salman
Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.
Corpus
The complete works of
Tagore are online, hosted by the Society for Natural
Language Technology Research. These can also be found at Tagore Web containing all songs of Tagore with their notations.
— Bengali —
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Poetry
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* ভানুসিংহ ঠাকুরের পদাবলী
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Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākurer
Paḍāvalī
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(Songs of
Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākur)
|
1884
|
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* মানসী
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Manasi
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(The Ideal One)
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1890
|
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* সোনার তরী
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Sonar Tari
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(The Golden Boat)
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1894
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* গীতাঞ্জলি
|
Gitanjali
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(Song Offerings)
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1910
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* গীতিমাল্য
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Gitimalya
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(Wreath of Songs)
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1914
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* বলাকা
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Balaka
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(The Flight of
Cranes)
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1916
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Dramas
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* বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা
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Valmiki-Pratibha
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(The Genius of
Valmiki)
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1881
|
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* বিসর্জন
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Visarjan
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(The Sacrifice)
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1890
|
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* রাজা
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Raja
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(The King of the
Dark Chamber)
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1910
|
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* ডাকঘর
|
Dak Ghar
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(The Post Office)
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1912
|
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* অচলায়তন
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Achalayatan
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(The Immovable)
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1912
|
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* মুক্তধারা
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Muktadhara
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(The Waterfall)
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1922
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* রক্তকরবী
|
Raktakaravi
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(Red Oleanders)
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1926
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Fiction
|
|||
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* নষ্টনীড়
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Nastanirh
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(The Broken Nest)
|
1901
|
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* গোরা
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Gora
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(Fair-Faced)
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1910
|
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* ঘরে বাইরে
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Ghare
Baire
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(The Home and the
World)
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1916
|
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* যোগাযোগ
|
Yogayog
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(Crosscurrents)
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1929
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Memoirs
|
|||
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* জীবনস্মৃতি
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Jivansmriti
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(My Reminiscences)
|
1912
|
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* ছেলেবেলা
|
Chhelebela
|
(My Boyhood Days)
|
1940
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— English —
|
* Thought Relics
|
1921
|
— Translations —
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* Chitra
|
1914
|
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* Creative Unity
|
1922
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* The Crescent
Moon
|
1913
|
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* Fireflies
|
1928
|
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* Fruit-Gathering
|
1916
|
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* The Fugitive
|
1921
|
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* The Gardener
|
1913
|
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* Gitanjali: Song
Offerings
|
1912
|
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* Glimpses of
Bengal
|
1991
|
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* The Home and
the World
|
1985
|
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* The Hungry
Stones and other stories
|
1916
|
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* I Won't Let you
Go: Selected Poems
|
1991
|
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* The Lover of
God
|
2003
|
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* My Boyhood Days
|
1943
|
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* My
Reminiscences
|
1991
|
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* Nationalism
|
1991
|
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* The Post Office
|
1914
|
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* Sadhana: The
Realisation of Life
|
1913
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* Selected
Letters
|
1997
|
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* Selected Poems
|
1994
|
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* Selected Short
Stories
|
1991
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* Songs of Kabir
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1915
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* Stray Birds
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1916
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……………THANK YOU……………….
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