Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a new religious organization in nineteenth-century Bengal that tried to revive Hinduism's ultimate monastic root as given down in the Upanishads. He was schooled at home, and although being transferred to England for official schooling at the age of seventeen, he did not complete his studies there. In his latter years, he oversaw the family estates in addition to his various creative endeavors, a project that brought him into intimate contact with common people and heightened his interest in social changes. He also established an experimental school at Shantiniketan to test his Upanishadic educational objectives. He took part in the form time to time.
Indian nationalist movement, although in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, modern India's political father, was his close friend. Tagore was knighted by the reigning British Government in 1915, but he withdrew the honor within a few years in protest of British policy in India.
Tagore had early literary success in his home Bengal. He rose to prominence in the West thanks to his translations of some of his works. In fact, his celebrity skyrocketed, carrying him across continents on lecture tours and friendship tours. He became the voice of India's spiritual tradition for the rest of the world, and a significant living institution in India, particularly in Bengal.
Tagore was initially and foremost a poet, not withstanding his success in other literary disciplines.
50 ODD WORKS OF POETRY:
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] are among his fifty-odd works of poetry.
The English translations of his poetry:
The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to specific volumes in the original Bengali; and, despite its title, the most acclaimed of them, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], and Muktadhara (1912) are Tagore's greatest dramas (1922)[The Waterfall],Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders] and [The Waterfall].
Short story collections and novels:
Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents].
Aside from these, he composed musical plays, dance plays, essays of various kinds, trip diaries, and two memoirs, one in his middle years and the other soon before his death in 1941. Tagore also left behind countless sketches and paintings, as well as songs for which he composed the melody.
Tagore utilised his Nobel Prize money to develop Shantiniketan, including the establishment of an agricultural school (1914). He kept writing, publishing the lyric collection Balaka in 1914 and the book Home and the World in 1916. He was not naturally inclined to politics, therefore he avoided open resistance to British authority, instead finding methods to reconcile eastern and western world views. To that purpose, he established a worldwide university to the Shantiniketan complex (1921) and spent the remainder of his life mostly dealing with its operations and lecturing overseas. He attempted to translate Indian philosophy into foreign cultures. His Oxford Hibbert Lectures from 1930 were published as The Religion of Man (1931).
Rabindranath Tagore :
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1913.
Born: Calcutta, India, May 7, 1861
Died: Calcutta, India, 7 August 1941
India was the recipient's residence at the time of the award.
Prize motivation: "for his deeply sensitive, fresh, and beautiful poem, through which he has made his poetic idea, articulated in his own English language, a part of Western literature"
Languages: Bengali and English
Parents: Debendranath Tagore, Sarada Devi
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