Biography of Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941. Indian poet and philosopher.

Poet, novelist, painter and musician, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is the grand master of Bengali culture. Written during the 1890s, the stories in this selection brilliantly recreate vivid images of Bengali life and landscapes in their depiction of peasantry and gentry, casteism, corrupt officialdom and dehumanizing poverty. Yet Tagore is first and foremost India's supreme Romantic poet, and in these stories he can be seen reaching beyond mere documentary realism towards his own profoundly original vision.

“Their real freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but in the highroad of adventures, full of the risk of new experiences.” Nationalism was a popular subject of debate in the pre-Independence era and academics from across the world shared their ideas on the same. Tagore’s idea of nationalism is deep-rooted in his belief that growth has to be all-inclusive – not just for a nation, but also for its people. This book is a collection of Tagore’s lectures on Nationalism in the West, Japan and India. His mastery with expression is further highlighted as he recounts the need of the concept of Nation to benefit its people, and not just exist as an idealistic theory that benefits a few. Nationalism brings to fore Tagore’s deep understanding of contemporary politics and paves a middle path between growth of the people and a nation, and aggressive ways towards modernity.

India’s Rabindranath Tagore was the first Asian Nobel Laureate and possibly the most prolific and diverse serious writer ever known. The largest single volume of his work available in English, this collection includes poetry, songs, autobiographical works, letters, travel writings, prose, novels, short stories, humorous pieces, and plays.

The Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) - 'the Indian Goethe', as Albert Schweitzer called him - was not only the foremost poet and playwright of modern India, but one of its most profound and influential thinkers. Kalyan Sen Gupta's book is the first comprehensive introduction to Tagore's philosophical, socio-political and religious thinking. Drawing on Rabindranath's poetry as well as his essays, and against the background theme of his deep sensitivity to the holistic character of human life and the natural world, Sen Gupta explores the wide range of Tagore's thought. His idea of spirituality, his reflections on the significance of death, his educational innovations and his relationship to his great contemporary, Gandhi, are among the topics that Sen Gupta discusses - as are Tagore's views on marriage, his distinctive understanding of Hinduism, and his prescient concerns for the natural environment. The author does not disguise the tensions to be found in Tagore's writings, but endorses the great poet's own conviction that these are tensions resolvable at the level of a creative life, if not at that of abstract thought.

Tagore's supressed book now available in an English-Bengali edition For the first time in English, here is the sequence of poems Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) worked on his entire life—the erotic and emotionally powerful dialogue about Lord Krishna and his young lover Radha. These "song offerings" are the first poems Tagore ever published, though he passed them off as those of an unknown Bengali religious poet. As the first and last poems Tagore wrote and revised, they represent the entrance and exit to one of the most prolific literary lives of our contemporary world. The translation rights to Tagore’s poetry were tightly guarded until 2001, when they entered the public domain, making publication of this book possible. These English versions are the result of a five-year collaboration between Bengali scholar Tony K. Stewart, who provided richly associative literal translations, and the celebrated poet Chase Twichell, who shaped the poems into English. This bilingual Bengali-English edition also includes the "biography" Tagore wrote of the unknown religious poet who supposedly authored these poems. Rabindranath Tagore was born in Bengal, the youngest son of a religious reformer and scholar. He wrote successfully in all literary genres and is the author of the national anthems for both India and Bangladesh. In his mature years he managed the family estates, which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He participated in the Indian nationalist movement, and was a devoted friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913; he was knighted in 1915 by the British Government, but later resigned the honor as a protest against British policies in India.

Written by the most famous Bengali poet, philosopher, social reformer, and dramatist who came into international prominence when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. For the Bengali public, Tagore has been, and remains, an altogether exceptional literary figure, towering over all others. His poems, songs, novels, short stories, critical essays, and other writings have vastly enriched the cultural environment in which hundreds of millions of people live in the Bengali-speaking world, whether in Bangladesh or in India. - Amartya Sen, Harvard University and Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 Formerly issued in a limited edition by the India Society in 1912. This edition was first published by Macmillan & Co. in March 1913. This text was retrieved from the digitized version of Gitanjali available in the internet archive of the University of Toronto. The hard copy of this version was presented to the Library of the University of Toronto by Lord Falconer from the books of the late Sir Robert Falconer, President of the University of Toronto, 1907-1932. A COLLECTION OF PROSE TRANSLATIONS MADE BY THE AUTHOR FROM THE ORIGINAL BENGALI