Gitanjali

by Rabindranath Tagore

Overview

Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, a collection of poems, the most popular work by Rabindranath Tagore, was published in India in 1910. Later, he translated it into prose poetry in English as Gitanjali, Song Offerings, and it was published in 1912 with an introduction by William Butler Yeats. Medieval Indian lyrics of affection gave Tagore's model to the poems of Gitanjali, as well as he composed music for these lyrics. Love is the essential subject, even though some poems are about the internal journey between spiritual longings and earthly desires. More of his imagination is drawn from nature, and the commanding mood is minor-key and muted. This collection helped him win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. However, a few later critics disagreed that it addressed Tagore's best work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789356568501
Publisher:	Double 9 Books
Publication date:	04/22/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	447 KB

About the Author

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at UniversityCollege London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.